Kimberly Reed silently raged against her own stupidity as the voice in her earpiece finished breaking the news of Erica’s first success. She’d probably walked past the book fifteen times already, as she completed circuit after circuit of the floor, futilely waiting for some inspiration to strike. And now that damn bitch was back on level terms with her.

As the buttons quietly dropped from Kimberly’s blouse, her blue brassiere and sumptuous cleavage hovered into view for the benefit of anyone not totally engrossed in what they were reading. Kimberly clenched her teeth together, flared her nostrils, and looked up at a security camera that hung passively from the ceiling. Oh don’t worry, thought Kimberly, you’ll be getting a show today alright, but today’s matinee starring role of `humiliated, naked woman number one` will now be played in perpetuity by my understudy!

Kimberly marched on, eyes focused front and center, pointedly ignoring a group of teenager boys who had momentarily stopped their incessant texting to take advantage of an unexpected photo opportunity.

**********

Not fair, not fair, not fair! The thoughts bounced around in Erica’s head on auto-replay as she began to feel a strange sensation around her legs. She knew that this would be the onset of yet another clothing malfunction, and her vivid imagination was already conjuring up the worst.

She was back on the escalators again, heading up to the second floor, following the same hunch as before that it was unlikely for two clues to be close together. In truth though, she had no idea what her next clue was getting at, and she was well and truly throwing herself at the mercy of random good luck. And good luck had been in short supply of late.

Several things were competing for Erica’s attention right now, and the clue itself had been rudely jostled into fourth place. Firstly, the inherent unfairness of it all! Secondly, at least the black-haired witch would need to slow down or risk exposure, not that exposing herself was something altogether alien to that brazen hussy! Thirdly, what the hell was up with the strange sensation in her stockings?!

The escalator delivered her to the second floor and Erica, cheeks red from all the attention she’d been receiving from a couple of men who had taken the ride up with her, stepped off and went to make her way to the History section. As she took her first step forward though, she felt a strange albeit slight resistance that made bending her knee just a bit more effort than was natural. Mumbling an unheard apology to the two smiling men she was now blocking from getting off the escalator, Erica shuffled to the side and began to experimentally bend her knees.

Erica quickly realised her latest predicament. As long as she kept her legs relatively straight, the stockings didn’t put up much of a fight. That was fine, although mildly disconcerting, while in a normal walking gait. However the moment she tried to bend them further, into for example a normal running gait, the stocking material became completely inflexible as if by magic, and she was forced to straighten her leg again. She was constrained to walking pace now, and that wasn’t even the worst of it. As Erica raised her leg up and down, she looked on in shock as her previously reliable skirt suddenly seemed to develop a dozen full length slits all around her. The slits ran all the way from the belt to (and through) the hem-line, and so had the undesirable effect of turning her skirt into thirteen completely independent strips that felt no compulsion to work together to protect her modesty.

Reduced to a walking pace, and with no overlaps between the strips of her skirt, Erica now risked the teasing exposure of her sexy green panties with every agonising step around the library. Permitting herself a moment to stomp her feet at the world, Erica then tried to suck up all the emotions running rampant inside her mind. She gave her dress a final flinty look as if to dare it to do anything else even remotely naughty, and set off once again into the thronging afternoon mass of library-goers.

**********

Agent Stacey Shackleton stood by the periodicals shelves of the Politics section, idly flicking through this month’s Foreign Policy. She wasn’t bothering to keep a direct eye on Erica or Kimberly, as she knew Mitchelson would have that under control through whatever voodoo magic he’d used to take over the Library’s surveillance cameras.

She had noted with amusement that a security guard had wandered over a few minutes back to make a few pointless prods and pokes at a mysteriously unresponsive camera nearby. She imagined that somewhere in the bowels of the Library, there were a couple of underpaid employees staring at blank computer screens and wondering just what was up with the IT gremlins today. It would be a while before anyone would actually summon the enthusiasm or talent to do anything constructive about it, and by then this little game would have played itself out to it’s conclusion.

No, it was sufficient that she was ‘around’, as a glorified one-woman rapid-response unit, and if Mitchelson needed her to intercede in person, then he knew how to reach her.

She was settling back into an interesting article on the Syrian civil war, when she felt the change in the air. In fact, she felt Kimberly Reed’s presence before she actually saw her. Or perhaps more accurately, she felt the head of every man in a two aisle radius of her swivel as if on a psychically-linked turntable. Her heavy disguise didn’t exactly hide the fact that Stacey was herself one of life’s natural beauties, but she was fairly certain she hadn’t personally done anything out of the ordinary in the past few seconds to merit that response. Interest piqued, she glanced in the general direction the men were now staring in, and saw the steadily moving figure of Kimberly Reed half-jog, half-bounce across the floor not twenty meters away. With her blouse billowing out like a parachute trying to pull her back, Stacey and her fellow audience members were left in no doubt as to the colour and general style of Kimberly’s bra, even from this distance

As several men dropped what they’d been reading, Stacey wore a strange expression of amusement tinged with more than a hint of self-recognition.

********

If Erica had thought that not being able to run or the constant green flashes that appeared between her skirt slits were bad enough, she hadn’t reckoned with the bottom shelves of the Classics section. It had been a very long two minute walk from the Art History section, where she’d been when she finally realised that the next clue would be somewhere around the Roman Mythology books. It felt like half the city had been appraised as to the fact that Erica Matthews was indeed wearing matching undergarments today. She knew the consequence of trying to hold the skirt together would be even worse than the constant embarrassment of the material strips wandering about mischievously, so she’d had to clench her fists by her side and live with the rising attention that befitted her current state.

But now that she’d arrived at the long line of books on Roman Mythology, she realised with a sinking feeling of resignation that the book she was looking for was destined to be on the bottom-most shelf. Unable to bend her knees, there would be no way for her to kneel down or squat, and that only left one unpalatable alternative.

Argh! Erica’s fists went from merely-clenched to red-balls-of-fury, as she finally gave in to the inevitable and bent her body at the waist. If it was any consolation that years of Pilates had made Erica very flexible, it didn’t show in her expression as she began to scan the books at the bottom. The gasps of astonishment behind her told Erica everything she needed to know about the current state of her skirt. With Erica fully bent over, the back strips of her badly behaving skirt parted like the Red Sea, and the material instead slid over hips and settled by her side. Her resplendent green panties shone like a beacon leading men to the promised land, and Erica had a hard time concentrating on reading the titles of the book spines as the whirring of cellphone cameras filled up the background noise.

The shelf was a long one and she had to edge along for several meters looking for the book in question. With every title she passed over, the desire to stand up straight became stronger and stronger in her. Surely the book she was looking for must be around here somewhere. As she began to hear the barely-whispered conversations of those with front row seats to her performance, the words they were using to describe what they were seeing made her ears burn. As the descriptions soon flowed on into suggestions, Erica finally let out a small shriek and turned to face her admirers.

“How dare you!” she said, indignantly, trying to ignore the fact that she was the one flashing her ass at everyone.

The men only smiled more though, and Erica turned back in a huff to valiantly try and resume her searching. She was only a dozen or so books from the end of the long shelf now and suddenly - out of the corner of her eye - she spied the simple grey spine of a small, partly obscured book resting on the next shelf along. The book had the equally simple title: DE.

With a small cry of exhilaration, Erica started to move towards it and was mere centimeters away when her outstretched arm was rudely knocked aside. Unable to bend properly at the knees, Erica struggled to regain her balance. By the time she had, she looked up in despair to find her rightful place taken by a certain raven-haired harlot. As Kimberly Reed theatrically kneeled down, she grabbed the simple book and yanked it off the shelf.

“You know, green really does suit you, Erica.” Kimberly said, as she took in Erica’s current state of dress.

“Give that back!” Erica cried, reaching out for the book that Kimberly tantalisingly held out in front of her.

“Ahh, no, no, I really don’t think so, girlfriend. Tell you what though, I think you’ll be getting the clue soon enough anyway, so don’t stress about it too much!” Kimberly winked at Erica knowingly, and skipped past her, heading back up the aisle they’d both just come down. As she danced past the stricken Erica, Kimberly took the opportunity to playfully spank Erica on the ass with the book.

As Erica tried to turn around, and send Kimberly on her own way with a swift kick to her retreating backside, the resistance of her stockings caused her once again to lose balance and Erica unceremoniously toppled over on to the library floor.

“Now now, Miss Matthews, no lying down on the job, there will plenty of time to rest and reflect on the day’s events later on.” The earpiece’s mock serious tone infuriated Erica, but she had just enough control over herself to know that screaming at someone who had complete control over her clothing wasn’t going to help right now.

“You saw that, you saw the cheating bitch steal that book from me!” Erica said plaintively.

“Well, `stealing’ is a serious allegation, and our match review committee will impartially look into the matter to see if Miss Reed’s actions merit suspension from any future matches.”

“How the hell’s that supposed to help me now?”

“Sadly it does not, but thankfully help is on hand in another guise. For I have another clue for you, Miss Matthews, and if you’d be so kind as to pick yourself up, both literally and metaphorically, then perhaps you might see about evening the score yourself.”

Erica grimaced again, and started to struggle to her feet. Naturally none of her fellow citizens bothered to even raise a hand to help, as she cut a comical figure getting to her feet while not bending her knees. Her skirt was now all over the show, with everyone getting the full effect of her green underwear as she splayed her legs out and edged her way into a upright position. Finally grabbing a nearby shelf, she hauled herself to her feet, and quietly seethed at the men who had let her do all that completely unassisted. They then had the temerity to break out into applause, making Erica’s mood even worse than it already was.

As she gathered herself for one more race, her hands subconsciously moved to smooth the skirt out into some semblance of normality. But it was with innate intuition that her heart was already sinking even before her hands encountered warm skin rather than the material of the skirt. Erica didn’t even bother to look down to acknowledge the fact that the remnants of her skirt had been left on the floor where she’d laid. The sole vestige of her skirt that she had retained was the belt around her waist, and the thin sliver of material that had been attached to the belt underneath. That helped cover up precisely nothing at all.

Instead, Erica simply inhaled, exhaled, and inhaled again. She stuck her chin out, made sure her panties were at least in order and properly presented, and firmly decided that this, this experience right here, this feeling right now, was absolute rock-bottom. This was the line in the sand, the final victory that Kimberly Reed would ever experience.

Almost liberated by the loss of her skirt, Erica felt like a hidden reservoir of resolve had suddenly erupted inside of her. No more. This was as bad as it was going to get for her, but things were about to get so much worse for Miss Kimberly Slut-Bitch-Whore Reed.

And so it was, still flushed by steely determination, that Erica greeted the sudden vibrations that kickstarted in the front of her underwear with an almost manic, out-of-control laugh. Pressed up against her skin, Erica realised almost instantly that she had scant minutes to go before the stimulation from the built-in and hitherto secret vibrator became too much to withstand...

**********

In took Kimberly only a few minutes to make her way back to the fifth floor, and begin searching for what she was confident would be the winning clue. Judging by the state of Erica’s dress just now, the idiot must have fallen foul of a penalty, and she was savouring the thought of just how embarrassed Erica must be right now. Kimberly was almost tempted to try and drag this game out a little longer, but she regretfully realised that there was no point taking stupid chances. Eyes on the prize Reed, Kimberly reminded herself. She thought back to Decider Enterprises’ promise that victory would be total, and contented herself with knowing that there was a decent chance the two of them would be together when Erica finally suffered complete and utter defeat. And if Kimberly was there, she’d make damn sure there was a heavy emphasis both on the complete and on the utter.

With her blue bra and white blouse attracting plenty of attention, she even afforded those around her a pleasant and friendly smile as she surged on.

**********

One floor down, Erica Matthews darted as quickly as she could from aisle to aisle, straining to resist the urges she felt beginning to build up inside of her. At least five minutes had already passed, and the vibrator appeared to be on a low but steady setting. Erica had gloomily surmised that Decider Enterprises were just the sort of people to be able to design tiny, undetectable batteries that would keep on going until the job was done.

In a bizarre, the-glass-is-half-full kind of way, the vibrator at least distracted Erica from the fact that her tight, sexy backside was now on permanent display to all around her. The underwear wasn’t doing all that good a job of hiding her front parts either, and it was only the fact that she was too focussed on fighting the constant, ceaseless vibrations, that meant she wasn’t completely paralyzed by the whistles of amazement that tracked her movements to anyone with decent hearing.

Fourth floor. The science sections were here, and Erica realised that this was also the site of their first clue. Would the voice have put more than one clue per floor? She supposed they must have done, especially if this was to go down to the wire and Erica was to start finding a few more herself. Still, so far each clue had been on a different level: fourth, first, second. That left third and fifth. Erica had started on the fifth floor, and she came to an admittedly random decision. She’d head to the fifth floor and let the die be cast.

There was still the problem of getting up to the fifth floor of course. The ride up to the fourth floor had been excruciatingly long, and it was only due to the fact that the handful of available security guards were too busy trying to fix their security cameras that she hadn’t already been intercepted.

Clad essentially in only her undergarments and stockings, and with an inappropriately done up blouse that seemed to only accentuate the sheer exhibitionism on show, Erica was every heterosexual male’s daydream come true. The stylish silver bracelets on her wrists glistened as she happened to pass by a window to the outside world.

She’d been keeping to the far edges of the library floor where it was a lot less busy, while she tried to figure out where she should go next. It was as she passed the window that the Sun chose to break through the cloud cover outside, and sunbeams pierced the glass next to her. Erica was suddenly bathed in natural light, making her appear to be a red-headed angel who hadn’t properly read the memo on what people were wearing out in public these days.

Well, if she was going to make a break for it, now was the time, she thought. She spied the most direct route from her current point to the central escalators, and summoned the courage to step out of the aisle she’d been pacing up and down. She just had to put up with the current state for another few minutes, and she’d already come so far!

Too busy thinking through the options, she didn’t even notice the woman in front of her as she started across from one aisle to the next. She walked into her before either could react, and Erica felt the air knocked out of her for a moment. The shock of collision was quickly replaced by the shock of recognition however, as she realised that she’d walked straight into Kimberly Reed.

“I was told you might be here. Thought I’d come down and see how you we’re going.” Kimberly paused for effect, and took the time to slowly take in Erica’s current state.

“Besides, I thought it rude to make you streak across to the fifth floor to fetch something as simple as this, when I could just bring it to you myself.” Kimberly’s seemingly sweet demeanour was laced with the undercurrents of a sneer, as she revealed a book that she’d been hiding behind her back.

“It’s a fine read Erica, and the ending is to die for.”

Erica looked on, lost for words, her mouth opening and closing as she tried to formulate any kind of response. It was at that point that a brief burst of static from her earpiece heralded an incoming message.

“Miss Matthews, as you can see, Miss Reed has found another clue. The final clue as it turns out, and so I have some wonderful news. Your feud is now over, or very soon will be, and this may very well be the last time you have to look at Miss Kimberly Reed ever again. Happy times ahead, as they say, and the grass is always greener on the other side anyway. Speaking of that, you do seem to be intimately familiar with the colour green at the moment, which of course leads us to the one small matter still outstanding...”

**********

Erica’s mind temporarily blanked out, as the enormity of the announcement settled in. Kimberly had won. The slutty bitch had solved the clue and Erica Matthews was in for the silver medal. Except in this case, she knew that the silver medal would be the one everyone remembered. She shuddered as the vibrations in her panties finally reached her breaking point, and she felt the orgasm rising up inside of her, uncontrollable and unstoppable. Erica had never been all that noisy in bed in the past, but now she couldn’t help but make some rather audible moans as the discharge of sexual tension touched every cubic millimeter of her body.

At the same time she felt her the bracelets on her wrists begin pulling irresistibly towards the decorative silver bands at the sides of her belt. Way too late. She realised they were far more than just there for decoration. Erica’s wrists were soon pressed against her hips, and then to her even greater surprise, she felt through the aftershocks of the orgasm a sudden movement at her waist. The silver bands on her belt were now moving of their own volition, riding the belt slowly but surely around to her back, dragging her protesting wrists with them until she found herself helplessly on display with her wrists effectively bound behind her. Unable to move them, she realised that she was now at the complete and utter mercy of her brassiere and panties, with no other way of covering up should they decide to indelicately fail.

The only saving grace was that she was in a relatively quiet part of the library, although her involuntary moans and gasps could soon rectify that. It was then that Kimberly Reed stepped forward and looked point blank into Erica’s emerald eyes.

“More!” she demanded, in a whisper that cut through to Erica’s soul.

As if in response, Erica felt something pop on her chest, and they both looked down to see - to Erica’s horror - the final button on her blouse give off some tiny sparks and disappear into it’s own mini-pyrotechnics. If Erica was glad that the sparks didn’t actually hurt, she was dismayed to see what the real consequences of the button’s odd demise had been. The button had, in it’s death spiral, neatly taken out the front joining clasp on her bra, and now nothing remained to keep the two cups connected.

Confounding matters, it was the inside of her wrists that had been bound to her belt, and the resulting relocation to behind her back had caused her arms to contort, her shoulder blades to be pulled back, and her chest to be pushed out. In this pose, the natural shape of her body gradually pushed the material of her bra and her blouse aside, and to Kimberly’s great delight, a pair of beautiful, perfectly shaped breasts gracefully emerged from the confines of their former prison.

“I believe the final move is yours, Miss Reed. You may of course show mercy if you wish,” the earpiece said, and almost as an afterthought, added, “Miss Reed, Miss Matthews, a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I fear this is where our relationship ends Miss Reed, however I do look forward to seeing more of Miss Matthews in the near future.”

The voice ended, and the resulting silence contained an unspoken note of finality to it. Kimberly took all of one second to consider, debate, and discount any notion of mercy. After a few brief moments of lightly tracing her fingers up Erica’s exposed stomach, she placed a hand delicately on each side of the now broken bra. Leaning in, Kimberly kissed Erica on the lips, and at the same time pushed the remains of the bra and blouse further down the back of the now-stunned Erica’s arms, leaving her entire upper body completely naked.

As Kimberly ended the lingering kiss, she passed her hands down between Erica’s thighs, and slipped two fingers between the material of the panties and Erica’s bare flesh. Her fingers were only there for a moment, but as she raised them back up and pressed them to Erica’s lips, Erica could feel the moistness on them.

“Not bad, not bad,” mused Kimberly, half to herself, “Although perhaps a little framing might put the finishing touches on this wonderful exhibit.”

Erica roused herself as Kimberly marched off down the aisle, and wondered where to make her escape to. She was still in a deserted aisle in a fairly unpopular part of the library, and so far she’d amazingly gone undiscovered by anyone other than her hated arch-nemesis.

As she desperately poked a head around the corner to see if there was any other possible place to hide, she heard movement behind her. Still constrained by the rigidity of her stockings, Erica struggled to turn around and when she finally did, she was greeted by the sight of Kimberly nonchalantly leaning on a book trolley. It wasn’t the book trolley itself that grabbed Erica’s immediate attention though, it was Kimberly’s blue panties, now completely exposed to the world with her skirt - torn into four neat strips - resting on the top shelf of the trolley.

“The things I sacrifice for you, Erica Matthews,” Kimberly said, grinning viciously, and grabbed Erica before she could protest further.

Unable to run, and with nowhere to run too, Erica didn’t even bother resisting as Kimberly quickly sat her on the trolley’s top shelf and positioned her legs down the sides. The stockings of course chose that exact moment to stop resisting any attempt to bend at the knee. Tying the shell-shocked Erica’s lower legs to each side of the troller with the strips of Kimberly’s ex-skirt, Erica was faced outwards, and perched at the front of the trolley like a masthead on a sailing ship of old. Even in her current state, she could feel Kimberly tossing enough books to the back of the trolley to counter-balance Erica’s front-loaded weight. Satisfied that the whole setup was sea-worthy, Kimberly sauntered around to the front and gently lifted Erica’s downcast and defeated chin up in her hand.

“Erica, you’ve got a hell of a journey ahead of you now, and I guess I may never know where you end up. But it would be churlish of me not to wish you bon voyage, and perhaps help you on your way. I haven’t got a spare bottle of wine lying around alas, but I’ll see what I can manage.”

With that, Kimberly grabbed Erica’s panties in both hands, and began dragging the trolley-bound red-headed beauty out of the remote aisle and towards the more populated center of the library floor. After only five meters, the trolley had picked up enough speed to slowly coast along by itself, which was fortunate in a way since the stress on the panties had pushed the stitching past breaking point. As the good ship Matthews slowly sailed away from Kimberly Reed, she looked down at the torn and wet green undergarment in her hand, smiled sweetly, and casually tossed them into a nearby aisle. A successful launch if ever there was one.

Kimberly gave Erica a few seconds head start, and then also strolled along in that general direction, aiming for the escalators and the safety of the third floor women’s toilets. Humming a happy tune to herself, and not even bothering to conceal her own blue panties, she openly walk past a crowd of men without attracting a single glance.

**********

Erica Matthews, completely exposed and utterly embarrassed, sat in front of the citizenry of her own city. Breasts forsaken by her bra, and panties now a forgotten memory, she looked out at the sea of faces arranged before her. The faces looked back at her, a mix of the angry, the shocked, and the extremely aroused. More than a few, she realised with complete resignation, were obscured by very busy cameras. Her legs were bound to the trolley in such a way that closing her thighs was a physical impossibility, and her neatly trimmed bush was definitive evidence to any judges in the crowd that she was a natural redhead.

Her heavy breathing from the orgasm had mostly settled down, but the adrenalin stemming from her current predicament was still causing her chest to heave in and out, and with it her magnificent breasts swayed hypnotically. Had she been in a position to take more notice of her admiring audience, she might have noted that more than a couple of the men were now struggling with their own groin-related distractions.

She almost couldn’t decide if the damp patch on the trolley between her legs, the natural and inevitable consequence of that earlier orgasm, actually made this more embarrassing, or whether she’d already passed the point where anything could be more embarrassing than it already was. Either way, it was not much consolation to Erica that her current pose, legs splayed out and arms bound behind her, would go down as the most popular public art display the city would ever witness.

As she dully heard some of the more prim and proper patrons attempt to summon security guards, Erica Matthews found herself reflecting on the fact that she’d probably done more to encourage library attendance amongst male students than any initiative she might have dreamed up as a senior librarian...

**********

Erin Masterson walked through the main shopping mall of her new home town ostensibly to find a new autumn wardrobe. Erin was 27 years old, or 3 weeks old, depending on how you viewed such matters, and a new set of clothes was more than just about welcoming in a new season.

Three weeks wasn’t a tremendously long time to have lived here, but even so Erin was beginning to feel like it was time to move on and actually figure out what to do next with her life. Her benefactors at least hadn’t scrimped on the relocation costs, and the clothing expedition was well-funded even if it was a so-far-futile attempt to kick-start some enthusiasm for her new situation.

It was as she passed an upmarket shoe shop that a poster suddenly dragged her attention away from feeling vaguely sorry for herself, and instead sent sparks of recognition flying through her mind.

The poster was as simple as they come. A single name, a single phone number. `Decider Enterprises - an EM Company’. The name put Erin into a trance for a good minute, and she didn’t notice any of the passers-by who began to grudgingly detour around her stock-still body. Her hand automatically reached for her mobile, and she found herself having half-entered the number before she even realised what she was doing. She paused for a moment, staring almost past the phone and at the floor instead. Then something snapped in her brain, her eyes refocussed, and she finished typing the number in, hitting ‘call’ with a thoughtful expression on her face.

“Hello Miss Masterson. Thank you for calling.”

Erin didn’t even stop to wonder how they knew it was her on the phone. She was beyond those kinds of worries now.

“What do you want?” Her question was short, and her tone abrupt.

“Well, we want you to have a good work/life balance. We want you to have something to look forward to in the morning. We want you to have a career that makes you think: ‘yes, I’m contributing positively to our wonderful society’. In short, Miss Masterson, we want to offer you a job.” The voice at the end of the phone was as cheerful and friendly as they come, and made to appear all the more so by the flatness and directness of Erin’s immediate reply.

“Bullshit. Why? I lost. I’m moving on. What the hell could you offer?”

“Miss Masterson, it’s certainly true that you may have lost a certain gamble of our own devising, but I can assure you that even in defeat you lost none of your magnificence in our eyes. My colleagues and I were quite taken with your resilience in the face of adversity, and the sheer bloody-mindedness with which you pushed on into certain defeat.”

Erin didn’t recall being particular resilient at that time, and pushing on into certain defeat felt like the ultimate back-handed compliment.

“So of course, we asked ourselves, what should be done about a beautiful, highly capable woman who had explored a side of herself she hadn’t know existed, and had emerged stronger for it?”

“Stronger?! I moved city. Lost my job. Lost my whole identity!”

“Yes, yes, but was it much of a life to begin with? A middling job in a frankly backwater library, based in a soulless city.”

“It was my life!”

“And now you have a new one. Congratulations, so few of us have a chance to start over and afresh. May I also add that the diplomacy that you employed with the police was also quite eye-catching. Perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised since ‘eye-catching’ seems to be your speciality.” The voice audibly grinned at that last part, and Erin briefly entertained the idea of just ditching the phone in a nearby rubbish bin. She breathed in though, and regathered her composure.

“So,” the voice continued, “with all that in mind, I am happy to relay an offer of employment from head office. We’re in need of young go-getters with an eye for danger, and who perhaps have experienced a few ups and downs and know how to pick themselves up.”

“What, so you’re offering me the opportunity to do unto others what was done unto me?”

“Oh, we’re so much more than that Miss Masterson. I think you may be surprised just what we get up to, and I can assure you that we have a constant eye on the greater good. We have one such upcoming mission that might actually help save quite a few lives, and what greater legacy can you hope for than that?”

Erin didn’t bother replying to that, and simply stood staring back at the poster in the shop window, waiting for the voice to break the silence first. It soon obliged.

“Should you feel that your new life could do with some gentle guidance in the right direction, then feel free to swing by the food court. I think you’ll know who to talk to when you see them.”

The voice hung up without a goodbye, and left Erin at the metaphorical fork in the road.

**********

Erin Masterson walked up to a table in the middle of the food court, currently the residence of a single female customer. The woman at the table was resplendent in shoulder-length, brown hair, and was sporting a rather sexy outfit that started late and finished early no matter which way you looked her up and down.

“Stacey?!” Erin didn’t bother to try and disguise her surprise.

Stacey Shackleton pushed back the chair opposite her with a foot, and threw Erin a welcoming smile.

“Hey ‘Erin’, you should try the coffee, it’s not half bad. Good to see a friendly face around these parts, I suspect we’ve got an awful lot to discuss...”

[Agents Stacey Shackleton and Erin Masterson will return in "Dress Off 3: The Capture of Tess Trueheart"]