Downtown is a big place. There are still a lot of other places you could look.
Still, you're feeling kind of discouraged by the time you head home.
Your mood has buoyed back up a bit by the time Sunday rolls around and you're headed off to Victoria's book club again, but it doesn't climb back to the heights you'd experienced while spending time with Madison. That's a bit depressing in itself, honestly; you hadn't thought you'd pinned that many of your hopes on getting a job, but you honestly had kind of hoped it a little.
Even outside of being able to actually take your girls out on dates, having a job would mean you'd be able to contribute some money to your household. Dad wouldn't have to scrimp and save to afford the money for your bus trips, wouldn't have to dig into the change jar to be able to afford another loaf of bread if the one you bought weekly goes stale or mouldy midway through the week. It would have helped a lot.
But it wasn't to be, you conclude as you step inside the bookstore again just before noon, this time clutching a small satchel containing an old copy of The Riddle of the Sands you'd dug up from your mother's collection.
For the first time in a few days, you stretch your power out properly.
You find Victoria almost immediately; she isn't making any attempts to hide her emotions. This time, you actually take a moment to pause and examine her emotions. There's the remnants of her lust and loyalty, of course— you begin almost immediately to tug on her loyalty, reinforcing it before she even sees you— but there are other emotions in there, too. Pride, contentment, naughtiness, wilfulness, an undercurrent of anger— and something you can't quite pin down, something you haven't felt before. It reminds you somewhat of the feeling you'd got from one of your neighbours when she'd walked around her front yard nude after you'd played with her lust for a while. Victoria isn't feeling lust at the concept of exhibitionism, not quite— but it's similar. More private, somehow.
She accosts you a few steps after you enter the store, affixing you with a naughty smile as she floats over to you. "Hey, Taylor," she drawls. "I'm glad to see you're back again." She's wearing a heavy jacket again, this one coloured a dark scarlet. Now that you know to pay attention to it, you can see that her skirt does rise indecently high, although it's hard to notice with the jacket's coattails hanging down.
"I wouldn't miss it," you reply.
Her smile just grows larger for a second. "Did you bring a copy of the book today?" she asks. You raise your satchel and go to answer in the affirmative, but she keeps talking over you. "Because if you didn't, you can sit next to me and 'share my book' again." She even makes quotation marks in the air and winks at you as she says it.
Well. Even you're capable of recognizing the innuendo when it's that in-your-face. You drop your satchel back to your side and give her an obviously fake frown. "Looks like I forgot it again," you lie glibly.
She smirks at you and reaches for your hand. You're prepared for it this time, though, and casually place your arms behind your back as you begin to walk forwards. Shes' caught a bit off-balance, and looks at you with a raised eyebrow as she floats casually in front of you towards the stairs. You poke her tongue out at her back when she turns back around. Pull you around, you grumble internally.
In a ritual familiar to you from last week, Victoria casually pushes you into a chair once you arrive in the book club's room, and waits for the store's clock to chime twelve so the attention of the other two dozen or so people in there is focused elsewhere before quickly taking her thick jacket off and sitting down, arranging her materials in front of her so nobody can see anything below her neck. She's wearing her lewd Glory Girl costume again, and it's exactly as revealing as it was last time.
You quickly touch her emotions again, getting a good feel for them. Her loyalty is tugging easily towards you— actually oddly easily. You brush around them some more for a moment, trying to understand what's going on. It doesn't take much; you quickly feel that same almost-exhibition rising up, strengthening her latent good feelings for you and making them much easier to manipulate. Her lust is rising similarly, although you haven't touched that one.
You should be safe to leave her loyalty as it is, you judge; it's not quite as strong as it was last week, but considering how easily she let you leer at her last week, you shouldn't need to worry about that. Instead, you begin gently tugging on her lust. It rises easily, too, but it'll take at least a few minutes to settle in.
In the meantime, you just casually lean over as if to peer at Victoria's copy of the book. You lower your head enough that the others in the room shouldn't be able to tell where your gaze is, and allow your hungry gaze to roam her body. The buzz of the others talking fades into the background as your attention narrows.
With your attention this focused, you barely need to focus your attention on your powers more than peripherally. You can feel Victoria's lust rising, but you can see the visible signs of it, too; little shivers rack her body every time you shift, and her hardened nubs are straining through her shirt. That answers that, you think, ignoring the thread of arousal that runs through your stomach; she's definitely not wearing a bra beneath that shirt.
It takes well over half an hour for Victoria's lust to rise gently enough that she lets you do anything more than just peer at her body.
One of the benefits of flying is that people who can fly don't need to shift the rest of their bodies in order to raise themselves off a seat. They can just float up a little, and to everyone else, it looks like they've just sat straighter for a moment. This allows them to do a lot of things— adjust seat cushions beneath them, straighten their skirts, and so on— without making a big deal of it. In Victoria's case, she's able to do rather the opposite; she bunches her skirt up, lifting it lewdly up and holding it to her stomach with one hand as she gesticulates with the other at someone else in the room, arguing about something or another.
She's wearing rather more immodest panties than she was last week. Or maybe she's just wetter than she was last week— you have been playing with her lust rather a lot. Either way, her panties are clinging to the outlines of her pussy lips, the faintly sheer material giving you just the slightest glimpse of the treasures laying within. You're pretty sure Victoria can hear the immediate change in your breathing, because she smirks triumphantly, leaving the guy she's talking to looking a bit lost.
You hesitate, fingers trembling. Last week, she stopped you from even looking at her panties for more than a moment. It could be a very bad idea for you to try to touch them this week.
On the other hand, it could be a very good idea, you conclude, and casually maneuver your hand such that you can press your index finger against her pussy through her panties.
Victoria stumbles over her sentence, but otherwise lets out no visible indicators of what you're doing to her.
Well, fine then.
You add your middle finger and press down harder, then begin stroking up and down. You can definitely feel how wet she is— she's not soaked, precisely, but your fingers are gliding easily up and down the material. She lets out a muted gasp when you drag your near-nonexistent fingernails down the front of her panties, sending a shiver down your own body.
It would be really easy to get used to drawing those kind of gasps from Victoria, you think to yourself.
You content yourself for the next hour or so by exploring Victoria's reactions as you play with her panty-clad pussy. She's pretty neutral on you gently stroking her normally, you soon find out; she doesn't mind it, but it doesn't draw much of a reaction from her. She has more of a reaction when you drag your fingernails around, or when you press down hard and rub within her entrance a little. What really drives her crazy, though, is when you spread your two fingers out to either side of her panties and squeeze them together, thereby rubbing her lips together, or when you move your fingers up higher and flick her nub slightly. The latter causes a whimper every time, so regretfully you can't do it very often; you're pretty sure that the quickest way to end this little game is to draw any attention to yourselves.
She stops really discussing the book after a few minutes of you playing with her, only saying anything when people directly address her, and even then only with a strained smile. The first time she does, you begin gently pulling on her loyalty again, drawing her attention away from the girl and back towards you; from there, you begin gently playing with both her lust and loyalty, teasing them up in tiny amounts, not really enough to affect anything significant, but enough to keep her attention focused on what you're doing to her.
By the time the clock downstairs chimes two, Victoria's panties are thoroughly soaked. You sneakily raise your finger to your mouth. She tastes pleasant— sweeter than you do.
As with last week, she just shrugs her jacket back on while everyone's attention is focused away, and waits until everyone else has left before she turns towards you.
Today, though, she doesn't make weird remarks about the club being elitist. She just draws you over into a tight, almost crushing hug, and whispers directly into your ear, "You're playing a very dangerous game, Taylor Hebert." When you look at her after she releases you, though, she's giving you a smouldering look, not an angry one. You can live with that.
You give her a faux-embarassed smile. "Sorry," you say sweetly.
She shakes her head, giving you a half-amused, half-frustrated shake of her head. "You don't even know what you're doing, do you?" she asks, softly enough that you're pretty sure you're not meant to have heard. Well, that's rude. You know exactly what you were doing. Louder, she says, "I'll see you next week." It's not even a question. You're momentarily tempted to avoid going next week now, just to spite her for trying to order you again. Then you feel the wetness still on your fingers, and that desire evaporates.
"Planning on it," you say with a cheeky smile.
She huffs out a laugh, then smooths down her skirt and leads you downstairs and out. Then, with a smooch to your cheek, she waves goodbye and floats straight up and away.
Well; that went well, you think.
In fact, it went well enough that you're not feeling down until the moment it's time to actually head off to school the next morning. That does, unfortunately, have the tendency to kill your good moods.
Your headache has returned, but only slightly. You're pretty sure you can still use your power some over the next couple of days without splitting your head in half; you're just going to have to make sure you give yourself a break somehow, or else be prepared not to use it for the rest of the week to give yourself a chance to recover. Or power on through the headache, but that sounds... unpleasant.
So; the question now is, exactly what are you going to do over Monday and Tuesday? [Pick two of the below. As last week, tutoring Madison is already locked in, so this week I won't be cluttering the vote with its presence until it's possible to avoid voting for it.]
[] Continue your emotional manipulation of Sophia. You managed to steal a half-second kiss last time, and you've given Sophia's subconscious enough time to accept the fact that she's attracted to you and justify it to herself. Now, you're going to push it further, and get a bit of revenge in the process; you're going to step up your campaign of sexual harassment a bit, knowing that Sophia will accept it coming from you (and only you).
— Success chance: 60%.
— General results: Increases Sophia's Lust and Loyalty by 1, and Intrigue by 2. May include a scene in which Taylor continues to sexually harass Sophia, in manners unlikely to remind Sophia of any prior similar abuses (by putting herself in vulnerable situations first so Sophia will accept it as fair payback for her own harassment of Taylor).
— On a success: Increases Sophia's Lust and Loyalty by an additional one point. Will result in Taylor winning this round of the battle of wills, lowering Sophia's resistance to future actions. Will result in Emma and Sophia stopping the school's harassment of Taylor, allowing Taylor to openly date Madison in Winslow.
— On a failure: Increases Sophia's Lust by an additional one point. Will result in Taylor losing this round of the battle of wills, giving Sophia the same permission to sexually harass Taylor that Taylor would otherwise have.
[] Use your powers on Charlotte. You'll feel a little bad about it, but not as bad as you feel at not getting to sit next to Madison. Besides, while she's no Madison or Emma, Charlotte isn't unattractive herself... and you really want to be able to sit beside Madison soon.
— Success chance: Impossible to fail.
— General results: Taylor deliberately uses her power on someone who is not a cape and is not a member of the Trio for purposes other than testing and training her powers. This will result in Taylor coming to partially acknowledge her control issues and accept her mind control fetish. Will open Charlotte for recruitment to Taylor's harem.
[] Take the first step towards familiarizing yourself with the problems facing people at Winslow. Start with the disadvantaged students and the delinquents; those who haven't joined the gangs yet, but are most at risk of doing so. See what problems are affecting them, and then you can spend some of your time researching what's been done in other parts of the world to help combat those issues.
— Success chance: 70%
— General results: Taylor will investigate around the school, seeing what issues people are facing and trying to figure out what issues the school is facing. This is the first step in making Taylor's hero team more than a vague idea in her head.
— On a success: Introduces Taylor to Aisha, who is unpowered right now. Opens Aisha up for recruitment. Introduces Taylor to Rune. Points players at further Winslow-related information regarding the directions she can take her hero team in.
— On a dailure: Introduces Taylor to Aisha, who is unpowered right now. Introduces Taylor to Rune. Opens Rune up for recruitment. Lowers Rune's recruitment chances by 5%.
[] Do something potentially immoral; you're going to deliberately and willingly use your powers to grant you safe passage during class to the area where you know the school's Brotherhood contingent keeps stashes of drugs and drug money. You are then going to dispose of the drugs and steal their money.
