Experiments in Recruitment -NCU Ch. 01

Rayne sat in her dorm room with her nose buried in a book. Not a novel or a school book, not from a class she was taking anyway. No, her nose was buried in a book filled with hypnotic scripts and techniques. In fact there were several other books scattered all around her on different topics within hypnosis, written by authors from various time periods. You could say she was becoming a bit obsessed.

Her current topic of study was instant inductions, a type of hypnotic induction that takes less than five seconds to achieve and in many cases is...as the name would imply...instantaneous. Of course, her intense focus came at the drawback of not hearing the sound of approaching footsteps in the hallway.

The sound of keys jingling in the door knob, however, snapped Rayne out of her self induced trance. She barely had time to realize what was happening before the door opened and Klaire walked in. The short brunette had barely taken a step into the room before she noticed Rayne and instantly rolled her eyes. "Ugh...what are YOU doing here?" She said in a disgusted tone. It was a greeting that Rayne was quite familiar with, but had yet to get used to.

Rayne sank into her chair and checked the clock. "Sorry, I lost track of time. I can pack up and leave if you give me a minute." She placed a bookmark into her study material and started to gather her things.

"Don't bother, you've already ruined my mood. I have no desire to be in here knowing you were just here." she said as she pushed past Rayne. She angrily grabbed the bag next to her bunk and started to rifle through the bookshelf, looking for the right book to occupy her.

Rayne somehow sank even further into her chair, but as she did the book she'd been holding slipped from her hand and landed in her lap. She flipped it open to the bookmarked page...a page on instant inductions. More specifically, on handshake inductions. "Could...that work?" she thought to herself. She quickly looked back and forth between the book and Klaire. "This is crazy!" she thought as she gently closed the book and stood up, moving strategically behind Klaire and waiting for just the right moment.

A moment later the frustrated young coed flung her book bag onto her shoulder and turned around, only to come face to face with Rayne. The shock of seeing her roommate standing so close to her was such a surprise that she actually gasped and took a half step back. The look of anger on her face completely drained away for a split second as her brain tried to figure out what was happening.

This was the exact look Rayne was hoping to see. It was a sign that she had managed to interrupt Klaire's thought process, leaving her temporarily open to suggestions while her brain assessed the situation. She acted as quickly as she could, extending her hand to Klaire with a soft smile. "We got off on the wrong foot..." She started in a soothing tone that she had read helped with hypnotic inductions. "I'm sure you can...see the benefit to starting over, starting fresh with me, now. I'm Rayne..." she extended her hand a bit more to imply that she wanted to shake Klaire's hand. "Pleasure to meet you."

Klaire's mouth opened just a bit. The shock of the situation and the soothing tone of her voice seemed to be playing right into Rayne's hand. Klaire stared at Rayne intently as she talked, and as her redheaded roommate extended her hand in friendship...Klaire subconsciously found her own hand slowly reaching out toward Rayne's.

But just before their hands touched, the awareness returned to her eyes. Her confused, open mouthed expression twisted into a narrowed eyed scowl as she quickly slapped Rayne's hand away. "You're an idiot." she said with a huff as she pushed past Rayne towards the door. "I'll be back at eight PM, and will be going to bed at eleven. Either be here, asleep before eight, or be quiet as the grave after eleven. I don't want to have to see you again today." She slammed the door shut before Rayne could so much as even think about a reply.

Rayne just stood there, completely in shock with her hand still extended. After a few moments, without even fully moving from her position, she simply moved the extended hand down to her bed and grabbed a pillow. She slowly brought it up to her face, took a deep breath...and screamed into the pillow at the top of her lungs. Not even a second after she had finished, the door popped open again as Klaire poked her head in. "A pillow doesn't cover the sound of a scream, moron!" she scolded, before abruptly slamming the door again.

Rayne just stared at the closed door in absolute shock... that is, until she finally seemed to snap inside and proceeded to beat herself in the head with the pillow. Repeatedly. Over and over again she simply slammed the pillow into her face. Around the tenth time the look on her face shifted from anger to an almost giggly, dazed expression. But still she continued to slam the pillow into her face again and again. Around the twentieth time, as she pulled the pillow away from her face, Rayne grinned and giggled. Her eyes were noticeably glazed and unfocused, and with one final hit they crossed and rolled up into her head. She sighed softly as she sank to her knees and then fell over onto her side. Her hair created the perfect Hollywood 'flip' as she fell and landed gently on her side, then rolled onto her back. She had managed to completely knock herself out with just a pillow.

She came to a few moments later, confused to find herself laying on the floor. It took a moment or two for her to finally remember what had happened. She was so sure the instant would work on Klaire, why hadn't it? Laura, while hypnotized herself, had told Rayne that she needed to find a way to connect to Klaire. "I guess politeness wasn't the way." she thought to herself. She rolled over and was about to stand up when something under Klaire's bed caught her eye. It was a small shelf of books, hidden behind several boxes. Very well hidden, actually. She knew that Klaire would know if she looked too closely, so she pulled out her phone and carefully slid her arm under the bed to snap a picture.

Carefully removing her arm to make sure she didn't touch a single thing on Klaire's side of the room, she propped herself up on her elbows and examined the pictures. "Vampire novels?" she asked herself as she examined the picture. "No...Vampire romance novels? Interesting..." she said with a grin. Before she could process any further the alarm on her phone went off. She had another hypnosis lesson with Laura, and if she didn't leave now she was going to be very late.

---

Twenty minutes later...

Rayne turned the corner into the small commons area that she was supposed to meet Laura in, only to to notice the older student with her back turned as she tried to get a dollar to go into a vending machine. Those things never, ever work right, but the fact that Laura hadn't seen her yet gave Rayne an idea. She quietly put her bag down and flipped through her book to the chapter on shock inductions. Slowly, quietly, she crept up behind the still occupied Laura while continuing to browse through her book.

She skimmed the section of the book she thought would help and gently set it down on the couch behind Laura. Slowly, she moved behind her and took a slow, deep breath as quietly as she could, waiting for an opportune moment as she readied herself to strike.

Laura was slowly pushing her dollar into the reader for the fourth time when Rayne saw her moment. The reader slowly made its clicking and mechanical whirring sounds only to finally flash the green 'accepted' indicator. Laura quickly shot her arms up in victory, and as she leaned in to make her selection Rayne made her move. She quickly grabbed the blonde around the waist with one hand and pulled her back against her stomach. She then swung her other hand around, placed it on Laura's forehead and pulled her head back to her shoulder. As she watched Laura's eyes look around in confusion she whispered "Sleep..." into the older student's ear. A second later Laura's eyes fluttered closed.

Rayne was so excited that she had to bite her tongue to avoid screaming into Laura's ear. She took a moment to let the feeling sink in...not only the feeling of her victory, but also of the helpless young woman that she was holding in her arms. She slid her face closer to Laura's and used her nose to move some of Laura's curly blonde hair out of the way so she could whisper into her ear. "That's a girl, nice and deep, ready to do as I command...isn't that right Laura?"

To her surprise Laura smiled and said "No" without so much as moving another muscle.

"Wait...what?" Rayne asked, clearly confused.

Laura's smile widened as her head tilted towards Rayne and her bright blue eyes opened. "No...sorry, but your timing was off." She let the shock sink into Rayne before she stood herself up and punched her selection into the vending machine. "It was a good attempt though...like I said, you just need to work on your timing."

Rayne sat down on the armrest of the couch with a sigh. "That...that's good to know...I guess." She was visibly depressed at this point.

Laura cracked open her can of pop and took a sip before setting it on the table and moving over to Rayne. "It's a skill, you just need practice and refinement. That's all. Your attempt was good, I didn't realize you were there til you grabbed me around the waist. Your placement of my head on your shoulder was excellent, and the way you said 'sleep' was flawless. That alone nearly put me out. Your issue was that the surprise I felt from being grabbed faded before the suggestion to sleep was said. They have to be very close together. There is a tiny window while the human mind is confused that you can slip a suggestion in...does that make sense?"

Rayne nodded slightly, lost in thought as she retraced the steps in her mind. Laura, of course, saw this as the perfect teaching moment and simply said with a smile "Let me show you!" Rayne barely had a chance to register the comment, and started to look up at Laura with a confused expression, just a moment before Laura slapped both of her hands together directly in front of Rayne's face. The instant the loud clap had ended and was still ringing through poor Rayne's stunned ears, Laura gave a sharp, blunt, but simple command. "Sleep!"

Rayne's head had jerked back just a bit as Laura's hands clapped in front of her face. The force of the clap was so great that the ends of her hair gently blew back from the tiny wind gust it had created. And then one word, "Sleep!" echoed through her mind. She looked at Laura as her mouth started to open to say something, but the thought never formed. Instead, her mouth just hung open as her eyes slowly rolled back into her head, while her head bobbed straight down. Her hair bounced a bit as her head finally came to rest on her chest.

Laura smiled, rather pleased with herself, as she looked at her hypnotized pupil. She gently slid a finger along Rayne's cheek, before moving it under her chin and using it to tilt Rayne's head up a bit so she could more clearly see the young woman's completely relaxed expression. "See?" she said happily "It's all about timing..."

To be Continued...