Six Uniform Steals Before Breakfast
Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2024 11:30 am
Hello, everyone. Here's another short story set in the Spacesuit Saga universe. In addition to the prominent returning characters, readers with long memories may recognize a few characters from early "Spacesuit" stories, written several years back. But even if you don't, I hope you enjoy.
The airport was quieter than usual at this early hour of the morning.
There were no big holidays coming up, no special events that required great throngs of people to fly their way into and out of Miami. There were still plenty of flights scheduled for the day, but the terminal was less crowded than one would expect.
And that suited Claudia just fine.
“That way,” she pointed to a side road away from the main entrance.
Zephyr nodded, and steered the white van she was driving onto the quiet road, past as sign marked “Airport Personnel Only.”
Zephyr and Claudia sat up in the front of the van. Seated in the rear of the large, tinted-window vehicle were six other women – all of them tall and well-toned. These six women were all dressed identically, in white sweaters, black pants, and white sneakers.
Claudia glanced in the rearview. “We’ve gone over the plan, girls… You all know what to do?”
One of the women, a Latina with tanned skin and short, bowl-cut black hair, nodded. “I still think this plan is too complicated…”
“Calm down, Rosie,” said the woman sitting across from her, a light-skinned blonde with her long hair tied back in a low ponytail. “You always overthink things.”
The Latina glared at her. “Stop calling me ‘Rosie,’ Amber… You know my name is Rosa.”
“Please, girls… no bickering,” Claudia interrupted. “We’re all up very early… haven’t even had breakfast yet. Let’s keep things civil and professional.”
“We’re here,” Zephyr announced.
She parked the van outside the rear entrance of the terminal.
“Okay, let’s make this fast,” Claudia said, unbuckling her seat belt and stepping out of the van. “Everyone, follow me.”
She punched in a code at the side entrance and slipped in. Zuhal and the six other women followed her.
They walked down a long but quiet hallway, far away from the crowds milling about in the main terminal. At last, they reached a door marked “Airport Employee Lounge.”
Claudia knocked twice, then three times, then one time – the prearranged signal.
The door to the lounge was opened. A young flight attendant stood there.
A light-skinned woman with short copper-red hair, she wore a standard uniform of blue jacket over white shirt, blue pencil skirt, red scarf, and blue pillbox hat, along with shiny black high heels. The lapel pinned to her jacket read “Becky.”
Becky glanced around, then motioned for the women to enter. “Come in, quickly.”
The eight women entered the lounge. There were five other flight attendants there, three sitting on the two couches and two standing by a counter with a coffee maker. All were dressed identically to Becky. They all stopped talking and looked up as the newcomers entered, while Becky closed the door behind them.
Claudia smiled politely at them. “Good morning, ladies. I trust Becky filled you in?”
The flight attendants nodded, and all stood up. Claudia surveyed their appearances and nametags to ensure they matched the descriptions she’d been given.
A tan-skinned girl with curly brown hair named Gerta; a fair-skinned girl with a bun of blonde hair named Audrey; a black woman with frizzy dark hair named Peggy; a porcelain-skinned woman with a ponytail of raven-black hair named Rhonda; and a fair-skinned Asian girl with dark brown hair named Jaclyn.
“All right, then,” Claudia nodded. “Let’s not waste any time.”
The flight attendants nodded. Without another word, they began stripping off their uniforms.
For the next few minutes, all was silent in the room, save for the sounds of jackets and shirts being unbuttoned, skirts being shimmied down slender thighs, high heels being unclasped, and the general rustle of clothing being removed to reveal six shapely bodies in standard professional-issue white cotton T-shirt bras and matching bikini panties.
“Stop drooling, Zeph,” Claudia whispered to her friend.
Zephyr blushed and quickly looked away.
Before long, the six flight attendants had folded their uniforms into six neat little piles, which they placed on the coffee table.
“Thank you,” Claudia nodded. Then she turned to the six women accompanying her and Zephyr. “All right, ladies… Strip out of your clothes and find a uniform that fits you.”
Immediately, their six associates began methodically changing out of their own clothes.
Zephyr resisted licking her lips, surrounded though she was now by twelve handsome women in their underclothes.
“Now, before we move on,” Claudia turned back to the flight attendants. “I trust none of you are claustrophobic?”
Jaclyn looked momentarily uneasy. “I… don’t like tight spaces,” she admitted. “But… I think I’ll be fine,” she added, catching the eye of her coworkers, who looked at her disapprovingly.
Claudia smiled. “Well, we’re going to try and make you all as comfortable as possible,” she said. “You’ll all be bound with flexible cables and gagged with clean washcloths – fairly unencumbering bondage material. And you’ll be seated in a closet, but with elbow room to maneuver, should you be so inclined.”
Claudia turned to Zephyr. “Come on, let’s take them to the closet and tie them up. Should only take a few minutes”
Zephyr nodded, though she tried to avoid looking at any of the flight attendants for a prolonged period.
The six flight attendants led the two mayor’s aides into the closet and obligingly sat on the floor. Claudia and Zephyr took two coils of flex and a half-dozen washcloths and got to work. They tied the wrists and ankles of each flight attendant, and wrapped cloths over their mouths.
“Everyone okay?” Claudia asked.
The flight attendants all nodded and “mmmppphhh”ed in response.
“Good,” Claudia smiled. “I know this sounds counterintuitive, but by allowing us to ‘steal’ your uniforms today, you are helping us prevent future uniform steals in the future.”
She checked her watch. “We’re perfectly on schedule,” she said. “You’ll probably be found in about five or six hours… And remember, when all this is over, you will all get quite a lot of financial compensation, courtesy of the mayor’s office.”
She and Zephyr exited the closet. Zephyr took one last glance at the bound-and-gagged beauties before shutting the door.
By this point, their six associates had nearly finished donning their new flight attendant uniforms.
“This feels weird, doesn’t it?” Amaya remarked. “In the past, we’ve had to mug women for their uniforms… This time, the women whose clothes we need just… hand them to us.”
“It feels wrong, somehow,” her twin sister Anika added, trying to squeeze into one of the uniform skirts. “And not just because this skirt is too tight,” she muttered.
Alice rolled her eyes. “As long as we get paid for this assignment, I don’t see how it makes a difference.”
“But they have a point,” Lauren countered. “Remember when we mugged that team of handball girls and stole their uniforms? That was fun. This feels anticlimactic, somehow.”
“Regardless,” Claudia interrupted the debate, “it’s the way it is. Mayor Hargrove has strict rules when carrying out these assignments – no uniform stealing allowed. It’s true that sometimes, disguises will be a necessity – as they are today. But whenever that’s the case, there is no reason to resort to mugging. The mayor’s office has a lot of money – we can bribe women to hand over their uniforms whenever we need them.”
She glanced back towards the closet. “Those six flight attendants were easy to bribe,” she added. “They had already all been mugged for their uniforms a few years ago. They were used to the prospect of spending a few hours tied up in the closet, so when I contacted one of them and explained our plan – and threw in several thousands of dollars – the pieces fell into place pretty easily.”
“I’m still not sure why we had to tie them up,” Zephyr said. “Couldn’t we just have them take the day off or something?”
Claudia shook her head. “It’s an added bonus,” she explained. “We get to assume and control their roles for the day, and also help raise awareness about uniform stealing. When the real flight attendants are found, tied up and gagged in their underwear, they will lie and claim that they were mugged by criminals – the USBs, presumably. Airports will respond by increasing security… And it will lessen the risk of flight attendant muggings in the future.”
She turned back to her six other associates. “But now, back to the plan… You all know what to do?”
Rosa nodded. “There are six flights scheduled out of the airport this morning… Our intel indicates that Cheryl Cambron will be on one of them. We will each infiltrate one of the flights and monitor them. The one who finds Cambron will track her to her destination and report back.”
Claudia nodded. “Good work. Glad to have you all aboard the team.”
She checked her watch again.
“Be sure to keep in touch over our communications link, ladies,” Claudia finished. “Now get to work.”
*********************
Ever since she had taken power a few weeks ago, Mayor Hargrove had separated her priorities into public and private ones.
Her public priorities were policy-oriented – chief among them, to fight back against crime and promote the strength of women in the workplace. These goals intertwined, of course, with her fight against the ongoing problem of uniform stealing that had plagued her city for years now.
To fight back against gangs like the Uniform Swiping Babes – and the troubling rise of uniform thieves writ large – Hargrove had begun organizing. She had instructed her team to recruit a team of women who would fighting back against uniform thieves while also instilling public confidence in strong female leadership.
To this end, they had discovered the all-women security organization of Female-Exclusive Military Muscled Enforcement – more colloquially known as FEMME. In the past week, Claudia and Zephyr’s coworker Jenna had met with FEMME officers to put the team under contract with the mayor’s office. They had thus begun organizing patrols and monitoring the city for incidents of uniform theft.
Hargrove’s private goals were tangentially linked to her public ones – she needed to monitor the more corrupt elements of the city, knowing of the many dangerous women who had attempted to illegally twist the system for their own ends in recent years. Julia Chen, Valencia Steele, Cheryl Cambron, Melissa Marinos, Maxine Ventriss, Gina Caldwell, Lucille Weldon-Grant… the list of powerful women who had engaged in criminal behavior for money and power in recent years had grown quite alarming. And Hargrove knew the city would not be truly safe unless she acknowledged the problem – and ensured that women like that were kept under watch when necessary.
Rosa, Amber, Alice, Lauren, Amaya, and Anika were all former FBI agents, skilled in the art of infiltration and disguise. They had been fired from their jobs over a year ago, due to their failure to capture the wanted terrorist Karima al-Bariqi. In recent months, however, they had joined FEMME, intent on patrolling the streets and putting their athletic skills to good use. But when Hargrove became mayor and recruited FEMME into her administration, Claudia had reached out to the six agents – she had a special job for them.
Cheryl Cambron, the former head of Rucon Steel, had spent some time in police custody due to charges of fraud, but her lawyers had eventually succeeded in getting her free. Her impulse now was to catch a plane out of the city. And the impulse of Hargrove’s team was to follow her – after learning which plane she was on – and ensure she wasn’t planning any more subterfuge that could damage the city.
Hargrove had approved Claudia’s plan to recruit six of the FEMME agents and have them attempt to follow Cambron at the airport.
She just had one important rule for Claudia and her team to follow: No uniform stealing.
*********************
Claudia and Zephyr made their way back down the quiet employee hallway toward the airport exit.
“That was easy enough,” Claudia remarked. “Everything went without a hitch, and in record time. And we didn’t harm any innocent women.”
Zephyr nodded. “Yeah…” She glanced behind her. “You sure those six flight attendants are gonna be all right?”
“Rosa and her team? They’ll be fine, they’re professionals…”
“No, I mean the women they replaced… I hope they don’t get uncomfortable or scared in that closet…”
Claudia let out a small grin. “Oh yes… I noticed the way you were eyeing them while they stripped off their uniforms.”
Zephyr blushed again. “Hey, I’m only human… I might be against uniform stealing, but some of those girls were cute…”
Claudia chuckled and shook her head. “They’ll be fine, Zeph. And don’t get distracted by their looks. We’re doing a valuable public service by pretending to steal their uniforms, remember?”
Zephyr nodded. “I know…”
“The Hargrove administration is working toward a future to prevent the need for this kind of thing,” Claudia continued. “A future where women can wear all kinds of uniforms, safely and proudly. Today, we’re moving one step closer to that future…”
She rounded the corner and stopped short. Then she quickly stepped back, pushing Zephyr behind the corner as well.
“What…?” Zephyr started to protest.
Claudia raised a finger to her lips. She peeked back around the corner.
“There’s a guard,” she whispered.
Zephyr glanced around the corner as well. Sure enough, there was a security guard positioned by the exit.
The guard was a woman, tall and slender, with light skin and sandy-blonde hair tied back in a bun. She wore a light blue button-down uniform shirt, black pants, and polished black shoes, along with a blue baseball cap with the airport logo emblazoned on it. She was currently idling by the exit that Claudia, Zephyr, and their team had earlier snuck into.
Claudia bit her lip. “There wasn’t supposed to be a guard at this exit,” she whispered. “She wasn’t here before… Why is she here now?”
“Maybe it’s a late shift,” Zephyr replied. She glanced back around the corner. “What do we do?”
“Maybe we can find another exit,” Claudia wondered. “Somewhere that no one is…”
At that moment, her empty stomach growled, somewhat loudly.
“Hey!”
The guard had noticed them from across the hall.
Claudia shut her eyes angrily. Maybe she should have had a quick breakfast before the mission…
“What are you two doing here?” the guard asked. “This wing is for airport employees only.”
She stepped away from the exit and approached Claudia and Zephyr, a suspicious look on her face.
“We could try to overpower her,” Zephyr whispered. “Two against one, and she doesn’t look too tough.”
Claudia eyed the gun strapped to the guard’s belt. “Just play it cool, Zeph… We’ll get out of here, somehow.”
“What are you two whispering about?” the guard demanded. She now stood about ten feet from them. “Who are you? Let’s see some ID.”
Claudia bit her lip. She knew they didn’t dare risk telling the guard they worked for the mayor’s office. Considering what they had just done to the flight attendants – even considering the compliance of the six airport employees – connecting themselves to Hargrove now would be a PR nightmare.
“Are you two deaf?” the guard said. She clearly seemed uninterested in polite discussion this morning. “Who are you?”
Claudia was still trying to figure out what to say – to determine if there was a way to get out of this situation without harming the guard, a woman who was just doing her job – when Zephyr spoke first.
“We’re flight attendants.”
The guard raised an eyebrow. “Oh? I don’t recognize either of you.”
“We’re new here,” Zephyr added quickly, catching Claudia’s eye. “We were on our way to get some coffee before starting our shift, but we got lost… This airport is so big, y’know?”
The guard looked at them strangely for another moment.
Then she nodded. “Oh, yes… you’re Avery and Raquel, aren’t you?”
Zephyr nodded, before Claudia could say anything. “Yep, that’s us.”
“I was told we had hired two new attendants today,” the guard said. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Claudia said, sighing inwardly with relief.
“The coffee is that way… I’ll show you.”
“Oh, that’s…” Zephyr was about to say “not necessary,” but realized she and Claudia were already in a tough situation, and didn’t want to risk raising the guard’s suspicions any further.
“…very kind of you.”
The guard nodded, and gestured back down the hallway. “Right that way.”
Claudia and Zephyr set back the way they came, the guard following behind.
Claudia glanced briefly at Zephyr, who gave a brief shrug. Neither woman knew what to do next.
Minutes later, they reached the door marked “Airport Employee Lounge.” The room that Claudia and Zephyr had just exited some ten minutes ago.
“Here you are, girls.” The guard opened the door and motioned them inside. “Go have a drink, and then I’ll take you to get your uniforms.”
Claudia and Zephyr stepped cautiously into the room, the guard following behind them.
Claudia glanced toward the closet, in which the six bound-and-gagged flight attendants were still stashed. Hopefully, they would keep quiet. Rosa and her team had not yet taken flight from the airport, and if the real flight attendants were discovered so soon, all hell would break loose.
When the guard turned her back to close the lounge door, Zephyr caught Claudia’s eye and mimed pressing her fist into her opposite palm.
Claudia shook her head. She did not want to hurt this guard… and she decided to roll with it as long as they had to. She strode toward the coffee machine.
We can get out of this without mugging any innocent women.
The guard’s radio buzzed. “Ramona, why have you left your post?”
The blonde guard picked up her radio. “Hi, Mariah. Just found those two new flight attendants wandering the halls… Taking them to get changed into their uniforms.”
“New flight attendants?” the woman’s voice responded from the other end.
“Yes… Avery and Raquel. I just met them now.”
“That’s impossible… I just spoke to Avery and Raquel a minute ago… Gave them their ID badges at the desk. They’re already in uniform…”
Ramona stopped talking and looked up, glaring suspiciously at Claudia and Zephyr – both of whom froze in their tracks.
At that moment, a frightened “Mmmmppphhh!” came from the closet.
Claudia recognized the pitch of the voice – it was Jaclyn, the young flight attendant who had mentioned her claustrophobia earlier. It sounded like she was starting to panic.
The guard swiftly drew her gun and pointed it at Claudia and Zephyr. “Don’t you two move.”
The two mayoral aides quickly raised their hands.
“Please, this is all a big misunderstanding…” Claudia began.
“Shut up.” Ramona’s eyes and weapon remained fixed on the two women as she cautiously approached the closet door.
“Er, wait…” Claudia said.
“I said shut up.” Ramona gripped the knob and turned it.
Before she could open the door, however, a flying coffee mug hit her in the back of the head.
The guard groaned, and teetered on the spot. Claudia quickly raced forward as she fell, catching Ramona before she hit the ground.
Claudia then glanced back up at Zephyr, a look of shock on her face. “What the hell was that?”
Zephyr shrugged. “I… didn’t know what else to do.”
Claudia lowered the guard to the floor and checked her over. “She’s unconscious… Why were you so impulsive? We could have talked to her, explained things…”
“She was already suspicious of us,” Zephyr countered. “Didn’t seem like she was in the mood of talking. ‘I’m sorry, officer, put down the gun, let us explain why there are six bound-and-gagged women in their underwear in that closet.’ Somehow, I don’t think that would have worked…”
Claudia sighed. “Well, she’ll probably wake up in an hour or two.”
“We’ll be long gone by then,” Zephyr replied. “Come on, let’s move.”
Claudia glanced at Zephyr, then back at the unconscious Ramona. “Wait a minute… We can’t just leave her like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“We already laid a plan to make it look like the USBs have struck at this airport… That they tied up all those flight attendants and stole their uniforms,” Claudia explained. “The USBs wouldn’t just leave a female security guard unconscious, though… They would leave her in her underwear as well.”
She glanced back up at Zephyr. “We need to steal her uniform.”
Zephyr raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious?”
“We don’t have a choice,” Claudia explained. “If airport personnel finds this woman unconscious in the lounge without her uniform stolen, they’ll get suspicious. It won’t look like the USBs’ methods. We need to make it look like a true gang of uniform thieves left their mark here.”
So saying, she began unlacing the guard’s shoes and pulling them off her feet.
Zephyr watched in amusement. “I thought you said we weren’t allowed to steal clothes anymore.”
“We don’t have a choice!” Claudia replied as she began unbuttoning the guard’s shirt. “I’ll wear her uniform till we get out of the airport. Besides, it’s just this one time. After this, we never…”
Her thoughts were interrupted as the door to the lounge banged open again.
Another woman in security uniform raced in – she was dressed identically to Ramona, though she had dark skin and black hair in a frizzy ponytail.
“Ramona, why didn’t you answer your radio? I was trying to tell you that—”
She stopped short, staring at the unconscious, partly stripped guard lying on the floor, and the two women crouching over her. Claudia and Zephyr stared back.
******************
Fifteen minutes later, Claudia and Zephyr exited the airport lounge.
Both women were now dressed as airport security guards – uniforms, shoes, and caps. Zephyr was fiddling with the top button of her shirt.
“Well, we’re in trouble now,” she murmured.
“No, we’re not,” Claudia said. “We just need to get out of here in one piece, that’s all.”
She gave a last glance into the lounge. From the doorway, all looked clear and innocent. However, Claudia knew that stashed behind the couch were a pair of unconscious security guards, both bound with black cables and gagged with white cloths. Ramona was dressed in only a grey T-shirt bra and ocean-blue hipsters, while her friend Mariah lay beside her in a lime-green sports bra and mauve cotton panties.
Claudia shut the door to the lounge, then glanced around the corner. “Coast is clear. Come on!”
The two women strode back down the hall, the way they had come.
“We shouldn’t have any trouble now,” Claudia whispered. “And once we’re out of here, we won’t need to steal any more uniforms.”
“Ms. Hargrove won’t be happy that we mugged those guards,” Zephyr replied.
“We won’t tell her, of course. She doesn’t need to know everything…”
“Hey!”
Claudia and Zephyr froze in their tracks.
They slowly turned to see another woman, a tall stern-looking redhead dressed in another security uniform.
“Where do you two think you’re going?” the woman demanded.
Claudia tried to formulate an excuse. “Well, we just…”
“All female security personnel are supposed to report to Conference Room D. We have a meeting. Didn’t you get the memo?”
Claudia and Zephyr exchanged a glance.
“Come on,” the redhead beckoned them. “Hurry up, or I’ll have to report you.”
Claudia didn’t know what to say in response without arousing suspicion. Neither did Zephyr.
With no alternative, they turned began following the guard down another hall.
*********************
A few minutes later, the three women arrived at a wooden door at the end of a long hallway of offices.
With a sidelong glance at the two women following her, the redhead opened the door and beckoned them inside. “Come on, we’re already late.”
In trepidation, Claudia and Zephyr entered the conference room.
The room was large and oblong-shaped, with a large mahogany table in the center. Standing around the room were about twenty other women, all dressed in airport security uniforms.
Claudia prayed silently that none of these security guards would recognize that she and Zephyr were not actually among their ranks. Luck was with her, as most of the guards had their eyes trained on one woman at the head of the table.
The woman was slightly older than the others, with light skin and shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair. Her uniform was a deeper blue than the others, and the badge of her chest read “Jennings – Security Chief.” Behind her was a white canvas upon which a slide projector appeared to be trained.
“Good morning, ladies,” Jennings began. “I trust that most of you know why I called this meeting.”
Several women nodded. A few looked perplexed. Claudia didn’t know which expression would be less suspicious, so she decided to remain neutral.
“For those who didn’t get the email,” Jennings continued, “I called this meeting because we’re facing a crisis. As women in the security business, our jobs have never been tougher.”
A murmur of agreement went up from the crowd.
“Our job is to protect the public and keep the peace,” Jennings stated. “It’s a tough job, but we do it, because it’s the right thing to do. But now we face a threat to our jobs, the likes of which we’ve never faced before.”
“She must mean the uniform thieves,” Zephyr whispered to Claudia.
Claudia nodded. “Security guards are a popular target for uniform stealing.”
“The threat I’m referring to, of course,” Jennings continued, “is Mayor Delilah Hargrove.”
Claudia’s eyes widened. Zephyr’s jaw dropped.
Jennings pressed a button on her remote. A picture of Mayor Hargrove appeared onscreen, scowling.
Claudia and Zephyr exchanged a glance, and the former motioned for the latter to keep quiet. She trained her attention on Jennings’ words.
“Ever since Hargrove took office,” Jennings continued, “female security guards have been treated as helpless jokes. She speaks constantly – constantly! – about how we get mugged all the time, how we get our uniforms stolen.”
Several guards in the room booed and hissed.
“It’s all crap,” Jennings added. “Yes, a handful of female security guards have gotten their uniforms stolen over the years, but most of us – practically all of us! – are smarter than that.” She looked around the room. “Has anyone in this room ever been mugged for her uniform?”
No one made a motion. Then, slowly, one of the guards raised her hand.
Jennings smiled politely at her. “Yes, Andra? Would you mind telling us what happened?”
Andra was a tall woman with light skin and dark blonde hair. She spoke softly, hesitantly. “It was… several months ago. I was helping the airline transport some artifacts onto a small plane bound for the science museum. Then I got a phone call from Philip… my husband. He couldn’t find the eggs in the fridge…”
She laughed slightly. A few other guards chuckled, understandingly.
“Anyway, I was a bit tired… I stepped behind some crates to take the phone call… And as soon as I hung up, some woman jumped me… tackled me to the ground. I tried to fight back, but she knocked me unconscious. Then she stripped me of my uniform and tied me up.”
“And what happened next?” Jennings pressed.
“She… was caught,” Andra said. “She tried sneaking on the plane in my uniform, but was quickly recognized as an imposter. The other airport guards apprehended and arrested her… Then they freed me and gave me back my uniform.”
Jennings clapped her hands. “Excellent!” she exclaimed. “That’s the sort of inspiration I love. One of our own guards was attacked, so we sprang to the rescue and caught her assailant. That doesn’t sound like incompetence, now does it?”
Several guards cheered. Audra nodded, but still looked a bit downcast.
Jennings noticed. “And you, Audra… you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened. Blame your idiot husband for distracting you. If he was more of a man, he would never have put you in a position to be caught off-guard!”
Audra nodded again, and smiled. “Yes… good point.”
“But Mayor Hargrove,” Jennings continued, “thinks we female security guards are in need of saving and protection. She claims to be a supporter of independent women in the workplace, yet she doesn’t think we can get our jobs done without protection from others! Namely, from the group called FEMME.”
She pressed the button on her remote again, and a picture of the FEMME logo appeared onscreen.
“Female-Exclusive Military Muscled Enforcement,” Jennings articulated. “They profess to help women by combating threats of uniform stealing… but in reality, they just demoralize and infantilize women like us, who work hard to protect others!”
Several of the guards in the room nodded and voiced their agreement. Claudia looked uneasy.
“We need to step up our game, ladies,” Jennings declared. “Show the mayor and her team of pencil-pushers that we won’t sit back and let a group of musclewomen steal our thunder!”
The security guards cheered.
Zephyr looked as if she wanted to say something in protest. Claudia caught her eye and shook her head.
“Back to work now,” Jennings said. “Let’s prove to that mayor and her team of idiots that we don’t need their help.”
The guards nodded and filed out of the room, chatting excitedly with one another.
“Well, this was demoralizing,” Zephyr whispered to Claudia as they followed the other guards heading for the door.
“Ahem,” Jennings said from behind them. “Would you two ladies mind staying for a moment longer?”
Claudia gulped. She and Zephyr stopped walking.
Jennings closed the door, leaving her alone in the conference room with Claudia and Zephyr.
“You two seemed a little unenthusiastic about my speech,” Jennings observed. “Is something wrong?”
Claudia could see that Zephyr was annoyed, so she spoke first. “I just think… maybe what the mayor and FEMME want to accomplish isn’t so bad?”
Jennings raised an eyebrow.
“Mayor Hargrove wants to protect the city,” Claudia continued. “She wants to work with the women who take pride in their uniforms, not antagonize them.”
“But she’s sticking her nose where it’s not needed,” Jennings replied. “We can do perfectly well by ourselves, thank you. The fact that a few female guards have been mugged for their uniforms in the past few years doesn’t mean we’re all helpless.”
“It’s more than a few,” Zephyr murmured.
“What was that?” Jennings asked, raising an eyebrow.
Before Claudia could stop her, Zephyr continued. “Lots of security women get mugged these days – and not just at airports! Museums, banks, industrial plants, even Cape Canaveral – don’t you read social media?”
Jennings laughed. “I don’t buy into that crap that fearmongers spread on the Internet,” she said. “The mayor is an idiot and a fearmonger herself. How easy do you think it is to knock out a professional security guard?”
“This easy,” Zephyr replied. She immediately hit Jennings with a swift neck chop.
Jennings stiffened and froze on the spot, her eyes wide. Then, with a groan, she fell forward.
Claudia quickly caught the unconscious security chief before she hit the ground. Then she turned to Zephyr in shock.
“Why the hell did you do that??”
Zephyr shrugged. “She asked a question, and needed an answer.”
“Dammit, Zeph, we can’t going around knocking out security guards left and right. We’re supposed to be helping these women.”
“Well, she seemed overly confident. I helped her by giving a dose of reality… Besides, she insulted Ms. Hargrove.”
Claudia sighed.
“She’s wrong about security guards,” Zephyr continued. “She made it sound like security women getting knocked out for their clothes is really uncommon, but we know from our research that it’s happened really often in the past few years. Heck, we just knocked out two security guards and stole their uniforms, didn’t we?”
“Don’t remind me,” Claudia murmured. Then she glanced down at the unconscious security chief. “Dammit. Now we have to strip her, too.”
“We do? Why?”
“We need to keep up the pretense that the USBs were here. The only way to spin this to our advantage is to make the security personnel at this airport believe they truly were victims of a uniform stealing gang.”
“Won’t the flight attendants who loaned our friends their uniforms notice how many other women were actually robbed of their uniforms?” Zephyr inquired.
“We bribed them well… Hopefully they keep quiet,” Claudia said as she knelt down beside the unconscious security chief. “But this plan is turning out to be more trouble than it’s worth.”
She began unlacing the unconscious woman’s shoes and pulled them off, one after the other. Then she unbuttoned the woman’s shirt.
“Find something to tie her up with,” Claudia told Zephyr.
Zephyr nodded, and her eyes fell on the nearby table, where a roll of black tape lay idly. “That should do the trick.” She scooped it up.
As Claudia began unbuttoning the woman’s shirt, a sound alerted her – the turning of a doorknob.
Claudia and Zephyr glanced at each other in shock.
“Get down!” Claudia whispered.
Zephyr quickly jumped behind the large conference table, crouching down beside Claudia and the unconscious Jennings as the door opened.
From beneath the table, Claudia could see the boots of someone entering the room. Women’s boots, a faded dark green in color. As the woman turned to close the door behind her, Claudia peeked up and got a quick glimpse of the rest of her – a tan-skinned woman with brown hair tied in a hasty ponytail, with a forest-green jumpsuit and baseball cap. She carried a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other, and appeared to be listening to music on her headphones.
Claudia ducked back down and turned to Zephyr. “It’s the janitor,” she whispered. “She must be here to clean the room.”
“Janitress,” Zephyr replied.
“What?”
“The proper term for a female janitor is janitress,” Zephyr explained. “Mayor Hargrove wants us to promote women in the workplace, remember? That means using proper terminology.”
“We’ll discuss that later,” Claudia said in annoyance. She glanced beneath the table again. “Crap… She’s circling around the table… Coming this way. If she sees us with the half-stripped security chief, we’ll need to knock her out as well.”
Zephyr smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ve got an idea.”
Before Claudia could stop her, Zephyr stood up.
The janitress was moments away from turning to the side of the table where Jennings lay. But she stopped in her tracks when she saw the woman in security uniform before her. “Oh! I’m sorry, I thought this room was empty.”
Zephyr grinned at her. “No problem. I was just searching for my contact lens.”
“Do you need help?” the janitress asked. “I’m just here to clean the room, but…”
“Thanks, but I’m fine,” Zephyr told her. “But… would you mind postponing your cleaning for, say, half an hour? There’s a meeting coming up here in a few minutes.”
The janitress looked confused. “I didn’t see anything on the schedule for this time of day…”
“Well, it’s an ‘off the record’ meeting,” Zephyr explained. “You know these airport executives… always keeping things hush-hush! Anyway, that should be starting any minute now…”
The janitress nodded. “Okay… guess I’ll come back later.”
“Great! And thanks.” Zephyr beamed at her. “We really appreciate your work.”
“It’s my pleasure,” the brunette replied, a little flustered. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”
She turned and walked back the way she came, having not seen anything on the other side of the table.
As she approached the doorway, however, something on the floor caught her eye. “Oh! Is this your contact lens?”
Before Zephyr could say anything, the janitress knelt down on the floor and picked up the small object.
“Oh, never mind… I think it’s just a button.”
She was about to stand up, when her head turned and she glimpsed the floor on the other side of the conference table. She could see another woman staring back at her, lying behind a third woman who was unconscious and partially stripped.
A confused look crossed the janitress’ face. “What… what’s going on here?”
Zephyr quickly hurried over to her. “I can explain.”
She swiftly hit the brunette with a neck chop. The janitress groaned and slumped to the floor.
Then she glanced to the other side of the table, where Claudia was standing up, a displeased look on her face.
Zephyr shrugged. “Look, I’m sorry… I tried to get her out of the room, didn’t I?”
Claudia sighed. “Just shut up and strip her.”
*******************
In a matter of minutes, the janitress was reduced to a lavender triangle bra and light green boyshorts. She now sat in the conference room closet beside the equally unconscious Jennings, who wore only a vanilla cami top and black bikini shorts. Both women had been taped up and gagged with the roll of black tape.
Zephyr shut the door and turned to Claudia. “I hate to say it, but… we’re getting good at stealing uniforms.”
Claudia just glared at her. “Get dressed. Make it fast, I want us out of here as soon as possible.”
She was already changing into the uniform of the security chief. Zephyr said nothing else, but picked up the discarded janitress uniform and began to don it herself.
Once they had disguised themselves again, Claudia took a deep breath. “Okay, now we get out of here and back to the van. No more unnecessary stops, no detours, no more muggings. Got it?”
Zephyr frowned. “You know, this isn’t entirely my fault…”
Claudia groaned. “Let’s just go.”
She opened the door and made sure the coast was clear. Then she stepped out, motioning for Zephyr to follow.
Immediately, the two women began walking back down the hall, navigating the corridors to the exit.
“Do you think anyone will ask,” Zephyr whispered, “why the security chief is walking the halls with a janitress?”
“Hopefully not,” Claudia responded. “We should be outside in another minute… Then we can ditch these disguises and forget about—”
“Excuse me.”
Claudia shut her eyes in exasperation at the sound of the female voice. What now?
She and Zephyr turned to see a pair of young women walking their way from an adjoining corridor. Both were dressed in standard blue flight attendant uniforms.
“Pardon us,” the first woman said. She was tall and thin, with dark skin and dark brown hair tied back in a bun. “We seem to be a bit lost.”
“Our first day,” the second woman nodded. She was similarly tall and fit, with light skin and red hair cut in a chin-length bob.
Claudia eyed them oddly. “Er… who are you?”
“My name is Avery,” the black woman said. “This is my friend Raquel. We just started work as flight attendants – just received our ID badges an hour ago – and was wondering where the employee lounge was.”
Raquel nodded. “We’d like to meet some of our fellow flight attendants… Make friends as best we can.”
Claudia wanted to get out of there fast. “Well, I…”
“You’re a security guard, aren’t you?” Avery asked. “Thank goodness… We’ve heard rumors about how dangerous it can be at the airports these days… especially for women in uniform.”
“We don’t believe all the rumors, naturally,” Raquel added. “But it’s helpful to take precautions. And it’s good to have a strong woman like yourself around to protect us.”
At this, Claudia felt a sudden swell of pride.
She smiled at Avery and Raquel. “Certainly I can help you girls. I was just escorting this fine janitor…”
“Janitress,” Zephyr whispered.
“…janitress to that area myself. Follow us, girls, the employee lounge is just down this way.”
As the four women walked down the hall, Avery and Raquel chatted excitedly with one another.
Zephyr leaned over to Claudia and whispered, “What are we doing?”
“Just helping these women find the lounge and adapt on their first day,” Claudia quietly explained. “That’s our job, remember? To help women in uniform.”
“But the lounge is where we… you know,” Zephyr countered.
“We hid them well… Don’t worry. We’ll be out of there and long gone before they find anything.”
They reached the door to the lounge within a minute.
“There you are, ladies… Go right on in.” Claudia held the door open and gestured for the flight attendants to enter.
Avery nodded at her, glancing at her badge. “Thank you… Chief Jennings?”
She paused, looking up at Claudia. “That can’t be right… We met with Chief Jennings before getting jobs here… She interviewed us and gave us background checks… But… you’re not her.”
Claudia froze. She had not expected two airport newcomers to have already met with the real Jennings.
“What’s going on?” Raquel asked. “Who are you?”
Before Claudia could respond, Zephyr cleared her throat.
“Ladies,” she said, “I know this might seem strange… but we can offer you a lot of money if you keep quiet about this, and take off your clothes.”
Avery and Raquel gave her a strange look.
Zephyr sighed. “That probably didn’t come out right.”
With that, she quickly struck out and hit Avery with a neck chop. The woman groaned and pitched backward, slumping unconscious into Claudia’s arms.
“Good catch,” Zephyr nodded.
Raquel opened her mouth to scream. Zephyr quickly covered her mouth and placed her in a sleeper hold.
The young flight attendant groaned and gurgled for several long seconds. Her eyes stared at Claudia with a mix of confusion and fear on her face.
“Trust me,” Claudia told her. “We’re doing all this to stop the rise of uniform stealing.”
Whether Raquel trusted her or not was a moot point. Moments later, the redhead was just as unconscious as her friend.
“Into the lounge, quick!” Zephyr whispered, dragging the sleeping Raquel inside.
Then, seeing Claudia hesitating by the doorway: “Come on!”
Claudia sighed, but dragged the unconscious Avery into the lounge.
********************
Ten minutes later, Avery and Raquel lay unconscious behind the second couch in the lounge, relieved of their uniforms.
Avery wore a dark green bandeau bra and teal cheeky panties. Raquel sported an orange underwire bra and burgundy briefs. Both women were clearly new to the flight attendant service, as they had not yet been assigned the standard white underwear of their coworkers.
Both women were also now bound with some spare blue flex and gagged with black tape, lying near the still-slumbering figures of Ramona and Mariah.
“You’re getting pretty quick at stripping women and typing them up,” Zephyr remarked.
Claudia glared at her. “Cut the comments and finish getting dressed.”
They were both already dressed in the uniform shirts, jackets, and skirts that had adorned the two unconscious flight attendants just minutes before. Claudia was adjusting her pillbox hat and Zephyr was in the process of squeezing her feet into the company-issued high heels.
“Is this really necessary?” Zephyr asked, wincing as her toes tightened within the confining shoes. “For us to wear their clothes? Why don’t we just throw their uniforms in a closet or something?”
Claudia shook her head. “No room for error, Zeph. If we want people to believe this place was attacked by uniform thieves, we need to make sure it’s convincing, right down to wearing their uniforms as we walk out of here. That’s the only way we can raise awareness and stop the awful practice of uniform stealing.”
Zephyr bit her lip. “We’ve left twelve different women tied up in their underwear around this airport,” she observed. “Six voluntarily, six mugged unwillingly. Are you sure this is the best way to stop uniform stealing?”
Claudia picked up her bag. “We can discuss new methods later… back at the office.” She adjusted her collar. “Come on, we’re already running late. Let’s get out of the airport, fast… before anyone else sees us.”
Zephyr nodded. “Right… Otherwise, we’d have to knock them out and strip them as well.”
Claudia gave her an irritated look, then headed for the door.
Zephyr gave a last glance at Avery and Raquel, situated behind the couch, all bound and gagged in their underwear.
Despite her own reservations about uniform stealing, she couldn’t deny… in their current position, they made an attractive couple.
“Zeph.” Claudia stood in the doorway, tapping her watch. “Let’s go.”
Zephyr nodded and hurried to the door, ignoring the pain caused by each step in her stolen high-heeled shoes.
**********************
There were no further complications between the two women and the exit. They made it out of the terminal and located their van.
“You think Amber and her crew made it onto the flights okay?” Zephyr inquired as they got into the vehicle.
Claudia started the ignition. “If they hadn’t, we would have heard about it,” she replied. “Hopefully, one of them locates Cambron.”
She drove the vehicle towards the exit ramp.
“And hopefully,” she continued, “we’ve scrambled the resources of the airport security enough to make them wake up… and realize that they do need our help. That they need the support of Mayor Hargrove and the women of FEMME to help combat and defeat the threat of uniform stealing in the future.”
Zephyr nodded, and was silent for several long moments.
Then she spoke. “Do you think Jaclyn’s okay?”
“Who?”
“Jaclyn… that flight attendant who said she was claustrophobic. We heard her crying in the closet… Do you think she’ll be okay?”
Claudia was silent for about ten seconds before answering.
“We’re paying her a lot of money,” she said. “She’ll be fine.”
Then she nodded. “The uniformed women… they’ll all be fine.”
She pulled off her pillbox hat and shook her long black hair free. “Anyway, we have a busy day ahead… More uniform thieves to foil.”
Her stomach growled, louder than before.
“But first, let’s grab some breakfast…”
THE END
The airport was quieter than usual at this early hour of the morning.
There were no big holidays coming up, no special events that required great throngs of people to fly their way into and out of Miami. There were still plenty of flights scheduled for the day, but the terminal was less crowded than one would expect.
And that suited Claudia just fine.
“That way,” she pointed to a side road away from the main entrance.
Zephyr nodded, and steered the white van she was driving onto the quiet road, past as sign marked “Airport Personnel Only.”
Zephyr and Claudia sat up in the front of the van. Seated in the rear of the large, tinted-window vehicle were six other women – all of them tall and well-toned. These six women were all dressed identically, in white sweaters, black pants, and white sneakers.
Claudia glanced in the rearview. “We’ve gone over the plan, girls… You all know what to do?”
One of the women, a Latina with tanned skin and short, bowl-cut black hair, nodded. “I still think this plan is too complicated…”
“Calm down, Rosie,” said the woman sitting across from her, a light-skinned blonde with her long hair tied back in a low ponytail. “You always overthink things.”
The Latina glared at her. “Stop calling me ‘Rosie,’ Amber… You know my name is Rosa.”
“Please, girls… no bickering,” Claudia interrupted. “We’re all up very early… haven’t even had breakfast yet. Let’s keep things civil and professional.”
“We’re here,” Zephyr announced.
She parked the van outside the rear entrance of the terminal.
“Okay, let’s make this fast,” Claudia said, unbuckling her seat belt and stepping out of the van. “Everyone, follow me.”
She punched in a code at the side entrance and slipped in. Zuhal and the six other women followed her.
They walked down a long but quiet hallway, far away from the crowds milling about in the main terminal. At last, they reached a door marked “Airport Employee Lounge.”
Claudia knocked twice, then three times, then one time – the prearranged signal.
The door to the lounge was opened. A young flight attendant stood there.
A light-skinned woman with short copper-red hair, she wore a standard uniform of blue jacket over white shirt, blue pencil skirt, red scarf, and blue pillbox hat, along with shiny black high heels. The lapel pinned to her jacket read “Becky.”
Becky glanced around, then motioned for the women to enter. “Come in, quickly.”
The eight women entered the lounge. There were five other flight attendants there, three sitting on the two couches and two standing by a counter with a coffee maker. All were dressed identically to Becky. They all stopped talking and looked up as the newcomers entered, while Becky closed the door behind them.
Claudia smiled politely at them. “Good morning, ladies. I trust Becky filled you in?”
The flight attendants nodded, and all stood up. Claudia surveyed their appearances and nametags to ensure they matched the descriptions she’d been given.
A tan-skinned girl with curly brown hair named Gerta; a fair-skinned girl with a bun of blonde hair named Audrey; a black woman with frizzy dark hair named Peggy; a porcelain-skinned woman with a ponytail of raven-black hair named Rhonda; and a fair-skinned Asian girl with dark brown hair named Jaclyn.
“All right, then,” Claudia nodded. “Let’s not waste any time.”
The flight attendants nodded. Without another word, they began stripping off their uniforms.
For the next few minutes, all was silent in the room, save for the sounds of jackets and shirts being unbuttoned, skirts being shimmied down slender thighs, high heels being unclasped, and the general rustle of clothing being removed to reveal six shapely bodies in standard professional-issue white cotton T-shirt bras and matching bikini panties.
“Stop drooling, Zeph,” Claudia whispered to her friend.
Zephyr blushed and quickly looked away.
Before long, the six flight attendants had folded their uniforms into six neat little piles, which they placed on the coffee table.
“Thank you,” Claudia nodded. Then she turned to the six women accompanying her and Zephyr. “All right, ladies… Strip out of your clothes and find a uniform that fits you.”
Immediately, their six associates began methodically changing out of their own clothes.
Zephyr resisted licking her lips, surrounded though she was now by twelve handsome women in their underclothes.
“Now, before we move on,” Claudia turned back to the flight attendants. “I trust none of you are claustrophobic?”
Jaclyn looked momentarily uneasy. “I… don’t like tight spaces,” she admitted. “But… I think I’ll be fine,” she added, catching the eye of her coworkers, who looked at her disapprovingly.
Claudia smiled. “Well, we’re going to try and make you all as comfortable as possible,” she said. “You’ll all be bound with flexible cables and gagged with clean washcloths – fairly unencumbering bondage material. And you’ll be seated in a closet, but with elbow room to maneuver, should you be so inclined.”
Claudia turned to Zephyr. “Come on, let’s take them to the closet and tie them up. Should only take a few minutes”
Zephyr nodded, though she tried to avoid looking at any of the flight attendants for a prolonged period.
The six flight attendants led the two mayor’s aides into the closet and obligingly sat on the floor. Claudia and Zephyr took two coils of flex and a half-dozen washcloths and got to work. They tied the wrists and ankles of each flight attendant, and wrapped cloths over their mouths.
“Everyone okay?” Claudia asked.
The flight attendants all nodded and “mmmppphhh”ed in response.
“Good,” Claudia smiled. “I know this sounds counterintuitive, but by allowing us to ‘steal’ your uniforms today, you are helping us prevent future uniform steals in the future.”
She checked her watch. “We’re perfectly on schedule,” she said. “You’ll probably be found in about five or six hours… And remember, when all this is over, you will all get quite a lot of financial compensation, courtesy of the mayor’s office.”
She and Zephyr exited the closet. Zephyr took one last glance at the bound-and-gagged beauties before shutting the door.
By this point, their six associates had nearly finished donning their new flight attendant uniforms.
“This feels weird, doesn’t it?” Amaya remarked. “In the past, we’ve had to mug women for their uniforms… This time, the women whose clothes we need just… hand them to us.”
“It feels wrong, somehow,” her twin sister Anika added, trying to squeeze into one of the uniform skirts. “And not just because this skirt is too tight,” she muttered.
Alice rolled her eyes. “As long as we get paid for this assignment, I don’t see how it makes a difference.”
“But they have a point,” Lauren countered. “Remember when we mugged that team of handball girls and stole their uniforms? That was fun. This feels anticlimactic, somehow.”
“Regardless,” Claudia interrupted the debate, “it’s the way it is. Mayor Hargrove has strict rules when carrying out these assignments – no uniform stealing allowed. It’s true that sometimes, disguises will be a necessity – as they are today. But whenever that’s the case, there is no reason to resort to mugging. The mayor’s office has a lot of money – we can bribe women to hand over their uniforms whenever we need them.”
She glanced back towards the closet. “Those six flight attendants were easy to bribe,” she added. “They had already all been mugged for their uniforms a few years ago. They were used to the prospect of spending a few hours tied up in the closet, so when I contacted one of them and explained our plan – and threw in several thousands of dollars – the pieces fell into place pretty easily.”
“I’m still not sure why we had to tie them up,” Zephyr said. “Couldn’t we just have them take the day off or something?”
Claudia shook her head. “It’s an added bonus,” she explained. “We get to assume and control their roles for the day, and also help raise awareness about uniform stealing. When the real flight attendants are found, tied up and gagged in their underwear, they will lie and claim that they were mugged by criminals – the USBs, presumably. Airports will respond by increasing security… And it will lessen the risk of flight attendant muggings in the future.”
She turned back to her six other associates. “But now, back to the plan… You all know what to do?”
Rosa nodded. “There are six flights scheduled out of the airport this morning… Our intel indicates that Cheryl Cambron will be on one of them. We will each infiltrate one of the flights and monitor them. The one who finds Cambron will track her to her destination and report back.”
Claudia nodded. “Good work. Glad to have you all aboard the team.”
She checked her watch again.
“Be sure to keep in touch over our communications link, ladies,” Claudia finished. “Now get to work.”
*********************
Ever since she had taken power a few weeks ago, Mayor Hargrove had separated her priorities into public and private ones.
Her public priorities were policy-oriented – chief among them, to fight back against crime and promote the strength of women in the workplace. These goals intertwined, of course, with her fight against the ongoing problem of uniform stealing that had plagued her city for years now.
To fight back against gangs like the Uniform Swiping Babes – and the troubling rise of uniform thieves writ large – Hargrove had begun organizing. She had instructed her team to recruit a team of women who would fighting back against uniform thieves while also instilling public confidence in strong female leadership.
To this end, they had discovered the all-women security organization of Female-Exclusive Military Muscled Enforcement – more colloquially known as FEMME. In the past week, Claudia and Zephyr’s coworker Jenna had met with FEMME officers to put the team under contract with the mayor’s office. They had thus begun organizing patrols and monitoring the city for incidents of uniform theft.
Hargrove’s private goals were tangentially linked to her public ones – she needed to monitor the more corrupt elements of the city, knowing of the many dangerous women who had attempted to illegally twist the system for their own ends in recent years. Julia Chen, Valencia Steele, Cheryl Cambron, Melissa Marinos, Maxine Ventriss, Gina Caldwell, Lucille Weldon-Grant… the list of powerful women who had engaged in criminal behavior for money and power in recent years had grown quite alarming. And Hargrove knew the city would not be truly safe unless she acknowledged the problem – and ensured that women like that were kept under watch when necessary.
Rosa, Amber, Alice, Lauren, Amaya, and Anika were all former FBI agents, skilled in the art of infiltration and disguise. They had been fired from their jobs over a year ago, due to their failure to capture the wanted terrorist Karima al-Bariqi. In recent months, however, they had joined FEMME, intent on patrolling the streets and putting their athletic skills to good use. But when Hargrove became mayor and recruited FEMME into her administration, Claudia had reached out to the six agents – she had a special job for them.
Cheryl Cambron, the former head of Rucon Steel, had spent some time in police custody due to charges of fraud, but her lawyers had eventually succeeded in getting her free. Her impulse now was to catch a plane out of the city. And the impulse of Hargrove’s team was to follow her – after learning which plane she was on – and ensure she wasn’t planning any more subterfuge that could damage the city.
Hargrove had approved Claudia’s plan to recruit six of the FEMME agents and have them attempt to follow Cambron at the airport.
She just had one important rule for Claudia and her team to follow: No uniform stealing.
*********************
Claudia and Zephyr made their way back down the quiet employee hallway toward the airport exit.
“That was easy enough,” Claudia remarked. “Everything went without a hitch, and in record time. And we didn’t harm any innocent women.”
Zephyr nodded. “Yeah…” She glanced behind her. “You sure those six flight attendants are gonna be all right?”
“Rosa and her team? They’ll be fine, they’re professionals…”
“No, I mean the women they replaced… I hope they don’t get uncomfortable or scared in that closet…”
Claudia let out a small grin. “Oh yes… I noticed the way you were eyeing them while they stripped off their uniforms.”
Zephyr blushed again. “Hey, I’m only human… I might be against uniform stealing, but some of those girls were cute…”
Claudia chuckled and shook her head. “They’ll be fine, Zeph. And don’t get distracted by their looks. We’re doing a valuable public service by pretending to steal their uniforms, remember?”
Zephyr nodded. “I know…”
“The Hargrove administration is working toward a future to prevent the need for this kind of thing,” Claudia continued. “A future where women can wear all kinds of uniforms, safely and proudly. Today, we’re moving one step closer to that future…”
She rounded the corner and stopped short. Then she quickly stepped back, pushing Zephyr behind the corner as well.
“What…?” Zephyr started to protest.
Claudia raised a finger to her lips. She peeked back around the corner.
“There’s a guard,” she whispered.
Zephyr glanced around the corner as well. Sure enough, there was a security guard positioned by the exit.
The guard was a woman, tall and slender, with light skin and sandy-blonde hair tied back in a bun. She wore a light blue button-down uniform shirt, black pants, and polished black shoes, along with a blue baseball cap with the airport logo emblazoned on it. She was currently idling by the exit that Claudia, Zephyr, and their team had earlier snuck into.
Claudia bit her lip. “There wasn’t supposed to be a guard at this exit,” she whispered. “She wasn’t here before… Why is she here now?”
“Maybe it’s a late shift,” Zephyr replied. She glanced back around the corner. “What do we do?”
“Maybe we can find another exit,” Claudia wondered. “Somewhere that no one is…”
At that moment, her empty stomach growled, somewhat loudly.
“Hey!”
The guard had noticed them from across the hall.
Claudia shut her eyes angrily. Maybe she should have had a quick breakfast before the mission…
“What are you two doing here?” the guard asked. “This wing is for airport employees only.”
She stepped away from the exit and approached Claudia and Zephyr, a suspicious look on her face.
“We could try to overpower her,” Zephyr whispered. “Two against one, and she doesn’t look too tough.”
Claudia eyed the gun strapped to the guard’s belt. “Just play it cool, Zeph… We’ll get out of here, somehow.”
“What are you two whispering about?” the guard demanded. She now stood about ten feet from them. “Who are you? Let’s see some ID.”
Claudia bit her lip. She knew they didn’t dare risk telling the guard they worked for the mayor’s office. Considering what they had just done to the flight attendants – even considering the compliance of the six airport employees – connecting themselves to Hargrove now would be a PR nightmare.
“Are you two deaf?” the guard said. She clearly seemed uninterested in polite discussion this morning. “Who are you?”
Claudia was still trying to figure out what to say – to determine if there was a way to get out of this situation without harming the guard, a woman who was just doing her job – when Zephyr spoke first.
“We’re flight attendants.”
The guard raised an eyebrow. “Oh? I don’t recognize either of you.”
“We’re new here,” Zephyr added quickly, catching Claudia’s eye. “We were on our way to get some coffee before starting our shift, but we got lost… This airport is so big, y’know?”
The guard looked at them strangely for another moment.
Then she nodded. “Oh, yes… you’re Avery and Raquel, aren’t you?”
Zephyr nodded, before Claudia could say anything. “Yep, that’s us.”
“I was told we had hired two new attendants today,” the guard said. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Claudia said, sighing inwardly with relief.
“The coffee is that way… I’ll show you.”
“Oh, that’s…” Zephyr was about to say “not necessary,” but realized she and Claudia were already in a tough situation, and didn’t want to risk raising the guard’s suspicions any further.
“…very kind of you.”
The guard nodded, and gestured back down the hallway. “Right that way.”
Claudia and Zephyr set back the way they came, the guard following behind.
Claudia glanced briefly at Zephyr, who gave a brief shrug. Neither woman knew what to do next.
Minutes later, they reached the door marked “Airport Employee Lounge.” The room that Claudia and Zephyr had just exited some ten minutes ago.
“Here you are, girls.” The guard opened the door and motioned them inside. “Go have a drink, and then I’ll take you to get your uniforms.”
Claudia and Zephyr stepped cautiously into the room, the guard following behind them.
Claudia glanced toward the closet, in which the six bound-and-gagged flight attendants were still stashed. Hopefully, they would keep quiet. Rosa and her team had not yet taken flight from the airport, and if the real flight attendants were discovered so soon, all hell would break loose.
When the guard turned her back to close the lounge door, Zephyr caught Claudia’s eye and mimed pressing her fist into her opposite palm.
Claudia shook her head. She did not want to hurt this guard… and she decided to roll with it as long as they had to. She strode toward the coffee machine.
We can get out of this without mugging any innocent women.
The guard’s radio buzzed. “Ramona, why have you left your post?”
The blonde guard picked up her radio. “Hi, Mariah. Just found those two new flight attendants wandering the halls… Taking them to get changed into their uniforms.”
“New flight attendants?” the woman’s voice responded from the other end.
“Yes… Avery and Raquel. I just met them now.”
“That’s impossible… I just spoke to Avery and Raquel a minute ago… Gave them their ID badges at the desk. They’re already in uniform…”
Ramona stopped talking and looked up, glaring suspiciously at Claudia and Zephyr – both of whom froze in their tracks.
At that moment, a frightened “Mmmmppphhh!” came from the closet.
Claudia recognized the pitch of the voice – it was Jaclyn, the young flight attendant who had mentioned her claustrophobia earlier. It sounded like she was starting to panic.
The guard swiftly drew her gun and pointed it at Claudia and Zephyr. “Don’t you two move.”
The two mayoral aides quickly raised their hands.
“Please, this is all a big misunderstanding…” Claudia began.
“Shut up.” Ramona’s eyes and weapon remained fixed on the two women as she cautiously approached the closet door.
“Er, wait…” Claudia said.
“I said shut up.” Ramona gripped the knob and turned it.
Before she could open the door, however, a flying coffee mug hit her in the back of the head.
The guard groaned, and teetered on the spot. Claudia quickly raced forward as she fell, catching Ramona before she hit the ground.
Claudia then glanced back up at Zephyr, a look of shock on her face. “What the hell was that?”
Zephyr shrugged. “I… didn’t know what else to do.”
Claudia lowered the guard to the floor and checked her over. “She’s unconscious… Why were you so impulsive? We could have talked to her, explained things…”
“She was already suspicious of us,” Zephyr countered. “Didn’t seem like she was in the mood of talking. ‘I’m sorry, officer, put down the gun, let us explain why there are six bound-and-gagged women in their underwear in that closet.’ Somehow, I don’t think that would have worked…”
Claudia sighed. “Well, she’ll probably wake up in an hour or two.”
“We’ll be long gone by then,” Zephyr replied. “Come on, let’s move.”
Claudia glanced at Zephyr, then back at the unconscious Ramona. “Wait a minute… We can’t just leave her like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“We already laid a plan to make it look like the USBs have struck at this airport… That they tied up all those flight attendants and stole their uniforms,” Claudia explained. “The USBs wouldn’t just leave a female security guard unconscious, though… They would leave her in her underwear as well.”
She glanced back up at Zephyr. “We need to steal her uniform.”
Zephyr raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious?”
“We don’t have a choice,” Claudia explained. “If airport personnel finds this woman unconscious in the lounge without her uniform stolen, they’ll get suspicious. It won’t look like the USBs’ methods. We need to make it look like a true gang of uniform thieves left their mark here.”
So saying, she began unlacing the guard’s shoes and pulling them off her feet.
Zephyr watched in amusement. “I thought you said we weren’t allowed to steal clothes anymore.”
“We don’t have a choice!” Claudia replied as she began unbuttoning the guard’s shirt. “I’ll wear her uniform till we get out of the airport. Besides, it’s just this one time. After this, we never…”
Her thoughts were interrupted as the door to the lounge banged open again.
Another woman in security uniform raced in – she was dressed identically to Ramona, though she had dark skin and black hair in a frizzy ponytail.
“Ramona, why didn’t you answer your radio? I was trying to tell you that—”
She stopped short, staring at the unconscious, partly stripped guard lying on the floor, and the two women crouching over her. Claudia and Zephyr stared back.
******************
Fifteen minutes later, Claudia and Zephyr exited the airport lounge.
Both women were now dressed as airport security guards – uniforms, shoes, and caps. Zephyr was fiddling with the top button of her shirt.
“Well, we’re in trouble now,” she murmured.
“No, we’re not,” Claudia said. “We just need to get out of here in one piece, that’s all.”
She gave a last glance into the lounge. From the doorway, all looked clear and innocent. However, Claudia knew that stashed behind the couch were a pair of unconscious security guards, both bound with black cables and gagged with white cloths. Ramona was dressed in only a grey T-shirt bra and ocean-blue hipsters, while her friend Mariah lay beside her in a lime-green sports bra and mauve cotton panties.
Claudia shut the door to the lounge, then glanced around the corner. “Coast is clear. Come on!”
The two women strode back down the hall, the way they had come.
“We shouldn’t have any trouble now,” Claudia whispered. “And once we’re out of here, we won’t need to steal any more uniforms.”
“Ms. Hargrove won’t be happy that we mugged those guards,” Zephyr replied.
“We won’t tell her, of course. She doesn’t need to know everything…”
“Hey!”
Claudia and Zephyr froze in their tracks.
They slowly turned to see another woman, a tall stern-looking redhead dressed in another security uniform.
“Where do you two think you’re going?” the woman demanded.
Claudia tried to formulate an excuse. “Well, we just…”
“All female security personnel are supposed to report to Conference Room D. We have a meeting. Didn’t you get the memo?”
Claudia and Zephyr exchanged a glance.
“Come on,” the redhead beckoned them. “Hurry up, or I’ll have to report you.”
Claudia didn’t know what to say in response without arousing suspicion. Neither did Zephyr.
With no alternative, they turned began following the guard down another hall.
*********************
A few minutes later, the three women arrived at a wooden door at the end of a long hallway of offices.
With a sidelong glance at the two women following her, the redhead opened the door and beckoned them inside. “Come on, we’re already late.”
In trepidation, Claudia and Zephyr entered the conference room.
The room was large and oblong-shaped, with a large mahogany table in the center. Standing around the room were about twenty other women, all dressed in airport security uniforms.
Claudia prayed silently that none of these security guards would recognize that she and Zephyr were not actually among their ranks. Luck was with her, as most of the guards had their eyes trained on one woman at the head of the table.
The woman was slightly older than the others, with light skin and shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair. Her uniform was a deeper blue than the others, and the badge of her chest read “Jennings – Security Chief.” Behind her was a white canvas upon which a slide projector appeared to be trained.
“Good morning, ladies,” Jennings began. “I trust that most of you know why I called this meeting.”
Several women nodded. A few looked perplexed. Claudia didn’t know which expression would be less suspicious, so she decided to remain neutral.
“For those who didn’t get the email,” Jennings continued, “I called this meeting because we’re facing a crisis. As women in the security business, our jobs have never been tougher.”
A murmur of agreement went up from the crowd.
“Our job is to protect the public and keep the peace,” Jennings stated. “It’s a tough job, but we do it, because it’s the right thing to do. But now we face a threat to our jobs, the likes of which we’ve never faced before.”
“She must mean the uniform thieves,” Zephyr whispered to Claudia.
Claudia nodded. “Security guards are a popular target for uniform stealing.”
“The threat I’m referring to, of course,” Jennings continued, “is Mayor Delilah Hargrove.”
Claudia’s eyes widened. Zephyr’s jaw dropped.
Jennings pressed a button on her remote. A picture of Mayor Hargrove appeared onscreen, scowling.
Claudia and Zephyr exchanged a glance, and the former motioned for the latter to keep quiet. She trained her attention on Jennings’ words.
“Ever since Hargrove took office,” Jennings continued, “female security guards have been treated as helpless jokes. She speaks constantly – constantly! – about how we get mugged all the time, how we get our uniforms stolen.”
Several guards in the room booed and hissed.
“It’s all crap,” Jennings added. “Yes, a handful of female security guards have gotten their uniforms stolen over the years, but most of us – practically all of us! – are smarter than that.” She looked around the room. “Has anyone in this room ever been mugged for her uniform?”
No one made a motion. Then, slowly, one of the guards raised her hand.
Jennings smiled politely at her. “Yes, Andra? Would you mind telling us what happened?”
Andra was a tall woman with light skin and dark blonde hair. She spoke softly, hesitantly. “It was… several months ago. I was helping the airline transport some artifacts onto a small plane bound for the science museum. Then I got a phone call from Philip… my husband. He couldn’t find the eggs in the fridge…”
She laughed slightly. A few other guards chuckled, understandingly.
“Anyway, I was a bit tired… I stepped behind some crates to take the phone call… And as soon as I hung up, some woman jumped me… tackled me to the ground. I tried to fight back, but she knocked me unconscious. Then she stripped me of my uniform and tied me up.”
“And what happened next?” Jennings pressed.
“She… was caught,” Andra said. “She tried sneaking on the plane in my uniform, but was quickly recognized as an imposter. The other airport guards apprehended and arrested her… Then they freed me and gave me back my uniform.”
Jennings clapped her hands. “Excellent!” she exclaimed. “That’s the sort of inspiration I love. One of our own guards was attacked, so we sprang to the rescue and caught her assailant. That doesn’t sound like incompetence, now does it?”
Several guards cheered. Audra nodded, but still looked a bit downcast.
Jennings noticed. “And you, Audra… you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened. Blame your idiot husband for distracting you. If he was more of a man, he would never have put you in a position to be caught off-guard!”
Audra nodded again, and smiled. “Yes… good point.”
“But Mayor Hargrove,” Jennings continued, “thinks we female security guards are in need of saving and protection. She claims to be a supporter of independent women in the workplace, yet she doesn’t think we can get our jobs done without protection from others! Namely, from the group called FEMME.”
She pressed the button on her remote again, and a picture of the FEMME logo appeared onscreen.
“Female-Exclusive Military Muscled Enforcement,” Jennings articulated. “They profess to help women by combating threats of uniform stealing… but in reality, they just demoralize and infantilize women like us, who work hard to protect others!”
Several of the guards in the room nodded and voiced their agreement. Claudia looked uneasy.
“We need to step up our game, ladies,” Jennings declared. “Show the mayor and her team of pencil-pushers that we won’t sit back and let a group of musclewomen steal our thunder!”
The security guards cheered.
Zephyr looked as if she wanted to say something in protest. Claudia caught her eye and shook her head.
“Back to work now,” Jennings said. “Let’s prove to that mayor and her team of idiots that we don’t need their help.”
The guards nodded and filed out of the room, chatting excitedly with one another.
“Well, this was demoralizing,” Zephyr whispered to Claudia as they followed the other guards heading for the door.
“Ahem,” Jennings said from behind them. “Would you two ladies mind staying for a moment longer?”
Claudia gulped. She and Zephyr stopped walking.
Jennings closed the door, leaving her alone in the conference room with Claudia and Zephyr.
“You two seemed a little unenthusiastic about my speech,” Jennings observed. “Is something wrong?”
Claudia could see that Zephyr was annoyed, so she spoke first. “I just think… maybe what the mayor and FEMME want to accomplish isn’t so bad?”
Jennings raised an eyebrow.
“Mayor Hargrove wants to protect the city,” Claudia continued. “She wants to work with the women who take pride in their uniforms, not antagonize them.”
“But she’s sticking her nose where it’s not needed,” Jennings replied. “We can do perfectly well by ourselves, thank you. The fact that a few female guards have been mugged for their uniforms in the past few years doesn’t mean we’re all helpless.”
“It’s more than a few,” Zephyr murmured.
“What was that?” Jennings asked, raising an eyebrow.
Before Claudia could stop her, Zephyr continued. “Lots of security women get mugged these days – and not just at airports! Museums, banks, industrial plants, even Cape Canaveral – don’t you read social media?”
Jennings laughed. “I don’t buy into that crap that fearmongers spread on the Internet,” she said. “The mayor is an idiot and a fearmonger herself. How easy do you think it is to knock out a professional security guard?”
“This easy,” Zephyr replied. She immediately hit Jennings with a swift neck chop.
Jennings stiffened and froze on the spot, her eyes wide. Then, with a groan, she fell forward.
Claudia quickly caught the unconscious security chief before she hit the ground. Then she turned to Zephyr in shock.
“Why the hell did you do that??”
Zephyr shrugged. “She asked a question, and needed an answer.”
“Dammit, Zeph, we can’t going around knocking out security guards left and right. We’re supposed to be helping these women.”
“Well, she seemed overly confident. I helped her by giving a dose of reality… Besides, she insulted Ms. Hargrove.”
Claudia sighed.
“She’s wrong about security guards,” Zephyr continued. “She made it sound like security women getting knocked out for their clothes is really uncommon, but we know from our research that it’s happened really often in the past few years. Heck, we just knocked out two security guards and stole their uniforms, didn’t we?”
“Don’t remind me,” Claudia murmured. Then she glanced down at the unconscious security chief. “Dammit. Now we have to strip her, too.”
“We do? Why?”
“We need to keep up the pretense that the USBs were here. The only way to spin this to our advantage is to make the security personnel at this airport believe they truly were victims of a uniform stealing gang.”
“Won’t the flight attendants who loaned our friends their uniforms notice how many other women were actually robbed of their uniforms?” Zephyr inquired.
“We bribed them well… Hopefully they keep quiet,” Claudia said as she knelt down beside the unconscious security chief. “But this plan is turning out to be more trouble than it’s worth.”
She began unlacing the unconscious woman’s shoes and pulled them off, one after the other. Then she unbuttoned the woman’s shirt.
“Find something to tie her up with,” Claudia told Zephyr.
Zephyr nodded, and her eyes fell on the nearby table, where a roll of black tape lay idly. “That should do the trick.” She scooped it up.
As Claudia began unbuttoning the woman’s shirt, a sound alerted her – the turning of a doorknob.
Claudia and Zephyr glanced at each other in shock.
“Get down!” Claudia whispered.
Zephyr quickly jumped behind the large conference table, crouching down beside Claudia and the unconscious Jennings as the door opened.
From beneath the table, Claudia could see the boots of someone entering the room. Women’s boots, a faded dark green in color. As the woman turned to close the door behind her, Claudia peeked up and got a quick glimpse of the rest of her – a tan-skinned woman with brown hair tied in a hasty ponytail, with a forest-green jumpsuit and baseball cap. She carried a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other, and appeared to be listening to music on her headphones.
Claudia ducked back down and turned to Zephyr. “It’s the janitor,” she whispered. “She must be here to clean the room.”
“Janitress,” Zephyr replied.
“What?”
“The proper term for a female janitor is janitress,” Zephyr explained. “Mayor Hargrove wants us to promote women in the workplace, remember? That means using proper terminology.”
“We’ll discuss that later,” Claudia said in annoyance. She glanced beneath the table again. “Crap… She’s circling around the table… Coming this way. If she sees us with the half-stripped security chief, we’ll need to knock her out as well.”
Zephyr smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ve got an idea.”
Before Claudia could stop her, Zephyr stood up.
The janitress was moments away from turning to the side of the table where Jennings lay. But she stopped in her tracks when she saw the woman in security uniform before her. “Oh! I’m sorry, I thought this room was empty.”
Zephyr grinned at her. “No problem. I was just searching for my contact lens.”
“Do you need help?” the janitress asked. “I’m just here to clean the room, but…”
“Thanks, but I’m fine,” Zephyr told her. “But… would you mind postponing your cleaning for, say, half an hour? There’s a meeting coming up here in a few minutes.”
The janitress looked confused. “I didn’t see anything on the schedule for this time of day…”
“Well, it’s an ‘off the record’ meeting,” Zephyr explained. “You know these airport executives… always keeping things hush-hush! Anyway, that should be starting any minute now…”
The janitress nodded. “Okay… guess I’ll come back later.”
“Great! And thanks.” Zephyr beamed at her. “We really appreciate your work.”
“It’s my pleasure,” the brunette replied, a little flustered. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”
She turned and walked back the way she came, having not seen anything on the other side of the table.
As she approached the doorway, however, something on the floor caught her eye. “Oh! Is this your contact lens?”
Before Zephyr could say anything, the janitress knelt down on the floor and picked up the small object.
“Oh, never mind… I think it’s just a button.”
She was about to stand up, when her head turned and she glimpsed the floor on the other side of the conference table. She could see another woman staring back at her, lying behind a third woman who was unconscious and partially stripped.
A confused look crossed the janitress’ face. “What… what’s going on here?”
Zephyr quickly hurried over to her. “I can explain.”
She swiftly hit the brunette with a neck chop. The janitress groaned and slumped to the floor.
Then she glanced to the other side of the table, where Claudia was standing up, a displeased look on her face.
Zephyr shrugged. “Look, I’m sorry… I tried to get her out of the room, didn’t I?”
Claudia sighed. “Just shut up and strip her.”
*******************
In a matter of minutes, the janitress was reduced to a lavender triangle bra and light green boyshorts. She now sat in the conference room closet beside the equally unconscious Jennings, who wore only a vanilla cami top and black bikini shorts. Both women had been taped up and gagged with the roll of black tape.
Zephyr shut the door and turned to Claudia. “I hate to say it, but… we’re getting good at stealing uniforms.”
Claudia just glared at her. “Get dressed. Make it fast, I want us out of here as soon as possible.”
She was already changing into the uniform of the security chief. Zephyr said nothing else, but picked up the discarded janitress uniform and began to don it herself.
Once they had disguised themselves again, Claudia took a deep breath. “Okay, now we get out of here and back to the van. No more unnecessary stops, no detours, no more muggings. Got it?”
Zephyr frowned. “You know, this isn’t entirely my fault…”
Claudia groaned. “Let’s just go.”
She opened the door and made sure the coast was clear. Then she stepped out, motioning for Zephyr to follow.
Immediately, the two women began walking back down the hall, navigating the corridors to the exit.
“Do you think anyone will ask,” Zephyr whispered, “why the security chief is walking the halls with a janitress?”
“Hopefully not,” Claudia responded. “We should be outside in another minute… Then we can ditch these disguises and forget about—”
“Excuse me.”
Claudia shut her eyes in exasperation at the sound of the female voice. What now?
She and Zephyr turned to see a pair of young women walking their way from an adjoining corridor. Both were dressed in standard blue flight attendant uniforms.
“Pardon us,” the first woman said. She was tall and thin, with dark skin and dark brown hair tied back in a bun. “We seem to be a bit lost.”
“Our first day,” the second woman nodded. She was similarly tall and fit, with light skin and red hair cut in a chin-length bob.
Claudia eyed them oddly. “Er… who are you?”
“My name is Avery,” the black woman said. “This is my friend Raquel. We just started work as flight attendants – just received our ID badges an hour ago – and was wondering where the employee lounge was.”
Raquel nodded. “We’d like to meet some of our fellow flight attendants… Make friends as best we can.”
Claudia wanted to get out of there fast. “Well, I…”
“You’re a security guard, aren’t you?” Avery asked. “Thank goodness… We’ve heard rumors about how dangerous it can be at the airports these days… especially for women in uniform.”
“We don’t believe all the rumors, naturally,” Raquel added. “But it’s helpful to take precautions. And it’s good to have a strong woman like yourself around to protect us.”
At this, Claudia felt a sudden swell of pride.
She smiled at Avery and Raquel. “Certainly I can help you girls. I was just escorting this fine janitor…”
“Janitress,” Zephyr whispered.
“…janitress to that area myself. Follow us, girls, the employee lounge is just down this way.”
As the four women walked down the hall, Avery and Raquel chatted excitedly with one another.
Zephyr leaned over to Claudia and whispered, “What are we doing?”
“Just helping these women find the lounge and adapt on their first day,” Claudia quietly explained. “That’s our job, remember? To help women in uniform.”
“But the lounge is where we… you know,” Zephyr countered.
“We hid them well… Don’t worry. We’ll be out of there and long gone before they find anything.”
They reached the door to the lounge within a minute.
“There you are, ladies… Go right on in.” Claudia held the door open and gestured for the flight attendants to enter.
Avery nodded at her, glancing at her badge. “Thank you… Chief Jennings?”
She paused, looking up at Claudia. “That can’t be right… We met with Chief Jennings before getting jobs here… She interviewed us and gave us background checks… But… you’re not her.”
Claudia froze. She had not expected two airport newcomers to have already met with the real Jennings.
“What’s going on?” Raquel asked. “Who are you?”
Before Claudia could respond, Zephyr cleared her throat.
“Ladies,” she said, “I know this might seem strange… but we can offer you a lot of money if you keep quiet about this, and take off your clothes.”
Avery and Raquel gave her a strange look.
Zephyr sighed. “That probably didn’t come out right.”
With that, she quickly struck out and hit Avery with a neck chop. The woman groaned and pitched backward, slumping unconscious into Claudia’s arms.
“Good catch,” Zephyr nodded.
Raquel opened her mouth to scream. Zephyr quickly covered her mouth and placed her in a sleeper hold.
The young flight attendant groaned and gurgled for several long seconds. Her eyes stared at Claudia with a mix of confusion and fear on her face.
“Trust me,” Claudia told her. “We’re doing all this to stop the rise of uniform stealing.”
Whether Raquel trusted her or not was a moot point. Moments later, the redhead was just as unconscious as her friend.
“Into the lounge, quick!” Zephyr whispered, dragging the sleeping Raquel inside.
Then, seeing Claudia hesitating by the doorway: “Come on!”
Claudia sighed, but dragged the unconscious Avery into the lounge.
********************
Ten minutes later, Avery and Raquel lay unconscious behind the second couch in the lounge, relieved of their uniforms.
Avery wore a dark green bandeau bra and teal cheeky panties. Raquel sported an orange underwire bra and burgundy briefs. Both women were clearly new to the flight attendant service, as they had not yet been assigned the standard white underwear of their coworkers.
Both women were also now bound with some spare blue flex and gagged with black tape, lying near the still-slumbering figures of Ramona and Mariah.
“You’re getting pretty quick at stripping women and typing them up,” Zephyr remarked.
Claudia glared at her. “Cut the comments and finish getting dressed.”
They were both already dressed in the uniform shirts, jackets, and skirts that had adorned the two unconscious flight attendants just minutes before. Claudia was adjusting her pillbox hat and Zephyr was in the process of squeezing her feet into the company-issued high heels.
“Is this really necessary?” Zephyr asked, wincing as her toes tightened within the confining shoes. “For us to wear their clothes? Why don’t we just throw their uniforms in a closet or something?”
Claudia shook her head. “No room for error, Zeph. If we want people to believe this place was attacked by uniform thieves, we need to make sure it’s convincing, right down to wearing their uniforms as we walk out of here. That’s the only way we can raise awareness and stop the awful practice of uniform stealing.”
Zephyr bit her lip. “We’ve left twelve different women tied up in their underwear around this airport,” she observed. “Six voluntarily, six mugged unwillingly. Are you sure this is the best way to stop uniform stealing?”
Claudia picked up her bag. “We can discuss new methods later… back at the office.” She adjusted her collar. “Come on, we’re already running late. Let’s get out of the airport, fast… before anyone else sees us.”
Zephyr nodded. “Right… Otherwise, we’d have to knock them out and strip them as well.”
Claudia gave her an irritated look, then headed for the door.
Zephyr gave a last glance at Avery and Raquel, situated behind the couch, all bound and gagged in their underwear.
Despite her own reservations about uniform stealing, she couldn’t deny… in their current position, they made an attractive couple.
“Zeph.” Claudia stood in the doorway, tapping her watch. “Let’s go.”
Zephyr nodded and hurried to the door, ignoring the pain caused by each step in her stolen high-heeled shoes.
**********************
There were no further complications between the two women and the exit. They made it out of the terminal and located their van.
“You think Amber and her crew made it onto the flights okay?” Zephyr inquired as they got into the vehicle.
Claudia started the ignition. “If they hadn’t, we would have heard about it,” she replied. “Hopefully, one of them locates Cambron.”
She drove the vehicle towards the exit ramp.
“And hopefully,” she continued, “we’ve scrambled the resources of the airport security enough to make them wake up… and realize that they do need our help. That they need the support of Mayor Hargrove and the women of FEMME to help combat and defeat the threat of uniform stealing in the future.”
Zephyr nodded, and was silent for several long moments.
Then she spoke. “Do you think Jaclyn’s okay?”
“Who?”
“Jaclyn… that flight attendant who said she was claustrophobic. We heard her crying in the closet… Do you think she’ll be okay?”
Claudia was silent for about ten seconds before answering.
“We’re paying her a lot of money,” she said. “She’ll be fine.”
Then she nodded. “The uniformed women… they’ll all be fine.”
She pulled off her pillbox hat and shook her long black hair free. “Anyway, we have a busy day ahead… More uniform thieves to foil.”
Her stomach growled, louder than before.
“But first, let’s grab some breakfast…”
THE END
It's as if the universe is conspiring to have all these uniformed women - guards, janitress, unplanned flight attendants... - throw themselves in their way.
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