Overlord Ch. 01

O'Brien rolled her eyes and gave her partner a look of mock-disapproval. "Well, I guess she'll have to earn her next punishment the honest way. Don't worry, honeybuns, I'll be watching you." She gave the reclining girl's naked bottom a poke, making her grimace and hiss. A moment later, Charrington had pulled the still mostly paralyzed Maria to her feet and bent her over the back of the bench. Winston could see her at a profile now, the pain and outrage and abject humiliation on her face as well as the fiery red pattern that covered her buttocks. Her pants and underwear fell to her ankles as Charrington folded his belt in half and lined it up with her shivering, bent-over cheeks. The song of descending leather. The pop of belt on flesh. The screams of a girl whose bruised flesh was being given another, even harder beating. Then the same thing again. And again. And again. A prisoner in her own body, Maria lay over the back of the bench as Charrington's belt painted eleven stripes across her largest surface. Finally, Maria's active discipline score was reduced to five. Charrington gave her a couple of open handed slaps to bring her down to 1, one on each rainbow-colored buttock and put his belt away. He then fired another energy blast at Maria's livid bottom, restoring her muscle strength.

"Dress yourself quickly," Charrington half-commanded, half-advised, "or your next punishment will be for public indecency."

The bawling Latina struggled upright, somehow managing to pull her too-tight jeans up over her ass and buckle them up. Winston could scarcely imagine the pain she must have felt as the denim squeezed her extravagantly spanked caboose.

"Be a good girl now, sweet thing," O'Brien chimed, and she gave the retreating girl a final slap on the bottom that made her squeal and run away as fast as she could, both hands on her abundant seat. The Disciplinarians laughed and headed along their way.

There was a long silence. Winston's blood was hot in his veins. He'd have to go into the shower as soon as he got home and ease the pressure, hoping that no Disciplinarians happened to be peeking through the window as he did. Masturbation didn't carry as high a point penalty as sex, but it still carried one. After a very long moment, Julia made eye contact with him.

"Well," his delicate-looking coworker said, "thank you for walking me, Winston."

Winston nodded and made himself smile. He couldn't bring himself to speak.

"I'll see you tomorrow in the office," Julia continued, "goodbye."

Winston croaked a barely-coherent goodbye and watched her retreat into the grocery store, her small, spherical bottom seeming much more vulnerable and endangered under her skirt than it had before.

Taking a deep breath of April breeze, Winston fixed his slacks and turned around, eager to walk his artificially enhanced body back to the imagined solitude of his apartment. He barely noticed the houses and benches and electric cars he passed until a familiar, female voice drawled from behind him "Mister Winston Fisher."

He turned around. Disciplinarian O'Brien, now separated from her colleague, stood over him. It was amazing how despite being only a little above average height, Corporal Laura O'Brien always seemed to tower above your head. The luminescent stripes that marked her wrong strobed on and off across her chest, forcing him to look there. Winston had no idea why Overlord designed those uniforms to call attention to the breasts of female officers and the pecs and abs of male ones. Was it to remind the citizens that sexual thoughts were destructive and dangerous? Was it just to torture them? Winston had long given up wondering.

"Ma'am," he said carefully.

O'Brien advanced on him, circling in a rather shark-like manner. "I see you've made a little friend."

He nodded. "Yes I have, ma'am. She is one of my co-workers."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Just remember to keep it friendly," she said, smiling like a hungry cat. "Last time you brought a lady here, you made Overlord very unhappy. Although I personally didn't mind it so much."

He was sure her blue eyes flicked up and down his body as she said that. He felt his heart accelerate.

"You keep that perky tush of yours out of trouble, studmuffin," she said. "We've got our eyes on you."

She flicked a disapproving finger at him before turning back around. He turned away from her, unwilling to stare at the extra corporal stripes emblazoned on the seat of her pants. Home. He had to go home. Then tomorrow he would go back to work, and maybe spend his lunch break with Julia, and...

...and what?

The gray sky begin to drip tiny, cold raindrops into the breeze. City-71 stretched around him in all directions, home to a hundred thousand like himself. They had lived here for three months. As far as Winston knew, they would live here forever. Another pair of Disciplinarians crossed the street ahead of him, making him increase his pace.

"I love you." Well, he would see.