Hunter nervously glanced at the three new interns. They felt a pang of tightness in their chest, as they were now responsible for multiple other people. The heist would have been so much less complicated if it was limited to just Hunter and Dan being the subjects of NewU’s feminization routine. Now Hunter felt something within them stir. They felt an instinctive need to protect these other interns and keep them safe, just like how they felt with Dan.

Hunter resolved to be very delicate and careful as those poor bastards had no idea what was potentially in store for them. 

“Does this place exclusively hire skinny people?” Dan questioned, immediately undermining Hunter’s plan. “No, wait, of course. People don’t acknowledge that other body types exist that aren’t skinny, curvy, and short. Especially, y’know, a specific type of protagonist appropriate for a situation like this. I mean, there’s not a single person here over 5”7’! What a shame, I mean, I was expecting some regressive tendencies, but to see it play out in front of me like this is just sad.”

“Who is he talking to?” the taller guy asked Hunter, gesturing over at Dan.

“And what is he talking about?” the shortest of the group continued, absently brushing his ponytail that certainly wouldn’t do him any favors in a hypothetical ‘how easily feminizable is this guy?’ contest.

“Dan’s had a long day,” Hunter explained while glaring at their partner. “Anyway, I’m Hunter.”

“My name is Simon,” the ‘just right’ sized guy said while flicking his nails. “And I just have to say it’s nice to meet you all.”

Dan evenly stared at the newcomers to the group in an intense manner reminiscent of how Natalie had scanned the two of them earlier. Dan was evaluating how easy it would be to forcefem the other interns, and from his expression, he didn’t think it would be very hard.

Rather than let Dan devolve the conversation further, Hunter instead gestured to the chairs. “Why don’t we sit down? I don’t feel like standing here awkwardly,” Hunter didn’t wait for nods of approval and sat down on one of the chairs, turning their head to study Simon and the other two guys as they followed along. 

Simon’s gait was slow and aimless, like he was sleepwalking. He sat down at the end of the sofa and seemed to unconsciously try to take up as little space as possible. Poor guy, he definitely needed some kind of a wake-up call. Preferably not from any of the NewU staff.

The other two guys had similar walks to each other, taking their spots on the sofa without any fanfare. They at the very least moved with purpose.

Dan elected to stay standing, just observing everybody else. Hunter exchanged a glance with him, seeing that Dan was focusing his gaze on Simon with an annoyed expression. What was that all about?

The last guy decided to chime in. “So I was told that a couple of you were recruited, even though I applied for the position, which I thought was curious. I’m Carter, by the way.”

“I applied,” Hunter said, though that was somewhat of a lie considering Artemis had a hand in getting Hunter and Dan back into the internship program. Dan nodded in agreement with Hunter, not saying a word.

“They recruited me online,” Simon answered.

“Same,” the shorter guy said. “I mean, not online. Someone came up to me on the street and said I might be a good fit for this place, which I mean, considering I don’t give a shit about college, I decided I’d take the easy money!”

"You're really begging for it," Dan grumbled, trying not to crack up.

Hunter ignored him and addressed the short guy. "I don’t think I caught your name, by the way.”

“It’s Felix. Is that a problem? And what the fuck is he laughing at? What’s wrong with a little money?” Felix pointed at Dan.

Hunter began to shake their head, but Dan decided to keep talking anyway. “I mean, I’d do a lot of things for easy money. Totally not an uncommon hook into some rather unfortunate circumstances…”

Hunter let a few chuckles slip out despite themself trying very hard to hold it in. Dan was matching the intern’s stories to all of the other fiction he’d read, and was probably mapping out what was going to happen to them in his head. Hunter couldn’t help imagining Felix as a story protagonist either, continually feminizing himself as people kept throwing money at him.

"Okay, seriously, what’s wrong with you two?" Felix glared at them.

"A lot," Hunter let slip, then attempted to recover. "It's been a weird day for us since we arrived here.”

“Same, I had some weird interactions,” Simon agreed. “The bagel place I usually go to was closed! On a Monday!”

"Did you get any veiled threats from, uh, Natalie the ice queen?" Hunter pressed while ignoring Simon’s non-sequitur. Dan was looking at them funny, and motioned for them to walk off into the corner together. Hunter ignored their partner and kept talking. "Or like, how she moved her eyes over our bodies like we were walking barcodes?" Hunter didn't technically know if Natalie had acted the same with the other three, but it seemed like a reasonable assumption to make considering how they lived in a world where forced feminization happened around every street corner.

"I mean, she gave us looks like that, but I read it as she’s just really invested in the development of her staff,” Carter said after a moment’s hesitation, with affirmative nods from Simon and Felix.

“THAT’S the message you get!?” Hunter stood up, only for Dan to put a hand on their shoulder and guide them away from the rest of the group. 

“We shouldn’t interfere in what’s going to happen to them,” Dan whispered. “These people are going to be girls anyway, and they’re not going to believe anything you say because what we know to be true is so far removed from their version of reality.”

“I…fine, that’s pretty much where I was at first. I thought you were just being ridiculous with your crazy hypotheticals until I saw actual proof of magic,” Hunter acknowledged.

“I’m still really smug about being right,” Dan gave Hunter a cheeky grin. “But anyway, these guys have already had their fates sealed. There’s no way out, we’re already here in the NewU headquarters.”

Hunter looked back at the three unfortunate souls, lounging on the sofa together.

“I feel sorry for them,” Hunter said.

As if on cue, Felix gestured over to the kitchen. “So when’s the maid or whoever going to feed us? It’s lunchtime and we’re supposed to wait for that woman to come back, right? I’d expect her to be able to feed me, at least.”

“A maid?” Simon looked over at Felix, confused. “I think the kitchen is for us to cook food ourselves, right?

“With all that pink? No way, that’s women’s work,” Felix continued, his reductive statement instantly making Hunter’s sympathy for him evaporate. “Besides, I don’t remember ‘able to cook’ being a part of the job description.”

“The description does mention that an ability to cook is preferable,” Carter said quietly. “I read some of the details there and in the contract we signed.”

“Bullshit.” Felix stared at Carter. “Nobody ever reads those.”

“Well, he’s right on one thing,” Dan muttered quietly. Dan seemed content to let them argue amongst themselves, a sentiment Hunter shared.

“Well, I’m going to make a snack.” Simon stood up from the sofa and walked over to the fridge, pulling a few ingredients out. Carter and Felix just stared at him. “What? My mom’s let me cook with her since I was a kid. Even though my dad didn’t like it.”

“Of course he didn’t, you’re wasting your time. You should do something manlier like working on cars or maybe construction, but I bet your delicate fingers would break if you even tried,” Felix sneered.

“Bite me,” Simon retorted without elaborating and continued gathering his ingredients.

Dan moved his gaze between Simon, Carter, and Felix, speaking quietly so only Hunter could hear him. “So we’ve got the passive and stereotypically feminine one, the neutral moral compass and smart one, and then a guy so tainted by toxic masculinity he might as well start bragging about lifting weights. Awesome.”

Once Felix uttered the words “So I was at the gym yesterday…” Hunter decided to tune the rest of their conversation out, electing to sit on the recliner and see if they could rest their eyes for a bit.

“Sleeping on the job already?” Natalie was instantly on Hunter as if she knew how to teleport. Hunter, surprised, managed to stare at everyone else in the room, eyes practically begging for an explanation of how Natalie had accomplished such a feat, and only got shrugs in response.

“How is this world still out to get me?” Hunter muttered before reluctantly climbing out of his seat.

“It’s time for us to address your demerit, Hunter.” Natalie’s smile was as unsettling as her sudden presence in the room. She then moved to address the rest of the room. “And let this be a lesson to the rest of you, don’t squander your only chance to be here.”

The threat seemed to have an effect on the other guys, though Dan just looked unimpressed, as if he’d heard all of this a million times.

Well, he did have his stories. Maybe he did read everything Natalie could possibly say a million times. Hunter idly wondered how Dan would get any sort of enjoyment over reading the same story over and over, though maybe they just didn’t understand.

Before Natalie could give Hunter more crap over zoning out, they quickly moved to leave the intern lounge, forcing Natalie to catch up with them in her cobalt heels.

***

Natalie eventually overtook them and showed Hunter to her office, which seemed to be a pleasant sort of room…though it had a suspiciously large number of cabinets and storage chests attached to the wall, with a bizarrely empty space in the middle of the room. Their supervisor sat down behind the computer at her desk, motioning for Hunter to sit down across from her. 

Even though Hunter had little emotional investment in the entire corporate charade, they couldn’t help but feel a little anxious. The gaze of Natalie’s icy blue eyes, the natural fear of losing their job by being in trouble while at the end of the desk without a computer…and of course, the unsettling knowledge that they were participating in the money-driven capitalistic industrial complex. But they weren’t one of the decision makers, or really, anyone important right now. They could get fired and replaced with someone else, and the only tools at their disposal were to beg that they were worth keeping around.

Hunter shivered. He – no, they, were starting to see just why Dan fixated on secretaries so much. In spite of Hunter’s attempts to detach themselves, there was a part of them that wanted to play the role of the corporate cisgender guy about to be thrown into the wringer. Was that because of the sheer oppressiveness of the situation, or was it possible Hunter could genuinely enjoy the thought of being forced? Did it mean they on some level found all of this thrilling and arousing, too?

Funny, they managed to scare themselves more from that than the realization they were trapped in late-stage capitalism. At the very least Hunter could pick up a few new tricks to use on Dan in bed.

If things ever got too batshit insane, Hunter always had the backup option of tapping into their shapeshifting powers. Those were certainly enough to keep themselves safe no matter what was thrown at them, with enough lateral thinking. Really, the stakes weren’t as high as they seemed since they had their powers as a safety net. If they really wanted to, they could even allow the secretary fantasy to play itself out and even take part in it, becoming the guy being slowly molded into the ideal, sexy, corporate drone.

Wait, why would they even think that!? What was wrong with them?

Natalie cleared her throat. “So, you’re not off to a great start. Such a shame too, because your resume and letter of recommendation made me think you would be an ideal employee for NewU. It was weird to me that you got hired without even going through an interview, which shouldn’t even be possible. Curious.” Natalie narrowed her eyes, making Hunter squirm. “You see, I like to think of demerits as an opportunity to right a wrong. Here at NewU, we expect a lot, and we would prefer our employees to keep their cute little comments to themselves. Therefore…” 

Natalie stood up and walked over to one of the storage chests, pulling it open. “...pick one of the items in here, if you please.”

Hunter followed her and peered into the chest, and gasped.

The chest contained several pairs of high heels, neatly arranged to be facing toward him. One red, one pink, one black. Even though they had already mentally prepared himself for moments like this, the shock of having a choice presented to them in this manner was enough to rattle them for a moment before looking back at Natalie.

Themself. Damnit, they were mixing up their pronouns.

“Is this one of those choices that’s supposed to tell you something about my psychological profile or something?” Hunter chuckled nervously.

Natalie didn’t answer and simply repeated, “Pick one.”

Pick out a pair of heels, huh?

It was one thing to be subjected to a bunch of seemingly-random events that conspired together to turn them into a woman. In this case, Natalie was forcing them to be an active participant. Hunter briefly considered walking out and giving up, but they knew it would be better to play along for now. Instead they decided to approach the choice as they were forced to in the moment.

Why the fuck would heel color be considered a choice in the first place? Hunter studied the pairs. They were otherwise identical except for color. Considering pink and red stereotypically could correspond to cute femininity and sexy femininity, the black heels seemed like the safe choice. Black tended to go with anything, after all. Was that the right answer?

Was Hunter the kind of person to play it safe? Or were they more daring, or even...confident? They were definitely confident their choice in aesthetics wouldn’t dictate who they were as a person, at least. Did that mean that this choice was not only total bullshit, but freeing in a way? After all, they were going to be safe at the end of the day. Would experimenting really be so awful?

Hunter spent a lot of time bouncing forced feminization hypotheticals with Dan. They’d never seriously considered such a thing could happen to them until it actually did when Artemis showed up. That was a bit different in that Artemis had treated them respectfully while still forcing them along in their journey. In this case, the flavor of the narrative happened to be a bit more blunt, and to survive within the constraints of it, they had no choice but to engage with it for fear of more serious consequences. Really, it was quite humiliating, which was definitely part of the point.

Even though they were trapped in this secretary fantasy, they could certainly control their own reactions to what was happening to them. If the world they found themself in was going to be over-the-top, they may as well be over-the-top as well.

Hunter made a show of throwing their hands up. “Alright! I’ll pick something.” They reached down and grabbed the red heels, staring them down as if to intimidate the heels into accepting their decision.

“Red? Bold choice,” Natalie commented.

“So it was a test?” Hunter needled before turning back to face their supervisor. “Now what?”

“Put them on.” Natalie grinned as if she were a shark hungrily watching its prey.

Hunter rolled their eyes and kicked off their shoes. “Are you sure? After the hard fall you took earlier, is this such a great idea to put me in these, where I’m surely going to fall on my ass at some point because of my inexperience? By the way, how’s your leg doing?” 

“What? My leg is fine, thanks --” Natalie stammered. “Fuck.” She shook her head a couple times to refocus. “Get the fucking heels on and maybe I’ll forget your attitude.”

“Fine, Fine.” Hunter gingerly stepped into the heels, which amazingly seemed to conform to their shoe size despite them never telling Natalie or anyone else in NewU their lady’s shoe size. They certainly weren’t a stranger to the act of wearing heels at all, they had occasionally donned them whenever they put on their divine ‘Diana’ outfit.

Natalie and Hunter stared at each other awkwardly, with neither of them saying a word for a few moments. Natalie seemed to be confused and just observing them, while Hunter was totally lost as to the actual point of this exercise. Such hesitation from Natalie was a bit strange, considering that Natalie had to have experience with forcefemming and should know how to take control of the situation, right?

Right?

Natalie eventually composed herself and broke the silence. “Do ten laps around the room. Then I will consider your demerit null and void.”

“Alright.” Hunter started pacing around the room, though they stopped after half a lap and looked back at Natalie curiously. “So…are you into feet or something?”

“What? No, eww, no,” Natalie said reflexively as if she’d been accused of that more than once. “It’s all a part of your training and in the handbook and shut the fuck up and keep walking because I’m not having this conversation with you.” She stormed back to her desk and sat down, hiding behind her computer screen while Hunter completed the rest of the laps.

Why couldn’t Dan have been the one stuck with this crap? He’d just be on his knees begging them to let him do one hundred laps or something. Instead Hunter was stuck with Natalie, certified potential footlover, and her incredibly dull demerits which were like running penalty laps in school, but admittedly a touch more arousing.

Hunter had barely made it through six laps when the door started to creak open. They quickly scrambled to slip out of the heels, barely managing to avoid falling onto the floor like Natalie had previously. They weren’t sure why they felt the need to put some distance between them and the heels, but that was the reflexive choice they made.

A tall and gruff-looking man scanned the room, passing over both Hunter and Natalie. The gaze wasn’t particularly targeted at anyone or anything, never settling on a single person or object. This was the gaze of someone used to owning everything and everyone they laid their eyes on. Hunter instinctively wanted to get as far away from this person as quickly as possible, or failing that, systematically destroy everything this person held dear.

“You must be one of our new interns. On behalf of the NewU Corporation and the rest of our staff, I welcome you to your new life working for us,” He moved a couple steps closer to shake Hunter’s hand. “Anthony Blake, Chief Executive Officer.”