The Perils of Enhancegirl 4: Popstars, Cyborgs and Spider Webs

[Damselbinder]

"No way!" Sophie yelped, bursting out of her bedroom door and making her room-mate leap clean out of her seat.
"What, what is it?!" Kirsten shrieked. The last time Sophie had made a noise like that was when she'd woken up with a spider on her face. Not that Kirsten had been much help: they were both hopeless arachnophobes. "If you throw another bug at me, I swear to -" But when Kirsten saw Sophie's face, she realised that the eighteen-year-old redhead was thrilled, not frightened.

"Kirsten, you need to understand that chances like this only come, like, once in a freaking lifetime." Her emerald eyes were wide and Kirsten had never seen her looking so enthused. "She never tours the States!"
"Who never tours the States?"
"Uh, Stellar!"

Everything about Sophie's body language indicated that she thought Kirsten would understand what she meant. The blank look she received told her that she was mistaken.
"You've seriously never heard of her?"
"Seriously."
"Ugh. You totally need to broaden your tastes," Sophie said, flicking her shoulder length, red hair in a gesture of superiority. "She's only the hottest thing in k-pop right now."
"K-pop?" Kirsten replied, still uncomprehending. "You mean Korean pop music? I didn't know you were into that."
"What, you didn't know I was into having showmanship and actual tonal variation in pop music? I'm, like, seriously starting to wonder about the longevity of our friendship."
"I don't even -"
"Kirsten, we haven't got time to listen to what you can or can't even! All you need to know is that you and me are going next Sunday, and you're gonna have the night of your freakin' life." Sophie was grinning. Kirsten couldn't find it in herself to refuse.
"I thought you were always busy weekends with that...whatever it is you do at the weekends."
"I'm taking some personal time," Sophie said.

It was true, despite maintaining the semblance of an active social life, Sophie had been socialising with less and less frequency in recent days, and none of her friends - not even Kirsten - knew why. She would never have guessed the truth. For as well as being a college student and K-Pop enthusiast, Sophie was also a superheroine.

Going by the name Enhancegirl, Sophie used her powers to fight crime in Seacouver and - thanks in part to an admiring journalist named May - had gained quite a reputation in recent months. Her crime-fighting career kept her busy - but for Stellar, Seacouver could wait.


If Sophie had been excited when she'd found out that her idol was coming to America, she was positively ecstatic when it came to the day of the performance. As she and Kirsten queued up in front of Seacouver stadium, her hands were actually shaking.
"Oh my god, Sophie, calm down," Kirsten said. Having listened to some of Stellar's music in the intervening time, she'd actually begun to look forward to the concert. Her anticipation, however, was nowhere near Sophie's.
"How can you tell me to calm down?! This is so awesome!" Even over the din of the crowd, Sophie's voice was attracting attention. And not just her voice: she and Kirsten were both dressed very fetchingly, Kirsten in a shimmering, knee-length dress, and Sophie in one of her favourite outfits: a short, tartan skirt, short-sleeved white blouse, buckled shoes and white stockings, her red hair trailing in a plait down her neck. The redhead drew quite a few stares, and she didn't mind one bit.

As the pair entered the stadium, the atmosphere was already buzzing. The stage was danced upon with brilliant, fluorescent light, synthesised music already playing. Darkness and light pulsed out of the front, a thumping, hypnotic beat enticing and confusing the senses all at once. The audience was packed - Kirsten was surprised that the Korean idol had drawn such a following in America.

"Excuse me, coming through." Sophie had no compunctions about pushing her way through the crowd to get closer to the front. She snubbed her nose at those who were already watching the action through their cellphones. "Oh my gawd," she muttered under her breath. "Who comes to a concert just to watch it through a screen?" Kirsten, who'd been about to whip out her iphone, elected at the last moment not to incur her roommate's wrath.

By the time Sophie and Kristen had pushed their way to the front, a strange hush had fallen on the audience. The beat was still strong, but something had changed. There was a palpable air of anticipation, though no-one there quite knew why. Sophie shivered, and then realised that she was not merely shivering with expectation. She was cold. It was a warm day, and the heat of all the bodies surrounding them should have been exacerbating that. But she was definitely cold.

"Huh?" Something had fallen on Kirsten's shoulder. It was some kind of white powder, but when she brushed it off she found it was icy to the touch. "It's snow," she realised. "Sophie, it's real snow!" The redhead looked up, and she was not the only one doing so. Snow was beginning to fall inside the stadium in greater and greater volume.

"Look!" One eagle-eyed crowd member saw something near the very top of the roof, a figure of some kind. But it shot off as soon as it was spotted, something under its feet supporting it. It danced through the air in dizzying pirouettes, and as it came closer and closer to the audience, it became clear that it was a woman.

Not only was it a woman. It was an exceptionally beautiful woman, slender - waiflike, even - with flawless, pale skin, dazzling ice-blue eyes, and hair of the same colour. Her features were subtle, delicate, yet with a hint of coy sexuality. As she spun in the air, dancing on a sliver of ice hovering beneath her, a thin, shimmering satin robe spun around her body, splits in the skirt occasionally offering tantalising glimpses of a pair of long, flawless legs.

She arced towards the stage, the music building to a sharp, precise resonation which the entire audience felt in their bones. Leaping off the sliver of ice (which melted away the moment she left it), she landed perfectly in the middle of the stage, a microphone stand already waiting for her.

The music went silent. The audience went silent. For a few moments, no-one knew what to make of it. The woman raised her head, eyes towards the heavens. She was not tall by any means, but she was somehow an imposing figure on the stage. She was breathing hard, her chest visibly straining against her satin shift. Condensation came out of her mouth whenever she breathed. Without looking at it, she drew the microphone close to her lips.
"Oh..." she moaned sensually, turning her eyes on the audience. "It's a true beginning..."

At this, the crowd erupted into thunderous cheering and hooting. They had been so wrapped up in the spectacle that they'd almost forgotten why they were there. But they remembered now: and there was Stellar, standing in front of them, about to launch into one of her most famous tracks.

Even though the vast majority didn't speak a word of Korean, they were happily singing along anyway, with the heavy, melancholic electronica that flowed from Stellar's lips like water from a spring in December. However, there were two audience members who were not following along. They moved very quietly and carefully through the crowd, getting ever closer to the stage. Their eyes were fixed on the beautiful popstar, but they looked at Stellar not with excitement or anticipation, but with villainy on their minds.

Sophie, however, was oblivious to this. All she cared about was the absurdly fantastic time she was having. Even Kirsten was loving it, totally caught in Stellar's icy spell. She moved across the stage as though she were skating, though her feet were bare, gliding across without the slightest perturbation of her voice. Blue lights illuminated her at all time, as though she were an operatic heroine lamenting her own death by drowning.

But gradually, the lights began to warm. The tempo of the song began to increase. A distinctly electro-pop note broke into the music, and her expression began to lighten somewhat. She began to spin, faster and faster, whirling round on the spot more quickly than it seemed possible for a human being to do.
"A white star..." she said, and there was a dazzling flash. Suddenly, the blue haired beauty was gone. Or rather, she was changed. Her face, her form, all those were the same. But her hair was no longer flowing and blue, but a cute, blonde bob-cut. Her eyes were green now, and even her skin was a little less pale. She was no longer in a loose satin robe, but an extremely tight, extremely short white dress, its lycra makeup clinging to her gorgeous body. Her shoulders were bare, though a thin white scarf was tied around her neck. Knee-high white boots covered her calves, and she was now smiling sweetly, even flirtatiously at the audience. "It's my champagne dream!" she sang, her voice now bubbly and warm.

"We love the White Star!!" Sophie screamed. None of them batted an eyelid at this transformation, as none of them had batted an eyelid at the ice on which she had sailed. For Stellar was not merely a pop singer. Like Sophie, she was a superheroine. Unlike Sophie, however, she did not hide her abilities, using them to dramatic effect not only to battle injustice, but also to thrill her audiences.

The Blue Star was the first persona they had seen, the White Star what she had subsequently turned into. Unlike most heroes, Stellar had three distinct power sets, and could switch between them at will, using each as an individual stage persona. Her first gave her power over ice and cold. The power of the second became clear, as Stellar's microphone switched off - and the volume of her performance increased.

"What's she doing?" Kirsten asked. She was not up on the specifics.
"She's absorbing the light that hits her skin," Sophie explained, "and turning it into sound." She was doing so to great effect. Modulating the pitch and timbre of her voice, Stellar could make herself sound as if her voice had been subject to all manner of electronic manipulation, when in fact she was doing all the work herself.

"Thank you so much!" she said, in a peppy, not-quite-spot-on accent. "I am so excited today! America, you are such great hosts for me!"
"We love you Stellar!" a few squealing schoolgirls right at the front chorused. She put her hand to her chest in coy modesty, before turning and winking over her shoulder, beginning the next number.

However, before that song was even thirty seconds in, something strange happened. There was someone on the stage. The security keeping the crowd from the performer were astonished to see that someone had got past them. No-one had seen her forcing her way past. She was just there. It was a dark haired woman, clad in a tight, red catsuit. She moved bizarrely, rolling her shoulders with every step. She seemed to have Stellar in her sights.

"What the hell?" Sophie hadn't seen what happened either. Stellar ignored the intruder, and many were beginning to think it was part of the act. However, some of the security guards clambered onto the stage, trying to get rid of the unwelcome supporting act.
"Yaarrghh!" one of them cried out, as he was hauled back by his collar, and thrown to the ground. The other two were similarly dispatched, before they could even get eyes on their assailant.
"Sorry, boys," the newcomer said, rising onto the stage herself. Though Stellar had ignored the first intruder, the cries of the guards drew her attention, and she found herself greeted by a strange sight.

It was a woman, tall and voluptuous, with long blonde hair. Her limbs were long - all six of them. Four were as you might expect them - the other two were not. For one thing, they were made entirely of metal, like long, mechanical tendrils, with formidable looking clamps. They were attached to her waist, and seemed as mobile as her actual arms. She was clad in form fitting leather, also quite alluring, but much more practical than her partner's clothes.

And then there was her face. Most was relatively unremarkable, though quite pretty, but the upper-right quarter of her face was covered by a metal mask, like something out of The Phantom of the Opera. Even her eye was obscured, a red blinking light gleaming from where it should have been.

Stellar was so taken back by her appearance, that she actually stopped singing. Confused murmurs came from the crowd. Most of them hadn't seen the blonde crash the party, so they thought it might be part of the act. Much of the crowd, in fact, was still cheering wildly.

"Wow!" Stellar said, suddenly, projecting her voice across the entire auditorium. "You guys are such big fans you came all the way up here to see me!"
"Oh yeah," the robotic woman said, in a Southern drawl. "We're huge fans..."
"Hehehehe!" the other woman cackled, getting close enough to the microphone that the audience could hear her. "Okay, she's being sarcastic, but I am actually a huge fan, Miss Stellar!"
"That's so nice," Stellar said, smiling winningly.
"I mean, I would definitely be asking for your autograph right now. Y'know, if we weren't here to kidnap you."

At this the entire crowd reacted. People didn't know whether to boo or cheer, or call the police.
"Is this part of the act?" Kirsten said.
"I've got no idea," Sophie replied, the crowd now quiet enough for her to speak at a more or less normal volume. "But that blonde looks weirdly familiar..."

"Oh!" Stellar gasped, clasping her hands to her face. "You - you want to kidnap me?"
"That's what we said, genius," the blonde replied. She was beginning to think that her target was not all there. "So why don't you just make it easy for us and stay still." The two began advancing on her.
"Oh no," Stellar said, "you both look so scary..." Pigeon-toed, Stellar placed her arms behind her back. "I...won't fight back..."
"That's what I like to hear," the blonde said. "Arachna?" The dark haired woman smiled, strutting towards her target.
"This isn't right," Sophie said, and she began barging towards the front, shoving people out of the way to get forward.
"Sophie!" Kirsten called out, but in a moment her friend had vanished. "What is she doing?!"

"Stay still, sweetie, okay?" Arachna said, taking Stellar by the wrists. She gasped, wriggling uncomfortably, but impotently. To her surprise, the Korean superstar felt something soft and silky against her wrists, being wrapped around them, binding her hands behind her back. She craned her neck to see white threads trapping her, threads that were coming out of the hands of Arachna. "Having spider-like powers has lotsa advantages," Arachna said, "but being able to spin webs is definitely my favourite. After all, I can tie up as many pretty pop-princesses as I like!" She knelt down, and Stellar felt her ankles being pressed together, as her feet were tied in silk as well. She was now bound.

"Oh...oh..." she mewed, "please don't tie me up..."
"Oh, you're so cute!" Arachna laughed. "You really think you have a say in the matter?"
"Stop playing, Arachna," the blonde said. "Let's just get out of here."
"No! Don't! Please let me go..." Stellar pleaded, wriggling in the silky bonds.
"Keep your trap shut, doll," the blonde snapped. To her surprise, Stellar was not cowed. On the contrary, her pleading expression turned into a sly smile.
"Actually," she said, "I don't think I will." On the last word of her sentence, Stellar magnified the force of her voice exponentially. Far, far before the blonde could react, she was blown backwards, head over heels.
"What the -?" Arachna stuttered.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Stellar said. "Weren't you listening? It's okay, I'll say it again. Let me go." Another boum, and Arachna was hurled back the way she'd come. Not only that, but Stellar's bonds were ripped asunder.

Needless to say, this provoked an extremely loud reaction from the crowd. Now they were convinced it was part of the show. Even Sophie, who was almost at the edge of the stage now, stopped.
"It looks like she was in control all along...but were they part of the act?" The blonde clambered to her feet, visibly shaken. Sophie gave her another look, and she was much closer this time. "Wait a minute...that's Cybelle!" Sophie had recognised her face for a reason. Cybelle was a notorious villainess, having crossed swords with members of the superheroic community on multiple occasions. No mastermind herself, Cybelle was a mercenary, acquiring as much money and as many resources as she possibly could, to advance her cybernetic enhancements to the greatest extent. Sophie still didn't recognise the other woman, though.

"Okay," Arachna said, "I gotta say, you surrendering like that was kinda hot - I like 'em a little passive - but it wouldn't be satisfying capturing you if you didn't put up a bit of a fight. I mean, you're Stellar!"
"You're being so nice to me," Stellar replied. "I feel a bit..." She searched for the word. "Unkind to do this, but...sorry." Another boum. Once again Arachna flew back, her ears ringing.
"You think you're hot stuff, don'tcha, doll?" Cybelle said. Stellar turned to face her.
"Well," she said, smiling, "I have sold more than two million records."
"Well I think you need to be taught a lesson!" She lunged with her right arm, her cybernetic limbs simultaneously striking from different directions, a pattern calculated to be as difficult as possible to avoid.

But Stellar was more formidable than her charming face suggested, and in rapid succession she dodged all three.
"Damn you!" Cybelle growled in frustration. was more than capable of being indignant and calculating at the same time, and she quickly worked out another plan of attack. She swiped one of her robotic tendrils at Stellar's feet. She jumped over the attack, but Cybelle had expected her to. Her tendril was not only prehensile, but telescopic, and it extended, turning on itself and attempting to strike Stellar from behind.

But the Korean heroine was too cunning. To Cybelle's surprise, Stellar pushed herself up using her powers, avoiding the strike, and almost causing Cybelle to hit herself in the face with her own limb. While she avoided that embarrassment, she did not avoid the strike that came next, as she was knocked down by the Korean word for "idiot."

By this time, the crowd were once again convinced that everything was going according to plan. Indeed, Stellar was dancing around her enemies' attacks with such grace and ease that it seemed no other conclusion was possible. Webs shot at her, but she either dodged or disintegrated them. Cybelle struck again and again with her tendrils, but she simply couldn't get close enough to use them effectively.

The odds seemed stacked heavily against the two villains, until they benefited from a very simple piece of luck. As Cybelle lunged, reaching out with her robotic arms in yet another attempt to seize Stellar, the popstar drew in breath to shout her away once again. But just as she did, the stage wiring, disturbed by the battle raging between the three women, momentarily gave out, plunging Stellar into darkness.
"Back!" she cried out, but with nothing more than her ordinary voice. Plunged into darkness, the source of her power was taken away from her. Frozen with shock, she hesitated for a moment. And in that moment, Cybelle grabbed her.
"Gotcha!" The Southern blonde didn't need to see to be able to swiftly wrap one of her tendrils around the Korean woman, cold metal squeezing against her arms and thighs, pulling her legs together, and trapping her arms at her sides.

"Unh!" Stellar groaned, suddenly finding herself caught. Not only was she powerless, she was blind.
"Heh. You're not so tough, girlie," Cybelle chuckled to herself. She was not hindered in the slightest by the darkness, using infra-red vision to keep watch on her struggling target. But having the pretty starlet in the grip of her tendril was not enough for her peace of mind. Bringing her other cybernetic limb to bear, Cybelle opened a slot at the end of the arm, and pressed it against Stellar's shoulder.

"Ah!" Stellar gasped, still blanketed in night, as she felt something sticky against her skin. She heard the arm move, and heard a tearing sound, at the same time feeling the sticky substance all along her back, just beneath her neck, covering up her exposed shoulders and the upper parts of her breasts, before being wound down her body, the first arm moving to allow the second to wrap up her torso. Indeed, once her upper arms were pinned in the substance, the first arm unwound from Stellar's body, and though her forearms were now free to wiggle, she couldn't raise them high enough. Indeed, all she got for that resistance was that her wrists were grabbed by the free arm, and crossed behind her back. Stellar's physical strength was no greater than that of any girl of her slight and delicate build, and she was no match for Cybelle's powerful limb. Her forearms and her hands quickly vanished beneath the sticky substance.

"What's she doing?" Stellar thought - though she was, of course, thinking in Korean. "What is this stuff? I - I can't get free!" At no point had it even occurred to Stellar that she might lose control of the situation. After all, she was Stellar. And yet now, she was approaching total helplessness. To her dismay, once her torso was wrapped up, Cybelle didn't stop.
"Oh, honey," the cyborg said, "you're gonna be wrapped up like a pretty little Christmas present." Using her free arm, Cybelle began spinning Stellar around to increase the speed of her encasement. The sticky substance continued circling Stellar's body, now ensnaring her legs, covering her fair skin, and gradually pressing her lovely limbs tighter and tighter together, until legs were completely covered, from waist to ankle.

It was at that moment that the lights came back on. Re-illuminated, Stellar could now see that Cybelle had bound her from top to bottom in thick, silver duct tape. She stared at herself, transfixed by the sight of her own wrapped-up state. She couldn't believe it. So distracted was she that she didn't notice Cybelle herself getting close to her, and whipping the scarf from her neck.
"Whhmmphh!" Stellar squeaked, as she suddenly found that scarf pressed over her mouth, gagging her, and tied tight with a painful yank. "Mmm-nnnmmphh!" The soft silk of the scarf caressed Stellar's lips, as gentle as a lover, but it nonetheless kept her from speaking. The material was thin, and its width was scarcely enough to obscure her lips, yet Stellar was completely incapable of removing it.

It was only when Stellar felt tape being wrapped around her shoulders and up her neck that it occurred to her to try to use her powers.
"MMMPHHHH!!" she shouted, as hard as she could. "MMMMPHHH!!" But it was no use. Her skin was covered so completely by that point that there was practically nowhere left on her body from which she could absorb light, so she had nothing to power her sonic shockwaves with. The tape went over her chin and, then over her mouth, sticking the scarf in place, and muffling her twice over. The silk protected Stellar's lips from the harsh tape, but that mattered little. Now she was even more thoroughly silenced.

"Aaaaahahahahahhahahahaha!" Arachna pointed and laughed at the wrapped-up heroine. "Looks like it's lights out for you, sweetie! Heeheeheeheehee!" Stellar blushed in embarrassment at her defeat, and turned her head away from the giggling villain. It was then that the beautiful damsel realised her position.

Every single member of the audience was staring at her. Some were still cheering, thinking it was part of the act, some were fearful, a few even trying to get away, but most were astonished. Astonished that Stellar had lost. Astonished that she had had the tables turned on her so quickly.
"Mmmmphhh..." Stellar whimpered. "They got me...and everyone can see..." Shamefaced, Stellar didn't know where to look. She didn't know what to do. A metal tendril coiled round her legs, while two hands ran down her body from her shoulders, taking in every contour of her wrapped up form.
"Oh, it's no wonder you get everyone's pulses racing," Cybelle drawled. "You're quite a sexy little creature, ain'tcha?" She was much taller than the diminutive singer, and Stellar suddenly looked very small and frail by comparison, towered over by the villainess who'd conquered her.

"Come on, let's get outta here!" Arachna urged. Her voice was trembling with excitement at the sight of the the lovely singer taped up and helpless, and she was anxious to steal their prize away. But before they could make good there escape, there was a bright flash near the front of the audience. It wasn't blinding, but it was much brighter than the incessant camera flashes, and it drew Arachna's attention.

But before she could even begin to guess at what had caused it, the source made herself very much known. A young girl, who looked no older than eighteen, leapt onto the stage. And once she was on it, she looked as if she fit right in. Dressed in a short, strapless golden dress, matching opera-style gloves, silver ankle boots and a red domino mask, the fetching maiden looked fit to perform.

"Okay, you two-bit morons, put her down right now, or prepare to get your asses well and truly kicked." To the astonishment of the two villains, the girl crouched into a fighting stance. Arachna shot her a withering look.
"And just who the hell do you think you are, interrupting us?"
"The name's Enhancegirl, lady. And you're on my turf, so really I should be the one asking who you are." She grinned. "Not that I actually care who you are."
"You little -" Arachna sprang into action. She leapt forward, propelling herself forward with superhuman strength. A normal person would probably have been able to get out of the way of the initial leap, but certainly not her subsequent strike. But Sophie was much, much more than human, and she knew what Arachna was going to do almost before she herself did. She not only dodged her punch - which would have knocked her out instantly had it connected - she retaliated with a sharp kick to the midriff.

"Oooff!" The high heel of Sophie's - for it was Sophie Scott under the red mask of Enhancegirl - boot connected directly with Arachna's stomach. She was not completely winded, but she was close to it, and - shocked at Enhancegirl's speed and precision - backed off to avoid further attack. "Who...the hell...is she?!"

"Okay, Cybelle," Enhancegirl said. The cyborg raised an eyebrow. She'd not expected this upstart to know her.
"I'm impressed, little girl," she said. "I didn't expect someone of such...clearly unrefined disposition as yourself to be aware of me."
"Put Stellar down," Enhancegirl commanded. "Right now."
"You're not in a position to give me orders, darlin'," Cybelle replied. "I can always -" It became apparent that Enhancegirl had less patience than Cybelle for witty repartee, as she charged towards her foe. Cybelle analysed her quickly - no super strength was apparent, no enhanced speed, no energy projection - she'd taken care of Arachna quickly, but how?

As a test, Cybelle shot out an arm to strike her, but seemingly before she'd finished plotting the co-ordinates of her attack, Enhancegirl had already moved out of the way.
"Some kinda precognition?" Cybelle thought. She tried again, and again Enhancegirl dodged. The tendril was behind her now, and they came in for the attack, but Enhancegirl slipped elegantly between them. However, she not only did that, she grabbed the end of the arm, and increased its speed along its path. To her great surprise, Cybelle calculated that she would not be able to dodge it, and she had to raise her other tendril to block her own limb.

This, of course, meant dropping Stellar; and that was precisely what Sophie had counted on. As Cybelle untangled her limbs, Sophie lunged at her. Early warning systems of her own alerted Cybelle to the attack, and she backed away easily, but this now made it a simple matter for Enhancegirl to grab Stellar, which she managed to do before the popstar had even hit the ground.

With one fluid motion, Enhancegirl tore away the tape from Stellar's mouth, before yanking the scarf from her lips.
"Are you alright, Stellar?" she asked. Her inner fangirl suddenly realised that she was inches away from her idol, who was, for that matter, actually lying in her arms. The lovely blonde smiled in response, making Sophie's heart flutter.
"I will be," she said. "A Black Star!" Suddenly, the rescued damsel was surrounded by a thick black mist. Sophie dropped her in surprise, and watched as she was enveloped entirely in the dark cloud. But as soon as it had come, it had gone.

"Stellar?" Enhancegirl wasn't sure what had happened. But suddenly, Stellar coiled her legs up, and thrust them forward, launching herself up onto her feet. A second letter, there was a loud bang, like the popping of a large balloon. To Sophie's astonishment, the tape wrapped around the slender heroine had been burst off her, and she stood free of her bonds. She was also completely transformed.

Again, the face and body were the same, but her hair was now waist length, straight and black. Her eyes were gleaming hazel, and her clothes were radically different. Gone was the dress, replaced by a, frankly, tiny leather skirt, a leather tube top which left her shoulders, arms and stomach totally exposed, and flat, black shoes on her feet, leaving her legs even more exposed than Sophie's. On her hands and elbows, leather patches with formidable spikes coming off them. Her other personae had looked formidable in their way, once Stellar had really started showing off her power, but this was the first to look dangerous.

A recovered Cybelle, enraged that her work in capturing Stellar had been undone so quickly, shot out a tendril at the transformed Korean. But the heroine simply caught the limb in one hand, holding it in place effortlessly.
"What?!" Cybelle exclaimed, unable to get the limb out of Stellar's formerly weak grip.
"Heh," Stellar laughed, a rougher edge in her voice. "Looks like you underestimated me, cyber lady." With that, she heaved at Cybelle's arm, tossing her across the stage in a long arc.

"Aaaagghh!" she cried out, sailing through the air. She landed hard, in a painful sounding impact. To her credit, though, she was on her feet pretty fast - she was made of sterner stuff than the average joe. By this point, Arachna had recovered as well. The heroines were on one side of the stage, the villainesses on the other.
"Two against two," Stellar said. "I'd say it was fair, if you two didn't look so weak." More even than the White Star, the Black Star was extremely confident. She turned to Sophie. "Thanks for the help. You seem pretty strong." She winked. "I hope you can keep up with me."
"You bet I can!" Sophie said, still a little starstruck.
"I'll take the girl," Cybelle said. "You take care of our princess."
"You betcha," Arachna said. The two sides had chosen their opponents. There was a moment of hesitation...and then they attacked.

"You won't take me by surprise this time, girl," Cybelle said, thrusting out her limbs towards the leggy redhead.
"I don't need to," Sophie said, avoiding the attack. She struck at what she saw to be a weaker point in the tendril - but weaker wasn't weak. She wasn't strong enough to exploit the weakness. She tried to attack Cybelle's body, but she dodged Sophie's blows. In their capacity to anticipate and avoid each other, they seemed matched.

Arachna and Stellar seemed less matched. Though Arachna had strength much greater than an ordinary person, it was scarcely a third of Stellar's. Every time they crossed blows, Stellar knocked her back, or down. And she was fast, too: Arachna had her matched there, but it made little difference considering their disparity in strength.
"Ohhhgghhh!!" Arachna groaned, hurled aside once again by Stellar's power.
"Are you even trying?" Stellar said. "If you want to capture me, you'll have to be stronger!"

Enhancegirl was not in a position to be so cocky. She was having to use the full extent of her power to keep up with Cybelle, though even her cybernetic enhancements were not enough to overmatch Sophie. It was as Cybelle was drawing back her arm for another strike that Sophie felt a curious tremor in the air around the metal limb. It was as if something was building up inside it. The slot at the end of the arm opened, and Sophie concluded that Cybelle was about to try and entangle her in the tape she'd used to bind Stellar. She leapt to the side in expectation, predicting that she'd dodge the tape.

And if it had been tape, she would have done. But she had miscalculated. When the slot was fully open, it was not tape that emerged, but a fine, pink mist. Sure enough, Sophie dodged most of it, but as it diffused, some of the mist settled on Enhancegirl's face.
"What the? -" she gasped, inadvertently breathing more of the mist in. And then the sensation hit her. An overpoweringly sweet smell invaded her enhanced senses, spreading weakness throughout her whole body. "Oooohh...ooooohhhnn..." In an instant, Enhancegirl went from fighting fit, to overwhelmingly drowzy. "No - no...unnhh...sleeping gas..." she mumbled, her knees already beginning to quiver.

Cybelle was very surprised. Her tactic had been one of desperation: her spray was meant to be quite a mild soporific - it would be too dangerous to risk a more potent drug leaking and knocking her out. And yet Enhancegirl was being completely taken down by its effects. It was then that she realised.
"You have enhanced senses, don't you, darlin'? Makes you real sensitive to sedatives and such." Enhancegirl was in no position to answer, and Cybelle knew it. "So...what would happen if I did this?" She pointed her tendril at Sophie again, and sprayed her once more, this time with much more than last time.

"Aaahhh....uuuunnhhh..." Sophie moaned, as her bare shoulders and legs became damp with soporific mist. "Can't...too weak...I...ooohh..." Sophie's oft-flaunted legs failed her, and she began to collapse to the ground. But Cybelle wasn't letting her off so easily. She caught her, coiling her tendrils about her supple form, and reeling her in.
"Well, well," she crowed. "Looks like you weren't all that tough."
"You...you cheap..." Enhancegirl didn't even have enough energy to finish the insult.
"Ahaha!" Cybelle's laughter was inspired by too much genuine surprise to sound malicious, but her expression did the work on that front. "What, you think there are rules? Are you really that much of a goody-two-shoes, superheroine?" She didn't wait for an answer. Instead, she held Sophie up with one arm, while reaching for - of all things - the microphone Stellar had discarded earlier. She ripped the cord out of the bottom, discarding the microphone itself, before using her real arms to cross Sophie's behind her back, at right angles, the redhead far too limp and sleepy to resist. She then started twisting microphone cord around her wrists, cinching them together.

"Unnhhh...no..." Sophie whimpered. But before long, her arms were tightly tied behind her back with strong plastic cord. Cybelle continued, winding rope around her chest, pulling her arms against her back and squeezing her pert breasts from underneath. She wound the cord once or twice down Sophie's body, but didn't begin binding her in earnest until she reached her bare thighs, which soon felt the wire's bite as they were bound together above the knees. Another loose twist down her calves, then the remaining wire, yanked out from the other end as well, was tied around her ankles. Sophie was now totally tied up.
"There. Wasn't so hard to truss you up, little Miss."

It was at this moment that Stellar noticed her fellow heroine's plight, having just hurled Arachna to the floor once again. Ignoring the spiderlike woman, she turned to aid Sophie.
"Hey! Robo-lady! Why don't you come and fight someone a little tougher, huh?" Cybelle seemed to ignore her, so Stellar decided to make the point a different way. She lifted up one of the stage's speakers with one hand, and was about to hurl it at Cybelle, when Arachna happened to shoot a bit of webbing at her. Distracted, Stellar didn't pay it much mind when the soft silk struck her on the thigh. Arachna wasn't strong enough to pull her back.

However, Stellar suddenly felt as if she wasn't strong enough to hold the speaker. Her arm began to shake from the strain, and she dropped it.
"What?" She didn't understand what had happened. One moment she'd been at full strength, the next she hadn't. The only thing that had happened in the interim was that she'd been struck by a piece of webbing. "It's very soft," she realised. "So silky...luxurious..." The thought seemed strangely intrusive, and she suddenly felt the need to rid herself of the substance. But before she could do so, Arachna yanked on the web-line connected to Stellar's leg. To the great surprise of both parties, this pulled Stellar back at great speed.

"Aah!" she cried out, as she fell into the clutches of Arachna. Both of them were so surprised that this had been possible, that there was a moment of mutual hesitation as Arachna gripped the scantily clad beauty by her shoulders. But instinct kicked in, and webs were soon pouring out of her hands, being wound around Stellar's body. "No!" she protested, uncomprehending of how she was unable to break the silk threads. They were weaker, she knew, than the tape she'd been wrapped in before - but she couldn't break them. "Oohh..." she moaned, as her chest was rolled up in moist, sticky threads, her acres of bare skin covered with the white webs. "What's...happening to me?" She hadn't just lost her super strength. Stellar felt positively weakened, weaker than she was without her Black Star power.

It wasn't just that she felt weak. She felt...smothered, somehow, like being trapped under a too-thick, too-soft duvet. The silk against her skin felt sumptuously comfortable, as if it were sucking the effort from her limbs. As her small but perky breasts vanished under white threads, Stellar felt so overtaken by this sensation that she was starting to go weak at the knees.
"Oh, wow, this is a dream," Arachna said, as she put her hands on Stellar's thighs. "Getting to feel up the best legs in K-Pop...and then wrapping them in silk? This is definitely a day to remember!" She made good on her promise. Stellar's leather skirt and the skin of her bare legs disappeared. As Stellar's knees were tied together, she tried to summon what strength she had, but it amounted to nothing more than a wriggle. It accomplished nothing.

"Oh, you're mine, you're mine..." Arachna cackled as she began wrapping up Stellar's calves, trussing them in silk all the way to her ankles, then covering her feet completely.
"Uh...how...how are you doing this...to me?" Stellar spoke so quietly as to be almost inaudible.
"I've gotta be honest," Arachna replied, "I have absolutely no idea!" Nevertheless, she was making the best of the situation. Her hands danced over Stellar's body, securing the webbing just-so. Stellar was not completely wrapped up - her midriff, shoulders, and the middle of her thighs were still open to view. However, when the oriental captive looked down at herself, she found no comfort in her less-than-complete wrapping. Arachna had wrapped her up in such a way as to make it look as though Stellar was completely naked.

"Oh, wow," Arachna cooed, "you're even hotter in person..." she spread her hands all over Stellar's body, stroking the skin she had decided to bare while Stellar impotently struggled, gradually bringing her hands towards Stellar's lips.
"No...no...stop - nnmmmphhh..." Arachna's long-fingered hand settled over Stellar's mouth, holding in her famous voice.
"Let's keep you nice and quiet, sweetie..."
"Nnmmphhh....sttmmmphhh..." Stellar could feel something warm and sticky spreading over her lips, sealing them shut. As the webbing leaked out from under Arachna's hand, she used her other to manipulate the threads round Stellar's head, forming a tight and secure gag. "Captured twice...I don't understand..." the defeated beauty thought. "How...did they make me so weak?"

Both heroines had now been subdued and bound. The only difference was that, for Stellar, her sudden weakness was a mystery, for Enhancegirl, it was no mystery at all. She was beginning to lose track of how many villains had exploited her weakness to sedatives. She tried to move, but she was well and truly trussed up. Her head lolled forward, but Cybelle lifted her chin, pointing her towards the crowd.
"I want you to see, Enhancegirl," Cybelle said, "just how many people watched me dominate you."
"Unnhh..." Sophie moaned, her green eyes half-closed. She looked out into the audience, now half-deserted by those whom the battle had panicked. But there were still hundreds of people looking at her. To her horror, she realised that many had their cellphones out, and were photographing and even filming her. "No...don't..." she mumbled, not wanting to be seen in such an embarrassing state. But they ignored her plea. When she was satisfied that Enhancegirl understood her position, Cybelle turned her around, holding her with both hands by her soft shoulders.

It was then that Sophie saw what had become of Stellar. She saw the slender maiden being scooped into Arachna's arms, limp and weak, and bound securely in webs. To Sophie too, it seemed as if Stellar were naked, for she looked so totally vulnerable. Their eyes met, both perceiving the helplessness of the other.
"Mmmphh..." Stellar mewed. She was completely overcome with the shame of her capture, at her public humiliation. To see another heroine taken down in the same way only made it worse. Stellar had never before experienced anything like this, had never been bound or captured before. She felt utterly defenceless, like all power had been stripped from her for all time. Sophie could actually see tears welling up in the beautiful maiden's eyes, tears of shame and whimpering dismay.

"Now I'm sorry I had to do that to ya, darlin'," Cybelle said, drawing Enhancegirl's attention, "but I figure a hotheaded little thing like you needed to be taught a lesson. That lesson is: don't mess with your betters." She turned her back around, making sure she'd be watching - and she'd be watched - for what came next. She held the end of one of her tendrils right next to Sophie's face, the slot still open.
"Now, Enhancegirl," she crowed mockingly, "why don't you take a rest?" There was a loud hiss, as Cybelle sprayed yet more sedative directly into Sophie's pretty face.
"Oooohhh...oohhnnn..." Sophie whimpered, her eyes fluttering, and rolling back into her head. She was scarcely conscious at all now, completely in the grip of Cybelle's gas. She was, however, just conscious enough to feel Cybelle's hand slipping under her dress to squeeze her rear, just aware enough to hear her whisper:
"Sleep now, pretty girl, and remember just how badly I owned that tight little ass of yours." With that ringing in her ears, Sophie collapsed onto her knees, before falling onto her front, tied up, out cold - and completely defeated.

[labink61]

great beginning ... cant wait for more

[Damselbinder]

"No, no don't," Sophie pleaded, shifting slowly in her bonds. She was bound at the wrists and ankles in thin twine, but it was more than a match for her. She was weak. Far too weak to fight back. Drugged perfume lingering on her neck and her shoulders made sure of that.
"You really do look sexy all tied up and helpless, Enhancegirl," said the blonde villainess who had caught Sophie in her nefarious trap. "And imagine that - just a couple of drops of my perfume to make you so scintillatingly helpless..." Sophie shifted languorously in the bonds, but there was nothing she could do - and she knew it. The Sleep Mistress, Nyx, stroked her bare legs, spreading more drugged perfume onto them as she did.

"Aaahhh...aahhh..." Sophie was overwhelmed by the sensual feeling of Nyx's hands on her smooth skin, the drugged perfume making her vulnerable to Nyx's lascivious predations. But Nyx wasn't content with just fondling her captive. She had something special in mind. Sophie felt shivers, as something extremely soft brushed up against her legs. She drowzily lifted her head to see what it was, and saw what looked like nylon.

"It's a special gift from Madam Black," Nyx explained. "Do you like how it feels?"
"Do I...what?"
"I hope you do. Because, in a minute Enhancegirl, it's going all over you." Sophie didn't understand. But when she saw Nyx unfold the fabric, she realised it was much larger than she'd thought. And there was an opening, an opening into which Nyx started slipping Sophie's feet.

"Uhh...no..." Sophie mewed, "don't..." But there was no stopping it. Nyx pulled the nylon higher, engulfing Sophie's calves, then her knees, then her supple thighs, the fabric stroking Enhancegirl's skin with an unbearable sensuality. Not only was it stroking her, though - it was holding her, pressing her legs tightly together. Sophie realised that Nyx was adding another layer of bondage.

"I just love seeing a superheroine as pretty as you in such a situation," Nyx crowed, pulling the nylon up past Sophie's waist, her midriff, over her arms, all the way up to her exposed shoulders - but not covering them yet. "So exquisitely limp and helpless..." Sophie writhed in the nylon cocoon, but only succeeded in rubbing her curves against Nyx's hands, who responded by stroking and squeezing her feminine form with even more zest, a feeling of bright shame pulsing through the helpless heroine.

"Oh, you're so sensual, Enhancegirl," Nyx laughed. She pulled the cocoon even higher, over Sophie's bare shoulders, and up her neck.
"No, no, please....please don--mmmph-nnnmmmmmphhh!" The cocoon was now over Sophie's mouth, holding her tight enough to gag her effectively. "Mmm-hhmmpphh..." she continued to whimper, even as the cocoon went over her nose as well. When it did, another wave of weakness hit her.

"Oh, did I forget to mention?" Nyx said. "The cocoon is soaked in my perfume. It'll keep you deliciously docile for a long time."
"Mmmphh...mmmpphh...nnhhh..." The gentle sounds emanating from Sophie's mouth seemed to prove her captor's point. She had been reduced to complete passivity.

At last, Nyx pulled the cocoon over Sophie's head, darkening her vision almost to blindness, though she could still see her captor's shape as she loomed above her.
"Oh, I've got you," Nyx said, "you're so deliciously defeated..." Sophie could barely follow what she was saying. The drugged cocoon had her totally powerless, even to think. She was just a sexy redhead writhing and moaning in her bonds, there for her body to be fondled and stroked by her captor, and nothing else. Her mind was only there so that she would know when to whimper.


"Ahh!!" Sophie started, awakening from her half-flashback, half nightmare, her head swimming. Her vision hazy, she looked down at herself. To her relief, there was no cocoon. "What...where...?" She was lying somewhere, flat on her back, illuminated by fluorescent lights. She was seriously disoriented, but she did at least remember why. She remembered fighting Cybelle and the spider-woman. She remembered being gassed and tied up.

"Ah!" Sophie sat up with a gasp, fearing that she had been taken by the villains. But it seemed not: she wasn't bound, or gagged and as her vision returned to normal - better than normal, in fact - she realised that she was lying in a hospital bed. Just as she sat up, a nurse walked in.
"Oh, Miss," he said, "you're awake!" He seemed nervous of her - which considering his rather impressive build was rather comical.
"How did I get here? What...happened to me?" Sophie asked.
"You were unconscious, Miss," he explained, "so you were brought here by ambulance. It's only been a couple of hours, but the sedative you were dosed with has already worked its way more or less completely out of your system - or, that's what the Doctor said, anyway. He was a bit confused though. He said the dose shouldn't have been enough to knock you out." Sophie grimaced. Suddenly her hand went to her face. The thought occurred to her that her mask might have come off, or have been removed, but thankfully it was still in its proper place.

"Don't worry, Miss," the nurse said. "This is Seacouver. We know how to treat our champions." Sophie smiled at him, but as her mind grew less clouded, her smile faded.
"Do you know what happened at the stadium?" she asked urgently.
"Ah..." He seemed hesitant to say. "After you were, uh, that is...after Cybelle -"
"After she kicked my ass, yeah," Sophie said with a grimace. "What happened?"
"Well - the news said that her and that spider chick vanished. Oh, and that Japanese -"
"Korean," Sophie instantly corrected.
"Uh, yeah, that Korean singer disappeared too. The cops don't know for sure what happened."
"What's there to know?" Sophie thought. "She's been kidnapped!"
"Hey, Miss!" The nurse's objection was in response to Sophie rising to her feet. "I wouldn't do that. You're probably still gonna be woozy."
"Don't worry about it, uh..." she paused to look at his staff pass. "Don't worry about it, Tyrese." She began to walk out, still a touch unsteady. "This crap happens to me all the time..."

Using her advanced senses to find somewhere safe, Enhancegirl changed back into her civilian form. Luckily for her, it was the middle of the night, and the hospital was more or less deserted. Still, the pretty redhead in a mini-skirt and stockings drew such stares as there were to be had.
"Sophie, what the hell?" Kirsten barked when Sophie rang her to make sure she was alright. "Where have you been?!"
"I got..." She hadn't thought of a cover story. "I got pulled aside by security. They thought I was trying to get onto the stage and they hauled me off. They only just let me go."
"You know what happened, right?"
"More or less," Sophie replied.
"Well if it's less, then turn on the news." Sophie was, as it happened, near a television. She asked one of the orderlies to change it to a news channel, and she was shocked by what she saw.

It was mobile phone footage of her, of Enhancegirl, being tied up by Cybelle. Every humiliating moment of it was captured, the second and third doses of gas, her body being manipulated as she was roped up in microphone cord...it was all in the public eye. They switched to another angle, one which quite clearly showed Cybelle squeezing Sophie's ass. She blushed in shame. Her defeat was being broadcast on national news. The headline read "Enhancegirl Overmatched: Pop Idol Stellar Feared Kidnapped As Valora Pledges To Bring Archenemy Cybelle To Justice." But even though the story was ostensibly about Stellar, most of the footage was of Enhancegirl, since she'd been closer to the front of the stage. For that reason, Sophie found herself watching herself fall to her knees over and over again, from a dozen angles.

It was only looking from outside that Sophie realised how the sight of the leggy eighteen-year-old in her tight mini-dress getting tied up and knocked out would excite quite a few people. She suddenly recalled all the occasions in which she'd been bound. The thought made the news report take on a lecherous quality, and Sophie was just about ready to switch it off, when it suddenly moved to focus on Stellar. There were fewer recordings of her, but there were some. They showed her being hauled in and wrapped up in webs. They showed Arachna scooping the pop-princess into her arms, the white of the webs making Stellar look all too much like a new bride, her dark hair trailing on the floor like a wedding train. Her sparkling eyes downcast and wet, Stellar looked humbled, as though all that confidence and style that she was famous for, everything that Sophie and her other fans had admired about her. Not only had she been humiliated and captured, but the essence of what made Stellar Stellar had been taken from her.

"No." One of the orderlies turned around, arching an eyebrow at Sophie. She thought the redhead was just surprised by the news. But Sophie was not merely surprised. She was defiant. "It is not going to end like this!"


"I don't think much of this hideout..." Arachna complained. Cybelle narrowed her eyes.
"It's just a normal house," she replied. "What did you expect?"
"I don't know," Arachna replied, "something with a little more...personality." Cybelle didn't have time to indulge her. Or rather, she did, as the two were just waiting for their client to pick Stellar up, but she didn't have the inclination.
"Why don't you go check on our captive again?" the cyborg suggested.
"Oooohhh! Yes please!" Arachna tittered, scuttling off to the back room where they were keeping Stellar.

"Mmmphh...mmmmpphhh..." The Korean damsel had been trying to muster her strength for hours, but she couldn't. The swaddling weakness was keeping her exactly where her captives wanted her. She lay face up on a hard wooden floor, in a darkened, bare room. The silken webs keeping her from discomfort, but comfort was not what she was interested in. "My powers...what's happened to me?" Before she could give the matter any thought, though, Arachna walked in. "Mmmph!!" Stellar couldn't help but react with dismay at the dark-haired woman's appearance. Her ivory-white skin and blood red lips were unsettling enough, but she seemed to take a disturbing amount of pleasure in keeping Stellar captive.

"Well good evening, my sweet star," Arachna said, sliding herself down onto the floor next to Stellar.
"Mmmp..." Stellar tried to shuffle away, but it was a simple matter for Arachna to take her by the waist, and pull her to her side. With one arm, she held Stellar in place, and with the other she traced her index finger down the contours of her captive's body, running between her breasts, over her midriff and belly button, down her waist, and her long legs. Stellar squirmed, but weakly. The lack of strength and Arachna's webs kept her more than sufficiently subdued for Arachna to do with the beautiful young woman whatever she liked.

"You know, I've been a fan of yours since you were eighteen," Arachna said. "I always thought you had a certain special something that the others didn't...and in three years you've definitely proved me right!"
"Mmmmhhnnmm..." There was a hunger in Arachna's eyes that frightened Stellar. She began running her hand gently back and forth over the skin of Stellar's legs that she'd left exposed. The Korean captive had the feeling that any negative reaction she gave would only encourage the arachnoid villainess. But she couldn't help but shift her legs - such as she could with her body so tightly bound - and turn her face away.

"No no no." Arachna grabbed Stellar's chin, and forced her to look her in the eye. "We're spending some quality time together, my sweet star. After all, it won't be long until we hand you off to our client...and then we'll be separated again..." She stared into Stellar's eyes expectantly.
"I don't understand...is she mocking me, or does she think I really want to be close to her?" Again, hands stroked her - but not tenderly. Stellar was touched hungrily, possessively. She got the impression that Arachna didn't see a person - just something for her to have.

Arachna stood up suddenly. Her eyes darted from right to left.
"Oh, sweet star...I'm starting to feel real naughty..." Stellar's eyes widened slightly. Whatever Arachna meant, it couldn't be anything good. "Well...I know I'm supposed to work with Cybelle...I know I'm supposed to deliver you to the buyer..." She shot a webline at Stellar's prone form, hoisting her to her feet. She did more than that, though - she spun Stellar like a dancer towards her.
"Mmmpphh!" Stellar protested, her long black hair swirling around her as she spun, before she fell into Arachna's waiting arms.
"You see," Arachna said, running her hand through Stellar's hair, "you're...well, sweetie, you're an absolute dream...and I'm not ready to wake up just yet." She grinned wickedly. "Hang on one second sweetie," she said, and in one deft movement, attached Stellar to the ceiling using a web line, leaving her wobbling on her feet.

Having done this, she vanished from the room. But Stellar did not even have time to adjust to her new status before she heard her captor re-enter. She was facing away from her, and couldn't turn around to see what she was doing. To her distaste, she felt a hand take her by the waist. But it was what Arachna did with her other hand that was the real problem.
"MMMPHH!!" Stellar cried out, as Arachna clamped her hand over her mouth. Through the silk, she could not feel the cloth that Arachna held - but she could still smell it. A thick, sickly sweet odour wafted into her nostrils, blocking out everything else.

"Mmmmphh!! Nnnmmmphh! Mmm-mmmpphh..." With every moan, Stellar felt herself getting more drowzy. "My body...this is...I'm being drugged!" Unlike Enhancegirl, or indeed quite a few superheroines, Stellar had never been dosed with chloroform before now. But it effected her the same way it did all of them. Her mind grew clouded. Her body groggy and weak. She began to sway in Arachna's grip, unable to hold herself up. Her slender legs shook as the strength was drained from them. Her hazel eyes began to open and shut, an insidious sleep coiling around the helpless popstar.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart, but I really can't have you make any noise at all, okay?" She felt Stellar sinking into her arms, could feel every languorous wriggle of the damsel's slinky body against her own as she fought the effects of the chloroform. And it was certainly a losing fight.
"Can't...I don't know...uhh..." That was as intelligible as her thoughts got by the end. She couldn't focus on anything. Couldn't think of how to escape. Couldn't contemplate her situation at all. Only three thoughts remained:
"I'm totally tied up..."
"I'm totally powerless..."
"They've totally humiliated me..."
It was with those thoughts ringing in her ears that Stellar gave into the drug, and lost consciousness, sinking into Arachna's arms, before her light, feminine body was thrown over the villainess' shoulder.
"Oh yes, my sweet Stellar," Arachna cooed, firmly gripping Stellar's rear and her thighs, "you're all mine."


"There's got to be something here," Enhancegirl muttered to herself. She was standing at the scene of the crime - a little subterfuge having got her into the stadium. She was attempting a state of total sensory awareness: a complete account of all the information that her senses, at maximum strength, could record. It required immense concentration to sift through the vast amounts of data entering her mind, but purpose gave her focus. She was looking for something, anything that would give her a clue as to where they went.

But there had been so many people that night, interpreting one scent from another - much less attaching it to a particular individual - was extremely difficult. But Sophie tried as hard as she could, setting one datum aside, examining another, all at incredible speed. She had begun to discover that her increased capacity for interpreting her enhanced senses had come with the ability to sort through sensory information consciously at a very high rate. But even that seemed too little - until she saw something. Naturally she'd been looking for scent trails, and that meant focussing on olefactory information. Had she been even a little more focussed, though, she would have missed the vital clue.

There was something on the stage. Something tiny, not invisible to the ordinary human eye, but so small that if one had not known - to the centimetre - where to look for it, one would never have found it. For Enhancegirl, however, such restrictions did not apply. It was a tiny piece of Arachna's silk, and having discovered it, Sophie's senses fixed on and analysed it in superhuman detail. The scent was faint - even for Enhancegirl's standards - but it was more than followable.
"I've got you now," she growled, before setting off.


It was at around the time that Enhancegirl had found her target that Cybelle realised that she had lost hers. Realising that Arachna and Stellar had been alone for longer than was advisable, Cybelle returned to make sure that nothing overly untoward was happening. If she had been of a more zen mindset, she might have noted that she had, in fact, discovered what she had hoped to discover.
"ARRAACHHHNNAAAA!!!" Unfortunately, Cybelle was not particularly zen. Discovering that there was nothing untoward going on was no comfort given that she had discovered nothing at all was going on - because there was no-one there at all. Arachna had absconded with their captive, leaving Cybelle alone to explain her absence to their employer. "I will KILL her!" she screamed, thumping her arm - her real arm - hard enough into a wall to shake plaster off it.

And things might have started spiraling downward in a serious way for Cybelle, had she not detected a new heat signature in the vicinity. Gallingly if she'd been actively scanning for heat signatures when Arachna had escaped, she would have noticed. But at any rate, not only did she notice this one, she recognised it. For any other foe, she would have attempted to hide herself for a sneak attack. But for this one, she knew there to be no point.

Likewise for the newcomer. She could see that the house her scent-trail had led her to had only one occupant using her x-ray vision, and she recognised that occupant. For the same reason, she did not disguise her entry, but opened the door calmly.
"I'm guessing," Enhancegirl said as she entered, "that you're either really smart, and you deliberately stayed behind here while your spider-pal went took Stellar somewhere else as a distraction. Or, you're really dumb, and your buddy outsmarted you and took all the credit, or money or whatever, for herself." Cybelle's mouth twitched. "Wow!" Sophie laughed. "You're dumb and you have a terrible poker face!"

"Laugh it up while you can, girl. You ain't gonna feel so smart when I whip your -" Sophie had given her side of the exchange, and she was not interested in Cybelle's. She lunged, snatching an old fork from a dilapidated kitchen table and using it offensively against Cybelle. Not expecting such openly aggressive tactics, Cybelle was taken aback, thrust after thrust from Sophie being met with no counterattack, only dodging. But she began to sense the rhythm of Sophie's lunges and kicks, and soon started to exploit opportunities for counters. But Sophie in her turn dodged those attacks.

It was just like their last fight. Indeed, some exchanges were exactly like their last fight. Sophie's powers were an absolute match for Cybelle's cybernetic enhancements. Cybelle was a little stronger, but Sophie was a little faster. Cybelle's visual acuity was a little sharper, but her sense of vibrations was not as refined as Sophie's.

It went on for a while in this vein. Cybelle did have a plan for finishing the fight sooner, but she needed to know if Sophie had any new plans. Convinced that she didn't, Cybelle now made what she imagined would be the decisive strike. "Try to dodge this." But her grin as she thought this, combined with the vibrations Enhancegirl could sense coming from one of her tendrils gave a clear indication of what she was about to do. But Sophie was ready.

As soon as the slot on the tendril opened, out of which was soon to come yet more gas, Sophie hurled the fork she'd picked up, and it shot right in.
"What? ARRGHH!" There was a loud bang, and a sickening shriek of failing mechanical elements. Sophie - fearing an outright explosion - dived out of the way. But while her fears were more or less unfounded, there was a significant release of the sedative mist around Cybelle - Sophie had been right to steer clear.

"Ugh...ughh..." Cybelle staggered backwards. The semi-destruction of one of her limbs was not painful exactly, but her feedback circuits made it very unpleasant. More to the point, she was covered in her own sedative mist. It didn't affect her nearly as much as it had Enhancegirl, but it was still making her feel groggy. Sophie was tempted to run in and press the advantage, but she didn't yet want to get too close.

The two looked at each other, realising the dilemmas they were in. Whether it was out of calculation, or simply because her patience gave out first, it was Sophie who broke the ice. She kicked at Cybelle's face - the human side - and while her blow was pushed aside with Cybelle's remaining tendril, she was unable to prevent Sophie from countering her counter, and the redhead delivered a withering kick to the robotic side of her head.

"Uaagghh!" Cybelle was sent sprawling. She tried to raise herself up, but the blow had been so hard that she was actually dazed.
"Well, well, well," Sophie said, mocking Cybelle's drawl. "Looks like you relied too much on all them fancy machines and ga-jits!"
"Shut up!" Cybelle spat. "You got lucky!"
"Maybe," Sophie said, "but I also capitalised on it." She walked over, still wary, but confident that the tide had firmly turned in her favour.

Cybelle, alas, was convinced of the same thing. With one limb in tatters, and with her physical body in less than top condition, she didn't know how she'd be able to keep up with Enhancegirl.
"Her senses are just too heightened..." she thought. And then it hit her.

"Okay, Cybo-dumbass, let's see if we can't just - aahh!" Sophie had screamed in response to something lamentably simple. Attached to Cybelle's left wrist, and which she had just turned on, was an extremely powerful, compact strobe light. It would have been disorienting at the best of times, but for Sophie it was totally blinding. She turned away, of course, but as soon as she did that, Cybelle struck her with her last tendril, knocking Sophie on her stomach.

The heroine stumbled to her feet, unable to see anything at all. She knew she had to beat a temporary retreat, but she couldn't do that completely blind. There was only one option.
"Downgrade!" With a more subdued flash than her transformation into Enhancegirl, Sophie reverted back to her civilian state. Sure enough, the flashes were not nearly so painful, but as soon as Sophie had changed back, the strobe had stopped.

If she had been transformed, she would not have needed to be facing Cybelle to know what was going to happen next. But as Sophie Scott, she was no more aware of what was happening behind her than anyone. She did not see Cybelle lunge at her. She did not see the pink tape Cybelle had manually spooled out of her shredded tendril. She did turn around, but not until it was far too late.

"Wha - MMPHH!!" Sophie cried out, as Cybelle slapped a slip of pink tape over her lips from cheek to cheek. "NNMMPHH!" With that one, simple action, Cybelle had not only gagged the stocking-clad redhead, but she had rendered her powerless. Unless she could speak the word "Enhance", Sophie could not access her powers from her civilian form.

She tried to fight. She reached up to pull the tape away, but both her wrists were seized by Cybelle. Even her human arms were synthetically enhanced, and so she was much, much stronger than the relatively slight eighteen-year-old. Sophie's arms were wrestled behind her back, and then held together with the clamps of Cybelle's tendril. She was then free to pull more tape from her broken tendril, which she wrapped around Sophie's elbows, not only binding them together, but wrapping the tape round to bind them to Sophie's chest, squeezing her breasts with tape, crumpling her thin, white blouse.
"NNHHMMPHH!!" Sophie screamed through the tape, as she realised that she was once again on the point of defeat. Already her arms were tightly restricted, and before she could even start thinking about what a plan might look like, Cybelle had twisted the sticky plastic down her forearms and several times around her wrists. There was a shocking moment for Sophie, when she realised that she had not noticed Cybelle's arms letting go of hers. The bonds were so tight that they made it impossible for her to move her arms.

"I...I can't get the gag off now..." she thought. "She's...she's beaten me again!" She twisted and thrashed, but nothing worked. She was so distracted, that it took her a moment to notice the feeling of Cybelle's hands on her stocking covered legs. It was the feeling of her own calves and feet being squeezed against each other by tape wrapped around her ankles and just under her knees that alerted her to the plight of her lower body. But the battle was over before it had begun. The tape stuck easily to the fabric of Sophie's stockings, and circuit after circuit made sure that her long, smooth legs were kept tightly trussed. In fact, once the fifth circuit below her knees was complete, her calves and knees were held so tightly that she couldn't even slightly separate her thighs.

In twenty-two seconds, Cybelle had blinded, de-powered, bound and gagged Sophie. And now the pretty redhead was in her control once again.
"Oh, you poor bimbo," Cybelle said, turning Sophie around. She held Sophie in place with her tendril, while stroking her cheek with her right hand. Her left was testing the strength of the bonds. Nothing had been found wanting so far. "You were actually kinda close that time, sugar," she said, "but like I said...I bet you don't feel so smart now, huh?"
"Mmmmphhh! MMM-RRHHMMMPHH!! NNNMMPHHH!!" Sophie wriggled and thrashed as hard as she could, but she was helpless in her bondage.
"Stop it," Cybelle said, putting a finger to Sophie's lips. It was a surprisingly effective method of asserting the power difference between the two of them, and the captive readhead couldn't help but feel a little cowed. "You're beaten, darlin'. You lost twice to me in one day, and both times you got yourself all tied up. You shoulda learned your lesson: and now you've been a naughty little hottie."
"Mmph!" Sophie squeaked, as Cybelle turned her around and bent her over. Sophie could feel her short, tartan skirt failing to cover her completely, as her upper thighs, not reached by her stockings, were exposed. She blushed with embarrassment.

But this was not enough for Cybelle. She lifted Sophie's skirt to completely expose her rear, barely covered at all by Sophie's frilly panties.
"Time for your punishment, darlin'," Cybelle said, before lifting her hand, and smacking Sophie's exposed behind.
"MMMPHHH!!" Sophie screamed, in shock and humiliation. "She...she's spanking me?!" Another smack, the sharp sound indicating the firmness of the skin being struck, sent waves of shame pulsing through Sophie's taped up body.
"Really is a tight little ass you've got there, hun," Cybelle said, squeezing Sophie's reddened behind. "That just makes things all the more fun for me." There was another spank, and another, Sophie unbelieving that she could have been reduced to such a pathetic state. "Is that what I am?" she thought. "Just someone for people to kidnap and knock out and spank? Not even a real heroine at all..." A small, helpless whimper escaped her lips, and it was just then that Cybelle pulled her back into a standing position. Sophie was breathing hard, exhausted by the ordeal. Cybelle leaned in close, speaking directly into Sophie's ear.
"Now get down on your knees like a good little girl."

She released Sophie, and sure enough, the redhead plummeted down to her knees. When she struck the floor, Sophie's head sagged forwards onto her chest, as though kneeling had taken something out of her. In a manner of speaking, of course, it had.

"Now stay there while I figure out what to do," Cybelle commanded, leaving Sophie where she knelt. The redhead didn't move. She couldn't. She'd been beaten, again, by the simplest of tricks. Her rear still stung from where she'd been smacked, and her pride stung even more sharply.
"What would people think if they saw me like this?" Sophie thought. "A pretty co-ed who wandered into something way over her head and got taped up and gagged for her trouble...maybe that's an accurate description." Sophie's dismayed thoughts were interrupted when she found Cybelle looming over her.

"How did you find out where I was?" she asked.
"Mmmhh whhddnhh thll yhhh hhvvnn hhphh hhh nnwwphh!" Sophie growled from behind her gag. Of course, Cybelle had not really expected her to answer.
"You detected something, didn't you? Following a scent, maybe?" She smiled wickedly. What she did next Sophie could not possibly have anticipated. The cyborg reached into her ear and pulled out a long, metal cable, dotted with squares that looked like oversized microchips, subsequently placing it on Sophie's head like a tiara.
"Whhmmphh?" Sophie didn't understand what she was doing.
"Hmmm..." Cybelle hummed. "Got it. You followed a trail here from the stadium...ah, some of Arachna's web."
"What the hell? Is she...is she reading my mind?!" Sophie had no idea that Cybelle was capable of such things. It was as she was wondering what the cyborg was doing to her that she realised that her sense of smell had been heightened to Enhancegirl-levels. At this, Sophie was completely mystified. It shouldn't have been possible without her transformation - and none of her other senses were enhanced either.

"I call it the Percept-Hack," Cybelle explained. "I can hook my own systems up to someone's senses, and then detect what they can detect. Right now I'm doing your sense of smell. And I know that you need to do some little lightshow to turn on your powers...but I don't. I'm just telling your brain what to do directly. It's probably happy to receive intelligent orders for once.
"Mmmnnmmphh?!" Sophie felt outraged. "She's...using my senses? What gives her the right?!"

"Oh, that's real good," Cybelle drawled. "The trail hasn't gone cold." She looked down at the damsel kneeling at her feet. "You might turn out to be useful after all." Saying that, she lifted Sophie up onto her feet with her tendril, before coiling it round her waist and lifting her lissome body up.
"Mmmph!" Sophie protested, dangling in the air. She wriggled, but to no avail. Cybelle had Sophie in her grip. But, wanting her most useful limb free, she deposited Sophie onto her shoulder, holding the struggling captive by her thighs and her ass.
"Don't struggle, girlie. I mean, what's the point?" Cybelle said, slipping her hand under Sophie's skirt to feel her taut flesh directly.
"Nnnnmphh!" Sophie protested, both at the touch of the blonde's hand on her rear, and at the thought of what was being done to her. "She's gonna use me as a tracking device? She can't! She -" Sophie's train of thought was interrupted when it occurred to her that, in her current state, Cybelle could do exactly what she liked with the mini-skirt clad maiden. Sophie felt her ass squeezed, her long legs stroked and fondled, her body entirely in Cybelle's control. Even her senses had been enslaved.
"Come on, hun," she said, "we got ourselves a popstar to find."


"Mmmhhmmphh..." Stellar moaned, as she began to come to. "Where am I now?" Her vision was blurry, but she could tell that she was somewhere dark and warm, lying on her back. She wriggled, and found her body still bound in sticky webs, keeping her powerless.
"I like this place a lot more," Arachna said. Alerted to her presence, Stellar turned her eyes, still only half-open, to her captor.
"Mmhhnn..." she intoned weakly.
"Glad to hear you agree. There's so much more...atmosphere!" She had a point, in certain respects. Stellar had awoken in a dark, dingy wooden building, with broken beams and cobwebs - not of Arachna's making - everywhere. It smelt of damp, and it felt it too. "This is what I call a lair."

She turned her eyes to her captive.
"Oh, my sweet star," she cooed, running her hands over Stellar's body.
"Nmmphh...nnhhmmphh..." the defeated heroine moaned, shaking her head.
"You don't have to worry," Arachna said as her fingers curled over Stellar's breasts. "We're all alone now. No-one's going to interrupt us." She hadn't noticed at first because the mattress beneath her was so tatty and thin, but Stellar realised that she was lying on a bed.
"Oh...oh no...what's she going to do to me?" She writhed slowly, trying once again to find some way to free herself from her sticky bonds, but she couldn't.

"You don't have to be afraid of me, my sexy little starlet," Arachna said, climbing onto the bed and - to Stellar's dismay - straddling her helpless captive. "I promise you'll only feel the softest webs...and the softest touch." Punctuating her point, she ran her fingers over Stellar's exposed midriff, her sensitivity there making the heroine blush. "Oh, that's is just so perfect!" Arachna laughed. "Such an innocent...I wonder - have you ever even been kissed?"
"Ah!" to Stellar's astonishment, she found her gag pulled from her mouth. She stared, uncomprehending, at her captor for a moment, her lips slightly open. She had her voice back, but the drained damsel didn't know what to do with it. She looked up at Arachna, lying almost perfectly still, her bare shoulders glistening with sweat. Arachna looked back, a feverish grin pasted across her face. She gently traced Stellar's lower lip with her finger, watching her lovely hazel eyes widen even further. She got closer, and closer, until her nose was almost brushing her captive's. Stellar knew what was coming. Yet she couldn't even find the strength to look away.

"Nyyymmphhh!" Stellar quailed, as her lips were sealed again - by her captor's. Her moist lips felt the forced tenderness of Arachna's, shivers running through her sensitive body. Her own eyes were wide open in horror at her captor's advances, though Arachna's were closed. "Mmmphh! Mmmnnnmmphh!" She wiggled her body, but it accomplished nothing. "Mmph!!" Arachna's tongue had slid inside Stellar's mouth, stroking Stellar's own tongue, the webbed-up popstar too frightened and helpless to do anything about it. She felt Arachna's thighs rubbing against hers, felt hands cupping her pert breasts, the web covering them scant protection from Arachna's advances.

Stellar was no ingenue. She knew how attractive she was - her slinky body had bewitched many a fan of both genders. Her beauty had always been a tool for her in the same way as her voice, a way of enhancing the aesthetic qualities of her performances. But now her beauty had been turned against her, her flawless, supple body captured and bound.
"She's just using me..." Stellar thought "...and all I can do is lie here and whimper...all my strength is gone..."

But why? She didn't understand. Even Arachna didn't, and as the long kiss went on and on, warmth forcibly spreading across Stellar's cheeks and quivering neck, the heroine wondered how her powers had been stolen away. And as she wondered, she realised that it was not just her powers that were gone. In each form, her personality changed a little as well. As the Black Star, she was confident - arrogant even - but that arrogance was gone, replaced with mewling impotence. It was as if something was stopping her from being what she was meant to be.
"The silk..." she realised. This was no great revelation - she'd lost her strength the moment Arachna's webs had touched her skin. Well, the second time at least.

And then it hit her. The first time Arachna had bound her, she'd been the White Star, and the silk hadn't had the slightest effect on her powers.
"Ooh, you taste like summer roses..." Arachna said, finally pulling away her lips from the oriental damsel beneath her. "So sweet and delicate..." To her surprise, she found that Stellar was smiling. "Oh I knew it!" she cackled. "I knew that you'd want this too..."
"You," Stellar said, her smile turning into a grin, "aren't very intelligent. Too bad, I guess!"
"What do you -"
"A Blue Star!" Arachna found her captive's body surrounded by a pale blue light. She shielded her eyes, and when the light had dimmed enough for her to open them again, she saw that Stellar had transformed herself once again. Her skin, ghostly pale, her eyes and hair glittering blue.

There was a moment when Arachna thought that this transformation might mean nothing. After all, her webs had somehow stolen away all Stellar's power before. There was no reason why this should change now, as far as she knew. For her mind was not quite as swift as Stellar's, even though the popstar was the one in the situation in which one might make allowances for her mental fortitude. It did not occur to her that Stellar had not been hampered in the least by her webs in her White Star form. Nor did it occur to her as soon as it ought to have done that it was beginning to feel strangely cold.
"Oh crap!"

Arachna leapt away just in time for her to avoid the icy splinters of her webs being fired out at her. She cursed somewhat more strongly when she saw Stellar risen to her feet, giving her captor a black look.
"You thought you could keep me, like a pet," she said, voice as icy as her powers. If any of Stellar's three personae could be described as ruthless, this would be the one. Her thin, gossamer dress swirled around her body as a snowstorm brewed in Arachna's lair, long sashes tied around her waist and across her chest fluttering in the chill wind.

"Stellar...my sweet Stellar...don't you know I did it all for you?" Arachna said, very much aware that the balance of power had shifted.
"Do not. Speak. My. Name." Stellar extended her hand, and razor snow flew like daggers towards her enemy.
"Aaggh!!" Arachna cried out, as the ice shards hit her. Her outfit was tougher than it looked, but she still took a few cuts, and the force of the wind that accompanied them knocked her back.

But there was no time for rest. An icy blast shot forth at her, and it took all Arachna's agility to spring up and out of the way in time. Already on her feet, it was easier for her to avoid the next, but they came thick and fast now. Arachna leapt up, kicking off a wooden beam to ascend to the upper level of the shack. But Stellar was in hot pursuit, launching herself up to pursue with her powers.

More icy blasts chased the spider-woman, but she managed to stay ahead of them. Astounded by the turnaround, she had no strategy in particular. She fired webs back, but even the ones that made contact with Stellar were frozen and shattered in seconds. There was only one thing she could think of, something that she'd used successfully before. But Stellar did not relent.

"You've lost now. The cold descends...and you cannot escape it," Stellar said. She fired ice, not at Arachna, but underneath her. The floor beneath her feet became hard and slippery, and she tripped.
"Aah!" she cried, landing hard and slipping on the frozen floor. Her superhuman reflexes were the only thing that stopped her from hitting her face so hard that she broke her nose. Still sliding, she managed to spin herself onto her back, before firing two strands of webbing at her potent enemy - who, but a few moments ago, had been her powerless captive.

Despite Arachna's spider-like sense of spatial awareness, the web-lines were far off target. They were so far off that Stellar barely had to move in order to avoid them. She did not know, however, that she had not been the target. There had been no real target. Arachna just needed to get both lines past Stellar. Too close to her, and she might have frozen them. But no - one line struck the ceiling and the other one of the beams. This was what Arachna had been planning all along. She pulled hard on the web-lines, using their elastic properties to fire herself towards Stellar.

The icy maiden was taken very much by surprise. Arachna barrelled into her before Stellar could use her powers to stop her, and the two tumbled onto the ground, limbs intertwined.
"Ungh!" Stellar groaned, finding herself on her back. The fabric of her shift had fallen back, revealing her ivory-coloured legs. To her even greater consternation, she found Arachna's hands on them as well, her fingers around Stellar's inner thigh. She gasped, the touch of her enemy's hands on her cold, though lovely body somehow more disturbing even than they had been before.

"Get off!" Stellar pushed Arachna in the chest. Somewhat disconcerted by the awkward landing, Arachna was relatively easy to push off. Stellar stumbled to her feet, leaning against a beam for support. Something was wrong. She hadn't just been disturbed by the feeling of hands on her cold skin, she felt disoriented. Weak. And not just that, her skin was not as cold as it had been.

Arachna saw her foe stumbling around and was perplexed. She hadn't hit her head, as far as Arachna knew, or been seriously hurt. What's more, she hadn't used her powers against the spider-woman. She'd not meant to get so entangled with Stellar - being so close was risky - yet it hadn't done her any disadvantage. On the contrary. She'd even managed to put her hands on Stellar's porcelain skin.

And then it clicked. At last, Arachna realised why she'd been able to capture Stellar in the first place. She realised why her webs, and now her touch, were causing the heroine such distress.
"It's about your persona, isn't it?" She smiled. "Your powers don't give you different personalities...you give them power by acting a certain way." She got up, walking slowly in Stellar's direction. "The tough girl...the Black Star...you need to be all hard and badass. Doesn't work too good if you're wrapped up in something soft and luxurious."
"What?" Stellar turned, eyes wide. What Arachna was saying made sense. "I...have a weakness!" Shaking her head to try and get rid of the feeling overtaking her, she fired an icy blast, but the attack was sluggish, and Arachna dodged it without even trying.

"So right now you're all cold and frosty; keeping everyone away, right? So being touched...especially somewhere sensitive, somewhere warm...and you're helpless." Stellar recoiled in horror - Arachna was right. When her inner thigh's delicate skin had felt Arachna's grasping fingers, she'd begun to lose her strength.

It was not, though, the loss of her powers that resulted in Stellar's second defeat. It was the loss of her presence of mind. She was not an unintelligent young woman - she was certainly much brighter than her perverse enemy - but the realisation that she had a Kryptonite of her own was more than enough to make her skittish, to say the least. As Arachna slowly approached her, Stellar might have used her powers to defend herself in any number of ways - away from Arachna's touch her abilities were returning to full potency. But she did not try to freeze Arachna, or attack her with an icy spear, or even trip her up again. There were infinite possibilities. She might even have tried switching to a different power set. But in her girlish fear, there was only one course of action that presented itself to the popstar.

She turned her back, and ran.

"Oh, wow," Arachna said, "this is going to be good."
"Aah!" Stellar felt something hit her in the back. Ordinarily that would involve one's forward momentum increasing, but in this case the Korean found herself being pulled back, and it was that that elicited her cry. Within seconds, she found Arachna's waiting arms wrapped around her.

"Let me go!" she insisted, but it wasn't long before her commands became pleas. Arachna's hands slipped under her shift, sliding up and down her legs, gripping and squeezing her perky breasts. She could feel Arachna's body grinding up against hers, Arachna's waist rubbing against Stellar's rear, every part of her body felt up by her captor.
"I can feel you heating up..." Arachna was right. With every touch on her cold body, Stellar became warmer, and warmer. That same weakness that the Black Star had felt when tightly encased in Arachna's webs the Blue Star now felt at the villainess' hands. Her supple limbs were less and less able to fight back, though her physical strength as the Blue Star was no match for Arachna's at the best of times. It was growing increasingly difficult for her to stay on her feet.

"Unnhh...no..." Stellar whimpered. A faint light came from her hands as she tried to summon frost against Arachna, but it was no use. The air around her hands became chilly, but there was no further effect. "I...I can't..."
"That's right, sweetie," Arachna whispered, "you can't." The beautiful singer was once again putty in her hands. She slipped the sash from around Stellar's chest, her shift becoming so loose that it slipped off her right shoulder.
"What...are you doing?" Her question was answered without too much hesitation. Her wrists were seized, pulled behind her back, before she felt the almost imperceptible touch of her thin, satin sash. What was more perceptible than the touch of the fabric, was the pinch around her wrists and forearms as the smooth satin bound them together. Arachna was tying her up again, but she wasn't using her webs - she was using Stellar's own garments against her.

"Stop...stop..." Stellar was growing warmer and weaker all the time. Her now-bare shoulder was roughly kissed by the obsessive kidnapper, sending uncomfortably pleasant tingles throughout her body. Her long, drowzily shuffling legs continued to be caressed and squeezed, and now Stellar couldn't even try to bat Arachna's hands away.
"Oh, don't you see, sweet Stellar," Arachna said, again whispering in Stellar's ear as if sharing a secret with a lover, "I've found out your...vulnerabilities. Me and only me. How could you deny now that you're mine?"
"I'm...not..." She did, in fact, manage to deny Arachna's claim, but she scarcely even managed that. The overwhelming sensuousness of what was happening to her, being captured and fondled by another woman while bound with her own sash was intoxicating.

And it was about to become even more so. Stellar found her other sash, the one tied around her waist, being unwound from her. She thought it might be used to bind her legs, but instead it was brought up her body, Arachna stroking her with the soft satin as she lifted it.
"No...stop...you - mmmphhh..." It was only when Stellar's lips felt the softness of her sash pressing down upon them that the popstar realised what was happening. Not content merely to bind her, Arachna was now gagging her victim with a piece of her own clothing. "Mmmhhhnnn...nnnmmphhh..." Stellar moaned, her pretty voice taken from her again.
"Don't moan, my sexy Stellar," Arachna said, "I'll warm you up." Still holding Stellar from behind, Arachna started kissing her neck and shoulders, easing the shift away to reveal her left shoulder as well. With one hand, she fondled Stellar's breasts, while with the other she ran a finger up and down her naked legs.

"Mmmmpphhh...mmmphhhhh..." As Arachna had promised, Stellar was getting warmer, literally. Her skin was now almost the same temperature as the room, and growing hotter. As it did, the popstar felt herself growing drowzier and more limp. Her eyelids fluttered. "I can't...can't...being...overtaken..." To Arachna's astonishment, as the captive beauty in her arms grew warmer, her skin actually began to steam.
"What's happening?" the villainess stammered, as Stellar became almost totally obscured.
"Oh...too...weak...it's too much...I...no..." Stellar's thoughts were rapid and disorganised, the sensations running through her body taking away all semblance of mental clarity. She felt like she could hardly breathe, her chest rising and falling very quickly. Her lovely skin was moist with condensation from the steam. Her icy blue eyes, powerlessness robbing them of their former sharpness, were fluttering open and closed.

"Ahh!" As the quantity of steam increased, Arachna found her grip on her lovely captive slipping. She took a step forward, out of her captor's arms.
"Mmmhhnnn...mmmhhhh..." Stellar moaned, taking one more step. "I...I'm...hers..."

With that, there was a great cloud of steam, great enough that Arachna had to cover her face. When she took her hand away, Stellar was gone.
"Oh my..." Arachna said, smiling. For it was true, the heroine Stellar, with all her power and her dazzling appearance, was gone. But Arachna had not been left empty-handed. For in Stellar's place was a young Korean girl. She had the same pretty face as Stellar, the same gorgeous figure. She had the same mind, the same memories and personality. But the girl who now stood before Arachna, wearing nothing but skimpy black underwear, beautiful though she was, was not Stellar.

"Uuuhhhnnn..." the girl moaned. Her clothes had vanished with her powers, taking the sashes that had bound and gagged her. But all this meant was that, when the scantily clad young woman dropped to her pretty knees, she did so while whimpering audibly, rather than inaudibly.

"Well, well, well," Arachna said, walking slowly around to look the young woman in the face. "At last: Yumi Tae-Yeong." That was, indeed, the popstar's real name, though it was rarely ever used of her. Yumi looked up, fixing her dark eyes on the one who had reduced her to such a state. She couldn't remember the last time someone outside her family or circle of friends had seen her outside her guises as Stellar. Her identity as Stellar was a shield, and it had just been shattered.

"Oh, Yumi," Arachna said, stroking the maiden's reddish-brown hair, "I hope you don't think that, just because I've destroyed your powers, I won't want you. You're still...delicious."
"Is...that what she's done? Has she taken away my powers for good?" Never had she been forced into her powerless state before, and she feared that the fact that it had happened then meant that Arachna was right. "I'm...just a pretty girl now..."

So convinced was she that her powers were gone, she did not even try to resist - though such attempts would have been futile - when Arachna scooped her into her arms, hands once again on her shoulders and long legs, stroking skin that was less dramatic and less pale than before, but was nonetheless smooth and yielding.

Yumi was carried down to the lower level of the ramshackle building, and set back on her knees. Bowing her head, she didn't see what Arachna was doing when she moved off to the side. The defeated heroine only knew what Arachna had done once she felt the rough cord being twisted round her wrists and forearms.

"You see, when you were Stellar," Arachna said as she forced Yumi's arms into a box tie, "it took cyborgs and spider-ladies and webs and all that fancy stuff to take you down." She wrapped rope around Yumi's chest, anchoring her arms in place and pushing up her scarcely-covered breasts. Yumi's delicate fingers twitched slightly, but without purpose. They were positioned so as to be useless to her. "But, now that you're just Yumi Tae-Yong, all I have to do to keep you helpless is tie you up." She pushed her captive in the back so that she fell flat on her stomach. "See?"

Yumi didn't even wriggle as Arachna's hands grabbed at her legs, fondling and binding at the same time. One circuit of rope above her knees, and another round her ankles - that was all. That was all it took to restrain the delicate, defeated damsel.


Sophie, on the other hand, took a great deal more effort to restrain. Slung over Cybelle's shoulder, the taped-up redhead wriggled and fought mightily as she was carried through the night.
"MMM-MMPHHH!!" she screamed, wiggling her stocking clad legs and shaking her shoulders as hard as she could.
"Oh save it, doll," Cybelle snorted. "You ain't going nowhere."

She had a point. As hard as she might have been fighting, Sophie had no powers at her disposal. She had no meanings of getting help. More than that, her powers were being used against her, to track down another heroine for some nefarious purpose.
"What do I do?" Sophie thought in dismay. She had been captured before, and - much to her chagrin - she had even had to suffer the indignity of being felt up in bondage before. But not like this. She was a tool, not just a captive. "I'm a slave..." she realised, uttering a little whimper.
"You just keep right on wrigglin'," Cybelle said, as if hearing her. "We're gettin' real close now." She gave Sophie's thighs an appreciative squeeze.

Captor and captive had been making their way across Seacouver by scaling and leaping across rooftops. Sophie could hardly even count the number of times she'd seen someone beneath her, called out for help, only to find the tape slapped over her lips making her cries useless.

By now the two were in the outskirts of Seacouver, the dock area that had once been a town of its own, had been absorbed by the nearby city, and then promptly strangled into financial ruin by the city's larger harbours in the South. If you wanted to go somewhere where no-one would follow you, the ports district was your safest bet, and it was here that Cybelle finally touched down.

"Mmmphh!! MMMPPHHHHHHH!!" Sophie screamed again, hoping her cries might catch the ear of some vagrant or something. But it was not to be. Moreover, Cybelle did not approve of her attempt at rebellion.
"I thought we understood how this arrangement was workin', red. That is, you be a docile little damsel, and lead me to where my idiot partner decided to run off to. And nothin' else." To make her point all the more clear, she spanked her pretty captive.
"Mmmphh!!" Sophie complained. But she complained impotently.

That, however, was not to say that she was completely impotent. For though she could not speak, nor move, she still had her tongue. And for the last few hours, she had been pressing against her gag with it, trying to get it off her lips. If she could do that, she could get her powers back.
"Big if..." Sophie thought. She'd been trying for hours. There was no reason to think that she would succeed at any time soon. And even if she did get her powers back, she'd already been defeated twice. How could she win against the relentless cyborg?

"I think we're gettin' close, sugar," Cybelle said. "Our little pop princess is stashed away real nearby. When we get her I'll -" She froze. She'd detected something. In her civilian form, Sophie couldn't match Cybelle's senses, so she had no idea what was going on. That is, she'd no idea until - without warning - a projectile was hurled towards the pair.

"Gnh!" Cybelle grunted. She'd instinctively tried to swat it away with her broken arm - a glitch in her proprioception subroutines had caused her momentarily to still sense the broken tendril as if it were there. The result was that the advanced cyborg's defences were penetrated, and she was struck in the head - by a homeless man's discarded beer bottle.

"You freakin' weirdos!" An prematurely old man with a huge, dirty white beard emerged from the gloom. "You can't leave one piece of this god forsaken town for the bums?!"
"Of all the..." Cybelle looked at the man with cold fury. "You've got some kinda nerve!"
"Oh, kiss my ass, lady!" He was brandishing another bottle. "Can't you super-freaks stick to the part of town where there's actually shit to save?!" Cybelle dropped Sophie roughly onto the ground.
"I don't think you realise the situation you're in, old man," Cybelle said.
"Well let's see now...I'm an alcoholic, homeless, deranged, bankrupt old geezer. I think that just about - grrk!" Using her functioning tendril, Cybelle seized the old man by the throat.
"You like to talk, don'tcha?" the villainess said. "I'm not sure how chatty you're gonna be after I squash your windpipe."
"Ghhhk-hhhhhkkk..." The old drunk was choking. Cybelle seemed to have every intention of squeezing the life out of him. It would only have taken thirty seconds at the level of pressure she was using, and it was well within her power to increase that pressure.

But before she could do that, or before the thirty seconds were up, there was a bright flash behind the cyborg that drew her attention away from the old man. When she turned around, she found herself face to face with Enhancegirl, unbound, and with an expression like death itself.
"How the hell..." Cybelle didn't have to tax her augmented calculative abilities too hard to realise that her rough discarding of her captive had been too rough. As she'd watched the old man choke, Sophie had felt her gag come just that little bit loose at the impact of her fall. With one last effort, she'd pushed it off, and transformed back.

"Let him go. Now." Sophie was not playing around. Her fists were clenched, her teeth gritted. For a moment, Cybelle considered using the old man as a hostage. But then, what did she have to fear from a heroine she'd already defeated twice? She threw the man to the floor, and he scuttled away.
"Well now, I didn't exp -" Enhancegirl was in no mood to hear Cybelle taunt her. She leapt straight into the fray with a powerful series of punches. Cybelle blocked the attacks, but it took three of her arms to match Sophie's two. Still, she was holding the redhead at bay.

"You really think this time's gonna be any different, girl?" Cybelle laughed. Enhancegirl ignored her, grabbing at Cybelle's tendril. Her foe didn't quite understand what she was trying, and tried to shake her off. But Sophie used the momentum she gained from Cybelle's attack against her, managing to get in behind her.

"What the - aughh!" Cybelle cried out in shock, as Enhancegirl grabbed the broken remains of her shattered tendril, and ripped them out of the socket. "You little hussy! I've a mind ta -" She was rudely interrupted by Enhancegirl smacking her with the broken metal, Cybelle's surviving tendril barely blocking the attack.
"Shut." She struck again. "Your." Again. "Mouth." With the last blow, she aimed very precisely. The impact against Cybelle's working tendril sent shockwaves through her body that made her fall to her knees.

Cybelle didn't understand how Enhancegirl had once again turned the battle completely against her.
"My upgrades were a match for her super-senses," she thought, "so how did she outfight me like that?" The solution was simple. Cybelle was a match for Sophie's powers. She was not a match for her rage.

But then, Cybelle still had her most effective weapon. She lifted her left arm, pointing it straight at Enhancegirl.
"Now, while you were all taped up over mah shoulder," she said sarcastically, "did'ja figure out a way to block this?!" She reactivated the strobe light. Or rather, she gave the mental commands that should have activated it. Except they didn't.
"Yeah," Sophie said. "I did, actually." Cybelle didn't understand what had happened - until she remembered the first few clumsy blows of their third battle. They had not been clumsy. Sophie had aimed her blows precisely to disrupt the mechanism that the light worked on.

But as Sophie's look of rage began to fade into one of triumph, Cybelle revealed one last trick. Activating a device in her other arm, she filled the air with a deafening, high pitched screech, against which her own ears were protected. She watched Sophie wince in pain, her own face now gaining a look of triumph.
"It'll be just like before...it'll be too much for her enhanced senses and she'll have to turn off her powers!"

Except, though Sophie's face looked pained, she was by no means disoriented. To Cybelle's great astonishment, Enhancegirl calmly walked up to the cyborg, raised the broken tendril above her head. She paused for a moment, judging the best angle of approach, and struck.

"AUUUGHHHH!!" Cybelle screamed, as her other tendril was bludgeoned into non-functionality, the electrical feedback shorting out many of her body's circuits, and disabling the soundwaves. In one savage strike, Enhancegirl had beaten her.
"Wow," Sophie said, "you really are dumb. All that fancy hardware, and you didn't notice that I don't have super-hearing."
"I -" Cybelle didn't get to say anything further. With one more blow, Sophie knocked her out.

"Uh...hhrrk..." The old man had been watching from a few feet away, and only emerged from the rubble he'd been hiding behind when he was sure Cybelle was beaten.
"Hey old man," Sophie said. "Do me a favour." She threw him a cellphone plucked from Cybelle's pockets. "Call the cops, will you?"
"Hey, whatever you say, lady!" he spluttered. "Just don't hurt me or nuthin'!" Sophie furrowed her eyebrows.
"Hurt you? I'm the good guy!" The old man looked at the shattered metal surrounding her.
"Whatever you say, lady..."

[Centurion]

Wow! This is great! The back and forth battles, the heroines thinking their way out of trouble. The interlude with Nyx was confusing, but I'm sure it will tie in sometime later.

[Damselbinder]

With her powers restored, it was not difficult to get the scent of Arachna's web back.
"Okay Sophie," she said to herself, "just a glitch. Just a setback. And that's one of them down now. That spider-weirdo is gonna get the ass kicking of a lifetime!" Anger and humiliation can be a potent mix. It had certainly been potent enough to prompt Sophie to defeat one villain. Time would tell if it could help her defeat a second.

When at last she found the dilapidated hut that Arachna had chosen as her lair, Sophie was psyched up to say the least, so much so that it would have been forgiveable had she taken leave of her senses and rushed in half-cocked. But Sophie was no fool, and she entered the dank wooden hut very carefully indeed.

"Where is she?" Sophie whispered to herself. She could see through walls with her enhanced vision, but she caught no sign of Arachna. She was no Kryptonian - her ability was only strong enough to see through about one normal wall at a time. There was also the festering smell of damp to contend with, and the odour of Arachna's webs was everywhere. Sophie's senses were sufficiently subtle for her to tell that the web scents were from various times. "She's used this as a lair before..." Sophie thought. "Ah crap...she could have booby-traps freakin' anywhere..." She proceeded with all due care.

However, as she turned a dank corner into an equally dank corridor, she caught sight of something in an adjacent room. A woman, sitting on a chair. For a moment, Sophie was confused. It didn't look like Arachna or...
"Stellar!" It had taken a moment for her to recognise the Korean songstress, for she did not currently resemble any of her three personae, and Sophie had never even seen Yumi photographed as herself. Enhancegirl's instinct was to run in and grab her, but she was cleverer than that. As the door to the room creaked open, Sophie scanned her environs with every sense she had. "No-one there..." she concluded, and stepped in.

"Mmmph?" Yumi mewed gently, hearing the door and expecting to see her captor return. She sat, bound and gagged and even tied to her chair by an extra cord around her chest, awaiting whatever fate the villain had in store for her. She'd been completely passive as Arachna had carried her to this room and set her down, her exposed body barely twitching as Arachna had her way with her. However, to her great surprise, it was not Arachna who entered.

"Mmmph!" Yumi gasped. It was not Arachna, or even the other villainess in search of revenge on her partner. It was a pretty young woman with flaming red hair, a woman who looked very familiar indeed. As their eyes met, and the red-haired girl put a warning finger to her lips, Yumi remembered her. She was the superheroine from the concert, the one who had tried to help her. The one who had fallen to Cybelle. Yet she was fallen no longer. Suddenly, Yumi blushed. She realised her status - almost completely naked, bound and powerless. For a fellow heroine to see her like that filled the soft-skinned maiden with shame.

Sophie could hardly believe what she was seeing. It was not that she had finally found Stellar - even in her blackest hour, she'd secretly thought she'd be victorious in the end - but the state in which she found her. The stunning heroine had been stripped down to her underwear, her powers seemingly vanished. Her eyes were downcast, lids half shut. She looked helpless, and not merely in the sense that she was bound and gagged. She looked as though she had been completely defeated, in mind and body.

But that didn't change Sophie's goal. She moved forward to rescue Yumi, but just in time she noticed the webs. Gossamer thin, so light and transparent that even Sophie had hardly noticed them, they stretched around Yumi in every direction, each web attached to some part of her body, though so thin were the webs that the captive would not have known they were there if she had not seen Arachna attaching them.

Sophie realised what this was. Somewhere, somehow, Arachna was monitoring her web, and she would sense a disturbance. Enhancegirl had to move very carefully indeed. She stepped between the webs, her heeled boots causing the floorboards to creak too loudly for comfort. But there was no better option. Anyone else would have disturbed the webs immediately, but Sophie was not anyone else. She managed to get within two feet of Yumi, before she realised that her success simply could not continue. The webs were packed too tightly around the helpless Korean girl, and there was literally nowhere Sophie could move which would not touch the webs. Yumi saw her pause, and understood immediately.
"Mhhhmmnnn..." she moaned. Sophie thought that Yumi was begging for rescue, but that was not so. She was urging Sophie to leave her there.
"Right," Sophie muttered, summoning her courage. "Nothing for it, I guess. If spider-chick turns up, I'll just have to kick her ass." After a moment's hesitation, Sophie moved in, and disturbed the web.

But it was not the perturbation of the web that proved fateful. It was the moment's hesitation. For when Sophie had scanned the room, the limits of her powers had not made it possible for her to see beyond the floor above her. Had Arachna been there, Sophie would have seen her. But she was not. She was on the roof of the building, watching the rooms below through two holes which just so happened to be on top of each other: one on the roof, the other on the second floor, giving her a line of sight to where Yumi sat in bondage.

But it was not Yumi she was looking at. It was Sophie. And as she stopped to work out what she should do next, Arachna worked up a little saliva. When she had enough, she dropped it through the hole. As it fell, Sophie sensed the vibrations in the air caused by its descent. But her reaction was to look up, not to move out of the way. For this reason, the droplet of liquid - which was certainly something other than spittle - landed on her lower lip.

"Ew, gross!" Sophie exclaimed. Her enhanced sense of taste told her that it was something unusual, but with no more knowledge than that, Sophie could do nothing about it. It was only when she reached out towards Yumi that she realised that there was something wrong. "What the hell?" As she raised her hand, Sophie found that it felt extremely heavy. In fact, her entire body felt heavy, as though weights were attached to each limb. "Ugh...what's going on?" Sophie could hardly move, and it didn't take much for her to realise that she wasn't getting heavier. She was getting weaker.

"Mmmphh?!" Yumi watched her rescuer's distress. She didn't understand either, but something was clearly wrong with her. Her arms dropped to her sides, her eyes widening in horror as she realised that she couldn't lift them. A weakening feeling was spreading through her. It wasn't like being chloroformed, where Sophie felt as though she were being smothered in warm blankets. It was more insidious than that, like her strength was being siphoned off behind her back. Her rosy knees began to tremble, and within a few moments the redhead gasped to find that she had fallen to them. "I...can't...I can't move!" Sophie exclaimed, her voice trembling, before the last of her strength left her, and she fell flat on her front, her head resting against Yumi's feet. "Unhh...I'm...I'm paralysed!"

"Nnnmmphh!" Yumi moaned, as her rescuer fell. "What happened to her? Why didn't she just leave me?"
"Unnhh...what's...happening?" Sophie was panicked. She was powerless, helpless, completely incapable of movement. She didn't know what to do. She didn't know how she'd been paralysed. She had no answers, and no way of getting them, until Arachna returned.

"Eee-hee-he-he-hee!" Arachna giggled, seeing Enhancegirl lying at Yumi's feet. "Another pretty little butterfly gets caught in my web!" She positively skipped over to where the redhead lay, before turning her over onto her back.
"Don't...touch me!" Sophie protested.
"Oh, you silly girl!" Arachna laughed. "You don't get to tell me what to do!" She looked quizzically at Enhancegirl for a moment. "Say...you were the one at the stadium! The one Cybelle beat! Wow, that must have been embarrassing, right? Losing so badly in front of all those people." Sophie's face fell, and Arachna knew she'd hit a sore spot. "Probably even more embarrassing than getting paralysed with a little droplet of venom just before you rescue the damsel in distress."
"You...did this to me?"
"Well, duh." She hoisted Sophie up, resting her on her knees. The heroine's head flopped forward, but Arachna took her chin and lifted it so she could look into Sophie's eyes. "Wow," she said, "you're almost as pretty as Yumi!"
"Mmmmphh! Mmmnnmmphh!" the songstress moaned piteously, but to no avail. "No...not her as well..."

"Mmmm..." Arachna hummed, running her hand over Sophie's thighs. "So soft...tell me, is having great legs a job requirement for superheroines or something? You've all got 'em."
"Nnnh...stop...get your...dirty hands off me." But Arachna didn't heed her command. In fact, to Sophie's horror, Arachna took the hem of her gold dress, and began to tear. "No!" Sophie practically screamed, as her dress was ripped away from her body in thick strips. Her midriff, then her breasts were revealed, and Sophie's lovely body was soon covered by nothing but her shimmering gold underwear, her gloves, her mask and her heeled short-boots. "What's...wrong with you?" Sophie demanded, watching herself reduced almost to nudity.
"Nothing's wrong with me," the villain replied. "I just like...pretty things."

Yumi watched as the brave young woman who had come for her was stripped, lowered to the same status as herself. She could hardly bear to look, yet she couldn't look away. Her eyes met Sophie's for an instant, and each knew the other was powerless to help them.
"Ooof!" Sophie found herself roughly shoved to the ground, on her front. Face down, she couldn't see what was happening, but her enhanced sense of touch soon met a very familiar texture - the fabric of her own dress. It had been torn away in long strips, and Sophie realised with horror that they were more than long enough to be used as bonds.
"Don't want you wriggling away now, do we?" Arachna explained, tenderly stroking Sophie's back.

Sophie's wrists were pulled behind her, placed side by side on the small of her back. Her legs too were manipulated so they were positioned neatly next to each other. It was then that Sophie felt a strip torn from her dress being wound around her wrists, before being tightly knotted, her arms tied together. Just to make sure that task was complete, Arachna tied a strip of fabric around Sophie's elbows as well, cinching them with painful strictness.

"I'm already paralysed," Sophie thought as soft fabric and hungry hands met the skin of her pale legs, "why does she need to tie me up too?" Fabric was wrapped just above Sophie's knees, pulling her shapely legs together. Arachna slipped her hands down both of Sophie's smooth calves, before twisting torn, gold fabric around her ankles, and fixing them tightly against each other. Even if she hadn't been paralysed, Sophie would have been more than immobilised by her bonds.

"Ah!" Sophie gasped, as in one movement she was lifted up to her feet. Unable to hold herself, she was rested against Arachna's body. The spider woman hooked Sophie with one of her legs, holding her against herself while balancing with one foot.
"Oh, little redhead, you've made me so happy. Not only do I have the gorgeous, the wonderful Miss Stellar - even if she is a little bit reduced - now I have this beautiful creature as well!" She ran her hands over Sophie's bare shoulders, and fondled her exposed breasts.
"Unnhh...stop...stop! You have to st-hhhhpp!" On the last word, Sophie found a piece of fabric thrust over her lips, before being tied in place behind her head, its knot nestling in her red locks. "Nnnhhhmmphh..." Enhancegirl whimpered, gagged and tied up with the dress that had been ripped from her body.

"See, now instead of complaints, the only things coming out of your mouth will be those sexy little whimpers," Arachna said, before putting her leg down, grabbing Sophie by the thighs, and lifting her up into her arms.
"Mmmphh!!" Sophie squealed in surprise as she was carried in Arachna's arms, her head falling back, her body dangling completely motionless. "I can't believe this...I can't believe I've been caught and tied up three times in one night!!"

Enhancegirl was carried over to Stellar, though neither of them felt particularly deserving of their noms-des-crimes. To the surprise of both bound beauties, Sophie was placed onto Yumi's lap, her head falling limp onto the Korean's shoulder, her nose brushing against the songstress' slender neck.

"Oh, now that is a sight," Arachna said. She noted with great pleasure how Sophie's left breast pressed against Yumi's right, and how the redhead's thighs lay on top of the songstress', so that whenever Yumi wriggled, she caressed her fellow captive.
"Mmmmphh! Mmmm-mmphh!" the two damsels whimpered, feeling each other's lovely bodies, the softness of each other's skin reminding them how vulnerable and exposed they themselves were.

"Oh, man...this is sooo hot!" Arachna squealed. She ran her hands all over the two captives, long legs stroked and smooth breasts squeezed. They both blushed brightly, humiliated by their ordeal.
"Why?" Yumi asked herself, "why would she do this to us?"
"How?" was Sophie's question. "How did I let her trick me like that?"

And for quite some time, that was how the three of them stayed. Sophie, paralysed and bound. Yumi, bound and no less helpless. Arachna, fondling her two prizes, every stroke a greater thrill than the last. It was by the time that both her captives were moist with sweat, their legs now slippery as well as smooth, that something occurred to Arachna.

"Wait a minute." She got up sharply, leaving her captives bemused. "How did you find me?" The question was addressed to Enhancegirl.
"Mmmm-hhmmm-rrmmphh!" came the angry reply.
"You've...you've got super senses or something, right?" Arachna looked grave. "And Cybelle has those enhancements...so if you could find me..." She suddenly dashed out of the room.
"Finally," Sophie thought, lifting her head.
"Hmmphh?" Yumi was surprised to say the least. She'd thought Sophie to be paralysed. "A deception?"

Yumi was right. The paralysis had begun to wear off, and movement was returning to Sophie's limbs. Once again she found herself with the task of pushing off a gag with her tongue. This time, though, she had her powers to help her, and she could feel where she needed to push to move the gag off.

"Ah!" she exclaimed when it came loose, happy to have speech returned to her. But it was not her voice she needed. It was her teeth. Surprising Yumi again, Sophie leaned over, and began to pull away at her cleave gag. "Nngh!" she grunted, finding it a little harder to get this one off. She didn't notice that her moist legs were rubbing and slipping over Yumi's as she fought the songstress' gag, but Yumi did, and her cheeks were crimson.

Either way, Enhancegirl soon managed to get the gag off, and Yumi breathed a small sigh of relief. The redhead waited for a moment, as if expecting something.
"Well?" Yumi looked at her uncomprehendingly. "Aren't you going to activate your powers?"
"I..." Yumi turned away. "She...defeated me." Her eyes were filled with shame.
"Stellar, I know how you're feeling, but you have to free us. Her venom's still got a hold of me - I'm too weak to untie myself."
"You...don't understand..." Yumi said. "She...destroyed my powers...I'm nothing now!"
"What?!" Sophie was shocked. Stellar's powers destroyed? It didn't seem possible, certainly not for a low-rent villain like Arachna. "How?"
"She...did something to me. Made me weak - reduced me to this. Now my powers are gone..."

For a moment, there was silence. With Stellar helpless, Sophie's plan had fallen apart. And yet...
"Has anyone ever forced you out of your powered state before?" Sophie asked. Yumi looked bemused.
"No. Until today I'd never been defeated at all." That fact stung. But it gave Sophie hope.
"So how do you know that your powers are gone for good?" Yumi opened her mouth, but didn't have an answer.
"I - she said that..."
"She said? What the hell would that dumbass know about it?" Bound though she was, Sophie managed to smile. "You're Stellar. You hear me. Stellar. No-one can take that away from you. You're the Bright Star of Incheon! Stellar, you're an inspiration to all of us!"
"Then I have failed everyone," Yumi said. "I was defeated..."
"Everyone loses sometimes," Sophie said. "Believe me, I know. But that doesn't mean you've lost what you are." Yumi still hesitated. "Come on!" Sophie urged. "Kick this stupid tramp's ass!"

It was at that moment that Arachna returned.
"Oh, up to something cheeky are we?" she said. "Well, I can't have that." She began to stride towards her captives, and Sophie turned her head without thinking. Immediately, she cursed herself. "Oh, little redhead, am I going to have to make you all limp and floppy again?"
"No, I - mmph!" A strand of web shot through the air, slapping over Sophie's lips and sealing them, gagging her instantaneously. "Mmm-mmmphh!" She looked desperately at Yumi. But the songstress' eyes were still downcast. "No!"

"Doesn't look like Cybelle's going to be bothering us," Arachna said. "And if anyone does come and disturb, I've got this place wired up now. So you two are going to be staying here for a good long while." She grinned broadly. "We're gonna have lots of fun." Sophie looked at her fellow captive again in desperation. Yumi saw the fear in her eyes, her helplessness. It was in that moment that she realised that Sophie didn't just need help. She needed a heroine.
"A White Star!"

There was a powerful flash of light. Sophie had had the good sense to shield her eyes, but Arachna had not, and she was momentarily blinded. Before her vision had recovered, she was sent reeling by a mighty sonic cry, that left her sprawled on the floor. It had also shattered Yumi's - Stellar's - bonds.
"Sorry about that," Stellar said, helping Sophie onto her feet before untying her. "Any girl can be down sometimes, right?" she said chirpily, happily embracing the peppy persona of the White Star, blonde and blue eyed again, clad in a tight, white mini-dress.
"No problem," Enhancegirl said, after pulling the web from her mouth. "Now let's deal with her." The heroine was, needless to say, a little embarrassed about fighting in her skivvies, but she made do. She was still a little weak from Arachna's venom, but she was still capable of fighting.

"Oh, so this is how it's gonna be, huh?" Arachna said, climbing furiously to her feet. "Fine! I'll show you both what it means to belong to Arachna!"
"Y'know," Enhancegirl said, "that line might be a little more intimidating if you weren't a total freaking loser!"
"Oh, that's just the -" Arachna ran forward, but she was blown back by another sonic blast.
"To think you can own a person - so old fashioned!" Stellar said. Both Arachna and Sophie were a little bemused by her choice of insult, but their ears rang from the results of her power. Even Enhancegirl's ability to sense vibrations was disrupted by the powerful vibrations of Stellar's voice.

Arachna leapt forward again, but just as Stellar breathed in to blast her again, she shot a webline at the ceiling. As the blast came towards her, she zipped up into a crack in the upper floor.
"I'll get her!" Stellar shouted, before shouting with much greater force at the ceiling. The woodwork shattered, but Arachna was not caught in the blast.

It was just after the blast, as Enhancegirl's senses were still reeling from the blast, that two thin, white threads descended from the floor above. With her abilities disrupted, even Sophie didn't sense them - until they stuck to her shoulders, and she was yanked onto the upper floor.
"Ah!" she gasped. As she was hoisted up, Stellar didn't even notice, still focussed on trying to bring the floor beneath Arachna's feet down.

Enhancegirl found herself face to face with Arachna, who had a sinister look. If she had not been slowed by the remnants of the drug in her system, perhaps she would have reacted quickly enough. But, as it was, Sophie found her arms seized, and her lips met by Arachna's.
"MMMPHH!!" she cried out, as the kiss was forced upon her, her tongue stroked by Arachna's, her lips pressed into by the villain's. "MMMPHH!! NMMMPHHH!! NYYYRRMMM-mmph?" It was then that Sophie felt the same weakness begin to take her limbs, the same sense of weight begin to overwhelm her. "Nnmmphh!! Nnnmmmmphh!" Arachna was not merely kissing the half-naked redhead. She was drugging her.

Sophie fought as best she could, kicking and batting at her enemy with all her might. But all her might was not very much, and it was getting less every second. With every passing moment her resistance waned, the kiss grew deeper, and her paralysis proceeded more and more quickly. Finally, Arachna released her from the kiss, and from her arms.
"Down you go." Down was precisely where Sophie went. She tumbled onto her knees, before collapsing in a heap on the ground.
"No...no..."
"Yes, yes," Arachna said, before beginning to entwine her.

From her hands, white, sticky webs emerged, webs which were soon tangled around Enhancegirl's body. Arachna went from her shoulders down, winding the webs over her breasts, squeezing them against her body. Her midriff was covered as her arms became trapped by her sides, the sticky strands holding against Sophie's tender skin like glue.
"That's it, my little butterfly," Arachna said, as Sophie's hips vanished beneath the tight ropes. "You'll be all wrapped up in just a moment..." She squeezed Sophie's thighs before wrapping them together as well, her limbs pressed inescapably tightly. Sophie could feel the warm, wet webs covering and pressing into her naked legs, felt them as they covered her knees and calves. Arachna even whipped off Sophie's boots so that she could bind her feet all the more securely.

But she didn't stop there. She then went up from Sophie's shoulders, covering her pale neck, working strands around her chin.
"No - no! Don't - mmphh!" It wasn't long before webs met Sophie's lips, first going between them, and cleave gagging the whimpering damsel, before being wrapped over them as well, sealing her pretty mouth. Higher they went, over Sophie's nose as well - though, mercifully, air could still reach the bundled-up heroine. Arachna's one gap in her mummification of the oft-bound maiden was to leave her eyes uncovered, so Sophie could see what was happening to her. But that was it. The webs went over her forehead, and Sophie's hair was bundled up and covered as well, so that she was completely wrapped up, from head to foot.

"Mmmphh...mmmphhh..." Sophie mewed. Paralysed, and tied up tighter than she had ever been, Sophie had never felt more helpless. "She caught me...she caught me..." she said in her mind over and over, distraught and defeated. She was cocooned, and this was no cocoon of the mind. It was tight, and warm, and it wrapped Sophie completely. She couldn't help but think again of what Nyx had done to her, couldn't believe that another villainess had manage to catch her and wrap her up so tightly.
"Poor little heroine, all wrapped up by the mean spider," Arachna laughed. "Now...be a good girl and stay here." With that, she crept back into the shadows.
"Mmmmphh!" Sophie cried out, half as a warning, and half begging for help. "MMMPHHH!!"

But Sophie's cries did not reach Stellar's ears. She had of course noticed Enhancegirl's absence, but it was as yet unexplained. She was watchful, though, ready to put Arachna down the second she appeared. The spider woman, though, watched Stellar from a distance, and pondered how to deal with her. Even paralysed, her voice would still be potent, so the same trick she'd used on Enhancegirl wouldn't work. She couldn't figure out an esoteric weakness for the White Star, so her tactic against the Blue Star wouldn't work either. As long as there was light, Stellar was more than a match for her.
"As long as there's light." She smiled.

Stellar was immensely powerful. She'd been holding back the full extent of her abilities in battle, but she could have brought the entire hut down with a word if she'd felt like it. She'd beaten crime bosses, metahumans, purported demi-gods even, with her mighty abilities. It was quite a turn up for the books, then, when Arachna defeated her by flicking a light switch.

"Huh?!" Stellar gasped. Plunged into darkness, she found herself robbed of her powers. For a moment, panic set in. But it was only for a moment. She realised that all she had to do was switch to a different power set, and her abilities would return.
"But the Black Star is weak against her webs...and the Blue...she'd..." But any action in that situation would have been better than inaction, and it was inaction that did for her. While Yumi dithered, Arachna pounced.

"Aaahh!" Stellar cried out, as strong limbs seized her in the blackness. "A Blue - MMPHH!" Before she could switch power sets, a hand clamped over her mouth. From that hand, a viscous white fluid emerged, a fluid which soon became string-like. By practised dexterity, Arachna teased the strands over Stellar's mouth, sealing her lips, before beginning to wrap her up.

"Mmmphh!" Stellar moaned as she was wrestled to the ground, her arms pulled behind her back. Webs were quickly generated and twisted round her wrists, binding them together. Once that was done, Arachna felt free to secure her properly, in the manner of the creatures her powers imitated. She started from Stellar's hands, wrapping webs over them, covering them as she wrapped silk around Stellar's midriff. The songstress' kicking legs were held down by Arachna's own as she bound her idol.

"Captured!" was all Stellar had the presence of mind to think as her arms were squeezed against her back by strong silk, her perky breasts vanishing under white threads before her shoulders disappeared as well. As with Sophie, Arachna wound silk up Stellar's slender neck, over her chin, and again over her mouth, doubly gagging her.
"Oh, I can't believe I didn't do this earlier," Arachna crowed, as silk covered Stellar's nose and forehead, her eyes left visible as well. Her haircut didn't require so much bundling, but her hair vanished as well under the silk, leaving her wrapped up from her waist to her head.

"Mmmphh! Nnnnyymmphh!" Stellar quailed, as her boots were pulled off too, preparation for the binding of her lower body. And soon, silk thinner than hair and stronger than steel encircled her legs. Thighs squeezed, knees pulled together, calves covered up completely - Stellar felt as her body fell into Arachna's grip once again. Her toes vanished last. With that, Stellar was completely mummified.

"Stay there, my sweet Stellar," Arachna said in the gloom. "I'll be two seconds."
"Mmmmmmmpphhh!" moaned the defeated songstress. She lay in the darkness, twitching, but barely able to move at all. "She bested me again...oh...I'm so pathetic..." When the lights came back on, too much of Stellar's skin was covered for her to use her powers. And it was then that she realised the extent of her defeat. Slung over Arachna's shoulder, was the webbed-up form of Enhancegirl.

"Mmmph!" the redhead grunted, as she was dropped down next to Stellar, her head falling to face the heroine.
"Well, well," Arachna laughed. "Two wrapped up heroines...and they're all mine." To make her point, she plucked the mask from Enhancegirl's face.
"Mmmmphhh!" she moaned, unable to take her eyes off Stellar, paralysed as she was. The Korean beauty turned to meet her gaze, and the two looked at each other. They saw the completeness of their sticky prison, saw just how pitifully helpless the other looked. The webs were so tight that the contours of their slinky bodies were completely visible.

"I don't believe it..." Sophie thought. "She got us both..." Though she had never been quite so covered up before in her life.
"We were no match for her..." Stellar realised. As she looked into the sparkling eyes of her fellow captive, a tear ran down the Korean beauty's cheek. Though both helpless maidens were partial to skimpy clothing, the closeness and warmth of the webs that bound them made both feel as if they were completely naked. They felt exposed, helpless and weak. It had been a day of many defeats for both damsels, but none as humiliating as this.

"Now...what am I going to do with you?" Arachna said. She knelt down between the two fallen maidens, and put a hand on each of their chests. Stellar twitched, but could barely move at all, and Enhancegirl couldn't even do that. Her green eyes widened, but she was otherwise still. To each girl's horror, Arachna began massaging their breasts, and the webs were no protection at all from her lasciviousness.

"Mmm-nnnmmphh!" Stellar moaned, shaking her head from side to side as she was touched. Arachna's hands went up and down their bodies, over their legs and hips, squeezing and fondling as she pleased. The heroines were powerless to stop her.
"Grrmmphhh! Mhhmmm-GMMPHHH!!" Sophie screamed from within her sticky confines.
"Ah-ah, my little redhead," Arachna crowed, "don't be so feisty." She stood up, before crouching down with a leg on either side of Sophie's webbed-up body. She looked at her for a moment, grinning.
"Whhm? Mmph!" Sophie squeaked, when she was grabbed by the shoulders and spun onto her front. Before she had time to contemplate why, she felt a hand slapping against her ass. "NNNMMPHHH!!" Sophie cried out, shocked and witheringly embarrassed. Her cheeks, though covered by the webs, were burning scarlet. "How...how have I let them do this to me?"

"See, pretty girl," Arachna said, turning Sophie over, "there's no point in getting mad about anything." She grabbed Stellar by the arm, and pulled her towards Enhancegirl, forcing her to sit up, before resting the paralysed redhead's shoulder against her Korean counterpart's.
"Mmmph..." Yumi whimpered, manipulated and pulled around as her captor saw fit. The two damsels stared out from the small windows in their tight cocoons, looking up at the madwoman who had ensnared and subdued them. She seemed so strong, and they so perfectly vulnerable.

"I beat you both. I caught you both. I wrapped you up like pretty little Christmas presents, so I want both of you to understand," Arachna said, "that you're mine now." For the two damsels, Arachna's words were like a fresh injection of her venom. They lowered their eyes, and Stellar ceased her pitiful struggles. They were truly defeated. A gentle push, and they fell straight on their backs, staring up at the ceiling, whimpering in their sticky bondage. Seeing the extent of her victory over her beautiful captives, Arachna smirked.

Her smirk was disturbed, however, when she sensed something. "The webs...an intruder!" Arachna had just enough time to turn around, before an extremely large chunk of wall slammed into her, and threw her across the room.

"Mmmphh?!" Sophie cried out, startled. For a moment she thought it might have been a recovered Cybelle, come to claim her prize back. But when the intruder stepped through the door, Sophie realised that it was even worse than that.
"Oh, I'm sorry, did I not knock loud enough?" It was a woman. A tall woman with long, blonde hair, dressed in a dark blue leotard, red knee-high boots, and a red domino mask a little thicker than Enhancegirl's.
"Valora!"

Sophie suddenly remembered the broadcast she'd seen in the hospital, remembered that Valora, the mighty maiden of Maine, was an old enemy of Cybelle's, and had vowed to stop her. Obviously she'd been too late for that, but she'd picked up the trail and found Arachna instead.

"Pardon me gals," Valora said, striding across the room. "I'll have you out of there after I deal with this louse." She walked over to where Arachna had crashed, throwing the piece of wall away with her superhuman strength. She found Arachna in the rubble, and lifted her by her collar. "Guess what, honey? You're under arrest."
"What the -" But Valora didn't let her finish. She tapped her on the forehead, knocking the villain out instantly.

The villain that Stellar and Enhancegirl had fought so hard against, that even united they could not defeat, had been bested in ten seconds. Though part of each damsel was very glad indeed for the rescue, another part of them felt even worse. Sophie remembered the peppy speech she'd given to inspire Stellar, and it now rang hollow.

"There we go," Valora said, ripping the webs from Stellar's body. "Sorry it took me so long, Miss Stellar."
"Don't worry," the Korean said sheepishly. "Thank you...for rescuing me."
"Heh. You don't sound all that happy about it!" Valora laughed. She ripped the webs off Enhancegirl next. The redhead lay still, however. "What's the matter?"
"Drugged..." Sophie whispered, choked with shame.

"Oh, don't worry, Miss, I'll get you out of here." Before she could object, Sophie was hauled up, and tossed over Valora's shoulder. "Follow me, Miss Stellar. I'll get you to safety." She strode away, with heroine and villain slung over her. Stellar wanted to say something, but her English wasn't good enough to explain the grave insult that Valora had committed, and she meekly followed.

As Sophie lay on Valora's shoulder, rescued but still helpless, it occurred to her that nothing she had done had made a difference. If she had just gone home from the hospital, and let Valora take care of everything, she might indeed have spared Stellar some difficulty.
"I was just another captive..." she said, as she was carried off by the heroine who had done so much more than either villain to take away Sophie's pride.

[mjkjets]

Another great Enhance Girl story. Keep them coming.

[Umi]

Very nice story. I hope to see Stellar as a main character.

[Damselbinder]

Very nice story. I hope to see Stellar as a main character.

Alas, I'm probably going to use Stellar quite sparingly. The reason for that is that she's overwhelmed and made helpless very easily because she's so unused to defeat, which I think is quite a cute trait...but naturally that would wear off if I used her more.

[Umi]

Very nice story. I hope to see Stellar as a main character.

Alas, I'm probably going to use Stellar quite sparingly. The reason for that is that she's overwhelmed and made helpless very easily because she's so unused to defeat, which I think is quite a cute trait...but naturally that would wear off if I used her more.

Yes i can see that and is a cute trait for sure.

I just like of stories of really powerful heroines (also overconfident and naive) that are defeated by weaker enemies because of secret weaknesses used accidentally or in a elaborated plot to use them to wear down the heroine until she can be defeated (specially interesting weaknesses like Stellar`s ones instead of only the 'Kryptonite' type). But i can understand that would be better for stand alone stories were the heroine is defeated for the first time.

Again congratulations for the stories and characters!

[Damselbinder]

"Miss Stellar!" An attractive blonde of curvy build and medium height grasped the Korean songstress' hand warmly, shaking it with a surprising amount of force for someone of her size. "It's such an honour!"
"Please," Stellar replied, smiling winsomely, "do not mention it!" Normally when exciteable women clasped Stellar's hands, either she or her security detail would be swiftly removing them from her presence. This time, however, not only were there no burly men rushing to separate the two, but they were not present at all. Stellar had asked them to wait outside her luxuriant hotel room, while May O'Brien conducted her interview.

"So, before we start," May said, getting out a small tape recorder, "can I ask why you wanted me to interview you?" Much was unusual about the situation. For one thing, Stellar wasn't in costume. She was being interviewed as Yumi Tae-Yong. Not that she didn't look fabulous, of course - she was clad in a very fetching, short black dress, with translucent sleeves, and red heels at the end of her long legs. May was dressed to impress as well, in a dark blazer and mini-skirt, but she still felt a bit out of place. Stellar had never given an interview to a Western journalist before.

"I have read your articles about Enhancegirl...you seem to admire her, yes?" May smiled.
"Well, I guess that's one way of putting it." May had become Enhancegirl's unofficial chronicler, regularly reporting on her heroic exploits, and trying to paint her in the best light possible. Recent events, however, had not been kind to Sophie's public image.
"Heroine Humiliated," the headlines had read. "Enhancegirl defeated twice in one night: rescued by Valora." With a rather sickening glee, Seacouver's papers had happily reported Sophie's double defeat. Valora had even received credit for defeating Cybelle, though not through any lie of her own. The old man Sophie had helped had simply been too drunk to remember accurately what the heroine looked like. Misremembering which was which, he described Sophie as blonde - which both Cybelle and Valora were - and the paper interviewing him had reported accordingly.

"I wish to say what really happened on that night," Yumi said. "I thought you would listen to what I say."
"I'm all ears," May said, crossing her legs, her flesh-tone stockings rubbing against each other as she did. And so Yumi began to relate what had really happened, how Enhancegirl had been the one who'd defeated Cybelle, how she'd come to rescue Yumi from Arachna, and only been beaten - as Stellar saw it - by chance.

It was as she was explaining this that the guard posted outside the hotel room door noticed someone approaching him. A tall, blonde woman, taller than the guard himself.
"Hey there stud," she drawled, "you work security here?" He wasn't supposed to talk to people, but the dame talking to him was quite a looker, so he decided to make an exception.
"Not exactly," he said, trying to sound cool. "I'm, uh, private security."
"Oh, a bodyguard, huh?" She got close to him. "I don't suppose you'd be interested in guarding my body, would you?"
"Well, ma'am, I -" The guard realised something, and his eyes widened. "Wait a minute, you're -" He reached for his gun, but too slowly. From underneath the woman's long, red coat, two steel tendrils emerged. One seized the guard by the throat, and hurled him to the side.
"Ungg!" he grunted, as he slid to the floor, stunned almost to unconsciousness, blood trickling from a gash on his forehead.
"Sorry, Mr Bodyguard," Cybelle said, "but you ain't the one I want to play with."

"So you think the press has been unfair to Enhancegirl, then?" May asked. It was a leading question, but it wasn't like the interview was going anywhere Stellar didn't want it to.
"Unfair? Yes, Enhancegirl was very brave. I owe her a...I owe her much." It was Yumi's turn to cross her legs, but she did so out of discomfort. She wasn't quite able to express herself as she meant. She was trying to plead Sophie's case, but it wasn't coming out right. Sophie had saved her, that was what Stellar felt, not Valora. Enhancegirl was definitely coming out in a better light, but she was not yet the hero of the story.

May sensed the same thing. She was trying to pose questions that would lead Stellar in the right direction, and she might have come up with something, had the two not been interrupted. The door to Stellar's hotel room opened, and Yumi huffed slightly. It was probably her guard coming to update her that nothing untoward had happened, as he was wont to do. However, her back was to the door, so it was May who saw the intruder first. Like the guard, she failed to recognise her as well.

The woman in red strode in confidently, hardly even looking at May, who was staring confusedly at her. She stood between the two women, arms akimbo.
"Um," May said, rising to her feet, "do you mind?"
"Oh, I'm sorry darlin'. I didn't mean to be rude, but, I'm afraid this interview is comin' to an end." The voice was very familiar to Yumi, to whom the intruder had her back turned. When she worked out why, her blood froze.
"Cybelle!" she gasped.
"In the flesh," the villain said. She whipped off her coat, revealing four long, metal tendrils. "So to speak."

"A Black - mmmphh!" Yumi had leapt up, and tried to activate her powers, but Cybelle was too fast. One of the tendrils shot out and wound around Yumi's mouth, preventing her from activating her powers. She tried to pull free, but she wasn't strong enough. Two more tendrils shot out at her, mechanisms within them already in the process of spooling out strong, fibrous white cord. Their pincers seized Yumi's arms, pulling them behind her back, and turning her around. "MMMPHH!" she protested as with ruthless efficiency the two tendrils began wrapping the cord around her wrists and up her forearms, binding the slender maiden."No! Not again!"

"Hey, let her go!" May leapt into action, and swung fiercely at Cybelle's face. But the cyborg didn't even flinch. She snatched May's arm in mid-air with one of her organic hands, and then grabbed the other before May could react. "Aah!" May cried out, as her arms were wrestled behind her as well. Grabbing May's waist with her last tendril, Cybelle spun the reporter around, before crossing May's wrists over each other. "Get off me, you robotic tramp!" was all she had the sense to say. She was breathing hard, her heart thumping against her chest. Panic and adrenaline shot through her, though it did her no good. "What the hell is going on? Why is she here? How is she here?!"
"Oh, that ain't very ladylike," Cybelle laughed. Holding May's wrists together with one hand, she pulled out what looked like a simple roll of silver duct tape from a pocket. May craned her head back, but couldn't see what Cybelle was doing. She heard the ominous tearing sound, though, as tape was pulled away from the roll, before being twisted round her wrists and upper arms, binding them together.
"No! Stop!" May protested. "Someone help! Help m-MMMPHHH!!" A strip of duct tape had been slapped over her pouting lips, gagging the plucky reporter. She shook her head from side to side, but the tape was not so simple after all - it was specially designed to cling to skin, to hold tight without causing harm when it was pulled off. "MMMMPHHH!!" May cried out again, but no-one could hear her.

Both Yumi and May's arms were now bound, and both damsels were gagged. Cybelle believed that she was in total control of the situation, with both women so secured. But she was perhaps a little too sure of herself, for she relaxed her grip on the blonde reporter - who promptly stamped on Cybelle's foot with her heel and ran for it.

Cybelle's feet, unlike much of the rest of her, were not robotically enhanced, and she yelled in pain from May's attack. But the lapse in concentration was only momentary. Throwing the duct tape from her human hands to one of her artificial ones, she shot out two tendrils towards the fleeing reporter. One seized her by the shoulders, the other by the waist.
"NNMPHH!!" May cried out, panic beginning to set in as she wriggled vainly against the metal limbs. "Mmph?" The limb grabbing her waist began sliding down her stocking-clad legs, slowly, as if feeling them up. If she had known that Cybelle had tactile sensors wired directly from her tendrils into her nervous system, May would not have dismissed that thought so easily.

At any rate, May was soon aghast to find duct tape being twisted around her ankles, pulling them together, and making it impossible to walk or run. A few circuits were tied around her thighs as well, just above her knees. May looked down at herself, realising that she was now completely taped up, hand and foot. "What the hell do I do now?!" she thought, eyes wide and forehead damp with sweat.

At the same time, Yumi's lower body was being secured as well. Cybelle had a little more fun with the whimpering popstar, encircling Yumi's bare legs with her tendrils, and running them up and down, feeling her as she wiggled in her captor's grip. But Cybelle didn't want to have to devote her limbs to binding the maiden. She spooled out more rope, and began criss-crossing it down Yumi's legs, ropes biting into her soft skin, and keeping her from even wriggling noticeably.
"Mmmm-nnnmmmphhh..." Yumi moaned, watching herself be trussed up. "I can't do anything...I'm so powerless..." She could feel something moving in the tendril ensnaring her mouth. Something was emerging from it, some kind of fabric which was pressing over her mouth. "It's gagging me," Yumi realised, and when the tendril unwound from Yumi's face, it left behind a thin, but very effective cloth gag, tied in place by the tendril's pincers. Yumi looked at May, struggling in the tape which bound her limbs, and thought that, somehow, she still looked strong. She was fighting, even if it was pointless, and the tape had a kind of rough-and-ready quality to it that made May look as if she had been hard to capture.

Yumi, however, was tied up in pure white ropes, with a thin cloth gagging her pretty lips. She looked like something out of a fairy story, and not just for her beauty: she was like a princess captured by a dragon, whimpering and feminine, as fragile as porcelain. She hung her head in the shame of her captivity.

It was very unexpected for both captives when Cybelle released them. Not that she untied them or anything of the sort. She merely unwound her tendrils. It was no mercy, though, as Yumi and May both realised. With their much-flaunted legs tied up so tightly, neither could balance, and they began to collapse to their knees. But before they could even hit the ground, Cybelle had snatched them up again by the waist. She pulled them in, spinning them like ballerinas, vulnerable and beautiful as they were. They fell helpless into her arms, as she held them both up by the smalls of their backs, a disturbingly intimate gesture. They squirmed in her grip, but to no avail.

"Now, darlin's, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Cybelle laughed. "In fact," she said, turning towards Stellar, "you might say it was kinda pathetically easy." Yumi turned her wet, hazel eyes away, blushing with embarrassment. Her tendrils folded back on themselves, all four doing something with Cybelle's back pockets. Not able to see what she was doing, the captives found their eyes turned on each other.

"Why isn't she doing anything?" May wondered as she looked at the downcast beauty before her. She seemed so far removed from the Stellar of the stage that she actually wondered whether she really had any powers at all - but then there were many heroines whom a quick enough hand over the mouth could make helpless. She just seemed so helpless, so feminine and delicate, it was hard to believe that Yumi and Stellar were one.
"Mmmmmphhh..." Yumi was thinking the same thing. She could hardly bear to look at the gorgeous blonde out of shame. She was a superheroine. She was meant to rescue damsels in distress, not become one herself. She was so absorbed in her feelings of defeat that she didn't notice the damp cloth until it was already pressed over her mouth.

"Mmph!" Yumi squeaked.
"MMMMPHHH!!" May screamed. The difference in volume meant nothing - both were being subjected to the same fate. Cybelle had pressed chloroform soaked rags over their mouths, and now only had to watch as they fell even further under her control.
"Sleepy time, my little honeys," she crowed. May had no intention of giving in peacefully, though. She thrashed and fought, wriggling as hard as she could in the tape that kept her powerless, trying not to think about the insidiously sweet odour, and the warm, soft feeling spreading through her.
"Just gotta stay awake...just gotta stay awake..." she repeated to herself. But it was not so easy. Her limbs were slackening, and her eyelids were already feeling heavy.

"Mph...mph..." Yumi mewed, shaking her head in some vain gesture of defiance, or denial, she wasn't sure which. The scent of chloroform was familiar now, after her ordeal at Arachna's hands, and she knew what her perfect body would experience. Her extremities began to weaken first, her arms and legs, her knees shaking as she lost the strength to support herself. Her mind grew cloudy, drowziness wrapping around her like a blanket. "I can't move...can't fight it..." she thought despairingly, feeling herself grow ever sleepier. She met May's eyes, and saw that even the feisty reporter now looked almost totally vulnerable as well, her eyelids drooping, her expression increasingly tamed.

"That's it, girls, just drift right off..." Cybelle whispered. Taking them by the waists again, she began to ease them down to the floor, as their legs couldn't hold them up any longer. Her moaning, bound captives sank down, and Cybelle herself kneeled down with them, positioning their heads on her lap. By the time they reached the ground, neither had the strength to move. All they could do was turn their eyes up to the villainess who had captured them. They whimpered gently, breathlessly, feeling themselves grow ever more still. Before they lost consciousness completely, however, Cybelle took the cloths away. Yumi and May were left teetering on the edge of giving in.

"Why...did she stop?" Yumi wondered. But that soon became clear. Cybelle wanted them to be awake as she started to show them just how much they were in her power. She started running her hands over their chests, squeezing their breasts - May's round and soft, Yumi's perky - sliding her hands wherever she pleased.
"Mmmmmphhh..." May moaned, feeling herself being dominated by the cruel cyborg. "Why...we're already helpless...why is she bothering?"
"Nnnnmmmmmppphhh..." Yumi whimpered in a long breath, as she felt Cybelle's hands touching her naked legs, stroking her thighs and eliciting another blush. She began writhing sinuously in her bonds, only noticing after it was too late that she was rubbing quite intimately against her fellow captive, her bare legs rubbing against the toned, stocking-clad legs of the blonde. She stopped moving, paralysed by humiliation. It was only when the cloth went back over her mouth that she started moving again, as she wiggled and moaned almost involuntarily. May was subjected to the same thing, the damsels' eyes darkening as they gave in, warm and soft and completely overwhelmed.
"Mmph..." May gave a gentle sigh as she passed out, only seconds before Yumi did the same. Cybelle held the cloths in place for a few moments to make sure that they were unconscious, before taking the rags away.

"Nighty night, gals," she said, before standing up, letting Yumi's head fall onto May's chest. She grabbed them both by their clothes, hauling them onto their feet. She did so with such force that May's blazer ripped, exposing her left shoulder. Cybelle would have called that serendipity. She held them like that for a few moments, enjoying seeing their struggles reduced to absolute meekness, enjoying taking in how utterly she had tamed the pretty young women. But she curtailed her indulgence, and, used her tendrils to lift both damsels up, tossing them over her shoulders. Both wore short dresses, not designed for such a defeated pose, and it was simplicity itself for Cybelle to slip her hands under their hemlines, feeling the tops of May's soft thighs, which her stockings didn't reach, and squeezing Yumi's tight ass. She almost hoped the Korean captive had some semblance of wakefulness, so she'd know Cybelle was doing this to her.

"There," she said, as she began walking off with two beautiful maidens draped over her body, "that stupid little redhead won't be able to resist bait as hot as this..."

[Umi]

Another amazing chapter!