Chapter 4Migraine-inducing Maids25 January 2022Ace, having gone practically non-verbal for a little while, sheepishly follows Amy into the rge room at the back of the building they’d sat earlier – the one that she calls the common room – and sits down on a couch across from her. She immediately notices that Amy isn’t wearing the same uniform that Ace is; she’s wearing a cute skirt, and that only generates more questions that ought to be answered.

  “Ace.” Amy says, showing incredible restraint to not be hugging her even more. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “Um.” She holds her hands tightly together. “Good to see you too, Amy, just…”

  “Hm?” Amy raises an eyebrow.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? About…” She waves her hands around. “All this.”

  Amy frowns. “Why didn’t you tell me might be a better question. You bloody disappeared.”

  “I wasn’t allowed to?” Ace offers as an answer, knowing it was a bad answer.

  “There’s your answer.” Her friend rests her feet on the couch, leaning into a cushion, and Ace has to control herself from looking at her friend’s figure for a little bit. “I could have been so scared, you know.”

  “Could?” Ace asks, a little offended. “I was having a whole, fucking, I don’t know! I was so worried I was hurting you! Wait– you knew?”

  “I,” Amy says with the biggest smirk Ace’s ever seen. “am such a horrible meddler. I put in a good word.”

  “You tipped them off?” Ace whispers. “You’re so… so…”

  “Sweet? Caring? Lovely? Pretty? Amazing? Please tell me in as much detail as you can. I need a little ego boost.”

  “Well, yes, to all of those.” Ace blushes. “I– I lost my train of thought.”

  “Remember, a month ago, when I told you that I got you the nicest Christmas present you could wish for? I had been in a meeting with Loonie and Eira a few days before and we agreed you could be included in the programme.”

  “This– this is your idea of a Christmas present?” Ace blinks repeatedly, trying to make some point – she forgot what that point was the moment she started doing it. “You just said it would be something kinky! And I told you I really couldn’t do something kinky, not when still living there.”

  “And I said I knew a way to solve that. And I have solved it quite well, haven’t I?”

  “I don’t know what to think.” Ace eyes her friend slightly suspiciously. “Why are you even here?”

  “Three years ago, when I was a little like you are now – pre-transition, depressed, unsure whether I could become, well… this.” She points at herself. “I met a woman called Kelynen. She was working for some noblewoman and looking for some trans girls willing to join an experimental transition programme, away from the rest of the world, but with guidance and access to all resources we may need. It was to see if they could create trans women who are… exceptional.”

  “You definitely are.” Ace whispers, and Amy giggles.

  “I am, and you will be too. But this is exceptional in the eyes of a lesbian aristocrat with an eye for already incredible trans women. Trans women who are engineered, in a way, not just to impress her, but every person in the world that might come across them.”

  “That sounds a little megalomaniacal.” Ace ughs.

  “It does. But they saw in me that I am a woman who loves her drama, her narratives, and they used it against me well. I signed the first opportunity I got.” She smiles. “What did they tell you? They have like this entirely new sales pitch for every candidate participant.”

  “Um. That they could make me incredibly pretty.” Ace blushes. “And um, the kinky thing–”

  “That doesn’t narrow it down much, silly.” Amy stands up and boops Ace on the nose.

  “It’s embarrassing!” She protests, then goes a little silent as Amy towers over her, Ace’s mind filled with some horrible thoughts.

  “And I won’t push you for an answer– I’ll just ask Eira.” Amy puts her hand under Ace’s chin, inspects her.

  She’s so pretty. She knows how to carry herself. Her back straight, her gaze unrelenting, her hand soft yet firm.

  “No! I–” Ace stammers out, horrifically turned on. “I’ll talk.”

  “I’d rather you actually talk than you saying you will talk.” She crosses her arms and leans slightly on one hip.

  “It was the– the thing with– um. Elle. And Eira said that she knew I think it’s hot to be– A– A pything. Or something like that.” Ace is very coherent indeed.

  Amy looks down on Ace, holding her eyes in pce and her mouth shut just long enough for an embarrassing sound to leave Ace’s mouth. Amy then loses her composure by giggling, ughing. “Oh my god– Ace. You silly fucking girl. It’s even more fun to do this in person than it was online. The girls are going to love you.”

  “Girls? Plural?” She blushes. “I thought it was just, um, Elle. And you. That makes two girls. Fuck.”

  “All of us, darling.” Amy sticks her tongue out. “You’re locked in a gilded cage with too little to do and a lot of very kinky, very horny young lesbians. Some of us are very pretty – and yes, that includes you too, don’t deny it – and I can already see you looking at me in the way I looked at some of the others after like, 72 hours. All that? It’ll break you. You’ll be such a mess by the end of the week. Probably going to be rather adorable to see you all pent up.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You’re no stronger than me, darling. Probably less so.” Amy whispers into Ace’s ear. “Oh! I need to see Loonie!” She unlocks her phone and types out a message. “My bedroom’s room number four. You can visit any time.”

  “For– umm–” Ace blushes intensely. She can’t say it, it would somehow besmirch Amy’s good name despite the woman’s obvious and historically extremely well-detailed promiscuity.

  “You’re such a mess already, aren’t you?” Amy gives Ace a corrective boop on the nose. “You can visit for whatever reason you like.”

  “Yes ma’–” Ace starts to say, then shakes her head to an incredibly amused Amy, who gives her one more tight hug before heading off to see Kelynen.

  ***

  At first, Ace tries to spend a little time in the common room. She sits on the couch, and then adjusts herself a little, and then another time, the urge to put her feet on the couch increasing by the minute. But that would be rude, wouldn’t it? She’s a visitor here, at the home of an incredibly rich woman, and she should respect that fact more than putting her smelly feet on the woman’s couch.

  She smells her arm, cringes, and gets up from the couch. They might as well burn it for the amount of boysmell that’s going to have in it now. Twelve hours of anti-androgens is clearly not enough to stop her from smelling like that.

  Ace needs a bloody shower.

  And that means leaving this room, and heading out into the great unknown: the maze of corridors that is the first floor of this building. Maybe find a sponsor who can help her find… the showers. And some clean clothes. And underwear! Perhaps, if she’s lucky, a bloody towel too.

  Leaving the common area means imposing herself and her horrid smell onto more of the building, something she’d rather not do. Perhaps she should open a window?

  Yes, she’ll open a window. Air out the horrible smell that was produced by Zak Howells, dead as of around 39 months ago, except in public. That version of Zak died eighteen hours ago.

  Zak certainly smells like a decomposing corpse.

  Ace takes a moment to stand up and breathe. To let the dysphoria attack fade whilst she distracts herself.

  She looks down at the floor and walks in an obscure pattern.

  Amy is so pretty and cute and beautiful and Ace is so… Ace.

  Her obscure pattern eventually leads her to the windows. It takes her a few seconds to open the window – it’s rather stuck, for some reason, probably because no one opens it?

  The window is open for around eight seconds before Ace realises that she is in the Welsh mountains, in winter, in the evening, and that it’s freezing outside. So that’s why no one opens it. Stupid, stupid Ace.

  A sponsor seems to have heard the window opening, Ace squealing, and then the window closing again. She’s tall, dark-skinned, with muscles, and Ace doesn’t know any women who have muscles, so she stares a little rudely.

  The woman coughs, commanding her attention.

  “Alice Howells.” She says. “You shouldn’t open the windows.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ace says, instinctively. “I realised it’s cold out. That’s why I…” She vaguely gestures at the window, trying to communicate the idea of it being closed.

  Words, it turns out, are hard when you are around so many pretty women.

  The sponsor nods. “You never know with this lot.”

  “I’m sorry.” Ace whispers.

  The sponsor ughs, but quickly winds down. She closes the distance with Ace, who instinctively takes a step back at that. That seems to make the woman freeze in pce for a second, recalibrating her approach.

  “Nothing to be sorry for.” She lowers her voice, allowing it to be more casual. “Forgive me. My name is Rose Ashbridge.”

  “Hello, Ms. Ashbridge.” Ace responds, trying to seem less intimidated than she is.

  “Please just call me Rose.” She smiles.

  To that Ace can’t do anything but nod.

  “You’re a shy one, aren’t you, darling?” Ms. Ashbridge says. “And I know you shy ones quite well – you probably have some questions on your mind right now.”

  “Um.” Ace blushes, looking at the floor, holding her hands behind her back. “I do. I don’t know where the shower is. Or my bedroom. Or where to find clean clothes–”

  “Didn’t Kelly tell you about that?” She asks, then decides to answer her own question. “Of course she didn’t. That girl is going to be the end of us some day. Alice, follow me.”

  Ace follows Rose, slowly filling in her mental map of where she can find everything on the first floor. There’s a bathroom, as well as three separate shower facilities, and a sauna. They also have a second, smaller kitchen, which mostly seems to be used to store various refrigerated goods. There’s a undry room, and some walk-in wardrobes. Various rooms are used for storage, including one with a lock, which Ace is scared to ask about, given the one with a major arsenal of sex toys didn’t have a lock on it.

  “There’s eight bedrooms total,” she says, “Or at least eight that are decorated right now. Seven for the sponsors and your big sisters, and then a big one for Aoife, Gwen and you.”

  “Do we get separate beds?” Ace asks. Given they share a room, she wouldn’t even be surprised if they all got put in one big bed.

  “Yes, you do.” The sponsor ughs. “ Though, I give it a month max before the question of which bed is whose is more theoretical than practical.”

  Their little tour ends at her – their – bedroom.

  “Thank you.” Ace whispers meekly.

  “No worries.” Rose says, putting her soft hand on Ace’s shoulder. “Remember you can always ask us anything, alright?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She says.

  Rose ughs, ughs like everyone else here does when she says that.

  Frustrating.

  She just wants to be polite.

  ***

  It’s really nice to be able to shower. The water is nice and warm here, and it’s so soft, and clean, and she almost would taste it if she wasn’t washing conditioner out of her hair. She isn’t sure whose conditioner it is, and she was afraid to ask, so she only took a very small amount, but it looked rather fancy. So did the shampoo.

  That must be one of the benefits of being the pretty little maid of an aristocrat: your budget for hygiene and beauty products is functionally limitless. So she doesn’t feel too guilty about stealing someone’s conditioner.

  It only took her like, five minutes to decide to do so.

  And she still feels quite guilty.

  She grabs a towel – they have big towels, which is a relief, because her dad always had those useless little small things which are made for men with almost no hair to dry, not women with rather too much of it – and tries to avoid looking in the mirror as she dries herself.

  At this point, she realises how incredibly tired she is. It’s been a long day, and she seems to have had rather little quality sleep overnight – something to do with being practically kidnapped, even if she’d signed up for it – and been a busy day in which she’s had to deal with too many new people.

  And Amy.

  She’s with Amy now. They’re in one building. They’ll be in one building for the coming years.

  It’s an odd sensation.

  Ace puts on her bathrobe, because of course they have those here, and thinks through her options for tonight.

  She could visit Amy, who would be very lovely and happy to see her. She’ll sit her down, hug her, probably give her a kiss, insist she joins her in some video game or another, and it’ll be a very fun evening with someone she adores–

  It would also be extremely tiring, and each step she sets makes it more obvious that perhaps she’s a little too far gone for that already.

  The alternative is going to the bedroom and getting snuggled up under the covers, which did look rather comfy.

  In this very moment, sleep wins out over seeing Amy. She drops herself into her bed and disappears into her dreams rather quickly.

  ***

  “Oh my god, Aoife. She’s sleeping already.”

  “Why don’t you whisper then.”

  “Well, I’m sorry–”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Why would I be sorry? She’s the teachers’ pet.”

  “I thought you’d be.”

  “Please.”

  “You want to be one! I knew it.”

  “No. I meant ‘please’, as in, ‘please, I would never.’”

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t you doubt me, Aoife.”

  “I will, actually.”

  "Not going to admit you have a point."

  “God. You’re the worst.”

  “You’re the worst.”

  “Is that the best comeback you got?”

  “I’m busy. Can’t you see?”

  “I thought the point of wanking one out under the covers is so people do not see, dumbass.”

  “Smartass.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You…”

  “Enjoying it?”

  “Shut up.”

  “You’re in a house with a whole lot of pretty dies, and you’re wanking one out under the covers. I doubt you’re enjoying it.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Kinda sad, isn’t it?”

  “You’re not going to make me horny.”

  “Make you horny implies that you go from a non-horny state to a horny one. Grammatically, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “I wouldn’t even want to fuck you.”

  “Not me, alright. How about Ace?”

  “No!”

  “I think she’s cute.”

  “Of course you do. You’d fuck any submissive trans woman.”

  “So? No whore’s a bore.”

  “Shut up. I can’t perform with you talking to me.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m not a cuck, Aoife.”

  “Why wank one out with me in the room, then?”

  “Where am I supposed to go?”

  “I don’t know. Elsewhere.”

  “You do know. You rub them out somewhere. Where do you masturbate?”

  “Why would I tell you? I’m certainly not doing it in bed with two other girls in the room– Oh, yikes. You sound like you’re enjoying yourself.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Never.”

  “Come taste it then, slut.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “It’s nice and salty.”

  “Didn’t want to know.”

  “God, these panties are ruined. Forgive me, I’m going to have to show you my butt as I put on some clean ones.”

  “I’m turning away.”

  “You were watching me masturbate?”

  “No I w– Shut up.”

  “Hah! you were watching me–”

  “Could both of you shut up?” Ace yells, and the room goes silent for a beautiful few seconds.

  26 January 2022Ace sits down at the breakfast table. To her relief, Aoife and Gwen are both still in bed, not being able to be bothered to get out before ten in the morning. The logical result of the fact that neither of them fell asleep before 4am, which she can entirely assume is a normal rather than exceptional circumstance.

  She looks as haggard as she feels, so Kelynen passes her a cup of rather nice smelling coffee.

  “Are you okay?” She asks.

  “I want to go home.” Ace says.

  “Are those two that bad?”

  “Yes, yes, they fucking are.” Ace spits the words. “I’m already sick of them.”

  “Imagine how I feel after seventy-two hours sponsoring Gwen.” The other sponsor says.

  “I’m so sorry.” Ace whispers. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “You’re not sorry that I have to deal with Gwen?” She sighs.

  “Well, also for that.” Ace takes a careful sip from her coffee.

  “I chose her. It’s all my fault.” She takes a careful bite from a croissant.

  “It is all your fault, Vivienne Calliwell.” Rose says.

  “Thanks for saying my name, Sis.” Vivienne shakes her head. “I’d completely forgotten. The coffee isn’t working yet.”

  “So.” Ace leans into the word until she gets a little bit of attention. “What’s on the agenda today?”

  “Oh. Not much.” Rose says, taking command. “Just a bit of mild torture, is all.”