Early one morning, a red-haired woman sat in the offices of Wright Anything, a combined talent agency/legal firm in Los Angeles. Wearing a yellow jacket, white shirt, blue tie, yellow skirt, and black stockings, she also currently had a pair of headphones on, alongside a blue ribbon in her hair and a golden earring in the shape of a crescent moon - actually made of moon rock, as it happened..
She was currently alone in the office, reviewing recordings of a case while the lead lawyer Phoenix Wright investigated another lead... in San Francisco. Trucy, head of the talent department, was currently out at a rehearsal for a show all day. This left her, the plant Charley, and her computer/AI companion Widget, a small blue orb normally worn as a necklace but currently on her desk, helping project holograms and play the recording.
"Hmm, no, there's just... something off. The file compression is affecting the voices?" She said, partly to herself, but also to Widget, who was currently recording her own notes also.
The file was being streamed from a server at the Criminal Affairs Department and to keep it safe as evidence, compression and security measures were running it.
"Listening to the original recording there is impossible with all the noise... I need to see if I can get an uncompressed copy, so I'll ask for access!"
***
"Afraid not, Athena," Ema Skye said with a sympathetic wince.
Ema was a friend and associate of the agency, working with the CAD as a forensics investigator, and currently the bearer of bad news for Athena.
"Well, is there some place quiet to listen to the recording? If it can't leave the place without being a secure stream then..."
She winced as the ongoing and noisy renovation of the building interrupted the speech, the power tools almost painful to her sensitive ears.
"...Then you can't pick up on the voices, I know, but administration is cracking down on any evidence leaving the building unaccompanied right now, even digital recordings. I agree that so much of it doesn't make sense but it's the regs, and City Hall's antsy about law enforcement stepping around procedure."
Athena sighed, back to square one due to red tape and paranoia, but raised a brow at an odd picture in Ema's workspace.
"Is that a drawing of you?"
Ema looked a little red faced as she saw where the Attorney was looking. It was a sketch very much looking like Ema in simple greyscale standing on a large square block, in her lab coat.
"Oh, um, it's a kind of thing some of the sketch artists are doing, a guessing game. They get a random name and word and draw something based on it, we're meant to guess the word. You got any ideas?"
"Statuesque. Because you've been drawn on a pedestal," Athena guessed.
"Might be it... And it gives me an idea. There's an artist, Donnie Michaels, does a bunch of stuff like sculpture, but he does a musical thing too. It's like a vinyl disc but you can't record directly off it and it degrades after about a day, some kind of 'fleeting voices' thing that gets used once or twice to play a piece of music and then it's gone forever."
Athena saw where she was going.
"So... I could try get a copy on these degrading discs, and the administration won't worry about evidence going off the place because it's going to destroy itself? But surely you could just record it while playing."
"Oh, that's the thing, he claims it can only be heard by living things, and, well, it seems like anybody trying to use a microphone on them just gets a lot of static. I can try get permission for that, at least?"
"...It's worth a shot."
***
Ema's boss had approved the idea, and Ema was approved to 'accompany' the recording on an uncompressed file to be put on the artist's vinyl discs. However, the machine that printed them was in his studio, and though open to helping, he had to have them come in person.
He was a man in his mid forties, black haired and wearing an apron over a boilersuit, all covered in paint stains.
"Welcome to my studio, ladies. I'd offer a short tour but I gather you're in something of a rush,"he said.
They were led into the place, noting a few statues and paintings on display, but they weren't here to admire his art. More make use of it. They were led to a room with heavy soundproofing, and inside, met a woman about the same age as Donnie, her blonde hair in a bobcut, wearing a pair of reading glasses, and a casual business dress. She sat at a small screen linked to a machine that must have been the record press, with a player on another table.
"My wife, and intellectual superior, Doctor Christina Michaels. And also the true creator of this artistic endeavour you're borrowing. Chrissie, this is Athena and Ema, the two people from the crime lab that need the recording."
"Ah, yes. You have rather fitting names, you know," The older woman said.
"Goddess of wisdom and Ema's means 'universal' right? Two good names for investigators?" Athena replied.
"Exactly!"
"Well, I'll leave you all to it, and get back to my less glamorous work..." Donnie chuckled, and returned to his studio.
Christina sighed.
"So self-deprecating. He plays up my work, but it's his art that sells so highly. Anyway, you can inspect the record press to be sure it's only making one recording, since you have this strange rule you're working around, but it has only a ROM system for running the program. It simply doesn't have space for anything else even if it could record."
"That's alright, Doctor, I think the CAD won't mind me taking you at your word," Ema said, and offered the drive with the uncompressed recording to be used.
After about ten minutes of work, one vinyl disc was made, with a time and date on which it would become unplayable as the only label.
"If you wish you can inspect the recording here, this room is very well soundproofed, and Ms. Skye can use another recorder to verify you cannot make copies through a microphone," Doctor Michaels offered, leaving the two in the room.
"Well... guess we try?" Athena said, putting the disc on the player.
***
It had worked flawlessly. The issues were gone! And now Athena was back at the office listening again. She had Widget on standby as she took paper notes, the only sound the perfect audio and the scratch of pencil on paper for hours as she pored over the sounds, finding what she wanted and getting her notes typed up just in time for the end of the day!
"Well, Charley, see you later!" She said on the way out, satisfied with her work. She walked out of the office...
...and past where her car was parked. If she hadn't been alone, others would have noted that Widget remained on her desk. If anyone noticed her, they might have noted a slightly glazed expression to her face as she walked.
But no one did, and so it would be that she walked in the warm LA evening unnoticed by those around, a woman briskly heading the wrong way.
For an hour she walked, and would enter a building far from her home or her workplace. A locked door opened up automatically for her, and closed as she entered. Inside, she entered a small room, eyes still glazed over, but now smiling due to a floral scent filling the air even alongside stifling warmth, as she began undressing.
Her jacket was removed, as was her sweat soaked shirt. A damp black bra was taken off, freeing her sweat-covered breasts, as she pulled off her skirt and boots, before peeling down the perspiration-saturated black stockings to reveal a black thong, also damp with sweat and clinging tightly to her shaven pelvis.
But soon it too came off, and she stood naked, bundling up her damp clothes as she dripped with sweat in the still-hot room, still dazed. She placed her clothes down a chute, a blast of hot air rising from it. They would soon be very dry indeed - incinerated, in fact.
As for Athena, she pushed on the wall, opened a small hatch, and entered an elevator that took her downwards. She walked out into a new room. White painted walls, a single door other than the elevator, and two figures. One inside a glass case, one kneeling atop a white pedestal. Both were stone statues.
Athena did not yet notice this, eyes staring blankly and mouth in a smile as she breathed in the sweet smelling scent wafting all around... until a voice spoke.
"Awaken, Athena"
She blinked, and looked around in confusion, then yelped in shock.
"W-where am I? Why am I naked?!"
She also wondered why she felt so warm and yet cold. She was slick with sweat from head to toe, and smelled an oddly sweet floral scent.
"You are here to play our game. You will solve the puzzles presented. Incorrect answers suffer a penalty. You will complete the puzzles in the allotted time. Or you shall gain eternal life. All other questions are irrelevant," the voice commanded.
"G-game?! What game?"
"Irrelevant. Your first task shall begin. The elevator is sealed, the other door out of this room is unlocked by touching the stone of Venus. You have five minutes."
Athena paused to try and calm her beating heart and rapid breathing, before looking around the room.
"...Stone of Venus. One of these statues?"
She studied them quickly.
The one in the case was a woman with short hair in a maid's outfit, headphones over stone ears, while the exposed woman was out in the open in two ways, for that statue was completely naked. The two statues held another contrast, for while the maid seemed peaceful and stood at attention with hands clasped in front of her, the pedestal statue had an expression of surprise, and knelt down with hands clasped behind her back, helping her thrust out her assets.
Athena felt like this statue was depicting a woman that had been in the middle of her pose and unready for a sudden event. A camera flash? Maybe the model it was based on had been a little less ready than hoped, and the sculptor went ahead.
Her smooth body was rendered in a white-grey stone, giving her the look of an athletic and tall woman with decent sized breasts. Two thick locks of her long hair dangled down to below her chest, and framed the stone bosom. The hair was secured in place by a headband, gold coloured, with a rose pattern on the side.
She also noted that it was actually very detailed. The pubic region was bald-shaven, and rather intricately carved. There were almost individual folds around the slightly-poking-out clitoral hood... And in her slightly open mouth it looked like somehow every tooth had been carved, and the gap behind the lips actually seemed to lead to a deep cavern of darkness...
The maid's case simply bore a small brass name plate. 'Jill, Maid.'
The other statue said 'Yor, 2022, Nielsburg.'
"...I've never heard of Nielsberg," Athena scratched her head.
Neither was called Venus, and nothing else was stone here, so...
"But what else could be Venus... Oh!"
With a mild blush, Athena placed her hand on the crotch of the kneeling statue, the hairless and smooth mons pubis - also known as the mound of venus on females.
"Correct. The door is unlocked. You will face the next puzzle."
The door clicked open, and Athena gave a nervous smile.
"Uh, sorry about that," She told the statue, then shook her head.
'It's just a statue, Athena...' she reminded herself, and moved to the next room.
This was... another white room. With two more statues, and one more door.
"The door behind is sealed with two locks. They shall open through a kiss from a far away land's woods, and the hand of the bear of one man's treasure. You have four minutes."
"What?! I had five before..." Athena sighed. The heat of the room didn't help either, it was harder to think while so warm and sweaty...
She studied the statues, her likely puzzle solutions. One was a woman in about her mid twenties, thin but not overly so, with short unkempt hair. She had breasts about the same size as Athena, and sat on knees, legs splayed open to reveal a smooth pubic region. Her head was arched upwards, eyes wide and lips closed.
The other seemed younger in a way, a ponytailed woman crawling on all fours, one hand reaching out, a look of despair on the stone face. Her average breasts hung down from her stone body slightly and her crawling posture did nothing to hide her lower modesty, a hairless region like the other two nudes.
Athena noted small name plates before them.
"Claire, 2018, Raccoon City... Abby, Forest of Dean, 2027?"
Athena pondered this a moment. Raccoon was in the midwest, but where was...
"Oh! Oh..." She realised the answer. Blushing again, she neared the statue that knelt, and leaned down.
She nervously kissed the stone lips, and heard a click.
She shook her head to stave off the mild blush, and looked at the crawling statue. She knelt, and took the outstretched hand... and heard another click.
"Correct. The door is unlocked. You will face the next puzzle."
She made her way through to yet another room, faced with just one statue, this time another young woman, crouching down and arms up trying to shield herself from something. There were also a pair of pictures on one wall, and four brass name plates...
"Give the face of fear her true name. You have three minutes."
First Athena inspected the statue. Her eyes were wide in fear, her shoulder length hair splayed behind her as if blowing in the wind, and her breasts seemed to be about a B-cup... and looked oddly like they had been supported by something. She was half-crouched behind an empty little square on the ground likely meant to fit one of the name plates.
On close inspection, actually, her body seemed to have some indentations, like there were some missing clothes that had been pressing into skin. Like she had been a real woman turned to stone and then stripped? There also seemed to be a few nicks and slight marks of damage, like a chisel had slipped sometimes.
"Nah, that's impossible right?"
The hair did seem awfully detailed though for a statue that the sculptor had made so many mild slips on the body with...
Athena distracted herself with the pictures, there were two. The ocean, and a motorbike. Then she looked at the name plates.
There were four, all looking the same.
"Zoey, Fairfield, 2008. Charlie, Brighton Falls, 2007. Lara, London, 2015. Heather, Silent Hill, 2013..."
Athena wondered the connection, and then checked the pictures again. The bike...
"A Harley Davidson Dyna Wide Glide! And that's the SEA, so... Sea Harley.... Charlie!"
She plucked the relevant plate down, put it in place, and heard a click.
"Correct. The door is unlocked. You will face the next puzzle."
"Where I'll have two minutes..." She sighed.
This room... held no statues. Instead it seemed to be lined with shields.. And felt warmer than ever. She wiped her brow and grimaced at the sweaty sheen over her naked body.
"Look upon the shields. One represents You. Fix it. You have two minutes."
"...Called it," she sighed.
There were a dozen shields, the round style known as the Aspis in Greece, or possibly the Clipeus more common with the Romans. One with the Roman Eagle. One with the Spartan Lambda. One with the head of a Gorgon. One with the heads of the Hydra. One with an Owl. One with a Swan. One with a Crown. One with a Hearth. One with an Omega. One with an Alpha. One with a Bow. One with a Harp. One with Grapes. One with Olives.
Each of them was slightly off-set, a few angles away from being straight.
"Okay.. I'm Athena, so... shield of Athena."
The problem was, there were three answers.
"The Owl, Olives, the Aegis... they all represented Athena sometimes! Maybe..."
She took a guess, and adjusted the Aegis... It had taken thirty seconds by her count...
"Incorrect. You have lost ten seconds. You have seventy seconds remaining."
Flushed with dismay and mild worry, she quickly concluded... She moved the Olives.
"Incorrect. You have lost twenty seconds. You have fifty-seven seconds remaining."
She froze in confusion. If this other was still wrong... Another ten added to the loss. Barely twenty seconds?!
She gulped, and moved the Owl.
"Incorrect. You have lost forty seconds. You have ten seconds remaining."
"W-what?! It doubles?! But I thought..."
"Eight... Seven... Six..."
"But they're all Athena! I'm Athena! You said... Oh no... Not 'you', 'u'!"
She raced to the Omega and tried to turn it, but the voice spoke before she finished.
"Time is up. You have lost."
A trick. Simple wordplay had been enough to fool her. And now she was... going to get eternal life, whatever that meant? A euphemism for quite the opposite, probably, she realised with horror.
"I... What happens now? Are you going to kill me or something?"
"You shall be granted eternal life. Athena, Los Angeles, 2028."
Athena, for all her terror, was bewildered.
"...Why are you talking about me like that? That's what the..."
And then a shield glowed. Athena turned in surprise, and then, a green light struck her. Her vision had fallen upon the head of the Gorgon, as the shield's eyes gave off that green glow.
She tried to ask what was going on... but was frozen.
'I can't move! What's happening?!' She protested in her head.
She was completely stiff, not a single muscle reacting. She tried to speak and at best got a small gurgle. She tried to blink and her eyelids didn't react. She stood there, hot all over despite her nudity, feeling her sweat run down her form.
And then the walls shifted slightly. The shields slid away, and a screen became visible.
A screen showing her.
She stood motionless and nude, saw the sweat pouring off herself in the display. Caught reacting in surprise to the sudden glow, head turned to face it, legs apart, right arm raising to try cover her eyes but barely halfway there. Her pink skin shone with perspiration, and yet for all her warmth her nipples were erect.
And then she heard a crackling, and her frozen eyes locked on the display saw a faint green glow at her feet.
'What's that? Come on, please, let me move!'
She saw the green glow rising up her pale feet, and for a moment was unsure what to make of it all. What she felt was a numbness... and what she saw was a greyness. Like her feet were...
'Turning to stone? But that's impossible! Does that mean...'
She tried to move again to no avail. She felt warmer each time, felt her fear rise as each muscle refused to budge. Felt her eyes water, and yet also stinging a little from not blinking.
On the display the green glow was just below her knees, and her lower legs felt numb, cold. She heard a crackling sound, like a mix of rolling up paper and the pitter-patter of falling stones and earth in a faint rockslide.
As the beam and chill hit her knees, she tried again to move, tried to shout, but all she could do was wail in her head in frustration and terror.
The wave by now was almost at her pelvis, thighs now mostly stone, and shimmering with the drying sweat on them even as her still pink flesh glistened with more of her body's efforts to cool.
And then the numbness, the glow, and the stone spread up. She gasped as it all felt so numb and cold at once, as it reached her hips, the crackle-landslide seeming louder as the wave got closer to her ears.
She could only watch, only fight pointlessly to move. She felt something running down her face and couldn't tell on the screen, was it a tear or sweat? Her eyes were burning and she wished she could just blink...
And then she felt the numbness reach her chest, the chill green wave and crackling sound flowing up and over her breasts. Her nipples froze harder than ever, turning into small pebbles atop the granite mounds of her mammaries.
She struggled to think, struggled to even keep trying to move. Frozen yet burning eyes could only stare as the change flowed down her arms, up her neck, and her lips open slightly in surprise became rigid. She felt her tongue numb, felt the feeling of her saliva fade even as it simply began drying up and evaporating in the stone cavern of her mouth. The petrification rendered her nose like a granite ski-slope and two small caves, her cheeks damp with tears and sweat became smooth fields of grey.
And her red hair turned grey, locking in place as a mass of fine and delicate strands of stone. Her blue ribbon and golden earring stood out against it.
And she realised her eyeballs remained unchanged even as the rest of her face turned grey.
'I... I can't... please... I don't want...' she thought with one last hazy effort, as the numbness washed into her burning damp eyes... and a blackness descended too.
And then her mind fell blank, blue trembling eyes becoming a lifeless dull grey. A few teardrops shimmered in them, one rolling down as a final act of Athena the person, the teardrop now rolling down the face of Athena the statue.
There she stood now. Grey, but still glistening in drying sweat.... Until the floor she stood on began to move. The wall shifted and the statue glided through, into a passage... and back the way she had came, arriving in the first room, rolling to a stop before Yor, as the maid statue Jill stared blankly from behind glass.
And for a moment there was stillness, until another secret door opened, and in entered two figures. A black haired man in his mid forties. A blonde with a bobcut about the same age. The Michaels, Doctor Christina, and Donnie the artist.
"Well, well... Pretty lawyer is a pretty statue now," Christina grinned, running a finger up Athena's still-damp upper arm.
"And so susceptible to the gas we pump in, getting so hot under the collar... if she'd had one" Donnie noted.
The pair looked over her stone body with their eyes, ran their fingers gently along her petrified form, appraising and inspecting the newly created statue.
A hand caressed her stone breasts, squeezing them in a gentle tease. A finger and then a tongue in the armpits, smooth and hairless before but still a little damp with sweat. Fingers ran over the hard rounded globes of her rear, pert bottom looking soft, yet feeling solid. Christina gave Athena a small peck on her partly open mouth as the pair stood back from their inspecting.
"A pity that the forensics girl didn't get lured in as fast, but she only heard it once. The subliminal messaging works slow after all... Maybe she'll be here in a few days?" Christina wondered.
"Perhaps. But even if not, well, this is Los Angeles. Pretty little things are dime a dozen. Real beauty is rare, and I snagged the best," Donnie flirted again.
"Oh, you make me blush so much sometimes it's like I'm the naked statue!" She giggled.
Athena's statue simply stared blankly as the pair flirted like high schoolers.
"So, will we maybe work her into the puzzles, or put her for sale?" Donnie asked.
"I have a few ideas... I think the puzzles. She's a little distinctive to go selling when she visited us directly so soon. Ah... but it makes me feel nostalgic. Remember when we first got the devices working?"
"Yes, poor Charlie, just a flustered little mechanic... and we had to chisel her petrified clothes off her because we hadn't figured it out properly. Those little nicks and scrapes from it because someone got so distracting..."
"You were the one with the boner threatening to burst your fly open. I had to stop my fiancee from wrecking his pants..." Christina sighed with nostalgia.
"And now we have it pinpoint accurate. Remember when we collected Yor there, the strip poker game? Forcing her to break out of every petrified article before making her pose when she lost the last round..."
The pair stood for a moment until Donnie spoke.
"Well, let's get back upstairs, shall we? I know I'm feeling.... Nostalgic," he grinned.
"Yes, me too... Let's let Jill get Athena polished up, shall we?"
Christina raised a small device, a remote button, and with a glow from above, the statue maid began turning slowly back to flesh. Earphones came to life, and the blank-minded woman began working, the hypnotic suggestions blaring into a mind that had been empty for years.
As her masters left, the maid began work, polishing and cleaning up the new statue. Lingering sweat was wiped away and beeswax was applied in a layer to replace it, as Athena was cleaned and prepared to stand in the puzzle room Christina and Donnie would devise around her.
The maid cleaning her was proof the currently inert statue could perhaps someday be turned back... but Athena wouldn't even know that. And the couple that had petrified her certainly had no plans to do so.
After all, they already had one maid. Someone with a law degree was definitely overqualified for that job...
***
A Few Days Later
Ema sighed as the latest news was, there was no news. Athena had vanished, and the rest of the Wright Anything Agency was getting frantic. But there was no trace of her. A few sightings on CCTV, eyewitnesses matching her to that, but the area she was last seen was wide, and searches turned up nothing.
She shut down her computer, her shift ended ten minutes ago, but she'd tried to see if anything on the footage would help. Maybe she'd go look at the spot the last footage was taken...
...She stood, bidding goodnight to a colleague, leaving her phone behind on her desk. Walking out the door, and heading off into the warm LA evening. Just another person in the rush hour crowds.
...If anyone noticed her, they might have noted a slightly glazed expression to her face as she walked.