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"Simone, your mission is to find the secret lab here and bring the files back to HQ."

The recruit tapped her ear twice in confirmation. She was surrounded by people, all wearing labcoats which fit them a lot better than her stolen one fit her. But they all looked down at tablets or clipboards as they rushed between identical, neon-lit corridors. As long as she moved with a sense of purpose and didn't make eye contact, she would be able to get around undetected.

It was easy to avoid eye contact, the other staff either had other things to look at or were the sort of nerds who would immediately shy away from a pretty woman. Plus, she was scanning all over the walls and ceilings. There were no security cameras around, or if there were they were very high-tech, there were no visible infrared lights or any of the sort. But there was also no indication of any sort of secret passage.

She would probably need to get into one of the senior offices and look around.

She knew the map, she would just need to try to tailgate someone through a security checkpoint. Or steal one of their pass cards. She kept her eyes peeled, alert for any particularly distracted technicians or managerial-looking people.

All of her senses were focused. Her instincts were polished enough to avoid detection, to not stand out. She just needed to find some lead in all the stimuli around her.

There was something.

At the edge of her hearing, there was a noise.

More than a noise, there was a pattern to it. Stops and starts, irregular but clearly not random. The pattern was immediately recognisable, even without hearing it fully. It was something she, like any person, was perfectly adapted to hear.

It was quiet, almost imperceptible, human speech.

"Some sort of glitch with the tannoy?" Simone mumbled to herself, before quickly catching the words in her throat and pursing her mouth tightly. She quickly glanced around, none of the distracted staff around her had noticed her little outburst.

She took a deep breath, clearing her head and stopping her from blurting out anything again.

And, more importantly, letting her focus.

.... be.... -et.... -nd....

Okay, so there were words, but she still couldn't make them out. That felt like something she should have had a reaction to. She stayed still, letting the other workers rush around her. She closed her eyes so she could better focus.

be calm... be quiet... serve and obey... be calm...

Of course! It was a subliminal broadcast, probably to keep the super-smart technicians in line and not questioning the villainous operations of the lab. Pretty clever, really. But Simone was even more clever. She knew exactly how to avoid getting influenced by subliminal messages!

She just needed to...

"Now what was it?" She mused out loud.

She was pretty sure that she needed to just focus more on them. She had managed to detect the words before they had started to affect her thinking, so now she just needed to lock on to the words, and drown them out with her own thoughts.

Ooooh I'm thinking so hard! Be calm. Yeah these hypnotic messages can't stop me. Be quiet. There's no way I can be influenced now. Serve and obey.

This was how any secret agent fought off subliminal hypnosis. Sure, Simone was still in training, but she always got passing marks in theory tests.

Just focus suuuuper hard. Be calm. Don't let anything else in. Be quiet. Let the words wash over my mind. Serve and obey.

She just had to calm down. She just needed to not make a fuss. She just needed to be a good worker. She needed to serve and obey the owners.

Be calm. Be quiet. Serve and obey.

And then the room and the people around her dissolved. For a moment, there was an angry red flash coming from all around her. A buzzer echoed through the room with an angry tone. Then the world disappeared into a lattice of white lines, unfolding like wires as they separated to reveal the Agency's training room.

"Simone, you need to be aware of sub-conscious threats before they emerge, remembering your training after you're exposed leads to remembering the wrong things."

"I know, I know." Simone rubbed her knuckles along both temples for a moment, feeling the bones bounce against her skull with a slight register of pain. "Sorry, I messed up this time. Give me a couple of minutes to clear my head."

"Of course. Scenario two will start in five minutes."

It always seemed so easy in class (well, it didn't actually, but it didn't seem as hard)! But in the 'real world', it was impossible to keep all the various threats she could face in her head at once. There were physical and mental traps to consider.

But now she knew this was a mind control resistance practical.

She would not embarrass herself again.

She brought her fists down to her hips and gave a cheeky smile to one of the many monitoring cameras around her. The countdown she had been running in her head hit zero.

Again, the green room turned black, crossed with high-tech wireframe imagery which quickly resolved into a new arena.

She was surrounded by shining metal walls. Shouts echoed off every smooth surface. She ducked against a wall and waited for her assignment.

"Recruit, your mission is to rout the enemy combatants."

Then the shouts resolved into recognisable words, along the lines of "intruder!", "get her!", and the like. She peeked around a corner to see at least half a dozen people in security gear.

All of them clutched something in their hands. Something firearm-shaped.

Simone grinned. This was her kind of test.

She kept her breathing steady (which, she had to admit, was actually a bit easier after some enforced relaxation), waiting for her chance to strike.

The footsteps slowed down before they reached the turn. Simone's smile grew. It would be boring if the goons weren't programmed to be competent. Her heels rose off the ground, her toes tense and ready to bounce into action.

A helmeted face made a cautious advance around the corner. As the man was still taking in the pretty intruder, her arm had wrapped around his neck, forcing his face down into her waiting knee. Her foot landed and swept around the corner to catch his legs, to bring his full body prone in front of her and behind her cover.

She examined his armaments. Standard tactical defensive gear, no sidearms, and the gun had a strange concave shape to the barrel. It seemed high-tech as well, with a tiny screen on the side displaying various numbers seemingly controlled by dials near the trigger.

Simone recognised it. After all, this was from the part of the textbook she actually enjoyed.

Hypno-guns were not especially cool firearms, but they were good to be aware of. In her hands she would rather have something to knock people out than have to deal with misty-headed goons, but in enemy hands it was good to know about. As always, she'd just need to avoid getting hit in the head. One blast of the waves would fill her head with a dizzying fog, and after the third she would just be completely empty, drooling mindlessly as she was lifted and carried off to a conditioning chamber. And of course the waves could go through any thin blocker like trying to shield herself with her arms.

But body shots with a hypno-gun were worthless.

Which meant it was one crack shot against six fake dudes which she was mostly immune against.

"Easy."

She rolled forwards, so she could see down the corridor, but her head was a lot lower than the assailants were expecting. She raised her arms, finger on the trigger. With one eye open she took easy aim at an armoured head and pulled.

The effects of the hypno-gun were not visible, but she remembered the concept was that it sent a supersonic vibration (hence the little poof sound that came out of the barrel) which would resonate through armour and bone to cause a specific sort of shake-up in the guard's head.

As well as invisible ammunition, the hypno-gun had no recoil. She had aimed and fired two more times before anyone reacted.

Three men swayed on their feet, hands open and guns dropped on the floor. Two more had their weapons trained on Simone, and two in front of them were unfolding and activating electrified batons.

Dodging the two shots was an easy task, she just had to spring from her crouch into a forward run, taking her head completely out of their sights. One of the semi-hypnotised goons was her first target. Even in his scrambled state, he was capable of recognising a threat, and his hand lashed out to grip her by the neck.

His hand was stronger than she thought, she couldn't even loosen his hold.

Her eyes darted to the side to see a concave barrel pointing at her. She definitely couldn't afford to be hit by even one hypno-shot with her head already starting to fade into a red, pulsing mist from lack of oxygen. She made an erratic push to one side with all her weight, not enough to escape the chokehold but enough to physically move her attacker. With the momentum, she threw her knee up right between his legs.

For one thing, she was a trainee spy, dirty fighting was part of the job. Plus it wasn't like he was real and needed to worry about fertility.

She twisted out of the loosened grip and gave a final, sharp push to the man's solar plexus. Already dizzied by the mental assault, he fell to the ground.

As he fell, he revealed the image of two advancing, armed guards, and two more behind him with weapons trained on her position, tracking her for any dodging. She was basically trapped. If she moved forward, she would be shocked, paralyzed, hypnotised and brought in for brainwashing. If she went to the side, she would also probably get shocked, and definitely get hypno-beamed. If she retreated, she would still probably get beamed, and she would get no closer to completing her mission.

But Simone had gone down.

And then she had picked up the hypnotised man's dropped weapon, and in three smooth motions put a hypnotic shot into the skulls of three of her assailants. Again, she rolled forwards to avoid the shot from the one remaining mentally capable opponent, picked up one more discarded weapon.

One more pull of the trigger, and there was no-one in the room with the mental faculties to actively target her for an attack.

"Mission complete, I'd just need to double tab them all and bring their compliant bodies in for questioning."

The metal cage faded into the matrix, and this time the holographic environment erupted with green and a happy ding tone.

Back in the training room, she spoke to a random point in the ceiling - she was surrounded by all sorts of monitoring equipment, but she didn't actually know where the cameras were.

"And that's how the top scoring trainee on marksmanship does things." Simone couldn't keep the cocky smile off her lips.

"Yes, yes, we expecting good things in that scenario. Take a seat, scenario three coming in another five minutes."

She didn't reject the offer, explosive and quick though the fight was she had been on her feet for the whole exam so far, it was nice to have a rest. Even if it was on a cold metal chair which didn't even have a back to it.

In retrospect, she really should have known better.

"Simone, your mission is to escape."

As the new simulation set in around her, she was forced backwards so that her back was against the flat, hard surface of her 'chair'. A quartet of metal bands emerged from it, binding her arms and her legs. A final larger band snapped into place around her waist.

She wriggled her limbs and found to now surprise that the restraints held fast. Her arms hurt as her bones smacked against stiff metal, and her legs were quickly growing uncomfortable just from the fact that only a thin layer of fabric separated them from the freezing band. The restraint around her waist was, at least, comparatively comfy, serving more to restrict her squirming than to really keep her held fast in place.

She looked around, happy at least that her head could rotate, but didn't even see any walls. There was no light source in the room, and not far beyond the table there was just an endless, empty void. Clearly, whoever had designed this trap did not want her to think about the possibility of escape.

She did wonder how she could see the silvery sheen of her examination table.

She craned the neck, letting her head roll a bit on the smooth surface so she could look straight upwards. Again, the sight really should not have surprised her.

Suspended some ten feet above her head was a large conical piece of apparatus. That was really the only way to describe it, all she could see was thousands of blinking lights, wires and what might have even been pistons inside its surface. It was, in a way, reminiscent of an old-timey hairdryer, mixed with a schoolkid's science experiment.

Even were it not for the theme of this exam, Simone would not have needed to think twice about what that thing would do once it was surrounding her head.

As if it were triggered by that ominous thought, the contraption started to vibrate. A low mechanical whir filled her ears before settling down to an almost subliminal rumble. And the hairdryer-brainwasher started to descend.

Her fingers, trapped though they were, could still flex enough to touch her own stomach. All that could achieve was tickling herself, but she knew there were all sorts of gadgets at her waist. But that was just a but too far down her body. Just slightly too much of a stretch.

She wriggled her arm, but brought only more dull, cold pain. She simply couldn't move her thin arm through the tight metal band. Her fingers just couldn't reach.

whirrrr

The machine descended, uncaring. Lights blinked in a scintillating pattern. Simone knew what was coming, and what they would do to her.

It would be easier to stare at the lights, let them lull her into a trance. Just to be like a moth to a flame, plunging into her oblivion instead of fighting against it. Struggling had brought her only pain and frustration. She just needed to wait a few more seconds, and it would be over.

It would be over, and she would fail.

She couldn't slap her own cheeks, but she could pinch her stomach. The jolt of warm pain snapped her out of it, and let her pull her eyes back to her own body.

whirrr

She still didn't have time. But at least she still remembered she had a way out. She lifted her body as much as she could before she was up against the metal ring of restraint. She awkwardly twisted her waist, trying to roll her utility belt so that a certain blocky device was in line with her right hand.

whirrr

The lights were unavoidable in her peripheral vision now. She was uncomfortably aware of how her arched back brought to mind far more pleasurable scenes.

Actually, it wasn't that uncomfortable. With the flashing lights, her muscle memory came to the surface and entered her actual memory. Her stomach churned and her thighs burned with remembered pleasure. Her heart pleaded her brain to shut down and just give in. Her facial muscles fought to moan and surrender.

"Y-y-eee--- No!"

She forced herself to bite down even harder on her lip, again using the slight pain to jolt herself back to reality.

whirrr

She was already being affected. She didn't have time.

But her involuntary convulsions had done what she had planned for. Her waist colliding with her restraints had pushed a device upwards and out of her utility belt.

In painful, but possible, reach of her fingers.

She pressed the button, and everything flashed electric blue.

The EMP deactivated the brainwashing machine. It reset, freeing her from its binding.

It also seemed to have reached some of the simulation software, because while she heard the same happy ding, there was no wall of affirmative green to join it.

"We'll need to do a quick reset, but well done, Recruit. Next scenario in ten."

"Simone, your mission is to capture the enemy executive."

After a longer rest than usual, Simone stood in a beautifully decorated office. Everything was plush and rich. Fur coats and scarves hung on a clothing rack behind the desk, a long sofa which seemed to be made of blue fluff went perpendicular to the desk. Behind the ornate wooden furniture sat a beautiful woman. Blue eyes shined behind her spectacles, and orange hair flowed down to her pale, exposed shoulders. Her body had curves so good they almost seemed exaggerated by some horny artist.

She looked up from her monitor at the new arrival. Her discerning, icy gaze peeked over the rims of her glasses.

Simone was immediately, embarrassingly aware of how silly and out of place her Agency 'uniform' looked in such an ostentatious setting.

"Hmm, so the spies sent some salacious secret-agent to seduce, subvert or somewhat sabotage?" She let out an aristocratic chuckle. "My mesmeric mastery may make your masterplan a mistake. Manipulating menaces into mindlessly malleable marionettes is my main merit."

Simone took another look at the woman. It was suddenly a lot less surprising that her white cocktail dress bore a design of apparently random letters of the alphabet all the way down it.

"Look, I don't care about your alliteration gimmick, come quietly and no-one needs to get hurt."

"Hurt!? Hardly! Harlots hesitate to harm heavenly hinds." The woman stood up and gave a seductive swing of her butt. As if that would stop a hardened secret agent from resorting to violence. It was a very nice butt, though, Simone had to admit.

And the woman was quite charming. And, again, very pretty.

"Anyway, august attackers always affirm their appellation."

For some reason, despite the obscure wording Simone immediately understood the request. "It's Simone." Actually, it was more of an order.

"Sweet Simone soon sleepily slips and snoozes. Smoothly seduced, she snores and somnambulates. She sees spirals subconsciously and she submits. Simone surrenders suddenly. Surrounded, sublimated, stolen. In sum, she submits."

The words were bypassing any sort of processing. Simone's only thoughts were that it was, truly, kind of impressive that this woman could weave together those sentences effortlessly.

And, effortlessly, she started to lose her grip on her own thoughts.

Spirals spun and swirled, slowly but surely. She saw solely the spirals.

Her will weakly wilted.

"Wait... no... this is... stupid."

Simone was smarter than this. She wouldn't let her brain be bypassed. She forced her feelings of slight bemusement and real annoyance (at both herself and the quirky villainess) to the forefront of her mind.

Hot anger drowned out the cold, sleepy submission.

Her eyes opened, there were no more spirals.

The woman behind the desk raised her hands above her head.

"Solemnly, I surrender."

Ding. The fancy office was replaced by a wall of green.

"Okay, control, what the fuck was that?"

"You'd actually be surprised, Simone, a lot of recruits fall at that hurdle. You've always been more emotional, though. It's often a handicap, but for that test it's a big asset. Keeps your brain working even as your intellect is sponged up by the alliteration suggestion."

"I choose to take that as a compliment." Simone pouted in no particular direction.

She also knew that she was probably lucky she got twice the time to recover. If she was still beaten down by the previous test, she would probably have been putty in the hands of the simulated alliteration villain.

A hot flush came to her face.

Even if it was a common stumbling block, just the thought of being mentally broken by that was embarrassing.

"How many more scenarios left?"

"Only two, but you've already used up your one failure, so you need to pass both."

"I know, I know. Bring on the next one."

"Affirmative. Recruit, you mission this time is to take down the sleeper agent."

With no further explanation, Simone was plunged into what looked like an abandoned warehouse, with a group of six other agents in similar Agency uniforms. The 'uniform' consisted of a black tank top, loose trousers, and a belt for their various gadgets.

There was absolutely no clue of who the sleeper agent was.

Simone supposed it was going to be some sort of interrogation test. Like the last scenario, she would just need to keep a firm grip on her thoughts so she couldn't be verbally induced into a trance.

She glanced at her fellow agents. They were two men, one buzzcut and muscular and the other more normal sized but with a malicious gaze and half an armoury hanging off his belt; then four women, one tall and dark-haired, one short and blonde, one dark skinned and thin, and one more a tall redhead. There was no obvious sign of enemy influence on any of them.

Simone supposed she would need to carefully interrogate each one, avoiding their verbal traps and keeping away from the earshot of others as they investigated the warehouse.

That thought lasted right up until the dark haired woman produced what looked like an inhaler from her belt. She whirled and shoved it in the face of the blonde beside her. With a press, a cloud of pink vapour filled the air, before it disappeared up the blonde's nostrils and into her mouth. The victim's eyes rolled back, her mouth stuck in a faraway smile. The traitor had already turned to the well-armed man.

Obviously, it was hypno-pheromones. That was good, Simone didn't need to remember any clever trick to avoid this hypnosis method. If she smelled any, they would send a chemical reaction cascading through her brain which would leave her thoughts immobilised and cause her to produce pleasure hormones to the point of extreme suggestibility. If she didn't get a whiff, she would be entirely safe.

She lowered her fingers from her nose - there was no way she would win hand-to-hand against someone with Agency training with only one hand free. She opened her mouth, consciously breathing only through it.

She looked stupid, but she would look even stupider with a dose of the pheromones. All five other agents were either down or stood at a dizzy approximation of attention. They hadn't expected some sort of hypno-foolery. Simone supposed that was one of the lessons here, constant vigilance.

The pheromone spray was the goal. Simone ran forward, taking heavy gulps of air. The traitor saw her coming and sent another puff of pink mist into the air.

Simone swiped at the mist just to see it part around her hand, but the movement made the traitor flinch, and allowed her to get a clean hit at the dark-haired woman's stomach.

Her hand jolted to the side, getting a grip on the arm holding the pheromone spray. The traitor responded by grabbing Simone's free arm. Simone twisted, trying to lever the pheromone arm closer to her to get the evil spray disarmed.

"In a fight, novices don't think, intermediate fighters think through every move, and experts don't think either, they just react." As the two women exchanged holds, the words of the Agency's combat instructor came into Simone's mind. She wasn't yet an expert, she was thinking through every move, trying to work out what hold would get the advantage in their grapple. It was only possible because the traitor's own movements were slow, her brain probably intoxicated and disabled by the hypnotic scents. But the taller woman was still Simone's better on strength, so even as she manoeuvred into better positions, she still couldn't get the upper hand. Every few moments, another puff of pink mist would appear in front of her face.

Simone was being careful, she hadn't smelled a thing.

But there was so much that she could taste it.

There was a fuzzy sensation on her tongue, like it had just run along a ball of fur and then got swaddled in a nice, comfy pillow. Her entire mouth was numb. The mist swirled around her and she could see rings of colour appear inside it.

Her wrist send her a sharp shock of pain as it twisted further clockwise than any wrist was meant to go. She was still fighting.

She needed to find a hold.

But when she looked down, she could barely see the enemy's arms, never mind work out where hers should go. There was only a nice, fluffy, colourful mist.

Simone was prepared for hypnotic effects. She knew what was happening, better than any of the other agents. She closed her mouth, without taking another breath in. She couldn't let any of her senses get exposed to the pheromones.

She didn't have time, she had barely any oxygen in her lungs (and her cheeks were now puffed out with what air she did have so she looked stupid). She had to make one, decisive move.

Her knee lifted to her shoulder and pushed, her foot smacking against the traitor's body and sending her reeling back. Simone landed, bouncing off her bent knee to gain on her staggering opponent. She brought her right arm around in a wide hook.

Simone wasn't strong enough to knock out an adult with a single hook.

But she could hook her arm around their neck if their reaction times were slow and they were off balance. She could use her other arm for support. She could complete a sleeper hold on the sleeper agent.

Neither woman had chance to take in a breath. It was a battle of willpower and lung capacity now, whoever fell unconscious first would lose.

Simone was ready to hold out.

She wasn't ready, though, to have two fingers drive themselves just under her ribs. The tickling, painful sensation made her yelp in surprise.

Her grip loosened.

She took in a gulp of air. Pheromones went right into her nose.

She turned around to see one of the other agents, the redhead, with a welcoming smile.

The other agent's blue eyes filled with swirling colours. Simone's mind was strangled in a fuzzy, fluffy blanket.

It smelled so good.

There were no other thoughts. No pain. Not even any memory of the fight.

Just the amazing sensation of the smell and taste of the pheromones, and of the hallucinated colours.

And the certainty that she was hypnotised. Just like the others.

A buzzer and a flash of angry red returned Simone to her senses.

"That's your second failure, Recruit. You have failed this attempt at the Hypnotic Resistance Test."

In the centre of the wide, empty room walled by green canvas and speckled with cameras and VR projectors, Simone stretched from toes to fingertips.

"Well, I got further than I ever did before." She sighed.

"Yeah, you only had one more scenario to go, you'll easily get it at the next attempt." The voice came from a man in a casual business suit with messy brown hair and slightly rodent-like facial features. Simone recognised him instantly, Tim, an Agency technician. Her friend.

"It's in three months though!" Simone whined. "But, I guess I still need to pass the theory test, too..."

"Hey, don't go worrying about theory." Tim flashed her a grin with two oversized front teeth. "You'll just strain yourself thinking about things too hard after that."

"Yeah, you're right, don't want to ruin it just after I'd recovered from-" Simone stopped with an annoyed grunt.

Tim was dangling something in front of her eyes. A tear-shaped crystal, smaller than her hand. It swung to the left. It swayed back to the centre and past that to the right.

"-hey, what gives? I'm not in the mood for post-exam training!" She made an effort at her whiney voice, but her eyes were following the pendulum like a cat watching a bird. Complete focus, her gaze stuck to it like glue.

"Come on, Simone, after you resisted the Alliteration Woman scenario and the Soak from the Machine scenario, a little pendulum isn't going to hypnotise you." Tim's voice had the annoying sing-song tone that meant Simone was being teased.

"Obviously, but it's annoying. I don't like not being able to look away from it. It's embarrassing."

"It's harmless fun, Simone. You can look away whenever you want. You're not being hypnotised."

Her eyes followed the pendulum religiously. It had stopped looking like a distinct object, but rather just a comforting silver blur. But she could hear Tim's squeaky voice and its authority. He was smart.

And behind the enchanting blur, the room went a solid green. She heard the nice ding. She knew what that meant.

She was not being hypnotised. It was just a bit of fun. "I am not being hypnotised. I can look away whenever I want." Simone spoke in a mock robotic voice.

"Obviously, your brain might be fragile after the Pheromone scenario, but an amazing Agent-to-be like you would never get hypnotised by a pendulum and an unattractive man." There was a another ding. It proved that he was right, that she was resisting the hypnotic spell.

"You're not unattractive, Tim. But you're right that this could never hypnotise me."

"Your body is tired from your test, so when you close your eyes it will be because you want to." Tim snapped his fingers.

Before Simone closed her eyes, she saw the wall become a flat plane of green again. She smiled, she was doing well. Even after all that mental strain, she was still holding on to her free will.

"You are not under a hypnotic spell."

Ding. Simone's body was tired. Her legs and arms were heavy but weightless with numbness at the same time. It was a familiar feeling, but it was different to the usual, because she was fully aware of what was happening and in control of her own thoughts.

She knew that Tim was still swinging his pretty pendulum, she could hear its swishes through the air in front of her. She could focus on them completely, because she was still of sound mind.

She would thank Tim for the extra training and the morale boost, just like she had the last time she failed the test.

She would go home with him like she usually did. She would strip down to her bra the moment the door closed behind her, and be entirely comfortable like that. She would make them a nice couple's dinner and massage him as they watched a movie.

It would all be of her own free will because she was (ding) not hypnotised.

She would even suck him dry once they went to bed. Because he was so nice to her, and most definitely not because she was a vulnerable, mentally fragile, brainwashed hypnoslut.

----

I have done this concept of multiple vignette trances finished off with a full hypnosis before, but I hadn't done it in one of my favourite settings of secret agents before, so now we're doing the 2021 remix of that concept!

Ft. various trances to pander to my friends on here like the Cyril Machine(TM), hypno-pheromones, and alliteration woman. Also a couple of extended fight scenes to pander to my best friend on here, Maurislave .

As is often the case, proofreading provided by my erudite quartermaster Dormiria , drop a Watch if you haven't already!

Description
"Simone, your mission is to find the secret lab here and bring the files back to HQ."

The recruit tapped her ear twice in confirmation. She was surrounded by people, all wearing labcoats which fit them a lot better than her stolen one fit her. But they all looked down at tablets or clipboards as they rushed between identical, neon-lit corridors. As long as she moved with a sense of purpose and didn't make eye contact, she would be able to get around undetected.

It was easy to avoid eye contact, the other staff either had other things to look at or were the sort of nerds who would immediately shy away from a pretty woman. Plus, she was scanning all over the walls and ceilings. There were no security cameras around, or if there were they were very high-tech, there were no visible infrared lights or any of the sort. But there was also no indication of any sort of secret passage.

She would probably need to get into one of the senior offices and look around.

She knew the map, she would just need to try to tailgate someone through a security checkpoint. Or steal one of their pass cards. She kept her eyes peeled, alert for any particularly distracted technicians or managerial-looking people.

All of her senses were focused. Her instincts were polished enough to avoid detection, to not stand out. She just needed to find some lead in all the stimuli around her.

There was something.

At the edge of her hearing, there was a noise.

More than a noise, there was a pattern to it. Stops and starts, irregular but clearly not random. The pattern was immediately recognisable, even without hearing it fully. It was something she, like any person, was perfectly adapted to hear.

It was quiet, almost imperceptible, human speech.

"Some sort of glitch with the tannoy?" Simone mumbled to herself, before quickly catching the words in her throat and pursing her mouth tightly. She quickly glanced around, none of the distracted staff around her had noticed her little outburst.

She took a deep breath, clearing her head and stopping her from blurting out anything again.

And, more importantly, letting her focus.

.... be.... -et.... -nd....

Okay, so there were words, but she still couldn't make them out. That felt like something she should have had a reaction to. She stayed still, letting the other workers rush around her. She closed her eyes so she could better focus.

be calm... be quiet... serve and obey... be calm...

Of course! It was a subliminal broadcast, probably to keep the super-smart technicians in line and not questioning the villainous operations of the lab. Pretty clever, really. But Simone was even more clever. She knew exactly how to avoid getting influenced by subliminal messages!

She just needed to...

"Now what was it?" She mused out loud.

She was pretty sure that she needed to just focus more on them. She had managed to detect the words before they had started to affect her thinking, so now she just needed to lock on to the words, and drown them out with her own thoughts.

Ooooh I'm thinking so hard! Be calm. Yeah these hypnotic messages can't stop me. Be quiet. There's no way I can be influenced now. Serve and obey.

This was how any secret agent fought off subliminal hypnosis. Sure, Simone was still in training, but she always got passing marks in theory tests.

Just focus suuuuper hard. Be calm. Don't let anything else in. Be quiet. Let the words wash over my mind. Serve and obey.

She just had to calm down. She just needed to not make a fuss. She just needed to be a good worker. She needed to serve and obey the owners.

Be calm. Be quiet. Serve and obey.

And then the room and the people around her dissolved. For a moment, there was an angry red flash coming from all around her. A buzzer echoed through the room with an angry tone. Then the world disappeared into a lattice of white lines, unfolding like wires as they separated to reveal the Agency's training room.

"Simone, you need to be aware of sub-conscious threats before they emerge, remembering your training after you're exposed leads to remembering the wrong things."

"I know, I know." Simone rubbed her knuckles along both temples for a moment, feeling the bones bounce against her skull with a slight register of pain. "Sorry, I messed up this time. Give me a couple of minutes to clear my head."

"Of course. Scenario two will start in five minutes."

It always seemed so easy in class (well, it didn't actually, but it didn't seem as hard)! But in the 'real world', it was impossible to keep all the various threats she could face in her head at once. There were physical and mental traps to consider.

But now she knew this was a mind control resistance practical.

She would not embarrass herself again.

She brought her fists down to her hips and gave a cheeky smile to one of the many monitoring cameras around her. The countdown she had been running in her head hit zero.

Again, the green room turned black, crossed with high-tech wireframe imagery which quickly resolved into a new arena.

She was surrounded by shining metal walls. Shouts echoed off every smooth surface. She ducked against a wall and waited for her assignment.

"Recruit, your mission is to rout the enemy combatants."

Then the shouts resolved into recognisable words, along the lines of "intruder!", "get her!", and the like. She peeked around a corner to see at least half a dozen people in security gear.

All of them clutched something in their hands. Something firearm-shaped.

Simone grinned. This was her kind of test.

She kept her breathing steady (which, she had to admit, was actually a bit easier after some enforced relaxation), waiting for her chance to strike.

The footsteps slowed down before they reached the turn. Simone's smile grew. It would be boring if the goons weren't programmed to be competent. Her heels rose off the ground, her toes tense and ready to bounce into action.

A helmeted face made a cautious advance around the corner. As the man was still taking in the pretty intruder, her arm had wrapped around his neck, forcing his face down into her waiting knee. Her foot landed and swept around the corner to catch his legs, to bring his full body prone in front of her and behind her cover.

She examined his armaments. Standard tactical defensive gear, no sidearms, and the gun had a strange concave shape to the barrel. It seemed high-tech as well, with a tiny screen on the side displaying various numbers seemingly controlled by dials near the trigger.

Simone recognised it. After all, this was from the part of the textbook she actually enjoyed.

Hypno-guns were not especially cool firearms, but they were good to be aware of. In her hands she would rather have something to knock people out than have to deal with misty-headed goons, but in enemy hands it was good to know about. As always, she'd just need to avoid getting hit in the head. One blast of the waves would fill her head with a dizzying fog, and after the third she would just be completely empty, drooling mindlessly as she was lifted and carried off to a conditioning chamber. And of course the waves could go through any thin blocker like trying to shield herself with her arms.

But body shots with a hypno-gun were worthless.

Which meant it was one crack shot against six fake dudes which she was mostly immune against.

"Easy."

She rolled forwards, so she could see down the corridor, but her head was a lot lower than the assailants were expecting. She raised her arms, finger on the trigger. With one eye open she took easy aim at an armoured head and pulled.

The effects of the hypno-gun were not visible, but she remembered the concept was that it sent a supersonic vibration (hence the little poof sound that came out of the barrel) which would resonate through armour and bone to cause a specific sort of shake-up in the guard's head.

As well as invisible ammunition, the hypno-gun had no recoil. She had aimed and fired two more times before anyone reacted.

Three men swayed on their feet, hands open and guns dropped on the floor. Two more had their weapons trained on Simone, and two in front of them were unfolding and activating electrified batons.

Dodging the two shots was an easy task, she just had to spring from her crouch into a forward run, taking her head completely out of their sights. One of the semi-hypnotised goons was her first target. Even in his scrambled state, he was capable of recognising a threat, and his hand lashed out to grip her by the neck.

His hand was stronger than she thought, she couldn't even loosen his hold.

Her eyes darted to the side to see a concave barrel pointing at her. She definitely couldn't afford to be hit by even one hypno-shot with her head already starting to fade into a red, pulsing mist from lack of oxygen. She made an erratic push to one side with all her weight, not enough to escape the chokehold but enough to physically move her attacker. With the momentum, she threw her knee up right between his legs.

For one thing, she was a trainee spy, dirty fighting was part of the job. Plus it wasn't like he was real and needed to worry about fertility.

She twisted out of the loosened grip and gave a final, sharp push to the man's solar plexus. Already dizzied by the mental assault, he fell to the ground.

As he fell, he revealed the image of two advancing, armed guards, and two more behind him with weapons trained on her position, tracking her for any dodging. She was basically trapped. If she moved forward, she would be shocked, paralyzed, hypnotised and brought in for brainwashing. If she went to the side, she would also probably get shocked, and definitely get hypno-beamed. If she retreated, she would still probably get beamed, and she would get no closer to completing her mission.

But Simone had gone down.

And then she had picked up the hypnotised man's dropped weapon, and in three smooth motions put a hypnotic shot into the skulls of three of her assailants. Again, she rolled forwards to avoid the shot from the one remaining mentally capable opponent, picked up one more discarded weapon.

One more pull of the trigger, and there was no-one in the room with the mental faculties to actively target her for an attack.

"Mission complete, I'd just need to double tab them all and bring their compliant bodies in for questioning."

The metal cage faded into the matrix, and this time the holographic environment erupted with green and a happy ding tone.

Back in the training room, she spoke to a random point in the ceiling - she was surrounded by all sorts of monitoring equipment, but she didn't actually know where the cameras were.

"And that's how the top scoring trainee on marksmanship does things." Simone couldn't keep the cocky smile off her lips.

"Yes, yes, we expecting good things in that scenario. Take a seat, scenario three coming in another five minutes."

She didn't reject the offer, explosive and quick though the fight was she had been on her feet for the whole exam so far, it was nice to have a rest. Even if it was on a cold metal chair which didn't even have a back to it.

In retrospect, she really should have known better.

"Simone, your mission is to escape."

As the new simulation set in around her, she was forced backwards so that her back was against the flat, hard surface of her 'chair'. A quartet of metal bands emerged from it, binding her arms and her legs. A final larger band snapped into place around her waist.

She wriggled her limbs and found to now surprise that the restraints held fast. Her arms hurt as her bones smacked against stiff metal, and her legs were quickly growing uncomfortable just from the fact that only a thin layer of fabric separated them from the freezing band. The restraint around her waist was, at least, comparatively comfy, serving more to restrict her squirming than to really keep her held fast in place.

She looked around, happy at least that her head could rotate, but didn't even see any walls. There was no light source in the room, and not far beyond the table there was just an endless, empty void. Clearly, whoever had designed this trap did not want her to think about the possibility of escape.

She did wonder how she could see the silvery sheen of her examination table.

She craned the neck, letting her head roll a bit on the smooth surface so she could look straight upwards. Again, the sight really should not have surprised her.

Suspended some ten feet above her head was a large conical piece of apparatus. That was really the only way to describe it, all she could see was thousands of blinking lights, wires and what might have even been pistons inside its surface. It was, in a way, reminiscent of an old-timey hairdryer, mixed with a schoolkid's science experiment.

Even were it not for the theme of this exam, Simone would not have needed to think twice about what that thing would do once it was surrounding her head.

As if it were triggered by that ominous thought, the contraption started to vibrate. A low mechanical whir filled her ears before settling down to an almost subliminal rumble. And the hairdryer-brainwasher started to descend.

Her fingers, trapped though they were, could still flex enough to touch her own stomach. All that could achieve was tickling herself, but she knew there were all sorts of gadgets at her waist. But that was just a but too far down her body. Just slightly too much of a stretch.

She wriggled her arm, but brought only more dull, cold pain. She simply couldn't move her thin arm through the tight metal band. Her fingers just couldn't reach.

whirrrr

The machine descended, uncaring. Lights blinked in a scintillating pattern. Simone knew what was coming, and what they would do to her.

It would be easier to stare at the lights, let them lull her into a trance. Just to be like a moth to a flame, plunging into her oblivion instead of fighting against it. Struggling had brought her only pain and frustration. She just needed to wait a few more seconds, and it would be over.

It would be over, and she would fail.

She couldn't slap her own cheeks, but she could pinch her stomach. The jolt of warm pain snapped her out of it, and let her pull her eyes back to her own body.

whirrr

She still didn't have time. But at least she still remembered she had a way out. She lifted her body as much as she could before she was up against the metal ring of restraint. She awkwardly twisted her waist, trying to roll her utility belt so that a certain blocky device was in line with her right hand.

whirrr

The lights were unavoidable in her peripheral vision now. She was uncomfortably aware of how her arched back brought to mind far more pleasurable scenes.

Actually, it wasn't that uncomfortable. With the flashing lights, her muscle memory came to the surface and entered her actual memory. Her stomach churned and her thighs burned with remembered pleasure. Her heart pleaded her brain to shut down and just give in. Her facial muscles fought to moan and surrender.

"Y-y-eee--- No!"

She forced herself to bite down even harder on her lip, again using the slight pain to jolt herself back to reality.

whirrr

She was already being affected. She didn't have time.

But her involuntary convulsions had done what she had planned for. Her waist colliding with her restraints had pushed a device upwards and out of her utility belt.

In painful, but possible, reach of her fingers.

She pressed the button, and everything flashed electric blue.

The EMP deactivated the brainwashing machine. It reset, freeing her from its binding.

It also seemed to have reached some of the simulation software, because while she heard the same happy ding, there was no wall of affirmative green to join it.

"We'll need to do a quick reset, but well done, Recruit. Next scenario in ten."

"Simone, your mission is to capture the enemy executive."

After a longer rest than usual, Simone stood in a beautifully decorated office. Everything was plush and rich. Fur coats and scarves hung on a clothing rack behind the desk, a long sofa which seemed to be made of blue fluff went perpendicular to the desk. Behind the ornate wooden furniture sat a beautiful woman. Blue eyes shined behind her spectacles, and orange hair flowed down to her pale, exposed shoulders. Her body had curves so good they almost seemed exaggerated by some horny artist.

She looked up from her monitor at the new arrival. Her discerning, icy gaze peeked over the rims of her glasses.

Simone was immediately, embarrassingly aware of how silly and out of place her Agency 'uniform' looked in such an ostentatious setting.

"Hmm, so the spies sent some salacious secret-agent to seduce, subvert or somewhat sabotage?" She let out an aristocratic chuckle. "My mesmeric mastery may make your masterplan a mistake. Manipulating menaces into mindlessly malleable marionettes is my main merit."

Simone took another look at the woman. It was suddenly a lot less surprising that her white cocktail dress bore a design of apparently random letters of the alphabet all the way down it.

"Look, I don't care about your alliteration gimmick, come quietly and no-one needs to get hurt."

"Hurt!? Hardly! Harlots hesitate to harm heavenly hinds." The woman stood up and gave a seductive swing of her butt. As if that would stop a hardened secret agent from resorting to violence. It was a very nice butt, though, Simone had to admit.

And the woman was quite charming. And, again, very pretty.

"Anyway, august attackers always affirm their appellation."

For some reason, despite the obscure wording Simone immediately understood the request. "It's Simone." Actually, it was more of an order.

"Sweet Simone soon sleepily slips and snoozes. Smoothly seduced, she snores and somnambulates. She sees spirals subconsciously and she submits. Simone surrenders suddenly. Surrounded, sublimated, stolen. In sum, she submits."

The words were bypassing any sort of processing. Simone's only thoughts were that it was, truly, kind of impressive that this woman could weave together those sentences effortlessly.

And, effortlessly, she started to lose her grip on her own thoughts.

Spirals spun and swirled, slowly but surely. She saw solely the spirals.

Her will weakly wilted.

"Wait... no... this is... stupid."

Simone was smarter than this. She wouldn't let her brain be bypassed. She forced her feelings of slight bemusement and real annoyance (at both herself and the quirky villainess) to the forefront of her mind.

Hot anger drowned out the cold, sleepy submission.

Her eyes opened, there were no more spirals.

The woman behind the desk raised her hands above her head.

"Solemnly, I surrender."

Ding. The fancy office was replaced by a wall of green.

"Okay, control, what the fuck was that?"

"You'd actually be surprised, Simone, a lot of recruits fall at that hurdle. You've always been more emotional, though. It's often a handicap, but for that test it's a big asset. Keeps your brain working even as your intellect is sponged up by the alliteration suggestion."

"I choose to take that as a compliment." Simone pouted in no particular direction.

She also knew that she was probably lucky she got twice the time to recover. If she was still beaten down by the previous test, she would probably have been putty in the hands of the simulated alliteration villain.

A hot flush came to her face.

Even if it was a common stumbling block, just the thought of being mentally broken by that was embarrassing.

"How many more scenarios left?"

"Only two, but you've already used up your one failure, so you need to pass both."

"I know, I know. Bring on the next one."

"Affirmative. Recruit, you mission this time is to take down the sleeper agent."

With no further explanation, Simone was plunged into what looked like an abandoned warehouse, with a group of six other agents in similar Agency uniforms. The 'uniform' consisted of a black tank top, loose trousers, and a belt for their various gadgets.

There was absolutely no clue of who the sleeper agent was.

Simone supposed it was going to be some sort of interrogation test. Like the last scenario, she would just need to keep a firm grip on her thoughts so she couldn't be verbally induced into a trance.

She glanced at her fellow agents. They were two men, one buzzcut and muscular and the other more normal sized but with a malicious gaze and half an armoury hanging off his belt; then four women, one tall and dark-haired, one short and blonde, one dark skinned and thin, and one more a tall redhead. There was no obvious sign of enemy influence on any of them.

Simone supposed she would need to carefully interrogate each one, avoiding their verbal traps and keeping away from the earshot of others as they investigated the warehouse.

That thought lasted right up until the dark haired woman produced what looked like an inhaler from her belt. She whirled and shoved it in the face of the blonde beside her. With a press, a cloud of pink vapour filled the air, before it disappeared up the blonde's nostrils and into her mouth. The victim's eyes rolled back, her mouth stuck in a faraway smile. The traitor had already turned to the well-armed man.

Obviously, it was hypno-pheromones. That was good, Simone didn't need to remember any clever trick to avoid this hypnosis method. If she smelled any, they would send a chemical reaction cascading through her brain which would leave her thoughts immobilised and cause her to produce pleasure hormones to the point of extreme suggestibility. If she didn't get a whiff, she would be entirely safe.

She lowered her fingers from her nose - there was no way she would win hand-to-hand against someone with Agency training with only one hand free. She opened her mouth, consciously breathing only through it.

She looked stupid, but she would look even stupider with a dose of the pheromones. All five other agents were either down or stood at a dizzy approximation of attention. They hadn't expected some sort of hypno-foolery. Simone supposed that was one of the lessons here, constant vigilance.

The pheromone spray was the goal. Simone ran forward, taking heavy gulps of air. The traitor saw her coming and sent another puff of pink mist into the air.

Simone swiped at the mist just to see it part around her hand, but the movement made the traitor flinch, and allowed her to get a clean hit at the dark-haired woman's stomach.

Her hand jolted to the side, getting a grip on the arm holding the pheromone spray. The traitor responded by grabbing Simone's free arm. Simone twisted, trying to lever the pheromone arm closer to her to get the evil spray disarmed.

"In a fight, novices don't think, intermediate fighters think through every move, and experts don't think either, they just react." As the two women exchanged holds, the words of the Agency's combat instructor came into Simone's mind. She wasn't yet an expert, she was thinking through every move, trying to work out what hold would get the advantage in their grapple. It was only possible because the traitor's own movements were slow, her brain probably intoxicated and disabled by the hypnotic scents. But the taller woman was still Simone's better on strength, so even as she manoeuvred into better positions, she still couldn't get the upper hand. Every few moments, another puff of pink mist would appear in front of her face.

Simone was being careful, she hadn't smelled a thing.

But there was so much that she could taste it.

There was a fuzzy sensation on her tongue, like it had just run along a ball of fur and then got swaddled in a nice, comfy pillow. Her entire mouth was numb. The mist swirled around her and she could see rings of colour appear inside it.

Her wrist send her a sharp shock of pain as it twisted further clockwise than any wrist was meant to go. She was still fighting.

She needed to find a hold.

But when she looked down, she could barely see the enemy's arms, never mind work out where hers should go. There was only a nice, fluffy, colourful mist.

Simone was prepared for hypnotic effects. She knew what was happening, better than any of the other agents. She closed her mouth, without taking another breath in. She couldn't let any of her senses get exposed to the pheromones.

She didn't have time, she had barely any oxygen in her lungs (and her cheeks were now puffed out with what air she did have so she looked stupid). She had to make one, decisive move.

Her knee lifted to her shoulder and pushed, her foot smacking against the traitor's body and sending her reeling back. Simone landed, bouncing off her bent knee to gain on her staggering opponent. She brought her right arm around in a wide hook.

Simone wasn't strong enough to knock out an adult with a single hook.

But she could hook her arm around their neck if their reaction times were slow and they were off balance. She could use her other arm for support. She could complete a sleeper hold on the sleeper agent.

Neither woman had chance to take in a breath. It was a battle of willpower and lung capacity now, whoever fell unconscious first would lose.

Simone was ready to hold out.

She wasn't ready, though, to have two fingers drive themselves just under her ribs. The tickling, painful sensation made her yelp in surprise.

Her grip loosened.

She took in a gulp of air. Pheromones went right into her nose.

She turned around to see one of the other agents, the redhead, with a welcoming smile.

The other agent's blue eyes filled with swirling colours. Simone's mind was strangled in a fuzzy, fluffy blanket.

It smelled so good.

There were no other thoughts. No pain. Not even any memory of the fight.

Just the amazing sensation of the smell and taste of the pheromones, and of the hallucinated colours.

And the certainty that she was hypnotised. Just like the others.

A buzzer and a flash of angry red returned Simone to her senses.

"That's your second failure, Recruit. You have failed this attempt at the Hypnotic Resistance Test."

In the centre of the wide, empty room walled by green canvas and speckled with cameras and VR projectors, Simone stretched from toes to fingertips.

"Well, I got further than I ever did before." She sighed.

"Yeah, you only had one more scenario to go, you'll easily get it at the next attempt." The voice came from a man in a casual business suit with messy brown hair and slightly rodent-like facial features. Simone recognised him instantly, Tim, an Agency technician. Her friend.

"It's in three months though!" Simone whined. "But, I guess I still need to pass the theory test, too..."

"Hey, don't go worrying about theory." Tim flashed her a grin with two oversized front teeth. "You'll just strain yourself thinking about things too hard after that."

"Yeah, you're right, don't want to ruin it just after I'd recovered from-" Simone stopped with an annoyed grunt.

Tim was dangling something in front of her eyes. A tear-shaped crystal, smaller than her hand. It swung to the left. It swayed back to the centre and past that to the right.

"-hey, what gives? I'm not in the mood for post-exam training!" She made an effort at her whiney voice, but her eyes were following the pendulum like a cat watching a bird. Complete focus, her gaze stuck to it like glue.

"Come on, Simone, after you resisted the Alliteration Woman scenario and the Soak from the Machine scenario, a little pendulum isn't going to hypnotise you." Tim's voice had the annoying sing-song tone that meant Simone was being teased.

"Obviously, but it's annoying. I don't like not being able to look away from it. It's embarrassing."

"It's harmless fun, Simone. You can look away whenever you want. You're not being hypnotised."

Her eyes followed the pendulum religiously. It had stopped looking like a distinct object, but rather just a comforting silver blur. But she could hear Tim's squeaky voice and its authority. He was smart.

And behind the enchanting blur, the room went a solid green. She heard the nice ding. She knew what that meant.

She was not being hypnotised. It was just a bit of fun. "I am not being hypnotised. I can look away whenever I want." Simone spoke in a mock robotic voice.

"Obviously, your brain might be fragile after the Pheromone scenario, but an amazing Agent-to-be like you would never get hypnotised by a pendulum and an unattractive man." There was a another ding. It proved that he was right, that she was resisting the hypnotic spell.

"You're not unattractive, Tim. But you're right that this could never hypnotise me."

"Your body is tired from your test, so when you close your eyes it will be because you want to." Tim snapped his fingers.

Before Simone closed her eyes, she saw the wall become a flat plane of green again. She smiled, she was doing well. Even after all that mental strain, she was still holding on to her free will.

"You are not under a hypnotic spell."

Ding. Simone's body was tired. Her legs and arms were heavy but weightless with numbness at the same time. It was a familiar feeling, but it was different to the usual, because she was fully aware of what was happening and in control of her own thoughts.

She knew that Tim was still swinging his pretty pendulum, she could hear its swishes through the air in front of her. She could focus on them completely, because she was still of sound mind.

She would thank Tim for the extra training and the morale boost, just like she had the last time she failed the test.

She would go home with him like she usually did. She would strip down to her bra the moment the door closed behind her, and be entirely comfortable like that. She would make them a nice couple's dinner and massage him as they watched a movie.

It would all be of her own free will because she was (ding) not hypnotised.

She would even suck him dry once they went to bed. Because he was so nice to her, and most definitely not because she was a vulnerable, mentally fragile, brainwashed hypnoslut.

----

I have done this concept of multiple vignette trances finished off with a full hypnosis before, but I hadn't done it in one of my favourite settings of secret agents before, so now we're doing the 2021 remix of that concept!

Ft. various trances to pander to my friends on here like the Cyril Machine(TM), hypno-pheromones, and alliteration woman. Also a couple of extended fight scenes to pander to my best friend on here, Maurislave .

As is often the case, proofreading provided by my erudite quartermaster Dormiria , drop a Watch if you haven't already!