Li and I decided to settle down for a while in a small city in the northeast. There, surrounded by real crime and urban problems, our fun would go unnoticed. We could enjoy ourselves and leave whenever we wanted.
We took a top-floor apartment in an old house in a slightly seedy part of town, overlooking the occasional hooker and gang member but generally just decent, working-class people. The neighborhood was filled with color, Hispanic, black, and white.
I had fun going out to bars and such, just blending into the scenery and watching people. I guess both Li and I are just voyeurs at heart. I would occasionally take a lover for a night, when I felt the need, as would Li. Generally, though, she and I watched the rest of the world and kept the physical things between each other.
This one night, I had decided to go out to a show at a local bar, and Li wanted to stay home, watching the street below. We had a large window right at the front of the house with a perfect view of the street. All the entertainment we needed would walk right by.
Li took a leisurely shower, dried off, and put on a sheer silk nightgown. She piled up some pillows on the floor in front of the window, covered herself in a blanket, and settled in, watching in the dark.
She was mainly waiting for the neighborhood hooker to walk by with her girl in training. Li was excited at the thought of a woman who allowed others to take advantage of her, all the while taking the real advantage, money, right back. She wondered what it was like to walk the streets. How a hooker picked up her Johns. She wondered how they trained their girls.
Before long, she approached. The hooker who owned the block was black/Hispanic with kinky black hair and dark skin. She was a bit on the large side, tall and bulging out at the thighs as well as the breasts. She wore a tight-fitting skirt and top, black, with a neon orange mesh "coat" covering it. True to form, her thighs and butt jiggled as she walked, exaggerating the sway in her hips. Her breasts were large, filling her top, and smashed down under the tight material. She walked slowly, blatantly, waving at the passing cars if they contained gentlemen.
Her girl was black and smaller than her. She wore a tight dress of black spandex and heels. Her breasts were large in proportion to her tiny stature, and her legs and arms were thin, especially in comparison to her companion. She wasn't allowed to attract attention, staying behind her teacher.
Li stared at them, looking into them, through them. Their symbols now danced in front of her eyes, plain as if they had been painted on the window glass. They were signs of submission, anger, and ego.
The hooker thought of herself as the best at what she did. She constantly defended her occupation to herself, running through scenarios of confrontation in her head. She argued for her trade. She also felt power. She liked the looks she got from the men who drove by. She liked to know that they would give more for her time and affection than they would put out for a real date. She could ask fifty for a fuck and do it ten times in a night, while some goody girl would only get a $20 meal and would have to spend the whole evening with the guy. In the end the outcome was the same, both would be fucked and left to live alone in the morning.
Her girl respected her, admired her. She wanted to take a block of her own, to be stared at by the men. She wanted the money to buy nice clothes and a better apartment. She wanted to be able to care for her kid. She figured that hooking was easy money, and she wanted to learn from a pro. Already she earned more from leftovers at night than she had as a waitress all day.
Li was disturbed by all this. The hooker was so angry, she didn't care about the money or the sex. Li couldn't believe a woman could forget the feeling of being fucked. She was angry at the way the hooker saw men, almost lashing out and scrambling her symbols beyond recovery.
Then she thought a bit. Her newfound powers could do more than get her laid. They could really help people, or at least change their outlook. Li thought she could help out both of the women outside, and get some fine viewing in the process.
She quickly instructed the two to stay within view and to act normally. She certainly didn't want them wandering off half instructed! Then she began to sift through the hooker's mind.
The hooker had it bad. Li never imagined some of the horrible things she had seen. The hooker thought about them all the time, though, seeing death and pain all around her. That was the first thing to be changed. She couldn't just yank the memories away, fearing it would wreck the woman. Instead, she toned them down, cutting out the most violent memories and moving the rest into the background a bit. She wanted the hooker to still be herself, just to not have so much hatred inside her.
Next she looked at her outlook on sex. The hooker thought of her job as a job, not as an opportunity to fuck as many men as possible. Li couldn't let that stand, so she moved some pleasure symbols into the job area and mixed them around a bit. If she's going to fuck, she might as well enjoy it, Li thought! She made the hooker a bit more choosy, too. She would now refuse the sickest of the sick.
But would the hooker make enough money turning away men? She should, but where was all the money going? The mind is an incredibly powerful thing, exerting total control over the body.
The hooker's body no longer needed heroin. Her brain was rearranging itself, rid of the habit entirely.
Then there was the student. She was too idealistic about the profession. She thought only of the money and not at all of the pitfalls. Li left her with a dread of certain aspects of the job, hoping the girl would steer herself clear of the obstacles she would face. Li also fortified the girl's sexuality, confirming its place in her life. For good measure, she programmed the girl's mind to refuse drugs, knowing that her little girl needed a living mother, not a strung-out hooker.
Li then released the two from their lock, wanting to see how they would react.
At first, they appeared just the same, waving at the cars and flaunting their bodies. Li wondered if she had made a mistake. Perhaps these two were already too far gone for even a symboler's intervention?
The hooker waved at a car and it pulled over. The two women walked over, leaning down revealingly and looking inside. Li grabbed a snapshot from the hooker's eyes. Inside the car were two black guys from nearby. They wanted some action. They had pretty nice bodies, really, and looked clean.
After some talk and settling on a price, the hooker suggested they go to her place. Li quickly jumped up, not wanting to miss the action. She scurried out the door, still wearing just her silk nightgown. Out the front door and onto the street, she projected a field around herself. No one would notice her as she ran up the street, following the car.
