Flawless Crystal Chapter 8

	Crystal continued doing this awful labor for quite some time. And while the memory of that tremendous orgasm drifted further and further away, she was continually confronted with the nasty footwear that had once excited her.
	There was no respite between pairs of shoes. As soon as she finished licking Chelsea's shiny black flip flops clean, the blue hands presented her with her sparkling ballet flats – every pair bearing a carbon-copy of Chelsea's soles smushed into the insoles that Crystal had to vigorously assault with her tongue if she wanted to 'clean' them properly. Chelsea, Sasha, and Tatiana squatted down observing her progress. The trio were leering at her, smiling and giggling every time Crystal had to swallow more of the dirt, sweat and filth that she collected from their footwear.
	"Come on, Chels. She's already done like three pairs of your shoes. I want a turn, too!" Sasha whined.
	"Fine, you can have a turn," the prima ballerina acquiesced, "but only so we can see whose feet she likes more. That's fair, right?"
	"She will like mine, obviously," Tatiana bragged, "I moisturize my feet every day with this mango coconut butter. It's gonna be like a pina colada!"
	The girls all laughed, but Crystal groaned – now they were going to ruin pina coladas for her?
	"Maybe she doesn't like clean feet," Chelsea suggested, "Maybe she likes them dirty."
	"Eeew! Hahaha!"
	They debated among themselves like this for a while, and the next pair of shoes that Crystal had to lick came from Sasha's wardrobe. For all the hype, she could taste almost no difference between Sasha's dance shoes and Chelsea's. But the fact that she was even comparing how two girls' footwear tasted made her angry beyond words.
	"Well? Whose do you like more?" Sasha asked.
	"I can't really tell the difference," Crystal answered.
	"Oh, don't worry. I can help with that!" Nina jumped in.
	"Let's enhance your sense of taste and smell. Oh, and we need to be more scientific about this! So now, between every pair of shoes, we will wash your mouth out with soap and water so you can cleanse your pallet. Starting~ now!"
	One of the blue hands opened Crystal's mouth, and the other stuffed a bar of white ivory soap in there. Its bitter, alkaline taste was magnified to an unbearable level – she tried to spit the thing out but there was an imaginary wall of force keeping the soap in her mouth. It lathered itself, filling her mouth with foul bubbles as the hand forcefully moved it along her cheeks and across her tongue. Since she was unable to spit the soap scum out, she needed to swallow it which was a truly horrendous addition to the punishment.
	But the finishing touch was that this soap had successfully cleansed her pallet – when she leaned down to work on Sasha's white platform sandals, she noticed an unfamiliar depth to the experience. Now, thanks to Nina's interference, Crystal's mouth was constantly picking up on new, stomach-churning complexities in the acrid flavor that she couldn't have noticed before. She thought it had been overwhelming before, but now it was like the volume had been turned up to some deafening level.
	At least they didn't seem interested in finding out which pair she liked most -- that could have been a dangerous game.
	"She's slowing down!"
	This was true. Crystal could hardly force herself to continue – her sense of smell had increased too, and she knew that Sasha had slightly worse hygiene than Chelsea. With her enhanced perception, she just couldn't white-knuckle her way through this.
	"Is that true, Crystal?" Nina said, "Are you slowing down? If so, I can give you some... motivation. How about a little more of that special dust? Another strong dose of that, and you'll wish you had all three of those buckets in the cage with you!"
	Crystal knew the danger of this 'dust' – it was just an attempt to strengthen her nascent sexual association with footwear. She knew how the mind worked: the more she indulged in that sort of thing, the more ingrained it would become in her thinking.
	"No," Crystal murmured, and lowered hers face down, to lick Sasha's white sandals.
	"Well, you have slowed down twenty two percent," Nina replied, "and we DO have a schedule to maintain. So, if you won't allow us to give you a positive motivation, you obviously need a negative one!"
	Crystal exhaled through her nose. How did they turn literally every decision into something that screwed her over?!
	"So now your friends are going to use that energy whip on you whenever you slow down. And I'll just leave some of the dust here, in case you change your mind."
	Within Crystal's cage, a little snuff box appeared. It was brimming with the sparkly white powder that Nina had thrown on her earlier. The drug caught the light and gave off a rainbow hue, promising unearthly delights if Crystal would just give in and take a little..
	"Hurry up!" Chelsea barked.
	Then with her lithe, athletic body she reared back and delivered quite a ferocious whip onto Crystal's unguarded backside.
	"OW!" Crystal shrieked, stunned by the torture implement that brought pain like she had never experienced before – had they enhanced her pain receptors as well, or simply turned the weapon up to a higher setting?
	It turned out to be a strong enough motivator. Although the shoe still tasted far worse than it before, Crystal poured her heart into the work for fear of another strike from that terrible energy whip. Her butt stung for quite a while afterwards – an unnecessary but potent reminder of what was at stake here.
	"Great! You are back on pace," Nina said in a chipper tone, although she did give Crystal another 'Flaw' for hesitating.
	It continued this way for some time, with Crystal forcing herself to tongue-bathe the dance team's dirty footwear with mock enthusiasm. Between shoes, they would wash her mouth out with soap, and if she slowed down too much then Chelsea or her friends would argue about who got to 'correct' her this time. They had truly perfected the art of causing her discomfort, and at every part of this ordeal they denied her her any opportunity to get used to it. Sometimes, they wanted her use a rapid and thorough pace so she could hurry on to the next pair. Other times, it pleased them to watch Crystal worship their footwear in a slow, dramatic, whorish fashion.
	Having to alter her behavior this often made it so that Crystal couldn't go on 'auto-pilot' – she was always having to look up at these cruel dancers, hoping that she satisfied them with her obsequious acts. She was particularly grossed out by Tatiana's shoes: notably a cork-bottom pair of platform sandals with black leather straps that kept them on the girl's foot. The pina colada stuff was nowhere to be found – it was just parabens and perfumes, more nasty than the soap. She felt no sense of accomplishment when she had licked the last bit of grime from them. Instead, she felt a sense of foreboding as that white bar of soap appeared and she had to meekly open her mouth so they could 'clean' it.
	"That's not just any bar of soap, either," Nina said.
	A screen appeared, showing Bonnie and the rest of the cheerleading team taking a shower together. Although it showed their entire nude bodies (which must have been exaggerated, Crystal thought: their waists were too narrow and there was no way the team massaged shampoo into each other's hair like THAT), the camera seemed focused on their legs and feet. Then she understood why. These women were passing an ivory soap bar between themselves, using it exclusively to clean their calves and feet. It was the same bar of soap that Nina was using to clean out Crystal's mouth! Crystal was made to watch an extreme close-up of Bonnie's soles as the girl rubbed this bar of soap all over them; yet another thing to offend and disgust her.
	Through all of this, Crystal's attention kept getting drawn towards that faerie powder in her cage. It was the Medusa's eyes all over again: an extremely addictive thrill that would diminish her willpower and suck her deeper into the Rift. Maybe she would fall past the point of no return into this twisted place; she thought of Alice in Wonderland, and that bottle that read "Drink me" which allowed the girl to enter the Wonderland in the first place.
	"Snort me," the powder whispered to her.
	"Love me."
	'Am I even accomplishing anything, by not doing that drug?' Crystal wondered, 'Or is it just another way for them to toy with me?'
	 It spelled out her dilemma pretty plainly. The Rift could have 'forced' her to take the drug; they could have whipped her until she snorted some, or Nina could have simply thrown it on her like she did last time. But they wanted her to choose it of her own accord. The only 'freedom' they allowed her was the freedom to worsen her own torture by depriving herself of the ability to love and enjoy this. And what was she accomplishing with her show of defiance? Proving that she still had the freedom of choice? Preserving a shred of dignity, after losing so much of it already? Or was it to satisfy Zarie -- a mysterious voice that could easily be just another part of their plot against her? But somehow, Crystal doubted that Zarie was on their side.
	'I have to endure this, to save my mom. To save everyone,' Crystal reminded herself. As long as there was a purpose to this suffering, she could endure it.
	Or so she thought, starting out. But every pair of shoes was heavily worn, and as Crystal progressed she felt new reaches of her mind violated thanks to her enhanced perception. Meanwhile Tatiana, Sasha and Chelsea each had their own unique styles of disciplining her whenever she slowed down or scowled too much in the course of her duty.
	Chelsea would use the energy weapon as a simple bullwhip, using a single measured blow to adjust Crystal's behavior, generally targeting her butt. Each strike she would accompany with an insult, commanding Crystal to stop being, "a stupid lazy slut" or saying something like, "I know you love this sort of thing, you little pervert."
	Sasha, on the other hand, would turn the thing into a cat-o-nine tails and bring it down across Crystal's back with a level of ferocity that terrified her. It was as though the demonic dancer-girl was personally affronted by Crystal's failures, and deemed it appropriate to respond to them with a vicious assault against her unguarded body. Sasha wouldn't stop until Crystal begged her to, and sometimes even then not until she was satisfied with her emotive pleas.
	In contrast with both her friends, Tatiana enjoyed telling the blue hands to immobilize Crystal, then she would target the soles of her feet with the energy whip. The strawberry blonde girl also had this maddening habit of randomly alternating between its whip mode and its tickling mode – not knowing what to expect made each stroke all the more frustrating.
	But none of them compared to Lilian.
	When she walked into the room, even Nina was taken aback. Headmistress Lilian was dressed like a re-imagined, sultry Victorian Countess. She wore a crimson red corset with black spiderweb details that transitioned into a splendid regal gown. The elegant gown was black and red taffeta and it flared out into a beautiful crinoline bell shape, except an an entire front panel of the garment was totally absent! Crystal could see all of Lilian's legs, from her open-toed ankle booties to the incredibly suggestive wolf-fur panties that barely covered her intimate garden. Each of the woman's steps were measured, and the sound of her heels touching the floor was the only thing to be heard. She was preternaturally pale and self-confident, with her hair in a voluminous updo except for the tresses that hung down, framing her face.
	Crystal was shocked to see some of the women's wrestling team came crawling behind Lilian. Each of them had on a headband that gave them cute little wolf-ears, but Crystal was really floored when she saw that they all had butt plugs stuffed inside of them, attached to which were broad tails. The girls meekly knelt to Lilian's side and a few of them started gently nuzzling her thighs and her feet, which made her smile. None of them made eye contact with Crystal, or anyone else for that matter; they seemed to be lost in their own little world where Headmistress Lilian was all that mattered. What a difference this was, compared to them pursuing a bunny-costumed Lilian through the halls of the school, as Crystal had seen on her first day here!
	"You can stop what you are doing, Crystal," Lilian announced.
	In a testament to the fidelity of the Rift world, Crystal felt the blood rush to her head as she finally found her way to a standing position.
	"Lilian, is that you? Please--"
	The Headmistress held up one slender finger, motioning Crystal to shut up. She had medium-long fingernails adorned with a red-and-black ombre.
	"Sorry, this look isn't doing it for me. Let's have you exactly as you are in the real world, shall we?"
	With a snap, Crystal became tall and blonde again. It was surreal for her to be so unsettled by Lilian. Not only because they were supposed to be friends, but also because even in high heels, the Headmistress was shorter than her. Pale Lilian gave Crystal a predatory smile – her ruby red lips were fuller here than they were in real life. Her breasts were bigger, too, and she was remarkably more attractive.
	"How can you do this?" Crystal demanded of her friend, "I saw how they treated you during the beta testing! And now you're going to do that exact same thing to me?"
	"Oh Crystal.. You haven't seen anything yet. Yes, the Rift did some messed up things to me. But that's how they showed me who I really am! Now look all that I have."
	Lilian swept her hand down, showing off her fawning servants. One of them (Crystal thought her name was Renee) started kissing the crotch of Lilian's panties, looking up at her mistress with her best saucer eyes. In response, the Headmistress reached down and stroked her head in an affectionate, if demeaning way.
	"Do you know what it's like to have someone addicted to pleasing you? To have an entire team of fit, young women whose life purpose is to make you happy? And I don't just mean sexually... Here, let me show you. Renee?"
	Renee, who had short-cropped black hair and an olive complexion pulled away from Lilian's fur panties and knelt at attention, gazing with adulation up at her.
	"Yes, Headmistress?" she asked.
	"I want you to let Sasha, Tatiana, and Chelsea here use their whips on you. Show them how well I've trained you. If you can last two whole minutes, I'll let you lick me. Does that sound fair?"
	"Yes, Headmistress! Thank you soo much!"
	"Lovely! Oh here, let me gag you first. I don't want your cute little screams interrupting my conversation with Crystal... As much as I enjoy listening to them."
	Renee gladly opened her mouth and Lilian popped a ball-gag in here, which immediately grew to such a large size that the girl couldn't hope to spit it out. It grew past any reasonable proportion until it visibly strained her jaw, but the girl suffered it gladly. She was ecstatic as she crawled over to the three sadistic women who had just tortured Crystal for so long. The glimmer in the dancers' eyes made Crystal tremble – Renee looked like a lamb trotting her way into the wolf's den (which was ironic because she was dressed kind of like a wolf).
	"That gag literally silences her – she can scream and scream without bothering me. Isn't this place amazing?" Lilian marveled.
	One of the wrestlers had crawled behind her to act as a living chair, and the Headmistress sat down on her servant's back to watch the show.
	"Like I said, these girls will do anything for me. And I would have never known it about myself, that I wanted this. Not until the Rift showed me – which is what you call them abusing me."
	"What did you have to do, in order to get this sort of power?" Crystal asked.
	"I agreed to help Miss Cottrell make the Rift a worldwide phenomenon. She only needs a handful of us, what with the AI helping her and all. I make sure nobody does anything to stop it. Every person tries it, and every person loves it."
	Crystal couldn't believe that Renee was loving what was going on right now. The dancers had restrained her heavily, and were flagellating her without mercy. Even if the raven-haired athlete had wanted them to stop, how could she have said so? She was blindfolded, gagged, and denied any bit of mobility – only able to cringe at each of the innumerable blows she endured. Acting all together, the girls were far more cruel; it was like a choreographed frenzy where they all wanted to outdo one another with their attacks. Even through the blindfold, Crystal could perceive Renee's eyebrows knitted together, her face a portrait of misery. Some saliva was dripping through her gag, landing on the floor. She was biting down hard on the gag.
	"But like, you weren't always like this!" Crystal argued,
	"Can't you see that this is a sickness inside of you? You're hurting people! And the Rift is just encouraging your worst instincts, to get you into a shame spiral so you will be part of their plan to rule the world."
	At this, Lilian lost her temper.
	"That's your problem, Crystal, you're always acting so fucking smart!" she replied,
	"My whole life was a shame spiral. I was always in your shadow, and Bonnie's shadow, and I hated it. Beautiful, perfect Crystal with her gene mods, and her money, and her gracious attitude. You never noticed peoples' jealousy, and even if you did, what could you do? Stop being beautiful? But then the Rift comes along, and they give me everything I want... and you think you're the good one because you want me to give it up?"
	"No, you're nothing but a genie!" Lilian spat out, using an epithet that no one had ever called Crystal to her face.
	'Genie' was a mean way of referring to someone with genetic modifications – because they were like mythical creatures and not fully human. Lilian had hit on her Achilles' heel: that Crystal was objectively smarter and more beautiful than most people. And no matter how gracious she acted, people would find reason to be jealous and resentful of all her blessings. Crystal wanted to cry, hearing her friend speak to her like this. Was this how she really felt? Was this even the real Lilian, or just a novel way of the Rift using her social network to make her feel more isolated and ostracized? Paranoid suspicions clouded Crystal's thinking. She ruminated that her friends weren't real; nobody liked her, she was an impostor.
	It was difficult to keep her composure, and Crystal's voice wavered when she spoke:
	"They are using you, Lilian. I know we had our issues --"
	"Ugh, this is BORING!" Lilian cut her off,
	"I know they're using me! And I enjoy it. So what do you have to say now? Are you going to lecture me about how they'll throw me away once the Rift is set in motion?"
	"Set in motion?" Crystal asked.
	"Shit, I said too much. You're a tricky one! Whatever, let's go for a walk. If you promise to stop acting like the annoying angel on my shoulder, I won't make you crawl. Your choice."
	With no better option, Crystal nodded that she would keep quiet and went for a walk with Lilian. It hadn't been two minutes yet, so Chelsea and friends were still unleashing hell on Renee's body. Except now, Lilian wasn't even there to appreciate it! Crystal dared a glance backwards to see if Renee would mind having her mistress leave, on the logic that maybe the Rift would notify Renee of the Headmistress's departure in spite of the blindfold. But all she saw was flashing whips, taut muscles, and silent screams.
	"There are two ways to condition someone: pleasure and pain," Lilian explained as they were walking through the hallway together.
	The Victorian woman had adjusted the school to her liking. Now Crystal's bare feet scraped against rough-hewn stone floors, and medieval candle chandeliers hung overhead. There were still single-tier lockers on either side of the halls about as tall as a person, but their doors were made of granite now. Lilian drew Crystal's attention to one of them.
	"On the left side of the hallway, we have the Rooms of Pleasure."
	The locker's door became transparent, and Crystal gasped when she saw what was inside.
	Two girls stood facing one another, their hands lifted high above their heads and locked away in wrist stocks. The locker scarcely had enough room for them; their boobs were pressed together and their pretty faces weren't far from touching. Both of those faces bore looks of beautiful agony: their eyes were screwed shut and their eyebrows contorted prettily. When Crystal looked down, she understood why. Each of them had one of those ghostly blue hands tracing urgent circles around their clits, palms resting above their pubis. In addition to that, more hands were thoroughly fucking both of them with curved vibrators, perfectly shaped to hit their G-spot every time.
	"Are you jealous?" Lilian asked, as Crystal felt like a voyeur watching these women's squeals of delight.
	"Just watch what happens when they cum."
	One of the girls – the blonde one on the left, started trying to rock her hips to better fuck herself on the dildo only to be met with more hands that kept her firmly in place and prevented her from seeking out pleasure on her own terms. All she could do was cry out, arch her back, and give in to the sensation that Crystal was already familiar with. The skilled hands knew exactly how to touch her to make her cry out in delight, reading her mind to work in perfect tandem with the dildo for maximum effect.
	The girl was visibly exhausted after her orgasm, dangling from her wrists with an deeply satisfied smile on her face. But then a puzzling thing happened. The vibrator that had just brought her to the heights of ecstasy pulled out. It maneuvered itself up until it was slightly above the other girl's head, and pointed itself down at her face.
	The other girl looked pleadingly up at the dripping wet dildo, and opened her mouth for it so that her tongue was hanging out. She did this right on time, because the sex toy began spurting copious amounts of girlcum into her mouth, across  the bridge of her upturned nose, all the way down to her tits. When it finished (and it lasted for an impressive amount of time), a blue hand lowered the phallus down to her face so that she could lick it clean. The captive girl ran her tongue all over the device, showering it with affection and swallowing every bit of love nectar that she gathered from its smooth surface. When it finally withdrew from her loving ministrations, another feminine hand gathered some of the girl's jet-black hair and used it to dry the dildo. Then it dragged its way down along the length of their bodies, towards its home to repeat the process yet again.
	 Crystal only realized the depth of her fascination when the locker door went opaque again. Her enhanced perception was very much still active; she could smell their desire and it stirred something inside of her the way a good beat makes someone want to dance. She found herself flustered, at a loss for words, and Lilian just gave her a knowing smile.
	"And on the right side of the room, we have the Chambers of Pain."
	This time, there was only a single woman in the locker. She stood perched on the ball of one foot atop a tiny pedestal that was so small it couldn't fit anything more. Her other leg was bent at the knee, restrained in such a way that her sole was held behind her left buttock, facing upwards. She appeared to be mortally afraid of falling from that pedestal into the brackish water that surrounded it – this was made more difficult by the fact that her hands were bound behind her back in a white leather armbinder. A collar around her neck offered her some stability, but the rope tied to it was held permanently taut so that it increased her discomfort.
	Little faeries abounded in the locker room with her. They were small, winged women with pointy hair and mean smiles that would do things like hold burning candles above her so that the wax fell onto her pierced nipples. Others would jab the exposed sole of her standing foot with little pitchforks, trying to cause her to jerk and fall. Some had the leaf of an itching plant – poison ivy from the look of it – and they would brush it against different parts of her body to tremendous effect.
	"What happens if she falls?" Crystal asked.
	"Then she has to stay in there for two more hours! Oh, and the Thing from Below gets to have its way with her for a little while," Lilian answered.
	"I think you should choose this one," Nina chimed in, notifying Crystal that one of these would, indeed, be her next challenge.
	"I'd really love to have free reign over you in the Chamber of Pain. I promise that if you beg for it, I won't put the nipple piercings on you that shock you whenever you laugh."
	Crystal balked. There was absolutely no reason to pick the Chamber of Pain – this woman was clearly miserable. That's what Crystal told herself. But for an unbeknownst reason, Crystal's heart sped up when she saw the faeries touch a just-extinguished match to the girl's exposed neck. A part of her wanted to see what that was like. A part of her thought she deserved it – no!
	"So, which do you want to experience?" Lilian asked.
	"Oh, and just so you know,' she continued, "Your experience won't necessarily be the same as the ones you've seen. These are just two examples, but we could have opened any other locker and seen something completely different. Pleasure and pain might have different manifestations in your Rift instance. Maybe you'd choose pleasure, and end up in that room with the faeries dripping hot wax on you!"
	Crystal just shot Lilian a dirty look.
	"What? There's nothing wrong with it!" Lilian gloated, "Come on, Crys. I saw how happy you were licking those shoes. Maybe you should just... drop to your knees right here, and let me decide for you? I'd love to make Crystal Maira my personal pain slut."
	"I don't think so," Crystal said flatly.
	"Well, hurry up and choose."
	Suddenly, she realized that Nina was holding up a timer. So every second she spent thinking about this would count against her.
	Why was it so difficult for her to decide? Why did it titillate her to think about what it would mean to surrender to Lilian, and let her do all the thinking instead? It particularly bothered Crystal to think about how much she had changed already, and she wondered how long she could withstand this nonstop assault on her identity. She quickly glanced left then right, and pondered which would be worse.
	'Better! Not worse!' she chided herself – why would she want the worse option??