Chapter 2

As state-owned employees went, Chatta had a cushy job. Most unowned Torean girls her age were still working off their dowry contracts, or the ones from rich families were suffering through finishing school. Those were the girls who did what they were told, and trusted that society would reward their conformity.

But Chatta had worked out how you got ahead. She looked past the collars and chains to the invisible lines that determined masters and slaves. There were people in power who did not flaunt it the way her peers always imagined. Some enjoyed authority without attracting attention, and Chatta had a knack for finding them.

She found the girls with the maroon collars and the Alemic ensign on the gold medallions that hung from their nipples. She ate at the cafes where they dined, and followed them to the grubby karaoke booths where they took turns drinking, singing, and necking. From outside the mirrored window, passers by couldn't tell one from another, but Chatta knew better.

She soon learned that the girl with the wide hips and black hair down to her nipples was a union tribune, and in private she began to see how the other girls treated her with a hint of the submissive respect that counted as flirting on Torei. This girl walked proud like a Mistress, and gathered the others into her arms and between her knees whenever they went out. She bought drinks and reserved booths and kept the evenings going until she was ready to go home.

Chatta knew precisely what she was doing. The day she came of age, she approached the union boss and with a coy "will you teach me?" fell between her legs, working hard to earn favor. In no time she traded the family cocklock of her youth for the maroon chastity corset of a low-level union-owned state working girl.

Chatta relished her cushy position processing incoming captures at the Ministry of Truants. She sat chained to her desk for a single work shift, with a break for lunch and fraternization. Her Union clout kept the bosses from inflicting the harsher punishments during her performance reviews, and if she played her cards right she could re-negotiate her contract next year. That could mean freeclit status three months ahead of schedule, and a dramatic pay rise.

Despite all this, Chatta was in a sour mood. The recent flood of Amalthean collars had put the pressure on everyone, and she'd just received notice from her local chapter that the negotiations had broken down and her union was going forward with a strike. Chatta had made plans, and they didn't involve wearing a time-locked straitjacket and hood for three days, chained to the ministry fence.

"Ah well," Chatta thought to herself, "Solidarity keeps us free!"

And so it was with this bad news on her mind that she saw Stella forcing her way past the waiting truant officers, inspecting their strings of kneeling slaves-to-be with panicked haste. She just knew that this freewomb meant for nothing but to interfere with Chatta's work, and that it would no doubt cost her several welts on her next performance review.

"I'm sorry, Freewomb Stella, but we are simply without the necessary staff to escort you into the holding cells. Perhaps if you came back tomorrow we could--"

"There isn't time!" Stella was red-faced with frustration and shame. "I've got to identify them and get their signatures before they're shipped off! Look, here is my Hotchkiss ID and my Torean Emancipation Card. I am a freewomb in good standing, and do not need an escort within the Ministry. Don't act like I haven't done this before!"

Chatta sighed and brought up Stella's entry from the Ministry of Obedience database.

"Our records show that you are currently in contract to an officer of propriety, and that you engaged in public performance for him but ran before completing its terms. Now, any dispute will need to be either settled between you or resolved in court, but this mark on your record prevents us from simply letting you in without either an escort or officer Gird's approval."

A round of cheers and wolf-whistles started up among the officers in the lobby. Stella held stiff as a board, trying not to let the loose-hanging straps of her "skirt" swing open to give them a view. Her teeth ground, but she could still see their reflection in the glassy info-wall behind Chatta's chair.

"So it's Gird, is it?" One of the men called out to her, "Don't worry little clitty! I'll protect you from him! Just come with me to temple and I'll give you a pretty necklace that'll keep him away!"

Stella sighed and spun on her heel. Too quickly, she worried, as she felt the straps bounce over her thighs.

"I am not interested in being collared, sir." She had to be explicit, to leave no room for misinterpretation in the law. These rooms were recorded, and she couldn't risk being seen as flirting with these slavers, or teasing them.

She turned back to Chatta, and laid the back of her hands on the desk in a pleading gesture. Once the catcalls and hooting had died down, she looked the girl in the eye and tried again.

"Listen, I'm clutching at straws, here. I need to get in and see these two girls before they're processed. I know they mean nothing to you, and I'm no one to you, but there must be some way you can help me. Just ... one woman to another?"

Chatta glanced over at her boss's office door. With the crush and overtime, he wouldn't appreciate being interrupted for some mad freewomb and her futile attempts to emancipate a couple of collars. Sighing, she brought up a form on Stella's side of the counter, and checked availability for any of the self-service processing booths.

"All right, if you submit your case for magisterial review now, I can have you processed and fitted for bail. That bond would be enough to get you through the gates unescorted."

Stella grimaced, cursing Gird's name under her breath. Court review was a lot more attention than she wanted her deal to receive, but she had witnesses to his verbal acknowledgement that she could leave the bar. It was a small problem, compared to the twins' freedom, and she needed to solve the big problems first.

"Where do I sign?"

Minutes later, Stella groaned in disgust, bending forward to lean one arm against the interior wall of the processing booth. Her other arm clutched at the spooned stomach of the "bond", gripping uselessly at its hard smooth surface.

"Aaaaugh! Kammit, plugs! Why the kamn plugs?!"

"You came into this office open-cunt with a cocktease flasher skirt on." Chatta's voice rang from some hidden speaker, "In addition, the system reports that your last orgasm was within the past hour. You'll have the opportunity to contest it if you go to court, but I have to file you as a level two slut. The bail belt simply configured itself to the appropriate settings for your recent behavior."

Stella punched the wall, clawing at the metallic corset and chastity belt combination that now squeezed her breathless and impaled her twice. It was her fulfillment of the terms of her contract with Gird that had made this bail belt so severe. She'd always known at an intellectual level how twisted the Torean justice system could be, but now it was literally fucking her in the ass.

"If you like," Chatta continued smugly, "I can cancel the application. The bond would unlock, and you'd head home and deal with the contract as you see fit."

Stella pried at the edges of the metal swimsuit, trying to slip fingers underneath the seams at her hips, crotch, and the diagonal neckline that squashed her modest breasts up into a distinct cleavage. The inability to feel her own body beneath it gave her a bit of a panic, but it was the mark on her record that filled her with dread. If the court review came down against her, the punishments available for a level two slut were far more distasteful than a chastity suit with a couple of orifice-holders.

Of course all this was nothing compared to the utter lack of status that Cali and Dimi were faced with. Stella closed her eyes, bit her lip, and exhaled.

"I'll need new clothes." Stella's voice was soft and forceless, as though she had not breathed enough to actually speak the words. "This thing is cinched so tight I'll need to use a wardrobe."

Chatta led her back through the lobby full of whooping and cheering truant officers with their terrified catches.

"That's a lot more metal than a little collar, isn't it!"

"Hey there clit, if you're at a party remember that we have keys for that thing!"

"Still room for you in my catch!"

Stella's face burned from the humiliation of being marched past these pigs with nothing but a steel swimsuit on, but as ever she focused on the job she had to do. She'd walk in freedom with Dimi and Cali, and that would be the best defeat for all of the disgusting little men that thought themselves above her.

She stepped out of the staff wardrobe booth with an acceptable compromise. She wore a black leather business suit with matching pencil skirt and bolero jacket. She couldn't get the neckline of the satiny white blouse to cover her over-presented cleavage, but she'd managed to convince the machine to give her a brooch that pinned the collar together adequately.

The seamed silk stockings were a bit more pleasure than business, but the tops were covered by the skirt so long as she didn't bend too much. It was the patent platforms with the towering fuck-me heels that she'd spent the most time trying to reconfigure without success. Even the makeup had eventually gone successfully down from "expensive whore" to merely "dramatic doll-up".

"Your wardrobe needs a technician." Stella grumbled to Chatta as she returned to the desk, tenderly feeling the set of the tight bun her hair now formed. "It wouldn't give me what I asked for."

Chatta's confused look melted into a smirk, and her words threatened to burst into giggles as they left her mouth.

"You're a second-level slut on bail." she laughed, "It doesn't have to."

Stella squirmed on the hard stool, staring at her reflection in the mirror for lack of anything better to pass the time. She'd used the toilet quickly before heading to this appointment, and the experience had left her on edge. She'd always been a little curious about the bidet attachment that Sophie's maid always used to clean out her belt, but only as a grotesque curiosity. Now she had no choice.

She'd emptied her bladder, and was relieved when it all drained without discomfort, but the washing cycle included an enema and douche that left her with a distracting tingling feeling all over between her legs. Stella crossed her knees, watching the image in the mirror do the same, and tried to think about something else.

It didn't work: a quick peek of garter beneath the tight silken pencil-skirt had her humming a little louder inside. If she'd seen a girl looking like this down the bar, she'd have taken her home and squeezed her dry like a sponge. Level two slut, eh? They made for a fun night out, once in a while.