Bright School: But I'm A Princess Prologue (Patreon)

The early morning sun crept up over brown-swept hills overlooking the Antelope Valley Heritage Festival site in sunny Lancaster California. A line of trucks had been parked along the side of the street alongside the park where the festival was being held and with the first rays of the morning beaming down on them, the drivers and moving crews began piling out of their vehicles one by one to get set up. Even those that didn’t jump out and start setting up with the sunrise got to work once they heard the clamor of trailer doors opening and closing or the heavy thuds and clangs from poles or wooden stall frames.

Leo had arrived quickly enough to get a decent parking spot before all of the other event staff had taken everything close to the entrance, cursing the heat already as he stepped out onto the warm brown dirt on his way to even warmer concrete. He was used to California weather for sure, but the desert temperature was especially ridiculous in the summer.

“Who the fuck decides to live out here?” He grumbled, sweat already forming on his forehead while he made his way toward the central stage headquarters.

The stage was already being set up with remarkable quickness, though the crews didn’t have an especially long time to get things finished before the actual festival started in earnest. It would only be twenty or so more minutes until families, studios, schools, and associations would be showing up to dress in their traditional outfits, cook their ancestral food, and play whatever music their particular branch of the world was known for. Leo’s job was to find the best and brightest among them and nominate them to be judged by the festival’s sponsors in order to determine which of them was going to win a yet undisclosed prize for whichever their rich, bigshot panel decided was the most pleasing to them. To a talent scout, this of course meant the same thing it did every time: wander through the crowds a few times and pick out the hottest college-age girls that could sing, dance, or play an instrument without making an ass of themselves so that the rich assholes in charge of the judging could put her on America’s Got Talent or some shit like that. In all of his years doing the job, he’d never seen anyone over 27 win, nor had there ever been a male contestant get picked for the final 3. That’s just how it was. These kinds of affairs always ended up being more of a talent show than a festival, and even then they were more model searches than talent shows with some poor girl winning the chance to be the next Hollywood bimbo on live television.

It was shitty, sure, but not really his problem. To Leo, a job was a job and it didn’t matter if it was for an ultimately evil cause if he ended up getting paid for it. It was that very thought that pulled him to his feet and back out to the blazing sun. The festivalgoers were starting to arrive now and he had to look as not-part-of-the-event as he could despite walking around in a suit and tie in the blazing 90° heat.

(1)

“Welp….” He grumbled to himself, wiping more sweat from his increasingly dirty brow. “Time to get this show on the road.”

It was a nice saying, he thought. Perfect for a long and miserable day.

The first stall he’d seen set up appeared to be Mexican in nature based on the number of sombrero racks sitting around. Leo looked at the festive hats and sighed, certain that each one was “lovingly handcrafted in the manner of the hard-working, indigenous peoples of” blah blah blah. The culture and all that was great. For anthropologists. Not Talent scouts. No producer wants to put someone making straw sombreros on tv for an hour and a half twelve times over. Or even once for that matter. That sort of thing was better left on cheap tiktok reels promoting an etsy store or some shit.

“Hola! Welcome! Sorry, but we’re still setting up the stand right now, but is there something I can help you with?” Came a cheerful, accented voice from just out of view.

Leo looked the girl up and down with a kind and pleasant smile on his face. In the infinitesimally small amount of time it took his eyes to fully take in the figure of the girl he was looking at and process what she looked like, she’d already been removed from the running as a possible candidate for top 3. She was sweet with a cute smile and a bright, happy face, but unfortunately, her obnoxiously gaudy green dress and a couple hundred pounds of blubber were going to make her an impossible choice.

(2)

“Hey there, beautiful! I’m not really looking for anything in particular, just browsing around and making sure everything is going smoothly. You gonna be performing something here later on?” He asked, his tone a perfect facsimile of kindness and support.

“Yep! My name is Mariana Gonzalez and I’m going to be performing the Jarabe, also known as the Mexican Hat Dance later on in the afternoon! It’s super fun and also open to the public just in case anyone who wants to tryyy~” She beamed jovially, a singsong in her voice telling him that she was hoping he’d be enticed to do so himself.

“Well, I’ll definitely try to make it back here on time then.” Leo said, smiling and walking away politely, well aware of the subtle celebration going on behind him as Mariana giddily bobbled with excitement alongside a few other fat Mexicans that Leo assumed must be her family.

“Alright…That’s a no from me, dawg…” The suited man stated in a hushed, gravelly mumble as he jotted down the words “Fat Mexican Dance”

After buying a drink, Leo took a stroll around the agricultural buildings to kill time while the other exhibits set up. He did genuinely enjoy seeing the animals and petting the odd goat or sheep having grown up on a farm himself. Too bad for him there were mainly pigs on display at this particular event. It wasn’t even that he didn’t especially like pigs; it was just that they were too coarse for him to enjoy petting for long. Eventually, he moved out to the more wooded area where he saw some dark-skinned guy setting up what looked to be some sort of Native American display. It was cool that that was being represented, but he doubted it’d be anything more than some kind of hooting and hollering gibberish as some hay-covered doofus hopped around with hula hoops all over his body. It was a shame, really. That kind of thing was definitely cultural, but no one was ever really going to give a damn about it. Oh well, he thought. Sucks to suck.

What really caught his eye was the setup NEXT to the Native one. A group of bustling martial arts students with katanas tucked into their belts muddled around a makeshift stage while a beautiful, albeit a little naïve-looking Japanese girl in some kind of flashy gi top gently glided around the area, seemingly practicing moves to a dance.

Glode? Glied? Leo wasn’t exactly sure how to properly refer to gliding in the past tense, but what he WAS certain of was that the girl in question was going to have to do better than her Asian Karate fan dance or whatever it was she was doing if she wanted to win. For a moment she looked over at Leo, giving him a subtle smile.

(3)

She knew, he thought. Just like the Maria girl knew. It made sense, he rationalized. He was walking around in a suit extra early on the day of a bunch of performances in Southern California; it was only a matter of time before people started putting it together. Granted, it usually happened after a while anyway, but it helped when it took them longer to get there so he could see their show, play, song, or special talent before they tried to ham it up for the one talent scout in the audience. Still, it didn’t matter to Leo that he’d most likely been caught. What mattered to him was that cute or not, this chick was too skinny for modern audiences and woefully flat-chested. She stood a better chance than Mary, but not by much.

With a smile and a subtle motion, Leo gave a barely noticeable, serene smile and a tiny, nodding bow. The girl’s smile widened as well to give the impression that she was merely accepting a kind compliment and returned the bow as if they’d shared a secret together.

“This bitch thinks she just got noticed.” Leo chuckled, shaking his head.

A secondary thought passed through his mind telling him that she WAS eye-catching enough to stop him, but he shrugged it off.

“I guess we’ll just put her in the ‘Maybe’ category.” He said, making a scribble in his notebook.

“Asian….Skinny….” He paused, trying to resist the urge to chew on his eraser long enough to finish his thought. “Workable.”

Continuing on, Leo found a stone wall passing through the fairgrounds and took the opportunity to sit down in the shade on one of the lower areas as it tapered down to fence height. Sighing, Leo tapped his finger repeatedly on his notebook in mild irritation. Without thinking, he patted his flat, empty coat pocket before remembering that today, like every day for the past three weeks, he’d removed any trace of nicotine from his house, car, and person. Truth be told, he was doing fairly well and he was mostly through the hard part of the quitting process but it still irritated him on a fundamental, physiological level to have a craving he couldn’t satisfy.

There were more people milling about now, he realized. Music had started up in various areas of the fairgrounds and the rides meant to bring more visitors had begun running as the day wore on. Leo looked over at an archway embedded into the wall and observed a group of Middle Eastern people wandering around, all patting each other on the back or hugging themselves for who knows what. Amongst them was a moderately pretty girl wearing a hijab and a full, body-covering dress. Her face was a little puffy for Leo’s liking, but the fact that she was wearing makeup indicated that she might not be entirely a lost cause.

(4)

“Arab….Covered….Fat face…..Big tits? ” He wrote casually.

Another for the Maybe pile, he figured.

For a while, Leo sat enjoying the shade, his jacket off and neatly folded in his lap as the group of probably-Muslims milled around in the brief distance. He leaned up against a wall, feeling himself become drowsy as a sort of electric tension filled the air, making it difficult to think. No matter how much Leo tried to focus on a particular object in the distance, he still felt his eyelids pressing down on his eyes until there was an almost painful pressure pushing down on them as his consciousness wavered.

Bing

It was the sound of his phone that snapped Leo out of his daze, suddenly free of the cloying, sedative pressure that he’d felt only a moment ago. He stood up and reached into his pocket, expertly flipping the device into the upright position and input his lock screen PIN without even thinking about it. Blinking rapidly, Leo looked down at his phone and saw that the event staffer had sent him a text almost an hour ago but no new messages that would have made the notification sound that woke him up.

“What the…fuck…HOLY SHIT!” He said, jumping to his feet before throwing his sweaty jacket back on and reading the text.

[Found our candidates yet? ]

Leo took a deep, relaxing breath before responding.

-Almost. Have a few who look promising. Gonna check back in soon

[Good. We’ll be starting in a few hours.]

A few hours. It was astonishing to him that he’d ALREADY been out there in the heat for a few hours without realizing it. And his little power nap had knocked him out for at least half of it, leaving him at the starting block with no real prospects for the top 3 finalists. He looked down at his notebook and prepared to sigh, but nearly had a heart attack when the words he read were not the ones he’d thought he’d written.

“What the…fuck? Did I have a bout of heatstroke or something?”

Leo looked around at the stalls and exhibits, surprised at the number of people milling about. He glanced down at his notebook and reread the last passage.

“Hot Arab chick. Skirt. Longlegs. Dark eyes. Probably dancer.”

The words weren’t the ones he remembered writing, but try as he might, he couldn’t remember what it was he believed he was looking for. That and with the evidence presented before him, he couldn’t disagree. Leo looked out into the bustling crowd and standing before him was a stunning image of a dark-haired beauty with smoky eyes and a strikingly slim figure. She wore a colorful dress that fell over a pair of long, smooth, tawny legs that completed the package. At that point it didn’t matter if she had a talent or not, she was getting nominated. He approached immediately and asked about the Arabic exhibit before she could get away.

(5)

“Okay so what I do is called Gothic Fusion bellydance. My whole family has been teaching me ever since I was a little kid and I have now performed at over 50 different venues across the state!” The girl said proudly.

“How would you like to perform at one more after your set here?” Leo asked, a tinge of actual happiness bleeding into his practiced, perfect smile.

“Oh! Uhh…Of course! But I’ll need to work out the bi-“ She began.

“-Well that’s excellent and I’m glad to hear that because you’ve been nominated as one of the top 3 finalists for the culture festival talent show!” Leo cut in, swiping through his phone as he google searched the area for local cuisine.

The girl looked stunned. “Oh! That’s…Awesome… but isn’t that kinda too good to be true? I mean I haven’t even been on stage yet. You’ve never seen me perform.”

“Oh but that’s where you’re wrong,” Leo responded quickly. “You danced at Shiraz over there on 20th Street when I went last time, didn’t you?”

It was a lie. In fact it was worse than that. It was a lie AND  a gamble, but Leo hadn’t gotten to the level he was at without taking a few educated risks now and then.

“Oh my god! You saw me?! I can’t believe I didn’t even recognize you!” She beamed happily.

“Yeah, well…Here’s the thing. I’m uhh….Not supposed to tell you this, but I’m a Hollywood talent agent. I’ve been in town for a few weeks now (a lie) on the hunt for new and upcoming faces in the community (another lie). I tend to stay in the dark, shady corners of places so as to not be seen (not a lie) by the normal folks. By the time your set was over, I’d spoken to a few people (didn’t happen) about whether you were going to be here performing or not. You were a shoo-in before the festival even started (all lies).” Leo said, his practiced speech littered with believable bullshit that would prick the ears of any would-be starlet.

In his opinion, the trick was to make them feel special. The easiest way to do this of course was to attack a rival and make them believe you were on their side and offering some kind of platform for petty superiority. In the absence of an enemy to shit on however, claiming that someone had a leg up on the competition was usually effective as well. Granted, it was important to only give the impression of an advantage, not sure victory. Promises of certain success were bad for business, as any failure put Leo in the crosshairs of pissed off people with broken dreams and was in general less believable. But if he told them they were simply being rooted for with special consideration, Leo maintained plausible deniability while making his target want to try that much harder to do whatever he said needed done.

The girl agreed to meet at the stage at the appointed time and took her leave, giving Leo free reign to roam the fairgrounds once more.

“One down.” He said.

“Asian girl. Mixed brunette. Hot. Pink kimono. Influencer?”

The words almost shook in front of Leo’s eyes as he struggled to focus on them, but he did remember seeing a standout over by the Japanese dojo group. Martial arts were especially great because the lot of those idiots were all trying to get into movies almost without fail. All he’d have to do is walk up, convince the bitch she was gonna be the next Lucy Liu, and bing-bang-boom, that’s two finalists in the bag.

Bing

Once again, Leo efficiently pulled out and unlocked his phone to see a message from Darla, his main handler and point of contact for the festival.

[Hey. Mr. Gideon says that he is especially looking for females aged 16-24. If you have to throw a guy in to make it seem fair, go for it, but make sure that we have 2 beauty queens in the finals.]

-Got it.

Gideon, he thought to himself. Never could trust a man named Gideon. The only people whose parents were cruel enough to name their child Gideon all turned into psychopaths and serial killers. And money made it worse. Thankfully, Leo figured, he only had to pick out 2 more candidates and convince them they were going to Hollywood before he could wash his hands of the ominous event sponsor.

When he made his way back to the Asian exhibits and stalls, Leo immediately spotted his quarry taking a multitude of selfies in front of a pagoda laden with food, much of it apparently home grown. As he approached, he could tell that she was already a bit short for his liking but easily pretty enough for print work or even film. Clad in a feminine and playful pink yukata, the gorgeous girl really only looked-half Japanese to the discerning eye of the talent scout. Granted, Leo DID have a thing for mixed Asian girls that allowed him a bit of insight into what features made what ethnic mix, especially since his first girlfriend was Scots-Korean. She had long, flowing brown hair with blonde highlights that lent to the feeling that she was definitely non-traditional Japanese or really even part of the culture outside of being born to at least one Asian parent. All of that coupled with the fact that she was taking picture after picture, holding up peace signs or making dick faces at her phone without any regard for or even awareness of anyone else gave Leo the impression that she was probably little more than a youtuber or instagram model. Still, he didn’t need her to be talented. He needed her to be hot.

(6)

“Excuse me miss,” Leo said politely, making sure to look as humble and approachable as possible.

“Hm?” The girl said, glancing over briefly before looking back to her phone.

She didn’t care for the humble approach, Leo thought, affirming his belief that this girl was at the very least raised American. He figured this wasn’t a girl who was going to give a shit if he made himself small, so he immediately switched gears to the fast-talking hotshot producer approach.

“Excuse me.” He began, but that was merely an opener to let her know that he was in fact talking to her before he continued his spiel.

“Hi I’m Leonard Stryker with Model Productions Management in Hollywood and I need to have a word with you right now.”

“O-oh! Uh, okay. Hi, what’s up?” The beautiful Asian girl said, her face filled with a mix of concern and wonder.

“Great. So I am actually pulling for you to audition today as a model and possibly film star in the talent show. You ever done any screen work?” He asked, each sentence blending into the next to prevent her from getting a word in.

“Well no I-“ She stammered.

“-That’s no problem, don’t worry. What we’re gonna do is give you a script that you’re gonna memorize and act out as best you can, alright? Can you do that for me? You do that you’ll make it big, I promise. Got a lot riding on you. Here, take my card and be at the stage at 3PM and we’ll be in business. I have a lot of stuff to get done in that time so I’ll see you there, okay?” Leo continued, handing her a dummy business card and then walking away even as she tried to respond.

“Oh, um. Okay!” She said, calling after him with an excited look in her eyes.

“Excellent!” He called over his shoulder. “Knock em dead, sweetheart.”

As the day wore on, Leo took a short lunch break at a food truck before moving on to his final candidate. With a piping hot philly cheesesteak and a larger Pepsi cup than he actually needed, he sat down and watched the people go by. It was always relieving to just be able to sit and watch people instead of predating them, he thought. In the past, he’d had a habit of working too hard and not allowing himself time to relax or be part of the population. He began to see people as either beneath him or something to take advantage of whenever possible. Until that is, he met his wife.

Leo’s nostalgic train of thought was broken by the sight of a Native American girl scowling at him from across the way. He hadn’t seen her at the stall earlier, but he was certain that she was a part of their group. Leo caught himself staring, lost in the gaze of the young girls’ palpable hatred for him as he wondered what it was exactly that he’d done.

She began walking over.

(7)

There was something different about her, he thought. Almost all of the other girls within the target age demographic had put at least a modicum of effort into looking their best, but this girl seemed completely normal. So normal, he realized, that the only reason it stood out to him was due to a kind of fake, surreal quality to the rest of the festival. It felt to her that either she didn’t belong, or that the fair wasn’t the way it was supposed to be somehow. His eyes were drawn to a set of circular tribal amulets that she wore all her outfit as she approached, the anger coming off of her like tangible heat. She said nothing as she moved towards Leo, staring directly in his eyes before throwing an emptied hot dog boat into the trash can and walking away.

Leo stared for a moment, stunned. It was a rare thing for him to feel so taken aback so he let himself sit in the feeling and enjoy the feeling of what had just happened before a single word slipped humorously and almost happily off of his tongue.

“…..Bitch.” He said, almost chuckling to himself.

Leo arrived at the Mexican stall he’d approached earlier that morning with a level of suspicion and discernment. Had it always been so casually decorated? He’d expected something more….Cultural than what lay before him: a large barbecue show with a large group of mostly Hispanic people all grabbing plates of freshly cooked meat for money. He flipped open his notepad and struggled once more to read what he wrote down without the words trembling off the page when he tried to see through them to what he felt lied beneath.

“Mexican. Thick. Curvy. Dancer. Body Positive/Torrid Material.”

With strained eyes, Leo looked around and found exactly who he’d been looking for. There was a plump-waisted Latina in a black sombrero and a frilly Mexican-style top that struggled to keep her fat, natural breasts in check with only a set of crisscrossed lace in the center. Below that was a not-unappealing muffin top that swelled into generous, child-bearing hips sealed into the tightest pair of jeans the talent scout ever did see.

(8)

But something still felt wrong. It was like he was seeing her incorrectly but didn’t know how or why. Something bothered him about the way she looked and acted. Like she wasn’t the same girl he’d run into earlier on the outside, but on the inside she remained and could be found if only he could just look hard enough into her. His eyes began to ache fiercely as he looked at her and suddenly everything around him seemed to assault his senses. Every colorful outfit or curvy teen caused his head to pound just by being present and the air began to thicken with an electric tenseness he could almost hear, like a sort of whirring in the air that only grew more and more densely concentrated as time went on. Leo felt his eyes close and ache dully against his eyelids like they were being pushed gently out of his head. He stumbled towards a bench and dropped his weight onto it as he desperately, tiredly attempted to massage his skull with his own hands.

“Excuse me, sir? Can I help you or something? You look like you’re having a hard time. Need some water?” A charming girl’s voice said in front of him, the pain and tension completely missing as if they had never even existed.

Leo opened his eyes and smiled. She was cute, he thought. In fact, she might just be the person he was looking for.

“Hey darlin, I appreciate the concern. I was just getting over a headache.” He said.

The cheery blonde looked down at his extra large Pepsi cup and smiled ditzily.

“Well no wonder. You’re totally drinking like…..A shit ton of caffeine right now. You need to get some water, especially in this heat, y’know?” she said.

The girl was gorgeous in Leo’s opinion, especially for someone who looked like she’d never had plastic surgery. Wide, curvy hips and toned waist with just enough padding to barely obscure her abs. She looked to be some kind of mix of white and Hispanic or Italian, maybe even Greek or Czech, Leo couldn’t tell, but she was definitely still Caucasian. This was especially obvious when it came to her generously large boobs that puffed out tastefully under a black spaghetti strap shirt while still causing it to rise up and show off a good amount of delicious looking midriff.

(9)

“Of course, cutie. Tell me, you entering the talent show by any chance?” Leo asked straight away.

“Umm, yes I am actually! I’m gonna be singing my own rendition of Hips Don’t Lie by Shakira and I even put together my own dance routine. Why do you ask?” She replied, optimistically looking at him as if she expected him to say more while she stared at him with stars in her eyes and her hands clasped together.

She DEFINITELY had worked out who he was. No matter, Leo thought. He knew the perfect escape.

“Let’s just say I’m….looking forward to your performance.” He said with a wink and stood up to walk away, leaving the hopeful teenager squealing with excitement.

Bing

[Almost time]

The text message stressed Leo out a bit. He thought he had more time to get back to the stage than he did. Still, whatever the boss wanted he’d get, so the suited man picked up the pace despite knowing the heat was wreaking havoc on his body.

Making his way past the Asian-themed stalls once more, Leo caught sight of one of his other finalists and gave her a knowing nod once they made eye contact.

“…Yeah, so like I was just telling them like, we have this whole cultural festival but like no one wants to be like ‘hey, I’m white, come look at this fucking cheese wheel,’ you know? So I was just like well why don’t I just do it like a book report, you know? Japanese culture has been my thing for like…fucking ever, so I decided to do like a Japanese theme for my booth. Oh. Hold on. Just walk with me. I gotta get ready to go onstage.

Anyways, so like I was saying. I found all these kinds of fabrics and like kimonos and stuff and I was like OH, MY GOD, I could totally make that, but like wear them in a way where there’s like panels missing or just like shorter so it’s all sexy instead of just lime…a bunch of layers? Like, it’s fucking hot out. I’m not tryna be out here in a fucking gown, you know?” She said, momentarily cutting her conversation with another pair of girls short to head down to the main event before returning to her description of what she thought was a genius plan.

Leo had picked her almost entirely off her looks alone. The busty blonde was the absolute ideal of standard American beauty all wrapped up in a moderately offensive but undeniably sexy Japanese-themed silk package. They’d spoken briefly and the girl had been completely self-absorbed and dumber than a bag of dead cats, but that didn’t stop the hot pink of her outfit from perfectly flaming her round, plastic tits in a way that made her too easy a choice to not include in the top 3.

(10)

Once backstage, Leo managed to run into the last girl he’d needed already practicing her routine in the sandy area where no one could see. She wasn’t the bustiest or the curviest, but unlike the other candidates, this one seemed to be the best fit for the top 3. In the Mexican stall girl, he found someone who at least had some level of ethnic diversity to present. With the yukata girl, Leo had found the hot, exotically dressed bimbo everyone wanted to see. Now finally, he had a girl who actually had some kind of cultural talent to perform outside of just singing or acting out commercial scripts on command.

This girl was also blonde but had long, golden dreadfalls woven into her hair and danced in a striking red bra and skirt complete with dangling, golden jewelry that did look authentically Arabic. Granted, Leo didn’t know whether or not her dancing was actually any good or if it was just more than he was used to seeing, and then there was also the fact that there was absolutely NOTHING Arabic about her no matter how hard she shimmied. But shimmied she did, and every time it happened, her still-large natural tits would practically vibrate and ripple in place with the motion. That alone was worth putting her onstage for.

(11)

With the show about to start and all of his tasks for the day completed in a close, but timely manner, Leo had very nearly sat down and put his feet up before a commotion drew him to the front of the stage.

When he rushed into the wings on looked out, he saw that the Native American girl from before had apparently slipped past security, set up, AND hijacked the MC microphone and was now screaming to the crowd about the event sponsors being corrupt and whipping the people into a frenzy.

“THIS NEW ACADEMY IS NOTHING MORE THAN A SOULLESS LAND GRAB, ABUSING GOVERNMENT PROTECTIONS IN ORDER TO SNATCH UP MORE AND MORE NATIVE LAND!! MY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN HERE FOR CENTURIES. THESE PEOPLE ARE THE ONES TRYING TO ROOT US OUT ONCE AND FOR ALL!! THEIR NEW UNIVERSITY IS TO BE BUILT ON NATIVE SOIL, BUT ONLY AFTER THEY’VE BULLDOZED HOMES AND BUSINESSES THAT THRIVED ON RESERVATION!! I WILL NOT ALLOW THIS SCHOOL TO BE BUILT! I WILL STAND AGAINST THIS OPPRESSION! AND I WILL SEE GIDEON ASHFORD HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE DAMAGES SUFFERED BY MY PEOPLE AT HIS HAND!!!!”

Leo’s jaw was hanging off of it’s hinges, dumbfounded at what he was seeing. Not only was this little brown girl secretly a stealth expert with enough stage presence to turn her into baby Castro,  she actually had the crowd roaring in support for her rage-fueled tirade of a speech. He was just about to force himself into action to run out and stop her when another woman began making her way to the stage.

The event director was in every sense of the word plastic perfection. Even during the initial meetings he couldn’t take his eyes off of her insane cleavage and gravity-defying bolt-on tits. Her luscious curves and obscenely high fashion clothing betrayed her appearance when it came to her age in Leo’s opinion. The repeated surgeries and augmentations made her look to be about 30 years old despite him discovering afterward while running a background check on her that she was only 22. No matter her appearance, however, Lucille Ashford was known in her own circles to be a ruthless businesswoman with her hand in some very large enterprises. She was reported to nearly effortlessly dance through negotiations like they were nothing while always getting her way. She was also known to be quite the sex fiend and an insatiable, sometimes even incestuous slut, having been rumored to be seen on several occasions having sex with both her own mother and father. Even more interesting was the fact that Lucille had 2 children, but no baby daddy was ever seen in public with her.

“You are amazing!” Lucille called out, her natural voice no match for the sound system equipped microphone, but still gathering shocked murmurs and the attention of the crowd.

(12)

Lucille was handed a microphone of her own by a skittering stagehand just in time for the girl to notice her presence.

“Ladies and gentlemen, have you ever seen such fire? Such an…IMPASSIONED performance?” She asked, her posh voice swaying the people to begin cheering for her opposition instead of with her.

“I understand your grievances and I assure you that the people of your tribe have been compensated in full by our company during the purchasing of the land you so cherish. It was given willingly and taken graciously. However, what has fascinated me most today wasn’t silly cultural dances or pretty clothes or simply BEING ethnic; it was you. You and your…ferocity. Your STRENGTH. I have already seen what I need to see in terms of performances. What I need now…is your name. I must know. Who is this stunning, powerful warrior of a woman who I have the privilege to meet as equals?” Lucille gushed condescendingly, finishing with a plastic-perfect smile of fascination and joy that bore not even the slightest hint of feeling threatened or even defensive.

The girl nearly snarled into the microphone as she spoke. “I am Kateri Serrano of the Morongo Tribe. I KNOW you didn’t purchase that land fairly. You WILL give it back.”

“Of course! We can reopen negotiations immediately, but today I want to award you and celebrate our meeting in hopes that our two cultures can grow and coexist together!” Lucille said, effortlessly inspiring the crowd to applaud her as Kateri shuddered with rage.

With wide, swaying hips and an ass so thick that Leo couldn’t tell if it was plastic or just the result of a fat transfer, Lucille made her way to the stage and handed Kateri a small white card and a trophy declaring her the chosen finalist by the celebrity director herself. It might have been shitty that none of hos choices got to even try to perform, Leo thought, but if this was going to be the result of them getting shut out, then he had no problem telling each of them to fuck right off and call him from one of the fake numbers listed on each of the dummy cards he’d given Hips Don’t Lie Girl and The Bellydancer. Only Yukata girl had actually been given a real business card for her to contact him later, but that was for a multitude of reasons. He’d give her a few chances to impress him with either a surprisingly good performance or surprisingly good head, and if she did neither he’d kick her to the curb. If she actually managed to get in good with him after that, Leo thought…..Then he could be bothered to actually learn her name.

Kateri held onto the card, but threw the trophy onto the ground as security began ushering off the stage. Lucille then picked up the trophy and upon seeing that it hadn’t been damaged said “Well, it looks like the contest is back on after all!”

Storming back to the Morongo stall, Kateri read the card aloud to herself in a discerning grumble.

“Congratulations dear winner, we humbly invite you to study to your heart’s content at our prestigious new venture, Ashford Academy: A subsidiary of Bright University. This acceptance letter guarantees you admission to the inaugural class as well as a full-ride scholarship in the subject of your choosing for any level of degree. New students will be expected to live on campus during the duration of their studies to avoid logistical difficulties. Use the Special Personal Passphrase written on the back of this card to complete your registration online.”

The dark-skinned girl nearly snorted at the ridiculousness of the idea of her attending such a school, but the realization of just how much access she would have to the facility and its' critical infrastructure she would have if she went even for a short time was enough to make her rethink her decision. She flipped over the card and stared at the hot pink cursive letters written on it.

“……But I’m A Princess, huh?” She said, her eyebrow quirking upward involuntarily. “We’ll see if that’s still what you think after the first semester’s over. I’ll show you a fucking princess.”