The Perils of Enhancegirl 5: Back to Black

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Damselbinder

"I'm here!" Enhancegirl shouted at the top of her lungs. "So where the hell are you?!" Often when entering a situation she knew would be trouble, Sophie Scott liked to start off in her powerless state, before dramatically transforming and activating her powers, but she was not in any mood for theatrics. Her voice rang against the rusted metal of the docks, bouncing back and fading as it travelled out over a calm sea. 'Calm' was not, though, a word that could be used to describe the flame-haired superheroine.

"We don't know who it's from," the Herald reporter had said, "just that it was meant to be sent to this number."
"But why me?" Sophie had replied, worried that someone other than May was getting in contact with her.
"Hey, I don't know and I don't wanna know," the reporter had replied. "If May found out I was talking to one of her sources she'd kill me." He'd hung up, but before Sophie could express her frustration, the video he'd sent had finished downloading.

It featured two very attractive young women. One was evidently South-East Asian - Korean, in fact - and the other Caucasian, blonde and blue-eyed. This was not what had made Sophie gasp. What had made her gasp was that both were bound and gagged, in rope and duct tape respectively. They were looking into the camera with desperation, and though there was no sound, Sophie had known that they were making as much noise as their gags would permit. She hadn't needed to hear their voices to recognise the pair either: one was superheroine and pop idol Stellar, otherwise known as Yumi Tae-Yong, and the other was Herald reporter May Springtide. She knew both personally, even going so far as to say that she considered May a friend. Stellar she'd...attempted to rescue only two nights before, but she'd been a fan of hers for a long time before that. And they'd both been kidnapped.

After a few seconds, the video had cut, and it know showed the two asleep, lying very close to each other in their mutual bondage. Sophie had a strong feeling that they had not fallen asleep naturally. After a few seconds of that, a placard appeared in front of the camera. It read:

FEELING HEROIC, ENHANCEGIRL?
COME TO THE PATTERSON DOCK AT 8PM TOMORROW NIGHT
IF YOU WANT US TO KEEP BEING NICE TO YOUR PRETTY FRIENDS, THAT IS.

So Sophie had gone where she'd been ordered. She knew it was a trap, and even had a fair idea of who'd set it. She knew that someone was probably hiding round a corner waiting to spring out, but in the first instance, she had to rescue May and Stellar on general principle. In the second instance, she couldn't stand the idea of her friends suffering because of who - because of what - she was.

Wary of a hundred possible ways of being snared, Enhancegirl scanned her environs with her powers, aware of the finest detail within - well within the horizon. Even solidity was no barrier to her enhanced vision. Her only "normal" sense was her hearing, though that rarely made all that much difference. It made a little difference in this case, but a vast amount. The motorboat approaching the dock did surprise Enhancegirl with how close it got before she noticed it, but it wasn't anywhere near close enough to being a threat to her. But it wasn't herself that Sophie was worried about.

As the boat got closer, Enhancegirl was able to make out the figure driving it. She'd thought that if she recognised the person responsible for Stellar and May's kidnapping, there were a limited number of people it could be. The person she saw was not on that list. She was blonde and, not that one could tell while she was sitting, tall. She was also a cyborg, enhanced with a number of mechanical components that made her a formidable opponent.
"Cybelle," Enhancegirl growled. They had tangled before, and Enhancegirl had only narrowly come out on top in their third fight, after having been soundly defeated twice before. It certainly made sense that the woman who had been (partially) responsible for Stellar's kidnapping before would try again, but she should have been in jail. How had she escaped?

Enhancegirl's instinct was to pounce as soon as Cybelle pulled in, but with Stellar and May in her clutches, that was dangerous. For the moment, she'd have to let Cybelle dictate the terms of their encounter.
"Well hey darlin'," Cybelle called out as her rather trim little boat pulled up. She hopped out deftly. "How's it goin'?"
"Oh, cut it out!" Enhancegirl barked. "Where are they?" She clenched both fists. In their last fight, she'd torn off one of Cybelle's artificial tendrils, and used it to batter her enemy into submission. She was prepared to do worse if Cybelle had harmed either of her captives.

"Oh, my, we are gettin' down to business, ain't we? Well, alright then..." She pointed behind her. If she meant to indicate that that was where Sophie would find the women she sought, that hardly seemed to make sense. But then, if it was merely the old "look behind you" trick, that wouldn't have worked very well on Enhancegirl. The redhead turned warily, and found to her great surprise that Cybelle was being truthful. From the end of a broken old crane, the two damsels dangled, back to back, their admirable bodies wrapped up in a long, thick chain, their arms bound behind their backs and their legs tied together, metal links criss crossing their chests and legs. Not only were they chained, they were chained to each other, their backs pressed against each other.

"MMMMPHHH!!" May cried out. A thick cloth was tied over her lips, keeping her from speaking. She'd only just caught sight of Enhancegirl, and called out in desperation to her.
"Mmmmphhh..." Stellar whimpered quietly. She had great powers at her disposal, but without her voice she couldn't activate them. As it was, she was just as helpless as she'd have been without them. She wiggled her body slightly, her bare legs rubbing together, the chains wrapping them tight clinking. She didn't make much of an effort. It had been two days since the pair had been kidnapped, and while they had made a couple of attempts at escape, none had worked. Stellar - or rather, Yumi - felt a gentle breeze run over her shoulders. Her dress was torn from repeated manhandling, exposing more of her body than the admittedly revealing outfit had meant to. She saw Enhancegirl as well, and hung her head. She knew what was coming, and so did May. That was why she was calling out so fiercely: not to ask for Enhancegirl's help, but to warn her.

"How did you -?" Sophie scanned again, but she could not see anyone else around. "Who the hell put them up there?" she thought.
"Oh, I don't think you need to worry too much about that, darlin'," Cybelle replied. "After all, you've got me to deal with." Saying that, she attacked.

Enhancegirl had known before the tendril lunged for her throat that that was what it would do. She felt the vibrations in the air, predicted its flight path based on its initial movements as Cybelle unveiled it from behind her white coat. The redhead ducked out of the way, and dashed in to make her own attack, but a second tendril whipped out, aiming for her legs, uncovered by her tight, gold dress. Sophie rolled under the attack, and - close enough now to attack Cybelle's body, swept at the Southern gal's waist. But her senses were enhanced as well - electronically, rather than supernaturally - and just as effectively. She dodged without much effort, retaliating with cobra-like swiftness.

"Whoa!" Enhancegirl dodged as well, but barely. She seemed faster. Their fights generally had a bit of a pattern: they would exchange blows with parity, then Cybelle would reveal some kind of unexpected trick which took advantage of Sophie's powers in some way, defeating the redhead. The only reason she'd lost last time was that she'd attempted to take advantage of a non-existent power: Enhancegirl's super-hearing. It hadn't worked, and Sophie had knocked her out.

But that was then, and this was now. Enhancegirl wasn't even sure she could keep up with Cybelle's new speed. She glanced back at Cybelle's captives, and gritted her teeth. She had to work something out.
"She who hesitates is lost!" Cybelle said, shooting out both her tendrils at once. This time, Enhancegirl did not jump to the side, but up, and her feet landed on one of the metal tentacles. The difference in weight caught Cybelle off guard, and she wasn't able to adjust her servos to accommodate Sophie's mass. While the cyborg dithered, Enhancegirl ran up her tendril, her super-senses giving her an enhanced sense of balance, and leapt off, attempting to boot Cybelle in the face.
"YMMPHHH!!" May yelled, cheering her on. Sophie would have succeeded too - had Cybelle not unveiled her other two tendrils.

"What?!" was all Sophie had time to blurt out before they seized her. One grabbed her round the chest, twisting over her arms and pinning them to her sides. At the same moment, the other tendril encircled her calves three times, and squeezed, holding her legs together. Enhancegirl struggled, but she didn't have any kind of increased strength, and she couldn't get loose. There was a knot in the pit of her stomach as she realised that she'd been caught.

"Ahahaha! Betcha weren't expecting that, were ya?!" Cybelle drawled, bringing her other two metal limbs to bear.
"Unngghhh!!" Sophie groaned, stretching and wriggling as much as she could. She could feel possible weaknesses in Cybelle's grip, but the question was whether she had enough time to exploit them.

As it happened, she did not.

Cybelle grabbed her with her other two limbs, and lifted her up straight above her head with all four. She wriggled, suspended in the air, caught and subdued by her enemy. It was then that Sophie sensed the vibrations within the tendrils, before she saw what emerged from compartments in their heads.
"Oh no," she said simply. It was tape. Strong, black tape, and Sophie knew it was about to be all over her.
"MMMMPHHH!!" May cried as she saw what was happening. "Come on, EG, get a grip!" But it was Cybelle who had the grip.

In several places simultaneously Sophie felt the tape being pressed against her body - her left calf, her right arm, her right thigh and her back. A testament to their great flexibility, the arms began wrapping the tape around Sophie's slinky body, and spinning the redhead around at the same time.

"Aaah! No!" Sophie protested, feeling her lovely limbs being secured in sticky, black bonds. Her arms were manipulated into being crossed behind her back, her thighs clamped together. As she was spun around, the tape began to encircle her, and bind her, her arms becoming first inextricably linked to each other, then to her back. Circuit after circuit of tape was wound over her, covering and squeezing her breasts, and immobilising her upper body almost completely. "Stop!" Sophie demanded, but with every spin of the imperilled superheroine, her long, pale legs disappeared even more under black tape, until she was wrapped from her ankles, to just below her uncovered shoulders. She was then, quite suddenly, dropped.

"Aiiiee!" she squealed, but Cybelle's accuracy was not to be underestimated. Enhancegirl fell squarely into Cybelle's arms - her real arms - which grasped the damsel by her thighs and her arm, long fingers just creeping over the edges of one of her breasts. She was almost completely mummified. Everything from the tops of her breasts upwards as uncovered, yes. "But I bet she did that just so I'd look more vulnerable..." Sophie thought, wiggling her soft shoulders uncomfortably.
"A beautiful dame falls outta the sky and right into my arms," Cybelle crooned, looking at the taped up heroine cradled in her grasp. "This must be my lucky day."
"Why are you doing this? Why does capturing me matter so much to you? What kind of - MMPHHH!!" She was not allowed to ask a third question. Tape was pressed by cybernetic strength over her pink lips, gagging the fetching redhead. "Nrrrmmphh!" she groaned in frustration. "Nmmm-mmm-MMMPPHH!!" Each moan was in response to another circuit of tape being wound around her head, making the gag tighter and tighter, until her mouth was well and truly sealed.

"Gotcha," Cybelle said. She wasn't wrong there: Enhancegirl had been bound and gagged with almost embarrassing rapidity.
"Nmmphh..." Stellar whimpered quietly. There'd been some small hope that Enhancegirl might at least overcome this stage of the plot. She'd expected her to lose eventually, but not at this stage. It was even easier than their captors had said it would be.

"By the way doll," Cybelle said as she began carrying Sophie towards the motorboat, "it ain't me who's so interested in capturing you. I agree with you actually - don't seem to make much sense to be so focussed on little ol' you." She laughed quietly. "Not that you ain't a real peach..." She squeezed Sophie's thighs judiciously.
"Mmmphh!" the redhead protested. She wriggled her body with all the strength she had, and though she knew that the tape was much stronger than the kind one could buy in a hardware store, it was still pathetic that she couldn't escape it with her powers undimmed. "I'm just as useless as I was against Arachna..." she thought, remembering how she'd been effortlessly wrapped up by the spider-like villain, having to be rescued by the mighty Valora.

But perhaps she would have succeeded. Had she squirmed at just the right angle, in just the right way, perhaps her superhuman sense of touch would have allowed her to find a way out of the sticky black prison holding her body so tightly. But she was never given the chance.

"Whhmmphh?!" Sophie exclaimed, as a blindingly bright light flashed before her eyes. Her sensitive vision reeled, and she felt before she saw that Cybelle had released her. Instinctively, Sophie twisted her body to land on her feet - and then came the second realisation. She should not have been able to do so while so tightly bound. Someone or something had untied her legs. As her vision returned to her, she saw Cybelle leaping from side to side, trying to dodge blasts of -

"Light!"

Sophie turned to the source of the blasts, and saw what she'd hoped - and sort of feared - to see. It was a tall, slender Japanese woman, dressed in a figure hugging silver outfit, a short cape trailing partway down her back, and a mask much like Sophie's, only silver, covered the upper part of her face.
"You seem to be in need of assistance," said Spectra.
"Mmmmphh!!" Enhancegirl replied. The oriental beauty - so gorgeous was she that, as Mariko Asakura, she moonlighted as a fashion model - raised her hand, and with awesome precision, blasted away the tape from Sophie's arms, or at least so weakened it that Sophie could remove the rest for herself. She pulled off her gag, and smiled embarrassedly at her rescuer.

"Damn it, what the -" Cybelle began, but seemed to restrain herself from further speech. She grimaced at the pair of heroines. Sophie was hardly surprised by her reaction: she had had occasion to run into Spectra on a number of occasions, and on each one she'd shown a formidable power. The last time, for instance, she'd rescued Sophie from the control of a powerful hypnotist named Mesmeredith, who'd subdued and entranced Sophie without effort. The tide was very much against Cybelle now.

"How did you know to, like, come all the way out here?" Sophie asked her fellow heroine. Spectra opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated for a moment, like the words just wouldn't come. "Spectra?" Sophie had almost said 'Mariko' but stopped herself. Spectra was very prideful of her status as a heroine.

"I received an anonymous tip, if you can believe it," Spectra said at last. She seemed convinced, but the pause had been strange. "Told me that you were in trouble. And since this is quite a usual thing for you to be in, I decided the matter at least bore investigation." She looked over at Cybelle. "I understand that this is the woman who defeated you at Stellar's concert. What made you think you could deal with her now?"
"I already beat her, actually," Sophie replied, restraining an angrier response. "Don't believe everything you read in the papers."
"Well she obviously got the better of you this time," Spectra said curtly.
"Wow," Sophie thought, "if I didn't know any better I'd say she was extra surly today." She should have trusted her instincts. Spectra was still recovering psychologically from a humiliating ordeal she'd suffered at the hands of an Italian fashion designer. She'd been drugged, tied up, dressed in fetishistic outfits, and - to her mortification - had been so overwhelmed at the domination inflicted on her that even when presented with the chance to escape, she'd not taken it, and had let herself be kept captive.

At least, that was how she remembered it. The memory presented such sharp cognitive dissonance with her personality that it stung her whenever she thought of it - which she did uncomfortably often.
"Focus," she thought. "There are more pressing matters here." She turned her attention to the cyborg, who looked at her with venom. Mechanically enhanced or not, in such an open area she simply couldn't compete with Spectra's powers, and she knew it. It was Cybelle's policy always to pick her battles, and she had not chosen this one.
"Surrender now, Cybelle," Spectra commanded, the manner in which she spoke her foe's name good evidence of her distaste for it. "I will not ask again. Or at least, I will not ask so politely." The cyborg grimaced again.

"Don't underestimate her, Spectra," Enhancegirl said, stepping in front of her fellow heroine. "She's tricky. I'd -" She stopped mid-sentence. In fact, she froze. An instinctive twinge at the periphery of her senses was telling her that something was amiss. It became very quickly apparent what that something was after about three-quarters of a second.

It was a smell. An overpowering, intoxicating smell that wafted into Sophie's nostrils, carried by the sea breeze. It was a sickly sweet, chemical scent which spread through Sophie's body slowly, but surely, like liquid metal. It made her slinky form tremble, made her emerald eyes lose focus, as her strength slipped away from her. It assaulted every corner of her mind, making it hard for her to think, as it wrapped its invisible tendrils around her.

"Chloroform," Sophie whispered, before Spectra clamped a drug soaked rag over her face. "MMMPHHH!! Nnmphhh! Mmmmmmphhh..." That feeling of weakness now spread through her even faster. The soporific drug had a very powerful effect on Enhancegirl, due to the great sensitivity of her senses, and almost immediately her body became limp. She sagged, Spectra taking her by the waist, and easing the redhead back against her. Sophie's head fell against the cushion of Mariko's breasts, her wavy red hair trailing down Spectra's abdomen. The lovely co-ed was no match for the drug's somnolent fumes, and she could barely move, her minds fading into darkness. "Mph..." she whimpered softly, rendered completely powerless by the chloroform in seconds. "Spectra...why...?" was all she managed to think before her emerald eyes fluttered shut. Betrayed and defeated, Enhancegirl gave in to the sweet-smelling fumes, losing consciousness completely.

Spectra held the cloth over Sophie's mouth and nose for much longer than was necessary. She wanted to make absolutely sure that her victim was out cold. She eventually took the cloth away, before releasing the redhead. Sophie tumbled to the ground, lying still at Mariko's feet.
"MMMPPHHHH!!" May and Yumi cried out, seeing their saviour fall. Their attempts to warn Enhancegirl had failed. It was Spectra who had hung the pair of them from that chain, surprising both greatly when she opened the car boot in which the pair had been stashed. Seized by the superheroine, they had been hung up and hidden from Enhancegirl's sight using Specta's powers over light, only to be revealed at a suitably dramatic moment. Once Enhancegirl had appeared, they'd realised what had been planned for her. The only thing that they - like Sophie - hadn't known was why. But that made itself apparent readily enough.

From some dark corner of the docks - there were many - emerged a brown-haired woman, tall-ish but not as tall as Spectra. In contrast with the waiflike model, though, she was buxom and full figured. She was dressed in tight, black leather, thinner than motorcycle leathers, but not quite thin enough to be utterly impractical. Her sleeves were ruffled, like a circus performer. Stellar didn't realise who she was until much later, but May already had inklings.

"Well done, Spectra my dear," the woman said, approaching the silver-clad heroine. However, Spectra did not turn in surprise, or even greeting, at her appearance. Instead, her arms fell by her sides, dropping the cloth she'd drugged Enhancegirl, and she began staring straight forwards.
"It's like she's in a trance," Yumi thought, looking down at the scene below her. It was then, seeing her high-heeled feet dangling in the air, that the Korean first realised how high up she was. "Mmmph!" she squeaked, her useless struggles dampening slightly. She wasn't afraid of heights as such, but she wasn't a huge fan of them either. Bringing herself to look down, she saw Enhancegirl lying by Spectra's feet. "Again she's captured trying to rescue me...if I were not so pathetic this would never have happened..."

"Where the hell have you been?!" Cybelle screeched at the newcomer. "You were supposed to get geisha-girl over here to knock her out straight away! She almost put a hole in mah head!" The newcomer acknowledged Cybelle's complaint, faintly, but was much more interested in Spectra. She walked slowly up to her, standing very close behind the Japanese heroine, and placing her hands lightly on Mariko's shoulders.

"You did very well, Mariko," she said, taking her time over each syllable.
"Thank you, Mistress..." Spectra replied in a half-whisper. The woman behind her ran her hands down the heroine's chest, gently cupping her breasts. "Oh..." Spectra moaned softly as her breasts were massaged, her silver leotard giving little defence - though she appeared not to want it. As the brown-haired woman felt up the oriental beauty, she met not the slightest bit of resistance. Spectra's pride seemed vanished.

"Oh god..." May's inklings had become realisation. "Hypnotra!" Indeed, the woman running her hands over Seacouver's most beloved heroine had once gone by the name Hypnotra, though latterly she'd preferred the nom de guerre 'Mesmeredith.' To May at least, it all became horribly clear. Mesmeredith was, like Mariko, Yumi and Sophie, a superhuman. In her case, she had a powerful ability to control the minds of others, and it seemed that she had Spectra wrapped around her little finger.

Mesmeredith took her hands away from Mariko, and turned her attentions to Sophie, who was sprawled on the ground. She pushed her with her foot, turning the redhead onto her back. Mesmeredith's eyes ran over Sophie; her bare legs, long red hair, and tight, figure hugging gold dress.
"Oh yes," she said, "just as lovely as I remember you." Indeed, she had encountered Sophie before, hypnotising her to make her compelled to drug herself, or to prompt others to capture her. Ironically enough, it had been in her attempts to rescue Enhancegirl from this fate that Spectra had fallen under Hypnotra's spell.
"She is yours, Mistress," Mariko said. Hypnotra laughed quietly.
"Not mine, dearest," she said. "But you, on the other hand..."

She turned back to Spectra. "Not that I didn't enjoy seeing our cyborg friend getting a good scare, but I ordered you to take Sophie Scott as soon as you could. You disobeyed me." She was playing a cruel game: Spectra had followed her orders to the letter.
"I...disobeyed?" Spectra said, surprised.
"Yes, my dear," Mesmeredith said. "Now, shed your powers."
"Yes Mistress...Spectrum is Red." With a flash, Mariko's outfit vanished. She was not naked, though. She'd merely changed back into her civilian form. By a bizarre coincidence, her outfit was strangely suitable for her surroundings. Before being summoned by her Mistress, she'd been at a Naval-themed photoshoot, and as such she was dressed in a sort of sailor suit. It was very much altered, however. Her top was a short sleeved, white blouse, with a blue neckerchief running across the collar. Her taut midriff was completely bared, and the buttons of the blouse were opened to show her cleavage. As for her lower body, she wore a pleated, navy-blue mini-skirt, which barely descended lower than her hips. Her long, tan legs were completely on show, enhanced by a pair of white high heels. She looked beautiful, and vulnerable, and Mesmeredith was very pleased indeed.
"Now, what happens to pretty girls who disobey their Mistress?" She continued, grinning wickedly. With her powers switched off, Spectra's mask was gone, and every corner of her pretty face was there to be admired.
"We..." Spectra hesitated, but not for long. "We must be punished..."

What form that punishment would take became apparent without delay. Spectra found herself once again gripped by the shoulders, only this time it was to turn her around. Mesmeredith took her arms, and folded them at right angles behind Mariko's back. It was then that Spectra felt the bite of cord against her skin: tough, thin brown rope was wound over her wrists and upper arms, a yank pulling the rope tight and cinching her arms together into a box-tie. In principle, there was nothing stopping Mariko from blasting Mesmeredith away with her powers, or worse, but she did not. Her head was bowed.

Mesmeredith anchored Spectra's upper arms together with rope running between them. With a kind of double loop, she used the same length of rope that was attached to Spectra's arms and wound it underneath her breasts, fixing her arms in place, and making her chest noticeably more prominent at the same time.
"Tell me," Mesmeredith asked, making sure that Spectra's bondage was secure, "why must you be bound?"
"Because...I must be punished..." She gasped slightly as she felt Mesmeredith's hands on her bare thighs. "Because I must be shown my place..." As she spoke, Mesmeredith was entwining her long legs, binding them with three coils above Mariko's knees.
"And what is your place?" her Mistress asked, pulling the ropes tight and snapping Spectra's legs together.
"I am..." Spectra looked down at herself. The proud heroine was trapped in tight bondage, her supple limbs bound inextricably in cord. She was - she thought - powerless. "I am your slave-girl, my Mistress..."
"Go on," Mesmeredith said as she tied Mariko's ankles too, happily indulging in reminding her thrall of her position.
"Everything I am...belongs to you. My powers...my body...all are yours...I'm your property..."
"And what shall I do with my property?" Mesmeredith began stroking Mariko's soft thighs, aware of Mariko's sensitivity in that area. Her tiny skirt was no defence against Mesmeredith's wandering hands, which slipped under the hem to feel Mariko's rear.
"Ooh..." the Japanese damsel moaned as she was caressed, pleasure throbbing inside her. "Tie me up even more tightly...gag me so I can't even speak." Mesmeredith smiled, standing up and grabbing Mariko from behind, fondling her breasts while the mesmerised maiden was incapable of stopping her. "Show me that I'm not a heroine," Mariko said," ...just a pretty girl in a revealing outfit...so helpless...so weak..." One could hardly believe such words could come from the mouth of Spectra, Spectra the Proud, Spectra the Strong. But her pride and strength had been taken from her. For weeks now she had belonged to Mesmeredith without even realising it.

"Very well," Meredith said, "I will show you...everything." She pulled a thick, white cloth between Mariko's teeth.
"Mmmphh..." Mariko whimpered gently, cleave-gagged. The cloth was soft, and muffled any sound Mariko might have wanted to make.
"Kneel," Mesmeredith commanded. Spectra obeyed instantly, sinking down to her knees, happy to humble herself before her Mistress. Kneeling, her clothes seemed to cover her even less, like they might just fall away at any time. It was somewhat to her surprise, though of course she did not resist, when Mesmeredith picked up the discarded cloth Mariko had used to drug Sophie, and pressed it over Spectra's lips.

"Mmmphh...mmhhhpphh..." Spectra was not as susceptible to chloroform as Enhancegirl, and the contents had become somewhat diluted on the concrete ground, but she still felt her limbs growing weaker. She'd knelt completely erect, awaiting whatever instruction she was given. But now she began to sag as her strength left her immaculate body. It was just on the point where she was beginning to sway, almost collapsing, that Mesmeredith took the cloth away. Spectra looked up, a little confused. Then Mesmeredith snapped her fingers.

If you have ever been somewhere, on holiday in your youth perhaps, only not to return to or even think about that place until years - even decades - later when one happens on it by chance, and suddenly long buried memories flood back in an overwhelming rush, that might give you some small approximation of the process that went on in Mariko Asakura's mind immediately after Mesmeredith gave her innocuous signal.

"Where am I?"
What's going on?"
"Why am I tied up?"

These were only the first bewildering thoughts that rushed into Mariko's mind, clouded and groggy by the fumes of the chloroform, as she emerged from her trance.
"Mmmmmphhhh...mmmnnnmmphhh..." she protested feebly, wriggling her bare shoulders. It was then that she saw the lovely young lady trapped in a drugged slumber, lying on the ground before her. "Enhancegirl? What is she...?" More memories were flooding in all the time, and she suddenly recalled herself sneaking up on her fellow heroine, recalled drugging her. "Wh-I...I did that?" she thought, sleepily. "Why...why would I...do that?" It was only then that she looked up to see the face of the woman who'd bound her, and it was only then that the flood really broke the dam.

She remembered everything. Remembered the first night when Mesmeredith had stolen into her room, instantly entrancing her. Remembered the nights after that when she'd snuck in to have her way with the hypnotised beauty, stroking and fondling her, and Mariko - to her horror - distinctly remembered enjoying it. She remembered what had really happened the day of Anita's photoshoot. She'd escaped and had had to restrain herself from doing great violence upon her captor - only to be mollified by Mesmeredith, who'd given her false memories of her own submission. Ever since that day at the stadium, ever since that one brief glance in a mirror, Spectra's fate had been sealed.
"All along...I've been a captive!"

"Finally awoken, my dear Mariko?" Mesmeredith said. "It took you long enough." She beckoned to Cybelle, who'd been waiting patiently while Mesmeredith had had her fun. She didn't begrudge that - watching Spectra be humiliated was not a sight one often had. The cyborg turned her attentions to Sophie and - not needing to truss her so quickly - spooled out rope this time instead of tape. Her four metal limbs snatched the redhead's sleeping form, and held her up on her feet.

Sophie's head drooped, but Cybelle took her by the chin, and held her face up. She wanted Mariko to be able to see. Sophie herself was completely tamed, her face peaceful in her drugged sleep. Not even when her arms were roughly yanked behind her, and strong white cords rapidly twisted about her wrists and forearms did she stir. Not even when ropes were twisted above, below, and even between her round, white breasts, securing her arms in a restrictive harness did she make so much as a sound.

"Nnnnmmphhh! Nnnnmmmhh..." Spectra protested, writhing weakly as she watched Sophie being tied up. "I did this...I did this to her...how could I have let myself be controlled?!" Her jade eyes were wide with panic. She didn't know what to do. She tried to summon her powers, but she couldn't. The gag prevented her from speaking the changeword she needed. She was powerless. "No...I'm completely helpless..." Minutes ago that thought would have given Mariko a submissive pleasure. Now it brought her only shame.

"Don't feel too guilty, Mariko," Mesmeredith said, putting a hand on Mariko's shoulder. This brought the Asian model discomfort, but she could do nothing about it. Even out of her trance, Mesmeredith still possessed her. "I'm sure we could have captured your lovely friend without your help...but you made it so much easier."
"Nnnnmmphhh! NNNNMMMPPPHHH!!" Mariko screamed through her gag, her rage and humiliation breaking through the spell of the drug. Drug or no drug, though, she was wrapped in cord, so all the tall, slender damsel could do was watch as Sophie was subjected to the same ordeal. Sophie's pale legs were being lashed together, Cybelle's artificial limbs making efficient work of winding ropes around the centre of her thighs, far too securely to allow for even the slightest independent movement of Sophie's legs. They bound her ankles next, cinching them together in four circuits of rope, which - when knotted and pulled tight - kept the limp damsel far more tightly tied up than seemed necessary.

"Unnh..." Sophie moaned, shifting slightly. Mesmeredith had tarried with Spectra for too long, and their target was beginning to awaken. But the hour was late. For Cybelle pulled from her tendril a strip of silver tape, and, turning Sophie to face her, pressed it tight over her captive's lips, smoothing the edges so that the tape wouldn't come away. She pressed it so tightly that the outline of Sophie's mouth was visible underneath. Just as her gag was completed, Sophie's emerald eyes opened.

"Mmmh?" she intoned weakly. She saw Cybelle in front of her, grinning at the sight of the redhead once again helpless in her grasp. She saw, over the villain's shoulder, a face that she didn't recognise at first, but the shining purple eyes reminded her: Mesmeredith. Her presence led only to confusion in Sophie's groggy mind, but a hint of her significance was revealed when Sophie's eyes turned down.

"Hhhhmmmphhh!" Mariko moaned through her gag, jade eyes wet with shame and guilt. They met Sophie's eyes, and the two heroines shared a gaze. In those brief seconds, Sophie understood.
"You...you were controlled...they got us both..." But that was all she could manage. She was still too weak, and her body betrayed her. "Mmmhhnnn..." she whimpered, as her eyes fluttered closed, and she passed out again.
"Oh, honey, don't worry," Cybelle laughed, "you can sleep as long as you like." Saying that, she grasped Sophie by the waist, and tossed the sleeping damsel over her shoulder, gripping her legs and ass to hold her in place, before carrying away her defenceless body. Sophie, draped over her captor, was meek and unresisting as she was groped and fondled in her bonds

"Nnnmmmphhh!" Mariko cried out, watching as Sophie was abducted. "Damn them! Damn them, I'll...I'll -" Even in her rage, though, she couldn't think of what she would do. She was helpless, truly helpless, and she knew that if Mesmeredith wanted, she could easily bring her back under her spell.
"You know, it's funny," Mesmeredith said, "for all your pride, Mariko, for all the power locked up inside you...it was so easy to make you mine, and to keep you that way. Sweet Sophie, on the other hand...she managed to break my spell all by herself in the end. I wonder why you couldn't do that, Mariko?" She tousled Mariko's jet-black hair, eliciting a muffled protest. "You seemed to just love being my slave."
"Nnnhh!" Mariko protested. But she remembered what it felt like, being completely submissive to Mesmeredith's will. She remembered the thrill of being so utterly dominated, so feminine and tame. "She forced me to feel like that!" she reminded herself, but that didn't mean she hadn't really felt those feelings.

She was not given time to consider the matter further. Hypnotra had kept the drugged cloth in her hand, and she pressed it back over Mariko's mouth.
"Nnnmmm-mmmphhh!" she protested. "No! No....they're going to...kidnap me as well..." It didn't take long for her to start getting sleepy again. Her long, uncovered limbs lost their vigour, her sparkling eyes became listless.
"Oh, don't worry, Mariko," Hypnotra said, putting a hand on her captive's thigh and squeezing gently, "I'm not going to take you away. I just need you to sleep in case you get any ideas about following us."
"Whhmmphh? Mmmmhhhnnnm?" Mariko had almost given in, but she retained enough presence of mind to be surprised.
"Our client didn't pay us to abduct you. If she wants us to bring you in, she'll have to pay extra."
"Mmmmhh...hhhnnnmmmphhh..." Mariko's protests were becoming ever more pathetic. She wiggled her lovely body slightly, but she could barely summon the strength to keep her eyes open, much less escape her bonds.
"Although," Hypnotra leant down to whisper to Mariko. "If I ever do come back for you...I guarantee that you'll be begging for me to tie you up again." It was with that claim ringing in her ears that Mariko was finally overcome by the chloroform. With a plaintive moan, the Japanese damsel closed her eyes and slumped forward, her hair brushing against her legs. Bound and gagged, drugged and humiliated, the scantily clad maiden was left on her knees, totally powerless.


"Mmmmhhh...mmmmhhh..." Sophie moaned, eyes beginning to open. She was aware of movement, of a loud noise all around her, and of the occasional drop of water hitting her skin. She was also aware of being tied up and gagged. "Mmmmphh!" she complained more loudly, as she started taking in her surroundings more. She was sitting, propped up on some kind of wooden bench, and though she felt like she was being shaken about, her immediate surroundings looked still.

It was the smell, really, that let her know where she was. Her super-senses picked up a complex combination of minerals dissolved into the tiny droplets that lay on her.
"Seawater..." She was on a boat. More to the point, she was on the same boat that she'd seen Cybelle turning up to the harbour in. "Mmmphh!" The last thing Sophie remembered was waking up to see Cybelle binding her, and to see Mariko kneeling at the feet of Hypnotra. She knew she'd been captured - she just hadn't known for sure that she was going to be kidnapped.

Still drowzy, she turned her head to the right, and saw Cybelle sitting lazily nearby, controlling the boat with two of her tendrils, but otherwise ignoring it. In fact, Sophie could sense that Cybelle was just lazing, she was actually asleep. Her breathing patterns, even her heart rate all indicated it. Besides, the sun was only just coming up over the horizon - it was perhaps 5.30 in the morning. "I might have a chance," she thought, noting that the boat was too small to be concealing Hypnotra as well. Presumably, Sophie thought, she had taken charge of Mariko and the others.

"Mariko..." She thought of Spectra again, thought of the humiliation she must have suffered at knowing what she'd done, what she'd been made to do. Stellar and May as well - they were all captives now. "And while I'm all tied up like this I can't do anything to help them...I don't even know where they are." Someone else might have begun to despair in that situation, and Sophie was certainly tempted. But she was a superheroine, she thought. To someone like her, despair was useless. "I have to get free!"

She tried to use her super senses to find a way out of her bonds, but the ropes were much too strong. There was no weak point that she could detect. Sophie considered just hurling herself overboard, but with her limbs so tightly bound, she might easily drown. She looked around for something she could cut herself free with, but saw nothing. Nothing, that is, except for a small flick knife sitting very close to Cybelle.

"Oh man..." Sophie thought. She began shuffling towards her captor, hoping that the wood beneath her wouldn't creak too loudly. She moved until she was facing directly opposite the cyborg, who was sat on a bench on the other side. Enhancegirl lifted her feet, hoping her long legs would be able to reach the knife. But they weren't quite long enough. "If I have to be tied up all the time," she thought, "can't I at least get a convenient sharp thing that's actually convenient once in a while?" There was nothing for it. She'd have to stand up.

With her preturnatural balance, standing wasn't too hard. It was getting close enough to grab the knife that was the problem. She hopped forward, unable to move her legs separately and her heeled boots hit the deck with a loud tap. Cybelle didn't stir, however. One hop was, fortunately enough, but - as she'd feared, she couldn't grab the knife without sitting right next to Cybelle. Grudgingly, she did so, and found herself uncomfortably close to her enemy. Still, with her bound hands she was able to reach the knife. All she had to do was stretch out her fingers -

"Oh hey there, doll," Cybelle said, opening her eyes. "Real kind of you to come join me."
"MMPH?!" Sophie gasped in astonishment, instantly trying to wriggle away. But it was too late. Cybelle grabbed her by the shoulder with one hand, and slipped the other under her thighs, scooping the bound redhead up before placing her captive on her lap. "Mmmmm-nnnnmmmphhh!!" Sophie screamed through the tape plastered over her lips, but in vain. Though she writhed, Cybelle had her exactly where she wanted her. "She was toying with me..."

"You thought I was asleep, didn't cha? Well that's the beauty of being a cyborg - my breathing and heart rate are whatever I want 'em to be." She began stroking Sophie's legs, enjoying the feeling of the captive maiden's moist, smooth skin.
"Mmmphhh! Nnnmmm-hhhmmmphh!" Sophie protested, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. She could feel every peak and trough of the leather on Cybelle's hands, could feel in exquisite detail every intimate detail of the way in which she was touched, could even feel the increase in her own body temperature as she blushed in embarrassment at her fondling. And she could do nothing about it.
"I've got you all to myself, red...and this time, you ain't gettin' away." Her hand went from Sophie's shoulder to her neck, from her neck to her chin and her cheeks. "Now let's see that pretty face." To Sophie's dismay, she realised that Cybelle was about to remove her mask.
"Nnnmm-nnnhhhmmph!" Sophie practically begged, shaking her head. It was not that Cybelle would see her face - she already had - it was the sheer fact of having her mask taken away from her. There was no greater shame for a superheroine. As her domino mask was peeled away, she became still, mollified by the totality of her defeat.

"There we go," Cybelle said. "Now why would you want to cover any of that up?" She stroked Sophie's cheek, before casually throwing her mask into the ocean. Sophie watched it sink into the depths, and it was as if her whole identity as a superheroine was being thrown away as well. "See darlin', you don't gotta worry about being a do-gooder no more. You just gotta worry about lookin' as pretty as you can." She pressed her lips against Sophie's gagged mouth.
"Mph!" Sophie squeaked, surprised into compliance. When Cybelle took her mouth away, there was a distinct lipstick impression on the tape covering Sophie's mouth. "Mmm-mmmphhh..." Sophie mewed. "Why is this crazy broad so obsessed with doing this stuff to me?"

"Mmm, ain't you sweet?" She peered into Sophie's eyes. "You look awful worried there, doll. Don't worry, I ain't gonna hurt you. Say - maybe you're worried about your super-friends!" She laughed. "We ain't interested in them. They won't be joinin' us."
"What...they didn't take the others?" Sophie had a horrible realisation. "All this...was just to kidnap me!"

"You know, we've still got quite a journey ahead of us, doll," Cybelle said. "And I don't see any reason why you should have to put up with being bored, so..." Cybelle stood, hauling Sophie onto her feet as she did so, before forcing her onto her knees.
"Mmph!" Sophie protested, though by now she knew there was little point in doing so. Cybelle brought her two free tendrils to bear, and began spooling out more rope. "I'm already totally tied up! What does she need more rope for?" That became apparent when Cybelle began wrapping cord over Sophie's thighs, then looping it round to go over her ankles as well. She pulled the rope tight, and Sophie found her legs forced into a kneeling position. Cybelle pushed the pretty redhead onto her side, and sure enough, her legs wouldn't straighten.

But Cybelle wasn't done. She took Sophie by the back of the neck, and pushed her down so that her breasts were pressed against her thighs. Before she could even blink, Cybelle's tendrils had wrapped rope between her thighs and calves, and over and around Sophie's torso, pulling the rope tight.
"Mmmm-hhhmmphh!" Sophie exclaimed, finding herself trussed up into a ball. She couldn't move at all; she could barely twitch. She'd been captured a number of times, but she'd never been tied up so tightly. "This is...I - I can't...I can't get free! Even with my powers I'm still helpless..."

"Hehe..." Cybelle chuckled, observing her handiwork. "Ain't you a peach?" She twisted one of her tendrils around Sophie's balled up form, and lifted her up. With another, she opened a small hatch towards the stern of the boat. It was empty, as far as Sophie could tell, save for a small canister of propane, the size of a fire extinguisher. She found herself dropped in, on her side, still completely incapable of unbinding herself. All she managed was a small wiggle of her rear end, almost entirely exposed by the angle at which her supple body had been bent, her short dress not designed for such a situation.
"Mmmph!" Sophie squeaked, as she felt a sharp sting on the taut flesh of her behind. Blushing, she realised that she had just been spanked.

"Pleased to see that cute little tush is as fine as ever," Cybelle laughed. To render such domination over her pretty captive was not only enjoyable for the cruel cyborg, it was thrillingly easy. To have such an attractive young woman so easily manipulable - and add to that that she was a superheroine - was something that would never get old. It was a shame, in a way, that it was not for herself that she had made Enhancegirl a captive.

"What do I do? I can't escape!" Sophie continued to be overwhelmed by the strictness of her bonds. So much so that she didn't notice what Cybelle was doing with the can of propane. She was fixing to its top a plastic tube, a tube which ended with a clear face mask. Sophie only took notice when the mask was pulled over her face. "Mmmhhhphhh!" she cried out, doubly muffled. There was a moment of total panic - but she realised soon enough that the can was merely labelled propane. It contained mostly oxygen, as it turned out, but with something else mixed in as well.

As Cybelle turned the valve to let the gas out, Sophie picked up an unfamiliar scent. It was weakly chemical, almost odourless, but not quite. It had a kind of vaguely minty quality to it, though no-one but Enhancegirl would have picked that up.
"Mmmhh..." It was only when her tightly tied up body began to feel drowzy that Enhancegirl guessed at what it was. "Sleeping gas..." Strictly speaking, it was halothane, but Sophie was close enough.

"There," Cybelle said, watching the redhead squirm pitfully, "that'll make this trip a lot less boring for 'ya. All you've gotta do is ride it out." Being of a much weaker scent, this sedative was proving less overpowering than chloroform, but it was more than a match for the balled up redhead.
"Have to...stay awake...can't give up..." But it was not a matter of will. Her eyelids grew heavy, her senses dull, and her twitches devolved into almost imperceptible movement. She'd thought when Cybelle had bound her so restrictively that it would not be possible for her to feel more powerless, but once again Cybelle proved that she could always make Sophie feel even more humiliated. "I...uh...I can't...do anything..." Sophie thought hazily, the drug making her slinky body slower and weaker the more it entered her system. She couldn't even take a breath without falling even deeper into captivity. The soft-skinned, lovely redhead managed only one thought before her body betrayed her, and she fell into drugged slumber once again: "I...I'm caught...I need...someone...please...save me..."


"Mmmph?!" Mariko started awake, around about the same time that Enhancegirl made her plea. "Mmmmnngghh!" she groaned, her head swimming. She tried to sit up, but she'd forgotten about her bonds, and remained prone on the ground. "They didn't take me..." She was right. True to her word, Hypnotra had left her be. She hadn't untied her, though. She still lay on the cold ground in her tank top and mini-skirt, tied up and gagged.

It was only when she looked up that she realised she was not alone. Still hanging from the chain suspended in the air, May and Stellar hung, chained up and unconscious. Mariko wondered if they'd been drugged as well, but they had merely collapsed from exhaustion. Mariko summoned up her blood: despite her shock at how she had been used, she forced herself to confront what was going on in front of her. She was a superheroine, and there were damsels in distress that needed rescuing. "Even if I'm one of them..." she thought bitterly.

She rolled to the left, her long, bound legs becoming damp from the moisture that had accumulated on the ground during the night. She didn't need a knife to break her bonds - all she needed was an exposed rivet or something, and such things were almost everywhere in the abandoned dock. She found a rusty piece of metal sticking out of the ground, and moved her head towards it, wriggling on the ground in the tight ropes binding her. She maneuvered so that she could get the metal under the fabric of her gag. She pulled hard, and it came loose.

"Ugh!" She spat it out. "Spectrum is Green!" There was a brilliant flash, and while Mariko was not much less skimpily attired when the flash subsided, the internal difference was much more significant. There was not much daylight yet, but it was more than enough for Spectra. She manipulated as many photons as she could get her hands on to split the ropes binding her in twain, freeing her slender body. She leapt to her feet - and had to steady herself, for she was still affected by the chloroform Hypnotra had used on her. But once that passed, she directed her attentions toward May and Stellar.

She had been the one who had chained them up there in the first place, while she was still under Mesmeredith's control, so she remembered the way she'd taken to get to the top of the crane from which the damsels dangled. But there was an easier way.

"Hmm...mmphh?!" May was startled awake by a sudden rushing of wind. It took little time for the reporter to realise that it was not the wind that was rushing, but her. She was falling. "MMMMPPHHHH!!!" she screamed, realising that she and the beautiful popstar chained to her were hurtling towards the ground at a lethal velocity.
"MMM-MMMPHHH!!" the Korean echoed, as she too was awoken, the two bound damsels feeling sure that the end was nigh. May even closed her eyes out of fear (unlike Yumi, she was afraid of heights), but she really shouldn't have done so. For if she hadn't, she would have seen the pale golden light surrounding them, and would have seen that their descent begin to slow. In fact, by the time their feet touched the floor, they were hardly moving at all.

"Mmmphh!! Mmmm...mmmphh?" It took a while for May to realise that their descent had stopped and that, indeed, they were standing, bound though they were. She didn't have time to adjust to this situation before two flashes of light danced across her body, and she found her chains falling in a pile on the ground. Yumi's soon followed. Having been restrained for some time, it took a good deal of stretching for the two to feel comfortable again.

They were free.

"I'm...sorry." May turned to see her saviour, though rather confusingly she had been one of her captors too. "What happened...what I did..." Spectra began to explain, but the words 'I was brainwashed and controlled' were difficult for the proud young woman to pronounce. Fortunately, explanation was hardly necessary. They had seen what had happened, and it explained a rather burning question the two had. That was: why had Seacouver's most beloved heroine suddenly become a villainous kidnapper? That some kind of brainwashing made a horrible kind of sense.

"You don't have to apologise," Yumi said. "You didn't mean to do..." Her English faltered slightly. "...what you did," she eventually finished.
"That hardly helps matters," Spectra said. "Anyway...you've been dragged into this unnecessarily. Please go." She only now recognised May, and still only vaguely. A look of horror appeared on her face.
"You can't expect me not to report this," May said, recognising Spectra's expression. "A) Hypnotra's back, again, and B) Soph-Enhancegirl has been kidnapped." The side of her mouth twitched slightly. She'd not meant to reveal that she knew Enhancegirl's secret identity. The fewer people knew that, the better. She'd been targeted just for being someone who regularly wrote about Enhancegirl: if it became known that she knew her personally her life could get very difficult. But Spectra, at least, seemed not to have noticed. She looked extremely distressed.
"If they knew...knew that I'd been controlled...knew that I'd allowed this to happen to me...Seacouver would never trust me again..." She turned away, breathing extremely rapidly. The shame of her brainwashing, the guilt she felt at delivering Enhancegirl into her enemies' hands, and now the possibility of public disgrace were too much. The immediate task of saving Stellar and May done, her mind had wandered to worse thoughts.

"Look, Spectra, I could...fudge a few facts. Leave your part out of the story." May offered, seeing Spectra almost on the point of tears. But she didn't hear.
"I couldn't...I could never look Hikari-sensei in the eye again..." Spectra thought, putting a hand on her chest. "I've failed...I've failed so completely..." She was rather surprised when she felt a pair of arms wrapping around her chest, and that surprise rather interrupted her train of thought.
"Don't despair, please," Yumi said, in perfect Japanese. It was she who had embraced her fellow heroine. "I...I know what it's like to feel like you've been reduced to nothing." She took her arms away, but Spectra turned to listen to her. "I know what it's like to feel as if you could never be called a heroine again. But...when I was at my lowest point, someone was there to remind me not to give up. The same person that we have to save now." She meant Enhancegirl.
"Enhancegirl...Sophie..." Spectra thought about their encounters, remembered how she'd tried to humiliate the redhead after being rescued by her. Remembered how Enhancegirl had nonetheless come to her rescue when she'd been kidnapped. "How many times I've thought of her as being weaker or less important than me - yet she'd never hesitate like this, would she?"

"Someone want to let me know what's going on?" May asked. "My knowledge of Japanese goes about as far as the theme tune to Bubblegum Crisis." It spoke to her strength of character that she was still capable of humour at five thirty in the morning, in a torn dress, on the docks and just having been in captivity for an extended period of time. Indeed, some of her colleagues might have said it was a testament to something other than strength of character.
"I'm going to go after Enhancegirl," she said. Then in Japanese: "You can't help me, Stellar. Not more than you already have, anyway."
"Why? I know I don't seem it like this -" Yumi said, gesturing at her dishevelled dress and her red heels, " - but I'm quite powerful."
"You misunderstand," Spectra explained. "It's not a question of how much power you have. You could go instead of me, but not with me."
"I don't understand," Yumi replied, rather echoing May's sentiments at that moment.
"I need help..." she said, struggling not to say that through gritted teeth, "but not your help."
"Whose, then?"
"The person who defeated Hypnotra last time." Her mind set, Mariko began to walk away.
"Spectra!" Yumi called out. Mariko stopped. "Be awesome, okay?" she said, channelling the perky persona of the White Star. Spectra smiled slightly, but continued on her way.

"Hey!" May said. She'd been on her phone, recovered from where Cybelle had apparently dropped it during her fight with Enhancegirl. "I understood that! You said she was awesome right?"
"Not exactly," Yumi said, switching back to English. "But she is."
"And you're not going with her?"
"No. She doesn't need the kind of help I can give."
"What a load!" May laughed. "She's way too damned proud. Hey," she said. "If Spectra's too good for you, what about me?" Yumi didn't understand. "I could use your help with something, if you've got the time. Apparently someone broke four sevenths of the Catastrophe Gang outta jail." Now Yumi really didn't understand. "I got somethin' brewing in the back of my pretty little head...and I think it just might work."


Natalya Nazarov was a beautiful woman. She had long, jet-black hair, skin as pale and pure as moonlight, a charming face with almond shaped blue eyes and rose-coloured lips. Her neck was slender, sloping gently to her white shoulders. Her legs were long and supple, her hips curving just the right amount for the rest of her figure. She was around 5'9", and very buxom indeed, at least a Double D.

And she hated it. She hated people looking at her as she walked down the street, hated being asked out by men in whom she had no interested, hated the jealousy of her friends. So as she sat at her desk with pencil and slide rule in her knee-length skirt and the plainest blouse she could buy, trying to figure out a way that her boss' ludicrous asymmetrical spire could be affixed to the top of the new Municipal Building without making it collapse, she tried to ignore the fact that every time she crossed her legs, or moved her hair out of her face, at least one person turned to look.

"Hi, Nat." Ernest Wilkinson, the man responsible for designing the monstrosity that Natalya was trying to fix, stood behind her. He insisted on calling her 'Nat' despite repeated attempts from her to stop him doing so. "How's the Municipal Building working out?"
"There are a few adjustments to be made, Mr Wilkinson," Natalya replied quietly. She had gone into architecture because she hoped she'd be able to work in relative isolation. Ernest patted her on the shoulder, and Natalya winced. She hated being touched. Unfortunately, she was too shy to tell him where he could stick it.
"Shouldn't take you too long, Nat. I mean, you're just making some adjustments." 'Making some adjustments' to Ernest's designs was, in fact, one of the most difficult jobs at Wilkinson's Architectural Firm due to the man's increasingly bold incompetence. Nepotism had got him his job, nothing more. It was a testament to Natalya's skills (and to others in the firm, to their credit) that Ernest's designs had not yet caused disaster.
"Yes Mr Wilkinson," was her eventual reply. "Now please go away..."

Moving on, he left Natalya simmering with anger. Not so much because of his incompetence, or because of his insistently referring to her as 'Nat', or even his hand unwarrantedly placed on her shoulder. It was because he had been picturing the buxom architect naked the entire time he'd been speaking with her.

For Natalya was not merely an architect: she was a telepath. Anyone she could see she could mind-read, and she was invariably assaulted by their conscious thoughts, though concentration allowed her to probe further if she wanted. It was not exactly that she was angry because Ernest had been fantasising about her: practically every man that met her did, though she found the nicer ones embarrassedly chiding themselves and trying to think of other things. In Ernest's case, though, not only did he fantasise about Natalya (and every other good looking woman in the company), he seemed honestly to believe that he had merely to ask, and Natalya would fall at his feet.

Needless to say, he was mistaken.

Though, unlike some other telepaths, Natalya could prevent herself from perceiving the thoughts of others simply by not looking at them, whenever she had to speak to someone it was hardly possible to avoid it. Over the phone at least, things were a little easier, so when her cell rang, Natalya didn't mind all that much, despite her shyness about face to face communication.
"Hello?" she said. She was very surprised indeed when she heard the voice on the other line.
"I apologise for contacting you in this way," she said, without any introduction. "It has been a while, but I hope that you remember me. My name is Spectra. I...need the help of Insyte."

"Hey, Nat?" Ernest had come back. He was about to make a change to Natalya's design that would give her another four hours of work, but when he came to her desk, she was nowhere to be found.


It was not for some time that Cybelle's small boat carried its occupants to their destination. Had she sailed as the crow flies, it would only have taken four or five hours, but she'd had to take a painstakingly circuitous route to avoid coastguard patrols. By the time she arrived, it was almost a quarter past nine.

Cybelle opened up the boat's hatch, finding the lovely superheroine she had captured still in her halothane-induced slumber, bound into a ball and tape-gagged to boot. Cybelle didn't need to tax her brain much to recall the decisive and brutal defeat Enhancegirl had handed her in their last encounter. With all her gadgets and upgrades, Enhancegirl had still been able to out-think and out-fight the cyborg.
"Not today, though, little redhead." Cybelle snaked her tendril around her defeated foe, getting a tight grip on the balled-up damsel. She closed the gas' valve, and pulled the mask off Enhancegirl's face before hoisting her up into the air.

So tightly was she bound that Sophie wouldn't have been able to give Cybelle the slightest trouble as she was carried from the piste into the huge mansion that dominated the landscape of the tiny island on which they'd landed. As it was, she couldn't even try. In a way, Cybelle would have preferred her to be fully aware of her helplessness, but she wasn't just indulging herself. She had a job to do.

As she strolled towards the front gate, she was picked up by at least a dozen security cameras. It didn't seem to matter much - in fact, the gate was opening before she even reached it. A pair of burly men with formidable looking weapons eyed the cyborg up through their sunglasses, but again they let her pass.

Cybelle was expected.

In fact, there was a trim young woman in a very fetching beige suit who was waiting to greet her.
"Please come this way, Miss," she said, in a slight French accent. "Madáme awaits you."
"Grand," Cybelle said, following the attendant through the vast house.

"Mmmhhhh..." Enhancegirl whimpered softly as she was carried, wrapped in ropes and metal tendrils.
"Is our guest beginning to awaken?" the attendant asked. Clearly the sight of Cybelle's captive did not perturb her in the slightest.
"I hope so," Cybelle answered. "I don't want her to miss out on all the fun."

Escorted into the bowels of the building, Cybelle felt slight movements coming from her captive. She was indeed awakening.
"In here, please, Miss," the attendant said, beckoning Cybelle inside.
"Thanks doll," Cybelle said, winking at her. She walked inside, bringing Sophie with her. "So, 'Madáme'," she said to the black-haired woman she found sitting inside, "she's your huckleberry, right?"
"Oh yes," the woman said, venomous satisfaction in her voice. "She's the one, alright."
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DrDominator9
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This is good stuff. Lots of KOs and mmphhing!
Follow this link to descriptions of my stories and easy links to them:

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Blx
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Wow. Defintely looking forward to more!
Damselbinder

"Mmmmmhhhnnn...mmmmphhh..." Enhancegirl moaned, beginning to awaken again. "Still tied up..." she thought despondently, but she noted that she was lying on her front - she had been released from the cruel ball-tie that Cybelle had bound her in. She tried to turn onto her back, but her limbs were weak from the drug she'd been dosed with. "At least the freaking ground isn't shaking this time..." She tried again, with a little more success, though not quite turning over. As her enhanced senses began kicking in, she detected innumerable things about her environment, but none of them helped her over-much. She tried just lifting her head, but she could see nothing useful from her position apart from a wooden desk right in front of her.

"Come on...how are you gonna get free if you can't even turn over?!" Enhancegirl yelled at herself. She shook her head, trying to clear her mind, and with one great effort, she threw her body to the side, rolling onto her back.
"Mornin' doll face," Cybelle said, looming over her.
"Oh no..." Enhancegirl thought. She'd hardly expected that Cybelle would be gone for good, but she'd held out some hope that she might have left her alone for a moment or two. In fact, Cybelle was not the only other person in the room. There were three or four other women, standing near her. One was the pretty French attendant who'd guided Cybelle in. "Mmmhhh..." Enhancegirl blushed suddenly, and for a moment she didn't know why. It was only as her mind became clearer - and it was still not totally clear - that she sensed a faint impression on her thigh. Distressingly, her enhanced sense of touch revealed the impression to be the shape of a pair of lips. She looked up, and all the women surrounding her were looking down and grinning. "It could have been any of them," Sophie thought, suddenly very aware that she had been unconscious for hours, defenceless against anyone who wanted to have their way with her.

"Oh, elle est jolie," the French attendant said. The other women cooed mockingly in agreement. Enhancegirl wriggled around a bit, but felt oddly exposed and embarrassed at struggling so vainly in front of them all. Though, through her chemically dulled senses, she could sense that her bonds, having endured hours and hours of her struggles, were not perhaps as invincible as she'd first thought. But she still couldn't sense a specific weakness.

Before she had a chance to test further, two of the so-far anonymous women grabbed Enhancegirl by her arms, and hauled her to her feet. Her legs were tied too tightly for her to balance herself, so she had to rely on the women who'd seized her. She didn't quite know why, but the trim French attendant seemed to be in charge of the others. Except for Cybelle, of course.

She was hauled up to face a very plush office chair, of the luxuriant-executive style, though it was currently unoccupied. Enhancegirl half expected Cybelle to sit herself in it, but again, she didn't seem like she was in charge of the others, though none of them were in charge of her either. The boss was absent. There was a feeling in Sophie's stomach which told her that she'd probably already guessed who 'the boss' was.

She heard the clacking footsteps of hard boot heels long before the door opened. If it were possible for a walk to be smug, this was it. It was so confident, so sure of itself, that Sophie would have imagined its owners face pretty accurately, had she not already known who it was anyway.

As the door opened, and a woman of not particularly intimidating height or build, with almost-black hair, emerged in a dark trouser-suit, one would not have thought that Enhancegirl, formidable superheroine that she was, would have been particularly affected. And yet her heart rate increased significantly, her palms began sweating, and she gave a small, frightened whimper from beneath her gag.
"Hello Enhancegirl. It's been a while, hasn't it? So nice of you to drop by," Madam Black said.


"Wow she's hot!"
"God, I wish I looked like that..."
"She's way outta my league..."
"What I wouldn't give to put my hands on her..." Natalya lowered her eyes before the lecherous man sitting across from her in the small, independent coffee shop. In all honesty, Natalya wasn't much of a coffee drinker, and would probably have preferred a Starbucks or some such, but this was where she'd been asked to meet the woman who'd contacted her.

She had never expected to hear from her again. It had been three years ago, when Natalya was only nineteen, when they had met for the first time. In her other life, as Insyte, she'd gone after a rogue chapter of the No-Law Gang on her own, fresh from a very famous victory over the villain Hypnotra which had given the shy girl some confidence.

For her efforts, she'd ended up bound, gagged and helpless within about five minutes of confronting them. Their leader had said they should kidnap Natalya in case they needed a hostage, so the buxom heroine ended up shoved in the trunk of a car, and driven off to the group's headquarters.

For three days they'd kept her trussed up and gagged, treating the pale damsel like a pet, feeling her up whenever they had a care to, stroking and squeezing her breasts and her thighs over and over, while she was powerless to stop them. Sometimes they would just sit her down and think at her, forcing her to experience in her own mind all the fantasies they had about the shy, lovely lass. But before things could get any worse for her, they'd been blasted away by a young, beautiful Japanese girl of seventeen, who seemed to have mastery over light itself.

"The name is Lumina," she'd said, once she'd freed Natalya from her bonds. "I don't imagine you've heard of me. Yet." Natalya had been awed by her confidence and power. There was a positive aura of self-belief surrounding her, and her mind had betrayed no secret fears or insecurities. She was amazing, Natalya had thought. Indeed, in the years that followed, Natalya had followed the progress of Lumina, even when she renamed herself Spectra, and had continually been astonished by her progress to the top of the list of Seacouver's heroes. You might even have said that Natalya was one of Spectra's first fans.

As a sort of token of politeness to her fellow heroine after rescuing her, Lumina had asked for a way to contact Natalya if she ever needed her help. She couldn't hide from Insyte, of course, that she'd done this entirely to help Natalya save a little face from her humiliating defeat. She'd no intention of ever asking for Natalya's assistance.

This made it all the more surprising when, three years later, Natalya had picked up the phone to hear Spectra's voice on the other end of the line, asking for her aid. Natalya, almost without thinking, had suggested they meet at Manuel's Café. She'd spent the intervening period wondering whether it was some kind of joke, or trick - trap, even. And yet, only ten minutes after Natalya had arrived, the café door opened again, and its occupants were no longer sure who the most gorgeous woman they had ever seen was.

Mariko Asakura hadn't entered such a seedy establishment in quite a long time. She had a fair idea why Insyte had chosen it: it was small and anonymous, but it didn't occur to her that it was the paucity of people that was the main reason. For Natalya, the fewer minds there were the better. It took Mariko a moment to recognise the heroine she'd rescued all those years ago, but of course her eye was instantly drawn to her anyway.

She sat down at the same table as Natalya, glancing almost nervously to the right, before folding one leg over the other, her grey dress sliding back to reveal much of her thighs. Natalya noticed an increase in the lewdness, and indeed complexity, of the fantasies of the men eyeing the attractive pair. Positively shocked by one involving the pair being assailed by an over-friendly octopus, Natalya tried to look at no-one but Mariko.

"Thank you for coming," Mariko said somewhat gingerly. "It's - ah - good to see you again. I'd feared that perhaps you might not have the same phone number anymore." Such small talk was unlike her. She was stalling, and she knew it. She tried to force herself to get to the point. "I...need your help," Mariko said. She was about to explain why, but when she saw Natalya gazing at her in horror, she realised that the heroine's powers had done all the explaining that was required.

There were almost too many things for Natalya to process in the storm that her mind had been met with. Hypnotra had returned. A faintly freckled redhead...the heroine Enhancegirl had been kidnapped. Spectra herself had been brainwashed and forced to assist in capturing her. Memories of the overwhelming scent of chloroform, and the shame Mariko felt at being tied up so tightly, flew into Natalya's mind. Beyond that...memories of her time as a hypnotised servant of Insyte's old enemy, of intense pleasure she'd been made to feel as she'd been dominated and controlled.

"Oh my god..." she whispered quietly. Mariko realised that everything - everything - had been revealed, and her face fell. This was the danger of working with a telepath - one had no inner world to oneself. "Miss Asakura, I can hardly-"
"Please don't," Mariko said sharply. She did not want sympathy. "I just - I need to know if you'll help me defeat her. I -" The next few words did not come easily to the proud model. "I cannot do it alone."
"I..." Natalya wavered. "I want to help, but...we won't only be facing Hypnotra. This Cybelle person, and the others working for them - I don't know if I can." Mariko's memories had stirred Natalya's own, of what it felt like to be a captive, to be totally powerless. The thought of being subjected to that again by this much more formidable gang of kidnappers than the ones who'd taken care of Insyte was hard to face.

"Fine," Mariko said curtly, before getting up and walking towards the door. She might have tried to be a little more persuasive, but Insyte's having access to all her most humiliating memories was enough in itself to make her want to leave. She was already out of the door before Natalya even had the chance to object.

There was certainly a part of Natalya that would have been willing simply to drop the matter. Mariko had entered her life abruptly, and she could leave again just as abruptly. But there was something beyond the shock of Mariko's immediate memories that had unsettled Natalya. When they'd first met, she'd been so confident, like a prowling tigress in the heart of her territory, unthreatened by anything in her domain. Now, her thoughts weren't just tinged with anger - though there was plenty of that - there was self doubt. It just seemed wrong.

She rushed out to try and stop Mariko, dashing through the door after her, but at the last moment lost her nerve and halted. The street was unexpectedly crowded, and Natalya instantly was paralyzed with social anxiety of shouting after Mariko. Not only that, but she was bombarded with thousands upon thousands of thoughts. She might well have disappeared once she turned the corner, but as it happened, she glanced over her shoulder. She saw Natalya, her eyes down, trying not to be overwhelmed by the thoughts of the passers-by, but occasionally looking back at Mariko. The model turned back, and escorted Natalya back into the café.

"I'm sorry..." Natalya murmured, sitting down and lowering her eyes. She felt embarrassed that she, trying to offer her aid to Mariko, had had to be rescued by the Japanese model. Again.
"It's alright," Mariko said, a little impatiently. "I -"
"I'll help you," Natalya blurted out. "I want to help you." Mariko smiled slightly.
"Thank you, Natalya. I'd hoped that you would acquiesce. We've not a moment to lose."
"I'm sure of that," the pale architect said, "but there's something we need to do first."
"What do you mean?" Mariko asked.
"Your mind..." Natalya looked Mariko in the eye. She didn't do this often. The thoughts were hardest to keep out when eyes met. "It's still under Hypnotra's control." There was a long pause before Mariko spoke.
"What do we do?"

Mariko and Natalya had to go somewhere else. The café was not empty enough. It was not a question of privacy, though. It was a question of concentration. Natalya needed as few minds as possible interfering with her if she was going to attempt what she'd planned.

So it was that they sat down in the poetry section of Lafayette library, a well-stocked but ill-used public convenience.
"What happens now?" Mariko asked. Natalya shushed her.
"I'm sorry!" she whispered suddenly, realising what she'd just done. Mariko impatiently waved away her concerns. "I'm sorry...I just have to concentrate." She looked into Mariko's jade-coloured eyes, which was not altogether easy for someone so shy. She furrowed her brows, and for a moment Mariko wasn't sure if anything was happening. Natalya, though, was beginning to look a little worn out. "I'm sorry," she said again. "It seems like she's stronger than last time."
"You mean you can't break her control?" Mariko asked, alarmed.
"No, I can...but I need your help. I've only done this once before...it can be disconcerting."
"What do you -?" Mariko was interrupted by her world suddenly going black.


"Well done, Cybelle," Madam Black said, taking her seat. The women holding Enhancegirl turned her around so that at all times she was looking Black in the face. "Looks like those enhancements I gave you worked a real treat."
"You betcha," Cybelle replied. "I take it you'll accept this lovely creature as payment?" With one tendril, she snagged Enhancegirl by the ropes around her chest, and pushed her towards Black's desk.
"Mmmphh!" Enhancegirl, completely incapable of balancing, fell against the desk, doubled over it. "Nyymmmphh..." She couldn't get herself back up. She was bent over in front of her captor, in a very short dress which was doing very little to defend her modesty at that moment.

As the scantily clad maiden wiggled her partly exposed behind, tied up and bent over a desk, she was so ashamed at her situation that she almost forgot the crucial one.
"Why?" She had come up against Madam Black for the first time a few months before, discovering that she was behind a slaving ring which had been kidnapping attractive young women and selling them off on the black market. She'd defeated them, but not before being captured herself. It was Madam Black who had been the first to discover Enhancegirl's weakness to chloroform. So why here? Why now?

Madam Black got up from her seat, and walked slowly around, letting Sophie follow her with her eyes.
"I expect right about now you're wondering 'why?" Her voice took on a mocking, simpering contralto. "'Why is a stupid, pathetic little girl like me so important that someone as powerful and dangerous as Madam Black would bother going out of her way to have me kidnapped?" By the end of her impersonation, she was standing directly behind Sophie.
"Mmhhhnnn!" Sophie twisted this way and that, trying to keep Black within view. It didn't work very well.
"In a word" Black said, "spite." With that, she opened the palm of her right hand, and spanked her captive's exposed rear.
"MMMPHHH!!" Sophie screamed, humiliation stinging as much as her behind.

"I had a good little operation going," Black said. She struck again, her leather glove slapping hard against Sophie's taut, pink skin. "And then one day you decide to waltz in and mess everything up." She struck again.
"Mmmm-nnnyyymmmphhh!" Sophie mewed helplessly. She heard the laughter of the other women, taking particular note of the drawling guffaw of Cybelle. If her head were not already leaning against the table, it would have drooped with shame.

"You stupid little superheroine," Black said, "with your stupid little outfit, and your stupid little powers. You thought I'd forget? You thought I'd forgive you for ruining what I had going? Now don't get me wrong - I partnered up with someone who made my next venture a whole lot more lucrative, but that's in spite of you, not because of you." She grabbed Sophie's waist, and turned her over, pushing her up the desk so her calves dangled off its edge, her hands gripping Sophie's bare thighs. Cold, brown eyes peered into Sophie's green ones. There was no lust in those eyes, not really. Despite her manhandling, Sophie could see that Black was just doing it to humiliate her red-haired victim. Not that that made matters any better.

"I'd wanted to start with you. The first big sale of my new enterprise. Except Brandon messed that up, of course." Sophie had quite forgotten, but the gang of low-lifes who'd kidnapped Mariko to bait her into a trap had pretty much told her that they were working for Madam Black. Nyx had been even more explicit - Nyx the villainess whose immunity to sedatives made for a rather unfortunate mix with Enhancegirl's weakness to them. "I'll admit I was a bit surprised Nyx lost to you. I've done good business with her before and since, and you're the first person who's really given her trouble." She put her hand on Sophie's midriff. Her tight, gold dress may as well not have been there. Sophie felt totally exposed. "It didn't matter all too much in the end, though. I have you now." Sophie shook her shoulders, but accomplished nothing. Black was quite correct in her assessment of the situation.

"Thanks to my new partner, that is," Black added. Sophie would have thought she meant Cybelle, but for the debt the two had spoken of. Who, then?
"Mmmph!" Sophie wasn't given the opportunity to ponder the situation before being roughly turned onto her front again. Black returned to her seat, but as she did, she snapped her fingers. Two of the women in the room, evidently members of her staff, moved to stand on either side of Sophie. The redhead didn't understand why, until Black opened a drawer and pulled out a vial of transparent liquid, and a thick white cloth.
"Oh no..."

"I have been looking forward to doing this for a looong time," Black said, smiling.
"Mmmmrrrmmmphhh!!" Sophie began fighting with all she had, but Black's attendants (servants? slaves?) grabbed her arms and held her down. She could already detect the overpowering scent as Black unscrewed the lid of the jar, and soaked the rag in its contents. "Nnnmmphh! Nnnnnnmmmphhh!!" Sophie could already feel the chemical affecting her, extending its etheric tendrils over her body.
"You're so sensitive, aren't you Enhancegirl?" Black laughed, bringing the damp cloth ever closer to Sophie's face. "I bet you're already starting to feel drowsy..." She wasn't wrong.
"Ugh...no..." Sophie could feel it happening. She could feel her wriggling body growing soft and weak, a feeling that was by now all too familiar. She could sense all power draining away from her. "Why...why do I have to...be so helpless?" She felt the grip of her handlers relaxing: she was becoming more tame with every passing second, the process speeding up the closer the cloth came to her face.

"Oh, girlie, you look so weak." Sophie's head was down against the desk, her limbs motionless. "You feel that tight little body getting all floppy and useless?"
"Unnhh...I...can't...get away..." Sophie thought. She couldn't even wriggle, much less get away. She felt Black taking her chin, and lifting her head.
"You call yourself a superheroine?" Black laughed. "What a joke." She then pressed the cloth over Sophie's mouth.
"Mmmphhh...mmmhhhnnn..." The fumes were totally overpowering. Sophie couldn't think. She couldn't move. All she could do was lie there in her bonds, whimpering quietly as she was drugged. "Can't...I'm so... so sleepy..."
"You're mine, Enhancegirl," Black said, "and there's not a thing you can do about it." But the chloroform worked too fast. The last thing Sophie heard before passing out was 'you're mine.'

She felt it, too.


"What?" Mariko felt like she had passed out, but she had no perception of any time having passed since. Not only that, but she had 'come to' on her feet, which hardly made much sense if she'd been knocked out. Her surroundings were, however, completely black.

"Hello?" she called out. There was no echo whatever, as if her surroundings were infinite in expanse. All was confusion, until she heard a voice in return.
"Mariko?" It came from behind her, and the catwalk model turned in hope of answers. Regrettably, answer came there none. For she found herself staring into her own eyes, at her own face. It was, in fact, her. Or rather, clad in the silver leotard, short cape and domino mask of her alter ego, it was Spectra.

"What in -?" Mariko jumped back. At the periphery of her memory, she retained some knowledge that Natalya had been engaged in some kind of psychic ritual, but she couldn't quite get it to the forefront of her mind. As such, she was not as surprised as someone would ordinarily have been at the appearance of a doppelgänger, but she was nonetheless alarmed.

"Who are you?" Mariko demanded. "Where am I?"
"I'm you," Spectra replied. "Who else would I be? As for where...such things hardly matter at this point."
"We cannot both be Mariko Asakura," Mariko insisted, putting a hand on her hip.
"Whoever said anything about Mariko Asakura?" Her double replied. "I'm Spectra. Aren't you?"
"Be quiet. I have no interest whatever in your nonsensical double-talk." She looked around. There was nothing - nothing whatever apart from her phantom, who was illuminated by no visible light source.

"I know what you're trying to do," Spectra said. "And I won't have it, you know."
"What are you babbling about?" Mariko said.
"You're trying to break the Mistress' control. That's just not on, Mariko."
"That's right..." The model remembered. "You shouldn't have reminded me of that, phantom. I assume my course is relatively clear. You're some sort of mental representation of Hypnotra's powers, and to dispel her control, I must defeat you. Spectrum is Green!" she called out confidently. Yet her powers did not manifest, and she remained in her tight, grey dress.

"You stupid girl," Mariko's copy said. "Did you really think that that would work? I'm Spectra, remember?" She flicked her right finger vaguely in Mariko's direction, and the Japanese woman was knocked instantly onto the floor by an unseen force.
"Unhh!" she groaned, sprawled on the dark floor. It had no texture at all - it was not really there, but Mariko had to work very hard to remember that. "You...you have only as much power as I think you have!" With great effort, she hauled herself back up. "And I think you have no power at all!" She rushed forward, swinging a fist towards the illusory Spectra.

But the illusion was quite tangible, and she caught Mariko's fist in mid-air. In fact, she grabbed both of Mariko's wrists, and forced them behind her back. Holding them in place with the iron grip of one hand, she took Mariko by the shoulder, and began spinning her around. The Japanese damsel found herself powerless to stop this from happening. Her astonishment at this only increased when she realised that her phantom was manifesting chains out of thin air, thick metal chains which were being wrapped round Mariko's body.

"No!" Mariko cried out as she felt the metal squeezing her arms and her breasts, binding her limbs to her back. Within seconds, her elbows were chained together, then her wrists, the chains being wound about her arms before being re-woven around her torso, securing those arms in place.

Spinning faster and faster, the disoriented and overwhelmed maiden found chains twisting round her abdomen, down past her hips, before pinching the skin of her long, slender legs. The strength of her soft thighs was no match for her metal bonds, and they were snapped together. Her knees were inseparable after a second or two more, before finally chains were twisted round her ankles, and her entire body was bound.

"What? No...no!" Mariko cried out, as the whirling finally stopped. Her doppelgänger put her hands on both of Mariko's shoulders, and pulled her in close. Mariko wriggled, but the chains were too strong and too tight for her. They were wrapped in intervals around her, leaving her dress and her legs mostly in view. She could feel, therefore, her replica's skin against her own.
"See, Mariko? Even in your own mind, you can't get away from the Mistress." She pushed Mariko, who fell the length of her long, beautiful body onto the ground, like a felled oak. There was no great creak, though, merely a confused, helpless gasp.

"What's happening?" Mariko cried out in fear, chained up and helpless. She shook, and the chains rattled, but there was nothing she could do.
"What's happening is that you're being shown where you belong." The copy knelt down, her legs on either side of her captive. Straddled, the slender beauty found herself even more tightly restrained. "After all, Mariko, don't you like it? Don't you like being a slave?"
"No, of course not!" Mariko protested. "I - what?" Mariko felt something warm and wet moving across her stomach. She looked down to see that her chains were chains no longer. They were...Mariko wasn't sure. Tentacles? No...they were more like vines, but they not only bound her as tightly as they had when they were metal, but they moved about her body, slowly squeezing her legs and her breasts, slimy and warm against her skin. "Oh!" she gasped, as the vines slid between her thighs. Her head fell back, the pleasure palpably weakening her.

"Doesn't it feel good, Mariko?" Spectra said, stroking the young woman's slender neck.
"No..." Mariko lied, her cheeks flushed, her skin tingling where her double touched her. She could feel the slime from the vines oozing over her legs, making her skin moist and slippery. She noticed, too, that her dress was becoming wet with the residue from her slippery bonds. As a vine curled over her breasts, massaging the helpless catwalk model, Mariko was almost too overcome to notice the hissing, and the steam rising from her body.

"What...?" When Mariko finally realised what was happening, she had barely enough mental fortitude left to be shocked to see that her clothes were dissolving. Inch by inch, her dress was vanishing, revealing more and more of her skin.
"Don't worry, Mariko," Spectra said, "it won't hurt you." She was right. The vines' slime was destroying her clothing, but leaving Mariko's lovely body unharmed.

In only a few moments, the tall, beautiful maiden was completely naked. The only trace of modesty she was left with were two wriggling vines covering the most sensitive areas of her body.
"Unnhhh..." Mariko moaned, as her double began running her hands all over her slippery skin, feeling her helpless captive wriggling weakly beneath her. The vines wrapped around her began squeezing more tightly, and she was so overwhelmed by the pleasure of the warm tendrils writhing over her that she had quite forgotten that none of what was happening to her was real.

"Nnngghhmmphh..." Mariko whimpered, as a vine slid up her neck, and between her lips, gagging her. As more vines joined it, forming a tight seal over her mouth, Mariko could taste the slime coating her body - it was sweet, and cloying, and the taste of it seemed to make her even weaker. "Mmmm...mmmhhpphh..." she moaned gently.

"See, Mariko?" her double said. "This is where you're meant to be. Such a silly girl...thinking that all that pride and strength really mattered when, underneath, you were so weak and soft." As Mariko heard her double pronounce that last word, the vines binding the oriental maiden squeezed her entire body all at once, and she gasped.
"Why...?" she thought. "Why does it...feel so pleasant? Is she right? Is this what I want? What I...deserve?"
"Yes, Mariko," said the doppelgänger in response. For in the dreamscape in which Mariko found herself captive, there was no difference between words she appeared to speak, and words she appeared to think. "After all, you betrayed your friend. You deserve to be sullied. You deserve to be dominated." She leaned in close, taking Mariko by her narrow shoulders, and suddenly Mariko was not looking at her own face, but at that of Mesmeredith. "But that doesn't mean you don't deserve to enjoy it."

She grasped at Mariko's thighs, and began smothering her neck and her shoulders with kisses, as the vines binding her victim began pulsating with even greater intensity.
"Mmmmphhh...mmmphhh!" Mariko whimpered, overwhelmed with powerless delight, unable to do anything but give in. There was almost a freedom in it, she realised, a release in her bondage. In a vague way she'd always understood the appeal of powerlessness, of freedom from responsibility and duty, but now she felt it in herself, and the shame of this made it all the more inescapable. She thought of her reputation as a heroine, as a model, of the public who loved her. None of it seemed to have any importance.

"Are you mine, Mariko?" Mesmeredith said, taking her captive by the chin.
"...yes..." Mariko thought. She was bound and helpless. How could she deny it?
"Does being Spectra matter to you anymore?"
"...no..." Mariko thought. She was naked and exposed. How could she deny it?
"Do you enjoy being my pretty, helpless little slave?"
"...yes..." Mariko thought. She was blushing with pleasure. How could she deny it?

If one goes about it in the right way, one can convince more or less anyone of more or less anything. Even Mariko Asakura, proud and strong, could be convinced not only that she was weak, but that she enjoyed being so by a hypnotist as powerful as Mesmeredith. But there was a line, a line very fine between the thoughts that Mariko was encouraged, tricked even, into having, and the ones that Mesmeredith had simply forced onto her. In ordinary circumstances, the psychic trap that Mesmeredith had constructed that currently ensnared Mariko would not have been threatened by crossing that line.

But these were not ordinary circumstances, and there was a second mind to be contended with.

Since arriving in the total darkness of her inner landscape, there had not been one jot of light visible anywhere, nothing whatever visible, in fact, apart from the two women. However, in a distant corner of the seemingly infinite blackness, there was a spark. It was tiny, and would have been invisible to any ordinary person. But then, Mariko Asakura was a little more sensitive than most when it came to light.

"Who are you?" Mesmeredith asked.
"I..." Mariko had been about to say that she was no-one, that she was whoever she was ordered to be at most. But just as she started, she saw a pinprick of light in the distance. It was tiny, but she could feel it as well as see it - she was Spectra after all. "I am Spectra..." she thought.
"No," Mesmeredith said. The vines tightened again, trying to squeeze resistance out of the maiden they held captive. "Who are you really?" The light had continued to travel as Mesmeredith spoke, and by the time she finished, it was hovering just behind her. It took a moment for Mariko to realise that it was she who had stopped it. She controlled the light. And why shouldn't she? All light was hers to control.

"Say it," Mesmeredith said again, and the vines unfurled from Mariko's mouth so that she might form the words with her own lips. "Who are you?"
"Oh, Mistress..." Mariko said in a simpering voice, lowering her eyes passively, "if I said that I'm just a weak, helpless girl, who was too weak to resist you, would that be right? Is that what I'm supposed to say?"
"It'll do," Mesmeredith chuckled. Her laughter was abruptly halted when Mariko's eyes fixed on her, narrowed to a point.
"Well that's unfortunate, then. Because I am SPECTRA!"

If there had been a further contingency plan to subdue Mariko, it would have proved hopelessly inadequate. The vines were blasted from Mariko's body, and she leapt to her feet, already covered in the costume of her heroic identity.
"Mariko -ack!" Mesmeredith was not given a chance to speak. Mariko's - Spectra's - hand was around her throat.
"I belong to no-one but myself," she said. "Being Spectra is the central fact of my life." She tightened her grip, as light began pouring out of her body. "And I am no-one's slave!" In a vast explosion of luminescence, Mesmeredith vanished. Spectra smiled, as the dreamscape shattered around her.


"Are you alright?" Mariko jumped at Natalya's voice, taken aback by the suddenness of her awakening. She looked around, disoriented.
"Am I - where did-?" It began to come back to her. She was in the library again, sitting across from Natalya. "Is it done?"
"Yes," Natalya said, smiling slightly. "I've destroyed her influence on your mind...I almost didn't think I could."
"Thank you," Mariko said abruptly. "Thank you, Natalya..." The telepath blushed.
"Oh, that's...I mean, you got rid of her really...I just helped a little."
"Take some credit!" Mariko didn't understand people who shunned praise. "You saved me, Natalya. There's hardly any need for you to be as modest as this." Natalya looked at her feet, evidently uncomfortable with compliments. Mariko changed the subject. "Now we can finally go after them." Mariko was about to stand, but she realised that she didn't actually know where to start looking.
"It's alright," Natalya said, reading her concerns. "I know where they've taken Enhancegirl. I've been there before."


"Mhhhnnn...mmmhhhphhh..." Sophie mewed, as she began to come back to consciousness. She was groggy and confused, but she could still see where she was: still a captive, still tightly bound and gagged, and - to her shame - still bent over Madam Black's desk. She tried to move, but her limbs felt heavy. "I'm so weak..." she thought. "The ropes...they're so tight..." Though semi-conscious, she hadn't moved enough to show that she was awakening, and Madam Black, sat only inches away from her red-haired captive, didn't notice a thing.

"She...she just left me here?" Sophie realised as she turned her eyes to her captor. Black was conducting a telephone call, apparently going about her ordinary business, with a kidnapped, trussed-up superheroine in a mini-dress flopped over her desk as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "I don't even matter..." Sophie thought, and shifted a little in her bonds. This, unfortunately, Black noticed, and she saw that Sophie was gradually awakening. Quite casually, she signalled to someone standing behind her captive.

"Mph!" Sophie squeaked, feeling a pinprick in her exposed posterior. "Mmmmmmmpphhh..." she moaned, as she felt something flooding her system, overwhelming her svelte body and taking away the minuscule amount of strength she'd recovered. "Tranquiliser dart..." she thought, half-mindlessly, before slumping forward onto the desk, limp. "No...falling asleep again...unnhh...it's too strong..."

She retained consciousness just long enough to hear someone else walk in, someone who spoke in a familiar voice, but Sophie was too drowsy to recognise it. Her green eyes fell shut a moment later, the redhead drugged into oblivion once again. She had been awake for all of fifteen seconds.


"Just get out!" the Warden snapped. His sub-ordinates instantly disappeared from his sight. "Damn, damn damn!" he cried out, restraining himself from thumping his fist against a nearby table. His brows were furrowed almost to the point of carving his forehead in two, his teeth were grinding in his head, and his thick, black beard was crackling with electricity. The latter was not a very common way of expressing rage, but anyone who worked with him knew well what it meant. Namely, that he should be left alone for at least an hour.

For Philip Hayward was not only the warden of the only prison in the country that was specifically designed to hold dangerous superhumans prisoner, he was also a superhuman himself, and one of the most powerful in existence. In his salad days, when he'd worn a brightly coloured costume and had gallavanted about fighting ne'er do wells, he'd been known as 'The Generator', because of his ability to produce large amounts of electricity from his body. As he'd aged, that power had matured into an ability to produce infinite amounts of electricity from his body, which he could direct in any way he chose, to stun, shock or worse. Unfortunately, this meant that he couldn't touch another human being without killing them.

There were quite a few human beings on whom Philip would have quite liked to demonstrate that effect on that particular day. For the first time, someone had escaped from the Penitentiary Supreme.
"And it wasn't even someone cool!" he'd barked at his underlings, all of whom had some power or other. "It was that bunch of losers, the...what are they called? The Crisis Crew?"
"The Catastrophe gang, si-"
"Whatever!" As far as he understood it, the security cameras had all been turned off, the doors to the Gang's cells had been opened, and the four members who had escaped simply walked out, completely unopposed. It was a monumental embarrassment.

So when his long-suffering receptionist entered, saying that there was a weird journalist from a weird newspaper who wanted to talk to the three remaining Catastrophe gang members, on the promise that she'd try and make sure that her paper's coverage of the breakout didn't paint Philip like a complete incompetent, he was so distracted by his attempt to contain his powers that he only realised that he'd just broken an order for total media silence that he himself had given after she'd already left.

It had not been a good day.


"What self-respecting villain would choose somewhere so gaudy for their hideout?" Mariko thought, as the vast mansion came into view. It could easily have been slotted somewhere in the Hamptons, but it was dumped rather unceremoniously on an otherwise unoccupied island.
"I suppose Hypnotra would," Natalya said. Mariko had forgotten that her every thought was available to her partner. "This is where we fought last time...I'm sure she's using it as her base again."
"I certainly hope you're correct," Mariko said, as their boat reached the small inlet on the side of the island. She hopped out, eyes scanning for any surveillance. She beckoned Natalya to follow her.
"Just a moment," she said, rifling in a small bag. "Could...you turn around, please?" Mariko was bemused, but she did as she was asked. When Natalya finally stepped out, Mariko was astonished at her appearance.

She was dressed in an extremely tight, pink dress, with a pleated hem that barely skirted the top of her thighs. The cut of the dress revealed her collarbone, and looked as if it might slip from her shoulders at any minute, her ample bosom straining at the tight material - lycra, or some equivalent. Her calves were covered by white, knee high stockings, and her she was shod in pink kitten heels. This was the uniform of Insyte. The beautiful, pale young woman looked fabulous - but Mariko didn't understand why she had chosen to dress in this way. She'd worn the same uniform when they'd met before, but Mariko didn't know her then.

"I don't...I mean -" Insyte stammered. "My sister designed it..."
"Let's not dawdle," Mariko said. "Spectrum is Green!" Her own transformation took far less time, and she was much more pleased with the outcome than Insyte appeared to be with hers. As she appeared, clad in her silver outfit, Insyte stared.
"She looks so amazing," Natalya thought. "I must seem absolutely ridiculous next to her!" She felt the wind against her legs, and wished that her sister had designed an outfit that was a little less revealing.

The two made their way around the perimeter of the island without incident. It was when they began to approach the mansion that things became more difficult. Two security cameras monitored the outermost edge of it, and there were quite a few armed guards as well.
"Leave this to me," Spectra said, and two lances of light shot from her fingertips, striking the cameras dead centre in their lenses, blinding both. She ran forward, Insyte hot on her heel. She'd deliberately hit them only hard enough to disable them temporarily, to make any watching guard think their malfunction a mere glitch.

Once past their field of vision, it had been Spectra's plan to cloak herself, using her powers over light to make herself invisible. Though she'd be blinded, and her invisibility would run out after only a few seconds, it would still have given her enough time to get past the guards. Unfortunately, she had not counted on Insyte.
"I can't cloak us both! This is why I hate working in a team..."
"Don't worry," Insyte said. She looked hard at the guards, focussing intently. "When I say, run for that window." The main entrance had two more guards in front of it and, it would have been impossible to take them out without raising the hue and cry. Going for the window made sense, but surely, Mariko thought, there was no way to run past the guards in front of the house without being seen. "Please trust me," Insyte said, sensing Mariko's doubt. "I...I can do this." Mariko hesitated, but nodded in hesitant agreement.

The pair waited for a little under a minute, though it felt like much longer.
"Now!" Insyte suddenly hissed. Spectra couldn't see why she had chosen that moment rather than any other, and she hesitated. But as Insyte ran for the window, Spectra realised that the guards simply weren't noticing. They should have, but they just didn't. It was only when Insyte turned her head and beckoned, looking panicked that the window of opportunity might close, that Spectra followed.

As she ran, she reached out with her powers, and sliced a neat hole in the window they were trying to get through. Insyte leapt in, demonstrating some surprising agility, and Spectra followed soon after. The guards didn't notice anything.

"How did you do that?" Spectra asked, finding herself in what looked like a kitchen. Fortunately for the two heroines, it was unoccupied.
"I'm not very powerful," Insyte said, "but I can exert a little influence over other minds. Enough to distract, or confuse slightly."
"It's a useful ability," Spectra said. "Come. We should move on."

Spectra knew herself to be very powerful indeed, but even she didn't want to get into too many entanglements. She and Insyte moved very carefully through the lavish mansion, Insyte's ability to prevent people from noticing her proving very useful indeed.
"Can you sense Enhancegirl's presence in this building?" Spectra asked.
"No," Insyte replied. "I can only sense minds of people I can -" She stopped talking. She'd glanced round a corner, and spotted a maid, though she appeared to be armed with some kind of oversized weapon. The weapon wasn't what made her stop in mid-sentence. It was the image of a gold-clad redhead that flashed through the maid's mind. "She's here." Spectra's fist closed.
"Where?"

Insyte didn't know exactly, but she knew they needed to head up. Ascending a sweeping staircase, the two ended up in a long, but narrow corridor. All seemed to be going well, until a tall, goateed man in a long, red coat appeared in front of them. At the last moment, Insyte reached out to his mind to try and distract him, but it didn't work. He'd already known they'd be there, and Insyte's trick would not dissuade him.
"How's it goin', girls?" he said, grinning. There was some kind of design painted on his forehead. He looked strange and yet, to Mariko, oddly familiar. But she had no time to contemplate the matter, as another man stepped out from behind him, dressed similarly, but with a mauve coat instead. He was shorter and stockier than the other.
"Wait a minute...I remember you," Spectra said, stepping forward. "Moved on from bank jobs, have we Hot Shot?"
"That's Big Shot!" the stocky man said. "And believe me, you'll see how big before too long!"

There was a thud from behind the two women. Insyte turned around to see a giant of a man, carrying a huge, metal mace. The other was about Natalya's height, with spiky black hair, but the way the other man moved around him suggested he was the stronger of the two.
"Stop right there, capes!" the shorter man said. "You're not going one step further!" Insyte briefly scanned the minds of the two, and she gasped.
"Spectra, they're -"
"I know who they are," Spectra said. "The Catastrophe gang, if I'm not mistaken, named after him." She jabbed her thumb at the shorter man. "I'll deal with them."
"You'll try!!" the giant, Hammerblow, roared, leaping into the fray. He swung his massive mace at Spectra, and she raised a barrier of light to block his attack. She was more than perturbed when a powerful light blast from Catastrophe was aimed at her as well. She used her light manipulation ability to bend the attack away from her, but her concentration was weakened sufficiently to weaken her barrier. When Hammerblow's mace struck it, it held, but barely. As Spectra quickly added more power to it, a fireball approached her from behind.
"Damn!" Spectra moved to avoid it, but it was approaching too fast. If Insyte hadn't pulled her out of the way, she would not have avoided being hit.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"Yes, thank you," Spectra said curtly. "They're better this time..."
"Let me deal with those two," Insyte said, meaning Big Shot and his partner. "They're the weaker of the four, right?"
"Can you handle it?" Spectra asked. She was asking an honest question.
"I think so..."

She didn't seem sure, but the decision was made for her. Big Shot aimed his hands at the black-haired telepath, and fired. Fortunately, she knew long ahead of time where he was aiming, and exactly when he would fire. She also knew that his real name was Bob Turnbull, and that he'd entered a life of crime after failing as a sculptor, but that was not particularly useful information.
"What the -?" Big Shot fired again, but the pink-clad young woman dodged again, coming closer and closer to him. He fired a much larger blast, which blew a fairly impressive hole in the wall. Unfortunately, he hadn't been aiming at the wall. He charged up as large a blast as he could, but he should have been paying more attention to his target. She kicked at his shin, and he buckled, before she delivered a powerful high kick to his forehead. He fell back, stunned at the martial prowess of his pale, raven-haired opponent.

In all fairness, Insyte knew some karate, but she was not particularly skilled. It was being able to know what her opponent was going to do ahead of time that gave her such a decided advantage. Spectra was not in such a fortunate position. All of Catastrophe's attacks were light based, and Spectra's powers gave her the ability easily to deflect them, but with Hammerblow constantly attacking her, she couldn't return fire with much effectiveness. Last time they'd fought, Spectra had defeated Catastrophe by turning his own attack against him. She was trying to do the same thing now, but he was deliberately using blasts which were too weak to do him any damage if they hit him, due to his partial resistance to his own powers. If they hit anyone else, it would have been a different story.

It was a nice trick, but Spectra had plenty of her own. As Hammerblow geared up for another swing, Spectra vanished from his sight.
"Huh?" Hammerblow grunted. He remembered that Spectra had pulled this trick before, and he swung his mace behind him where he assumed she'd be.
"Aaack!" The giant turned to see his leader knocked onto his front by a light blast from behind. Spectra had known that the pair she fought would assume she'd cloak herself to take out Hammerblow. Now she only had to deal with one of them.

Not so with Insyte. Big Shot was down, but not out, and he continued to harry her with fireballs as she attempted to deal with his partner. If he had powers, he wasn't using them, though it was surprisingly difficult for Insyte to get a psychic bead on him. She could just about stay ahead of his attacks, but she couldn't read his thoughts.

It was as Insyte turned to try and knock Big Shot out completely that his partner stepped round her, so the two were facing each other. In fact, in the whole fight it was the first time that the two had made eye contact.
"Pow," Mindblow said, smirking. His eyes flashed.
"Aaahhh!" Insyte cried out, as what felt like a nuclear bomb went off in her brain. "Unnnhhh...can't...think..." Even with her powers, Insyte was totally overcome, every synapse in her brain overpowered by Mindblow's blast.
"Down you go, doll," Mindblow laughed.
"Ohhn..." Natalya whimpered quietly, before collapsing in a heap at her enemy's feet, completely unconscious.

"Damn!" Spectra saw what had happened to her ally, but there were still three Catastrophe gang members between her and the fallen telepath. Dodging another swing from Hammerblow, Spectra tapped into the infra-red spectrum, and sent a bolt of energy at Big Shot, who was pulling himself to his feet. Sensing the attack, he turned and fired a blast of his own, but it was overwhelmed by Spectra's.

"Aaaghh!" he roared, the searing pain of Spectra's heat blast almost as debilitating as the force of the attack. He was sent careening back, and decisively taken out of the fight. Mindblow saw what had happened to his partner-in-crime, and elected to make himself scarce. However, that was not before he grabbed Natalya from where she lay, and hauled her limp body up into his arms.

Spectra had no intention whatever of allowing Mindblow to make off with Insyte so easily. She prepared another heat blast, but at the last moment Hammerblow stepped in the way, blocking the attack with his mace. Spectra was perplexed - the Hammerblow she had fought before did not seem as if he had nearly enough skill to perform such a feat. But it mattered little: he was squarely in front of her now. Spectra raised her thin fingers, and fired an energy beam at each of Hammerblow's hands.

"Ow!" Superhumanly strong and durable, Hammerblow's hands were not hurt particularly badly, but the shock caused him to drop his mace. This was the opportunity that Spectra needed not only to get past him, but to shoot two significantly more powerful blasts into the backs of his legs. Let us say that 'ow' was not how Hammerblow chose to express his pain at that attack, as he collapsed onto his knees, cracking the floor beneath him.

"Ah hell!" Mindblow realised that there was now nothing between himself and the mighty heroine, and he laid Insyte back down so that he could actually fight her. He needn't have bothered. He tried to make eye contact with her, but she already knew how his powers worked and, looking at him only with her peripheral vision, she bombarded him with a cascade of light energy, defeating him instantly.

Spectra was about to claim victory over the gang, when a beam of energy came flying past her. At the very last moment she realised that it had been aimed at the unconscious Insyte, and she redirected it away from the pale young woman. Spectra turned to see that Catastrophe was back up. He fired again, and again, and it became clear that having to defend Insyte put her at a significant disadvantage. She would have stood her ground, but for the fact that Big Shot was fighting through the pain of Spectra's attack, and was back on his feet as well.

Big Shot was much weaker than Catastrophe, but Spectra could only block his attacks, not deflect them, and the narrow corridor gave her no room for manoeuvre.
"Damn them!" Spectra thought. She would have to retreat. As Catastrophe fired a stronger attack, Spectra sent it straight up into the ceiling above her enemies. There was a potent explosion, and dust and debris were sent everywhere. This was the cover Spectra needed. She grabbed Insyte, throwing her over her shoulder, and dashing away. When the dust cleared, Catastrophe was incensed to find that the heroines were gone.

"I know they weren't that effective when I fought them last," Spectra thought, balancing her defeated ally's body over herself. But she had a more immediate concern now: Mariko wasn't all that physically strong, and carrying Natalya was already starting to tire her. Hearing raised voices, Spectra ducked into a small room, waiting for whomever it was to go past her.

Spectra set Insyte down on her knees. She looked at the pale heroine, and realised that she had no idea when she'd awaken. She couldn't very well go through the complex with Insyte slung over her shoulder the entire time. She looked around, and saw a small closet at the back of the room. She opened it, and saw that - while cramped - it was just about big enough to fit someone inside. She took Natalya by her arms, dragging her across the room, before placing her inside as gently as she was able, having to tuck her legs to make her fit.
"Forgive me, Natalya," Spectra said, before closing the door. She only hoped that no-one needed any cleaning supplies before Insyte woke up.

Things were much easier for Spectra after that. For sure, Insyte's ability to distract guards had been useful, but Spectra could outright cloak herself, albeit briefly. She continued to ascend, until she judged herself to be on the top floor. Displaying a somewhat ruthless single-mindedness, she hardly thought of Insyte at all.


"Ooohh..." Natalya groaned, as her brain finally settled itself from Mindblow's attack, and she awoke. There was a moment of utter panic, as she felt herself shut in a confined space, and she feared that she'd been captured. But she realised that she wasn't bound, and as she tried to stand, the door in front of her opened easily. She came out into a small, darkened room, but there were no guards or anything of the sort.

"What's going on?" Natalya said to herself, as she explored further. The last thing she remembered were the flashing eyes of the Catastrophe gang member she'd been fighting, then blackness. Now she was here. Where was here? And where, for that matter, was Spectra?

Cautiously, Insyte opened the room's door, and peered out. There was no-one there.
"I'll have to continue on my own..." She kept moving, hoping that her path would cross Spectra's again soon. She ascended a set of steps, and was about to go further up, when she heard someone coming.

It was a guard, with a nasty looking sub-machine gun slung over his shoulder. Insyte hid round a corner, but peeked her head out so that he would remain within sight. She began probing his mind for information, finding that he was named Denzel Bindon, and that he was considered a blunderer by the other guards. She became somewhat distracted, however, by a rather vivid narrative playing out in his mind:

""Oh Spectra," Insyte said nervously but flirting sort of. "I'm so weak and helpless...the villains keep capturing me and tying me up...won't you help me become stronger?" She pushed her really big boobs in Spectra's direction because she secretly fancied her because she was real hot.
"I can try, Insyte-san," Spectra said in her very thick Chinese accent. Her outfit showed off her great body and she secretly fancied Insyte too, because she was real hot too. She had some ropes, and tied Insyte up. She was really tall and looked like a dominatrix, I guess.
"Oh Spectra!" Insyte explicated. "These ropes are so tight and strong!" Her really big boobs looked even bigger with the ropes and she wriggled around but secretly she found it real hot that she was tied up and stuff and Spectra could do naughty stuff to her.
"You're weak. You can't even get out of these ropes? Ha ha ha!" she laughed but really she found it super hot and started rubbing her leg on Insyte's leg, which they both thought was hot. Spectra pulled her close so she could feel Insyte's really great boobs and then kissed her, but like really hot with her tongue and stuff. It was really hot and they both totally liked it."

The narrative was only interrupted when Denzel thought to himself that he needed to buy a thesaurus, but by that time the shy heroine was already shocked beyond tolerance by what he'd been thinking, cheeks burning red.
"I can't believe...that people actually think that sort of thing about me!" Indeed, Insyte was so distracted by Denzel's incompetent, plot-hole ridden musings, in which - despite the absence of any third party - Spectra had somehow become tied up as well, that she didn't notice a maid sneaking up behind her. She didn't notice when the maid took out a large sack, and opened it as wide as she could. She didn't notice as the maid calculated exactly where would be the best place to strike from. In fact, she didn't notice until it was already too late.

"What?" Insyte gasped, as her world went black. In the first instant, she thought a bag had been pulled over her head, but it quickly became clear that it was big enough for her entire body. The maid pulled tight a cord attached to the outside, pinning Natalya's arms to her sides. "No!" Insyte wriggled in the sack that she'd just been stuffed into, but the maid was much stronger than the pale heroine, and wrestled her to the ground. "No, no!" Insyte said again and again as her kicking feet were shoved inside too.

"Keep still girlie," the maid said, another cord, which tightened the sack around Natalya's legs, pinning them together too. "You can't do a thing."
"Let me go, let me go!" Insyte demanded, as she realised that she could hardly move. She writhed and thrashed in the rough, burlap sack, but she couldn't really fight. "No, stop! I have to - nnhhhphh!" A cord near the top of the sack had been pulled, tightening the burlap prison against Insyte's mouth. "Nhhhh! NHHHMMMPHHH!!" she cried out, gagged as well as restrained by the sack she'd been shoved into.

"Come on," the maid said, as she hauled the wriggling sack up and over her shoulder, "I know there's a bunch of people who are gonna be very excited to meet you."
"NNNMMMMPPPHHHH!!!" Insyte screamed, bitterly aware that all it had taken to make her helpless was a thick, burlap sack.

Denzel looked around a couple of times, making sure no-one was watching, and lit a cigarette. He hadn't noticed a thing.
Damselbinder

"Nnnhhhpphh! NNNHHHPHHH!!" The sound of a young woman stuffed into a sack, whimpering helplessly in her confines was what finally roused Enhancegirl from the sleep that she'd been forced into. She awoke hazily, two different sedatives still in her system, but she was alert enough to notice that, mercifully, she was no longer bent over Madam Black's desk. She was, instead, lying on the floor, propped up against it. She shook her head to try and rouse herself, her red hair tickling her uncovered shoulders as she did. Her vision swam into focus, and she saw the maid standing in front of her with a wriggling sack over her shoulder.

"Hhhlllp! Hhhhlp!" came the cry again from inside the bag. It was only now that Sophie realised that there was someone inside it.
"Oh no...who else have these stuck-up assholes caught?" She had some thought of helping, but her body was too weak, and her bonds were too tight.
"So, who do we have here?" Sophie heard Black's voice from behind her.
"An intruder," the maid said. "One of the two that Catastrophe fought."
"Intruders?" Sophie thought. "That doesn't sound like they kidnapped her..." Her blood froze. "Oh god...did she get caught trying to save me?" She wondered who it could be. It made sense that Spectra - ruthless as she was - would have come after her, but the person in the bag didn't seem tall enough. Stellar, perhaps? No...she'd have recognised the voice.

When the maid dumped the bag onto the floor, and yanked it off the woman inside it, Sophie was very confused. The stunning young woman that was revealed was completely unfamiliar to her. Other than the sack, she'd not been restrained and she leapt up at once, but was seized by the attendants surrounding her.
"Let go! Let go!" she demanded as they forced her down onto her knees. She was dressed like a superheroine, but whatever powers she might have had didn't seem to be helping much. "No! Don't...don't tie me up..." she pleaded, as her arms were forcibly crossed behind her back by one of the maids, white ropes wrapped around her wrists in three tight circuits. Box-tied, the pale beauty was forced onto her front, her pretty legs held down while the same maid who had tied her wrists bound her ankles too, cinching her stocking-covered calves against each other, tying her up hand and foot.

The damsel lifted her head, and her yellow eyes fixed upon Sophie for the first time. Her lovely face fell.
"Enhancegirl..." she said, despondently, "I - I'm sorry..." She was hoisted up by her arms, and then pushed down roughly next to Enhancegirl.
"Mmmhhhphh!" Sophie was almost glad for her gag, for she had no idea what she'd have said. This woman, this complete stranger had come to help her, and she'd been captured for her efforts. All because Enhancegirl hadn't been able to get free herself.

Insyte felt Enhancegirl's guilt. Felt her frustration and fear at what was happening to her. Felt, too, the embarrassment at the way she'd been treated.
"Are...they going to do that to me?" Natalya thought, faced with Sophie's memory of Black spanking her. She didn't know if she could endure the shame of being treated like that. She was almost at the point of despair, until she remembered she had not come alone. "Of course they captured me," she thought, "but there's no way...there's no way they'll get Spectra!" Sophie saw what looked like hope flashing across Natalya's eyes. She only hoped that it was not misplaced.


At the same time that Insyte was awakening from her enforced sleep, Spectra was - she herself judged - coming very close to finding Enhancegirl. There were more guards than before, and Spectra occasionally overheard them talking about "the boss'" wishes. Spectra noticed a very pretty maid with short brown hair walked past a couple of guards with a silver tray in her hand.

"Hey, sugar," one of the guards said, "got anything for me?"
"This is for the prisoner," the maid said sweetly, "but maybe later, hun." She winked, and went through a small door.
"That's it!" Spectra said, and emerged from hiding.
"Hey!" the flirtatious guard barked, aiming his gun at the silver-clad heroine. "Stop right -" Spectra didn't bother to be subtle. By now the Catastrophe gang would have already alerted their superiors (clients, perhaps?) to her presence, so there was little further use in sneaking around. She blasted both guards, and followed the maid through the door.

Spectra was more than a little surprised to find herself in a large, white room, with no 'prisoner' whatever. There were, however, six or seven maids, wielding strange looking weapons. They were led, or appeared to be led, by a tallish blonde woman in a very nice beige suit.
"So you're Spectra," the woman said in a French accent. "It's very nice to make Madáme's acquaintance." She signalled to someone behind Spectra, and the door was shut and locked by the maid she'd followed in.

"If this," Spectra said, "is your idea of a trap, then I imagine you're not going particularly to enjoy what comes next." She aimed her palm at the Frenchwoman, and fired a beam of moderate strength. To her surprise, the blonde stepped deftly out of the way, and fired her weapon. Spectra was surprised again when it was not bullets that emerged from the gun, but some sort of turquoise liquid. Spectra avoided most of it, but a few droplets landed on her shoulder. The substance was slimy and gelatinous, and Spectra promptly swiped it off herself.

"Perhaps -" but Spectra was not allowed to complete her taunt. Not only did the Frenchwoman fire again, but the other maids did as well. Spectra dodged most of it, and blocked more with her powers, but she was hit directly on the leg by one burst. It ran insidiously down her thigh, and Spectra felt the strong impulse to get rid of it, but she didn't have time. Another volley, and this time Spectra was hit by two bursts of the gel, on her chest and her right arm.

"Ugh!" Spectra found the feeling of the stuff vile, and she made to counter with a light blast, but she found it strangely difficult to gather the energy she needed. Not only that, but when she did have enough, her beam veered wildly off course, hitting none of her opponents. She suddenly felt faint, as if she might collapse at any time. "What's...going on?"

"Having a little trouble fighting back, Spectra?" the Frenchwoman said. "Feeling a little disoriented, a little tired?"
"The gel!" Spectra suddenly realised the purpose of the stuff. Somehow, it was draining away her strength by being in contact with her skin. If she left it, she would be too weak to fight within seconds. She had to act fast: she gathered her energies, and fired them in against herself. It didn't harm her, of course. It was merely designed to blast away the gel. As soon as the stuff was off her skin, Spectra felt a little better.

But that was certainly not the end of her problems. They fired another volley, and Spectra was too drained to block or dodge, her body suddenly covered with gel. It clung to her shoulders and limbs, even her neck was wet with the gel.
"Unnhh..." Spectra moaned, as a new wave of weakness surged through her. Somehow managing to find the strength to fire one more series of blasts, she managed to get some of the gel off her. But she was too weakened to get it all off. She tried to gather her power again, but she couldn't find the strength. "Uh...no...no..." A tiny flicker of light appeared in her hand, but it soon faded.

"Oh, so sad!" one of the maids laughed. "Looks like she can't do anything!" Spectra stumbled towards the door, but the maid who'd led her into the trap grabbed her by the shoulders, turned her around, and pushed her back into the centre of the room.
"Stay put, okay sweetie?" she said in a sickening, honey sweet voice.
"I have to...have to think of something," Spectra mumbled, as the Frenchwoman strode towards her.
"Oh, I think it is a little late for that," she said, before putting on a pair of plastic gloves, and taking a small, vacuum sealed pouch from her pocket. She opened it, and poured the contents onto her hands, before rubbing them onto Spectra's shoulders.

"No..." Spectra felt more of the weakening gel being applied to her soft skin, the slimy substance being absorbed through her pores, and filling her whole body with weakness. Spectra was too weak now even to lift her arms as the blonde rubbed more and more gel over her shoulders, her collar, and her neck. Mariko's knees began to shake, and she would have fallen if the maids had not been there to catch her. They eased her onto her back, and - to Mariko's dismay - began taking gel pouches of their own.

"Oh, your skin is so smooth," one of them crowed, rubbing gel into Mariko's left arm.
"Isn't it just?" another said, massaging Spectra's right thigh, covering it with sticky fluid.
"Unnhh...stop..." Mariko whimpered softly, as she was overwhelmed by the victorious maids. They unzipped her silver boots, pulling them off her feet so they could rub gel into her shapely calves, and over her feet, caressing and squeezing the model's gorgeous body as they made her more and more powerless.

Mariko found herself crimsoning as she felt one of the maids reaching down her top, rubbing gel all over her smooth, pert breasts.
"My...my powers...I...can't do anything..." she thought hopelessly. "I can't move..." Laughing, the maids flipped her over, and began rubbing the weakening gel into her back, onto the backs of her long legs, and even onto the skin of her tight behind. By this point, Mariko was completely immobilised, and she couldn't resist at all. She was rubbed and fondled by her laughing foes, stroked and squeezed, her smooth skin slippery to the touch from the slimy chemical they had rubbed into her svelte body.

Finally, the maids turned her back over, and Mariko found herself straddled by the Frenchwoman, her stocking clad legs rubbing against Mariko's bare thighs. The blonde looked down at her jade-eyed victim, her flawless skin wet with the gel that had defeated her.
"S...stop..." Mariko said almost inaudibly. "Get off m-" Mariko was silenced by the Frenchwoman placing a finger on her lovely lips.
"Nothing you say can make a difference now, n'est pas?" she said, and as she stroked Mariko's mouth, the fallen heroine realised that she was spreading yet more strength draining gel onto her, like lipstick.
"Unnhhh..." Mariko moaned weakly, every inch of her overwhelmed. She could feel her body absorbing the gel, could feel the weakness coiling around every inch of her. She almost wished that the gel would make her fall into outright unconsciousness, so that at least she wouldn't have to be aware of how powerless she was. But she was given no such mercy.

The Frenchwoman in the beige suit tucked one arm under Mariko's naked, wet legs, and another under her back, before lifting the tall damsel up into her arms. Mariko's head fell back, her short cape fluttering slightly. She twitched slightly in her captor's grasp, but she was virtually paralysed.
"I can't...can't believe they captured me...they don't even have any powers..." Mariko thought, despairing at her defeat. "D...don't..." she whispered, as the Frenchwoman began to carry her off.
"No protests, Miss Spectra," she said. "You belong to us now."


Scarcely a minute had passed since Natalya's binding when the door opened again. It was another maid.
"Madam Black," she said, "Madeleine reports that the second intruder has been neutralised."
"No!" Insyte cried out reflexively.
"Good," Black said. She got up, and stared into Insyte's eyes. "Bring her here." The maid nodded, and left. Black peered at her black haired captive. "I know you, don't I? Not personally, but..." She smiled, and then broke out in raucous laughter. "Oh, that's hilarious! You're Insyte, aren't you?" Natalya didn't answer, but her shamefaced look was answer enough.
"Insyte?" Enhancegirl turned to her fellow captive. "I know that name...Spectra told me about her. She's the telepath who defeated Mesmeredith the first time -" That was why she was here, Sophie realised: to counter Mesmeredith.
"For all the good it did," Insyte thought bitterly. "Please, please let them not have meant her...please..."

But alas, as the door opened again, Natalya and Sophie saw a blonde woman in a beige suit walk through. She was carrying in her arms a beautiful young Japanese woman, her long, uncovered legs dangling in the air as she was brought inside. Her silver outfit clung to her slender figure, and her soft skin was wet. She twitched slightly, but could barely move.
"Nhhhhhhphhh!!" Sophie moaned piteously, all too familiar with the woman who'd been brought in. "Spectra! Oh, come on, not you too!"
"Spectra..." Natalya whispered despairingly, seeing her last hope dashed.

So much weakened by the gel coating that she could barely move, Spectra nonetheless managed to turn her eyes to the right, and saw Enhancegirl and Insyte, sitting side by side as captives.
"I've failed..." she thought, her jade eyes downcast. She had tried to rectify her grievous failing in allowing herself to be hypnotised and controlled, and the only result was that she had delivered herself, and Natalya, right into the enemy's hands.

"Tie her up," Black ordered. "We don't want our latest guest wriggling away, do we?" Her servants obeyed. Madeleine laid Spectra down on her knees, her weakened body totally incapable of resistance. They pulled her arms behind her, forcing her elbows together, before wrapping rope just underneath them, binding her arms. They kept going, spiralling rope down her forearms until they'd entangled her wrists too.
"Nhhhphh!" Enhancegirl protested, seeing Spectra being trapped in bondage as well. She met Mariko's eyes, and the two damsels were suddenly aware that the other could see just how powerless they were, and they felt ashamed.

One of the maids hauled Spectra up, her head falling back. Mariko was quite tall, yet her body was being easily manhandled by the shorter women binding her. That, coupled with her slender frame made her look exceptionally fragile. Held up on her bare feet, Mariko felt her long, moist legs being pushed together, before cord bit into her skin, her calves bound against each other, rope coiled down to her ankles.
"Ah..." she complained weakly, as the rope was pulled tight, finishing off her bindings. While one of Black's servants held her by the arms, the other took her calves, and the two lifted the defeated heroine between them.
"Put me down..." Spectra demanded, and to her surprise her request was granted. She was set down - on top of Insyte and Enhancegirl.

"Mmph!" Sophie complained angrily, as the leotard-clad model was laid over her legs, her slippery thighs brushing against Sophie's.
"What's the matter, Enhancegirl?" Black asked. "You don't feel like being accommodating? You're the reason she's here." Sophie's complaints stopped. Black was right. Mariko tried to move, acutely embarrassed at the feeling of Sophie and Natalya's legs underneath her, but she couldn't.
"Why...why are you doing this?" Insyte asked.
"I'm a villain, girl," Black said. "Do I need a better reason than that?" She didn't altogether feeling like explaining her motivations a second time. She took a few steps back, observing the three lovely young women she'd captured, tied up and writhing on top of each other. "Well isn't this a peachy little tableaux?" Black laughed.

Insyte was taken aback by what she found in her captor's mind. There was no lasciviousness at all: just sheer malice. She was filled with hatred: she hated Enhancegirl for disrupting her earlier plans, hated Spectra and Insyte for daring to intrude. There seemed to be nothing more to her than that.

"Unnhh..." Mariko moaned. Her head was resting against Natalya's thighs, and as she wriggled slightly, her hair brushed her fellow captive's skin. Natalya looked down at her, and felt an almost overwhelming wave of humiliation.
"How did I allow this to happen to me? How could I have failed them so completely?" Mariko thought. Natalya heard, and wanted to say something - but there was nothing to be said.

Black snapped her fingers, bringing some of her attendants to heel.
"Get them out of here. Stash them in The Room. You gals," she said, meaning Insyte and Spectra, "weren't meant to be here. You've given me a lot more work than I'd planned for." Before they were given an opportunity to work out what she meant, Spectra was hoisted off the two heroines she'd been thrown onto, and thrown over the shoulder of the maid who had tricked her into her trap. Her skin had absorbed most of the gel that had been used to defeat her by that point, her supple skin was still slippery, and the maid holding her had to grip her thighs very tightly. Other than that, of course, the maiden of light gave her little trouble.

"Don't! Don't touch me!" Insyte gasped as she was hauled up into the arms of a stockier maid, her strong fingers digging into Natalya's ivory skin. She felt malice from this woman too, but not just malice. She lifted Insyte's legs to a slightly sharper angle in her bridal carry, and Natalya felt her dress slide back, revealing yet more of her feminine form.

"Ngghhh! Nhhmm-mmmphh!" Sophie watched her fellow heroines being snatched away, and she fought in futility against the ropes binding her, against the whole desperate situation. It was bad enough being kidnapped - knowing that she'd led two courageous heroines into falling as well was even worse. When Madeleine, the woman in beige, stooped to lift her up, Sophie couldn't find the strength to fight her. Her shame bound her as much Cybelle's ropes.

"Come along, ma renarde," Madeleine said, having been rather keen to get her hands on the supple, bare-legged redhead. She carried her bridal style, enjoying the imagery of the helpless maiden dangling defeated in her arms, like some bimbo on the cover of a pulp comic. 'Bimbo' was certainly not a word one ever could have used to describe Sophie Scott, but she felt very much like it was appropriate. As she was carried through Black's mansion, she felt like a fool. A fool for going to that harbour without backup, for not realising that there was something suspicious about Spectra's behaviour, and that she hadn't been able to escape, even with her powers.
"I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I got you both captured..." Sophie lamented.

The three captive heroines were taken two floors down, into a very cramped, featureless room. When Spectra was laid inside it, the weakened heroine thought they would be placing the other heroines elsewhere, but Insyte was dropped on her right, and Enhancegirl on her left. Without a word, their jailors shut the door, plunging all three in darkness.

"Let us...let us out..." Mariko demanded vainly. "This is ridiculous," she thought, "there's barely enough room for me to move!" Spectra found that she was regaining a little strength, so she shuffled in her bonds, but not only did she not loosen them, she found she was quite vigorously rubbing her legs against Insyte's. The buxom heroine felt her skin stroked by Mariko's flawless legs, and she blushed. Sophie was less embarrassed by such things, but even as she fought her bonds, she was very aware of her intimate contact with the beautiful woman on her right.
"Oh gawd, that's part of the trap, isn't it? They know the more we fight the more we look like we're getting all frisky with each other..." But that was not the worst of it. Long before the others, Sophie felt vibrations in the walls around them, like the knocking of pipes, but not quite. When she heard the hissing, she realised what was happening.

"Nnnhhphh..." she moaned, as she smelled the gas that was being piped into their prison.
"Wh...what is that?" Natalya said, hearing the hiss.
"Ghhss...ghhss..." Sophie intoned faintly. After only a few seconds, there was enough gas in the small chamber to be visible, forming a fine purple mist that surrounded the three heroines, filling the room - bizarrely - with the scent of strawberries.

"Unghh..." Mariko groaned. "What's...what's it doing?" She had been getting stronger, as the gel's effects had worn off, but she found herself sinking back into weakness again. The gas was affecting her quite quickly.
"Uh...a...sedative," Natalya said. She could feel her limbs growing heavier. "Is it...going to knock us out?" Natalya's question stirred Mariko's memory, and she remembered how vulnerable Sophie was to sedation. She looked to her side, and sure enough, the redhead was almost on the point of unconsciousness.
"Sphhhctrhh..." she moaned, "mhhh ghhhgghh..." Mariko, quite sleepy herself, didn't understand what she meant.
"Her gag," Natalya explained, reading Sophie's mind, "she...wants you to take off her gag."

Mariko wasn't bound as tightly as she could have been, but she still didn't have the use of her hands or her powers. It was only when, with a titanic amount of effort, Sophie lifted herself and pushed her head against Spectra's that she realised what to do. She leaned down, and grabbed Sophie's gag between her teeth. Yanking hard, she pulled it out from between her lips.

"Downgrade," Sophie said at once, and there was a flash. When it subsided, Sophie was Enhancegirl no longer. She did, however, look very striking still. She was clad in an extremely fetching, dark green mini-dress, hanging from her shoulders by two thin straps. It shimmered even in the low light, and was evidently made of satin. On her feet were very tall, open-toed mauve heels, and her hair trailed down her left shoulder in a braid. She'd been at a cocktail party before attempting to rescue May and Stellar, and had dressed for the occasion.

For a moment, Mariko was taken aback. She was aware that Sophie was a very pretty young woman, but she'd never before thought of her as beautiful.
"Unhh..." Sophie moaned quietly. Turning back into her civilian state, where she had no powers but none of the accompanying vulnerability to sedatives, had helped matters some. But the gas still hung over the three lovely heroines, sapping their strength, and keeping them powerless.

No-one spoke. Sophie tried to move. She couldn't. Mariko tried to use her powers. She couldn't. Natalya did nothing. They lay still. Their bodies were warm. The air was warm, and thick. Their bonds were strong. The captives were weak. Sophie's head fell to the side. Her eyes met Mariko's.
"I..." She couldn't finish. She wanted to thank her. She wanted to say it was alright. She'd failed, but she'd tried. She'd come. That mattered. Didn't it? "You did your best...like that'll make her feel better." Mariko opened her mouth too. From her not a sound emerged.
"Look at us..." she thought. "How did we let them subdue us so easily?" She didn't feel like a superheroine. She hardly even felt like a fashion model.

Natalya turned away. Feeling Sophie's guilt at her being used to bait and trap her fellow heroines, and Mariko's sunken pride at her failure was too potent a cocktail of emotions to endure. She'd seen into their minds, and glimpsed quite a few of their adventures. She saw Enhancegirl battling against Cybelle, overcoming odds stacked very much against her to defeat the mad cyborg. She saw Spectra's first battle against the Catastrophe Gang, defeating all seven without a single civilian being hurt. She saw them strong, and fierce and beautiful.
"Reduced to this..." she mumbled.

Insyte had never considered herself the most effective heroine. True, there had been her famous victory over Hypnotra, but that - she felt - was more a question of her having the right power than anything else. She looked on her own heroics as a duty that impinged on other matters. She could do things no-one else could do, so she felt a duty to do those things. For her it was merely a question of responsibility. But Enhancegirl and Spectra...she could feel how much they loved it, how much it meant to them in their different ways.

"You...you're incredible," she said. It was difficult to form the words in her weakened state, but she found the strength. The others both heard, but they hardly felt the truth of it. "You're both...so strong...so brave..."
"We...we're not strong..." Mariko said. "Look at me..." Natalya did so. Mariko's long, slender body was still. Her skin glistened, with residue from the gel used to capture her, and with her sweat. Her jade eyes were half open, her bound legs shifting slightly. She seemed a picture of fragility.

Sophie heard the two talking. She felt as Mariko did: how could anyone call her strong in her present state? How could anyone call her a heroine? But then, it didn't matter what people called her. It mattered what she was.
"Nnnh..." she groaned, as she began pulling her legs in towards herself. She pushed against the floor with her heels, and managed to prop herself up against the back wall. "I...don't...know about you guys," she said, the gas threatening at any minute to overpower her, "but...I'm not going to let these...assholes...win." With titanic effort, Sophie pushed against the wall, and - incredibly - actually managed to stand. "Come on, Spectra. You really want...me to take the credit for...this one?"

She had said just the right thing. Mariko had to dig very, very deeply indeed to find the strength she needed, but she found it. That her boots had been taken from her became an advantage, as she pushed against the floor with her bare feet, pushing against the wall. Inspired by her fellow heroines, Natalya tried as well, getting onto her pale knees, before leaning against the wall to her right, and gradually easing herself up. It was extremely precarious. Their legs were weak, and they might have given out at any moment.

But all they had to do was get to the door. If they could get it open, if they could get out of the soporific-soaked chamber, then Black would be dealing with all three of them at once. With their ankles bound, the best way they could move was by hopping. Though she was the only one not in heels, Mariko found this the most difficult, not just because of the gel, but because of the sheer embarrassment of moving like that.

"Almost...there..." Sophie had hopped out in front, but her tall heels were making it very hard for her to balance. She jumped too strenuously, and she started falling back. Fortunately, she fell back into Natalya, who inadvertently pushed her back forward.
"Ah!" Natalya began to overbalance as well, but she fell in the right direction, her shoulder hitting the wall just next to the door, and keeping her upright.

Mariko got there too, in the end. It hadn't yet amounted to all that much, but the damsels knew they were expected to be completely powerless. Yet they had won - not overall, of course - but they had defied their trap. They had not been content to lie there and wait for whatever their captors wanted of them next. At the very least, it was a start.
"Okay ladies," Sophie said, with just a little smile on her face, "let's take care of this door, shall we?" The others nodded.

It was very much to their surprise, then, when the door opened all of its own accord.
"Hello, girls," said a blonde woman in a black outfit, before shoving two chloroformed soaked rags over Natalya and Mariko's mouths.

"NNNMMPHHH!!"
"NNHHHMMMPPPHH!!"

Mariko's eyes went wide with panic. She could feel the drug already affecting her system. Natalya could too, her pale body instantly beginning to weaken. The two damsels wriggled and writhed, but with their ankles bound, they couldn't get away. Natalya turned her eyes to Sophie, who was the only one of the trio without a rag over her face. But Natalya didn't need her powers to know that Sophie was paralysed with fear.

"No," she whispered, "not you..."
"Yes, Enhancegirl. Me," the woman said, stepping inside. She pressed her two victims against the side walls, which weren't quite as far apart as her armspan. The bound, already weakened damsels were helpless to stop her, and they were getting weaker with every second.
"Mhhhnnn!! Mhhhnnnn..." Mariko whimpered, trying to get Sophie to help them. The Japanese damsel could feel the chemical overwhelming her, taking away her strength yet again. It would be only seconds before she was completely helpless. But Sophie stood, staring transfixed at their assailant.

The blonde lifted her foot, and pushed Sophie lightly in the stomach. She fell onto her back, now certainly not in a position to help either of her fellow captives. In fact, there was nothing she could do but watch as they squirmed, too tightly tied up to fight back.
"Nnnmmphh...nnmmmphhh..." Natalya mewed, feeling suddenly stupid for thinking that they could have escaped. Her body was weak, her lovely breasts bouncing visibly as she writhed in her attacker's grip. She was drowning in weakness, and could not surface. "I'm so...I'm...so...sleepy..." Her eyes fluttered as she struggled to stay awake.
"Sophie...what's...wrong with you?" Mariko thought, as her consciousness began to fade. Her long legs were too weak to hold her up, and she only remained on her feet because of the strength of the woman chloroforming her. "I can't...I can't...I've lost..." she thought in despair.

Sophie could only watch as her rescuers again succumbed to powerlessness, whimpering and moaning softly as they were drugged. They looked only at her, eyes plaintive as they faded. Natalya was first. With a long moan, the pale damsel gave in, and her assailant felt her go limp. She took the cloth away, and she tumbled to her knees. Even as Natalya fell, her assailant grabbed Mariko with her now free hand, and pulled her in close.

"I've got to say, it's a real pleasure Spectra," she said, and began running her hand down the maiden's long, still-wet legs. "It isn't every day that I get to knock out someone as famous..." she said, pausing and smiling slyly, "...or as sexy as you."
"Nnnhhmmphhh..." Spectra whimpered, as the woman started squeezing her thighs, her beautiful, willowy body completely vulnerable to her latest captor's predations.
"Oh, you're all wet," her assailant cooed. "Did you enjoy my gel? It took me a long time to get the formula right." Spectra was barely awake at this point, but she could still feel her captor's fingers running all over her, and she blushed, her body pulsing with shame, all the more heightened by the knowledge that this woman was responsible for her defeat. "I've lost..." she thought again, "I'm too weak...I...save me...someone...rescue me..." She had forgotten her pride. With that, her jade eyes rolled back, and she fell into darkness.

"Oh my," the blonde woman said. "The mighty Spectra, already defeated. Such a shame." She dropped the Japanese beauty, letting her crumple onto the floor, her tall frame only serving to extend the length of her fall. She fell in a heap, and the blonde turned her attention to Sophie.

Had they not been overwhelmed by chloroform, Mariko and Natalya might well have wondered why this woman did not seem to be affected at all by the gas in the room. But Sophie knew. She knew that a freak of this woman's physiology rendered her completely immune to all forms of chemical sedation. A freak of her psychology compelled her to induce chemical sedation on any pretty girl she took a liking to. She'd learned only too well the last time she'd encountered Nyx, the Mistress of Sleep.

"It's been a little while, hasn't it, Enhancegirl?" Nyx said, approaching the redhead. "Or should I say, Sophie?" She leant down. "That's a very nice dress, Sophie. You look lovely, as always." Sophie remembered what Nyx had done to her the last time, drugging her with soporific perfume, playing with her limp and drowsy body, and cocooning her in a drugged nylon sack. She remembered the forced sensuality of what Nyx had done to her, how Sophie had even started to -

"No!" Sophie cried out as Nyx put her hand on the redhead's leg, stroking her defenceless body.
"Oh, come on, Sophie," Nyx said, "this isn't like last time. There's no point in fighting me. You're already beaten. Heck, Madam Black only hired me to do a little consulting. The stuff her goons beat Spectra with, this little room...my contribution to your captivity."
"So you're...just a hired thug?" Sophie said.
"You make that sound like a bad thing," Nyx said. "It's a living, isn't it?" She grinned, her teeth a row of white below her black mask. She slipped her arm under Sophie's back, and pulled her closer. "This, I'm not getting paid for, though. I asked for the chance to do this."

Nimbly, Nyx hopped up, and she pulled Sophie up with her, the lovely college girl wobbling on her mauve heels as she was hauled up. She was then spun around, so she was facing away from Nyx, before being pulled against her body.
"Do you remember what I told you last time, Sophie?" Nyx said. "I've got all sorts of clever little tricks I can use to put a hot heroine like you down...but nothing beats a classic chloroforming." She still had a damp pad in her right hand, and Sophie saw it.
"No..." she whimpered.
"Nothing beats the feeling of a sexy girl wriggling her body against yours, writhing and moaning as she gets weaker and weaker...but last time, I never actually got the chance to do that to you, did I? Why don't we try it out..."
"No...no..." Sophie pleaded. "Don't chloro-phhhhrrmmmm!!" As the last worded faded into muffled noise, Sophie felt the soft white cloth pressed over her mouth and nose. "NNNNHHHMMMPHHH!!" she screamed, wriggling desperately to get her mouth away, but she couldn't.

"Oh, that's right, Sophie, struggle...struggle all you want," Nyx said, feeling her shapely captive up against her, writhing helplessly in her grip.
"No! I have to fight! Have to...have to..." In her civilian form, Sophie may not have been weak to sedatives, but she certainly wasn't immune to them either. She could feel the chloroform taking her, making her limbs weak, making her whole body limp. She gyrated in Nyx's arms, fighting with her dwindling strength, but it wasn't any use. "Mmmhhh..." she complained, as Nyx pushed her up against a wall.
"That's right, Sophie," Nyx said, grinding up against the bound redhead, feeling her tight, firm ass wiggling as she fought the soporific fumes. "Feel your whole body getting weaker...and weaker...and weaker..." It was exactly as Nyx suggested. Sophie was getting weaker, her eyelids already drooping.
"Can't...stay awake...unnhh..."

Nyx turned Sophie around, taking the cloth away from her mouth and holding her against the wall. She feel how limp her victim was, and savoured every second of her slow, languorous writhing. She ran her free hand up Sophie's bare legs.
"No...don't...don't touch me..." Sophie said, still just about aware of what was being done to her. The absence of the cloth made her fractionally more alert, but she could have passed out at any second.
"Oh, don't say that," Nyx replied, feeling the curve of Sophie's hips, before gently gripping her pert breasts, massaging them slowly.
"Unnhh...no..." Sophie mumbled, feeling her body become the plaything of the so-called Mistress of Sleep. "Mmmhhphh..." The cloth had gone over her mouth again, and her little remaining strength was fading.
"What's the matter, Sophie?" Nyx said. "You don't like the cloth? Maybe next time, I'll knock you out with a kiss again." Sophie just about managed to raise her eyes to look into Nyx's. She saw confidence, control and power. She saw everything that her captors were taking away from her. She no longer even had the strength to whimper. As her eyes grew harder and harder to open, Sophie wondered what Nyx would do to her while she was unconscious and helpless.
"But...it doesn't matter if I'm unconscious..." Sophie thought, despairingly, "I'm already totally helpless..." With that, the red-haired maiden finally gave in, and she fell into chemical slumber.

Nyx let her slide down, slowly until Sophie was sitting quietly against the room's back wall. The Mistress of Sleep then took Natalya, dragging her over, and placing her in the same position. She did the same with Mariko, and before long the three slumbering heroines were sat in very close proximity. Sophie's head fell limply onto Mariko's bare shoulder, and Nyx appreciated very much the intimacy of the unconscious gesture.

She lifted Natalya's bound legs, placing them onto Sophie's, arranging the tableaux to make it as appealing as possible. Her helpless actresses obeyed their director's every whim: they had no choice in the matter, after all. Nyx stepped back.
"Wow, I really did luck out today," she chuckled to herself, looking at the gorgeous young women who had fallen into her clutches, reduced to absolute helplessness. She knelt down before them, and started caressing them, an elicit thrill in knowing how they would have protested had she not knocked them out. That gave her a thrill too. It was she, Nyx, who had foiled their escape attempt, and made them moan and wriggle as they slipped into drugged sleep.

"Uhh..." Natalya whimpered softly as her buxom chest was fondled, her soft, white breasts sensitive enough that she could feel something even when knocked out. Nyx thought for a moment that she was stirring, but no: all three were completely out. Nyx smiled. She kissed Natalya's long, pale neck, leaving a visible impression.

After having indulged herself in stroking, squeezing and fondling her helpless, nubile captives, Nyx decided that she'd had her fun. It was just as well: the weak anaesthetic in the air had just finished draining out. She stood up, and rapped on the door, before sticking her head out.
"The girls are ready for you now," she said to the three maids who'd been patiently waiting for the gas to clear. Just before they entered, Nyx raised her hand. They paused. "Just a second." She looked inside and took out her cellphone. There was an electronic imitation of a shutter snapping, before Nyx left the room again. "For the memories," she explained as she admired the picture she'd taken of the defeated heroines. The maids passed her, clutching coils of rope in their hands...


"He what?!" Philip screeched, lightning spitting forth from his mouth. "How?!" A subordinate of his, a woman in her early thirties with the power to turn her skin into metal, had just explained that a fifth member of the Catastrophe gang had just escaped. The only difference was that Rupert Kleinfeld had done so much more conventionally than his comrades, using his terrakinetic powers to burrow through the ground and make his getaway.
"We, er, don't know yet sir. We thought his cell was impervious to his powers. It was quite effective on Commandant Quake -"
"Didn't it occur to anyone that it might not be a great idea to judge the strength of our facilities relative to the powers of an individual who calls himself Commandant Quake?!" Before his underling could reply, he waved her away. "I hate steady jobs..." he sighed. He was only thankful that he could probably make it seem like all five had escaped at once, and spare himself a double embarrassment. Indeed, if that reporter had left ten minutes later...


"Mmmphh...mmmmhhh..." Sophie mewed, as she came back into consciousness once again. She looked straight up, and saw that she was still in the same place. "Mmmph?" Sophie realised, as her voice again came out muffled, that she'd been gagged with a thick cloth. And something else felt different too.
"Mmmmphhh...mmmmmpppphhh!!" Natalya awoke to find her lips sealed. "No! They...they gagged me..."
"Rrrmmphhh! NNNRRRMMMPPHHH!!" On the other side of the redhead, Mariko struggled fiercely, growling through a cleave-gag, and fighting a losing battle against tight ropes wrapped around her limbs.

All three damsels had awoken to find themselves much more tightly tied up than before. Yards and yards of rope had been wrapped around their feminine bodies, keeping them all but completely immobilised. Their thighs, calves and ankles had all received separate attention. Their arms were box tied, with cord wrapped underneath their breasts to pin their upper arms - and to connect to their forearms as well, making it impossible to move their arms at all. Their captors had, however, made sure to leave plenty of skin on show.
"We can't get away now," Sophie thought, "we're tied up too tight...I can barely move!" They could certainly not attempt escape in the same way as before. If it were possible, they'd become even more powerless.

The combination of the large amount of rope, the darkness, and the distress at their tightened bondage, made all three notice the other alteration after they took stock of their bonds. It was shy Natalya who first realised that she had been stripped.
"Mmph!" she squealed, as she saw that her outfit had been taken from her. "I-I'm naked!" she thought, but she was not quite right. She had been left with extremely flimsy, pink underwear, the precise shade of pink as her outfit had been, with extremely tall high heels to match.
"Mmmphh!" Sophie saw that the same thing had been done to her, leaving her in gold underwear and heels. She had the sudden fear that it had been Nyx who had stripped her, and she blushed visibly.
"Mmmhh..." Mariko moaned, looking despairingly down at her tall, near-naked body, her strapless silver bra glinting in the low light. "I've fallen...I've fallen so far..." As the other two struggled, Mariko lay still. Seeing herself stripped had taken the fight out of her. She felt her captivity like it was a force all its own, and it wrapped the beautiful damsel tight in its coils.

"Oh, Spectra..." Natalya thought, as she felt her fellow heroine's thoughts. She wanted desperately for Mariko to feel her proud, confident self, to be the heroine who had rescued her all those years ago. It was not entirely empathy that made her want this: for if even Spectra was in the throes of hopeless defeat, what chance did she have?

The three writhed in the dark for quite some time, before they were once again interrupted by the door being opened. In walked Madeleine, flanked by two maids, one tall and dark-haired, the other shorter, with a white pixie-cut. Both maids were good-looking, but they had a rather blank look about them.

"Good morning, mesdemoiselles," Madeleine said. "I trust you slept very well."
"Khhhs mhh hhhsss!!" Sophie said through her gag. She was rewarded for her defiance by being hoisted to her feet by the white-haired girl. She found thin fingers gripping her thighs and bare shoulders, before lifting the squirming redhead into the air. She wriggled her body, but couldn't do very much with it.

"Mmmphhh...nnnmmmphhh..." Natalya moaned, as the taller maid took her. She was stronger than she looked, and she tossed Natalya over her shoulder without a second thought, grabbing her by her soft, white rear. Natalya's cheeks were all the more visibly red for her paleness, and as her voluptuous body was draped over the maid, Natalya felt every square centimetre of her skin that was touched. The flimsy brassiere and panties hardly mattered - she felt completely exposed.

Mariko hardly resisted as she was lifted up, Madeleine easily manipulating her willowy form.
"Nmmphh..." she moaned quietly as Madeleine brought out what Mariko thought was another drugged pad - but she was wrong. It was too long for that. Mariko wasn't sure whether she was pleased or not, though, when the cloth went over her eyes instead. "Mmmph?" Suddenly blinded, Mariko realised what her captors were doing. In the dark, weakened by the drugs she'd been dosed with, Spectra hadn't even tried to use her powers. But with her eyes covered, she would be completely incapable of doing so. "Mmh!" Unable to see what was being done to her, Mariko was surprised by Madeleine's hands on her legs and her chest, before being lifted up into her arms.
"Mmmhh...mmphh!" Mariko turned her head this way and that, trying to shake the blindfold off. But Madeleine had tied it too tightly, and Spectra was carried away without incident.

The three helpless heroines were carried further down this time, to the second level of the mansion, their shapely bodies lugged around with no more difficulty than one might expect of a simpering, brainless heiress snatched for ransom. The three damsels had fallen to such a state of powerlessness that the maids carrying them didn't even require guards.

"Mph!"
"Mmmpphh!"
"Mmmhhh..." the three gagged maidens whimpered, as they were set down on a rather plush couch, their captors making sure that they were in close proximity. As Sophie tried to move away from Natalya, the two pale young women found that the couch had been chosen for a reason: its plush composition made it very difficult for them to move while so tightly tied up, and they were more or less immobilised.

Madam Black had arrived before them with her usual retinue, and had looked on with a callous sneer as the three damsels were brought in. Once Sophie and the others were sat in front of her, she approached them.
"Have a nice rest, girls?" she asked, making a point of looking over the scarcely-covered trio, scanning every contour of their bodies.
"Mmmhhnn..." Natalya moaned, knowing that Madam Black was looking at her as nothing more than a commodity. Mariko wriggled hard next to her, trying to shift her blindfold.
"What's the matter, Spectra?" Madam Black said. "No light for you to use?" She stroked Mariko's delicate cheeks, eliciting a growl and a sharp shake of the head from the Japanese damsel. To her great surprise, the blindfold slipped down, revealing one of her sparkling eyes. It took her only an eighth of a second to realise the significance of this.

"Now's my chance!" Had Mariko not been gagged, Madam Black would have seen a fierce grin on her face. "Take this, you reprobate!" She didn't plan to kill Black, but she planned to give her a good scar to remember her by. She did not, however, do even that. "Wh...what's going on?" She looked around. A few of the maids had ducked for cover when they'd realised that Spectra's blindfold had come loose, but some were just laughing at her.
"Oh! Oh no! Spectra's powers aren't working!" Black clapped her hands to her face. "It's almost like...she's not actually transformed or something, and she was just too stupid to realise!"
"What? That's impossible!" Mariko thought. "I know that I was transformed when they captured me...I should still be!" Mariko didn't understand how it was possible that she could have been changed back into her civilian form. Even when knocked out, she should have stayed in her powered state until she decided not to.

It was only then that Mariko remembered.
"Eyes...eyes in the dark...forcing me to turn back!" Mariko couldn't remember much - she'd barely been conscious when it had happened - but someone had entered her cell, stirred her out of her drugged sleep, then forced her to de-power before sending her back off to sleep.

Precisely who that had been became clear, if it was not so already, when a voluptuous woman with curly, dark-brown hair entered, a long black dress swaying around her ankles. Her eyes were violet, and seemed to pierce the very soul. All three captive heroines had been murmuring or whimpering into their gags, but all three fell silent when Mesmeredith walked in.

"Oh no...no..." Natalya knew her by another name, but she recognised her instantly. She'd known that Hypnotra was involved, that she might well have the misfortune of running into her, but she was no less shocked by her entrance. That she was uniquely immune to Hypnotra's powers didn't salve her fears either.

"I think you've all met my partner before, right?" Black said. "How's the new muscle?" she asked.
"Fairly effective," Mesmeredith replied. Her eyes met Insyte's, and a flash of rage danced across her face. "Well," she said, obviously making an effort to calm her voice, "isn't this a surprise?" She turned to her partner. "I didn't realise that this was the telepath you spoke about."
"Small world, isn't it?" Black laughed. "Oh come on, Meredith, you've been aching for a reunion."
"You know me too well," Meredith replied. She cast her eyes over Natalya's body, her flimsy underwear leaving nothing to the hypnotist's imagination. "You've filled out a little since last time, my dear," she said, winking. Natalya lowered her eyes.
"Mmmrrmmphh!" Sophie complained, wriggling her uncovered shoulders. "Mmmrrmmmpphh!!"
"Oh, hush, little vixen," Meredith said, meeting Sophie's eyes for just a second. Despite her anger and frustration, Sophie found herself mollified, and she fell quiet.

"Do you want to tell them, or shall I?" Black asked.
"You've done all the arrangements," Meredith replied. "Why don't you have the honours?" Black nodded, and rubbed her hands together. She sprang up, and pushed Mariko to one side, sitting between her and Sophie.
"Your little rescue operation," she said, addressing Insyte and Spectra, "caused quite a ruckus. When my client found out about it, she decided to bail - too much heat." She stretched her arms out, putting one hand on Sophie's shoulder, and one on Mariko's. "But I found others who were interested without too much trouble."
"What is she talking about?" Mariko wondered.
"The long and short of it, girls, is this." She paused, smiling wickedly. "I'm going to sell you."

"Mmmph?!" Natalya mewed. "What? She - she can't!"
"She's bluffing! She's - she's just trying to intimidate us," Mariko thought, knowing Natalya would hear, but not even believing herself.
"She's...she's going to make us somebody's pets..." Sophie felt a wave of an unrecognisable emotion pouring through her. It was a little like dread and shame all at once.

"I mean, who wouldn't want you?" Black said. "Three sexy young supergals, all tied up and helpless? I mean, you're still complete airheads, but hey? People don't buy their slave-girls for their brains, do they?" The word 'slave-girls' hit the three like icy water. They had not just been captured - they'd been enslaved.
"Mmmmphhh..." Sophie whimpered. Black took her chin, and made the pretty redhead look her in the face. Her emerald eyes were filled with shame and bitter consciousness of her powerlessness.
"That's it," Black said. "That's the look I wanted. You know, don't you? You know I have you, that you're completely under my control, that I can do whatever I want with you, you stupid little girl. Don't you?" It was a shame that Black was not a telepath herself, or she would have heard Sophie say 'yes.'

"Perhaps," Meredith interjected, "you're thinking that at some point you'll be able to get away. Perhaps your new owners won't be as careful as we are." She turned to the maids. "Saskia! Chloe!" Two maids, the ones who had assisted Madeleine in bringing Sophie and Natalya, stepped forward. "Lovely, aren't they? Your friend Nyx obtained them for us, to show she was worth keeping on retainer. Kiss," she said to the pair, and they immediately obeyed, the white haired girl pulling the taller girl towards her and pressing her lips against hers. "Stop." They ceased, and immediately placed their hands by their sides. The heroines understood: Mesmeredith was going to do to them what she had done to this pair, so that they'd never disobey their owners.
"Alright, Meredith," Black said, getting up. "Your turn."

"Nnnmmphhh! Nnnnnmmmpphh!!" Mariko moaned, seeing that Hypnotra was coming straight towards her. "No! She can't! Not again! I've only just been freed from her..." She wriggled and writhed, but it was no good. She couldn't get away. The violet eyes were fixed on her, and there was no escape. Mesmeredith knelt down before the long-legged model, and put her hand gently on her thigh.

"It's good to have you back in my company, Mariko," she said, speaking very slowly. "I did so enjoy the time we spent together..." She began running her hand up and down the Japanese maiden's bare legs, never taking her eyes off Mariko.
"Mmmphh!" Mariko protested as she was felt up. She could feel, though, at the edges of her mind, a tinge of pleasure.
"Don't fight it, my dear," Mesmeredith said, "don't you like being touched? Don't you like your beauty being...appreciated?"
"Nnnnmmphhh! Nnnnmmphhh..." Mariko's second objection was much less strenuous than her first. "No...no...I mustn't..." She felt warm. Hypnotra's eyes filled her and emptied her at the same time. She could feel her free will, actually feel it, like a paper-thin membrane holding back an entire river.

"Nnnnmphh!!" Natalya almost screamed. "I could barely break Hypnotra's hold last time! Mariko...I'm sorry...I don't know if I can break it again..."
"Mmmmrrmmphh!" Sweat ran down Sophie's neck and over her breasts as she fought the ropes binding her. She, too, had once been under Mesmeredith's spell, and as she watched Mariko fighting a losing battle, she knew well what would happen to her once Spectra's defeat was complete.

"Remember how it feels, Mariko," Hypnotra said, sliding a finger up Mariko's swan-like neck, feeling her throbbing pulse. "How good it feels to give up control."
"Mmmhh..." Mariko moaned. "Unnhh...no...she's taking me...she's going to possess me again..." Meredith leaned in close, and pulled off her gag. She turned Mariko's head towards her, and met her lips with her own.
"Mmmpphh...mmmhhh..." Mariko moaned, her jade eyes growing dull as her mind weakened, feeling her captor's tongue stroking her own warm mouth. Mesmeredith withdrew, and put her lips by Mariko's ear.
"Surrender," she whispered, and Mariko went limp. The battle, such as it had been, was over.

"Now for the pretty redhead," Meredith said. She pushed Mariko to the side, and her head fell against the side of the couch. She wasn't unconscious, but she was in a total trance.
"Nhhhh! Dhhhnnd!" Sophie begged, as Meredith grabbed her by the shoulders. Her green eyes couldn't escape Meredith's violet gaze, and she found herself transfixed.
"Do you know what's going to happen when we sell you, Sophie?" she asked. "I'll tell you. You're going to tell anyone who asks what makes you weak. Aren't you?" To her horror, Sophie found herself nodding. "If you try to escape, you're going to fall to your knees and beg for punishment, aren't you?" Sophie nodded again, but this time more of her agreed. "You're going to tell them to drug you with chloroform for being a disobedient slave-girl, and fondle your defenceless body while you sleep." She pulled off Sophie's gag. "Aren't you?" Sophie felt her lips forming the words, and her last bastion of resistance was completely overpowered.
"Yes Mistress," the helpless redhead said quietly, without hesitation. "I'll do whatever I'm told..." Both Spectra and Enhancegirl were now the property of Mesmeredith.

All Natalya could do was watch as it happened, watch as her fellow heroines became brainwashed slaves. She could feel everything that was happening to them, and could do nothing to help them. "I'm sorry...I've failed..." she thought, seeing the two superheroines reduced to obedient slaves. Mesmeredith looked back at her.
"Whatever is the matter, Insyte? Do you want to be my slave too? Such a shame that my powers don't work on you, then." She stood up, and ran her fingers over Natalya's heaving bosom, gently, but slowly. "Make no mistake - you belong to us just as much as they do."
"Mmmphh..." Natalya whimpered, believing her completely.

Mesmeredith took a seat on the couch opposite, a much more stylish affair, crossing her legs under her dress. She clapped twice. Immediately, Sophie and Mariko sat up straight, staring forwards.
"Sophie," Meredith said, "look at Mariko." She did so. "Do you think she's beautiful?"
"Yes, Mistress..." Sophie replied, her voice somehow strained, though scarcely above a whisper.
"Mariko, look at Sophie." She obeyed. "Do you think she's beautiful?"
"Yes, Mistress," Mariko replied with no strain, as if she found her hypnosis more amenable.
"Why don't you show your appreciation for each other?"

Gingerly at first, Mariko shuffled a little closer to the redhead. Sophie did the same, and they were soon very close indeed. Mariko brushed her nose against Sophie's cheek, quite shyly. Sophie blushed. Mariko leaned closer, and pressed her soft lips against Sophie's neck. Sophie sighed, before rubbing her bound calves against Mariko's long legs, stroking her tan skin.
"How does she feel, Sophie?" Meredith asked.
"She's soft," the redhead replied. "She's warm, and smooth..."
"What do you want her to do?"
"I..." Sophie hesitated. "I..." Mesmeredith frowned. Enhancegirl had escaped her control once before. She was going to make sure that never happened again.

Mariko leant forward and began smothering Sophie's neck and shoulders with kisses, feeling the redhead's lovely skin against her lips.
"Unnhh..." Sophie moaned, waves of pleasure washing over her. She pressed her chest against Mariko's, her yielding breasts pushing into Mariko's pert bosom, their skimpy bras allowing them to feel each other almost completely. "I want her to take me..." she answered at last. "I want her to own me, and possess me..." She felt the thrill of submission, the sensuality of being completely powerless before a lover. "I want her to knock me out...unnhh...with chloroform...and have her way with me while I'm helpless..." She breathed hard, pulse racing.

"And Mariko? What do you want of her?"
"I," she said, pausing when she felt something inside her throb with delight, "want her to humble me...to strip me...to make me kneel before her naked and powerless..." She leaned back, as Sophie began returning her favour, planting kiss after kiss on her breasts and soft shoulders, her moist legs shifting in their bonds.

"Nnnmmphh...nnnmmphhh..." Natalya blushed brightly, seeing and feeling everything that they felt and saw. It was a heady mixture of humiliation and elicit enjoyment, an intoxicating aphrodisiacal drug. "Why is she doing this to them? Haven't they humiliated us enough?!"

Sophie wriggled on top of Mariko, pulling her legs onto the couch, while Mariko's dangled onto the floor. Their bound bodies pressed tightly together. Sophie's hair trailed onto Mariko's chest. They looked at each other, at themselves, saw how tightly they were tied up, how their bare legs rubbed together as they wriggled in their bondage.
"Ohhnn..." Mariko mewed, "I'm so weak..." She met Sophie's eyes. Both sets were green, both sparkling. They felt not only a delight in their own submission, but a delight in the submission of the other, in knowing that they were both whimpering captives, that they'd been reduced from powerful heroines to sensual slave-girls. There was an almost un-containable erotic sensation felt and shared by the two: both wanted to entwine their naked limbs with those of the other, but they couldn't unless their Mistress gave them permission, and was merciful enough to untie them.

But there was something they could do, even while bound. Both damsels leaned in close, Mariko turning her head slightly so their noses didn't touch. Their lips pressed together, and Sophie shivered with pleasure at feeling her pink lips against Mariko's. Sophie's mouth opened slightly, and Mariko gently slid her tongue into the svelte redhead's mouth.
"Mmmhh..." the Japanese damsel moaned, writhing sinuously against Sophie. They began to kiss with greater intensity, whimpering softly into each other's mouths, kissing again and again, as Mesmeredith watched the heroines bend to her will.
"Ah, young love," Black laughed.
"Oh, but you know how fickle love can be," Meredith said, and snapped her fingers.

"Mmmhh...mmhh?!" Even more quickly than they had fallen into them, Sophie and Mariko awakened from their trances.
"NNYYMMPHHH!!" they screamed, completely aware of everything that they had done, and everything they had felt. Sophie pulled her mouth away and wriggled off her fellow captive, cheeks burning with shame.
"I...can't believe...they made us do that! I can't believe they made me feel that way..."

Mariko might as well have been paralyzed. She couldn't move. She could hardly think.
"They...I...she was..." she thought incoherently, images and sensations flashing through her mind. As if drawn by magnetism, the two looked at each other, exchanging looks of utter dismay and humiliation. They looked at each other's bodies, seeing the impressions from their lips, both lightly balmed, that they had left on each other's skin. They could still feel the tingling throughout their bodies. That they had been made to feel pleasure did not make the emotion any less real. It was extremely confusing and distressing, but they suddenly found themselves incapable of looking away from each other.

"Oh, I think they like each other for real, Meredith!" Black cackled. She could feel their shame as though she had Insyte's powers herself, and took pleasure in adding to it.
"Such a shame about poor Insyte, though," Meredith said. "She didn't get any attention at all." She raised a hand.
"No! No, please, I beg you!" Mariko moaned, but even begging accomplished nothing. Mesmeredith snapped her fingers, and her slaves fell back under her command, their green eyes blank.

Black gestured to Chloe and Saskia, who both grabbed Natalya, pulled her up to her feet, and then immediately shoved her back down between the hypnotised heroines.
"Nmph!" she mewed, as almost immediately Sophie began kissing her shoulders. "Mph!" the raven-haired telepath squealed, as Mariko's slender legs began stroking hers, her ivory-white skin bombarded with tender affection from her fellow captives. She tried to wriggle away, but her bonds were too tight, and she only ended up rubbing herself against the near-naked bodies of the damsels fondling her.

"Enhancegirl, you have to stop!" Insyte pleaded psychically, but it wasn't enough. In a completely peaceful environment, with hours available to her, Insyte would have been able to free Sophie's mind, without question. But here, bound and gagged, surrounded by people, and assailed by thoughts and emotions, she could barely concentrate. She looked at Mariko, and felt again the intoxicating mix of lust and shame which Mesmeredith used to control the pair. She could feel what they thought of her, how they admired her pale skin, and toned legs, her soft shoulders and voluminous, womanly breasts. Sophie began kissing them, and Natalya went bright red. She had let very, very few people be this close to her, and certainly never a fellow heroine. Their thoughts were vivid and clear - Sophie imagined the three of them bound together, sharing kisses with wild abandon. Mariko was picturing Natalya binding her in chains, then bending her over and spanking her, before picturing herself doing the same to Natalya. "It's...too much..." Natalya could feel her cheeks getting hot, her whole body, in fact. The sensuality of the beautiful women smothering her in kisses, the overwhelming fervour of their submissive desires, the sheer emotions of helpless pleasure was far too much for Natalya to take.
"Mmm...mmpphh..." she whimpered into her gag, her eyes fluttering. The beautiful heroine felt herself draining away, before she was completely overcome. She swooned, falling unconscious against the Japanese beauty she admired so much.

"Ahahaha!" Black laughed, seeing Natalya faint. "I bet Nyx'll wish she'd been here for that!"
"Perhaps we've had enough fun for the moment," Meredith said. "Sleep, my dear damsels," she commanded, and without a moment's hesitation, they obeyed.
"Ooohhnn..." they sighed, before joining Natalya in swooning. They swayed once or twice as they fell, before their lovely faces fell onto the soft cushion of Natalya's breasts, all three joining each other in unconsciousness, completely and utterly defeated.
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digitalbleh
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Nice story
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lordgriffin
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Hello Sir:

I do not often read the "tame" stories. I saw some real potential in what you write, your not afraid to allow the Villain to win, though I think your a little afraid of actual sex, and I love the mind control.

The biggest critisizem I see, is that you tell your reader too much instead of describing it.

For example, you have one mewl out I am so weak" which sounds real campy...would feel much more arousing if you described it... Her making soft mewling sounds as she had trouble lifting her head allowing her nemesis tp push her face between the open thighs of her friend with a single smug word "lick"
Damselbinder

While Mariko, Sophie and Natalya were locked in intimate embrace, Nyx and Cybelle watched each other, though both pretended not to. Both were on retainer to Black and Mesmeredith's partnership, and both were very much aware that they might be double-crossed at any time. The money, however, was too good to ignore.

What could have been an even more awkward, even more protracted silence, was broken by the sound of guards rushing past the room in which they sat.
"Hey!" Cybelle called out. "What's goin' on?"
"We've got another intruder, Miss Cybelle!" Denzel Bindon said, snapping unnecessarily to attention. "Security cameras picked her up a minute or two ago!"
"'She'?" Nyx stood up. "Is she pretty?"
"Er, yes, Ma'am! Er no! I mean, she is...but -"
"Would'ja mind shuttin' up, hun?" Cybelle said. Her eyes lowered. "What does she look like?"
"Um...well, she's blonde...white dress...she looked kinda Asian?" Cybelle leapt to her feet.
"Well, I'll be damned. Some gals never learn." She turned to Nyx. "Keep the coffee warm, Nixie. Come on, dumbass."
"Sweet!" Denzel said, and hurried after her. However, Denzel was extremely unobservant. He, and the rest of his company, hadn't noticed that there was a second intruder.


Stellar moved quietly through the sparse undergrowth of the island. Using the powers of the Blue Star, it had been easy to reach the island, but she was now clad in the white mini-dress and boots of the White Star.
"Are you going to do anything?" May had asked her. "Don't glamorous super-hotties have to stick together?" Though the way she'd phrased it was certainly eccentric, the reporter had stirred Stellar's heroic instincts. She thought she'd dodged all of the cameras, but unfortunately one had caught her.

As it was, she was rather unexpectedly confronted with a number of armed guards, wielding sub-machine guns.
"Okay, you!" came the unconvincing voice of Denzel Bindon. "You drop your..." There was a moment of conference. "Drop your whatever-you've-got and come quietly!"
"Quietly?" Stellar said. She put her hands on her hips. "You can't ask that!" She wagged her finger. There was another moment of conference.
"W-why can't we ask that?" Denzel stammered.
"Because!" Stellar laughed. "You are seeing a Star! A Star never shines in silence!" She opened her mouth, and drew in breath. As the White Star, Stellar could absorb ambient light through her skin, much like Spectra absorbed it. However, she released it not as light again, but as sound. However, before Stellar could make another sound of any kind, cold metal limbs gripped her shoulders and spun her around, before a piece of silver duct tape was slapped over her pretty lips.

"Mmmmphh!!" Stellar squealed, coming face to face with Cybelle.
"Oh, hey, darlin'. Fancy seeing you again so soon," the cyborg said. She seized Stellar with all four of her tendrils, and wasted no time in deploying silver tape from all four.
"Nnnmphh!! NNNMMPHH!!" Stellar wailed, as the tape was stuck to her gorgeous body, her arms pressed against her sides, her legs swiftly trapped together, the lovely maiden's soft skin vanishing beneath the sticky bonds. Cybelle knew from their first battle that the White Star needed her skin to be exposed to be able to absorb enough light for her powers, and being wrapped up would keep her helpless. As more and more tape was wrapped round Yumi, her limbs were pressed in tighter, and tighter and tighter, until the Korean popstar could barely even wriggle. "Mmmmphhhh!" she moaned, having been tightly bound up in a matter of seconds, her rescue effort ending in instant defeat. As she whimpered, Cybelle finished wrapping her up, covering her from her ankles all the way to her mouth, wrapping two or three circuits around it and trapping her famous lips.

"You know, sweetie," Cybelle said to her new captive, who looked at her with wide, plaintive eyes, "you really are very pretty...but you're also really, really stupid." She coiled one of her tendrils round the slender damsel five or six times, before lifting her up over her head.
"Nnnnmmmphhh!! NNNNNNNNMMMPPHHHH!!" Yumi moaned, as she was hauled off in her defeat, carried over the head of the victor. Though, it hadn't exactly been much of a fight.


"Mmhhnnn...mmmhhhnnn..." Sophie whimpered, as she began to come to. With no drug in her system, there was not even the barrier of disorientation to what had happened. As she lifted her head, she met the sorrowful yellow eyes of Natalya, remembering every kiss she inflicted on the shy beauty, remembered making her swoon. The only surprise was the reapplication of her gag.
"I...I couldn't help it...I couldn't control myself..." Natalya heard her thoughts, and knew she spoke true, but it didn't matter much. Mariko woke last, and she could not bear even to look at the others.

"Welcome back, girls," Black said. "I thought you might want to know that we have a new guest."
"Mmmphh?" Sophie mewed. At this point, she was so overwhelmed with humiliation that nothing could move her much. Or so she thought. For when the door of the lounge opened she saw Cybelle walk in with a very lovely young woman coiled up in her tendrils, wriggling in the shiny confines of silver tape. "Oh no...no no no..." Sophie said in her head, over and over again.
"Is that...Stellar?" Mariko thought. "What's she doing here?"
"Why...why did you all come for me? I'm not worth it..." Sophie thought, filled with despair.

"Well, y'know I was taking a nice stroll outside," Cybelle said, "when I found a pretty little flower I had to pluck." She slapped Stellar on her tight behind.
"Mph!" the popstar squeaked.
"You just keep falling into my lap, don't you?" Black laughed. "One stupid, sexy little creature after another. I should really -"

Whatever Black's taunt was about to be, it was swiftly forgotten in the chaos that followed a few moments later. The upshot was that the room was completely totaled, and Cybelle was knocked unconscious, within about twenty seconds. To give you the long version: the assembled company were very surprised indeed when, with scarcely any effort at all, Stellar burst out of her bonds, tore off her gag, and socked Cybelle on the jaw, sending her sprawling through the doorframe, the enhanced strength of the Black Star more than enough to knock her out. As Stellar grinned, she pulled off her blonde wig to reveal her black hair, kicking off her boots and tearing away her dress to reveal a black, leather skirt and tube top, with flat black shoes. The maids leapt into action, and Mesmeredith herself prepared to subdue the heroine, but the efforts at fighting back were somewhat hampered when the floor exploded beneath them.

"AAARRGGHH!!" Hammerblow cried as he was hurtled up, crashing not only through the floor, but continuing up through the ceiling of that room as well. The maids, and Mesmeredith too, were thrown back. It was as well that they were, for a wiry man with thick black hair, and skin almost as red as blood leapt through the hole.
"What the hell?" Black sputtered. "Who the f**k is he?!"

This question was on quite a few minds, but not Stellar's. Some maids got in her way, but she batted them aside easily using her enhanced strength. She pulled off Sophie's gag and bonds, and - to the redhead's surprise - embraced her.
"I'm so happy you're safe!" she said.
"Uh...thanks," Sophie mumbled, as Stellar freed Spectra and Insyte as well.

"You!" Meredith said. "I don't know who you are, but you will stop." She fixed her eyes on the blood-red man, and spoke one word: "Kneel."
"Heh!" The man did not kneel. Nor, indeed, did he respond at all to Mesmeredith's powers.
"Kneel, I said!" Mesmeredith commanded. It again had no effect. She concentrated as hard as she could, staring directly into his eyes.
"You...did not control me before..." the man snarled. Meredith suddenly remembered why he'd looked faintly familiar. He'd been rather less red in the Penitentiary Supreme, but he still hadn't responded to her hypnotic commands, unlike the four other Catastrophe Gang members held there. "AAARRGGHHH!!" As Angermax roared, he lifted his hand, the intellect he'd gathered deserting him as he gathered his terrakinetic powers. He might well have killed Meredith then and there, if a fireball had not struck him in the back.

"Angermax!" Big Shot had appeared in the doorway. "What the hell are you doing?"
"GRRAAGGHHH!!" The last superhuman member of the Catastrophe gang banged his fists together, unleashing a wave of energy that ripped up the floor and smashed into Big Shot, knocking him senseless.

"Enhance!"
"Spectrum is Green!" The two heroines, helpless captives until mere moments earlier, saw their skimpy underwear vanish beneath their heroic outfits. Natalya was not so lucky as to be able to cover herself up so easily.
"So, is there time to explain why he's fighting against his comrades?" Spectra asked Stellar in Japanese. She was the only one in the room apart from Stellar who'd recognised Angermax.
"He wanted to help. He said "the Gang aren't kidnappers! We're bank robbers!" May Springtide was the one who thought Hypnotra had something to do with them." Enhancegirl heard her friend's name
"What did May have to do with this?" A maid tried to get in her way, but she - with great pleasure at the return of her power - knocked her aside.
"She advised me to be disguised, so they would try to...ah... capture me wrong." Yumi was less confident in English. "She spoke to Angermax."
"Okay, well remind me to kiss her when we get outta this place," Sophie said. She was about to make for the door, where Mindblow and Catastrophe were trying to squeeze themselves in, but Spectra merely blasted a hole in the wall next to them.
"I think this way will be easier," she said.

The heroines barreled through the hole, all except Insyte. Still dressed in nothing more than heels and underwear, she braved the fray to look for Chloe and Saskia, the two brainwashed servants of Mesmeredith. She found them sprawled near where Angermax had crashed through, both unconscious. She grabbed Saskia, and just about managed to put the tall woman over her shoulder, but she realised that there was no way she could get Chloe as well.

"Here, give her to me." Insyte felt Saskia's unconscious body being taken from her shoulder by a superhumanly strong arm. Soon Chloe was taken by another arm, and Stellar was carrying two unconscious maids. Insyte looked up at the leather-clad songstress, and felt a mind full of kindness and selflessness. It was warm relief to the telepath, who'd been surrounded by greed, villainy and despair since she'd been captured.

As Mindblow was tossed aside by a stray shot from Catastrophe, the two heroines made to follow Enhancegirl and Spectra. However, a shockwave from Angermax crumbled the already severely weakened wall. Stellar could have cleared it with her strength, but not while she was carrying Saskia and Chloe.

The Blue Star or the White Star, with their aloof and peppy personalities respectively, might have thought of something a little less daredevil-esque. As it was, Stellar - with the arrogance and flair of the Black Star - leapt down the hole in the floor that Angermax had created. Insyte started, but a stray blast from Catastrophe soon convinced her to follow.

In the confusion, it had been impossible for Enhancegirl and Spectra to return for their fellow heroines. All they could do was run for the exit, and hope that Insyte and Stellar would meet up with them.
"Spectra," Enhancegirl said, halting the Japanese heroine. "There's gonna be about ten goons on us if we keep going this way, and they've got some pretty heavy artillery." She'd seen through the walls of the hallway. "We should double-back. Getting shot wouldn't be much of an improvement on what they did to us before." She sounded a little hysterical - she was all too aware that their cunning enemies might snatch their newly found freedom from them at any moment.

"Don't forget whom it is you have at your side, Enhancegirl," Spectra said. She raised her hand. "You might want to shield your eyes." Sophie knew better than to attempt to dissuade her. She did as Spectra suggested, and covered her eyes with her hands. It was still extremely painful for her sensitive eyes, though, when Spectra sent a multi-coloured, dazzling cascade of photonic energy at the guards who appeared from behind the walls of the corridor. When Enhancegirl dared to open her eyes again, the guards were all defeated.
"Doubling back doesn't really fit my idiom," Spectra said, quite satisfied with her display of strength. She continued on immediately, not even giving Enhancegirl's eyes time to recover.

It was unfortunate, then, that she herself did not have the ability to see through walls. Had she done so, or had she bothered to let Sophie recover, she would have seen a tall, voluptuous cyborg lying in wait for her a few feet from where she'd defeated the goons.
"Wha -" was all Spectra had time to say when she saw Cybelle's tendrils shoot out for her, before they slapped thick, sticky tape over her eyes.

"NO!" she cried out, as she was instantly robbed of her powers, unable to absorb light anywhere but through her eyes. She reached up to pull the tape off, but strong, metal pincers grabbed her delicate wrists, and pulled her hands behind her back.
"Hey there, hottie-san," Cybelle said, as she wound tape in multiple layers over Mariko's green eyes to ensure her blindness.
"Let me go at once! Release me or I'll - RMMMPHHH!!" Spectra felt more of Cybelle's tape pressed down over her lips, before being wrapped round as well, sealing her voice with three full layers of tape.


"Come on!" Stellar said, rushing ahead of Natalya. She, for her part, followed as fast as her tall heels would enable her. It wasn't long before the two had reached the room into which Natalya and Mariko had first broken upon their initial ingress. They could have just left. All they would have had to do was keep going. But when someone, anyone, hears a loud noise from behind them, it is virtually psychologically impossible not to turn around.

"Insyte!!" Natalya recognised the voice, even if Stellar didn't, though it did her little good. She turned around to see Mesmeredith, breathing hard, her face twisted with rage. Insyte clenched her fists, but it took her too long to realise that Mesmeredith was not looking at her.

Natalya heard a soft pair of thuds as Saskia and Chloe were dropped onto the ground. She realised what was happening, and turned her eyes to Stellar, but much too late. The Korean beauty was standing, staring at Mesmeredith, her arms by her side and her mouth slightly open.
"Oh...oh..." Stellar twitched slightly, almost as though she were trying to struggle, but couldn't remember how. "Can't...unh..." she moaned, unable to take her eyes away.
"Stellar, no! You mustn't give in!" Insyte cried, seeing the popstar fall under Mesmeredith's control. She reached out with her own mind to try and curb the process of brainwashing, but she wasn't strong enough. Mesmeredith's hypnosis worked too fast, and her mental powers were too subtle.

It occurred to Insyte to try a different tack, and she ran at Mesmeredith herself. But again, she thought of it too late. She only just saw Stellar lunge at her, and only the pseudo-prescience granted by her telepathy stopped her from getting knocked out.
"That's it, Stellar," Meredith said. "Get her! Remind her that no-one escapes Hypnotra!"


Things were not going any better for the other duo.
"Spectra!" Enhancegirl ran forward to rescue her fellow heroine, but Cybelle sent three of her tendrils to intercept. Her vision still recovering from Spectra's blast, it was all she could do to avoid the tentacles, much less rescue Spectra.
"Mmmmphhh!! NNNMMMPHH!!" the blinded damsel whimpered, as Cybelle's remaining tendril began wrapping her torso in tape. She moaned and thrashed, but was effectively helpless. Silver covered silver as her outfit vanished beneath her bindings, her slim arms tightly tied behind her back. "Idiot, idiot, idiot, IDIOT!" Spectra cursed herself bitterly. "How could I have let them capture me again?!"

Mariko felt her knees being pulled together, before her calves were completely covered with tape. She strained against her bindings, but they were unbelievably tight. She could hardly move her arms or legs at all. But, as Cybelle bound her latest catch, Sophie managed to trick two of the tentacles into tangling with each other.
"You just don't know when to quit!" Cybelle spat, shoving Spectra to the side, where she landed on her front. She'd realised too late that, as advanced as her internal processors were, it was not altogether easy for her to concentrate on two enemies at once. She'd put three of her tendrils on full A.I, and they'd promptly bugged out.

As she tried to return them to manual control, Sophie closed the gap between them. Cybelle struck like a scorpion at her red-haired enemy, but missed. As Sophie attacked, Cybelle was reduced to using her actual limbs to fight. They were cybernetically reinforced, but not nearly as strong or versatile as her tendrils, and Sophie knew it.
"What is with you?" Sophie said as the two fought. She was much faster than Cybelle was in her current state, and she was driving the cyborg back with blow after superhumanly accurate blow. "You seriously get your jollies from kidnapping people this much?"
"Not just people, darlin'," Cybelle said, bringing her functional tentacle back to bear. "Only super-hotties like you two. And you in particular just seem to loooove getting wrapped up in my arms."
"Oh, kiss my ass!" Sophie hissed, punching Cybelle straight in the face. The sheer violence of the blow took the cyborg very much of guard, and she reeled. "I hate people like you! Moronic villains with no real ambition, no serious goal. At least people like the Supremacist actually want to use their powers to, like, establish a new world order. You? You're just a nuisance! You're the reason people with superpowers never have time to, like, fix global warming or cure cancer or whatever. We have to spend every minute of the day dealing with you assholes!"

Cybelle had stopped listening about ten words in. She was much more interested in re-installing her tendrils' manual subroutines. Once they finished, just before Sophie said 'dealing with you', Cybelle flexed them to make sure they worked, and when she said 'assholes' she launched them, from behind Sophie, straight at the redhead's back. It was well, then, that Sophie deftly sprung out of the way, causing the tendrils to hit their wielder at full force. She flew back, slamming hard against a wall with a sickening thwack.

"Unnngghhh..." Cybelle groaned, scarcely conscious.
"Two all," Sophie said, dusting off her hands, having drawn the number of defeats and victories she'd had against Cybelle level.
"Mmmmpphh! Mmmm-mmmphhh!" Spectra wriggled around on the ground, bound, gagged and blindfolded, embarrassedly trying to get Sophie to save her.
"Don't worry Spectra, I'll -"

She knew. Somehow, she knew. When she felt the first whispers of chloroform at the edges of her olfactory senses, it could easily have turned out to be Nyx behind her. It could have been Madeleine, or Hypnotra, or any of the maids. But it wasn't. As she turned around, already starting to feel weak, she knew that the woman behind her was Madam Black.

"Downgrade!" Enhancegirl shouted, shedding her powers, and her weakness to chloroform. It was as well that she had done so, for within a few seconds she would have been too weak to fight. But Black was fast and she leapt at Sophie, pushing her against a wall, and shoving a drug-soaked rag over her mouth.
"Oh no, oh no no no no no," she hissed, as the building shook from Angermax's battle with Catastrophe. "You're not getting away. Not this time."
"Mmmphhh...mmmphhh..." Sophie could feel herself weakening. She wiggled her now almost entirely naked body, feeling a thick, warm cloud settling over her, making her soft and pliable. "No..." Sophie thought, blackness creeping into the edge of her vision. "No...no...NO!" With a fire born of too-great a humiliation, Sophie found her strength, and thrust her knee into the pit of Madam Black's stomach.

"Ooofff!!" Black groaned, dropping the pad and sinking to her knees.
"Unnhh..." Sophie was very lightheaded from the fumes, and held a hand against her forehead. She shook the effects off as best she could, before reaching down to pick up the pad. She looked at Madam Black, groaning on her knees. She grinned. "My turn."

She leant down, intent on making Black endure what she'd endured so many times, but she hadn't taken her own dizziness into account. She reached, but missed. It wouldn't have mattered much, except that the delay gave Black a little more time to recover. She snatched the cloth out of Sophie's hand, and the redhead - taken very much by surprise - was grabbed by the wrist, and judo-tossed to the ground.

"What the - MMMPHH!!" She hadn't expected Black to have much combat proficiency, and now the villainess was sitting directly on top of her, pinning Sophie's arms with her knees. "MMM-MMMPHHH!!" she cried, feeling herself begin to go under once again.
"Feel that, Sophie?" Black spat. She'd learned Enhancegirl's true name from Hypnotra before, but only now chose to reveal that she knew it. "That's the feeling of you losing. Again."
"Nnnmmphhh...nnnmmmphhh..." Sophie whimpered, her eyes fluttering shut. "Can't move...can't...can't..." She was getting weaker by the second, and her kicking legs were now barely moving at all. She felt a hand on her bare thigh, and realised that Black now only needed one hand to actually knock her out. Her scantily clad, svelte body was helpless, and Sophie was in Black's control once again.
"Mmm? Mmmmpphhh?!" Spectra, still blindfolded and taped up on the ground, couldn't tell what was happening. She only knew that she could hear Sophie's muffled cries. "Have we lost?"
"Nighty night, you stupid cape. When you wake up, we'll make sure your new owner knows what a naughty little girl you can be."
"Mmmnnphh...mmmnnnphh..." Sophie moaned, as her body became still. Her chest rose and fell, her soft breasts straining against her brassiere. "No...don't knock me out...she's too strong...too...unnhh..." She sank down, and down into darkness, until she could not rise. Her eyes fell shut. She was defeated.


"Ah!" Insyte cried out, dodging out of the way of another of Stellar's punches. She'd been able to keep ahead of her, but it wasn't going altogether well in any other respect. Stellar was far, far more powerful than Insyte, and it was only a matter of time before she won their fight. Indeed, Insyte realised, it was only because Mesmeredith did not want Insyte grievously injured that she had lasted as long as she had. She'd been scanning Stellar's mind for some kind of weakness, but she only found something about extremely soft materials - nothing of the sort was available to hand.

"A Blue Star!" Stellar said, her leathery outfit vanishing in favour of a translucent, gossamer thin robe which billowed all about the now white-skinned, blue haired heroine.
"Oh no..." Insyte instantly read her opponent, and discovered her new set of powers. Things were about to get very, very cold.

"There's no point, Insyte," Mesmeredith said, as flurries of ice shot all around the room, Insyte scarcely able to avoid them even with her powers. "You'll lose. You'll lose and you'll be mine. Even if I can't hypnotise you, I can still have plenty of fun with you when you're all tied up." Her taunts were designed to put Insyte off balance, and they worked to a tee. She glanced at Mesmeredith, and was suddenly aware of just exactly what Mesmeredith intended to do with her. She lifted her hands to her mouth, and did not see the ice spreading under her feet. She took another step, and slipped in her heels, falling on her back. Before she could get up, she saw Stellar standing over her, palm outstretched.
"It's over," the brainwashed singer said.

It was just then that Insyte, thinking it would be useless, scanned Stellar's mind again. Only this time, she found something she could use. She just wasn't sure she could bring herself to do it. As Stellar's thin robe fluttered, revealing her smooth legs, Insyte closed her eyes, gulped, and reached up Stellar's robe.

"Oh!" Stellar gasped, feeling Insyte's warm hands on her bare legs. "Ooh..." Mesmeredith didn't understand what was happening. Stellar had been about to shackle Insyte in place with her powers, but just a touch from the busty telepath had completely taken the wind from her sails.
"I'm sorry!" Natalya said, as she began running her hands up and down Stellar's thighs. Her skin was growing warmer, steam rising from her body.
"Unnhh..." Stellar moaned, feeling an inescapable sensuality as her legs were stroked by the beautiful, dark-haired woman at her feet. She felt weak, but it was a pleasant weakness, one which invited her to surrender to it. She dropped to her knees, weak as a kitten.

Natalya found herself face to face with the beautiful songstress, who looked her in the eye, overcome by the Blue Star's weakness to sensual pleasure. But she wasn't quite out yet. Natalya knew what she had to do, but a lifetime of shyness kept her from doing it. Yet when she looked at Insyte, it seemed almost as if the beautiful young woman wanted her to do it.
"Please don't let her remember this..." Natalya said, before pressing her lips against Yumi's.
"Mmmmphhh..." the Korean damsel moaned, as steam rose from her body. Going limp, she fell against Natalya, cushioned by the ivory-skinned maiden's voluptuous breasts. There was a great rush of steam, and when it faded, Stellar was gone. She was now Yumi Tae-Yeong, kneeling in her underwear, almost passed out.

Mesmeredith had been transfixed by the spectacle, so much so that it did not occur to her that her weapon against Insyte had been taken from her.
"Oh sh-" she spluttered, as Insyte rushed towards her. Before Mesmeredith could react, she had been kicked in the back of the knee and chopped in the shoulder. Reeling, she lost balance, and fell onto her back. Insyte stood over her, her yellow eyes glinting with cold fury. She grabbed Meredith by the temples, and stared into her eyes.
"I...have never hated anyone," she said, "as much as I hate you."
"So what?" Meredith grinned. "What are you going to do about it, girl?"
"This." Insyte reached deep, deep into herself. She summoned up all the telepathic energy she had, driven on by a vast, red loathing. She took everything she could muster, and she poured it all into Meredith's brain.
"AIIIEE!" the hypnotist cried, head racked with migraine-like pain. It didn't last very long, but when it subsided, Mesmeredith could feel that something was very wrong.

Telepathy worked in very strange ways sometimes. Some telepaths, like Mindblow, wielded the equivalent of mental hammers. Mindblow in particular benefited from a kind of mental static that made it difficult for other telepaths to get a bead on him. Even Mesmeredith had had to work pretty hard to mesmerise him. As for the villainous hypnotist, her mind was opened, allowing her to open the minds of others. But this left her vulnerable, and it was this vulnerability that Insyte instinctively exploited.

"What...what have you done?" Meredith said.
"I reached into your mind...such a horrible place to be..." Insyte said. "I found the part that controls your power, and I switched it off." Meredith recoiled. A half-smile appeared on her face.
"You're...you're bluffing."
"You know I'm not. You're never going to control anyone again, Hypnotra." Beware the shy, when you finally push them too far.

"Unnhh..." Yumi moaned, starting to come to, and Natalya rushed over to her. Meredith didn't move. She wouldn't for a while.
"Stellar, are you alright?" Natalya said.
"Yes..." she said weakly. "I think so..." With Natalya's help, she stood up. "What happened? I remember...eyes - purple eyes."
"Don't worry," Natalya said. "Those eyes won't be doing any more harm." There was a loud bang uncomfortably close to the heroines' location.
"We must go from here," Yumi said. Natalya nodded, and was about to follow her, when she thought of something.
"Stellar...can you get these two out of here?" She referred to Saskia and Chloe.
"I think so," the Korean responded. "I just need...a moment..." Her sensual depowering at Insyte's hands had left Yumi feeling very weak. But she tried anyway to haul Chloe onto her shoulder. But she overestimated her strength in her current state, and she and Chloe fell to the ground, the songstress almost unconscious.

"Stellar!" Natalya was not very strong, and she wasn't sure how she would get all of the women out. It was fortunate, then, that an answer appeared. A battered, bruised, and somewhat burned man entered the room, one shoe missing, thick brown hair falling down his face.
"Bunch of...weak minded fools..." he muttered. "Don't...know why I ever joined up with them." It was only with a brief telepathic scan that Insyte realised she was looking at Angermax.

The criminal ambled towards her, limping slightly, but seeming rather the better for wear, all things considered.
"Hey, you're Insyte, aren't you?" he said.
"Yes," Natalya replied, suddenly realising her state of undress. She yelped, and covered her sizable chest with her hands.
"Oh, relax lady," Max said. "I'm on the, ah, other side of the fence." He was telling the truth. Sheepishly, Natalya lowered her hands slightly. "Hey, what happened to her?" Max pointed at Yumi.
"Listen to me," Natalya said suddenly. "I - I need you to get these three to safety. Can you do that?"
"One condition," he said. "You - you're a psychic, right?"
"Yes."
"When this is done, can you fix my friends?" Max asked. Natalya smiled gently.
"I'll try." Max nodded. Another advantage of telepathy was that Natalya knew when a person was trustworthy. Seeing that, for now at least, Max was such a person, she gulped - and ran back into the mansion.


"Mmmphhh! Mmmhh-mmphh?" Spectra whimpered, lying taped up on the ground, writhing powerlessly in the tape binding her. She couldn't see what was happening, as Cybelle had blindfolded as well as bound and gagged the Japanese maiden, but she knew that Sophie had been brought down as well. When she picked up a faint whiff of chloroform nearby, she realised how.

"Would'ja look at that?" Black said. "Two supergals completely helpless at my feet. And I don't even have any powers!" She was giving herself too much credit: it had been Cybelle who had defeated Spectra, but Mariko found her taunts no less embarrassing. Black turned Sophie onto her back, and pulled out a spool of microfibre cord, designed to be as compact as possible. She unwound some, and Sophie's wrists were suddenly meshed in artificial rope.

"Unnh..." the sleeping redhead moaned as her arms were tied, rope twisting up her wrists, forearms and elbows. Black yanked tight, and Sophie's arms were tightly bound.
"Mmmmphhh! MMMPHHH!!" Spectra protested. She could hear the whizzing of more rope being unraveled from the spool, and guessed what Black was doing to her fellow heroine. The lovely co-ed's slim ankles were tied next, swiftly cinched with three circuits of rope.

Bound hand and foot, Sophie's half-naked body was turned over, her hair spreading around her like a halo. Picturesque as she was, Sophie was given no peace. A piece of cloth was stuffed into her mouth, before being sealed in place with a strip of duct tape, taken from one of the unconscious Cybelle's tendrils.

"Mmmphh!" Mariko felt Sophie's body being rolled into her, and could now feel for herself the ropes binding the sleeping redhead. "It mustn't end like this...I have to save her!" But as much as she tried to fight the tape keeping her shapely body in check, she couldn't escape its sticky coils.

"Now..." Black mused, "the only question left is how to haul the two of you outta here." She grabbed a radio from her back pocket. "This is the boss. I'm on the third floor, corridor C. Need help moving two wrapped-up superbimbos." She holstered the radio, and bent down by the fallen damsels.

"Rrrmmphh!" Mariko growled, feeling Black's hand on her thighs.
"Oh, is it embarrassing? Are you feeling angry because you got taken out so easily?" She moved her hand up Mariko's body, over her hips, before raising it, and giving the willowy beauty a firm smack on her behind.
"MMMPHH!!" Mariko's cheeks went scarlet, as she wriggled and writhed in her bonds, her helplessness stinging her as much as her spanking.
"A-hahahahaha!" Black laughed. "God damn, you're pathetic! It's like anyone who associates with the dynamic dumbass here," she said, pointing to Enhancegirl, "is just totally useless." It was certainly true, Mariko realised, that since she'd begun to associate with Enhancegirl the number of her defeats had increased noticeably.

Leaving Spectra with her thoughts, Black made some efforts to rouse Cybelle. The blonde groaned half-consciously, but she was still not responsive. While Mariko writhed blindly, and Sophie lay completely subdued, someone approached who had answered Black's call for help.

For different reasons, neither of the two captured young women saw what happened next. Mariko heard the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps, tacking against the ground in swift steps. She then heard a yelp, a thump, and the sound of someone crying out in pain. Poor Sophie wasn't aware of anything. It was only when Mariko felt someone taking her by the head, and unwinding the tape covering her eyes that she realised what was happening.

As Mariko's jade eyes opened, Insyte, who had overheard Black's call for help and had come running, felt a potent mixture of astonishment, relief, gratitude and intense embarrassment at how she'd again needed rescue.
"I came as soon as I could," Natalya said, not knowing what else to say, really. She unwound the tape from Mariko's body, which because of the tall model's height, and the security with which Cybelle had bound her, took a surprisingly long time.

When Mariko was finally free, she leapt onto her feet, and aimed her palm at Black, who was slumped over by Cybelle, clutching her stomach. She'd been no match for Insyte.
"Try taunting me now, you harlot," Mariko spat. "Try telling me how inevitable your victory was!"
"Ghhkkk..." Black couldn't yet speak clearly, but she was genuinely unsure whether or not Mariko would fry her.
"Don't, Spectra," Insyte said. "She... isn't worth throwing away your conscience."
"Fine," Spectra said, turning her hand to Sophie instead. With a flicker, her mastery of light had severed the redhead's bonds.
"What do we do with them?" Insyte asked, as Mariko slipped her hands gently under Sophie's body, and lifted her sleeping form into her arms.
"We leave them. Their operation is exposed now." She shifted Sophie's body closer to her chest: she was not all that physically strong, and svelte as Sophie was, she was difficult for the slender model to carry. "They can be rounded up at any time." That wasn't the real reason, and Mariko had forgotten that Insyte would know that. They could - perhaps should - have spent more time rounding the criminals up then and there - but Mariko decidedly did not want to risk recapture, not again. Insyte was rather of the same mind.

"Where are they?" Yumi said to herself, awaiting the arrival of her three fellow heroines. Somewhat embarrassed by the fact that she'd had to be rescued by one of the women she'd been rescuing, she was now more or less recovered from her depowering. The mansion in front of her looked much the worse for wear, thanks to Catastrophe and Angermax. Max himself was explaining the situation, as far as he understood it, to Saskia and Chloe, who had awoken from Hypnotra's control now that Insyte had taken away her powers.

"The last thing I remember," Saskia said, "was this strange blonde woman breaking into my apartment. She tied us up and drugged us..." She folded her arms over her chest. "We couldn't do anything...we were so helpless...and after that I remember waking up here. You're saying we were brainwashed?"
"Yep," Angermax said. "You and my crew, too."
"Gawd, what a bunch of assholes!" Chloe said. She had seemed most shocked, when she awoke from her long trance, to find herself in a French maid's outfit. "I'd give 'em a piece of my mind...anyway, you and Stellar came to rescue us?"
"Not exactly. We came to help out Spectra and...uh...Farsight. They came to rescue this chick called Enhancer. Oh, there they are now!"

Max spoke truly. For from the main entrance, long since abandoned by its guards, emerged three lovely young women, one cradled in the arms of another.
"Enhancegirl!" Yumi gasped, seeing the redhead unconscious in Spectra's arms.
"Oh, that was it!" Max exclaimed happily.

"Come on," Spectra said, running as fast as she could towards the gathering. "We need to get out of here as quickly as possible."
"Mmm," Yumi replied. "We found a boat, ah..." She searched for the English word 'moored' but couldn't find it. "...floating nearby. It's big enough for all of us."
"Fine." Spectra had no particular interest in recovering the dinghy she and Insyte had 'borrowed'.

As the motley crew hurried to what would later turn out to have been Cybelle's speedboat, the sea air began to stir Sophie.
"Unnhh..." she moaned as she returned to consciousness. She felt that she was being carried, and - remembering herself being taken down by Madam Black - assumed she was being carried off by her captor. But she felt her limbs unbound, and looked up to see the proud face of Spectra. "Mariko..." she said, drawing the model's attention, "you...saved me..." Spectra didn't quite find it within herself to correct her.

"You know," Max said, "I'd like to point out that even though I'm the only convicted criminal here, it was not my idea to steal a boat. Just sayin'."
"Yes, thank you for your contribution," Spectra said tersely.
"Well, I -" If Max had a witty rejoinder, he was not allowed to give it. A fireball in his back knocked him down, hard, and he fell flat on his face.

"What?" The heroines turned around, Spectra quickly setting Sophie down on her knees to free her arms. Twenty feet away stood Big Shot, coat trailing in the wind.
"See, boss?" he said, "I told you I could nail the traitor from here." He was not alone. Catastrophe, Mindblow and Hammerblow were with him. Like Angermax, they looked bruised, but not beaten.

"They're still under Hypnotra's control!" Insyte realised. When she'd destroyed Meredith's powers, she'd been surprised to find that Saskia and Chloe had been freed. Evidently the shackles placed on the minds of the Catastrophe gang were stronger.
"Come on, hotties!" Mindblow shouted. "Let's dance!"

Without warning, the heroines found themselves in pitched battle.
"Get him to safety!" Spectra ordered Saskia and Chloe, who combined their efforts to haul Max away. The Mistress of Light deflected attacks from Catastrophe and Big Shot, as Hammerblow charged towards them. She fired volleys of light in return, but Hammerblow was able to deflect them with his mace.

"A Blue Star!" There was a flash of light, and a rush of chill wind, before Stellar rose again on a pillar of ice. She glided into the heart of the enemy, dancing over Hammerblow. Big Shot fired at her, but Stellar not only dodged his fireball, but trapped him against the ground by hitting him with an icy blast, freezing him in place.
"What the-?" He strained, shivering from the cold. Mindblow stepped forward, but was held back by Catastrophe.
"She's too powerful for you," he said. "Leave her to me."

Hammerblow swung at the frail looking Insyte, but his blow was easily dodged. She was going after Mindblow, to keep him from harrying Stellar. Spectra was left with the giant.
"You fool!" She spat at him. "Do you even know what you fight for?" He grinned, and swung at Spectra. It was too fast to dodge, but she erected a barrier of light just in time. It still knocked her back, though, and she had to roll out of the way of his next strike. She called upon the infra-red light she controlled, and attempted to defeat him with pain, burning his chest. But though he cried out in pain, he didn't stop, and when he swung again Spectra had to cease her attack.
"Every time I fight him, he becomes more effective!" Spectra thought. She wondered if great strength was, in fact, the only power he had. Some kind of adaptation ability was becoming increasingly likely.

Stellar, for her part, was the one causing frustration in her fight. She seemed to float like a phantom, ineffable, intangible as she battled Catastrophe. Now matter how mighty the blast he summoned, he could not hit her. In addition, he had to stop every few moments to blast ice away from his body, as Stellar had no trouble hitting him.

Insyte, meanwhile, was struggling. She knew now not to look at Mindblow's eyes, but keeping him in sight while doing so was proving difficult. Her attacks missed more often than they connected, though he was too focussed on trying to get her to make eye contact with him to hit her back.

From the dock, Sophie watched on her knees as the two sides fought, seeing the skill and power of her comrades on full display.
"This is all because of me," she thought. "Because I let myself get kidnapped..." She thought again of her losing battle with Arachna, and of being drugged and cocooned by Nyx. "I'm nothing compared to them..." she said to herself, looking at the others.

But then she remembered Spectra's capture, when they'd first met. She remembered how Stellar had fallen into total despair after being kidnapped by Arachna. Insyte, who had fainted from the overwhelming humiliation of what Mesmeredith had made Sophie and Mariko do to her. They had all been defeated, but they all fought.
"Can I do any less?"

As Hammerblow swung, Spectra summoned a great flood of energy, and poured it into one massive blast. She fired it, and though Hammerblow blocked it with his mace, even his strength couldn't hold onto the weapon, and it flew from his hands. But he didn't stop, and his huge fist would have collided with the slender heroine, had she not at the last moment been pulled out of the way.
"What?" Spectra could hardly see the gold and orange blur which rushed by her, striking Hammerblow square in the chin. As he reeled, feeling that the blow hurt him more than it should have done, he was knocked down by a second blow to his neck. Spectra was amazed, and only then did she see what had got him.
"This guy is a complete waste of space. A waste of a lot of space," Enhancegirl said. "What the hell took you so long, Spectra?" Mariko couldn't help but smile.

"Aha!" Big Shot had finally managed to get free of his icy prison, and immediately threw a fireball at Stellar. It missed, but exploded not too far from her, and she was knocked off balance. She hit the ground just as Catastrophe was aiming another shot at her.
"Eat this!" he roared, firing a huge wave of light energy at her.
"A White Star!" she said, before being engulfed in the energy blast. Enhancegirl saw this, and for a moment feared the worst, until the blast dissipated and Stellar was revealed, truly the White Star this time, her powers allowing her to absorb every scrap of energy that Catastrophe fired at her.

"Good god damn," Big Shot said, impressed with Stellar's ability. But absorbing light was not all Stellar could do. Drawing in breath, she shouted wordlessly at Catastrophe. A wave of sonic energy struck him dead centre, knocking him flat on his back, and firmly out of the fight. In terms of power, if not ambition, Catastrophe was one of the great new threats of Seacouver, and Hypnotra had only begun to show the devastating effect to which he could be used. Despite that, Stellar floored him in a single attack.

Big Shot should not have gawped: Enhancegirl was closing on him. He turned in time to launch a fireball at her, but she knew what its flightpath would be almost before Big Shot did, and was on him in seconds. Sensing a slightly odd distribution of weight, she kicked at his right calf, and he howled in pain, bearing an injury from the gang's battle with Angermax. He went down.
"You know," Sophie said, "I always seem to have more luck when I'm fighting dudes."

It was only when Big Shot went down that Mindblow truly realised the situation he was in. He'd not yet been able to defeat one heroine, and now he was to deal with four. He decided that as cowardice was the better part of discretion, and discretion the better part of valour, he would valorously run away.

But Insyte managed to step in front of him, and to Mindblow's astonishment, she locked eyes with him. Before he could even think to activate his power, she activated hers. Reaching into his mind, she found a part that was exposed, weakened by the loss of Hypnotra's powers. Forming a psychic fist, she imagined herself tearing this part out. In doing so, she freed Mindblow.
"What the - where am I?" he stammered. "Wasn't I -" He looked around, extremely confused, before turning his eyes to the scantily clad, busty maiden in front of him. "Well hey, sister," he said, grinning. "Did you bust me outta jail?"
"In a manner of speaking," she replied.

From there, it was a simple matter of Insyte undoing the gang's brainwashing, one by one turning them from depraved villains back into mere crooks.
"So, me and Max did that?" Catastrophe said, looking at the wrecked building. "Cool."
"You want to thank us, maybe?" Sophie said.
"What? Oh, uh, thanks, I guess." The gang saw to Angermax after that, the wiry berserker relieved to see the crew back to their old selves.

The heroines were, momentarily, left to themselves. Enhancegirl breathed in, the salty air refreshing and cool. She imagined it was washing away her ordeal. She looked at the others. Save for Stellar, who simply seemed peppy and cheerful, they seemed very relieved. All knew that the Gang's attack had been a blessing in disguise. They had been forced almost to forget their power, but they had been allowed to reclaim it.
"Um," she began awkwardly, "I don't really know what to say to you guys. I-"
"If you're about to thank us," Spectra interrupted, "don't." Her face was stern. "We devote ourselves to saving those in need. It's what it is to be a heroine." Sophie might have expected such an answer, but for a moment Mariko's expression appeared to soften. "It's also what it is to be a friend."
mjkjets
Neophyte
Neophyte
Posts: 5
Joined: 13 years ago

Nice ending. Looking forward to more Enhancegirl.
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