Under Pressure

"I feel it going, and it's wonderful. Exciting. Empowering. All the best adjectives."

We were seated back around the kitchen table, this time for a very different conversation. "Layla, I have not done that with anyone else. I don't know what will happen, how your body will react."

"Yeah, the two of us took a whole week." Lucy was seated in her Amazonian glory, completely nude and wearing it well. "The part you're feeling right now is the slowest pace. It all gets faster and more intense as you go."

Layla's reaction to that was perhaps not what Lucy expected. "You mean it gets better? All of this and it gets

better

? Lucy, walking back here from that bedroom... even with being so wobbly from getting railed so good, I didn't hit a single wall. The bruises I pick up every day don't hurt, it's like they just healed. Like I never got them. I'm lighter on my feet, practically bouncy, and you're telling me it gets BETTER? Jay, I

need

you to drag me back there and hit as many more points as you can!"

"It's just a huge risk. What if the energy or whatever this is overwhelms you? There aren't any take-backs on it, no way to undo these changes." Lilly was sitting, deep in thought, elbows on the table. The pose's impact was slightly altered by the fact that she was completely nude, her overwhelmingly huge breasts calmly resting on the table between her elbows.

I managed to tear my eyes away from the sights in front of me, somehow. "Alright. Layla, while I would prefer for you to wait, I am willing to keep going..."

"Yes!"

"... but not THAT much faster."

"Drat."

"Look, I'll put you forward by one more day of pressure points. Three more, it will put you about to the halfway point. I am not willing to risk more than that for now."

Lilly straightened up a bit, her massive boobs still resting on the table despite this. "What are you thinking, Jay? I know you have to have a thought on this. Spit it out."

All eyes were suddenly on me. "I might have found the process, but I probably know the least about it of anyone in the room. Lucy, Lilly, you both got a ton of info out into your heads I can't access. Layla is feeling that now. The way I see it? She's conscious, and not a blissed-out mess. Unless one of you two has a specific objection, if she says she can take it, I trust her."

"I can take it! I know it. I... I need it, Jay. I can't keep living like I have been."

I nodded. "Then we go just a bit further. Give me about ten more minutes to get some water, though. This might look fun, but it takes a lot out of you."

"Oh, come on. It's absolutely fun."

"You're right, but then again I never said I can't be both, now did I?"

--

I woke up the following morning to an odd sensation. There was only one person in my bed, and eyes closed I did not easily recognize her. She was in my arms, but my arms were pretty close together for that. Both Lucy and Lilly tended to be larger, either powerful or curvy in degrees not equalled by merely human women. Layla, too, was rather on the chunky side. Though still remarkably comfortable, the woman in my arms was thinner. She was quite warm, and would likely have been uncomfortably so without my body's recent upgrades. I could feel smooth hair against my cheek as I spooned the woman, my hands tracing the smooth skin and smooth dips and curves of her body. She was fairly tall, too, about my height. Odd. I didn't know anyone quite by that description, nor did I remember us picking up someone the night before.

I opened my eyes and felt for a moment like the warmth was my bed being on fire, but no. It was hair, a bright shade of red varied enough to show it was natural. The air still felt calm, the city sounds coming in from the window telling me that it was still early in the morning and well before my alarm. She was starting to stir, too, wiggling her body into mine. The low "mmmm" coming from her throat brought me back to the present fully. It was Layla, and the power of what I had unleashed in her was putting in work.

She stood, and the motion was smooth. Graceful. She had gone from short and pudgy to tall and lithe overnight, her breasts filling slightly and the cellulite subsiding. "Oh, that was some of the best sleep ever... oh! This feels... strange. Everything is offset, but my body is... listening to me? Can't put it into words."

I rose slowly. As we moved, the door to the bedroom opened, Lucy and Layla coming in. I shook my head, getting some of the cobwebs out of my head. "You're changing quickly, Layla, but Lucy and Lilly both got dramatically improved self-control as part of the package. Things are going to feel off for you until your body settles down, and since we are doing this differently I don't know when that will be."

"Love, you need to get ready to go to work, and you still make better coffee than I do. Come on, get going." Lucy was walking around the room, still quite nude. Much to the appreciation of everyone in the room, as her muscles flexed and danced under her skin. "We can teach Layla what she needs to know for today while you're there. Don't you have a meeting, too?"

I shook my head. "That's scheduled for tomorrow. Going to be teaching and researching for today, it should be a short one. The students just want to go party, and the classes are about wrapped up. Prep for finals, you know the drill."

She nodded back at me. "Alright. See if you can find out about whatever that weird guy was talking about? No telling who else is in on that, and I'd like to know just how hard we are going to have to hide."

To be honest, I hadn't been thinking too hard about that part. Not that I didn't need to, and not that I didn't know I needed to. I just... really didn't want to. What I wanted was to just settle back into our life. To just go teach, then come home to enjoy my wife and girlfriends. That sounded good. It sounded like something I could be happy doing for as long as I lived. Was it too much to ask the world to just let us live? Apparently so.

Traffic near the University was ugly that morning. Odd, the bad times were usually Thursday in the late afternoon as the teenagers tried to go party, which was why I made sure to never schedule a class around that time. Even before I'd accidentally turned my wife into a sex goddess, I just didn't like dealing with it. Everything just got denser and more complicated as I got close to campus. It wasn't just that there were an unusual number of vehicles, no. They didn't drive like they knew the streets and quirks of our city. It wasn't University traffic, no, it was more like Convention traffic... and no conventions were going on in town, much less at the University specifically.

Thankfully, people who weren't supposed to be there seemed to be leaving the Faculty and Staff parking lots alone. The number of zeroes on the fine for ignoring this was probably a factor, but it meant that when I pulled in I was able to get back to my routine. Get parked in my usual spot, pull out my briefcase, say hello to the usual folks, comment about the weather and traffic, and get to my office. Perhaps with less time than I usually might have, but enough that I could get to my first class before students started wondering about escaping. More theory, more ethics, more trying to get students to pay attention when nobody wanted to be there.

Imagine my shock when I got back to my office after that first class to find my department head waiting for me. "Jay, you need to head to the Dean's office immediately. He needs to speak to you, in person."

"Can it wait? I have a class to teach in less than 30 minutes and I'm already on his schedule for tomorrow."

He shook his head. "It's urgent, apparently. I'm subbing for you."

Um, WHAT? Since when did anything happen that could force a

department head

to jump in as a substitute? "Alright. They're on chapter 12 of the new books, you know the one. I'll head over to Admin now."

Making my way over to the administrative offices was an odd experience. There were a lot more people on campus than usual, and they stood out like a sore thumb. College students, even non traditional ones who were older than their peers, tended to follow a certain mold. These were not amiably chatting, headed with purpose from place to place, studying, or doing any of the myriad other random things that students did in the spring. No, these people were looking for something. Or some

one

.

Instinctively, I hunched down a bit. Gave them a wide berth whenever I could, kept my face from showing too much when I couldn't. This was a route I could walk blindfolded, and my instincts were screaming at me that this might be a matter of life and death. Whomever these people were, I did not want them to know I was there. With a sinking feeling, I felt that they were likely to have something to do with that same strange guy I was supposed to be researching. In all, I was very, very glad to get into the elevator at the administrative hall. The slow trip up gave me a chance to get nervous again, what the heck could all of this be about?

The door pinged, and let me out into a hall I normally dared not tread. This was where big, important people made big, important decisions for the school. I just wanted to make tenure and chill out until I could retire. Now I was knocking on the door of a guy who could make or break most of the rest of my life with a random decision. It wasn't what I usually wanted to be doing, especially not under mysterious circumstances.

A gravelly voice sounded from within. "Come on in, we have a lot to talk about." Joy. As I entered, a shockingly banal scene greeted me. A large man, broad grin on his face and in high-quality business casual, sat at a large desk, gesturing me towards a chair that seemed nearly as large as the desk I usually worked at. The dean. I took the seat he gestured at. "Jay. You are giving me a lot of problems the past couple of days, you know that?"

He had a reputation for not wasting time. Glad to see that much was consistent. "You mean my request?"

"That's a part of it, sure. I wondered why you suddenly wanted to scram, go for the remote work life, so close to the finish line. Didn't make sense, not for you. I'd have bet my bottom penny that you, of all the professors, would never upend your life on a lark. Glad we don't live in Vegas, eh?"

I wasn't really sure how to respond to that. "Did you want to talk to me about those arrangements now?"

His jovial grin dropped. "You ask to leave out of the blue, and now my campus is being overrun by people looking for someone who matches your description? After you've obviously been spending money I know for certain you don't have? I want you to explain for me, in great detail, why I should not fire you now for the safety of my students."

"I assure you, sir, the explanation is not anything illegal, but I guarantee you it will sound completely deranged."

He glanced back at me, one eyebrow raised. "I just want to know who you stole the texts of the paths of power from."

Okay, there was a LOT to unpack there. "I don't even know what you're talking about... wait. The pressure points?"

He shrugged. "That narrows things down a bit, but not how I've seen it done specifically." He rubbed at his temples, as though my response was sparking a severe headache in his skull. Who knows, maybe it did. "You didn't answer my question. Where did you get them?"

You know what? Might as well roll with it and pray. Unlike the people outside, I wasn't getting the instinctual aversion to the Dean. At least, no more than usual for being in this hallway. "First one I found myself, by accident. Found most of the rest online, and the last bit I figured out by following a hunch. Still feeling things out, but I think I'm close to some kind of limit."

"ONLINE?" The Dean practically roared this. "Who in the... so you're telling me that you didn't steal it from anyone. You didn't deprive another of power. You are not one of the Thousand, nor their designated successors? That any number of lucky fools could have stumbled onto this?"

"I have literally no idea what you might be talking about, but I accessed the information from the same site twice, about a week apart."

The large man leaned back in his large chair, looking largely exhausted by whatever revelations I had just given him. "Jay, you just handed me a much, much larger problem than you could possibly know about. You're telling me the truth, I know you are, but if I'd told this to myself from a week ago I'd have thought I'd taken leave of my senses. Alright. How much do you know about the sudden crowds on my campus today?"

I did not like how he'd phrased that. I worked here, too. I'd invested years of my life into the students passing through these halls. "One came to my office asking about some kind of path of power yesterday, he wasn't very coherent. I fed him some lies about chiropractors and exercise. I don't know who these people are, but I get the sense that they are both hostile and looking for me, specifically."

"You are correct as far as your statement goes. Now, how much I tell you is going to depend on the answer to a question I am going to ask you. Answer yes, and we have a lot of work to do. Answer no, and I will help you disappear. It is not a mercy that most would give, but you aren't like most of the ones I deal with. I don't need to worry about you. Now, the question. Do you wish to join the world I have only vaguely described for you? You would be my apprentice, ally, and possibly partner, and we would work together to secure our corner of it. This decision cannot be revoked. Once you're in, you're in for good. Take what time you need to consider this, but I cannot let you leave this room until you give me an answer."

I sat in silence for a moment, pondering what information he had given me. The dean seemed like he wasn't at all nervous about what I was going to say. Like he already knew what conclusion I was going to come to, or whether the decision was of no moment to him. He wasn't even looking at me, having turned back to his office computer to tap out some message or another. For me, even the knowledge that he had given me was more than enough.

A thousand powerful people, with apprentices, in some kind of crazy balance. He'd reacted like what I'd found were national security documents, and was acting like a lot of those people would be more than happy to see me dead. He was offering either safety in partnership or a way to escape. It didn't take long, really. I knew what I was about.

"My answer is no. Help me get out of here and we'll figure things out."

"That's what I... huh?" The Dean's head turned slowly towards me. "Really? After that kind of pitch, you'd just leave it? You could be so much more than you are, even now, just by learning. So much of your abilities remain locked, you remain ignorant of them."

I nodded. "I don't need this. I can finish what I've started and just go. We can be happy. I want no part in the conflict you are describing, leave me to the side. If I can't figure it out myself, it isn't worth it."

He sighed, a long and drawn out thing. "Fine then. I will help you disappear. Even arrange things for you to get your pension, as long as you keep a look out for more like us. Send likely talents my way, and it will be worth it. Deal?"

I took a deep breath. Just like that, my life was about to be upended. Again. Just as much as it was in the fall, when I found this process. I knew this one was coming, I guess, but not this soon. "Can't make any promises about how many that will be, but deal."

---

As it turned out, his plan and mine were fairly similar. Get gone, somewhere that attractive people wouldn't seem out of place. Live in comfortable obscurity. He didn't share the RV thought, but agreed it could work. The one exception? "Once you're away from this town, you have to stop using your abilities. Even we we didn't see people transforming, it has a signature that we can recognize. The only way you got away with it this long was because I operate around here, and the others thought it was either me or my apprentices."

That was fine by me. By the time the weekend was done, I wouldn't need to. Most likely, I wouldn't be

able

to use the abilities. There were some exceedingly mundane details he needed to arrange. I was suddenly shuffled off to an administrative position I was quite sure I'd never heard of before, which nobody would think twice about not seeing my name on anything.

After getting some information from me, including the location of the website (which had been apparently taken down or deleted since I last saw it), the Dean left me with three immediate instructions. First, get back to my office to get anything personally valuable. Second, get back home to my family to finish what I started here. Last, lay low until I could get gone. Timing my movement to when students would be out between classes, I got to it. The interlopers were still walking around, but none even looked in my direction. After all, unlike them, I knew what students moved like around these parts.

In the end, what was really "mine" in the office didn't amount to much. Some pictures and letters, some office supplies, a few thumb drives and cables and adapters that I never did end up convincing the school to buy. Couple of folders, too. It all fit in my briefcase with space to spare, now that I wasn't going to be bringing student papers home. It took all of fifteen minutes before I was striding back towards the door... but there I paused. This was the room I had spent years working in. Students had shed literal blood, sweat, and tears here. My career, my life, and all I had long envisioned for it. It all had seemed so solid, so little time ago, but it was set to evaporate. The pillars of those dreams might not have been made of salt and sand, but they were not made to weather this. I shook my head. The long I stayed, the more likely I was to be found... and the more likely I was to get cold feet about my decision. Resolutely, I stepped out the door.

Traffic on the way home was much less intense. Fewer were moving at this time of day, and the people looking for me thought I was still on campus. I paused only to shoot a terse text message home to warn them I was coming, and that I would explain in person. No sense taking chances.

As many shocks as I had gotten that day, what I saw when I got home definitely ranked high. Lucy's car was missing from the parking lot, so I assumed all of the ladies would be out doing something critical. Not quite. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was tackled by a red blur. Sent my mind back to where it all started, let me tell you. We were thankfully alone in that hallway, because Layla was fully and completely nude.

And now, she definitely wore it better than a day prior. Instead of short and squat, she was tall and elegantly formed, almost elfin. Smooth and hairless from the neck down, the muscles of her arms, legs, and abs firm and toned, her hair a fiery red that cascaded down her back like a waterfall. Her breasts and hips were most definitely there, bouncy and perky handfuls that drew the eye and imagination. Without any comment needed, she grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me inside.

At least we were out of view, right?

The door closed behind me, and she was suddenly removing my clothing with remarkable speed and precision. "I know we're going to have a lot to do later, but I stayed home for one reason. Finish me, Jay. I know I want this."

With agility I knew for fact she didn't have the day before, Layla leapt up to latch herself to my suddenly-nude torso, sliding herself onto my rigid length and pumping me there as I stood holding her. So unlike before, she took my impossible length all the way down almost instantly, and I could feel her first orgasm crash into her as she did so. The feel of it was electric. I knew that this time, I would not need to go to the others for relief afterwards. My mind came to the present, I knew what I needed to do. Three long strides later and I was no longer carrying her in the middle of the living room. Instead, she was pinned to the wall, which let me seize her hands. "Last chance to back out, Layla," I half-growled into her ear, "Do you want me to finish what we started?"