Chapter 1. Inductions and Introductions
Elena Fremont smoothed out her pencil skirt and tried to hide the smirk she was wearing when she walked into the lecture hall. Her lecture hall. The garden that would cultivate the first generation of her students. It had taken immense time and risk to secure her position as a psychology professor at one of the most prestigious institutions in the country. She had big plans for her proteges and even bigger plans for her position in the psychology community. Not the academic psychology fellowships, filled with stuffy intellectuals and ethical red tape. No, she wanted to climb...that other ladder. So when she strode into her classroom, her garden, her temple, it was not an easy task to hide her smile and she only managed to smother it down to an arrogant half smirk. Lips curling at the corners of her mouth as if she had just heard a clever joke. She had never met any of the students who turned their heads to watch her. Not in person anyway. But she had met them all a hundred times in reports and photos and videos from her private investigators. She had spent the better part of a year researching her starry-eyed roster. The twenty girls that stared at her cascading down the aisle had been hand selected. Scrutinized for their possession of a dozen or so very specific traits. The amount of string-pulling and wrist-twisting she had had to endure to orchestrate this day would have demoralized a lesser woman. But for Elena it was just the beginning.
She kept her eyes forward. Locked like a panther on the dais at the center of the lecture hall. Her seat of power. The whiteboard on the far wall read "Introduction to Advanced Applications of Psychological Stimulation on the Frontal and Parietal Lobes". A daunting title, more suited to a research project or a grant proposal than a sophomore college course. And more than one of the students in the room had already wondered to herself if the forces that had coerced her into attending this class had led her astray.
One of the students in the back had seen a well dressed man who looked like a security detail standing outside the hall, facing out as the door had slowly closed behind Ms. Fremont. She had only caught a glimpse of the man, and idly mused as to why a college lecture hall would ever need a security detail. At least, that's what she would have wondered, had her thoughts not shifted when Ms. Fremont entered. In fact, only one thought had dominated the minds of the students as soon as their new teacher entered the room; Ms. Fremont was impossibly beautiful.
Every article of clothing she wore looked as if it had been tailored for her that morning. Every piece was professional enough to maintain her visage as a member of academia, yet form-fitting enough to turn every head that saw her. And the form that her clothing stuck to so devotedly was just as impressive. All the usual suspects for a knockout beauty were there in spades: shapely ass, tiny waist, large breasts, the top quarter of which were exposed through the first two undone buttons of her shirt. Her auburn hair was wavy and bounced animatedly with every step she took, and as she walked up onto the raised platform and arrived at the dais at the front of the room, she turned and revealed her most impressive feature. Her face was a work of art. Not hot, like a sex-drunk sorority girl. Not cute, like an anime cosplayer. It was simply beautiful. Flawless skin, piercing blue eyes and, as the class saw her smirk finally give way into a full smile, dazzling white teeth. It was with that wide smile that she finally acknowledged her fledgling priestesses.
"Hello class. I'm Ms. Fremont. Welcome to the last psychology course you'll ever need to take."
Most of the women in the class were still too distracted by Ms. Fremont's stunning beauty to heed the odd introduction with any scrutiny. The lecture proceeded in a more straightforward manner when Ms. Fremont instructed them to begin taking notes and she turned to start writing on the whiteboard. She adjusted the microphone attached to her shirt collar so that the class could still hear her clearly even as she was facing away from them, and began a cacophony of psychology facts as the students furiously tried to codify it all. The lecture was extremely dense and filled with terminology that kept the students puzzled as to how this was at all suitable for an introductory course. After about ten minutes of furious note taking, a student in the front row finally let her aggravations boil over.
"Ms. Fremont, what exactly *is* all of this? This can't possibly be an introductory course. I'm completely lost and it's day one. And why are we in a huge lecture hall when there are only about twenty of us? And what do you mean that this is the last psych course we'll need? And--"
Ms. Fremont raised a hand to silence the stream of questions. She turned to regard the interrupter, another half smile playing at her lips. Clair Hartman, aggressive and just impatient enough to keep things moving forward.
"Yes Miss Hartman, I think you're right. Let's have a practical demonstration. Mister Carter, would you please join me up here?"
Claire was briefly confused as to how Ms. Fremont already seemed to know her name, and incensed that the professor hadn't even attempted to answer her questions. But all was forgotten as a new realization dawned on her; there were more than just the women in the class. There was a man. And he was gorgeous. Sitting by himself in a section to her right. His polo shirt was stretched somewhat tightly over an immaculate body. His face, while boyish, was handsome, and he wore the arrogant smirk of a man who knew it. Brandon Carter rose out of his seat and walked down the aisle and up the stairs leading onto the stage. Ms. Fremont had moved some large, plush looking chairs around on the stage and instructed Brandon to take a seat in the one with its back to the whiteboard. She took the one facing it.
"Brandon, I'd like to continue the lecture by demonstrating your autonomic nervous response to memories linked to your various senses. Can you start by recounting the best memory you have of a strong smell?"
"Uh, sure, I guess. I dunno, we went to the fair when I was a kid and there was this like, stand selling cornbread and--" as Brandon continued to stumble through an old memory, Ms. Fremont looked up at the whiteboard behind him with a furrowed brow.
"Ah, excuse me, Brandon, keep going, I just need to erase the notes from the previous lecture." She stood up, grabbed the eraser, and leaned forward over Brandon's shoulder to erase something. Brandon had leaned to the side out of politeness, but Ms. Fremont was stretching across his entire field of vision. And as she leaned further over, her shirt, which came down just to the top of her skirt, started riding up.
"Um, well, so there was this stand next to the flame jugglers--"
"I'm sorry," she cut him off, "I've asked Professor Whitaker to clean up after his lectures but he is rather adamant. We go back and forth like cats and dogs about the tiniest of things. Do you ever do that with your friends, Brandon? Go back and forth with them?"
