Dress Off 02: Erica vs Kimberly

Game on, thought Agent Stacey Shackleton.

************

"Nice, ASS", Mitchelson called out as Stacey returned back to base. You'd think - Stacey mused - that a full month after her male colleagues had stumbled halfwittedly across that particular acronym of her title and name, that they'd have moved on to something else. Apparently not.

"Who do you think is going to win 'Dress Off' then?", Stacey called back, refusing to rise to the provocation.

"Me!" said Mitchelson, happily.

************

Two days later, Kimberly Reed stood in a stall of the third floor women's toilets in the City Library staring down at the bag that now contained what she'd worn as she walked into the building. The package from Decider Enterprises had been pretty clear, and she'd only momentarily entertained the idea of keeping her own underwear on beneath what the company had given her. Not that what she'd been told to wear actually looked all that bad, truth be told.

As she looked out of the open stall door into the mirror beyond, she saw her graceful, taut body show off her current outfit like a designer's dream. Her raven-black hair contrasted with the simple white blouse perfectly, and the blouse itself was sufficiently opaque that there was no hint of the sexy blue brassiere she was wearing underneath. Of course, even if the bra wasn't visible, mankind had yet to invent the blouse that could hide the sexy curves of Kimberly Reed's perfect breasts, and no-one was working to rectify that oversight either. It certainly didn't help that the blouse seemed like it was just the right size to accentuate Kimberly's body, and at least one size too small for any decent work environment. The blouse's buttons would have their work cut out for them today.

Kimberly absentmindedly smoothed out an non-existent crease in the discreet black-checkered skirt that went down to nearly knee-length, from under which emerged two magnificent legs encased in patterned black stockings. Further up, matching blue panties complemented her blue bra, although she was determined that neither would see the light of day. A pair of surprisingly sensible black work shoes, and a couple of discreet silver wrist bracelets rounded out the apparel, while a small black belt with silver decorative metal bands on the hips also helped keep the skirt in place.

She'd assumed that somewhere in the building, Erica Matthews would have stripped down by now and be wearing something much like this. Kimberly silently vowed to whatever Gods were currently watching that any clothes Erica was now wearing wouldn't be on long enough to need a wash afterwards. A red light, somewhat out of place in a women's toilet, shone above the mirror that Kimberly was using to check out her reflection. As Kimberly gazed on, checking herself out and wondering what exactly the trick was to the outfit she wore, an earpiece tucked away in her left ear crackled and sprang into life.

"Miss Reed, only moments to go now. No last minute nerves I hope? If so, at least you're in the perfect place to get rid of them." The voice seemed very happy with itself, and Kimberly just flickered her black hair slightly and concentrated on herself. On some level she was nervous, of course she was. She knew the consequences of failure. She knew that the discreetness of what she was wearing was a temporary measure if she wasn't on her game. And if there was one person she was determined not to lose to, it was that bitch Erica Matthews.

"Game on." Kimberly said, simply, knowing the voice would hear her.

"Game on then", the voice replied, equally simply. The red flight flickered for a moment, and suddenly went to green. Kimberly Reed took a big breath in, arched back her shoulders, and took her first step out of the stall.

**************

At precisely the same time, Erica Matthews emerged from the women's toilets on the fifth floor of the City Library, and was immediately struck with the dilemma of which direction to go in.

The first clue, as she suspected all subsequent clues would do too, was supposed to lead her to a real book in the library. Once she'd found that, then she'd hopefully be able to find the nearby fake book planted by the game masters, and inside that was the next clue. And if all that sounded convoluted and confusing, it was nothing compared to the difficulty of the clue itself. The clue had been delivered by the earpiece voice as she stepped through the toilet door into the bustling public space of the Library's Law section. Having been told the clue though, she was still none the wiser as to where to go.

She tried to focus more on the actual clue, and less on the fact that if Kimberly solved four clues before she did, then Erica would find herself in a world of trouble unchartered by any map in this Library. She needlessly adjusted her white blouse and patterned skirt for the tenth time, before deciding on going left as being as good a course of action as anything else she could think of right now. At least, she thought, her racy green bra and panties were adequately hidden by her attire. She'd still be ogled by the male patrons of course, but she'd been used to that over the years. At least she was putting up a decent front, for the time being at least.

As Erica headed left, she began to think through which section of the library the clue was trying to lead her towards. She was painfully aware that if Kimberly got there first, then the voice in her ear would have to give her the next clue. That would come with a cost. A wardrobe malfunction, type unknown. She spun the clue around in her head, trying to seeing all the different angles that she could tackle it from. Somewhere out there Kimberly would be doing the same. Erica could mentally envision Kimberly striding around smugly, possibly en route to the first book already. Damn it Erica, she admonished herself, focus on your own game.

As she walked through the aisles she saw the escalators to the fourth floor, and on a whim started walking towards them. Even dressed as modestly as she currently was, several men that she passed stopped what they were reading and took the time to blatantly stare directly at her ass as she strode on. Without turning around, Erica could feel their eyes piercing her skirt to the green panties underneath. Come on, why was this throwing her? She'd worn more revealing stuff than this around public without a second thought in the past. But it wasn't how the clothes looked now that was causing her nervousness, she realised. It was how they might behave in the all too immediate future...

*********

Kimberly Reed arrived at the fourth floor via the central escalators, and took an immediate right into the Sciences section, making a bee-line for the Geography books. As she did, she couldn't help but notice a pair of similarly clad legs on the nearby escalator coming down from the fifth floor. Kimberly didn't need to wait and see the rest of the body that followed those legs to know that Erica was hot on her heels, and Kimberly broke out into a very un-librarian-like run through the aisles. She was desperate to reach the book before her nemesis.

Of course, at this point on any normal day Kimberly would have aimed herself for one of the myriad of public library kiosks scattered around the place, and would instantly know where the book she was looking for was hidden. But naturally, accessing the kiosks was a strict no-no, and the voice in the earpiece had made it pretty clear that this would be interpreted as seeking outside assistance. A penalty offence. Kimberly Reed was in no mood to give Erica a leg up by falling foul of penalties this early in the game.

The aisles were separated into different subcategories within Geography, and fortunately for her the earth sciences had been something of a speciality back at high school. That said, it was a big field and looking for one book was not unlike looking for a needle in a haystack. She cursed herself for being too reliant on computers to find things these days, and frantically scanned the shelves around her, stealing the occasional glance back at the escalators half-expecting to see Erica striding towards her.

When Erica failed to materialise, Kimberly gave herself a moment to compose herself, and settled on to a far more methodical search. It had to be in either this aisle or the next, she thought, so that narrowed it down to only a couple of hundred books. She ran her fingers over the book spines, almost willing the book she wanted to jump out as if summoned by her thoughts alone. As she rapidly looked from one title to the next, something suddenly fired in her brain, and she paused to check the numbering system properly. Bingo. Kimberly broke out in a broad smile, indulged herself in an undignified dance, and then dashed over three shelves to where an innocuous brown book hid between two much larger volumes. To Kimberly, it was suddenly the most beautiful book in the world.

************

Erica Matthews felt she was beginning to get into the swing of things now, as she purposefully strode towards the Geography area on the fourth floor. Granted, it had taken her more than a few minutes to conjure up the now-obvious solution, but anyone can suffer from initial nerves, and now Erica was determined to make up for lost time.

That quiet, powerful determination carried her all the way to the sixteenth aisle, past dozens of unsuspecting patrons, and lasted for precisely one second after she rounded the corner and started heading down the aisle. Standing half way down was a woman dressed identically to her. Same tight blouse, same skirt, same bracelets, same stockings, same shoes. The attire was where the similarity ended though, for Kimberly Reed now wore a smug, self-satisfied face that clearly contrasted with Erica's sudden shock of realisation.

At that exact moment, the earpiece chose to chip in it's own thoughts.

"Well Miss Matthews, it appears our game has now advanced. Miss Reed has found your very first clue, and in the spirit of fair play we'll be sharing that with you shortly. However ..." the voice trailed off as Erica scrunched her eyes shut. She could still see the grinning Kimberly in her mind's eye, and the fact that the earpiece had now fallen silent was no comfort at all. Seconds past, as Erica waited for the inevitable, and then she realised she been rooted on the spot for nearly 30 seconds. As far as she could tell, as she worked up the courage to open her eyes, nothing untoward had actually happened. She opened one eye, and noticed that Kimberly had disappeared. Damn, damn, damn. She had the second clue, and the earpiece was still maintaining an ominous silence. Get on with it, she thought, give me the next clue!

She took an experimental step forward, and was beginning to calm back down when she felt something hit her shoe. It was something small and fairly inconsequential, but she still felt it tap against her toes and roll on to the floor. She looked down to see what it was and felt another couple of taps on her other foot this time, and also spotted a fourth object roll towards the shelving unit in the periphery of her vision. As she paused to look closer at what they were, she suddenly froze in horror. They were buttons. Blouse buttons. Her hands and eyes instantly went to her top, and she could both see and feel what had happened. The blouse material, somewhat figure hugging before, was now moving more freely that it should as she moved her upper body. She realised with a growing sense of panic that the only thing now keeping her blouse closed was a single, gallant button at nipple height. The blouse now gaped at the top where a button had gotten AWOL, while below her nipple line the situation was even worse. The blouse was now hanging lose, naturally separating out further and further the closer it got to her waist, uninhibited by any pesky buttons to keep it locked together. The gap in the blouse teased and revealed her toned stomach to anyone who cared to look.

Erica knew with a fatalistic certainty that as she walked or ran, the state of her blouse would only become more and more pronounced as the airflow had it's wicked way with the loose material. Caught between a desire to get to the next clue first, and a desire to not completely expose her sexy tight stomach muscles to the general citizenry of the library, Erica found herself frozen in place.

The earpiece had clearly noticed this, as it chimed in after a few more moments with a not so gentle reminder.

"Miss Matthews, I'm sure you're just taking a moment to reflect on the ingenuity of Decider Enterprises' clothing engineers, however unfortunately our legal department are absolute sticklers for the rules, and I'm afraid to say you've been standing still now for just a minute now. Believe or not that is a penalty offence. Seems unfair to me too, but I am just the humble rules enforcer, and I leave the actual rule making to others."

Erica opened her mouth to protest, but wisely decided to also start walking forward, heading along the relative privacy of the now deserted aisle. She tried to gather her thoughts before heading back out into the main walkways of the library, and after only a few steps, the earpiece sprang to life once more.

"Now Miss Matthews, there's good news and even better news. The good news is that the first penalty is a warning shot, so keep up with the rules and those clothes your modeling so wonderfully don't have to breakdown any further. The even better news is that I can now give you clue #2. Good luck Miss Matthews, I always appreciate a closely fought contest!"

**********

Kimberly Reed jogged between the aisles, ignoring the disapproving stares she attracted from a group of older ladies who were gossiping near the magazine section on the ground floor. Clearly the old biddies were not of the prevailing opinion that an Amazonian physique and meticulously maintained skin complexion allowed one a certain leeway in having to follow the library's rules on decorum. Kimberly didn't even consider slowing down to a more respectable walk. After all, she was fairly certain that running through the library with clothes on rated far more towards the milder end of the heinous rules infringements spectrum than calming walking through the library stark naked. Erica would be the proof of that very shortly, thought Kimberly, with a sudden rush of anticipation and glee.

Of course technically, she hadn't actually found the second clue yet. However she'd left Erica rooted to the spot back on the fourth floor, and she wouldn't put it past the woman to still be stuck there in the same place, paralysed by her usual dithering and indecision.

Kimberly hadn't hung around long enough to see what punishment had been meted out to Erica, but her imagination was already firing on all cylinders, visualising the enemy in various states of distress and undress.

She'd made her way to the ground floor where the fiction sections sprawled out by the main entrance, and where the weekly magazines were thumbed through for any new trivia, gossip, innuendo or embarrassing photos that had been tossed out to a ravenous reading public. She'd been this way before, she must have. Kimberly knew some of the magazine covers all blurred into one after a while, but she was certain she recognised the flabby beach photo that adorned one of the magazines directly in front of her. And that meant that Kimberly was now doing circuits of the same damn patch of the library, which was at least more exercise than the poor lady on the magazine cover.

Kimberly's good mood took its first downward turn at that point, as she realised that without actually knowing where she was going, she was no better off than the stupid bitch she'd ditched three floors back.

She ran the clue over in her mind one more time.

She'd come to this floor almost by instinct rather than by any great plan, and she'd momentarily screwed her nose up in thought as she realised she'd just have to trust to that subconscious instinct one more time. She raised a leg out in front of her, wiggled her foot experimentally to the left and to the right a few times, and then decisively placed in pointing right. She pivoted on the spot with all the grace of someone with far too many childhood ballerina lessons under their belt, and pressed on.

**********

Erica stepped off the escalators onto the second floor and desperately resisted the urge to break into a run. She'd already tried that on the third floor, and had barely contained a shriek as the bottom half of her blouse billowed out behind her like a sail. The three men she'd been passing at the time certainly gave the impression that she'd just consigned their attempts at actually studying this afternoon to the waste bin.

Erica had quickly learnt that at least if she walked, the blouse resettled back into a semblance of normality and her well-toned tummy didn't quite end up as the star attraction wherever she visited.

She tried to rationalise it as being no different than if she were at the beach in her bikini. She was certainly aware that Erica-in-the-polka-dot-bikini was a sight that brought more cheer to at least half her fellow beach goers than any amount of fresh air or scenic ocean vistas. But no matter how much she tried to convince herself of that, embarrassment welled up inside her every time she passed someone with that now familiar surprised expression on their face. There was was something about how the bottom of her green brassiere seemed to indecently peak out from under the thin white line of blouse material held together by the valiant, sole remaining button. There was something about how the blouse, now gaping open at the top above her cleavage, flashed a streak of green undergarment above each nipple. She'd certainly worn less in the past, but strangely she'd never felt so naked as she did now.

Erica tried to get a grip on herself and think about the clue she'd received. Kimberly had a head start, and for all Erica knew her earpiece might ominously burst into life at any moment now. She'd taken a punt on the fact that the game's designers would want to maximise her exposure around the library, so it was a fair bet the next clue was on another level. Floor two, where she now stood, was where the Humanities collections resided. Art history, religion, anthropology, the usual array of great works and their lesser cousins.

But that didn't sound right to Erica, and as she cast around in all directions, walking aimlessly around the center of the floor, she peered down over a mezzanine balcony to the ground floor beneath her.

She froze as her eyes instantly fell on the unsuspecting figure of Kimberly Reed, patrolling her own route between two aisles in the Science Fiction section below. From her vantage point above, Erica saw the way heads turned to follow Kimberly when their owners didn't think she was looking.

Argh! Science Fiction! Of course! Erica suddenly had the flash of inspiration that landed her the solution to the second clue, and she had the terrible suspicion that Kimberly was only moments away from the book in question.

Erica turned immediately and flew towards the escalators. The slipstream caused by her sudden running caused the blouse to open out behind her again. As she started leaping down the steps of the escalator, pushing unceremoniously past book-laden library users, her mind coalesced on one single overpowering thought - she had to get to that clue first, she just had to.

Fighting her way past what now seemed to be rush-hour foot traffic at the library, Erica arrived at the ground floor and immediately accelerated towards the Science Fiction area. She'd lost sight of Kimberly the minute she'd hit ground level, and her eyes now darted all over the place trying to locate the enemy, while her brain tried to multi-task on exactly what shelf the book might be on. As she did, the current state of her blouse finally *ahem'ed* it's way to the forefront of Erica's mind, causing a momentary distraction.