The holodeck couldn't recreate smells, but all the same, Semya thought that she could taste stale tobacco in the air as she and Alara walked down the narrow, hardlight alleyway, between buildings that were made of nothing more than photons and data. Semya wrinkled her nose at the phantom stench, but in truth it was a pleasant distraction from other aspects of her situation.
It didn't last. The holodeck was extremely capable of creating local temperature adjustments, and the biting cold of the simulated night air on Semya's bare legs was a constant, unpleasant, forcefully arousing reminder of what she was wearing.
"Are you ready?" Alara asked her.
Semya flashed her a jealous look. Unlike her, Alara Hisarlik was wrapped up in a long, fine, warm coat. Why did Semya have to be so uncomfortable? What sense did it make for her to be dressed in such a humiliating way, while her therapist was comfortable and dignified? What kind of therapy was this, anyway?
Semya thought about voicing that question, but she couldn't seem to muster the focus. Instead, she just found herself saying:
"Yes, Alara."
"Good." There it was again; that wide, unwholesome grin that had Semya convinced the counselor was bad news. "We're here."
She gestured to the building they had just arrived outside: a grubby little hole of a dyke bar, charmingly named 'The Scissors'.
Semya knew it well. It was a perfect, holographic recreation of the real deal, a bar that Semya had gone cruising at often enough during her stints of shore leave on Earth. She'd actually built the simulation herself, although she'd never quite plucked up the shameless daring to go through with any of the deep, dark fantasies that had motivated it.
But now, thanks to Alara, that was about to change. And Semya was about to experience The Scissors in a very, very different way.
Just thinking about that made Semya whimper. She could already feel herself dripping down her leg.
"Don't be nervous," Alara cooed. "This is simply the culmination of your therapy, Semya. The final push. It's what you need to finally break through your own walls and barriers."
Semya nodded in instinctive submission. The final push. After this, she'd be cured. Cured of the messed-up, embarrassing fetish that had kept her holed up in her cabin touching herself all day long ever since their last session.
Then she could alert the captain and the rest of the crew. She could save the Inyx. She'd have Alara Hisarlik in the brig. She just needed to be cured.
Semya frowned for a moment as she tried to remember why, exactly, what they were doing was so important to her therapy. Her head started to hurt. The memories wouldn't form. How had she ended up here? Why was she doing this?
She couldn't remember. When she tried, she just found herself picturing Alara's pocket watch.
Alara was doing something to her. Definitely. Something sinister. Semya was sure of it, and it terrified her.
But before she could come to terms with that, she needed to be cured.
"I understand," she whimpered softly.
"Then," Alara said, licking her lips and reaching out to open the door to the lesbian bar, "let's get started."
Before Semya could brace herself, Alara rested a hand on her back and pushed Semya through the door.
It was loud inside the bar, but as soon as the door closed behind the two of them, a distinctive hush washed through the space as conversations fell silent and heads turned, punctuated only by the scraping of barstools as every single patron craned to look at Semya Kuznetzov.
Semya's cheeks turned bright red. She knew those looks. She knew what she was to them.
Fresh meat.
The Scissors might have been a filthy dive bar, but there was a kind of etiquette to the place that was as rigid as any military discipline. The way the bar worked was that dominant, butch women hung out and drank, and if any submissive, feminine girls wanted some action, all they had to do was walk through the door and pick who got to buy her a drink.
In the past, Semya had always been one of the butches. Not anymore. And now she was learning how all those femmes had always felt, staring down all these hungry, cocky, lustful stares.
Someone wolf-whistled. A moan slipped out of Semya's lips.
It was little wonder that everybody was staring. Semya was dressed in the outfit Alara had picked out for the occasion - and it was beyond even her wildest fantasies. A metallic, gold minidress, cut tight to her figure, but ruched so that each of its folds caught the light and attracted attention to Semya's physique. She felt she didn't have the figure for a dress like that, but from the looks she was getting, the bar's patrons disagreed.
In one hand, Semya was clutching a tiny purse Alara had given her to hold her badge. Alara had given her a necklace, too: a woven little gold chain that hung down as if pointing the way to her exposed cleavage. And then there was her makeup: under Alara's stern instruction, Semya had been practicing, and in a few weeks she'd become skilled enough to give herself a perfect complexion, full, vibrant lips, striking eyeliner, and deep, sultry eyeshadow. But Alara had insisted on a heavy hand. The colors were a little too lurid; the pronounced blush and bright lipstick looked slutty instead of simply pretty, and the way she'd used bright pink instead of a deeper red ensured the resulting look was girlish rather than womanly.
All in all, with her mid-length hair, she looked just like a freshly-turned femme looking to get fucked like a princess for the first time.
And it was desperately, humiliatingly hot to know that, in a way, that was exactly what she was.
The crowning humiliation was the tall, dainty, heels Alara had forced her to wear. Semya stumbled like a newborn faun as Alara pushed her a few paces deeper into the bar.
"Go on," Alara jeered. The rich pleasure in her voice was unmistakable. "Time to take your medicine, lieutenant."
Semya let out a plaintive little whine. She had never been so turned on. The outfit was bad enough, but now, feeling dozens of pairs of eyes roving over her body, Semya was completely robbed of the ability to form words. Her head was full of steam. She couldn't think.
"Does..." she whimpered eventually. "D-does it really... have to be... t-them?"
She gestured at the bar's patrons. They were all dressed for the part, but each and every one of the patrons' faces was familiar to Semya - because they were holograms of the Inyx's crew.
"Oh yes," Alara insisted, giggling. "Private therapy is merely the beginning. To complete your counseling, you need to be properly socialized into your new, feminine social role.
Hearing that didn't make thinking any easier.
"B-but," Semya tried to say, "I t-thought... b-but you said..."
She was supposed to go back to normal after this, wasn't she? She'd be free of her fetish. She'd be able to go back to being butch. Wasn't that the whole idea?
Semya wasn't sure anymore. She just couldn't think. Why couldn't she think?
"You have to feel seen," Alara assured her. "By people familiar to you."
