October 2nd, 2024.
Terry Manning sighed. None of the professionals they'd hired had been able to solve this puzzle, and once the higher-ups decided it wasn't worth the time and resources they were pouring into this project, they shoved it off to her.
The excavation was her idea in the first place, but she hadn't expected that she'd be sitting in her room, trying to solve an ancient puzzle for hours a day. As far as they knew, this thing could've had missing pieces. There were several dozen of them, all strangely shaped and clearly meant to fit together into one piece somehow.
That all being said, Terry kept at it tirelessly. It was fascinating, if frustrating. The design was immaculate. Each piece was flawlessly crafted and entirely made from a material that was similar to solid gold. It was harder and stronger than gold, and smoother; still sleek and shiny despite all of these years buried underground. It was her duty to figure out the cultural significance of the items they had recovered, and she had proposed that finishing this puzzle was the key to that.
She actually had no idea whether that was true, it was just a feeling. But it was a strong one. This frustrating puzzle had a strange, mysterious draw to it. Like it was pulling her in, whispering to her that it needed to be solved.
...
October 25th, 2024.
Sam Savallis always loved this time of year, though no one else she knew really appreciated it. It reminded her of her childhood: taking detours on the way home from school as she admired all the houses covered in Halloween decorations, and the pretty autumn leaves all over the ground.
Sam was grumpy and cynical enough to complain about the gray skies and the dampness and the windchill, but it was still nice. She could handle it. She wore boots, thick socks, multiple layers of underwear, pants, and shirts with a jacket over top. Overkill? Most definitely, but Sam was also fairly skinny and didn't want to freeze to death.
The extra weight did make riding her bike slightly more difficult. Yes, she didn't have a car. Not that she needed one now, but it was incredibly embarrassing for her that she still could barely muster up the confidence to get behind the wheel. Maybe one day she wouldn't get scared any time her car came within 10 feet of another vehicle.
A car that won't move can't get go anywhere, Aurora had told her. That was probably the most literal metaphor she'd ever heard, but it got the idea across. Sam admittedly had always been the type to be paralyzed with indecision. In the words of her sister, she was, "always with one foot in the door and one foot...not in the door. Out of the door. Whatever". Yeah, Aurora was really bad with idioms.
She wasn't exactly wrong, though. Sam was worried about life after college, if she'd be able to turn her passion for science into a career. And if she did, would she really be happy with it? She already found her enthusiasm for it draining due to the excessive amount of coursework.
God, she felt like a child sometimes. Her one consolation since attending Uni, she supposed, was that she'd at least lost her virginity. Not that it was particularly good, and that asshole of course bragged about it to everyone. She never wanted to talk to him after that.
Her sex life after that was a mix of awkward and generally not great; maybe it was time for her to become a lesbian. Sam laughed, she'd probably mess that up too. The female relationships in her life tended to be pretty intense, to say the least, which was absolutely not what she needed right now from a partner.
Plus, Sam had little idea of how to please another woman, as stupid as that sounded. She imagined it was like trying to use someone else's shower, it should be the same thing but the controls are all different.
In any case, it was no use thinking about any of that stuff now. Sam was on her way to meet with her friend Grayson Elliot, she was just about to get off work and told Sam she wanted to go shopping. And by "go shopping", she usually meant look at cute dresses and lament that she was poor. Grayson never ever wore dresses, she just liked the catharsis of envying others and complaining about being broke. Sam admittedly could relate.
Grayson had also mentioned wanting to show Sam 'something weird', whatever that meant. She just hoped it didn't take them all day, she had to go to her mom's house later; she'd been invited over for dinner.
Sam pedaled toward the local mall, she whizzed past several slithering tendrils of Pink; they went in every direction as they looked for pressure points to exploit. They were invisible to her and the Pink energy within her was largely ignored by them, dormant Pink would always eventually find a way to grow.
Sam chained her bike in front of the mall and made her way inside. Grayson worked at a record store; it had been known as a pretty hipstery, underground place for music snobs from the mid 2000's to the early 2010's, before vinyl records became the trendy thing to buy.
Grayson was great, but she was definitely that type of music snob. She always complained about the Swifties and other pop fans who would come into the store to buy records and not even know how to work a record player.
Sam entered the store, chuckling to herself as she saw Grayson leaned against a shelf, reading a comic book. One wondered what her actual job was here besides giving customers music recommendations.
Sam supposed that Grayson was such a wealth of music knowledge, you couldn't really easily replace her. Plus, a lot of the guys that bought records were nerds that probably sometimes entered the store just to see a cute girl with the same interests as them. And then they'd promptly leave as soon as she started shitting on their favorite bands.
"Hey, my dear Sammy-whammy." Grayson joked, pinching Sam's cheek. The green haired student groaned and lightly slapped her friends hand.
The musician had a similar bespectacled nerdy look to Sam, but with shoulder-length, dirty-blonde hair. She generally wore a sweatshirt and checkered pants, and a small lip ring. She had two small tattoo's on her wrist and lower neck, respectively. She was 5'4, while the slightly taller Sam was 5'7. While Sam had more sharp and mature facial features, Grayson looked a bit more soft and youthful. She had a brilliant, wonderfully wide smile as well. Sam always liked seeing it.
Ahem.
"Oy, knock it off. You're not my gramma. Don't you ever work at your job, by the way?" Sam protested. Grayson laughed.
"As little as I possibly can. I just got off, anyway. I actually wanted you to come in here cause I bought you something." Grayson said, before pulling a record out of her bag.
"Wh-what? Why?" Sam blushed. It was an old record of a boyband (or possibly girl group) she was obsessed with in Highschool called the Maybe Boys.
"I know you don't really listen to them anymore, but you said your sister broke your copy of it, so here you go." Grayson said, grinning slyly.
"Wow...thank you." Sam held the record closely.
"Hey, don't get soft on me." Grayson put Sam in a headlock despite her equally weak body.
"Oy!" Sam cried out.
Soon, the duo was off. Sam usually didn't spend much time at this mall, it was only now that she realized how relatively unpopulated it was. People didn't really congregate to smaller malls like this one nowadays, they tended to just stay home and buy things online. She supposed people found more pleasure in being alone.
"You ever notice how, like, no one really looks happy when you're walking through a public place?" Sam suddenly asked. Grayson shrugged.
"What do they got to be happy about?" Grayson asked as she put her hands into her sweatshirt pockets. Fair point.
It was nice catching up with Grayson, it was normally hard finding the time or energy to hang out with her friends. Sam mostly just listened as Grayson talked about the live shows she was going to be playing, old friends, and just generally gossiped. She likely would've been offended if Sam had called it gossiping, but that's what she tended to do.
After talking and walking aimlessly for ages, they arrived at a...lingerie store? Sam gave Grayson an incredulous stare.
"Grayson, why are we here?" She asked, holding her book bag close. Grayson rolled her eyes.
"It's nothing, don't worry. It totally left my mind until now, but I wanted to show you something. It's kinda why I called you here. Since, like, a week ago, something weird's been happening. I haven't seen anyone else talking or posting about it, but I've noticed." Grayson ominously stated.
"Well, are you gonna tell me about it?" Sam raised an eyebrow.
"Just follow me." Her friend said. The green haired young woman sighed but followed Grayson in. She never really went into these places, but she hadn't quite expected it to be this... over the top?
The walls, desks, and the lingerie on display were overly girlish and colorful, with a surprising amount of violets, lavenders and pinks. To her surprise, not as much black as you'd think. There were hearts, fake lipstick stains and female gender symbols all over the place. It almost looked like a store for bimbos just off of the design alone. But what really made it look like a store for bimbos was, well, all the bimbos.
It was considered a derogatory term, but that's the only thing you could really call them. There was just over a dozen of these customers that the store had attracted, and it seemed some of the employees were also among these bimbos.
Sam had no idea what she was truly looking at, but these women in the coming months would eventually be categorized in her mind as 1.0's; some of them were maybe 0.7's or 0.8's.
They were all gorgeous women with painted nails, faces immaculately made-up, and hair that looked straight out of a shampoo commercial. Most of their lips were painted subtle pinks, browns, and reds. Nothing too crazy, but enough to stand out.
Of course, the real show was their massive tits that were shoved into flesh-hugging bras. They weren't the largest tits Sam had ever laid eyes on, but unlike many of the silicone monstrosities she'd seen, these were very appealing and healthy looking.
Definitely real, despite their very large size and their preposterous amount of bounciness and perkiness. They were probably the largest natural tits she'd seen, at least in terms of proportion to the rest of the body.
Then there were the short skirts, and the short-shorts that clung to their healthy asses quite nicely. Some were more bubbly down there, while some had legs and glutes that were pretty damn muscular. It was impressive.
The more muscular ones had straight up bodybuilder legs and thighs, with a not-unremarkable amount of tone to their abs and arm muscles.
Oh yeah, that was the other thing. Very few of them wore full covering shirts, rather sticking to either half-shirts or open-chest vests. Many of them simply just wore what were essentially sports bras or something similar. Most of these women had on sensible high heels as well, not a single sneaker in sight. Many of them had small earrings or bracelets; one woman wore a weird looking gold necklace.
"Okay, so...You wanted me to look at some sexy ladies buying lingerie? I mean, I'm not against it." Sam chuckled.
"No, but like, I've never seen these kinds of women until last week. Now, I see a few every day, without even going into places like this. Like, it's hard to explain. They're not just hot women. They're all different, but they all kinda have the same energy, you know? Like they're apart of the same Hottie Club or something. They all have kind of the same demeanor." Grayson said.
"You know you sound crazy, right?" Sam placed a hand on her hip.
"Okay, but isn't it weird how all their butts and boobs are huge? I've never seen so much boobage in one place. I mean, of course my flatchested-ass hasn't, but still..." Grayson said.
