Chapter 1 - Who's the Topdog?

No one had believed in magic for several thousand years, at least not in honest. While some individuals might have dabbled and probed, tried ancient spells or looked deep into crystal balls; in the end everyone that was mildly sane knew that magic was something conjured up by their forefathers in a time were things like science and medicine were only a distant future. And even now in the year 2058 this way of thinking had held on, magic was non-existent hogwash and no one should have to try and think too hard on it.

At least that was the way it should have been, as clearly our civilization had advanced even more, so magic should have become a very foolish pipedream. The only problems had been the last two years of human history. Instead of the world working like it had for eons and long before humanity had even existed, the things had taken a turn to the weird and mysterious. Two years ago almost all people inside of a high security prison had disappeared. Guards, prisoners and visitors, all were just gone without any clue of their whereabouts. And of course the authorities had covered up the event, but not before several Mega-Corp’s had gotten wind of it, resulting in subsequent spill to the normal populous.

From there things had gotten worst, of the next two years the phenomenon had started to happen all over the world; things people and sometimes even entire houses disappeared without a clue to where they had gone. Thanks to the authorities’ hard work at covering everything up the general panic one would have expected did not happen and most people simply thought of it as they always did. Did it affect them? No? Good, than it did no really concern them.

Well that hadn’t held for really long, because instead of global warming coming back to scream in our dumb faces, something else came back. Two days ago the inner city of Neo-York had been able to witness the very first thing that had appeared instead of being whisked away. In the middle of a crowded street people dressed as if coming from the middle ages had, for the lack of better words, materialized. This had caused several people to question their views on magic or even outright state that it was magic. I of course had even then still prided myself with being able to see through this farce, as everyone knew magic was a thing for children. Thankfully with the amount of cameras and video bloggers everywhere the event had been recorded, which was also exactly what, was playing on the large screen in my conference room right now.

At first it was a generic video-blog about some young little idiot spouting nonsense about stuff he had bought with his parent’s money, all in all very uninteresting. Yet at about thirty seconds in, the feed sputtered as something akin to an electrical discharge happened; the screen went white for a second before the video resumes. When the feed recovered, seemingly appearing out of thin air about eight people could be seen suddenly standing in the middle of the market street. All of them wore strange clothing; metal cuirasses as well as swords and crossbows. Overall they resembled knights or the like, while two people in particular stood out from the group. They both towered over the others by at least half a head and were as far as you could tell more imposingly dressed. At this point the video view switched from the go-Pro to an overhead flying security drone, it zoomed in on the two people in the middle.

The one on the right who was clearly female, was dressed in lose robes and wore a strange mask over her face depicting an eye; yet the most noticeable things were her strange skin colour as well as two horns on her head and what seemed to be a tail flicking behind her. While she was impressive and alluring in a rather mysterious way she was not alone. The figure to the left was of almost the exact height and featured the same tail and horns only with one of them broken off. The biggest difference would be that instead of a loose fitting dress she wore a full set of armour. It was when the figure took of her metal helmet that my suspicions where confirmed; the woman’s face was completely identical to the other woman, but instead of the mysterious smile of the first one, her lips were pulled into a shit eating grin. Right after the person yelled the words “I’m back bitches!” I had seen enough, I held my hand up and stopped the video right there.

“This,” I stood up and pointed at the face on the screen. “This is what. I. Want!” With each word I jabbed my index finger into the hard surface. “Perfect genetically engineered hybrids! Look at those two! This right here, this is art!” I rubbed the bridge of my nose before I carried on.

“So how come that someone else managed to create such a perfect specimen before us? No, hold, stop, I know it isn’t your fault.” I smiled at the rest of the team gently, almost like a mother would.

“It is my fault for even thinking anyone here capable enough! I want you to find me those hybrids, find out who created them and bring me some results! That is all, thank you.”

The other scientists quickly left the room mumbling things like “Yes, Ma’am.” Or “Of course Dr. Foster.”. ‘Ugh, these pathetic people. While it was a wonderful thing to be the lead researcher it also carried the burden of having to muck up every little bit of shit the others created or like in this case motivate them to work at least a little bit.’ I looked up and realized that from the half dozen people in the room only two had not left. One being my secretary the other the teams “PR-Manager” a better description would be the upper managments Blood-Hound, I turned to the secretary with a haughty look.

“You can leave for now Trevor. Your presence is not required.” The young man quickly bowed and left with a way to happy smile on his face. ‘I guess I would have to punish him later.’

It was only when all the people had left that I turned to the tall handsome woman in the corner of the room. She was at least 1,80m with an athletic build and toned muscles underneath golden tanned skin. While her brown hair was cut short and she was definitely more handsome than pretty, her smile was so dazzling that it could easily charm any man or woman. I let out a long heavy sigh and walked up to her. Instead of speaking I stared into her eyes almost as if I was trying to drill into the brain behind. ‘Now what is it this time?’ She opened her mouth in an attempt to speak, but before even a full syllable could leave her lips, I let myself fall forward right into her perky breasts. Her hand landed on my head and for a full minute or two we only stood there with her petting my hair. Sadly nothing good can last forever and she spoke up in her oh so sexy dark smoky voice.

“Tell me, was that just now really necessary?” Despite her speaking I didn’t look up and only buried deeper into her chest.

“You’re not wearing a bra Kassy, again.” I tried to change the topic to her going commando and failed pathetically. Instead of being ashamed she simply lifted up my face with one hand and began painfully squishing it between her fingers. Her left eyebrow was raised and twitched almost comically as if she was seriously enraged. I knew she was faking it, but the reason was solid; I had ignored one of her commands. I wasn’t allowed to do so. ‘Ahh~! I guess I’m going to get punished again.’

. . .

“Janavar, are you ready yet?”

I frowned as I heard Kassy’s voice from the other side of the door. I had thrown her out of my bedroom as revenge for my up-coming “punishment”. I stared at my reflection in the mirror not sure what to think. There stood a naked woman of Indian descent with light brown skin and long black hair. The only thing standing out from my rather average body, were a golden metal collar around my neck and a pair of rather sizable nipple piercings connected through several slim golden chains. While I had to admit that the new accessories were beautiful in the way the gold contrasted to my skin, I didn’t really want to be seen with either of them outside of my bedroom. ‘I have an image to up hold you damn evil woman! Ugh!’ Pushing away my reservations I took a simple red dress and pulled it over, realizing that the nipple chains were clearly contoured underneath the flimsy fabric. I turned to look at myself; together with some large sunglasses I should be safe enough, no one in their right mind would think I was a renowned scientist.

“There I’m done! But don’t think I’m happy about this.” I said with a faked pout.

“Ha! Sure!” She grinned and pulled me closer by the ring of my collar.

‘Oh, who am I actually kidding here? I am a dirty little sub and love every second of this.’ While I didn’t want my colleagues to find out about my interests, I certainly had no problem with Kassy knowing, for she herself was a pervert, though way more on the dominant side than me. We had known each other from work for several years and our relationship at this point had been strained to say the least. Yet it was only about three months ago when our situation had changed and drastically at that too. After a night of generous drinking I had finally plucked up all my courage and found my way into an obscure BDSM club, where very quickly my eyes had fallen upon the sight of Kassy with several people around her worshipping her feet. The next non-drunk memories I had of that night were of me waking up next to her in bed wearing nothing except for a locked dog collar around my neck and kitty ears on my head. It had been a strange experience to say the least but one that I had greatly enjoyed, enough in fact that a week later I had become Kassandra’s Sub and we had begun a secret relationship.

Whilst I had personal contact with several of the other six lead researchers none of them had ever seen beneath my carefully constructed mask of arrogance and superiority, I had worn this mask for so long that it had become more like a second nature to me. Not even Ms. Bennet, the last one of my late foster care workers that I still had contact to, had been spared from it; the only person that ever had broken through it had been Kassy. And now I had a hard time even keeping it up in her vicinity, it was becoming a serious issue as I had even problems controlling my desire at work. I tried to get closer to kiss her but she held me by my collar and with one hand forced me to my knees. I almost wanted to protest but she only smirked and grabbed something from her pocket.

“You know that every pet needs to be on its leash before going out, right? So here is yours!” She proudly presented me with a golden metal chain that had a loop at the end. ‘Damn her she knew that I found gold pretty!’

“Do you not want it?”

“No!” ‘Yes, I do!' I really did, it was so pretty . . . Hearing this Kassy pretended to be shocked and turned away shaking her head.

“Such a shame, and here I thought I would make my pet a present. Well, I guess I’m just going to go on a date with someone else.” She began to walk away but soon enough I sprung up behind and hugged her waist.

“No! Don’t go! It is wonderful and very beautiful!”

“So you do want to be on a leash!”

“Yes.” She turned to me and grinned.

“Say it. Say that you’re a pet that wants to be on a leash.” She was actually now crouching down in front of my still cowering form and began petting my head. ‘Arg! It was so humiliating, but it felt so good! Now that I think about it, does it even matter? As long as Kassy keeps our secret I can act as humiliating as I want to!’ Having made up my mind I decided to turn the tables a bit and make her flustered instead. Instead of answering I placed my head into her lap and began rubbing her inner thigh with my nose always stopping just before her crotch.

“Mmhhm~, yes Mistress. This pet would love to be . . . on . . . your . . . leash~!” Mission accomplished.

Despite her cool demeanour, incredible charisma and dominant front, she could be quite cute especially when no one was looking. And despite my obvious interest in being dominated by her I still had over a decade of experience being a haughty bitch. Much to my delight it had actually worked this time, for when I turned to look into her face, her cheeks had gained a nice blush.

“G-Good!” She stammered for a second but quickly caught herself and the oh so cute blush was replaced by a predatory smile. She hooked the leash to my collar and pulled me up. Before she was satisfied though, she took a dog ear hair band from somewhere and put it on my head.

“Time for a walk, isn’t it?” ‘And there goes my dignity. Woof! He he.’

. . .

The so called “Walk” had at the beginning been mostly her walking me around the Central-park for a bit and playing Frisbee; well she threw and I had the honour of running after them. It was kind of nice in a weird sort of way; I didn’t have to think about anything and instead could power myself out as much as possible. I never knew how she did it but Kassy had the uncanny ability to know exactly what I needed, even if I didn’t. And apparently sometimes that is pretending to be a dog trying to catch Frisbees with ones mouth.

Sadly we were forced to more or less evacuate when several “wholesome families” threatened to call the police on us, because according to them we were disturbing their children with our perverted act. I actually had been more surprised of them trusting the government police to do anything; most big corpo-area’s around Neo-York had their own security forces that were also far more competent than the pathetic remnants of the police ever could be. Now despite my wondering that didn’t mean I wasn’t pissed at those people. They had ruined my happy fun times! As I was still caught up in the, well, pet play I just maybe might have growled at them. That certainly had not helped our situation. We had quickly packed our stuff and ran away from the angry mob of harpies. Instead we had made our way to a nice bazaar closer to the less savoury Bronx.

“Aw, shit. I’m really sorry Jana. I didn’t think they would be so . . . judging.” Kassy frowned in frustration and crossed her arms; thanks to her still holding on to my leash though I was pulled towards her. I stumbled closer for a bit but after finding my balance again, I leaned my head against her shoulder.

While I could see the various expressions of several other passers-by watching us, in the end I did not care for any of those inferior people. We were almost in the year 2060, if they still had lingering resentment over the way other people spend their dates than they were truly lost. Just like with the people in the park I wondered what exactly they were so upset about, same sex pairs weren’t really so uncommon and most people even if they weren’t sexually inclined for it, would have tried it at least one time in their lives. ‘I mean it would be a waste of 120 years to never have experienced the full spectrum. So that couldn’t be it; is it the leash? Well it didn’t matter.’

In an attempt to show her that I was still happy, I kept up the pet persona and gave her cheek a small lick to get her attention. That seemed to work as she turned around laughing and gave me a prolonged kiss on the lips. While her attention was nice, I didn’t really feel like it at the moment, after all I was supposed to be in pet mode! She began laughing even louder when instead of kissing her back I simply kept licking her face. It was funny enough that I joined her in the laughter and we kept at it for almost a minute. Finally Kassy had gotten her body back under control and while wiping away a tear from her cheek she looked around the small marketplace. Apparently something had caught her fancy as she smiled at me brightly and pointed to the ground beside a tree.

“I have found something I want, but pets aren’t allowed inside, so sit!” I looked around and found a bench to sit on, but when I went towards it my Dom simply pulled me back with the leash. “Silly girl! Dogs don’t use benches, hmm, sit!” And pointed to the ground again. ‘Okay, now this is really humiliating! I’ll show her tonight exactly what I think of it!’ But despite my frown I sat on the ground and even answered in the only way I deemed right.

“Woof!” Apparently she had found it funny enough as she pat my head and happily skipped off towards a nearby ice cream parlour. Almost at the same time she left I noticed a group of people, two women and two men, pointing at me and whispering to each other. I decided to ignore them but luck was not with me; footsteps came closer and soon enough they had me surrounded. I looked up and instantly regretted going out today, the women infront of me was oddly familiar; I could have sworn that she was a junior researcher on my team. If there was one thing that could be said about having me as a boss than I guess it would be that I could be a little harsh, when I noticed a failure the person responsible would be punished. This woman in particular had been punished, a lot.

“Will you look at that, a lost puppy. How delightful.” Her voice was dripping with spite and malice. ‘She can’t have recognized me right? That is impossible! No, I should just stay in character and she’ll soon realise that I’m someone completely different. Wait . . . what the fuck is that!?’ I half heartedly growled at the annoyance but my focus had already shifted to something behind the group. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw her raising a smartphone but I didn’t pay it any mind, as there was something way more fascinating happening.

There was what seemed to be a crack, not in the ground or one of the little stalls, no there was a crack in the air itself. It seemed to grow and as it did the wind around us turned into a storm. It was beautiful, never had I seen something that had fascinated me this much. I pushed past the people running around and made my way towards the growing anomaly. Barely had I registered my hair whipping around, throwing off the dog ear band; it wasn’t important anymore. The rift whispered to me, it drowned out the voices screaming both in my head and outside telling me to run. It told me of a world behind the mirrors a world magic, something so nonsensical that it had to be true.

It promised me power untold if only I would release it, enough power to smite and dominate the world. Something in me wanted that power. I was now only a meter away from it; the rift spewed out all kinds of natural phenomena, flames, light, shadow, wind but most of all energy in its most devastating and useful form. Arks of electricity crackled around me, gently lapping at my form, leaving loving burns and blackened skin. My mind reeled up one last time and with a single tear falling down my cheek I looked into the fearful face of Kassy standing several meters away, screaming at me to get away from the rift. I smiled, my hand touched the anomaly and the world around me exploded into blinding light and pain.

I could feel the power coursing through me, burning my flesh from the inside out it was as if it wanted to destroy my very being but instead it kept me alive to suffer endlessly. I fell to the ground, the asphalt blackened and melted, some parts simply burned away when an ark of electricity hit it. And there on the ground I felt my body changing it warped to the power coursing through me. It stretched and collapsed, bones were breaking and muscles ripped; the pain had long ago abandoned me, my nerves were burned dead. The collar around my neck seemed to twist and constrict, crushing my throat beneath it. My air ways got cut off and finally I felt the sweet release of oblivion as I slowly asphyxiated and my vision went black.

It was such a fitting end for a date was it not?