A 33-year-old freelance reporter, Lili Barnes was rather unremarkable in every way. She wasn't particularly attractive or athletic. She wasn't popular with the guys or the girls. She wasn't cool, preppy, nerdy, geeky, or freaky. In fact, she tended to fade into the background. However, she had one extremely honed talent. She had a talent for sniffing out a story.
And, truth be told, her ability to blend in made her a surprisingly successful reporter. No one took particular notice of her, which allowed her to gather much more information than most people could without arousing attention. She simply sold her stories to various newspapers under the pseudonym Lilian Barnett, and never included a picture, which granted her a degree of anonymity.
Which is why when Lili started hearing rumors about a strange modeling service, she was pretty sure it wasn't the story for her. After all, she wasn't exactly model material, and she valued the fact that no one knew her face. However, the rumors that were seeping out across the net piqued her interest. Granted, it was rather difficult to gather any concrete information, as most refernces mysteriously disappeared as soon as they were posted, and when Lili tried to track down the sources, they always seemed to lead to a dead end. But the rumors kept appearing, and Lili's reporter instinct began tingling; there was a story here, she just had to find it.
Then it finally happened: a post Lili happened to catch before it was taken down. Although it didn't explain much, it did give her her first solid lead. The post read, "If sumthin sounds 2 good to be tru it usually is Transform your life my a$$ CYOC = ripoff!" Most people would just dismiss such posts as trolling, but this wasn't the first time Lili had heard gossip having the words "transform" and "CYOC" in the same sentence. On top of that, Lili had done some digging. It was carefully hidden, but by tracing the corporate structure, Lili managed to find out that CYOC Labs was the parent company of a litlte relatively-unknown webcam modeling company by the name of TFCams, Inc.
Standing outside a nondescript warehouse in the industrial sector of town, Lili wasn't sure if she had been led on a wild goosechase. She had even cut and dyed her hair and changed her style of dress in order to hide her identity, but it wasn't as though it made her taller or skinnier. She still looked like an average working woman. Nevertheless, if the rumors were right, that wouldn't matter. Although they billed themselves as a modeling agency, it didn't seem like they screened their applicants particularly carefully. After all, Lili had applied with a false ID under the name Lilian Burns, and had even taken a temp job and apartment to complement her fake identity, and it appeared TFCams was none the wiser.
Entering the warehouse, Lili was greeted by a smiling receptionist in a makeshift admitting room. Upon giving her name, the receptionist lead Lili to a drywall office down a hallway in the warehouse, and left her with a thick contract to sign. Skimming it, it seemed to Lili to be a regular proprietary confidentiality contract, although the length did surprise her. It had the regular terms like "release from liability" and "force majeure," but also some odd references to "loss of identity" and "mental trauma." It even asked whether she was pregnant, and required her to promise to remain on birth control for the duration of her employment. While such terms seemed like overkill, Lili figured she couldn't back out at this point, so she signed away until she reached the last page, entitled "Transformation Authorizations." While Lili wasn't sure what it referred too, she figured maybe it released the company from liability on dressing her up for whatever kinky videos they were making. Under each category, Lili had to check whether she would accept that type of transformation, and initial. She went down the list: "Age," "Gender," "Height," "Weight;" but then it got stranger: "Animal," "Mythological," "Mental..." At that point Lili stopped. She had checked all the prior ones, but she wasn't sure about mental. What were they planning to do, lobotomize her? Leaving "Mental" unsigned and unchecked, Lili went ahead and signed everything else.
The moment she put down her pen, the receptionist came back. Lili was pretty sure there was a security camera somewhere, but it wasn't like she had been acting suspiciously. Taking the contract, the receptionist left behind a bottle of water. While Lili was usually careful about strange food and drink, especially in her line of work, she wanted to give the impression of being at ease, so she unscrewed the bottle cap and took a long swig. As she swallowed, a man in a white lab coat walked in.
"Miss Burns, I believe? I'm Dr. Larsen, how do you do? I see you've decided to join TFCams, very good, very good. Now, we used to start our new applicants out here at the main office, but thanks to modern technology, you can actually go about your daily life as normal. You agreed to 12-hour shift monitoring, so you'll only be required to wear the tracking and monitoring devices from 7 AM to 7 PM daily, and the rest of the time is yours to do as you wish, although the transformations will remain in place until you choose to terminate your employment or you violate your contract. And, of course, I'm sure I don't need to remind you, but everything regarding TFCams is strictly confidential: you are not allowed to discuss your work here at all, nor are you allowed to make any mention of being employed by TFCams. Should you break this clause, all compensation is voided, and you may face some severe consequences. Now that that's out of the way, are you ready to get started?"
Lili nodded at Dr. Larsen, wondering what a doctor was doing in a modeling agency explaining legal terms, but ignored the discrepancies for the moment.
"Great!" Dr. Larsen smiled. "Here is your monitoring device," he said, handing her a rather fancy smartphone. "Please keep it on you during work hours, as it will allow us to track you during employment hours and use footage from any nearby cameras on our site. It will also notify you when transformations are about to take place. As I said, our goal is to disrupt your daily routine as little as possible, as our clients wish to see how you adapt to the challenges a normal day will provide someone in your condition. It's late today, so your employment will begin from tomorrow. If you don't have any questions, we should be all set to go!"
Dr. Larsen handed Lili a rather large binder labeled "Employee Handbook," then ushered her out the door.