Arena Ch. 07

Todd closes the blinds on the glass wall looking into the hall before he steps out and shuts the door. "Come on, Coy, let's go to my office. It beats standing here in the hall."

"That it does," he agrees, following Todd.

Donna finishes sizing Sierra up. "We've already fitted Coy with a subligaculum, a kind of ancient loincloth. I think we are going to fit you the same way, along with a matching strophium. It's period correct and Coy is such a beefcake that I wanted to show off as much of him as I could before you two get down to business. Undress, please," Donna says pointing to the portable screen. "Charlie told me more or less what you two were going to be doing, and let me tell you, honey, you are going to have a great time if you like big men."

"Big as in muscles, or big as in..." Sierra trails off, leaving the question unasked as she begins to undress, removing her shorts and blouse.

"Both. I brought several different off-the-shelf gladiator uniforms to try, but once I saw him I knew that to cover him up would be crime against womanhood. All the way, please," Donna says when Sierra steps from behind the screen with her undergarments still on. "Charlie told me he's packing, but even though I left extra room, it's still snug." She laughs lightly. "If I were fifty years younger I'd give you a run for your money."

Sierra laughs, completely put at ease by Donna's patter. "Well, I do like them big," she says, stepping from behind the screen again.

"I bet you do," Donna says, walking around Sierra. "You're a big girl. I suspect you can hold your own with just about any man. Yes, I think a matching subligaculum and strophium will do nicely. You're heavy-chested enough that the strophium won't completely flatten you out." She eyes Sierra's breasts. "We may cheat you a little by hiding a wire in the strophium to push you up against the flattening effects. Hmmm... okay, here, turn around and let's try this."

Sierra turns as Donna retrieves a leather strap with an uneven cut. Donna expertly wraps the leather around Sierra's breasts in a crossing pattern, pulling it tight and quickly tying it off. She then steps around to the front and begins to push on Sierra's breasts from the sides and underneath, watching how her breasts move under the snug leather.

"This comfortable enough?" Donna asks, pushing Sierra's breast up and toward the center.

"Comfortable enough," Sierra agrees. She'd thought the leather would be terribly stiff, but it's very soft, like glove leather.

"Okay, I like that look. Here, put your hands here and hold," Donna says. When Sierra complies, Donna takes a piece of soap and marks two lines on the leather along the bottoms and sides of Sierra's breasts. "This is where the wire will go. Not completely accurate, but a girl needs to have her secrets, right?"

Sierra laughs, removing her hands and letting her breasts flatten out again. "Of course."

"I'll put a thin piece of leather inside to hide the wire and no one but you and me will know we cheated," Donna says with a grin, sticking a pin here and there, adjusting the fit. "Okay, now this." Donna hands Sierra a smaller version of the loincloth Coy wore.

Sierra slips the subligaculum on and Donna ties it off. "Not bad," Donna says, turning Sierra around, once again pulling and tugging, marking and pinning. "Not so overtly sexy that it looks ridiculous, but it shows off your curves nicely. Especially with momma's little helper in the strophium. Give 'em a push like before," Donna requests, and Sierra complies. "Yes... yes... I think that will work nicely. Coy elected to wear sandals, so I assume you'll want to as well?"

"May I see them?"

"Of course," Donna says, retrieving two sets of sandals from her bag. "I put Coy in these high lace sandals but you could wear the lower shoe type, I think. With your legs, I'd recommend the taller laces. The laces will draw the eye, and you do have some lovely legs."

"Thank you, Donna, that's nice of you to say. It comes from all the hiking, I suppose."

"Well, whatever it is, keep doing it," Donna says, handing the sandals to Sierra.

Sierra takes them and, after a couple of false starts, figures out the laces and quickly laces them around her legs and ties them. "What do think?"

Donna looks her over with a critical eye. "I like it. Sexy, feminine, but you look like you could kick some ass too." Donna sighs. "Too bad they aren't going to be on long enough for anyone to really notice."

Sierra laughs. "You never know," she says with a bright smile.

Donna snorts in derision. "Five minutes, tops," she says. "Okay, I think we're done. Any changes you want to suggest?"

Sierra looks herself over. The costume making her feel strong and powerful. "Nope. Wrap these up and I'll take them now," she teases.

Donna laughs. "Just wait until I adjust the fit. Okay, if you want to change back into your normal clothes, I'll take these and be on my way. Be careful not to smear the marks."

Sierra undresses, handing each piece carefully to Donna, who folds them neatly, repins them and then places each piece into her bag. Once Sierra is dressed, Donna opens the office door. "Okay, we're done, so you can stop trying to peek through the blinds," she says loudly.

Down the hall from Todd's office, Coy and Todd laugh. "You saw that, huh?" Coy shouts back.

"Boys never change," Donna says, stopping in the door to Todd's office. "It went well today. Charlie's measurements were pretty close so we just need the final tweaks to make everything fit perfectly. We should have that done in just a couple of days, then I can turn the uniforms over to you. You only want one set?"

"Yes, please," Todd says. "If we have to reset and do another capture, having dirty costumes will be the least of our worries."

"Okay. These were nearly off the shelf for us anyway, so we can run up another set pretty quickly if we have to." Donna looks at Coy and Sierra. "You two are going to look fabulous," she says before turning her attention back to Todd. "We'll have your tunics ready no later than next week. Are you going to come pick them up, or shall I send them over?"

"I'll come pick them up," Todd replies. "Thank you, Donna, for helping us on this. Charlie owes you one."

"My pleasure. Sorry I couldn't meet with you personally on the tunics. I assume Jill was able to handle everything you needed?"

"It was perfect. You run a tight ship," Todd says.

"Jill's my girl on Friday. She's been with me almost thirty years, since she was seventeen. She'll take over the place in a few years."

"Then Designs by Fawn will be in good hands," Todd says sincerely.

"I think so too," Donna agrees. "I'll get these cleaned up and aged for you by next week. I'll let you know when they're ready for pick up."

"Thank you, Donna." Todd walks her to the door. Once Donna Fawn is gone, he turns to Coy and Sierra, who seem to be standing about rather stiffly. "You two ready for some lunch and then a trip to the arena?"

Sierra and Coy look to one another before Coy shrugs. "Sure. You buying?" he teases.

"Immersion Playground is buying," Todd corrects. "I know you both expressed interest in seeing the arena and I need to go check on the progress, so if you want to ride along, you're welcome. We'll be gone five or six hours, counting lunch. We should be back by five-ish."

"I'm game," Coy says. "I've never seen a real Roman coliseum before."

"I have," Sierra chimes in, "but it'd be interesting to see what it looked like before it became the pile of rocks I saw."

"Well, don't get your hopes up too high. This is a small arena, nothing like the coliseum in Rome. This one is only sixty feet in diameter with five rows of seating, like you'd find out in the frontier lands of the Roman Empire."

"But it's absolutely accurate?" Sierra asks, the amateur history buff in her coming out.

"In the public areas, yes, as accurate as we could make it. There are a few modern touches hidden away out of sight. I'll show you when we get there. If we're going, let's get moving so we can get back at a reasonable hour."

Two and half hours later, Todd is once again creeping along the rutted track to the arena, the Honda heaving and bouncing. He grits his teeth every time the car's undercarriage scrapes.

"Nice road," Sierra quips from beside Todd. "We should have come in my Jeep."

"Or my truck," Coy adds from the back.

"One of the things on our to-do list. Get this road graded. I swear, every time I come out here it's worse than the time before." Todd says, his comment punctuated with a particularly hard bang under the car, causing both Coy and Sierra to groan in mechanical sympathy.

Ten minutes and two miles later, they step out into the hot California sun, the angry hissing of the painters' equipment shattering the quiet.

"Let's go see what the painters are up to, and then I'll show you around," Todd offers. "This is one of the entrances into the arena," he explains as they pass through a tunnel under the stands. "There's another one on the opposite side. On either side of the tunnels are all the mechanical bits we'll need to do the capture. Over here," he says, gesturing to the left, "is the room for all the capture equipment and the power plant. On the other side is the restaurant, for lack of a better term, where we can feed the extras. Restrooms can be found there as well. We wanted everything tucked away and out of sight so the entire area, as far as the eye can see, looks like it might have in ancient Rome. That was the hardest thing to get the set designers' minds around, that you can't fake anything. We would say, 'That can't be there,' and they'd say, 'Oh, we'll shoot from this side and you'll never see it.' Sorry, it doesn't work like that when doing an immersion."

The three step out of the tunnel into the arena proper, and step back in time. The painting is complete and the painters have nearly finished aging the concrete. "Holy shit, Todd," Sierra whispers, "This is amazing." She stops and looks closely at the arena wall. "This looks just like I remember when I was in Italy," she says, running her fingers along the wall. "What are you going to do with this after we capture?"

"We don't know. We're pounding our heads against the wall trying to think of another scenario where we can use it again. The University of California wants to come out and shoot some video of the place when we're done, for reference material. But after that, I don't know. We may try to rent it out for other productions or, if we don't get any interest on that, tear it down, maybe?"

"Oh, Todd, that would be such a shame," she says, looking around and taking it all in. "I feel like I've stepped back a thousand years."

"Yeah, well, wait until the stands are full of cheering Romans. Then tell me what you think," Todd says with a smile.

"Sierra's right," Coy says finally. "This place looks amazing. You know how you can get a vibe when something just seems right? I get that from this place. I bet this is exactly how one of these looked way back when."

"I'm going to talk to the foreman, find out where we stand. You two take a look around," Todd suggests as he walks away.

Coy turns to Sierra. "What do you think?"

"I wasn't just shitting Todd. This place gives me the chills. It's so real looking, it's spooky. Look, those poles?" Sierra says, pointing to large wooden poles spaced at regular intervals around the arena with arms extending over the stands. "Those will be covered in canvas, to provide shade during the day. And look there, see that box cut into the stands? That's the pulpitis, where the nobles will sit and watch the games. I can just imagine men in here with swords hacking each other to death." She looks around the arena again and then turns her attention to him. "I'm really beginning to look forward to this, to rolling around in the dirt with you, fucking you until you beg for mercy," she says with a teasing smile.

He looks into her eyes and sees a wanting there, a wanting that he feels for her. "I intend to give you a little stiffer competition this time," he says, smiling slightly.

She barks out a short laugh at his choice of words. "Oh God, I hope so," she says huskily, unable to believe how horny she's become from thinking about what they will be doing here in a few weeks. "You still want to wait?"

He thinks before answering. "I didn't want to wait Friday. I don't want to wait now, but yes, I still think we should wait." He considers saying more, but stops, not wanting to become a blabbering idiot like he did Friday. She smiles at him, and it reminds him of her smile on the mat right before she kicked his ass.

"I haven't been laid in over a month. I am going to wear your ass out. Count on it," she says, poking him lightly in the chest with a finger on her last words, just to see what Coy will do.

He doesn't know if she is trying to get into his head or if she is just coming on that strong, but either way, he can feel his penis begin to stiffen at the thought. "Maybe, but then again, maybe not," he says with quiet confidence. He's had enough women, especially those who know what they want from a man, that he's learned a few things along the way.

They stroll around the arena, each lost in their own thoughts, only speaking to point out some detail of the structure they find interesting. Coy also looks at the floor of the arena, toeing it with his shoe. They make it all the way around the inside of the arena and are about to go outside when Todd rejoins them on the arena floor.

"You ready for the nickel tour?" Todd asks as he walks up.

"Yeah, but before we go, what are you doing to the surface in here? This ground is hard as concrete," Coy says, scraping the ground with his toe again.

"We're going to have a couple of inches of sand brought in. It's what they used, to absorb spilled bodily fluids I'm told, back when they really held games in arenas like these."

"Sand, huh?" Coy asks. "Could we use something else? Something not so... abrasive?"

"Abrasive?" Todd asks, not understanding.

"Well, it's called sandpaper for a reason, and it's going to stick to anything wet, if you know what I mean. I just as soon not have my tender parts sanded, and it will be worse for Sierra."

Todd looks at Coy, finally understanding what he is getting at. "Oh. Yes, I see. Do you have a suggestion?"

"Actually, I do," Coy begins. "What you want is loam. Bring in about five times the sand you were planning, then bring in about that same amount in peat. Get a heavy tiller in here and till it until it's uniformly mixed down to a depth of six or eight inches, then rake it smooth. Once it's smooth, get a yard roller and lightly roll it to compact it down some. That'll allow the ground have some give. It'll feel slightly springy when you walk on it, but it won't be so soft that you'll leave tracks in the surface. It also won't have the abrasive properties that sand will. The day before we capture, wet down the entire surface to knock the dust down. It'll still be a little dusty—nothing to do for that—but it won't be a choking dust, as the ground will still be slightly damp below the surface."

Todd and Sierra look at Coy, impressed. "And you know this how?" Sierra teases.

"I have a degree in agri-science, plus twenty years' experience on daddy's farm. I know dirt," Coy says with a smile. "What you have here a typical clay hardpan. What we want to do is to add—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa there, farmer Bell!" Sierra calls with a laugh. "I would like to stipulate for the record that you know what you're talking about and we should just defer to your expertise." She turns to Todd. "I hadn't thought about the sand thing before, but I suspect he's right. Can we do what he says?"

"Uh... sure, I guess. You want to oversee this to make sure it is done the way you want, Coy?" Todd asks. "You've obviously given this some thought."

"No, not really, but once I got here and saw how hard this dirt is, I didn't want Sierra to get hurt." He quickly holds up a hand to silence her protest. "And I don't want to get hurt either. Ground like this will break your back. So yeah, if you want some help, I'll be happy to help get the arena surface prepared." He smiles broadly. "No extra charge."

"Okay, great. I'll send you the address of the man bringing in the sand. You can ping him on the way back and you two can work it out. Thanks, Coy," Todd says sincerely. He hadn't even thought about how the sand might cause discomfort for the participants.

"Glad to help out. Now, the tour?"

Todd takes another half an hour to show Coy and Sierra the rest of the arena facility, including the control room and the cantina, explaining how they wanted to keep everything tucked away and out of sight so there's nothing to suggest it isn't a real Roman arena. He also explains how they'd aged the surfaces to make the two-month-old concrete look two hundred years old.

"You've put a lot of thought and effort into this," Sierra comments from the stands as they look at the area around them, marveling at the lack of civilization as far as the eye can see. "I'm surprised there's anywhere left in southern California where you can't see modern civilization."

"We looked long and hard for this site," Todd says, "and we still had to tear some buildings down and remove electrical poles. We're betting the company on this immersion, so it has to be right. We've spared no expense to make this as real as possible."

"Betting the company? How?" Coy asks.

"If the immersion is a flop, and we don't at least break even, I'm not sure we'll try to do another. The four of us, Rick, Giselle, Charlie and myself, talked long and hard about what to do after The Proposal was such a success. It made more money than we dreamed possible. What we don't know is if it's just luck, a one-time thing. Rick wanted to cash out, take the money, and run, but the rest of us convinced him that Immersion Playground can make a go of it, but if we lose our ass on this production, I suspect that we may just take what's left in the kitty, divide it up, and close up shop."

Coy and Sierra exchange a glance. "No pressure," Coy says with a grin.

Todd laughs. "No, none at all. Seriously, if the immersion fails it won't be because of you. Rick's convinced that the reason The Proposal is such a success is because it's real. If we fail, it'll be because we over spent trying to capture that realism and can't recoup our investment, but we won't know until we release the immersion if he's right or not."

"Here's to keeping it real," Sierra says. "I think Rick's right, and I think that if we," Sierra points to Coy and herself, "can live up to our end of the agreement, this is going to be a huge success."

Todd sees Coy nodding his head in agreement. "I feel pretty good about it myself, but there's no way to know until we know," Todd says. "Anything else you want to see?"

Sierra takes one more slow turn, drinking in the isolation. "No, I think I've seen enough. I just love this place, though. I kind of hate to leave."

Todd leads them back to his car, sending Coy the contact information for the landscaper that's going to prepare the arena floor. On the two-hour drive back to Los Angeles, Coy spends several minutes in conversation with the landscaper, explaining what he wants and how he wants it done. Finally satisfied that the contractor understands what's expected, he logs out.

"I think he understands. He wants more money, of course. He said he'd contact you tomorrow with a new bid."

Todd sighs dramatically. "Of course. Nothing ever costs less."

Coy chuckles from the back seat. "Ever. If you give me a heads up, I'll drive out and make sure it's done right. Would you like to ride along, Sierra? You're welcome, but it'll probably be a long day."