Ris Versus Reward

Author's Note

Risk Versus Reward is a prequel to Girl Friday and focuses on the story of Karin, the 'H.R. Lady' who provided Charlotte's rather unique interview experience when she was hired. You do not need to read Girl Friday to understand what's going on in Risk Versus Reward. But if you enjoy this story, Girl Friday should most definitely be on your reading list.

When we last left our heroine Karin in chapter 3, she had managed to survive the rigors of early morning calisthenics with the P.E. teacher from hell and even got a perverse a thrill watching her friend Desi as she struggled under Mistress Nguyen's personal attention. As the morning continues, the girls will have a chance to find out more about life at The Academy and be asked to make a big decision.

I hope you enjoy Karin's continuing story.

WaxPhilosophic

* * * *

Chapter 4: Orientation

In stark contrast to calisthenics not being a choice, breakfast a whole array of choices, but none of them involved a rope to determine gourmet vs cheese sandwiches. Breakfast, as it was explained, was a self-serve buffet affair that started at six and ran for three hours right up until classes began at nine. We were free to come and go as we chose, sampling from a variety of selections all the way from a quick grab-and-go protein shake or fruit and yogurt, to a full-course breakfast with made-to-order omelets and Belgian waffles. Everything was served up by the ubiquitous bespectacled lab coat girls, and much to my chagrin not a single one of them tried to cop a feel.

I pulled out a chair next to Desi and Jordan and another girl named Shauna, who Jordan assured us was just a hoot, and tucked into my Denver omelet. After a while I began to wonder about Jordan's assessment since Shauna hadn't contributed a single thing to our conversation as of yet.

"So what do you think Shauna?" I said.

"Good waffles." She turned her attention back to the food on her plate.

Yep, a real hoot.

Cute though. A petite girl with a bright smile, perky little tits and an amazing ability to inhale waffles in no time flat. I had no idea where she put it all in that skinny little body of hers.

"I grew up in Bumfuck, Michigan," I said. "Where're you from, Shauna?"

Shauna didn't even crack a smile as she continued shoveling in her breakfast.

Yep, a real hoot.

"She's from Fort Wayne," Jordan said. "About halfway between you and me."

"How come you know so much about her, Jordan?"

"She's my cousin."

"No shit?" I mean, looking at them I had never seen two people who looked so different. Jordan was big. I'm not implying she was chunky or anything, there was just a lot of Jordan to love with that long tall athletic body of hers and legs that went on for miles, whereas Shauna was just a little slip of a thing with hardly a curve on her body except for the two tiny bumps of her chocolaty-brown nipples.

"No shit," she said. Apparently Jordan sensed my doubt. "Third cousin," she added. "Once removed."

I hung my head and snickered softly. Somebody was a hoot alright, though I was beginning to think that it didn't stem from Shauna's side of the family.

"So you're not going to be weirded out if she sleeps in with us?" Desi asked.

Jordan leaned over with her arm around Shauna's neck and pulled her in for a kiss. It was a nice deep kiss that looked like it involved a fair amount of tongue. So apparently the answer to my question about being weirded out was a big fat no.

* * * *

"Welcome to orientation, girls." It was our old friend Headmistress Miss Hendricks addressing us while standing in front of a large video wall up on a decent-sized stage. I started to wonder if maybe they had movie nights here at The Academy, because with a little popcorn this would be the perfect place for it. The video wall was in some kind of screensaver mode with undulating color-changing curves making their way around and morphing as they bounced off the edges. It was fascinating to watch, but nowhere near as interesting as the eye-opening Academy history lesson we were getting.

"At the close of two-thousand eight, The Academy's founder, Doctor Tina Moreau found herself as a newly-minted psychology graduate during one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression of the nineteen-thirties. Though she was offered employment with the university to continue her research, she turned them down. Doctor Moreau, a native of Detroit, could not ignore the plight she saw in the area she called home. Women not much younger than herself were struggling to find the American Dream -- struggling to move out of their parents' houses, to make it on their own."

Desi turned to me with a look that said her story was pretty well summed up by the opening line of this morning's presentation. It sounded familiar to me too, and as I glanced to Jordan and Shauna I saw them nodding. I reached over the arm of the seat and squeezed Desi's hand in mine while Miss Hendricks continued.

"These were not ignorant women mind you, not lazy women, just women lacking opportunities. Doctor Moreau felt she knew a little something about women, and not just because she was one herself."

A few small chuckles arose from those of us assembled in the auditorium. In my mind that showed a lot about how far our little group had come since we walked into the lobby just the other day to find that we were being asked to remove our clothing before proceeding. The mood was light and jovial, nerves calmed, like just another day here at the lesbian Hogwarts. My own chucking continued a little longer due to my fascination with the rather absurd moniker I had assigned to the school. Miss Hendricks waited until we all got it out of our systems, smiled and got us back on track with our history lesson.

"So Doctor Tina Moreau did what any enterprising young millennial would do, she took to the internet. Doctor Moreau logged onto what was at the time a fledgling little website called Kickstarter, and she started a campaign to create opportunities for young women to be matched with older established women as their mentors. It was successful beyond even her expectations and is the basis for all of this. Miss Hendricks swept her arms out to the sides in a grand gesture.

"Oh, and did I mention that Doctor Moreau was also a dominant woman seeking an intelligent, elegant and well-mannered submissive female companion? After what you've seen so far at The Academy, I'm sure this won't come as too much of a surprise. The incentive to invest in the Kickstarter campaign is that dominant women -- those like Doctor Moreau -- are hoping to increase the number of compatible submissive partners in the dating pool."

Desi and I traded glances. I saw Jordan and Shauna looking at each other too. In just five minutes the strangeness of our first day here was explained, and the reason for all of this became clear.

We

were the dating pool. We were being groomed as potential matches for dominant women, women who apparently preferred cute young girls with hairless mounds who weren't inclined to question being asked to strip down before entering a building or to have dinner tied up with a friend. And with Doctor Moreau's psychology background I wondered if maybe some of our willingness was already divined from our entrance applications. I mean with all the deviant behaviors we'd been exposed to, it seems like losing a quarter of us that first day was kind of low number.

"Some of you may not be well versed in what I mean when I speak of a submissive woman. Here at The Academy we are not looking for doormats. Far from it. We don't want a girl who will simply let anything and everything happen to her while feeling powerless to stop it. We want girls who have minds of their own -- girls who think -- girls who when faced with a choice, will choose to submit because it fulfills their desire to do so, not because they are passive and feel helpless to stop it.

"You will always have a choice at The Academy. This is one of our core tenets and something we pride ourselves on. Some of these choices will be easy and some of them will be more difficult, but in the end the choice is always yours. You're all very intelligent girls here and I'm sure the fact that you have not been asked to make any choices so far today beyond what to have at the breakfast buffet was not lost on you. Omelets or waffles is not exactly monumental."

I few chuckles arose from around the room. I was not one of them. I leaned forward in my seat, focusing on every word that fell from Miss Hendricks' lips. She was about to share something important, I could sense it. I think some of the other girls did too, because the room fell deathly quiet in a very short amount of time.

"In a moment girls, I'm going to start a short video. It's only about thirty minutes long, but it sheds quite a bit of light on the educational curriculum here at The Academy. Please pay close attention, for we wish for you to be fully informed when you make your choice. It is a very important choice. By the end of the day you will be asked to decide if you wish to stay on at The Academy and enter into a life dedicated to service, or if you wish to return home with a twenty-thousand dollar college scholarship and the sincere gratitude of The Academy for entertaining our offer."

Even the gravity of what Miss Hendricks was asking us to consider was not enough to put a damper on the murmur of voices in the auditorium. Twenty-thousand didn't exactly constitute a full ride scholarship these days, but it was certainly nothing to sneeze at. With that kind of money at my disposal and some shrewd financial management, I could easily get myself most of the way through a degree at one of the public universities. Add in a part-time job and I could graduate debt-free.

Twenty grand just for showing up and taking my clothes off.

Well, there was also the one bed to rule them all sleeping arrangements, that was weird. But that led to Jordan's face planted between my thighs and Desi's hands all over my tits and quite possibly the best orgasm of my life. And thinking of Desi made me think of our odd little dinner arrangement, having my wrist tied to hers and sitting close enough that I had to rest my hand on her thigh -- or her hand on my thigh -- but that was OK too. I still recall the gooseflesh she gave me just by drawing lazy circles under the table.

But then there were calisthenics and having my pubes ripped out from the roots. Did I really want to be subjected to painful waxing treatments just to satisfy someone else's idea of what constituted a proper submissive? Or take part in Mistress Nguyen's remedial squat-thrust seminar and Kegel exercises every morning from here on out?

Maybe,

I thought,

if I got to watch Desi doing hers with a riding crop clenched in her teeth.

I felt a smile crossing my face and I was pretty sure that my mind had been made up during that brief moment of introspection. I was probably ninety-percent convinced -- so far all of the rewards had far outweighed the risks -- but I wasn't ready to sign anything just yet. No way was I going all in on this decision before I got to see that video.

Miss Hendricks waited until the handful of girls who decided that the scholarship was too enticing to pass up had their chance to get up and leave. After that, the lights went down and the show started.

* * * *

It started off pretty tame considering what we were being briefed on, and on top of that it was done with those same incredibly cheesy cartoon animations we had seen on the flat-panel monitors yesterday. If The Academy can afford to toss around twenty-thousand dollar scholarships as a consolation prize you'd think they could spend a couple of bucks hiring a professional spokesmodel or something instead of subjecting us to cartoons and a voice-over.

"Here at The Academy we pride ourselves on preparing young women such as yourselves for a happy and fulfilling life of service. Service to your dominant can take on many forms and we'll do our utmost to ensure that you are well versed in your role and prepared for what is expected of you," the animation's narrator told us.

It was a woman's voice was at least semi-professional, with a flat Midwestern accent, the kind that radio and television newscasters strive to perfect over their careers. It was the kind of non-accent that those of us from the area inherited at birth. That idea started the wheels turning in my mind and I wondered if the video might be narrated by Doctor Tina Moreau herself. That certainly would not be outside the realm of possibility since she was the one to start the program. And if it was her, her voice was kind of soothing -- sexy in a way, but mostly soothing.

I settled back to watch the goofy animations as the voice I now thought of as Doctor Tina continued adding the auditory description. I watched an animated scene of a woman walking through a door, a briefcase clutched in her hand, looking tired and more than a little stressed out -- yes, even the campy cartoons could convey that feeling. But when the animation cut to the young woman in the kitchen stepping away from the meal she was preparing in order to bring the briefcase lady a glass of wine, the message was quite clear. Briefcase lady turned her frown upside-down and was embracing the young woman.

As the viewing angle tightened, I could easily see that the young woman was nude except for a kitchen apron.

That was me. I was the girl being trained to cook meals and dedicate myself to fetching wine for someone else. Is that what I wanted?

I thought about what else I saw in the video, the more subtle aspects like the fact that briefcase lady was the one who looked stressed out, not the young chef. The girl cooking looked rather calm and collected. I extrapolated a bit and imagined that briefcase lady held some high-stress executive position in some company struggling to survive in today's economy. Chef girl on the other hand seemed focused solely on keeping briefcase lady happy. Interesting.

As I was mulling this over, probably reading way too much into these corny animated sequences, the scene changed. Dominant lady -- I guess I can't really think of her as briefcase lady anymore since she had left her cartoon briefcase in the other room -- I thought of her as dominant lady now. Dominant lady was standing beside a bathtub and being undressed by submissive girl. It was cute. Submissive girl wouldn't even raise her eyes to dominant lady until dominant lady lifted her chin with a finger and planted a kiss on her pouty lips. Adorable I tell you.

Dominant lady slipped into the tub while submissive girl knelt beside it, washing, rinsing ... repeating. For some reason that struck me as hilarious and I started to snicker. It ended up getting so bad that Desi had to reach over and pinch my arm to stop me from bursting out. I covered my mouth and tried to pretend it was a cough. But both dominant lady and submissive girl looked pretty happy about the situation. Not my giggles, but the bath they were having. That was made rather obvious when submissive girl's hand was under the water and dominant lady began sliding downward with a big smile on her face.

So two of my duties were made quite clear by that little sequence. I would be in charge of caring for my dominant, feeding her and bathing her. Oh, and I guess there was a third duty implied by the submerged hand and the roiling water -- I was in charge of getting her off from time to time. Listen to me, talking like I've already taken the job. But so far this was shaping up to be something I thought I could enjoy. Almost like being kept as some kind of pet, except that I pretty sure it's probably illegal to do some of the things I saw in the video with a pet. Maybe pet was wrong and this was more of a superhero sidekick role.

The adventures of dominant lady and submissive girl continued and now I began to provide my own narration with that thought in my head. Dominant lady and submissive girl were the new superhero duo I had invented inside my over-active imagination as I watched the videos play out. They even had superhero costumes to go with their superhero roles. Dominant lady's consisted of business suits and fine evening gowns, while submissive girl's were usually sun dresses or barely there frocks worn as evening attire, but mostly her birthday suit.

Occasionally the pair would augment their costumes with superhero accessories. Dominant lady's inventory seemed to consist of a riding crop similar to Mistress Nguyen's or one of a number of strap-on dildos that she could choose to employ. Submissive girl's accessories were usually things that could be tied on like ropes, or things that could be clamped on like bells. She also had a pretty cool collar that gave her the superpower of kneeling whenever she put it on. A lot of times it seemed to help her when Dominant lady employed her superhero accessories on submissive girl. Cartoon or not, I was really starting to get into the video, like to the point of wanting to try some of it out with my bed buddies and preferably soon.

And just like that, the video was over. The lights came up and Miss Hedricks was up on the stage again.

"Now that you girls have seen what your service would entail should you choose to accept it, I'd like to invite you to take the rest of today to relax and consider your choices. You are free to enjoy any of the facilities we have here at The Academy -- the garden, the pool, the spa, the gymnasium -- it is your day, so please savor it.

"Take time to spend with your newfound friends and discuss your options. And please do not hesitate to ask questions of myself or any of the staff. We want you to make an informed decision. All we ask is that you let us know of your decision by tomorrow morning.

"Thank you for your time girls. Now please, enjoy the rest of your day."