Allison's hands hovered over the keyboard and she hesitated, before hitting the short-cut key for Compile and Run. She waited with baited breath for a moment as the computer thought... and then let out a frustrated grunt as the compiler spat out seventeen syntax errors.

"Dammit..." she mouthed, drawing a raised eyebrow from Lisa who was seated at the PC just to her left. With a sigh she fixed her eyes on the screen, scanning the code for problems, but no matter how much she stared nothing stood out. She changed a few token variable names, and checked all her functions and comments... but when she hit the key again exactly the same problems occurred.

She kept staring at the code, looking it over and over, glaring and scowling it as the minutes ticked by. Soon fifteen minutes had passed with no progress or clue what was wrong, and she slumped back in her chair and let her arms drop to her side.

"Something wrong?" Lisa asked, her fingers pausing over the keys she'd been rattling the whole time. Allison nodded in her direction.

"It's giving me a ton of errors. I must have a typo somewhere, but I can't find it." Allison shook her head. She'd assumed that this advanced sophomore Computing class would be as easy as the freshmen one was, and for the most part that was the case, but the freshmen classes had focused on applications that weren't dependant on typing accuracy... and C++ definitely WAS. Allison was unfortunately a slightly sloppy typist, and over the last few weeks she'd found nearly every single way you could ruin a line of code with a typo.

Seeing her friend's frustration Lisa slid her chair over. Like most of the others in this class she was sixteen now, and very sweet with it. In addition to being Allison's best friend, she was usually Allison's fiercest competition for the highest grade on tests. Together, the two of them dominated the intellectual elite of their grade.

But they were both stumped by this C++ compiler.

"I can't see anything wrong," Lisa said after inspecting it for a minute, to Allison's dismay. Ten minutes until the end of class, and she'd hoped to finish this program today. She was just about to call it a lost cause when someone walked up behind her.

"Something wrong?" a male voice said nervously, and Allison glanced up into the face of Matt - a scrawny and nervous guy who was one of the grade's absolute computer geeks. He was staring down at her, his eyes flickering up and down in that irritating "looking at you, not at your goodies" way that boys think fools girls. Irritated, she motioned towards the computer screen.

"We can't figure out what's wrong here. It just keeps giving me syntax errors." Matt leant over her shoulder and she shrank away slightly - it was uncomfortably close for her. After a moment of him glancing at the screen, he leaned forward with a nail-bitten finger and pointed at the screen.

"There. You've got a curly bracket instead of a square bracket." Allison took a look and sagged. That was the case, and it was having a knock-on effect all the way down the rest of the program. Two keystrokes later, it was compiling successfully.

"Thanks Matt," she said, looking up to him. "I can't believe I didn't see that earlier."

"It's OK," he said, his voice squeaking slightly. "It happens to everyone sometimes no matter how good they are..." he added, but was interrupted by a laugh from behind the two of them.

"Hey, check it out!" someone said from behind them - Will, an arrogant, loud-mouthed jock. "Matt's making a move on Allison!"

"Really?" a girl said. It was Simone, and she let out a cackling laugh. "Silicon Brain's trying to hit on Silicon Boobs!"

Allison's face turned red and she narrowed her eyes, but she didn't respond - just hunched over slightly and tried to focus on her monitor.

Just to the side of her, Matt had backed away stammering "no, I-I was ju-just help..."

"Careful Matt," Will said. "With your 'little problem,' if /she/ gave it a suck you might never get it back."

A few others in the class erupted into braying laughter while Allison's face turned a deeper shade of puce. Somewhere behind her Matt was backing off, feebly making excuses to get the others off his back. She didn't turn around, didn't say a thing, just waited for it to stop. To her side, Lisa was grimacing, her face flush with rage, but she didn't do anything. Allison had forbidden her from defending her.



“Boob Story” (preliminary title)
By SJS




The final five minutes of the lab passed all too slowly, and Allison didn't immediately rise from her seat when the bell rang. Instead she waited for everyone else to leave before wordlessly getting up and packing her bag.

Lisa was still here, of course. "Those scum. They never get any better." She almost shook with rage. "Foul-mouthed assholes who think they own everyone else," she continued, throwing her textbooks into her bag.

"Don't worry about them," Allison said, her voice level. "They don't bother me any more."

"Allison..."

"They don't," Allison insisted. "I'm used to it."

"You shouldn't need to get used to it," Lisa replied. "They should be able to treat you like a person."

Allison just exaggerated shrugging her shoulders, and her chest heaved. "That's just not very likely."



The two of them left the classroom and started heading for the front door of Springfield High School, dropping into a restroom on the way for Lisa's sake. While Lisa was in the cubicle, Allison moved over to the mirrors and stared at herself for a while.

She was a year younger than the rest. At seven years old, she had been sufficiently intelligent to be moved up a year to the second grade, and she'd crested that wave for the past eight years. But she'd always been smaller than everyone else, and when the boys and the girls had been taken to separate classrooms to have some important biological matters explained, she'd got quite worried. She wouldn't need any new pieces of supportive underwear or absorbent pads until a full year after the other girls. She was, as usual, always going to be a step behind everyone else but now the step had got much bigger and she'd wanted to get over it as soon as possible.

If she'd had any idea what was waiting for her, she would have wanted to stay on that step. Instead, when she was eleven, her breasts had started to grow. And grow. And grow. To a scale that was, to her mind, completely ridiculous.

Now she was fifteen, and she glowered at the reflection of her bust in the mirror. 28F now, and still growing. Her bust was huge, and heavy, like carrying a ten pound pack on her torso 24/7. It shifted and jiggled uncomfortably no matter what kind of bra she wore, and sagged painfully when she didn't. It was ridiculously, freakishly... almost wackily out of proportion with the rest of her body - hell, she wasn't even all that curvy below the waist like you'd expect a woman like her to be. But as much as she hated the physical problems these breasts brought her, the reactions they triggered in others were far worse. She, in a word, despised them.

The toilet flushed, and Lisa exited the stall to join Allison by the basins.

"You know," Lisa said as she got some hand lotion, "if you'd just stand up to them..."

"That doesn't work and you know it, Lisa," Allison replied. "If I reply to them, they just push harder. They just want to see me go blue in the face protesting my virginity."

"You don't need to protest anything! Nobody believes you're the kind of whore they make you out to be..."

"Maybe, but they like to. The boys are pervs and want to hope I'm easy," Allison said darkly, "the girls are jealous and want to think I'm a slut, and everyone wants to pigeon-hole me as some dumb blonde whose only chance of success is sleeping her way to the top."

"That's not the way it is at all!" Lisa said. "Nobody cares. Only a few self-obsessed jerks care, and all they've done is build up some social momentum - if you just applied some force in the opposite direction, you could turn it around."

Allison just shook her head, and glowered again at her chest.

"It's not momentum, Lisa. It's social gravity." And over the past few years, gravity had definitely become her enemy.

***

They left the restroom and headed for the front door of the school. Every step forced Allison's bust to shift slightly, in a manner that was endlessly irritating but by now all too familiar.

As they walked, Allison thought about what Lisa had said. She didn't think it was very true, really. The stares and glares she got when she walked around in the open confirmed that - lustful looks or jealous glances followed by bitter gossip surrounded her most of the time. Even Lisa had once admitted she was jealous of Allison's chest. But to tell the truth Allison was more jealous of Lisa.

Lisa was... just ordinary. The most remarkable thing about her was her intellect of course, but physically she was nothing special, and yet the guys flocked to her and she was able to revel in it in a way Allison didn't think she'd ever be able to - Lisa was now on her fourth boyfriend and yet nobody thought of her as remotely slutty.

The difference, in Allison's' opinion, was what Lisa called her "weak point" - her breasts were a 'mere' B cup. Lisa still thought this was wasn't enough, but to Allison it seemed perfect. When people looked at her, they saw a person.

Lisa could walk down the street and NOT be noticed by everyone. She had an excellent sense of fashion, and could buy clothes off the rack instead of ordering bras on the internet from brunels.com and getting men's shirts modified. She could talk to a guy and be friends with him, and could go on a date with a guy without him assuming he'd hit fourth base tonight. And if she wanted more... all she had to do was pad!

Lisa could be herself without other people deciding who she was, and if she wanted to be someone else she could change herself. They were qualities that Allison felt like she would never have.

Instead, Allison had to put up with people like those up ahead. A group of senior girls were crowding the doorway to the entrance hall. At the centre of the group was Jessica Lovejoy, who was often at the centre of many things. Jessica's circle of friends was... odd. She was beautiful and had a very strong personality, and was frequently surrounded with a gaggle of guys and girls who practically worshipped her. But as far as Allison could tell, she didn't really like any of them, and only wanted one thing from them - to be entertained. 

Allison had seen Jessica asking a guy to buy her lunch, only to leave it completely uneaten for no real reason. She just loved having power over people, and was constantly testing to see if she still had power. And she liked to test her subjects, to see if they were entertaining enough.

Allison put her head down and tried to walk straight past them, but one of the girls looked at Jessica, who nodded assent, and as Allison approached she raised her voice.

"Hey, Jiggles!" As usual, this nickname was accompanied by an exaggerated shaking of her chest. Allison ignored her. "Jiggles, you're off to see Mr Davies, right?"

Allison slowed by gait slightly. Davies was her 50-year-old Geography teacher. "No. Why would I?"

"Well, I heard he gave you an A+ on your last essay. That means you have to go give him a little 'teachers petting' session, right? Don't want to ruin your GPA do you?"

The group of girls burst into laughter as Allison glowered and turned away. Instead of letting it be, the girl chased Allison, hovering behind her shoulder.

"Anyway, I need some help in his class too, so if you could put in a good word for me in-between orgasms, I'd really..."

She was interrupted when Lisa laughed, much to Allison's surprise. Lisa's face had split into a huge grin.

"Hah! Yeah, Bart told me about your problems in that class. Is it true you said Notre Dame was the capital of France yesterday?" The girl's face fell. "Come on..." Lisa continued, "if you're going to get your information from a Disney movie instead of a book, you could at least pay attention!"

The girl paused, the wind taken out of her sails. She feebly tried to open her mouth, but no rejoinder came out, and a few of the girls behind her were actually laughing. Even Jessica was smirking and shaking her head, and she turned to walk away, followed by her little private army. The girl who'd been so sure of herself just glared at Lisa for a moment, before scurrying off after Jessica. Lisa and Allison could hear her protesting "Seriously, it was a joke! I didn't mean it that way!" Allison watched the door she'd fled through for a moment.

"Did she really say that?"

"I wasn't sure," Lisa replied, "but it definitely looks like it."


They left the entrance hall and walked along the narrow path between the main car park and the track field. Far to their left the football team and the cheerleaders had taken to the field for practice, the head cheerleader's voice booming over Coach Jenkins' thanks to her somehow getting hold of a megaphone. One of Lisa and Allison's friends, Janey, was out there in SHS's blue and white cheer uniform, practising the jumps, dances and poses the football team supposedly needed to do it's best.

Lisa had been horrified to hear her friend was joining in with what she considered a demeaning and exploitative activity. Janey had countered that it was an excellent way to meet hot guys. Lisa had not been able to argue with that point. Allison on the other hand, hadn't really cared about cheerleading one way or another until one joker had ran for Class President with just one campaign promise - that he would force Allison to join either the cheer squad or the swim team. He had been banned from running, but to her dismay had still got a lot of write-in votes.

The two girls passed by the end of the bleachers. A bunch of guys were hanging out on the bottom steps, lounging around a MP3 player that had been wired up to some portable speakers. They were small speakers, but they easily pounded out the bass beat and lyrics of some rapper boasting about how great he was, and Allison found herself slowing down to listen.

"I take the bitch to my crib to give her the show,
Cut open her bra and her thong with my blade yo.
Ah show her the works and make sure that she's well fed,
Give her what she wants and move on to the next ho.

It's a public service. A public service."

It was quite amazing. Amazingly repulsive. Why would anyone listen to that awful misogynistic crap? Why would anyone sing it? Who could possibly act that way and suggest other should? Why had she stopped walking and why was her blood pumping?

She looked up at the bleachers. A few of the guys had stood up, and were looking at her... staring, and grinning at her. And Lisa had kept walking, leaving her alone here for now.

She turned away from them and broke into a a march, a bead of sweat tricking down her forehead. She had to get away from them and catch up with Lisa, and now. She didn't feel safe any more. In truth though, she hadn't felt safe for years.


Lisa turned around, and noticed the look on Allison's face as she rushed to catch up.

"Are you OK?" Lisa asked. "You've gone all red."

"Just..." Allison thought for a moment, and waved idly at her bosom. "Just struggling to keep up."

"Oh, sorry," Lisa said. "I didn't realise I was walking quickly." They slowly walked to the school gate, and Lisa piped up again as they approached it. "Hey, you're not doing anything on Saturday, are you?"

Allison almost laughed. "When do I ever go out at the weekend, unless it's with you?"

"Hm, yeah," Lisa said with a frown. After a moment she shrugged her shoulders, and didn't ask again.


The two of them said bye there, as their houses were in opposite directions, and Allison walked the rest of the way home by herself. It wasn't all that crowded which was a relief, and she was so familiar with this neighbourhood that nothing worried her, but she still saw men and women glancing and starting at her. They talked about her under their breath, whispering and tutting, and a mother walking with her two young sons crossed over to the other side of the road as she approached. Humiliated at the apparent snub, Allison didn't notice them getting into the car parked on the opposite kerb.

When she got to the end of her garden path she hurried to the front door and let herself in. She carefully settled her bag down in the hallway and was pulling off her sneakers when she heard her mother call from the lounge.

"Allison? Is that you home dear?" Allison peeked though the archway leading to the lounge and caught a glimpse of her mother's head over the back of the couch.

"Hi Mom."

"Hi dear. Did you have a good day at school?"

"Yeah, not bad," Allison lied.

"Good," her mother said with a smile. "Oh, a package came for you. It's from Brunels." Allison froze while pulling off her shoe. "You didn't tell me you ordered bras."

Allison flushed, and finally slipped her second sneaker off. "Ah... well, I kinda did. Just... felt I needed some more."

Her mother stood up, and walked around the couch toward her.

"Moving up to the next size?" Allison gulped, and nodded, keeping her eyes directed toward the floor. Her mom stepped closer toward her and put her arms around her shoulders, drawing her into a tender hug. "Oh, Allison... I know this is tough for you, but you don't need to keep secrets from me. You've got nothing to be ashamed of, and I can help you through this."

"I know Mom," Allison replied, returning the hug. "It's just... difficult."

"Did something happen at school today?"

Allison waited a moment, before responding. "Yeah, kinda."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really," Allison replied. "It wasn't anything big."

"Hm," her mom replied. "Well, if you do want to talk about it later, I want to talk about it too." The two let go of each other, and after a moment Allison picked up her bag and started making for the stairs.

"I left the package on your bed," her Mom said. "I'll make dinner early, for half five."


Allison nodded and climbed the stairs, opening the door to her room and dumping her school bag on the bed. It landed next to the plain brown box from Brunels. She tore open the clear plastic envelope on the front and checked the invoice - two 28FF full cups, a sports bra of the same size and a balconette style one she'd probably never wear, if the last fancy bra she'd bought was any judge.

She closed the door and the blinds, and pulled off her cardigan and blouse. Her bras had been growing tight recently, a now-familiar sensation, and she's quietly ordered replacements herself... with her first few bras, her mom had treated shopping for new ones like a small celebration - so proud of her growing daughter it almost smothered her. Now, Allison really didn't want to draw any more attention than necessary

She tried on one of the new full-cups. It fit snugly, just as it should have, and covered her chest nearly all the way up to her shoulder blades. It looked like it had been built in a shipyard - re-enforced and underwired, the sole concession to femininity was a small pink bow where her cleavage would have begun. She turned to look at herself in the mirror, and as usual let out a dismayed sigh at the parody of womanhood her bust had become. Double-F... it was completely ridiculous.


She could remember a time, long ago, when she'd stood here while trying on her first B-cup. Growing worried already, she'd asked her mom how large her breasts were - the chat at school yesterday had been about how if you wanted to know how big you'd be, you just needed to look at your mom. Chances were, you'd end up a lot like her.

When her mom had told her she was a C, Allison had been so relieved. She'd been almost gleeful right until mom had come back a few hours later with a photo album, and said she needed to talk to Allison about something.


Back in the present day, Allison sat down on her bed and opened the middle drawer of her night stand, drawing out that photo album. She'd borrowed it from downstairs, and felt weirdly compelled to check it every so often, as she grew to resemble more and more the women inside.

It was titled "One Perfect Day," and it was the album that contained her parents wedding photographs. She flicked it open to the first page, a double-page spread of her parents and their direct family outside the church.

On the left page were her father's family - him, granny and grampa, two of her aunts. Every one of them were smiling in the sunshine and her father had the biggest smile of all, dressed in his sharp tuxedo. Her mother was next to him, of course, radiant in the sunlight and her shining white dress. Her parents were stood behind her, and her sister and brother off to the side. It looked like a very happy day.


Back then Allison had been intrigued to see these photographs, as she had never seen pictures of her mother when she was younger before. It had been a delight to compare her parents back then with them now, but as she'd flicked from page to page with her mother's arm around her, she'd started feeling like something was wrong with the wedding dress. It had been quite low cut, but it seemed like her mom's cleavage was much longer and deeper than it could have been. She was dismissing it as a trick of photography until she saw the photo of her parents having the first dance at the reception.

"Mom," Allison had said, "isn't... well," she paused, unsure how to continue, and then swallowed. "Isn't there something funny about your boobs in these pictures?"

"There is, but it wasn't very funny I'm afraid," her mom had replied.

"They're... very big, aren't they."

"They were. I've had breast reduction surgery since then. When I married your father, they were F-Fs, my natural breast size, and very unusual in any other family. Our family on the other hand... well, see for yourself."

And then, to Allison's mounting horror, she's started flicking though the album, pointing out four or five women - herself, granny, her sister and a pair of more distant relatives whose names Allison couldn't recall. Every one of them had been abnormally busty. The smallest was Granny, a "mere" DD; then one of the other women was a F, and Mom and the other mystery woman had been FFs. And then... then there was Mom's older sister, Aunt Penny, who had gained frankly-unbelievable H-cups. Allison understood a little about how it felt to be a guy when she saw photos of her aunt - all she could do was stare.

After what felt like an age, Allison had leaned backward and asked, with a sense of dread, "Mom... am I going to end up looking like that?" Her Mom had sighed, and taken the album from Allison's lap.

"It's genetic, of course. We're on the very far end of the breast size bell curve. Like anything genetic, it can skip a generation, or be overridden by a dominant gene. I have plenty of female relatives who could have turned out like me but didn't." Her mom put her hand of Allison's shoulder. "So you might not get much bigger. But judging by how much you've grown so far, I think there's a good possibility you will."

"But..." Allison had started to sniff, tears coming to her eyes. "But I don't want to!"

Her mom had put her arms around her, and promised to help her with everything, but that evening Allison had cried herself to sleep, and withdrew into a series of increasingly re-enforced and underwired shells.


Fifteen year old Allison flicked though the album, looking for pictures of her mother. She'd been a FF back then, which meant that Allison now matched her for cup size. It didn't feel like much of an accomplishment.

Her eyes fell on a photograph of Aunt Penny. There were a lot of them - someone had considered her very, very photogenic. She seemed to be genuinely enjoying herself. She'd worn a low cut dress that showed off her cleavage and massive bust to maximum effect, and in nearly every photo she was posed with or draped over a different man, a predatory look in her eyes.

Allison didn't know what to make of Aunt Penny. Mom said she had majored in Media Studies in college, before moving on to become an executive at a software company despite not knowing a thing about computers. Allison would have liked to ask her about that, but she'd have needed the dubious services of an Ouija board for that - Aunt Penny had died a few years after Allison was born, because of complications after contracting HIV. It didn't look like she'd got it from a blood transfusion. Allison got the feeling she wouldn't have liked her aunt very much.

She set the album aside, and her eyes drifted to the balconette bra. She might never wear it, but it couldn't hurt to make sure it fit. She quickly changed into it, and inspected herself in the mirror. It was comfortable enough, though it didn't support as well as the full-cup, but Allison was more concerned with how much it revealed - even though it wasn't very low cut, she wasn't comfortable with revealing any amount of skin and cleavage. She picked up the album and checked the picture of H-cup Aunt Penny in her low-cut dress, and then looked at herself in the mirror. Definitely still smaller. She wasn't that far gone yet.


After changing back to the full-cup, she sat down to study for a while. This was really the only time she felt like herself now, when she was alone and absorbed in some new learning. She probably studied much more than she needed to to maintain her perfect GPA, but this was her comfort food. TV, movies, music, video games, internet - they were all well and good, but whenever she lost herself in them she risked encountering some piece of exploitative drivel that brought her back to reality. That risk simply wasn't there when studying the chief exports of Poland.


She went to eat dinner after a while, and then hurried back upstairs. Dinner had been early tonight because Allison had a karate class at seven. With the way people treated her, she'd realised that learning some self-defence was probably vital and enrolled at the dojo in the mall a few years ago.

She changed into her sports bra (which contained enough wire to qualify as a breastplate) and a black bodysuit, put on her normal clothes on top of them and stuffed her gi into a backpack, before charging down the stairs and out the door.


***


The walk to the mall was long, but at least it was May and still light outside. She walked briskly, trying to avoid people's gazes, hunched over slightly due to the weight of her bust and out of hope it would make it's size less obvious. Doctor Hibbert would have probably killed her if he'd seen her deliberately assuming a bad posture, but his Hippocratic oath presumably barred him from that.

She left East Forrest street and headed toward the mall, usually just half an hour away. The main feature between there and here was the Montgomery Burns Memorial Park, an expanse of green land that had been about to be turned into the new City Toxic Refuse site until the tragic moments at a PTA meeting a few years ago. Now it was dedicated to Burns - although ever-present graffiti under the dedication read "double-check that he's dead."

She cut through the park, taking an indirect route to skirt around the woodland paths and keep to the grassy open areas. This being a Thursday evening there weren't many people here apart from a group of boys playing with a remote controlled airplane, but they paid her no heed.

It took her twenty minutes to cross the park. After she passed the statue dedicated to Burns at the eastern exit (the original head had been removed and never reattached, leaving the statue with a replacement hunk of stone that was a slightly different colour and made him look quite tanned) she could see the MallMart up ahead. It sat on the site of the old Springfield Historical Society, that entire area having been swallowed whole by this redevelopment project a few years ago. Now four floors of shopping ecstasy sat there, dozens of stores selling everything you didn't need but wanted. Movies, music, games and toys, chocolate and confectionery, popcorn makers and portable pizza ovens. DIY kits for men who had trouble getting up ladders, and home hairstyling kits for women who would very soon regret it.

And then there were the clothing stores - shopfront after shopfront of female and male - but mostly female - mannequins, wearing the latest styles and accessories. Ravine, Springfield Connection UK, the iStyle store, Gear and Clothing LA... Allison wasn't really interested in any of them. 

That wasn't strictly true. She supposed she liked dressing up as much as any girl, but those stores were only good for buying clothes worn below the waist. When it came to tops, dresses, jackets and underwear worn on the torso setting foot inside was a massive waste of time for her - they simply didn't carry anything in her size. She'd first realised she might have a problem years ago when she'd gone to buy a new bra and all the bras in her band size had been training bras. That had been embarrassing, but nowhere near as humiliating as the time she'd asked the assistant in Gear and Clothing if they had a certain top in her size.

"Sorry," the assistant had said, looking down her pierced nose at Allison, "but you could try Donner Outdoors. They might have something on special that fits you."

Sceptical, Allison had crossed the mall to find Donner Outdoors had a sale on tents.

The only clothing stores she could visit for tops were Classy Lassy (but she refused to shop there due to an overpowering sense of taste) and Royal Majesty, a store for the obese or gangly whose small ladies section supplied her with a few shirts and tops that were too baggy about the shoulders and waist. But they were better than nothing. (FAR better than nothing!)

Allison headed through the mall to the central plaza, where a double-helix of escalators wrapped around the main elevator shaft. She headed for the ascending one, but there was a small promotions table near it, and as she approached she caught the eye of the young man manning it. She put her head down as he watched her and smiled, and tried to walk straight past him, but he approached her as she passed and held out a clipboard.

"Excuse me Ms," he said, his eyes occasionally falling to her bust, "but I'm here with Otto's Auto Insurance and we've got a great special offer for you. If you have just one year driving experience we can guarantee we can quote you a better rate..."

Allison walked right past him, but he followed her. "Do I look like I have a car?" she asked sarcastically.

"First time buyer, huh?" he replied. "Well, if you act now, we can also help you get that first car for college or work!"

"I'm fifteen," she said, and his eyes widened and immediately fell to her bust again, lingering longer. "I can't even take lessons yet. So stop following me, I'm going to my *karate* class," she added with a hint of threat in her voice. He looked away.

She made it on to the escalator, and didn't look back, but she could swear she heard a low whistle.


The dojo was up on the fourth floor, sandwiched between a law firm and a private language school. Allison changed out of her normal clothes and into her gi, tying her yellow belt about her waist. For someone who was such an overachiever, it stung her a little bit that she was only a yellow belt - most of the girls and boys who joined at the same time as her and stuck about this long were green belts at least, and a rare few were brown belts or almost black belts. But her own progress had mainly been hampered by her boobs - it was a cruel irony that the reasons why she needed to learn self-defence made it much more difficult.

The lessons always followed the same plan - warm-ups and stretches, kata and drills, a lecture and demonstrations. The least amount of time was spent actually practising with a partner, which was always to Allison's relief, but it did happen. Boys and girls were allowed to pair up during practices, and to Allison's usual dismay the guys seemed quite keen on sparring with her, but there were strict rules - no hitting girls in the tits, no kicking guys in the balls. Boys would sometimes complain that this gave Allison a massive unfair advantage, but to no avail, and they still subtly competed to try be matched up with her, jockeying for position before the drills so that they were next to her when pairs were made.

They hadn't seemed to realise that the way to endear yourself to a beautiful girl is not to go beat her up with your martial arts skills.

Today, however, she ended up paired with a thirteen year old girl named Shelly, who shook in her gi as they faced off. Allison had intended to go easy on her - she was at least two inches taller after all - but things hadn't gone as expected. The smaller girl was faster and deflected most of Allison's attacks, while Allison was heavier and slower and couldn't seem to move quickly enough. The weight on her chest, the way her bra chafed, the way such a tight bra affected her breathing... she just couldn't keep up. It was like fighting with an anaconda wrapped around her torso.


She was glad when her sensei called an end to the lesson. She was, as usual, utterly exhausted, sweating and short of breath. She quickly changed back to her normal clothes without really talking to any of the others and fled the mall.

It was past eight, and growing dark outside. Allison hated the dark. It was difficult to look like she did in the light, but much more dangerous to do so in the dark, and she didn't want to be caught out when the street lights came on. The worst kind of men came out at night, the ones who assumed that a woman on the street after dark was only there for their amusement... Allison wanted to avoid them at all costs.

She hurried down the street, her head bowed, backpack bouncing on her back, breasts not bouncing thanks to her sports suffocater. After a few minutes walk, she came to the park, and her usual dilemma - she had taken the shortcut though here earlier, but that had been in the light, and as the shadows lengthened so did her fears. As night fell in Allison's mind, every tree held a potential attacker, ready to threaten her in the very worst way. She knew that sick men passed though here at night... there was a burlesque house to the south of the park, a place where they went to sate their perverted needs. Its very existence made her feel a little ill inside, especially since a persistent rumour said she was already working there.

A substantial portion of the path was through the woods. If someone were to decide to take advantage, she couldn't stop them. And Lord only knew she always seemed to bring out the worst in men.

Even the shadows on the statue of Burns make it look like he was leering at her.

Shaken, she turned right and went to walk around the edge of the park. It took a half hour longer this way, but she couldn't risk heading though the park, not at this time of night. Still, even though she was staying out of the park, she put her hand in her pocket and threaded her finger though the pull string of her personal alarm. She just felt more secure that way.


As she walked around the outside of the park railings, Allison thought about her self defence classes. It all seemed pointless... she didn't have the strength, breath or range of movement to do it properly. She couldn't even stand up to a younger girl... what was she supposed to do if she was attacked?

She couldn't learn to fight, and to make things worse attending classes brought her out here at this time, the last place she wanted to be. She'd rather spend every night at home, where it was always safe and she could study without interruption. It was just pointless...

She passed the northern entrance of the park, and saw a man in a trench coat walking toward the centre of the park. He stopped at the edge and went to take a shortcut right through the trees.

No... she'd continue with the lessons for now.


45 minutes later, she arrived home. Her father asked how things went, as usual, her mother worried about why she was back late and she lied that she'd stayed behind to help pack up, as usual. And Allison fled upstairs, to study and sleep, and await the next awful day at school.