# Bail Procedures

As state-owned employees went, Chatta had a cushy job. Most unowned Torean girls her age were still working off their dowry contracts, or the ones from rich families were suffering through finishing school. Those were the girls who did what they were told, and trusted that society would reward their conformity.

But Chatta had worked out how you got ahead. She looked past the collars and chains to the invisible lines that determined masters and slaves. There were people in power who did not flaunt it the way her peers always imagined. Some enjoyed authority without attracting attention, and Chatta had a knack for finding them.

She found the girls with the maroon collars and the Alemic ensign on the gold medallions that hung from their nipples. She ate at the cafes where they dined, and followed them to the grubby karaoke booths where they took turns drinking, singing, and necking. From outside the mirrored window, passers by couldn’t tell one from another, but Chatta knew better.

She soon learned that the girl with the wide hips and black hair down to her nipples was a union tribune, and in private she began to see how the other girls treated her with a hint of the submissive respect that counted as flirting on Torei. This girl walked proud like a Mistress, and gathered the others into her arms and between her knees whenever they went out. She bought drinks and reserved booths and kept the evenings going until she was ready to go home.

Chatta knew precisely what she was doing. The day she came of age, she approached the union boss and with a coy “will you teach me?” fell between her legs, working hard to earn favor. In no time she traded the family cocklock of her youth for the maroon chastity corset of a low-level union-owned state working girl.

Chatta relished her cushy position processing incoming captures at the Ministry of Truants. She sat chained to her desk for a single work shift, with a break for lunch and fraternization. Her Union clout kept the bosses from inflicting the harsher punishments during her performance reviews, and if she played her cards right she could re-negotiate her contract next year. That could mean freeclit status three months ahead of schedule, and a dramatic pay rise.

Despite all this, Chatta was in a sour mood. The recent flood of Amalthean collars had put the pressure on everyone, and she’d just received notice from her local chapter that the negotiations had broken down and her union was going forward with a strike. Chatta had made plans, and they didn’t involve wearing a time-locked straitjacket and hood for three days, chained to the ministry fence.

“Ah well,” Chatta thought to herself, “Solidarity keeps us free!”

And so it was with this bad news on her mind that she saw Stella forcing her way past the waiting truant officers, inspecting their strings of kneeling slaves-to-be with panicked haste. She just knew that this freewomb meant for nothing but to interfere with Chatta’s work, and that it would no doubt cost her several welts on her next performance review.

“I’m sorry, Freewomb Stella, but we are simply without the necessary staff to escort you into the holding cells. Perhaps if you came back tomorrow we could—”

“There isn’t time!” Stella was red-faced with frustration and shame. “I’ve got to identify them and get their signatures before they’re shipped off! Look, here is my Hotchkiss ID and my Torean Emancipation Card. I am a freewomb in good standing, and do not need an escort within the Ministry. Don’t act like I haven’t done this before!”

Chatta sighed and brought up Stella’s entry from the Ministry of Obedience database.

“Our records show that you are currently in contract to an officer of propriety, and that you engaged in public performance for him but ran before completing its terms. Now, any dispute will need to be either settled between you or resolved in court, but this mark on your record prevents us from simply letting you in without either an escort or officer Gird’s approval.”

A round of cheers and wolf-whistles started up among the officers in the lobby. Stella held stiff as a board, trying not to let the loose-hanging straps of her “skirt” swing open to give them a view. Her teeth ground, but she could still see their reflection in the glassy info-wall behind Chatta’s chair.

“So it’s Gird, is it?” One of the men called out to her, “Don’t worry little clitty! I’ll protect you from him! Just come with me to temple and I’ll give you a pretty necklace that’ll keep him away!”

Stella sighed and spun on her heel. Too quickly, she worried, as she felt the straps bounce over her thighs.

“I am not interested in being collared, sir.” She had to be explicit, to leave no room for misinterpretation in the law. These rooms were recorded, and she couldn’t risk being seen as flirting with these slavers, or teasing them.

She turned back to Chatta, and laid the back of her hands on the desk in a pleading gesture. Once the catcalls and hooting had died down, she looked the girl in the eye and tried again.

“Listen, I’m clutching at straws, here. I need to get in and see these two girls before they’re processed. I know they mean nothing to you, and I’m no one to you, but there must be some way you can help me. Just…one woman to another?”

Chatta glanced over at her boss’s office door. With the crush and overtime, he wouldn’t appreciate being interrupted for some mad freewomb and her futile attempts to emancipate a couple of collars. Sighing, she brought up a form on Stella’s side of the counter, and checked availability for any of the self-service processing booths.

“All right, if you submit your case for magisterial review now, I can have you processed and fitted for bail. That bond would be enough to get you through the gates unescorted.”

Stella grimaced, cursing Gird’s name under her breath. Court review was a lot more attention than she wanted her deal to receive, but she had witnesses to his verbal acknowledgement that she could leave the bar. It was a small problem, compared to the twins’ freedom, and she needed to solve the big problems first.

“Where do I sign?”

Minutes later, Stella groaned in disgust, bending forward to lean one arm against the interior wall of the processing booth. Her other arm clutched at the spooned stomach of the “bond”, gripping uselessly at its hard smooth surface.

“Aaaaugh! Kammit, plugs! Why the kamn plugs?!”

“You came into this office open-cunt with a cocktease flasher skirt on.” Chatta’s voice rang from some hidden speaker, “In addition, the system reports that your last orgasm was within the past hour. You’ll have the opportunity to contest it if you go to court, but I have to file you as a level two slut. The bail belt simply configured itself to the appropriate settings for your recent behavior.”

Stella punched the wall, clawing at the metallic corset and chastity belt combination that now squeezed her breathless and impaled her twice. It was her fulfillment of the terms of her contract with Gird that had made this bail belt so severe. She’d always known at an intellectual level how twisted the Torean justice system could be, but now it was literally fucking her in the ass.

“If you like,” Chatta continued smugly, “I can cancel the application. The bond would unlock, and you’d head home and deal with the contract as you see fit.”

Stella pried at the edges of the metal swimsuit, trying to slip fingers underneath the seams at her hips, crotch, and the diagonal neckline that squashed her modest breasts up into a distinct cleavage. The inability to feel her own body beneath it gave her a bit of a panic, but it was the mark on her record that filled her with dread. If the court review came down against her, the punishments available for a level two slut were far more distasteful than a chastity suit with a couple of orifice-holders.

Of course all this was nothing compared to the utter lack of status that Cali and Dimi were faced with. Stella closed her eyes, bit her lip, and exhaled.

“I’ll need new clothes.” Stella’s voice was soft and forceless, as though she had not breathed enough to actually speak the words. “This thing is cinched so tight I’ll need to use a wardrobe.”

Chatta led her back through the lobby full of whooping and cheering truant officers with their terrified catches.

“That’s a lot more metal than a little collar, isn’t it!”

“Hey there clit, if you’re at a party remember that we have keys for that thing!”

“Still room for you in my catch!”

Stella’s face burned from the humiliation of being marched past these pigs with nothing but a steel swimsuit on, but as ever she focused on the job she had to do. She’d walk in freedom with Dimi and Cali, and that would be the best defeat for all of the disgusting little men that thought themselves above her.

She stepped out of the staff wardrobe booth with an acceptable compromise. She wore a black leather business suit with matching pencil skirt and bolero jacket. She couldn’t get the neckline of the satiny white blouse to cover her over-presented cleavage, but she’d managed to convince the machine to give her a brooch that pinned the collar together adequately.

The seamed silk stockings were a bit more pleasure than business, but the tops were covered by the skirt so long as she didn’t bend too much. It was the patent platforms with the towering fuck-me heels that she’d spent the most time trying to reconfigure without success. Even the makeup had eventually gone successfully down from “expensive whore” to merely “dramatic doll-up”.

“Your wardrobe needs a technician.” Stella grumbled to Chatta as she returned to the desk, tenderly feeling the set of the tight bun her hair now formed. “It wouldn’t give me what I asked for.”

Chatta’s confused look melted into a smirk, and her words threatened to burst into giggles as they left her mouth.

“You’re a second-level slut on bail.” she laughed, “It doesn’t have to.”

Stella squirmed on the hard stool, staring at her reflection in the mirror for lack of anything better to pass the time. She’d used the toilet quickly before heading to this appointment, and the experience had left her on edge. She’d always been a little curious about the bidet attachment that Sophie’s maid always used to clean out her belt, but only as a grotesque curiosity. Now she had no choice.

She’d emptied her bladder, and was relieved when it all drained without discomfort, but the washing cycle included an enema and douche that left her with a distracting tingling feeling all over between her legs. Stella crossed her knees, watching the image in the mirror do the same, and tried to think about something else.

It didn’t work: a quick peek of garter beneath the tight silken pencil-skirt had her humming a little louder inside. If she’d seen a girl looking like this down the bar, she’d have taken her home and squeezed her dry like a sponge. Level two slut, eh? They made for a fun night out, once in a while.

When the visiting booth’s mirror switched transparent, and Stella saw the twins on the other side, it was as if half of the evening’s fear and tension just sighed itself right out of her mouth. The girls were still in their catsuits and fiddles, but the hoods were off.

They had clearly been crying, and the sight of Stella made them press against the glass in a way that was painfully familiar. Stella had met with women hauled in on truancy charges before, and almost without exception they were panicked and desperate to get out. They’d scrabble for any opportunity to fix their circumstances, which was often how the ministry trapped them forever.

“Dimi, Cali, listen. I know this is horrible, but I absolutely need to know something before we can talk. Can you pay attention and answer me truthfully?” Stella paused, ensuring that they were listening. “Have you agreed to anything or promised anything to anyone since you got here?”

“How could we?” Cali said, swallowing hard, “We were blind and gagged until just a minute ago. Stel, please, what the cock is going on? Why are we in here?”

Stella took a deep breath, and held her hands with the palms down in a gesture of sincerity.

“All right, that’s some relief, at least. The reason you’re here is that Amalthea just lost membership in the last treaty that ensured the freedom of its citizens on Torei. Soph suspected it was pre-arranged as a political takeover, and the readiness of the truant officers kind of supports that. So for now, any Amalthean woman over the age of independence who doesn’t already have a collar or a contract is suddenly considered illegally at large.”

“But you’re Amalthean. Why aren’t you in here?”

“Half Amalthean, remember?” Stella looked at Dimi directly, “My father was Hotchee, and I still go back to tidy his grave every year. I’m well protected by the confederation, right now.”

“That’s great for you,” Cali snapped, “but what do we do?”

“Right, that’s where Sophie’s plan comes in.” Stella moved some documents to the glass window between them, so that the twins could read them. “She’s currently negotiating a new treaty of some sort with Relitania. It’s all behind closed doors, but all we need to do is stall your processing until it is signed. Once that’s done, it’ll be trivial to file an application for re-emancipation and you’ll be on the streets again.”

The girls looked at the forms on the window, and did their best to sign them with their hands cuffed to the fiddles around their throats. It was just in time, too, as the 30 second timer began to flash on the window between them.

“Just remember: whatever happens in there, you’re two free women who are unjustly imprisoned. You’ll be released as soon as the paperwork is cleared up. Do not promise anything to anyone, and you’re best off not speaking at all. I’ll see you in a couple of days to get you out!”

Stella saw two men grab the twins and drag hoods back over their heads, and then suddenly she was looking at the slutty office girl in the mirror again. It didn’t pay to despair at times like this, in her business. You had to trust that you had cracked the code, and that the pieces would play as you predicted.

But the other side always had a few surprises of their own.

Stella felt exhausted as she waited on the platform for the train. She had won some, lost some, and just needed to take a good long heat soak and try to get some sleep before the courts opened. As she stood, flexed her feet in the ridiculous heels the wardrobe had given her. She kept trying to stretch her heels out of them a bit, but the ridiculous ankle straps kept her suffering feet clamped inside the things. The best she could do was rock back on the stiletto point to work her ankles some for relief.

When the train arrived, she stepped forward eagerly, spotting a free seat on the relatively empty after-hours service. Her feeling of success was short-lived, however, as the moment she reached the door she received a sudden crack against her backside. It felt for all the world like someone had slapped her with a crop or snapped a rubber band at her bottom.

Stella whirled around, glaring daggers at the man she expected to see behind her. But she was now alone on the platform, everyone having already boarded the train. Confused, she turned back to the train and tried to step on, only to feel what she now realized was a stronger shock coming from the plug in her anus.

Screaming in disbelief and frustration, she watched the doors close and the train pull out of the station. Once it had gone, she turned and quietly walked out of the station, confused. It was only when she saw the truant officer waiting for her at the exit gate that she understood what had just happened.

“I’m led to understand that there was an attempted bail violation, just now? Were you trying to leave Alem while bound to its jurisdiction?”

“Oh kamn! Er, no officer, sorry, it was absent-mindedness on my part. I guess I forgot about the borders and just started going home on auto-pilot. It was a mistake, sir, and I’ve learned my lesson.”

“Going home? Then you do not domicile in Alem?” The officer perked up suddenly and grabbed her wrist, but Stella was too exhausted to realize what he was after, at first.

“Hey! What? No, I live in Mokta.”

“Clit if you do not have a place of residence you can reach before curfew, then I will have to collar you on a charge of vagrancy right now.”

Stella’s drowsy head jolted into action. A vag rap wasn’t as dangerous as curfew violation, but in her current situation it could start the kind of downward spiral that she needed to avoid.

“Ah, no officer. There’s an apartment here in Alem I can stay at. Here, look, I have the key.”

The man insisted on escorting her to the front door, and watching her try the key. He even barged into the place to give it a cursory once over, which was something Stella had never seen before. Of course, Stella had never had her status sink so low before.

Once the man had faced his disappointment and left, Stella tore off her clothes and collapsed on Sophie’s bed. She felt no time pass before she awoke suddenly to the sensation of a presence in the room. She bent to sit upright, only to tense against the unyielding metal of the chastity corset and fall off the bed.

Crawling back up, she saw the maid sitting primly on the corner of the mattress, her legs crossed. Above her glossy scold’s mask, her eyes glittered with a knowing smile. The look on her face made Stella’s face burn.

“Don’t you dare even think it, slave.” Stella mumbled, rising to her feet. “I’m a free wo—”

The time display on the wall rolled over to a new early-morning hour, and Stella was suddenly startled by the sensations of warmth and vibration between her legs. It caught her completely by surprise, and she sat back down suddenly on the bed. Her nipples felt like soft brushes were tracing lazy circles around them, and she felt the plug in her vagina squirming slowly like an exploring tongue.

When she caught her breath, she realized that the maid was squirming as well, rubbing her thighs together with rubbery squeaks as she shifted her knees around. Soon the girl rolled to a crawl behind Stella and began rubbing her shoulders.

Stella was so in need of the massage that she allowed herself to be lowered back down on the bed while the maid crawled on top of her. The two women moaned, one into her gag, as each relished the teasing stimulation from her chastity belt. Stella scissored her legs with the maid’s and they ground their buzzing crotches together while Stella licked and nibbled the slavegirl’s ears and cheeks.

Stella felt a wave approaching, the kind that usually let her begin to build up for a grand orgasm. She gasped at the thought of the sensations to come, and as if summoned by her need the stimulations faded away to silence.

“What? Graaagh! Kammit, no!” She threw the maid from her and clawed at the seams of her bail belt. She hammered on the crotch with her fist, trying desperately to make it shake within her, but it was well built for its purpose.

The maid, flushed, had regained her composure and resumed the condescending leer that had woken Stella up in the first place. When Stel glared at her, the maid did an enthusiastic pantomime: she pointed at Stella, then at herself. She pretended to rub her crotch vigorously, and then brought her fists together behind her back and shook her head in mock distress. Finally she clapped her hands like an excited little girl and bounced on the bed.

“God, how do you stand this?” Stella had given up trying to assert her status over the girl. For her part, the maid simply pointed out the door at the closet where the old hypersonic washer still sat. Stella rolled her eyes. Sophie’s old-fashioned insistence on keeping clothes around must have been one reason the maid was nearly impossible to discipline.

“It doesn’t matter.” Stella barked as she tried to ignore the frustration of denial. “I’ve got work to do today. The twins were taken in last night.”

The maid made another expression of surprise and joy, pointing at Sophie’s photos of Dimi and Cali when they were younger, and then at her own collar. She made a clearly inquisitive facial expression, and then lifted one knee and pantomimed the crack of a whip before clapping with little-girl joy again.

“Yeah I know they aren’t your favorite mistresses, but don’t get any ideas. I’ve got to get down to the bailey to represent them in court today. When they come home, maybe I’ll tell them how interested you were in playing cowgirl with them.”

The maid draped her hands loosely over her crossed knees and tilted her head down, fluttering her thick black eyelashes at Stella. Stel rolled her eyes, but stopped short when the maid jumped suddenly to her feet, petticoats bouncing. Stella followed her gaze out the bedroom door, finding herself just as startled.

“Soph!”

“Good morning Stel. I see you’ve…had some difficulties.” Stella stood at the doorway, a vision in glossy white and gleaming chrome. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Stella felt at the smooth metal shell of her corset’s spooned stomach, stammering for words. Sophie continued on without waiting for a reply.

“I don’t know how it got authorized, but a large number of the recent Amalthean truants have been fast-tracked to the Ministry of Improvements. The twins were relocated to a treatment facility there just a couple hours ago. The work order is sealed, so we don’t know yet what modifications are planned for them, but we need to work fast if we’re to get them back intact.”

“Oh kammit no!” Stella wailed, banging her fist against her metal chest, “But then, you… I mean, why are you…?”

“Why am I wearing a collar?” Sophie’s gaze fell downward. “Because…according to our nation’s agreement with Relitania, I am now a slave.”