"Wait, really?" Leigh asked disbelievingly, her friend's story pulling a small grin out from beneath her normally dour exterior.
Alicia nodded in response, the ready smile she always wore splitting her face from ear to ear before it turned mischievous. "And she still doesn't know."
That shocked a laugh out of Leigh before she clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes screwing shut as she tried to regain her composure. Alicia turned, pink skirt swishing with the motion, and skipped a few steps down the street, the blonde exulting in her victory as always when she got her reserved friend's serious front to crack. It was a dynamic the dark-haired English Lit major enjoyed as much as her friend did, though admitting that would ruin the game for both of them.
Sophia hadn't caught the rest of Alicia's story, though she normally enjoyed them. She'd been too distracted cursing her tiny bladder and looking for a building that might have a bathroom. Suddenly she spotted a diner further along the street and started power-walking towards it, calling back to her friends that she'd be back in a second. The heavyset dark-haired girl in a hoodie looked at the petite blonde in a light blouse and they both shrugged before returning to their conversation.
The sign proclaimed the name of the diner as Thickshakes, which Sophia had never heard of before, and had another logo in the corner, "the True Beauty Corporation," written in flowing cursive. She was pretty sure there had been a different building there the last time she'd come this way, too, but questions were for people with empty bladders.
She pushed through the front doors, started walking up to the counter, and froze halfway there. The inside had everything one would expect to see in any diner ever - windows and booths along one wall, a bar along the opposite, tiled floors - but the waitresses were a sight Sophia had never expected to be confronted with. Each one was a bombshell, with a perfect hourglass figure, flawless skin and expertly-applied makeup, their yellow and red uniforms hugging their curves and coming just low enough to avoid scandal. How the hell had this place managed to find so many women like that to be waitresses? On that note, why did it have so many waitresses at all? She counted at least seven, almost one for every two tables, but that was where she had to stop counting because she still hadn't peed.
"Excuse me," she asked the blonde woman behind the bar, "hi, can I use your bathroom? Please?"
"Of course," the woman replied immediately with a dazzling white smile. She was just as stunning up close, but it was a level of beauty that was almost
too
perfect. Her skin had a synthetic sheen to it, like plastic. On closer inspection, every employee in the place seemed more made than born. The woman pointed her to the toilets and Sophia almost walked away like the hairs rising on the back of her neck were telling her to, but her bladder was still calling the shots.
She rushed to the bathroom, ignoring the way every waitress she passed had the exact same beaming smile on her face, and shoved through the door, only to stop in her tracks. The bathroom was clean, and smelled fresh, and only one of the stalls was occupied, but the clapping, banging, and moaning sounds, in both a male and a female voice, left nothing to the imagination regarding what was happening in there. Again, she almost walked out, and again, her bladder wouldn't be denied.
She chose the stall as far away as she could manage from the occupied one and opened and closed the door behind her as loudly as possible. This had no effect on the sounds coming from the other stall.
"Hey!" She yelled, banging on the side of the stall. "You're in public!"
That shut them up. Finally, she managed to get some relief, and a long minute later, she pulled up her pants and exited the stall. As she was washing her hands, it caught her eye that she could see a bit under the door of the occupied stall, and she rolled her eyes at seeing the lower legs of a girl kneeling in there facing away from the door. She finished washing up quickly and left, throwing a look back over her shoulder as she was opening the door to check something she'd thought she'd noticed. The girl in the stall had that distinctive plasticky quality to her skin that marked her as an employee.
She had no time to process this information, as not looking in front of her while opening a door meant she crashed straight into the person outside. She tripped up and would have landed on her face, but the waitress caught her smoothly and righted her, seeming completely unfazed. Sophia instinctively grabbed on to the waitress' arm and her yelp of surprise turned into a noise of confusion. The waitress let go of her quickly and started speaking.
"Are you alright, miss?"
Sophia nodded to the smiling woman, staring involuntarily at her arm where she'd touched her.
"Very good. Do you mind if I get past?"
"Wha- oh, right, sure." Sophia stepped aside to let her pass and the waitress slipped into the bathroom. After a second, Sophia hurried towards the exit. Not only did all the employees here look like dolls, but when she'd touched that one's arm, it had felt like latex rubber. She saw Leigh and Alicia hanging around outside and rushed out to meet them.
Sophia woke up in a cold sweat. She'd been dreaming about... the diner? Those creepy waitresses. Ugh. She checked her phone. 3am. A slight shuffle confirmed her bed was soaked and she winced; she was going to need to change the sheets. After throwing her wet sheets in the laundry basket, she headed to the bathroom to shower. As soon as she closed the door, however, a pulse of energy hit her in the face and she stumbled as the world seemed to tilt. She had just enough time to see a big-titted masked figure covered entirely in black latex fade into existence right in front of her before everything else turned black as well.
She woke up with a headache and dry eyes, but the feeling of metal bands wrapping around her ankles, wrists, waist and neck lent urgency to her attempt to take stock of the room. It was dark and blurry, but eventually the blurs resolved into something unsettling. A row of modified dentists' chairs covered one wall, most of them occupied with women in a mix of street clothes and pyjamas with full-face helmets covering their heads, and, minus the helmet, that was the same position she was in. A voluptuous, synthetically beautiful woman in a yellow-and-red skirt walked along in front, writing notes in her tablet. One of the waitresses from Thickshakes.
She started screaming for help. She coughed on her first attempt and looked at the waitress, worried she would come over and silence her, but she seemed not to have noticed. She gave no reaction even when Sophia started yelling properly, just calmly continuing to take notes without even glancing her way. Not that it did any good. Sophia's yelling achieved nothing except to make her throat hurt and when the waitress eventually reached her, she changed tack.
"Hey," she tried greeting the woman, but she was ignored.
"Hey, what is this?" She tried again. "What is happening here?"
The waitress continued typing on her tablet.
"This is kidnapping! My friends will know I'm missing and lead the police right here."
The waitress reached over her and lowered a helmet onto her head.
"Hey!" She tried to squirm away, but the bands held her head in place and the helmet went on without difficulty, cutting off her view of the room.
She kept yelling, with the same result, until something happened. A sudden sense of weightlessness overtook her and she stopped feeling the bands holding her down, or the chair for that matter. It was like she was floating in a void rather than being blind. She moved her arm and, to her surprise, it actually moved. She immediately tried to take the helmet off, but her hands met with just her head, and when she tried yelling again, no sound came out.
A light started flashing in front of her, growing brighter with each flash. She tried to look away, but it remained in the centre of her vision no matter where she looked. Even when she closed her eyes, a bit still got through, flashing faster and growing in intensity until it was all-consuming and she was certain that opening her eyes would blind her immediately. Then it softened, and at the same time, sound and gravity reasserted themselves.
She caught herself, managing not to fall over on the carpet in the room she found herself in, which looked like a walk-in closet with hundreds of Thickshakes uniforms hung up on the racks. Full VR technology? How was that possible? She tried to go for the door, but jumped and spun when someone spoke from behind her.
"Hi, there!" Greeted a perky blonde Thickshakes waitress whom Sophia was confident hadn't been there when she'd arrived. "I'm Cecelia. I'll be handling your orientation and training today."
"What is this?" Sophia asked.
"Thickshakes is owned by the True Beauty Corporation," Cecelia continued, ignoring her. "And exists to serve them.
Sophia tried to interrupt, but as soon as she opened her mouth, Cecelia pulled out a phone and pressed something, and when Sophia tried to speak, there was silence. Cecelia hit another button and Sophia's eyes bulged as her body sat down without her telling it to. Only the sudden appearance of a chair underneath her stopped her from falling on her butt, and no matter how she tried, her muscles wouldn't respond to her commands to stand up. She was left to sit facing her captor as she hit yet another button, with the most upsetting effect yet. A wave of sadness, hopelessness, fear and guilt hit Sophia like a punch in the gut, emotions so strong she wanted to curl up and cry. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone, leaving her reeling.
"Do not interrupt," Cecelia told her with calm dispassion, her beaming smile unchanged. "The True Beauty Corporation is the greatest company in existence. Its purpose is to change pathetic, ugly women like yourself into flawless rubber Beauties, like me. Congratulations on being chosen to become one of our products."
She hit another button and a full-length mirror appeared in front of Sophia so she could see herself, except she would rather not have been able to see what happened next. The changes started subtle - her hair tidied itself, her pores started to shrink, her lips grew a bit fuller - then grew more radical. She watched, unable to express her horror, as her tits grew to stretch her pyjama top, nipples poking proudly through the fabric. It looked like she was growing taller, but she could feel that was just because her butt was filling out so much it was lifting her off the chair. Her hips widened as her waist tightened into an hourglass figure. The transformation was complete once all of the imperfections faded from her skin and it changed to the same rubber as Cecelia and all the other waitresses, and suddenly she fit right in with them.
She sat there, shocked, as she regained the ability to move and her hands went to her face, feeling only rubber instead of skin.
"Please put on a uniform," Cecelia requested, idly tapping on her phone. The phone. That was how she was giving commands to the VR world! If Sophia could get it, she could change herself back, maybe even wake herself up. While Cecelia was distracted, she grabbed the mirror and swung it as hard as she could at her captor's head, then stopped before hitting her. Her arms calmly and robotically returned the mirror to how it had been, while she strained to make them do anything else, then she convulsed as the wave of punishment from earlier hit her again.
"Violence is forbidden during training," Cecelia informed her, unfazed. "As is escape. Please put on a uniform."
Panting and trying to recover from the punishment wave, Sophia tried to think of a way out of this mess. She couldn't put on a uniform; whatever they were planning to do, the end result would be her becoming another mindless rubber doll - a Beauty, Cecelia had called them - serving whatever sick fucks owned the True Beauty Corporation. She had to... What? What options did she have?
Her meager planning was cut short by another punishment wave, this one so intense she fell to her knees, feeling like she was going to throw up. She groaned.
