Dress Off 06: Butt Naked in Brisbane

"Got it." Stacey said, with a thin smile.

"Not quite, Special Agent. It would appear that all of the firm's male executives are currently off-site, undoubtedly overseeing the preparations for 'Lesbian Strip Humiliation'. That just leaves the female executives, and I'm afraid that your undoubtable charms may well be lost on them. We have nonetheless identified the most likely target who may be... convinced... by the proper romancing. She represents our best chance of extracting access credentials to their secure systems without raising immediate suspicion. Once access is acquired, then Special Agent Shackleton is use them to extract every ounce of information we can get from their databases. I want the keys. I also want to know who these people are, how they appear to have got their hands on those encryption keys in the first place, and why they're so willing to hand them over." At this point, the Director paused again and cast her eyes towards the ceiling.

"Needless to say, when I realised that this woman would have to be romanced and treated with both respect and dignity, I immediately thought of Mitchelson."

Mitchelson visibly perked up at this reference, and gave a knowing look to Stacey, who in turn made sure that Mitchelson noticed as she rolled her eyes in response.

"More precisely," the Director continued, "I immediately thought 'wouldn't it be woefully inappropriate to send Mitchelson on this assignment?'," the Director leaned forward and fixed her gaze solely on Mitchelson, before clicking her tongue thoughtfully and continuing.

"However between everything else going on in the world, and with half of our agents having gone to ground while we make sure nothing else has been compromised after Tess' capture, you qualify as our most available male agent to hand. I assume I don't have to impress upon you the need to not mess this up, and especially not to raise her suspicions?"

Mitchelson tapped his notepad with his pen, and if the Director's apparent lack of confidence had affected Mitchelson's mood, his grin didn't betray that. "Don't worry Director, I've got this one well under control."

The Director continued staring at Mitchelson for several seconds longer than would have been comfortable. Breathing in deeply, she then simply said "Right" before indicating for them both to wait as she got up and went over to a lone filing cabinet by the door. She continued to speak even as she hunted through the mess. "Agent Masterton will join you later in the operation, but right now you two will need to leave for Australia tonight, by yourselves."

Stacey smiled. It was good to know that Erin would be involved too. She'd worked with Mitchelson quite a few times before, and while she'd never say it to his face, she had to privately admit to herself that he did have his uses. And for all his faults, he was pretty loyal and calm-under-pressure when push came to shove. Still, Erin Masterson was her best friend in the agency. Stacey knew that Erin had left only yesterday on courier assignment to one of their field stations, but even knowing that she'd then be hurrying down to Australia to provide backup solidified Stacey's confidence even more.

The Director momentarily fell silent and seemed to be zero'ing on what she was looking for.

Stacey took the opportunity of the Director being away from her desk to lean over at check out Mitchelson's notepad. The sum total of Mitchelson's notes on the meeting so far seemed to have been captured in five simple words.

"Tap it, and thank it?!" Stacey whispered incredulously. Mitchelson seemed to bridle slightly at the apparent accusation of ungentlemanly behaviour, and he made a show of underlining the "and thank it" part a few times for Stacey's benefit.

Stacey rolled her eyes for a second time in less than a minute, and breathed in deeply as the Director returned back to her chair accompanied by a simple folder.

Hopefully you'll be able to rendezvous with Special Agent Beacham and Agent Proudchest in Brisbane - they are our local operatives. Unfortunately, with the sudden move we've lost contact with them. Before this," the Director stopped and waved her hand around the room, indicating the world in general, "chaos, they had been briefed on some of the early details though. They know to try and make contact with an incoming team."

"Obviously we'll upload all relevant information to you soon. In the meantime, our current situation dictates a slightly more low-tech approach. This folder has enough for you to get going on your target." The Director leaned forward again. "Good luck to both of you. If our target truly possesses what they claim, then more than just the fate of this agency may rest on your success."

Stacey nodded in calm, business-like acknowledgement. She was a professional now — admittedly not the kind she'd thought she'd grow up to be as a kid — but a professional nonetheless.

"We'll..." Stacey paused, and cast a sideways glance at Mitchelson who was still doodling on his pad with a radiant smile of supreme confidence plastered across his face, "well, I'll make sure we've got every angle of this covered by the time we land in Brisbane."

The Director looked at her two agents, and her lips pursed in what resembled a small, almost private smile. "I'm sure you will." She looked at Mitchelson and paused, her mouth slightly open as if she was about to say something. Then, considering it to be the wiser course of action to simply say nothing, she nodded and pointed at the door.

Stacey and Mitchelson hauled themselves out of their chairs, Stacey taking the folder the Director had retrieved, and Mitchelson waving his notepad at the room in general.

"Don't worry Boss, you're sending the best of the best on this mission. Just sit back, relax and get this place up to scratch. We'll take care of the rest."

The Director raised an eyebrow quizzically, but then sighed as she looked around the room at the various boxes that needed to be sorted. "I'm going to need an army of executive assistants to get this under control..." she added, somewhat mournfully.

Wary of being tasked with any paperwork or unpacking even before he'd left for the warmer climate of Brisbane, Mitchelson nudged Stacey and indicated that they should beat a retreat from the office. After all, a truely well-trained agent knew there was often little point in tempting fate...

They'd both reached the door when the Director called out to them one last time.

"There is one last thing," she said, with a slightly distant tone in her voice as if she was now mentally stepping back and surveying the big picture of everything that would have to be done, "While I'm sure half of her gear is still packed away in shipping crates, 'O' did mention she'd have a few toys for you to try out on your mission."

Mitchelson's smile knew no bounds. A visit to O's lab very rarely disappointed.

*******

The warehouse complex that Decider Enterprises had relocated to on short notice had rather conveniently come equipped with a decent sized basement with heavily reinforced walls.

Stacey and Mitchelson made their way quickly down the stairs, barely pausing to greet their colleagues who hurried by with a million and one things to do. They pressed on through the busy lower-floor corridors, dodging the occasional trolley moving at high speed.

Eventually they reached a stairwell that led downwards, over which hung a temporary sign emblazoned with "Lab", followed by a hand-written note of "(Authorized Personnel Only!)" in what seemed to be a perfect hand-written facsimile of the comic sans font.

The two agents waved their credentials at a guard who was loitering at the top of the stairs, and who in turn waved them on down to the lab below.

If the corridors above had seemed busy, then the basement underneath a heaving hive of activity on an entirely different level of noise and motion.

An array of large crates and containers had been deposited at the far end, near what looked like large service elevators. All around the basement, people scurried from one table to the next, moving gear, unpacking gear, or trying to connect equipment to the power supply without blowing fuses or, worse still, blowing up themselves. Orchestrating the fit out was a tall brunette woman — mid-30s and with glasses perched on her forehead — dressed in a fairly unflattering white lab coat, and waving a clipboard around with a fair degree of agitation.

It took her several moments to notice Stacey and Mitchelson standing at the doorway. When she finally did, she stopped in mid-conversation and then waved animatedly with her clipboard in the air, almost accidentally smacking an assistant in the face whom she'd just been admonishing for not taking proper care with a container.

Stacey smiled and returned the wave, before poking Mitchelson in the ribs. "Behave." she said, without any need to elaborate.

Agent Olivia 'O' Berkeley was Decider Enterprises foremost engineer, and headed up the organisation's innovative Research & Development division. A materials scientist by training, 'O' had been recruited through the Dress Off programme ten years ago with the intention of being a regular field agent, before her natural social awkwardness and complete inability to stop nervously giggling when naked meant that the Director had felt that 'O's talents were better used elsewhere.

It had been an inspired decision, with 'O' finding herself right at home in the lab with plenty of equipment to tinker with, design, test and deploy. The agency had come along in leaps and bounds and Stacey often found herself amazed at what new gadget or whiz-bang toy they'd find in their deployment kits for missions.

In truth, 'O' was just as attractive as any other woman in the organisation, and physically had all the assets to make a damn good field agent. What she lacked in poise and field-smarts though, was far out-stripped by what she lacked in taste. Much to the continued amazement of her colleagues, 'O' had developed a not-so-secret crush on Mitchelson and was positively glowing as the two agents approached.

"Hi Tom!" she said, making her unique amongst the female contingent at Decider Enterprises by voluntarily using Mitchelson's first name in a friendly way.

'Hey Olivia." Mitchelson replied, enjoying the attention and treating 'O' to a friendly smile. "The lab looks great!" he added, taking in the chaos of their surroundings with a sweeping hand gesture.

'O' beamed at that compliment, even as the sound of equipment being dropped echoed in the background. Her smile flickered for just a moment, but when a few seconds passed and they hadn't been annihilated in an explosion, she seemed to settle back into one of her favourite pastimes of gazing at Mitchelson.

Stacey gave him a suspicious look, but he at least seemed to be behaving himself at the moment. Then, realising that her presence was barely registering on Olivia's radar, she coughed.

The other woman broke her gaze and looked a Stacey with a slightly flustered expression. "Ahh, Special Agent." she said, finally.

"O. How's it going."

O smiled grimly, before raising up her hands in exasperation. "Well, I have about one tenth of the lab space that I had three days ago, and I've still not unpacked most of our gear. My top computer technician's been co-opted for some crazy mission, and I am weeks behind in..."

Stacey smiled, but decided to interrupt before O launched into too lengthy a discussion on her troubles.

"The Director said you might have something for us, O."

Olivia stopped in mid-fret, and then perked up at the thought of being able to demo some of her gadgets.

"Yes, yes indeed. Not as much as I'd like to be able to give you," she added, pointing at the crates, "but I do have a few trinkets that might come in useful."

Olivia led them over to a table, and then rummaged through a pile of clothing before turning around and calling out to one of her assistants. "Wendy... where's Wendy... I remember telling her to get the hot pants out of storage at least an hour ago..." Olivia looked up and around at the various scientists, engineers, assistants and agents who were trying to get their new digs up to speed. Then, she finally found who she was looking for. "Wendy... oh, there she is... Wendy, the hot pants please!"

A shorter red-headed woman dressed similarly to Olivia hurried over with a pair of hot pants clasped in one hand. The woman had a slightly distracted and flushed expression on her face, and she handed the garment over to Olivia before retreating a few steps and waiting for further instructions.

Olivia triumphantly held up the pair of hot pants for further inspection. As Stacey leaned in, she couldn't help but noticed that the pattern on the hot-pants seemed to shimmer. She blinked a few times, and it was almost a struggle to pull her eyes away from the material.

Olivia noticed her expression and winked.

"I think you'll find these especially useful Special Agent. You're both familiar with Bree Carson's hypno-boobs attire I assume?"

"Familiar?" Stacey snorted, "Getting Bree Carson out of her clothes was never much of a challenge before you gave her that particular piece of tech. It's the longest I've seen Bree keep her breasts covered!"

"Well, we aim to please. Her hypno-boobs top is of course somewhat obvious. It's pretty hard to miss that they're on, and the particularly strong willed can evade their hypnotic charms... even when worn by someone like Bree. Sometimes you want a bit of discretion."

"So, hot pants?" Stacey queried

"Hocus-pocus hot pants!" Olivia replied, "Just slip these bad-girls on, make sure your target has an unimpeded view of your backside, turn the hot-pants on, give it 5 — maybe 10 minutes — and then they'll be completely under your spell." Olivia shrugged, "Well, at least _highly_ susceptible to suggestion at least." she added, with an audible disclaimer in her tone.

"That's a fairly long time to get someone to stare at your backside." Stacey said, somewhat doubtfully.

"Mission accomplished." Mitchelson said under cover of a cough, which earned a piercing stare from his partner.

Olivia bridled at the suggestion there was some design flaw in her equipment.

"Well, I can assure you that it certainly works! The victim becomes _very_ open to performing actions or questioning, no matter how much they might fight it."

Olivia looked up at the air, now talking to the world in general. Caught up in her own train of thought around the sheer genius of her inventions, she began to rattle off all manner of different things that an agent could do when they had their target under such control.

Losing a little bit more of the tiny amount of patience Stacey had left, the special agent raised a hand to stop Olivia before her verbal momentum burnt up too much more precious time.

"Fine, fine... I stand corrected."

Olivia huffed for a moment, but then seemed mollified by Stacey's apparent back-down. "Well... good..." she said finally, "because it's a damn fine invention. Using this, I could order someone who fallen under the control of these hot pants to.. to... well strip naked and dance for me!" she said, with a note of finality, before catching Mitchelson's eye and blushing hard. "Not that... ahem... I've been thinking about that..." Olivia coughed, and then looked around quickly for something new to steer the conversation toward.

A few meters away, Olivia's assistant Wendy blushed even harder.

Sifting through the table in front of her, Olivia finally found something else worthy of their time. It was a small, innocent looking container, not dissimilar to a lotion or cream that could be found in anyone's makeup bag.

She held it up for inspection, and Stacey raised an enquiring eyebrow.

"Ahh, yes, the Ultima-Strip-Nude-Mistress-3000." Olivia said, by way of introduction. "The Director asked me if I could develop a lotion that would cause whoever used it to suddenly develop an aversion to wearing clothes! The lotion is designed to cause the victim to develop an uncontrollable itch if they wear a stitch of clothing. The only means to reduce the itching is to expose the skin to natural sunlight. The objective is to make the lotion last for 8 hours, so that the victim has to be outside naked for eight full hours unless they happen to get the anti-dote!"

"What?!" Stacey looked both shocked and impressed. "And you managed to get that to work?!"

Olivia looked up at Stacey with a blank expression for a moment, and then waved a hand dismissively.

"Oh, God no. Didn't make any progress at all on the original specifications. Would have been a complete and absolute failure if it wasn't for the fact that we accidentally discovered it was a pretty decent sunblock. Council's actually considering spinning off a company to try and sell the stuff, bring in a few extra dollars to fund some of this stuff." Olivia paused for a moment and seemed to lose herself in a few seconds of reflective thought. "Although thinking about it, perhaps marketing might want to look at the name..." she mused. Then, with a shrug, she threw a container to Mitchelson.

"Take a vial though, could be useful in the Australian sun!" she added, cheerfully.

Mitchelson went to catch the vial, but then fumbled and let it crash down to the floor as his attention was suddenly grabbed by events occurring behind Olivia.

Olivia looked wordlessly at Mitchelson for a moment with a puzzled expression on her face, then turned to look at whatever had caught Mitchelson's eye.

"Oh... oh my..." Olivia said with a start.

Only a few feet away, and now gyrating her hips to a tune only she could hear, Olivia's assistant Wendy was beginning to tug at her top. Her wide-eyed expression betrayed a growing sense of panic in the hapless assistant, who suddenly pulled open the lab coat and revealed

"W... Wendy, what are you doing?!" Olivia said, as the busy workplace ground to a halt around them to witness the latest show.

The woman didn't stop though, her hands running over her body as she twisted and turned somewhat awkwardly on the spot, while simultaneously struggling with her white lab trousers. Or perhaps more accurately, she was struggling with the struggling with the white lab trousers. Her hands seemed to be at odds with what her mind wanted to achieve, and while the conflict played out within her, the hands made short work of her trousers, which quickly dropped down once pulled below hips, and began to pool together on the floor around her ankles.

"Wendy, I... Oh... of course!" Olivia slapped herself theatrically on the forehead and turned to face Stacey and Mitchelson with a relieved look on her face.

"It's okay, it's absolutely okay!" she said animatedly, with a tinge of self-absorbed excitement creeping in too. "See, it's the hot pants!"

She stood aside as if afraid Stacey and Mitchelson weren't getting a clear enough view of Wendy's growing embarrassment. The woman's panties were edging down her body, courtesy of one hand, while the other hand was trying to simultaneously pull her still-buttoned blouse up over her head.

Olivia waved a hand at Wendy, as if she was a particularly interesting exhibit in a zoo, and Olivia was a tour guide. "You see, I told her to unpack the hot pants a while back. Silly things must have turned themselves on, and... umm... well, turned on poor Wendy here too... prolonged exposure to them on a low setting, that sort of thing."

"Umm..." Stacey started to say, wondering exactly when Olivia was going to actually help her assistant.

Olivia looked back at Wendy for a moment, her eyes seeming to focus in the middle distance. "Oh dear yes," she said slowly, as Mitchelson finally snapped out of his ogling and reluctantly reached the conclusion he should at least try to save the woman any further blushes.