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Hello all, DB here. Those of you following 'The Perils of Valora', be warned. This is NOT an entry in that series, though it does star Valora. Think of this as like a fanfiction of my own character. It's set between Enhancegirl 10 and Enhancegirl 11, but is not in continuity with any main series entries. Enjoy!


"I'm really, really not in the mood." Ordinarily, the 'mighty' Huxtable Duxtable would not have been intimidated by an attractive, curvy blonde such as the one with whom he was faced. She wasn't quite as tall as him, and the ripples in her tight leotard were not made by muscle, but by her voluptuous, feminine frame. But this was no ordinary blonde - nor indeed, was this even an ordinary heroine - this was the Mighty Maiden of Maine, the Vanquisher of the Vorpal Twelve - Valora!

"So what's it gonna be, dickhead?" the blonde said. A wind seemed to arise simply to make her cape flutter dramatically.
"I...uh...um..." Huxtable spluttered. He knew perfectly well what he was facing. Valora could have splattered him against a wall with a single punch. He was terrakinetic; more specifically, he had a particular talent for making concrete explode, which was a fairly potent ability to have in a city. Indeed, his truly - inexplicably - absurd nom de crime sometimes helped mask that he was pretty dangerous. He'd been underestimated before.

But this was not some low-rent rookie with the ability to control snails, or something. This was one of the strongest heroines around - possibly even stronger than Seacouver's beloved Spectra, depending on how you measured such things. Whether she underestimated him or not, there was not going to be a great deal he could do to defeat her.
"Just my fucking luck," he muttered. He'd been very fortuitous to escape prison, after having been defeated and arrested by Spectra.

Valora looked on him with scorn, but not hatred. While fellow heroine Enhancegirl reserved her greatest detestation for villains with aimless or mercenary pursuits, Valora hated those like the Supremacist who dared to call themselves 'visionaries'. Huxtable Duxtable was pond scum like all the others.
"Are you a shifter?"
"What?"
"Are you a shifter?" the heroine asked, a note of threat in her well practiced, neutral accent: Valora was one of the few heroines of her public profile and longevity who had successfully preserved her secret identity over the years.
"No," he replied. "What's it -"

Had he had a little more wit, he might have realised why Valora had asked what she'd asked. If he'd been a shifter - someone like Enhancegirl, Spectra or Stellar, who could switch their powers off - Valora would simply have commanded him so to do. But he was like her: his powers were always active. Conscious, he was at least in theory dangerous, so Valora flicked a small pebble she'd picked up at him. It was a small fragment of concrete, as it happened, and with his powers he could sense it as it travelled. Unfortunately, his reactions were pretty slow, and he wasn't able to do anything about it when it hit him. He did, however, crumple to the ground, knocked out cold.

"Lightweight," Valora muttered. She strode over to him, and dropped a small transponder onto his chest. Her contacts in Seacouver P.D. would be alerted to come and find him. She could have stayed to gloat, of course, but she had become a little disheartened with the limelight as of late.

She, alongside fellow superheroine Enhancegirl, had been captured, stripped, and publicly displayed in their humiliating bondage by Nyx, the Mistress of Sleep, who'd laid an all-too-simple trap for them. The sleazier aspects of the media had had a field day with it, and Valora's reputation had indeed suffered.

That wasn't her main problem, though. She'd recover quickly enough - she'd managed to build quite the reputation for, well, valour over the years. It was how they'd treated Enhancegirl that had been so galling. The vultures had tried to tear her to shreds, though thankfully she was no corpse to be picked at. From what she'd heard, Enhancegirl's reputation had made an admirable recovery thanks to her role in the defeat of Ricardo Hosenfluss' mad ambitions. Indeed, other rumours were beginning to emerge regarding the foul-mouthed belle and a certain willowy, Japanese beauty...

But that was none of Valora's business. Her business was, as it had always been, fighting against crime. The vast glut of superpowered heroes that had been attracted by the Supremacist's attack on Seacouver was beginning to diminish, and things in the city were settling back into normality. Valora was nevertheless feeling like it was, perhaps, time to move on from this oddly significant little city. It might even have helped her shake off the rest of the damage from her reputation.
"If I ever see that Nyx again..." she growled.

More than most heroines, Valora felt most comfortable in her alternate identity. Since taking on her role as a defender of the weak, she'd always felt that Valerie Orville, photographer, was not who she really was. Within her own mind, indeed, she long since stopped calling herself 'Valerie.' For this reason, it would not be too difficult for her to set up somewhere else. Being a freelance photographer would make this all the easier.

Valora had, indeed, considered going 'full time'. Plenty of cities, and Seacouver was one of the pioneers of this practise, would pay supers to work full time in the service of the city. Imperion was the leader of such a team, working out of Sacramento, and Valora understood that the pay could be pretty good. She used to be in a team of her own when she was much younger, but those days were long gone.
"Good riddance," she muttered, dismissing some painful memories. She was happy to team up with other heroines, partly because her great power had fairly limited, violent applications, and often the help of a heroine with more technical or information-gathering powers was greatly appreciated.

She wondered if she shouldn't have made Enhancegirl an offer of a more permanent partnership. The two worked well together, Valora thought, and while being part of a larger team had not - in the end - suited her very well, being one of a pair had obvious advantages. It occurred to her that Enhancegirl might take such an offer as patronising, like she was being recruited as Valora's sidekick. But Valerie had little patience for vanity. If the redhead didn't take the offer in the spirit in which it was meant, that was her problem.

She crouched down, and then leapt up, scaling in one bound a ten storey building, and landing on its roof. She could jump higher than that, at a stretch, but super strength didn't mean super accuracy. Besides, travelling around by leaping about had always struck the mighty maiden as being just a little silly.

She was on the roof to give one last survey to the area. She hardly expected to find anything, but she had settled over the years into a standard procedure to put her mind at ease when she finished for a night, and she was as susceptible as anyone to the occasional bout of superstition. Indeed, that night Valora was feeling particularly superstitious. It was almost as if -
"I'm being watched!"

She turned around, bending her left leg in preparation for springing out of the way of an attack. But there was nothing there. No-one at all. Trusting her instincts, she remained suspicious. She strained her eyes, looking for a hidden enemy, but she couldn't see anything.
"Maybe I was just imagining it," she thought to herself, but was still wary. In this world, there were an infinity of possible dangers.

A certain internet critic had once off-handedly remarked that "if the world was an RPG, it'd be the most unbalanced piece of shit you ever played". He had a point: some superhumans simply had better abilities than others. Weregild, for instance, had a power which made him about as durable as Valora, but with no increase in strength. Doveman could fly - but so could Nova, and she also had energy projection abilities on top of that. But even so, there were such things as situational advantages. There were many opponents against which the likes of Enhancegirl would be next to helpless, whom Valora could deal with easily. But there was one thing Valora would never be able to do against her enemies as well as the comparatively fragile redhead: see them coming.

As hard as she looked, Valora couldn't see through walls, or floors. So she didn't see the explosives planted underneath her, not until they went off, with a kind of shrieking rumble.
"What the hell?" Valora gasped, feeling the floor beneath her shaking. It hadn't sounded like a normal explosion, so she wasn't sure of what had happened. She worked it out, though, when the portion of the floor she was on crumbled, and collapsed, sending her tumbling down to the level below.

"Oogh!" Valora groaned, landing hard on her back. The blow did her no damage, but she was shocked and disoriented. "Wh-what?" The ground had just given way beneath her. For a moment she considered the possibility that, in a moment of distraction, she'd stepped down too hard, her great strength crushing the floor. But as she looked up, she saw an almost perfectly circular hole. "That was no accident," she thought, leaping to her feet. While powerful, her body weighed no more than it looked, so she could throw herself about with some agility.

It was as she reached her feet that she wished she'd looked around more before getting up: she was surrounded on all sides by men in vibrant, red outfits, and Venetian style masks, with hooked, birdlike noses. Some of them were carrying odd looking weapons, while two were unarmed.

"Don't move, Cape!" one of them barked. There was a shrill, nasal quality to his voice. "You're surrounded - by the No-Law Gang!"
"Oh, great," Valora growled. "I can't believe you scrubs still exist!" The No-Law Gang had always occupied a rather irritating position in Seacouver's criminal hierarchy. They weren't quite harmless, but weren't exactly the worst of the worst, either. They alleged themselves to be anarchists in the political sense, but quite what species of anarchist was never clear. Their membership changed constantly as members were arrested, or expelled because of infighting. Their leader was always kept a secret, but it was well known that he or she had changed at least three times since the group had first appeared in 1992.

"No-one can destroy the No-Law Gang!" another one said, the voice sufficiently muffled by their mask that Valora couldn't tell their gender. "And now you'll see just how strong we are!" The first one who'd spoken motioned towards one of the unarmed men, who stepped forward.
"Time to -"
Valora didn't give him the chance to speak. She stepped down, throwing up a chunk of plaster, wood and concrete as the floor shattered from her blow. As it flew up, she punched it. The plaster and most of the wood just crumbled, but the concrete flew on, catching the man in the chest. He flew back, knocking past one of his allies, and becoming embedded in the back wall.

Valora didn't stop there. She leapt forward, bounding like a gazelle, grabbing one of the others by the scruff of the neck. He raised his weapon, but Valora snatched it out of his hand, crushed it almost into powder. She looked him in the eye, and even through his mask she could tell he was afraid. "These idiots," she thought, "these pretentious, hypocritical little rodents! How dare you even try to attack me?!" She drew back her hand, and he audibly cowered. "You're pond scum," she spat, before hurling him up, creating another hole in the same ceiling through which she herself had fallen.

While quite a few of the No Law Gang began to experience something close to panic, one smiled.
"Come on, you fuckin' pussies!" he laughed. "What's the fun if she doesn't know how to plaaaay-yaaaaayy?!" He clapped his hands together, and rubbed them, as if in satisfaction. But he kept doing it, staring intently at his enemy. Valora took a good look at him. He was short, and thin, but wiry. He held himself as if he were a bit stronger than he looked, though even through his mask there was something unhinged about him.

He began a strange, almost ritualistic looking movement. He rubbed his hands, intertwined his fingers, pulled them apart, then returned to the first step. Valora was about to ignore him and attack, but then she saw a yellow light from his fingers. She hesitated. "He's a superhuman." Her confidence in her own power, and the surety of her victory, didn't dim whatsoever, but she wasn't stupid. If he was a superhuman, she had to be careful. He might be able to pass his hands through solid objects, or shoot lightning from his fingers, or blind people. Perhaps he could paralyse nerves or shatter bones. It was impossible to know. This was one advantage of being no-name 'pond scum' as Valora had put it: no-one knew what you could do.

But he just kept doing the same thing over and over and over, making wild faces - not that Valora could see them - and grinning like a madman. He began ducking and bobbing from side to side, the light from his hands leaving traces in the air.
"What's he gonna do...what's he gonna dooo0o0o0o0o?!" he crowed, giggling to himself. Valora found herself exceedingly vexed. His irritating, shrill, sing-song taunts were making her clench her fists hard enough to crush steel, yet she found herself hesitating. She recalled her 'battle' against Nyx, where her smug self-assurance had led her to ignore the apt advice of Enhancegirl, and had led to both of them being captured and humiliated. She tried to think of possible scenarios, to prepare herself, but she simply wasn't patient enough to be a good strategist. A single flaw in a plan made her frustratedly abandon it.

"Ugh!" Valora cried out. She looked down, and saw that a thick, white cord, made of some kind of flexible plastic, was pinning her arms to her sides. "What the hell?!" She looked up, uncomprehending of how it had got there - only to see three, four more loops thrown over her head. Her arms were crushed in three places at her sides, her legs slammed against each other at her knees and ankles. Valora had been lassoed.

"Now!" The No-Laws squeezed the triggers of their weapons, from which they'd fired the cords that had ensnared the buxom blonde.
"Unnghh!" Just as the heroine had been about to summon her strength and snap free, she felt a surge of energy into her body. "Aah!" she cried out. "Wh-what the...hell?!" The ropes began glowing with grey light, and Valora felt very odd indeed. "The ropes...I can't break them!"

She looked up at the gang members, who were snickering and crooning as they saw Valora ensnared. She growled at them, and tried to summon her strength - but she just couldn't engage her muscles. She didn't feel weak, or drained, exactly - she could tell her core of power was still within her, and as great as ever. But she just couldn't get it to respond.
"What...have you done?" she asked. "What's - urrghh - happening to me?"

"Nice one, Donnie!" one of the masked men laughed, ignoring Valora's question. He was talking to the one with glowing hands, who triumphantly whipped off his mask. He revealed small, rodentine features and wild, curly, beige hair. His wide row of teeth was drawn back into a manic grin.

"Oh that was awesome!" Donnie said. "Shit, I didn't think it'd even work that well!" Valora glowered at him, and tried to shake her shoulders, but they hardly moved, just making her ample bust jiggle visibly in her tight leotard.
"I don't feel weak," she thought, "but...I can barely move!" She just about managed to lower her head sufficiently to look at her glowing bonds. "What are they doing to my body?" She felt herself shivering, her muscles failing to engage enough to fight.
"You know what my power is?" Donnie said, turning his attention fully to the twitching, gasping maiden. "It's so baaaaaaaaad..." He walked a little closer, ducking under the cords that his allies were holding. "Not like, 'badass' bad, just 'bad' bad, y'dig?" He made his hands glow again. "All it does is distract people a little. But you...damn, you just couldn't look away, could you?"

"Go...to...hell..." Valora croaked, but even her vocal chords would barely obey her.
"You like these ropes?" Donnie giggled. He poked them, then drew his hand away, hissing with pain. "Ah, fuck!" He cradled his hand, which seemed to sag limply. "Oh, wow, they really work, huh?" He shook his hand, as if trying to restore feeling to it.
"Keep your hands away from it, you moron!" another of the gang members shouted. "For someone like you, it could completely paralyse your body!"
"Sorry, Viv," Donnie whimpered, like a chastened dog.
"P-paralyse...?" Valora said. She tried to move again, but she could feel her body becoming more and more rebellious to her will. She found the ropes pressing her arms tighter against her sides as her resistance faltered. Her shapely legs, thinly covered in soft, satin tights, were shivering. She feared they would not be able to hold her up long.

The one Donnie had called 'Viv' stepped forward. She was short, and squat. If she hadn't spoken, Valora wouldn't have known she was a woman.
"What the hell are you idiots waiting for?" she barked at the others. "For someone that strong, nerve induction is only gonna work for so long. Wrap her up!"
"Nerve...induction?" Valora muttered. But before she could ponder the mystery of her weakness, the No Law Gang took Viv's advice. The ones holding the ropes binding her began circling Valora, first at a jog, then breaking into a full run. They wound their cords all over her voluptuous body, covering her buxom chest, squeezing her strong, but soft thighs and calves, surrounding with rope her round, womanly hips, winding round and round, covering every inch of the blonde.

"No! Stop!" Valora shouted. Impressively, she managed to sound commanding, rather than pleading, but there was nothing she could do to back her tone up. She watched helplessly as the ropes grew tighter and tighter, covering more and more of her, until she saw her legs subsumed, her voluminous breasts squeezed in, and her arms and shoulders completely entwined. "N-no!" she gasped, the mighty maiden seeing herself completely mummified in yards and yards of rope. "I'm...captured!"
"Yeehaw!" Donnie giggled, hiding behind his comrades. "Roped like a heifer, a-hyuk!"

"Nnnhh..." Valora groaned, gritting her teeth and trying again to summon her strength, but it was even harder now than it was before. She tried to fight, but her body just wouldn't obey. It was then, however, as her womanly body was squeezed from all sides, bound with inexorable strictness, that she realised how the ropes were making her feel: relaxed.

It was a very strange sensation, akin to being given a full body massage, on every inch of her body simultaneously. It was disturbingly pleasant, spreading a slow warmth through her body. She remembered what it had been like being weakened by Nyx's chloroform: a wet, thick blanket choking off all strength and focus, smothering her power. This was insidiously different, like her body was willing yielding up its strength.
"Have to...have to...uuuunhhh..." Her mental resilience was useless: her muscles were having none of it. Pleasurably relaxed to the point of indolence, she felt her legs quivering, before she toppled - powerless - to the ground. Flat on her back, Valora stared upwards, moaning with a mixture of rage and disbelief.

"I love this job," Donnie chuckled. "Shit...feels so long since we last roped up a supergal."
"I know for a fact," one of his allies said, "that you've captured Aerogirl at least twice in the past year. I haven't trussed up a cape-ette since...not since Insyte!"
"Seriously? And you're so good at it too." He shook his head forlornly. "Hey, maybe before we hand her off we can have some fuuuuuuuun!" He giggled like a schoolgirl.

His prominence seemed not to translate to genuine authority among his peers, for they weren't willing to indulge him. Viv approached her first, checking a tablet computer, glancing between it and the ropes binding the flabbergasted heroine.
"What...is this?" Valora struggled to say, no longer even able to struggle. "Why...do I...feel so relaxed?"
"The principle is simple," Viv replied, "even if producing that effect isn't. Your nerves are being sent electrical pulses which trigger the 'relax' command in your nerves. It's not paralysis, exactly." Her expression revealed a hint of pride. "Every time you tell a muscle in those fantastic limbs of yours to contract, there's a hundred signals telling it to do the opposite."

At her signal, one of Viv's comrades came forward, a burly-ish man. He wasn't even a superhuman, let alone one as strong as Valora, but in her present state, the blonde was no match for him. Cocooned in cord, she was hauled up onto her feet. The curvaceous blonde felt her body entirely obedient to her captor, despite her best efforts. She could barely even hold her head up.
"You're...going to...suffer for this," Valora said. "By my hand, and by...the law's..."
"Say that again," her assailant said, a slightly latin brogue colouring his voice. "I don't hear so good."
"I said...you...are going to sphhhrrmmphhh!!" Valora's pillowy, ruby red lips were parted by a thick, off-white rag, her voice sealed. Or rather, not sealed, but stifled to nothing more than furious, unintelligible moans. "Mghmphh!"
"Nope," her captor said, as he pulled the cleave-gag tight, and knotted it in place. "Still can't hear you, blondie." He patted her on the cheek. "I'm sure it wasn't that important."
"Mghmph!" It was difficult maintaining her ferocity with her body weakened and her mouth gagged. She breathed hard, feeling hot, stifled by her fiendish bonds. Blood rushed to her cheeks.

"Oh my gaaaaawd, that's adorable!" one of the No-Laws laughed. "Valora's blushing!"
"Nhhh..." Valora's eyelashes fluttered. "Mhhh...mmmphh..." The burly man held her tight even as she felt like sinking to her knees. Some of his colleagues came forward, one of them holding something made of black plastic. Or rather, as Valora discovered when they began pulling it up her legs, made of latex.

"Whh...whhhnhh?" Valora whimpered, as her captors began pulling the bag up her legs, over the ropes that bound her so tightly. "Nhhngh! Nhhn...mmhhnnnhh!" Whatever this stuff was, it wasn't normal latex. It squeezed her almost as tightly as the strength-draining cords, holding her so tightly that her weakened muscles could barely move her limbs at all. As it went up over her womanly hips, her stomach, she tried once again to resist, but she just couldn't. Her body wouldn't let her, wouldn't follow her commands. She looked down in horror, looked at her body being subsumed, stifled by this second skin they were applying to her beautiful body. It went over her tights, her leotard, but it seemed more clinging than either - a scandalous, denuding tightness into which she was completely absorbed.

"MHH!" Valora cried out, as with a satisfying snap the latex bag was pulled over the buxom mounds of her bosom, compressing them, squeezing them like hungry, angry hands. It was pulled over her shoulders, her soft throat, right up to the line of her jaw. She was completely covered from foot to chin. She could move, just about, and so her breasts, her thighs bulged and creaked against the black substance binding her, every weakened, languorous movement a testament to the curvaceous shapeliness of her body. One could see, too, the texture of the ropes beneath the latex, the astonishing extent of her captivity.

"You know," Donnie giggled, "I, uh... I mean, I've seen this chick on TV doin' some pretty crazy shit. That really going to hold her?"
"Yes," Viv replied. "Yes, I think it will." She laughed. "The information they sent us... it's absolutely spot on. She's helpless!"
"They?" Valora scowled beneath her gag. "Someone else... someone else put these chumps onto me. Of course... no way... no way that the god-damned No Law Gang could beat me themselves!" But, of course, as Valora belatedly realised, this meant that they had beaten her.
"Get her in the truck," Viv ordered, and three men at once leapt forward to do the honours, shoving and jostling for the privilege. Valora saw it in their eyes. Like jackals fighting over a piece of meat - and a piece of meat was what they now saw her as. Eventually, the largest of the group won out, and his hands thrust out towards Valora with grasping avarice. He took her by the shoulders, hoisted her up to her feet.
"Mmmhhh..." he grunted. "You're one fine piece of ass, you know that?"
"Grrghghhpphh...!" Valora growled back. "Mmmhhrrr-ggrrrrrmmmpppphhh!!"
"Oooh, attitude," her attacker chuckled. "That's not gonna help you much now, sweetie." He grabbed her thighs, and with one heave he hoisted her up into his arms, cradling the helpless heroine. Her calves dangled in mid-air, her shoulders clutched and pulled against her captor's body. She could barely summon enough strength to keep herself from wilting in his arms completely, but that was all she could do. And her captor smelled, smelled of sweat, of bad cologne and deodorant, and she felt that scent assaulting her. He was parodically manly, all chest-hair and muscle and leering swagger - but as ridiculous as he was, he was more than a match for the trussed-up heroine, and he impressed into her all too clearly how parodically feminine she must have seemed.

Yet, even as she was captured, even as she was bound, wrapped in latex, and then lugged about by some great, blundering thug, even then she did not feel as though the battle was over. They had not beaten her. For all that it appeared as if they had, they were pests merely. She was not a fly caught in a web: she was a bear caught in a net, a net that could not hold her indefinitely. As she was borne down to where the No-Laws truck was waiting, she was already beginning to plot revenge. Once she got out of this and clobbered these insects, she would track down every single member of this stupid cult of cockroaches, and would clobber all of them just as badly. Worse, even. So it did not perturb Valora when they threw open the hold of their truck. It did not perturb her when they tossed her inside, her bundled-up body rolling along the floor of the hold. It didn't even perturb her when Donnie, and the man who'd carried her, jumped in to 'keep watch' on her. It only angered her.

The truck began to move. Valora continued to squirm weakly, and the two men continued to leer at her, but otherwise... otherwise there was surprisingly little in the way of further indignities. No physical ones, anyway.
"Man, if I hadn't seen the way they jiggled when we tied the blonde up, I'd be sure those boobs were fake," Donnie crowed.
"Naahh," his friend assented. "They're pretty big but... don't you remember the telepath?" With his hands, he simulated two heavy burdens attached to his pectoral muscles. "Geez that girl was stacked."
"Nah, Fred, I like this one more," Donnie replied. "She's... bouncier. Plus she has better hips - and a teensy little waist, too! That's what you want to see in a blonde."
"Mmrrrrggghhhh!" Valora protested, trying to move her weakened, drained body in a way that was not so slow and suggestive. Yet for all their taunts, Valora noticed that Donnie and this Fred person were making no attempt to touch her. She would have thought that two degenerates with a woman as beautiful as Valora - bound and subdued to boot - would be pawing relentlessly at her. Yet they did not. They didn't take a step towards her. "They're still afraid of me," Valora concluded. "If I keep trying... I can break out of these bonds!"

Yet Valora had miscalculated, even if somewhat forgivably. She was right that Donnie and Fred were afraid, that part of the reason for their vile bluster was to cover that up. The problem was, they were not afraid of her.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The journey lasted about half an hour, and in that time, neither of the men guarding Valora came even an inch closer to her. They jeered and mocked, but did nothing more. It was plenty of time for Valora to consider the indignity of her bondage: the latex sheath hugging her figure, the ropes, hard and constricting, binding her shapely limbs. She did not stop fighting, though. She could almost feel the countermanding impulses in her muscles from the ropes, like another voice shouting over hers. She tried to focus, just to shout even louder than the artificial impulses in her muscles. "Wish I'd learned to meditate or something," she groused. Nevertheless, she closed her eyes, and focused as hard as she could. She heard the ropes creaking as her strain against them slowly increased. Even as that creaking began to become a groaning, though, the truck skidded to a halt.

"Oh shit," Donnie laughed. "Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit!" He covered his mouth with his hands, spun in place. "We're here, Goldilocks! It's the end of the roooooo-ooooooaaaad!"
Fred glanced at him, evidently not wholly simpatico with his associate's eccentricities. "Come on, let's get her out," he said, striding with false confidence to where Valora lay, and grabbed her by the shoulders. Donnie leapt to his aid, took Valora by the ankles, and between them the two lifted her up into the air, lugging the bound blonde between them.
"Mrrgghhhmphhh!!" Valora complained through the cloth wrapped around her face, struggling in her captors' grasp. This time, she was actually giving them a little trouble.
"Is she... wrigglier this time?" Fred grunted, as Valora tried to squirm her shoulders out of his grasp.
"A little," Donnie replied, "but if you consider how wriggly she'd be if we hadn't suppressed her power... she's still pretty much just a kitten. Ain'tcha?"
"RRggghghhmmmphhh!!" Valora growled back, thoroughly un-kittenishly.

All the same, they pulled her out of the truck without all that much trouble. Valora's eyes adjusted from the gloom of the inside of the hold to the fluorescent glare of what looked like an underground parking lot. Another disadvantage Valora had compared to some of her contemporaries was that she didn't really know Seacouver very well yet: Enhancegirl, or even Aerogirl, would have known that this could only be the basement of the Nash Building, which - while its above ground offices were mostly unused - made a tidy bit of profit as a parking garage right in the middle of the commercial district. But Valora didn't know: she had no idea where she was.

"Bring her here." As far as Valora could tell, she hadn't heard this voice before. The accent was distinctive: Valora hadn't heard enough to tell if it was Dutch or South African or maybe German, but it was definitely foreign. She was carried about ten metres, before being dropped unceremoniously on the floor.
"Mgghmmphhh!!" She glowered fiercely at the No-Law thugs, who backed away. But, again, they weren't backing away from her. They were backing away from the man standing behind her.

"You'll look at me, eh?" he commanded, turning Valora's face towards him with his foot. Looming over her prone body, he looked tall, but he was only about 5'9". He had very broad shoulders, though, and wide hips for a man. He looked as though he'd been specially designed to be as hard to knock over as possible. "I can't hardly believe it. I mean I know we gave you those special ropes and everything, but boy howdy - you little turds actually did it!" He glanced over his shoulder. Valora followed his gaze, but didn't see anything behind him.

"So uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." Donnie began rolling his head from side to side, clapping in rhythm. "You know, I think since we uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh did such a good job and everything..." He rubbed his fingers together. "C'mon, Mr Westchester, we got you the blonde! Can we get to the big-briefcase-full-of-cash part of this transaction?"
And then, as if by magic, Westchester had something in his hand. It hadn't been there before, and even Valora was startled by its sudden appearance. "How the hell did he do that?" she wondered. Was he a superhuman, then? If so, how strong was he? It was no longer just a matter of whether Valora could break her bonds. It was a matter of whether or not she could defeat Westchester.

Either way, Westchester handed the mysterious item to Donnie, tossing it to him. Donnie caught it, and spluttered with glee.
"Holy shit! Check it out, Fred, it's an actual big briefcase full of cash!" He gave the case to Fred, reached over where Valora was lying, grabbed Westchester's hand, shook it vigorously. "Oh, man, we're gonna be doing so much fuckin' business, bro!"
"... I think not," Westchester replied. "Now that I have Valora... I don't need anything more from you." His face had taken on a distinctly sinister aspect. At the same time, Fred stepped forward, tapped Donnie on the shoulder.
"Jesus, Fred, what?!" Donnie barked, spinning on his heel, intent on smacking Fred in the face for his impudent interruption. But he didn't. Nor did Fred need to explain himself. He had opened the briefcase: it was empty.

"Oh dear," Westchester said. "I'd hoped the two of you would be stupid enough not to check the case until you'd left. Ah, well..." He shuddered. His face took on a strange expression. His cheekbones, which had at first appeared low and flat, now seemed to protrude very prominently. Too prominently: they began to push through his skin, as if there were no muscle or blood between his bone and his skin. His whole body stretched and contorted, growing in size, his skin tearing like dry paper as his bones lengthened to hideous, monstrous proportions, the bones of his fingers and toes sharpened to knife-points, his teeth jutting out at disgusting angles, some the shape of pruning hooks, some swollen to huge, grinding cuboids that caused the very shape of his ever-more elongated skull to warp.

Captor and captive alike stared up in disgust and sheer confusion as Westchester transformed. Donnie may have been a superhuman himself but this - he'd never seen anything like it. No-one had. As the skeletal monstrosity bore down on Valora's captors, Fred drew a pistol, shot the ever-growing monster in the skull. The bullet went right through, but didn't seem to affect Westchester in the slightest. Noticing the ruckus, the other No-Laws abandoned their truck, peppering Westchester with bullets. But with a long stride Westchester vaulted over Donnie and Fred, and swatted their companions, sending them flying, and damned near shearing their truck in half.

"What the hell is he? What kind of superhuman can do... that?!" Valora was sickened at the sight of him, and trying to rack her brain for anything she knew about such a person. "A shapeshifter... no, more than that..." A distant memory, something Akwesi had off-handedly mentioned to her, about a 'bone-weirdo'. He hadn't been talking very seriously, and Valora hadn't paid him much attention. But if she was remembering right - and she was not sure that she was - then he'd been one of the Supremacist's top acolytes at one point. If that were the case, then it made sense that he was slumming it in a garage with the No-Law Gang: thanks to Enhancegirl, Valora herself, and Zjarrus the Supremacist had once again been dethroned, his acolytes scattered to the winds. What he wanted with Valora, though, was still a mystery. Nor was it something to which Valora could devote much thought: her enemies were arrayed against each other - she needed to use the opportunity. She had to try to break her bonds - she had to try to escape.

But the bonds were strong, and her enemies' battle did not look like it would last much longer. Westchester grasped at one of Fred's muscular legs, making a kind of shrieking roar that was at once ear-splittingly high and disturbingly low. Fingers as long each as the leg around which they curled closed around Fred's limb, and there was sickening snapping sound, preceding an agonised scream, a howl of pain almost as disturbing as the screeches issuing forth from his tormentor. Still holding him by his shattered leg, Westchester hurled him at the other No-Laws, knocking two of them down like bowling pins.

It would not have taken a coward to run from this monster, and Donnie was a coward. Halfway to screaming himself, he sprinted towards the all-too-distant exit with astonishing speed, certainly for a forty-five year old with a strained relationship with exercise. But if he'd been Roger Bannister it wouldn't have helped him. Now edging on being thirteen feet tall, Westchester's abominable form closed the distance between himself and Donnie in four earth-shaking strides. With agility that ought to have been quite impossible from such a misshapen, hunched monster, Westchester vaulted over Donnie, and flattened him against the ground with an open palm, a palm which continued to grow in size as it held him down, with a biting, gnawing, crunching, creaking groan.

"AHHHHHHHH!!" came Donnie's inevitably terrified screech, though it was just fear at that moment: Westchester was only holding him, not crushing him yet. "W-w-w-we can - uhh...!" His mouth moved by itself, sheer instinct getting him to try to bargain for his life. But the man himself knew he was going to die, knew that there was obviously no reasoning with the groaning, twisted monster looming over him. Westchester opened his mouth wide, so wide it looked as though his jaw would pop off completely. Donnie stared up in wordless fear, sure now that he was staring into the face of death itself. Certainly the face of his own death, for Westchester began to increase the pressure. There was a groan and a loud, hard, snap.

But that snap had not come from from Donnie's bones. For the skeletal abomination had devoted so much of his attention to the feeble threat of the No-Law Gang, he had quite forgotten that only real danger to him was lying bound and gagged a few metres away. Or rather, she had been until she'd - with sheer force of effort - snapped the ropes, and the latex sheath holding her down, with a single, furious burst of strength.

It hadn't been like being drugged. The insistent, treacherous weakness that had been forced upon her by those fiendish ropes wasn't like what Nyx had done to her at all. Chloroform, sleeping gas - even when one recovered, it lingered, hung on the body like tar. But not this. Her captors had got fancy this time and the result was that, with her bonds broken, Valora was back at full strength within a second. Within a second and a half, she had closed the distance between herself and Westchester, and closed one hand around his obscenely twisted, misshapen thigh.

"Ghhhkkkghghghkkhhh?" Westchester rattled, slowly turning his bloated, elongated skull towards the woman who, now, only came up to his hip.
"Okay," Valora said, "you win. You are the freakiest, most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life. I'm probably gonna be seeing you in my nightmares for weeks. So, uh... hats off for that. I'm still gonna stomp you, though, you freak."
Hissing, Westchester rotated his spine 180 degrees, and thrust his left hand at Valora like a sword. But, surprised and disgusted as she was by the monster's contortions, she reacted quickly enough to catch Westchester's hand. Catch it, and then deprive him of it.

Westchester gave a screeching, rumbling roar, forgetting Donnie entirely. He lunged at Valora with his other hand, but the bombshell blocked it with the first. Its fingers, disturbingly enough, still wriggled and groped at her, but it didn't matter all too much. It was perfectly clear that, though Westchester's monstrous body gave him great strength, it was no match for Valora's. She used Westchester's limb like a club, battering his calves, splintering one of them and shattering the other, before catching his falling body by its exposed spine and, grasping it with both hands, smashing Westchester into the ground with all her might, shattering his abominable, hideous body into a thousand fragments. It had taken about one-seventh of Valora's strength to do this, and somewhere between fifteen and thirty seconds.

Between screams and bouts of pant-soiling, hysterical terror, it had occurred to Donnie to wonder why, if Westchester were such a powerful superhuman in his own right, why he had bothered farming out the kidnapping of Valora to him and his crew. But in fact, Westchester had been perfectly intelligent: Valora was far beyond him. How far, then, was Valora beyond Donnie? Beyond measure, and he knew this. He knew it well enough that, when Valora turned her rich-blue eyes upon him, he didn't even try to run away.
"How hard," she said, "do you think I'm gonna have to punch you to make you break into a million pieces, huh?"
"Y-you're a superhero!" he screamed back, shuffling away from Valora like a small, upended crab. "You don't kill people!!"
"Tell that to Captain Calcium over there," Valora grunted, rolling her shoulders, throwing off the discomfort of having been tied up for so long. "Besides, I don't think you count as 'people'." In truth, Valora had no intention of killing him - but he didn't need to know that. After having the shame of capture inflicted on her, she was happy to watch him squirm in fear. She advanced on him, her beauty only adding to the fear she caused - for if such loveliness could be preserved unscathed, how much more powerful must she have been than some grizzled, scarred veteran? There was an angelic purity, an angelic deadliness about her as she advanced on Donnie. And then, just as she was about to slap him unconscious, she forgot entirely that he existed.

It was like having tunnel vision. Valora could see only straight in front of her, everything in her peripheral vision fading. No, that wasn't right: when she wasn't looking at the particular spot to which she was drawn, she couldn't see anything at all. But it was a moot point - she couldn't help looking where her eyes drew her. She felt a compulsion so powerful that she didn't even realise she was being compelled. Valora turned, and came upon the most arresting sight of her life.

A woman. She wasn't that tall, but she took up the whole of Valora's field of vision. She wasn't very muscular, but she seemed wrapped in strength. She wasn't very threatening, but she filled Valora with a kind of fascinated dread. Her hair was thick, and silver, and her skin seemed pricked through with gentle starlight. She wore dull, grey clothes - a simple vest and loose faux-fatigues - but she had an irresistible glamour to her. Her figure was curvaceous, fit, effortlessly sensual. Valora could not look away - there was simply nothing else to look at.

"Who... who are you?" Valora said, clenching her fists. She was ensorcelled, but not tranquilised: this was obviously an enemy - but of what kind? Valora knew that there was a spell, but could not break it.
"Valora," the woman said, and her voice rang in Valora's head like a tuning fork, struck over and over again. "Valora, do you really not know who I am?"
"No idea. What's happening? You're - you're doing something." There was a pressure on her, stifling, crushing: like a weight that could push her, but that she herself couldn't touch.

The silver-haired woman approached her, slowly. One could fairly call it a strut, but it had no arrogance to it. Seductive, but strangely unpretentious, almost as if this quality had been programmed into her. "I am Sinistrus," she said. "Does this name mean anything to you?"
"Not a god-damned thing," Valora said. She was lying, and it was very obvious that she was lying. Sinistrus was a name that any superhero worth their salt would know well and, were they any weaker than Valora, they'd know to fear, too. Sinistrus was the Supremacist's deadliest assassin. The hidden left-hand - the left-hand carrying the dagger. Many times had Valora heard that she was dead, many times had it seemed that at the very least the mantle had been passed on, but then another hero would fall at her hand, and Sinistrus' bloody legend would grow bloodier.

But for all her mystique, Sinistrus' presence made complete sense. Valora had probably remembered rightly about Westchester, that he was one of the Supremacist's groupies: he was working with Sinistrus. They had hired the No Laws to capture her. She'd helped to defeat their master, and now they wanted revenge. Well, that made things nice and simple.
"You want to tussle with me, huh?" Valora said. "That's just fine. That's just god-damned fine. What have you got? Some kinda telepathy?"
"Yes," Sinistrus replied, gently. "More or less."
"Well that must be just fantastic for you." Valora smirked. "See the thing is, unless you can control my mind or turn off my motor functions or something, you're shit out of luck. Can you do any of that?"
"No."
"Then get the hell down on the ground with your hands above your head. Or do you want to see how powerful I really am?"
"No, Valora," Sinistrus replied. "I'll do as you ask." She did. Fixing her pale eyes on Valora, she placed her hands on her forehead. "Like this?" Slowly she began to kneel, keeping Valora's eyes upon her. For, as long as Valora was talking to Sinistrus, as long as she felt she had a reason to devote every atom of her attention upon Sinistrus' silvery figure, then her incapacity to look away, her incapacity even to remember that there was such a thing as looking away was not remarkable. So she was not even trying to pull her gaze away from Sinistrus when it hit her.

How much time had passed since Sinistrus had pulled Valora into her all-too-subtle spell? Not more than a couple of minutes. As much as that even? Maybe. It all seemed to... dilate, somehow when you were in the eye of the storm. But it was enough for Westchester. It was more than enough. For his skeletal form was not just for show: there was truly something of the undead about him. So though he was shattered, he was not vanquished. As Valora and Sinistrus had traded words, he had pulled himself back together, his bones jumbling and squeezing and popping themselves back into place. He'd snatched up the ropes that Valora had snapped, and with two solid pieces of steel, he'd weighted the longest length of rope at each end. And then - he'd thrown.

"What?!" For Valora, it was if the attack truly had come out of nowhere, literally. One moment Sinistrus was surrendering to her, and the next - bound! A bolo whip had struck her in the back, spinning cords curling, winding binding the buxom beauty in a second, pulling her arms against her sides and her hands flat against her womanly waist, squeezing in her supple shoulders, pulling tight against her voluptuous bosom, ill-defended by her leotard. But then ropes weren't a threat to Valora. A flex of her shapely muscles would be all it would take. Just one. Just one that she couldn't seem to make. And then Valora noticed that the cord wrapped around her was glowing.

"Oh, shit!" In the instant she perceived her delectable torso bound, everything turned on its head. Now she was not forced into focusing on Sinistrus - now she was forced to forget her, and her mind was filled only with her immediate peril: that she had once again been trussed in cords that sapped her strength. She wheeled round on Westchester, seeing that he was not quite finished reassembling himself, his right leg still scuttling towards him. "You should have stayed in pieces!" Valora growled, baring her teeth like a hound. For her power was not wholly gone: her arms were restrained, but her shapely legs were no weaker. The suppressing, stifling weakness of her upper body went no further than her waist. She had enough power in one leg, one foot even, to smash the skeletal monster into dust.

But for all her strength, Valora had still not comprehended the nature of Sinistrus' powers. The Left Hand was a telepath, yes, but not one like Insyte or Psy-Clone: her weapon was subtler. She controlled attention, could deflect it around her to make herself all but invisible, or could draw every quantum of attention towards herself. When Westchester had been preparing to ensnare Valora, Sinistrus had drawn all of the blonde's attention to her. When she'd been ensnared, Sinistrus made Valora forget her - and now that she was about to attack her would-be captor again... Sinistrus just flipped the switch the other way.

It worked exactly as Sinistrus had hoped it would. Without thinking, Valora turned on Sinistrus again, kept from recognising the contradiction in her actions. As the silver-haired siren came back into view, Valora did for a moment register that, even though she could no longer remember what it was, she had had a reason to turn away from Sinistrus. But that was too little, much too late. As she wrestled with the cognitive dissonance of both knowing that Westchester was the one responsible for tying her up and not recognising anyone but Sinistrus as being a threat, or indeed being present at all, she gave her enemies all the opportunity they needed.

"What?" Whipping and whistling and curling and grasping were the ropes, pulling and tugging and coiling and squeezing were the ropes as they struck Valora's long, womanly legs. From the middle of her thighs to the top of her ankles they spun around, her legs snapping together with an audible slap, the cords stealing her legs' strength even as they wound around them. Valora tried to strain, but her muscles wouldn't obey her. She tried to fight back, but her strength was stifled. She tried to stand, but she'd been recaptured too quickly. Her legs betrayed her, and she fell. Valora fell.

She was turning as she tripped, so she fell on her back. With a loud grunt she hit the floor, her buxom chest visibly bouncing with the impact. It had happened so fast, so disorientingly that she scarcely understood why she was in the position she was in. She'd been toppled, trussed, and completely outmanoeuvred. "Nghh... ngghhh!" She strained, trying to escape her bonds as she'd done before. But the last time it had taken her half an hour to build up the strength to burst her bonds. The ropes creaked as she writhed, but they seemed in no danger of snapping. Another heroine in Valora's position might have called for help, or perhaps looked for something sharp to cut her bonds. But for Valora, there was no point seeking outside aid. In her mind, an obstacle that her strength could not overcome could not be overcome at all.

With that same catwalk strut Sinistrus approached the squirming, trussed blonde, her eyes roving with a systematic lust over Valora's satin-covered legs, her voluptuous figure, her proud, beautiful face. Valora raised her legs to try to kick her, but Sinistrus easily pushed them aside. Valora was not able to raise them again. Shocked at how easily her attempt had been dismissed, Valora tried to sit up, but found that she could not do this either. But this was only partly because of the muscle-relaxing effect of the ropes. It was mostly because Sinistrus was sitting on top of her, straddling her, holding her captive against the ground with a hand between her breasts.

"Get your god-damned hands off me!" Valora hissed.
"Why?" Sinistrus replied, gently. "It feels so nice having them on you." She spread her fingers wider, over both of Valora's bosoms, pressing just a little too hard for it to feel pleasant. "And I have no reason to be afraid of making you angry, do I? There's nothing you can do about it." She began moving her hand up, over Valora's sternum, up to her throat. "It's extraordinary, Valora. For one so powerful - so bulletproof - you're so soft..." She caressed Valora's neck, her cheeks, even twirled a few strands of Valora's flaxen hair between her fingers.
"I'll show you soft, you - MMPHH!!" Indignity of indignities, the mighty heroine found her fierce voice stifled and muffled by a slim, supple hand. A smooth palm pressed down over Valora's pillowy, pink lips, pressing into them, making sure they couldn't open. Thin, strong fingers curled around Valora's jaw and her cheeks, squeezing, clutching, muzzling. "Mgghphh...! Mm-MMMPBBBFFF!!" Valora protested, her blue eyes wild with fury, but her body tame with weakness. She turned her head from side to side, shaking her golden locks about her head, but not even coming close to dislodging the hand gagging her.

"You see," Sinistrus said, "you are soft, Valora. Your skin... your lips... your hair..." With her other hand, she stroked Valora's hair with what could almost have been genuine tenderness. "But there's nothing softer, Valora," she said, "than your mind."
"Mrrrgggffff!!" Valora growled, a hot discomfort building beneath her heavy bosom. The claustrophobic embarrassment of capture and bondage, and now this woman straddling her, muzzling her with her smooth palm and grinding against her hips. She couldn't get her off, couldn't stop her from... taking advantage. It was maddening.

In fact, it was close to unbearable. It wasn't just the grinding, the pressure and the tingling of it. Nor was it just Sinistrus' hand on her mouth, stifling, hot and rapacious. It was that she found herself inextricably drawn to Sinistrus. Her eyes couldn't pull away, from her captor's sensuous frame, and it was a sensation so at odds with Valora's embarrassment and rage that she finally began to realise the nature of her foe's powers.
"She can make me look at her, or something... and make me look away as well. That's how they captured me - I kept forgetting she was there." A pulse of humiliation throbbed through her at this epiphany. "That's... that's all it took? Some pissy little magic trick? I'm one of the strongest superhumans around and that's how they captured me?!"

"Now that I have you, Valora," Sinistrus said, "there's all kinds of ways that I could keep you subdued. I could use chloroform, or halothane, to send you to sleep. I could give you a drug to paralyse you, make you limp as a fish. But I'm not going to." She reached into a pocket, took out something that glinted in the harsh light of the underground parking lot. It was a simple necklace: a piece of silver in a teardrop shape attached by a small ring to a thin, silver chain.

"It's just a necklace," Sinistrus said. "It's just an ordinary, silver necklace. It's no threat to you, right? There's no way such a small thing could harm someone like you." Slowly, she began swinging the necklace back and forth, like a pendulum. It caught the light at the two crests of its swing. "Just watch it, Valora. Just watch the necklace swing from one side... to the other..."
Valora wanted to laugh. "You're kidding me. She's trying to hypnotise me? She's trying to hypnotise me? Oh, yeah, that'll do it." Part of the reason it seemed so stupid was that, Valora thought, she could just look away, or close her eyes. She certainly tried to. It was only when her third attempt failed that she began to feel just a hint of fear. She couldn't look away from the necklace. Sinistrus wasn't letting her.

"You can't take your eyes off it, can you, Valora?" Sinistrus said. Her voice was getting softer. She looked into Valora's eyes with great gentleness. "It's nice to look into it. It's nice to hear my voice. It's nice to let yourself relax..."
"Mrghhphh! Mmmhhh-mhhphh!" Valora growled, trying again to strain and twist in the ropes that bound her feminine body, that pressed her gorgeous limbs together - but for all her anger, nothing was accomplished. She couldn't move. She couldn't even avert her eyes.
"No, no, no, Valora," Sinistrus cooed. "You don't want to struggle. You just want to lie down... you just want to rest..."
"Mrrhhph... mrrgghhhmmhh..." It wasn't true, of course, that Valora just wanted to rest, but she could feel it threatening to become true. She felt warm. She felt heavy, but not in an uncomfortable way. The stifling weakness in her limbs now felt almost... pleasant. "What the hell? What's... what's happening?"

"When I received the order," Sinistrus said, "to kidnap you, Valora, I was a little worried at first. You're very powerful, so I thought I might be biting off more than I could chew. Of course you're a flea compared to the Supremacist - but then so am I." She kept swinging the necklace. She eased the pressure on Valora's mouth. Her touch began to feel more tender. "But then I saw those pictures that Nyx woman published of you and Enhancegirl. I saw news footage of you trying to battle my master in single combat. I realised that, while care was called for, you're little more than a fool with powerful fists. I realised that I could just wrap you... around... my little finger..." Her own silver hair glinted the same colour as the necklace. Valora felt insulted, angered, but there was something else in her too now. Relaxation, like a snake, was coiling slowly around her.

"The ropes don't feel like ropes anymore, Valora," Sinistrus said, lowering her voice to a sensual whisper that tickled the edges of Valora's senses. "They don't feel harsh, and tight... they feel like an embrace... like an embrace it's good to surrender to..."
"Mmphhh..." Valora whimpered. "This is... bullshit... just ignore it..." But she couldn't ignore it. The grip of the bonds wrapped around her body did take on a different colour, did start to feel less uncomfortable. She could feel sweat on her brow, sweat between her thighs making her tights damp, sweat between her bosoms caressing her creamy skin. She felt Sinistrus' hips gyrating against hers, felt Sinistrus' hand rubbing against her pillowy lips, felt the silver-haired sylph dominating her moaning, voluptuous captive, suppressing and controlling her. She tried to wield her anger in response, but it wouldn't come. With horror, Valora realised that it was working. "She's... hypnotising me...!"

The necklace continued to swing, and Valora continued to be drawn deeper, and deeper. "You're so relaxed, Valora... so heavy... so sleepy..."
"Nhh..." Valora protested, though she felt her psyche cry "Yes!" in an overwhelming chorus. She was dangling from the precipice, holding on by one finger. She knew she was close to succumbing, and knowing this only made succumbing more likely, for being brought even this far was humiliating, and that humiliation ran warm and suppressing in her blood.
"Don't fight, Valora. Don't fight. Just let it happen. Let yourself fade... let yourself fall..."
"Mmhhghh... mhhhff..." Valora felt the blanket enshrouding her. Her eyes flitted lazily from left to right as they followed Sinistrus' necklace, pulsing a slow, hypnotic rhythm into her body. Her bosom heaved beneath her leotard, her shoulders wriggling and shifting, but with a sensuous regularity now. "I'm... I'm losing..."

Sinistrus began to grind against Valora with more vigour now: slower, but harder, squeezing her from either side between her thighs, massaging her hips and her waist with the same rhythm as the swinging pendulum. "It doesn't matter that I'm a woman," Sinistrus whispered. "It feels pleasant... this defeat feels so pleasant... so warm and tingly... and it makes you want to sink, doesn't it? Sink into a deep... deep trance..."
"Mmmmmmmhhhhhhh..." Valora sighed, eyes growing blank, half-lidded. "No... no I have to keep fighting... always... fighting..." She felt her focus drawn to Sinistrus' hand on her mouth. She pushed against it, pushed with her soft, sweet lips. Lips that had kissed plenty of mouths. Oh, Valora had had a surfeit of lovers - she had a boyfriend going at that moment, as it happened - but she'd never been in love. Never even been close to being in love. Suddenly she found that she wasn't pushing Sinistrus' hand away. Even though it gagged her, she kissed it. Because it gagged her, she kissed it. "Wh... what am I doing?" Valora was cognizant, still. She was aware of what was happening, aware enough to realise that she was being hypnotised, mollified - but not wakeful enough to resist. She had fallen off the precipice now: it was simply that she had not yet hit the ground.

Slowly, Sinistrus began to move her hand away from Valora's mouth, tracing her captive's lips with her index finger just before she withdrew it. "You," Sinistrus said, "are completely in my power, aren't you?"
"N...hh..." Valora mewed, but it was the merest shadow of protest. As Sinistrus pushed tighter against Valora's hips, the voluptuous blonde crimsoned, and her aspect settled into an even more subdued one. She barely seemed awake, but for the regular motion of her half-closed eyes, left to right, left to right...

"You want me to do this, Valora," Sinistrus said, a quiver of pleasure tinging her own voice, as she lowered with trepidation the zip of Valora's leotard, all the way down to her navel. Her cleavage was completely exposed, her leotard only barely keeping the smallest traces of her modesty intact. "You feel so tired... so sleepy... so warm..."
"So... sleepy..." Valora mumbled.
"You have no power left, do you?"
"No... no power..."
"You're completely hypnotised," Sinistrus whispered. "You're completely helpless."
"Completely hypnotised..." Valora sighed. "Completely... helpless..."

It was done. Valora - Mighty Maiden of Maine, Vanquisher of the Vorpal Twelve - had been absolutely defeated.

Very nice! It's got it all; the physical and mental domination of the heroine from a colourful assortment of villains.

Valora lay, trussed and subdued, on the hard concrete ground. Her eyes were half open, sleepy and blank. Her shoulders sagged. Her cheeks blushed. Her bosom heaved, and heaved all the more for the hands curled around them, massaging them, fondling them like a sculptor working high-quality clay. There was, deep within Valora's mind, a vague wish for resistance, but it would not come to the surface. For, with a combination of genuine, quite humanly achievable hypnotism and her own attention-seizing powers, Sinistrus, the Supremacist's deadliest servant, had mesmerised the mighty, golden haired warrior. She had captured her.

And with her captive, Sinistrus was achingly tender. She kissed her neck, her face, her breasts. She ran her fingers through Valora's golden tresses, twirling them, smelling them. But no passion for her voluptuous victim beat in Sinistrus' breast. What Nyx, or Cybelle, or Mesmeredith might do with aplomb and delight, Sinistrus did only to observe the forms. She was not a machine: as she squeezed Valora with her thighs, ground against her hips with her own, pressed her bosoms against Valora's fantastically buxom chest, she did feel jolts of pleasure - but it was sensation without emotion. For Lissandra Tomislav - a name Sinistrus used only very rarely - a lifetime of control by Martin Sontag had squeezed most of the emotion out of her. She'd had to crush it down. Had to cut it away.

Nevertheless, she imitated the dominating lover very nicely. She even whispered sweet nothings into the hypnotised heroine's ear.
"Such a beautiful woman," Sinistrus cooed, "such a beautiful body. Such a strong body. But such a weak mind."
"Weak... mind..." Valora repeated, wrapped absolutely around her captor's finger.
"Stand," Sinistrus commanded, and Valora obeyed. At least, she tried to: she was still tied up, and Sinistrus had to help her, gently tugging her upward by her underarms. She could remain on her feet, just about, but she swayed slightly, like a tree in a light breeze.

Sinistrus slowly walked around her victim, tracing her finger around Valora's lower lip, her jawline. Standing behind the blonde, Sinistrus pulled herself close, wrapped her arms like tendrils across her body. She embraced the shapely damsel, brushed her nose lovingly against Valora's soft neck. She slipped her hands beneath Valora's heavy bosom and cupped them, squashing and teasing. Her captive blushed, gave a long, sonorous sigh. There was still just the faintest trace of disbelief in her expression, a rabbit-in-headlights look that only served to make the scantily clad blonde seem all the more powerless.
"You'll repeat what I say, Valora," Sinistrus said, kissing Valora's neck, "won't you?"
"Yes..."
"You want to obey me, don't you?"
"I want... to obey you..."
"It feels good to obey me, doesn't it?"
"It... feels good... to obey you..." Valora mumbled, shivered slightly.

Sinistrus buried her face in Valora's thick, golden hair, smelling it, kissing it, then kissing her neck, her trapezoids. With her teeth Sinistrus gripped the edge of Valora's leotard, yanked it to the side, exposing Valora's white shoulder, her decolletage, most of her right breast. Valora didn't even look, just kept staring blankly ahead, mind shackled more thoroughly than her sensuous frame. With her hair ruffled, her clothes dishevelled, the sweat on her skin, her blush, her moans - to the untrained eye Valora looked as much ravished as ravishing.
"Your will has been stolen," Sinistrus whispered.
"My will has been stolen," Valora repeated.
"You're the Supremacist's slave."
"I'm the Supremacist's slave."
"You're his mindless, obedient slave-girl."
"I'm his mindless, obedient slave-girl."
"In fact, you're so obedient, that if we told you to kill, you would."
"If you told me to kill, I would..."

In fact, this was not true. Sinistrus had imposed the trance on Valora with supernatural assistance, but the trance itself was nothing more than what a common or garden hypnotist could achieve. Sinistrus could no more make Valora murder than she could make her fly. But she could certainly make her say that she would kill. And, as it happened, that was all that Sinistrus required.
"Very good, Valora, very good," Sinistrus cooed. She started stroking Valora's hair, very softly. Very slowly. "It's all finished now."
"Finished now..." Valora murmured.
"Done your duty now, haven't you?" Sinistrus said, pressing her nose against Valora's ear, her voice tinged with the hush of a rolling wave. "It's all alright now."
"All... alright..."
"Shhhhh now, Valora... shhhhhh... all the fighting's over now..."
"Over now..."
"So sleep, Valora. You're beaten. You're helpless. You're captured. So you might... as well... sleeeeeep..."

"Why is it so easy?" Even entranced, even controlled, Valora could just about summon up the perspicacity to wonder that. She wondered why a dark, submerging haze was wrapping itself around her consciousness, sapping will, sapping wakefulness, drawing her down with a sinister, opioid pleasure. She wondered why her nylon-clad legs were giving way beneath her, why her head was swaying from one side to the other. She wondered why her eyelids felt so heavy, why her baby-blue eyes fluttered shut. But she did not pursue this curiosity. She merely observed it, yielding herself up to the chasm of slumber yawning beneath her. And so, again, Valora fell.

It had not mattered that Valora could take a shotgun blast to the face without flinching. It had not mattered that Valora could bench-press an industrial crane. It had not mattered that hundreds of her enemies had shaken - physically shaken - with fear upon being faced with her. A few swings of a glistening necklace and some honeyed words had had her purring like a kitten. And so Valora wilted into the arms of a woman that she could have crushed like an ant, fell like a wounded bird, fell like a fainting, overpassioned lover. Sinistrus clutched her shoulder, pulled her close against her chest. Valora's head slipped back, her blonde hair trailing downwards, her throat exposed, her half-undone leotard threatening to slip off entirely, clutching against her limp body almost teasingly. Her womanly thighs were clutched, pushed together, slowly lifted, until Valora was being cradled in the air, carried and caught and captive. She was vanquished, utterly. It was over.

But what of Westchester? The skeletal monster was a monster no longer: he had, as Sinistrus had mesmerised Valora, pulled himself back together, his skin creaking like rubber as it stretched back over him, his bones grinding and creaking as they shrank back to human proportions. He'd watched as Valora had fallen under Sinistrus' spell, but not idly. He'd listened as she'd confessed her helplessness, but not just as an audience. He'd recorded it. He'd filmed it.
"What now?" he asked, not entirely displeased with the sight in front of him.
"Now," Sinistrus replied, looking down with an almost maternal gentleness at the tall, buxom maiden she'd overthrown, "everything else begins. Contact Bulkup and Protea. They can begin tonight. Tell them to avoid major cities, at least for now."
"Fine. What about her?"
"Oh, Valora?" Sinistrus held her a little tighter. "She's of little consequence now. But the Supremacist wants her to be able... to watch. Take her to Gila County."
"Gila?" Westchester replied, not understanding at first. But a moment later, a look of astonished, pleased surprise took hold of his thick, square features. "You mean the Pit?"
"I do," Sinistrus replied. "The arrangements have been made."

She carried Valora a few steps forward, looked up at the grey ceiling of the parking lot. "Oh," Sinistrus muttered. "I hadn't thought of that. Silly."
"Hadn't thought of what?"
"You can't see the stars from here. I was going to let Valora look at them."
"Oh yeah?" Westchester asked, with quite genuine friendliness. "Why's that?"
Sinistrus shivered. She seemed all at once elated and sorrowful. She lifted Valora a little higher, and kissed her on one of her soft, smooth cheeks. "It's because," she explained, "she'll never see them again."
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"What?" Valora wasn't groggy when she woke up. She wasn't even tired. She went right from being completely unconscious to completely awake. She sat up with a start. She shook her head, spreading her blonde hair about her. She flexed her fingers, her toes. She got up (what had she been lying on? a mattress?), she blinked. She looked down at herself: fully clothed. She looked around: was it the same place that she'd been recaptured in? It was grey, concrete, no windows. It could easily have been underground.

Wait - back two steps. She'd been recaptured! That Sinistrus woman had tricked her and ensnared her and - and -
"And hypnotised me..." The memory burned, but there was no time to indulge her feeling. She had to know where she was. She had to know what had happened. She wasn't bound anymore. Why? Had they thought she'd stay asleep? Her back hurt. It wasn't much, but it stung a little, near her lowest vertebra. Not important. Where was she? Why had she been taken?

Her back hurt. Her back. She rarely felt pain at all, even as minor as this. Maybe it was important. Where was she? The room was small. Was it a room? It could have been a cupboard. No - there was a mattress, a sink, a toilet. All in one room. One tiny room. One tiny cell? Was she being kept prisoner? Square walls, square ceiling, square floor - but no bars. Just a door. Thick door, heavy door, but just that. Was it locked? Didn't matter. Valora could break through. But she felt weird. Her back hurt.

She had to shake it off. Had to find out what was happening. Had to find someone, beat it out of them. The door opened. Someone walked in a woman in drab clothes, but a pretty woman. That didn't matter either. Valora pushed past her. She fell on the floor, yelled "Hey!" but Valora ignored her. Walked out. Looked. Looked back inside. Looked out again. She blinked. She kept looking. She kept looking but it didn't make any sense.

How could you describe it? It was like a tunnel, a huge tunnel with a gaping, hundred metre across mouth. Except the tunnel didn't go forward. It went up. So not tunnel - funnel. Yes, like a big funnel, with concrete stairs that spiralled up, up, up and great metal scaffolds and catwalks everywhere. Down, a great, flat floor, made of metal, with lots of people. Sitting, talking, eating, shouting, fighting. Doors everywhere. On every landing dozens and dozens of doors in a great circle, thirty in a great ring. Doors like the one Valora had walked out of. Everyone in the same drab clothing. Everyone a woman.

Valora looked up. She thought she saw the sky, a perfect circle of blue sky directly over them. But it was too perfect. Too blue. It wasn't the sky at all it was - it was - she didn't know what it was. She just stared at it. Horror. Horror in her anger, a mix like pepper in coffee. She was confused. She was so confused. Her back hurt.

"Quite a sight, huh?" It was the other. The one she'd pushed. She was on her feet. She seemed fine even after Valora had shoved her. She had dull, brown hair, close-together eyes, big teeth. Not so pretty on the second look.
"What is it?" Valora asked. She was in a dream. She felt quite distinctly that she was dreaming. Everything was strange. Who was this person? Why was she talking to her?
"I don't think it has a proper name. People call it 'the Door' or 'the Gate' or 'the Barrier', 'cause that's what it is." She had an accent. Valora couldn't place it. It was strong, though. A mix of lots of things. "Clever girls call it 'the Membrane'. 'Cause stuff goes in, but doesn't go out. I'd say you're a clever girl, but then - heehee! - you got chucked in the Pit, didn't you?"

"The Pit?" This meant something to her. This was something she understood. But it didn't make things better. It was, perhaps, the worst thing the big-toothed woman could have said. Valora was perhaps incapable of true panic, but she was as close as she could be. She was breathing hard, sweating. She was almost trembling. "No," she mumbled. "That... that hasn't - hey!" She turned on the big-toothed woman, grabbed her by her collar. "Where's Sinistrus?"
"Uh... who?"
"The woman, the - she has grey hair! Works for the Supremacist! She must have brought me here. Where is she?!"
"Well, she mighta been the one who dumped you through the Membrane, but I didn't see her. Senza was the one who lugged your sleepy ass down - OW!"

Valora had pushed her out of the way again. Actually that wasn't right: she'd just pushed her. She hadn't been in Valora's way at all. In fact, Valora pushed her, then turned directly on her heel. She clambered up the metre-high, steel railing along the catwalk, and leapt off.
"Urrghh!" Valora hadn't gone as far forward as she'd expected, and landed hard against the metal floor. Only her great durability prevented her ankles from shattering from the impact, which made a great clang, drawing the attention of all the women there. It even caught the attention of two who had been in the middle of an honest-to-goodness knife fight. They all saw her. They all froze. Confusion in the eyes of most. Fear in many. Superhuman energy building in two. A few of the women put up their respective dukes, expecting to have to defend themselves. From one hand, lightning crackled. In another, a kind of purple smoke. They were superhumans. Were they all superhumans?

"Okay," Valora said, striding forward, flexing her fingers in their deep red gloves, swishing her red cape behind her. "You." She pointed at the nearest woman that she could tell for sure was afraid. "Where am I? What is this place?"
"Y-you're in the Pit," the woman replied, evidently surprised that this was knowledge that Valora lacked. "Everyone h-here's too dangerous for normal jail, but not high priority enough for the Penitentiary Supreme or the Ultramax in Maricopa County."
"Jail? This is a jail?" Valora shouted, but her voice didn't carry quite as fiercely as it should have done. "Where are the guards?"
There was some nervous laughter.
"Hey, ain't you Valora?" one of them said. "Like... with the costume and everything?"
"Shut the fuck up!" Valora barked. "Answer my question: where are the guards?!"
"There are no guards."

How she'd come by it, when everyone else was in drab beigerie, Valora couldn't say. A long, leather duster, that framed her wiry, bony body surprisingly well. Cheap leather, maybe even fake, but it still looked decent. She was tall, taller than Spectra even - with a dark, orange, messy afro. She had marks on her face, marks that would have looked like scars in worse light. But they were tattoos, tattoos made to look like chisel marks in her flesh. She strode with confidence, with a sashaying charisma that was, probably, a bit of a performance, but a performance for herself rather for others. She was only a couple of years older than Valora herself, but she looked older.
"There are no guards," she repeated. "Guards cost. That's the whole point of the Pit, girl. We're left to our own devices down here. No rules but what we make for ourselves." She was floating, floating on a visible bed of steam beneath her feet, lowering herself grandly into the centre of the assembly. Everyone near where she was going to land moved away, fast. Evidently she was capable of more than just floating from the way the others looked at her. Some were making a show of not being intimidated - but they all were. "I'm Senza, by the way. Senza Boitano. Maybe you've heard of me, huh?"

Not only had Valora not heard of her, she didn't even really hear her say it. "I don't... you can fly?" Valora gestured upwards. "Why don't you just leave? Oh, the Membrane - but... can't you...? Wait - no! No, I don't care. I don't care. I'm leaving. I don't care what kind of - this is bullshit... this is bullshit!" She stumbled forward, in a sort of daze. "I'll beat you - beat you all!" She began to lope towards them, clenching her fists. Most of the women in her way backed off. One of them, a kleptomaniac named Vivian who had so little power it was barely worth mentioning, rushed forward in a near-suicidal charge. It was laughable. The other women started wincing in anticipation of what Valora was about to do to her. She swung, she missed. Valora drew her own fist back. She didn't miss.

But she didn't accomplish much.

"Ow!" the blowhard cried out. "That hurt!" She had a small, red mark on her cheek. Valora's punch hadn't even broken her skin. It hadn't even knocked her over.
"What?" Valora stared. The whole crowd stared. Valora hit Vivian again, and this time she did knock her down - but it had taken as much effort as it normally took Valora to smash through reinforced steel. "You're... you're tough, huh?" Valora spat, trying to psych herself up. "Superhumanly durable, I'm guessing."
"Uh, no," Vivian said, sounding as confused as Valora. "I'm flame-resistant. That's all." A smile flickered on her face. "That punch should have turned me into a smear, shouldn't it? What's wrong? Lose your mojo?" She sneered. Valora saw others beginning to smile as well, their fear beginning to fade. Valora heard laughter, at her, and she saw red.

Valora grabbed Vivian by the hair, growling with rage, pulled her up to her feet, tried then to shove her back down. But Vivian grappled with her. Grabbed her hands and wrestled with her like they were Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior or something. Eventually Valora managed to push her off, kick her in the hip and knock her down more-or-less for good this time, but it was still wrong. Valora wasn't strong. Vivian was quite a small woman but Valora had barely managed to overpower her. "What did they do to me?"

"Oh," Senza said. "Now isn't that interesting? Not been working out, babe?"
Valora didn't understand. If something was wrong with her powers, how had she been able to jump down from that high ledge without breaking her ankles? She knew of certain superhumans, thankfully extraordinarily rare, who could suppress, destroy or outright steal powers. Had that happened to her? Had they taken her abilities away?
"AAGGGHHH!!" As Valora had pondered, a second woman had tried her luck, grabbing a fork and lunging at Valora with it, sticking the prongs directly into Valora's neck.
"Unnh!" Valora grunted, falling back a couple of steps, unused to having to brace herself with such force. Her hand went up to her neck, but there was no injury. The fork-wielder could not say the same: she'd badly hurt her wrist, and the fork was bent completely out of shape.
"What the hell?!" Valora stared. "I'm still tough, but - my strength..." She looked at the ring of women gingerly approaching her, still unsure of whether she was powerless, or still as legendarily mighty as ever. But not all of them were ignorant. Senza understood. She saw Valora, beautiful and proud, and cast down into a den of sinners, in her cape and her satin tights and her all-too-perfect body. She knew how the hero had been brought low, and she wanted to bring her lower.
"No reason to be scared, girls," Senza said. "She's tough, but you can take her."
"How are we supposed to do that?" another yelled. "She's indestructible!"
"I'm not asking you to destroy her, am I?" Senza replied. "I'm asking you to take her."
Like a ripple, the realisation swept through the assembly. Like a wave, the intimidation in their expressions shifted to rapaciousness. Like a storm, they descended on her.

The first one Valora dodged, then knocked over with a vicious shoulder-barge. The second she head-butted, her durability meaning that she knocked the jailbird unconscious while barely feeling a thing herself. The third tried to trip her, and failed, but Valora's counterpunch didn't do much. She went off-balance, and that was all it took for the rest of them to overpower her. One woman caught Valora's left arm, another her right, and together they brought Valora down.

"NO!!" Valora bellowed, still a battle-cry rather than a plea, but a desperate one nevertheless. She hit the floor, the cold, hard metal pushing against the warm, curvy softness of her body. Perhaps a dozen hands grabbed at her as she landed, forcing her arms behind her back, clutching her once-mighty shoulders, holding and squeezing and groping her long legs, forcing them down, and together. "Get off me! Get the fuck off me, you little bastards! You pond-scum! You - gghhpfff!" Something stuffed into her mouth, a cloth or a rag keeping her tongue from moving, foul-tasting and sour. She tried to spit it out, but a strong, calloused hand slamming down over her mouth, fingers curling around her jaw, her cheeks, pushing against her lips, muzzling her instantly.

"NNMMHHH!!" Valora cried, feeling the sound of her voice absorbed by the strong hand gagging her, the heat of their palm on her lips, the frustration of not being able to spit out the cloth stuffed in her mouth. But she couldn't focus on one humiliation for long: the mob had plenty more to give her. One of them cried 'tie the bitch up!', and suddenly Valora felt her wrists crossed, her ankles pressed together. She heard a whipping sound, laughter, and then - rope.

Thick, brown, rough and strong. They all seemed to be holding some, and it was all going around Valora, all binding her, all trussing and seizing and shaming, all reducing and hobbling. They laughed as they lashed it around her, shrieked with delight as they realised that it was really happening, that they were tying up Valora - and she couldn't do anything about it! It didn't even seem to be multiple lengths of rope, but one great, hemp serpent devouring her - or at least devouring her dignity. Her wrists, her shapely arms ensnared, elbows fixed together; her shoulders were pulled back by the strictness of her arms' bondage, her upper arms forming a fixed, rigid triangle. At the same time her legs were bound, too: her ankles tied so tight her boots creaked like a falling oak. Two different women lashed up her calves and her thighs, one curling loop after loop of rope just under Valora's smooth knees, the other roughly trussing rope roughly where the hem of a short skirt would end, the rope biting into Valora's soft, yielding flesh - unable to damage, but perfectly well able to restrain.

"NNNMMMGGHHHH!! MMMMMMMMMMPPPPHHHH!!!" Valora screamed, thrashing this way and that, aghast as she felt them wrapping her in yards of rope, snaking it around her legs, her torso, turning her on her side to snake it around her stomach; below, above, across and even between her vigorously jiggling, voluptuous breasts, that every prisoner in reach thrust their hand in to cop a good feel of, only being stopped by the relentless increase of her bondage. They spun her over and over on the ground, disorienting her, trussing her from head to toe, binding the buxom maiden more strictly than she'd ever been bound before. The woman gagging her with her palm kept getting jostled, so eventually she decided to make the gag a more lasting fixture, taking a leather belt and slapping it over Valora's lips, curling it round one, two, three times, before tying it off, not only gagging Valora securely, but also compressing her long, thick blonde hair against the sides of her head. The delighted screeching and cackling only grew more intense at the sight of her bound and gagged: a mighty heroine reduced to a writhing, moaning damsel.

"Yeah, how'd you like that, blondie?"
"Bet you you're not feeling so high and mighty now, Valora!"
"Bet you're wishing you didn't leave so little to the imagination, huh?!" one laughed, reaching in to cajole the others into laying the bound bombshell on her front, before thrusting out with both hands, and grabbing Valora's shapely, womanly ass, squeezing and smacking it, as other began pawing at her legs, massaging and stroking and grabbing, her tights tearing as they took their pleasure of her.

"NHHHRRRMMMPHH! MMMHHHHHHPPPHHHHHH!!" Valora growled, feeling the mob feverishly groping her. Like people using a Ouija board, their hands seemed to have a collective will of their own, and Valora was turned onto her back. She saw their faces, cruel and jeering and lustful, and a cold jolt of fear shot through her, that she was at the absolute mercy of this mob, and One of them unzipped her leotard, with such force that she broke the zip, and as Valora roared her muffled protests, her leotard was pulled open, and dirty hands began pawing at her chest, pulling her breasts free of the blue fabric, yanking off her bra with enough force to split the strap in two, denuding her bosoms completely.
"Oh my god, look at the size of those things!" one of them cooed.
Another pushed their way to the front, and to Valora's horror she roughly grabbed the blonde maiden's ample bust, squeezing and caressing Valora's milky skin, teasing with her thumbs Valora's rosy, tender buds. "Oh man... oh man... you know just looking I thought for sure she'd had work done, but these are all natural!"
There was a shrieking, hysterical glee as Valora was exposed. She cried out in furious, apoplectic protest, but her gagged cries only egged them on. It seemed like there were a thousand hands writhing all over her, yanking at her clothes, exposing and grasping her voluptuous body, the fallen beauty a mouth-watering morsel for mouths that were dreadfully hungry. Valora heard her leotard tearing, being pulled apart, felt the hands touching her everywhere, screaming in mad rage, still unbelieving, helpless and tied and gagged and weak, weak, weak!

A thunderclap. An actual thunderclap, from a thick, charcoal-grey cloud above the mob's heads, lightning striking from it, painfully zapping three of Valora's assailants, and sending several more running for cover. It was Senza, her mastery of weather patterns making this localised thunderstorm easy to create. But when even this didn't get the mob to disperse completely, the cloud-compeller opted for a simpler solution: rain.
"Aaaahhhh!!" went up the cry, the shock of the water putting a dampening on even the most vicious spirits. No-one tried to argue against Senza's watery rebuke - no-one dared. And so they moved aside, revealing the extent of what they'd done.

Valora panted. Her cheeks were red, as much with exhaustion from her anger as from embarrassment. Her naked bosom, glistening from Senza's rain, heaved deeply, stroked with each breath by the tattered remains of her leotard. Her whole body was soaking wet now, her long, pleasingly rounded legs stripped of hosiery and shining from the water, unharmed by the mob's molestations, but quivering from them. The coarse rope had swollen as it took on water, securing even more tightly the divinely sculpted maiden they had captured. They cinched into the flesh of her curvaceous body, into soft skin that yielded humbly to their rapacious bite. And Valora did not cry out. She did not roar or growl or even struggle much. In this situation, this terrible panoply of intense, sensual humiliation, she just couldn't process it. She wasn't drugged, or hypnotised, or anything - but she was weak. She was tied up and she couldn't escape. Two dozen women had stripped and groped her and she hadn't been able to do a thing about it. She was locked into a mental loop of bewilderment, impotent anger, and terrible shame.

"Uggghhhh!" Senza shouted, brushing water off her own face. "You know girls, it's shit like this that makes people support the death penalty. Ravening a noble hero like a bunch of hungry jackal-bitches. Tsk tsk tsk." She slunk slowly towards where Valora was lying, leaned over her. "Look at what you did, huh?" she shouted over her shoulder. "So unwelcoming." She looked down, arms akimbo, at the captive beauty lying at her feet. She looked at her bare, wet breasts, her quivering thighs, the strands of hair that clung to her lovely face. "Aww, sweetheart, they treated you so mean, huh? Don't you worry, I'll put a stop to it." She waved her hands, and cloud poured from them, wrapping softly around Valora's body, and gently pulling her to her feet.
"Mmmphhh?" Valora whimpered, as Senza put her hands on her shoulders, and embraced her, warmly and sweetly.
"There now, dollface," Senza cooed. "Aww, I'd be shivering too if I were you." She broke the embrace, but kept hold of the heroine's shoulders.
"Mmmmhhh... mmphhh..." Valora couldn't look Senza in the eye, couldn't focus on her, couldn't do anything except stand there, dripping and softly mewing.
"Aww, babe, I can't believe they gagged you. That's so cruel. Here, lemme get that for you." Slipping her fingers into Valora's gold hair, darkened by Senza's rainwater, the orange-haired jailbird undid the knot keeping Valora's gag in place. She pulled it away, stroked Valora on the cheek. "Is that better?"
"Whhghh..." Valora groaned, the wad of sponge still stuck in her mouth.
"Oh man, they even stuffed a little rag in your mouth, too? That's just dickish. Here, lemme get it for you."

Valora didn't understand what was happening for a few moments. Something soft, wet and sweet against her lips, and in her mouth, hot and tingly. She realised that it was Senza's mouth after about a second, but even then it took her a few moments to process that Senza was kissing her.
"MMMPHHHH!!" Valora cried out, her eyes going wide. She tried to struggle, but she was too tightly bound, her whole voluptuous figure criss-crossed in brown cord. She shook from side to side, inadvertently rubbing her fulsome, naked bosoms against Senza's chest. She felt an embarrassingly pleasant tingle from this sensation, and she focused more on trying to pull her head away instead. But Senza's wiry arm shot out, and she grabbed Valora by the back of the neck, her strength enough - more than enough - to keep Valora's head in place.

"Mmhh..." Senza purred, probing further into Valora's mouth, pushing the sponge within aside to stroke Valora's tongue, the inside of her cheeks, pulling her moaning captive close not only by her neck, but also by her shapely behind, grabbing it tight and pushing Valora's hips against hers, feeling them shift and wriggle as the heroine fought against her. But even this wasn't satisfactory. With a skilled, quick strike, Senza kicked at Valora's ankles, knocking her completely off balance. She fell backwards, but Senza dropped with her, not even breaking the kiss, catching her like the two were doing the tango. She held her like that for a few seconds, before hoisting her up, and finally breaking the kiss.

"Ahh! Now that was fucking good," Senza declaimed grandly, facing towards the rest of the mob, grinning maniacally. "Candy's always more delicious when you take it, right?"
"Hggh - hhmmbbphhh!!" Valora had tried to spit the stuff-gag out, but Senza was having none of it. She dodged behind Valora, and clamped her hand over the damsel's pretty mouth, so tight and so close that Valora was effectively silenced. As she writhed, Senza reached over her and grabbed a handful of her prisoner's breasts, vigorously massaging them. "NNMMMHHHH!!" Valora cried, looking down in shock as her round, ripe bosom was fondled yet again, Senza not only displaying dominance to the other prisoners, but displaying her as well.

"See this?" Senza said, making no effort to hide her arousal as Valora bucked and wriggled, "this is how you treat a lady. You've gotta make her feel appreciated." With terrific speed, Senza whipped out the cloth Valora had been gagged with before, pulled away her hand, and then pulled the cloth back in place, between Valora's lips this time, cleave-gagging her as she cried out in frustration. "See, she's not just a piece of meat," Senza said, running her hands down Valora's sides, before gripping the blonde's waist, turning her back around, and - to Valora's astonished shock - throwing the stripped hero over her shoulder.
"NNNNYYYHHMMPHHH!!" Valora cried, feeling herself tossed like a sack over her captor's body, her breasts pushing against Senza's back, her legs kicking helplessly in the air, her round, ripe backside completely displayed, wiggling salaciously as Senza grabbed it, pulling Valora tightly against her.

"You've got to treat a hero like this with respect," Senza said. "Gotta appreciate her many assets. " She punctuated the last word with a hard, loud smack against Valora's rump.
"MMMMPHHHH!!" Valora shouted, choking on her anger. "She - she fucking spanked me!"
"Oh sure," Senza said, raising her hand again, "she's helpless -"
"MMPHHH!"
" - trussed -" Smack.
"MMPHHH!!"
" - gagged -" Smack.
"MMMPHHHH!!"
" - whimpering - " Smack.
"MMMPHHH!!"
" - wriggling -" Smack.
"MMPHHH!!"
" - defeated - " Smack.
"MMPHHH!!"
" - downcast, depowered, and dominated -" Smack. Smack. Smack.
"MMMMPHH! MMHHH! NNNNMMMMPHHHH!!"
" - but, she's a hero, girls. And more important to you... she's mine." Senza turned her head, and instead of spanking Valora's gorgeous, wiggling backside again... she kissed it.
"MMHHGGGHHHHPPPHHHHHH!!" Valora screamed, her rear stinging from the unrelenting spanking, her body pulsing - throbbing - with a humiliation too hot and too deep for her to express with anything else but vengeful violence. But such was denied her. All she could do was lie there over Senza's shoulder, and wriggle.

The point made, Senza began carrying off her captive prize, relentlessly stroking and squeezing her thighs as she did, taking the most circuitous path that she could back to her own cell, with every woman in the complex sticking her head out of her room to see the spectacle, to see Senza bearing Valora, vanquished and bound, over her shoulder. Up enough stairs to ascend a seven storey building Senza bore her, her gagged moans ringing out, echoing against every surface in the great Pit, laughter and whistling and shrieks of pleasure ringing back at her, until Valora could not even hear her own cries, but only the mocking jeers of the prisoners amongst whom she had been so unjustly cast. Eventually Senza couldn't drag it out any longer, and they reached her cell.

"Criminals, right?" Senza said, shutting the thick, steel door behind her. "I mean, it just goes to show that places like this are more than justified. Throw 'em in, lock 'em up, throw away the key. That's what they deserve." She walked over to her bed, and dumped Valora down on it.
"Mrgghh!" Valora growled, kicking at Senza, but missing.
"I know what you're thinking," Senza said. "'You're a criminal too! You're a wicked and evil villein!'" She smiled, but there was no pleasure in her expression. "I'm as innocent as you are, Valora." She grinned. "Well... maybe not as innocent."
"I don't care," Valora thought. "I don't care about you... I just - I need to get out of here!" In a blind, desperate fury she rose, tried to barge past Senza, but the redhead easily pushed her back down onto the bed.
"Sweetheart, you're really not getting it, are you?" She pointed at herself. "Villain." She pointed at Valora. "Pretty, tied up captive." She bent down until she was eye-level with the gagged blonde. "You're going nowhere. Do you understand? You're as stuck here as any of the rest of us. And that's pretty fuckin' stuck."

She drew a knife. It had obviously started its life as a butter-knife or something, but it had been sharpened into a more lethal form. Valora wasn't nervous for her life: she was still resilient enough to be impervious to damage from such weapons, but there were still foul things that could be done with it. But she was wrong about Senza's intentions: the jailbird didn't cut her. She cut the ropes.
"Man, they wrapped you up good," Senza laughed, as she cut away the cord around Valora's breasts. "Bunch of pre-verts..." When she was finished, Valora was not completely untied. There were still cords around her ankles and wrists, cords that Senza had only cut halfway through. "I'm not about to give you the chance to do something stupid," Senza explained. "I'm shutting you in here for a while. There's..." Her voice took on, suddenly, a different aspect. Her face looked older. Not kinder, exactly, but the sneering, leering dominance was gone. "There's food. Water. Eat, drink - there's a shower, too. You never know when you'll get another chance." She walked towards the door. "Just because you're stuck here doesn't mean it has to be torture, huh?" She slammed the door shut, and Valora heard a click as she locked it from the outside, leaving Valora alone.

A couple of minutes got Valora out of the ropes. With a desperate frustration, she ungagged herself, spitting the stuffing out furiously, her breathing ragged and violent. She leapt off the bed, and shoulder barged the door. She did it again, and again, and again until even her shoulder began to ache. Her strength just... wasn't there.
"What the fuck? What the FUCK!!" Valora bellowed, banging on the door with her fists. "I'll kill you! You dirty bitches did something to me, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?!" She saw the plate of food that had been left for her on a paper plate, resting on the floor, and she made to kick it over, to spit Senza's "hospitality" back in her face. But something stopped her - a memory flashed in her mind, halting her violent ingratitude. A memory, of all things, of a James Bond novel.

It was in the novel version of Goldfinger, if she remembered rightly. James Bond had been captured, and offered a meal by his captor - a meal which he had quickly and ravenously consumed, on the basis that he might not get any opportunity for food again. The thought of this, of the actions of a fictional character Valora had read about in her teens, was surprisingly powerful. If even the macho superspy would swallow his pride for the sake of survival, then was it so bad for her to?
"But James Bond didn't have his clothes torn apart and get tied up and spanked in front of a mob of scumbags!" Valora shook, clenching her fists, every instant of her torment playing over and over in her mind. But reason won out. Valora had... tendencies to anger, but she wasn't stupid. If she was going to effect an escape, she would need to keep her strength up, however measly that strength was.

So she ate, pulling off her gloves to make handling the flimsy plastic cutlery easier. It was dry potato and something which was presumably meant to be beef: it wasn't nice, but it wasn't nothing. She ate without complaint. She drank stale-tasting, but unspoiled water from a cheap, plastic cup. She didn't shower - she couldn't be naked, even when her clothing now covered so little. She did, however, wash her face. Standing in front of a small, cracked mirror, she turned on the faucets, and tried to remove her mask. Except she couldn't. Her mask was already gone.

"Wh-what?!" Valora frantically turned around, casting her eyes all about the cell looking for it, but she couldn't see it anywhere. But it wasn't there. It wasn't anywhere she could see. She looked under the bed, behind the shower, in the little alcove where the toilet was installed - but there was nothing. "Where the hell...?" But Valora was, she realised, being foolish. It had been knocked off, surely, when she was being assaulted by that mob. It might have come off by accident in the scuffle. It wasn't, if one had any sense of perspective, a big deal.

And yet. For all she tried to focus on the bigger issues, she couldn't pull her thoughts away. They, in fact, pulled her back towards the mirror, staring at herself, her gorgeous face exposed, as naked as her bosom. It was just a domino mask, but it was an important barrier between her and her enemies, a safety net for herself and the scarce few she'd, in a good mood, call 'loved ones'. She felt so... foolish without it, so stupid. And the worst thing was, over her years in the business she'd seen quite a few dramatic unmaskings - some agonising humiliations for defeated superheroines, some purposeful statements of defiance and courage - but they were always big events. Not her though. She'd been unmasked before a whole crowd of criminals, and they hadn't cared one jot. They hadn't cared that she was Valora. They'd just cared that she was a hot girl that they could fondle and humiliate.

Her legs felt heavy. Weary. She sat down on the edge of the bed, breathing slowly, but heavily. The exhaustion of her ordeals, everything from the No Law Gang, to Sinistrus, to the Mob, to Senza... it all seemed to weigh on her suddenly, and profoundly. Lead balloons were tied to her shoulders, pulling her down. Her eyelids felt heavy, too, and drooped a few times, almost shutting completely before Valora caught herself.
"What the... why so - so suddenly?" she mumbled. It wasn't right - this wasn't just sleepiness. She forced herself to stand, but the effort was agonising, even taking into account the loss of her strength. She felt dulled, stultified, as well as unaccountably tired - and it was only when she saw the empty plate on the floor that she finally realised why. "The... the food!" Or the water. Or both. It was such a simple trick, and she had fallen for it. But no, it wasn't that, was it? It wasn't that she'd fallen for it: it was that she'd been so helpless, so cornered, that she had no choice but to fall for it. She had let herself be drugged.

"Unnhhh..." she moaned, stumbling forward, instinct making her reach for something to support herself, pride making her fight to stand on her own feet. Valora's vision was darkening, her hearing becoming duller, and duller. She swayed, shuffling unsteadily on her feet, summoning strength that was no longer there to keep her upright. It felt so strange, fighting the weight of her own body, even at the best of times. She was used to feeling as light as a feather, but now - well, now she felt like a tonne of feathers. She tried to move towards the door, but she couldn't lift her feet. Her long, sumptuous legs quivered and trembled, struggling under a weight they could no longer bear.
"Can't... let this... let this happen, I -" But it was already happening. Slowly, helplessly, Valora was collapsing. With a heavy, feminine moan, a moan that faded into a soft sigh as wakefulness slipped from Valora's grasp, she fell. She fell on her knees, the drug forcing surrender out of her, lowering the mighty heroine to a kneeling submissive. But even this was not enough for the forces that had arrayed themselves against her. She had to prostrate herself, and that came next.
"Noooooo..." she mewed, as the strength of her back gave out, and she fell forward. "Unhh..." Valora whimpered, as her fall was cushioned by her round, naked breasts, her smooth skin pressed against the cold, bare concrete beneath her. She lay like that for a few moments, as darkness slowly encroached on her. She lay there, immobilised, as her blue eyes fluttered shut, one arm by her side, the other slightly lifted, with her hand resting on the small of her back. Her legs had become slightly crossed at the ankles, and she could not part them. She couldn't move at all. And as the buxom beauty faded into the embrace of drugged slumber, she heard laughing.

She heard a man laughing.

Man, I hope I can write SHIP stories as good as you do one day. Everyone of your stories are always fun and interesting. I'm just now getting over a bout of writer's block. Please keep it up and thanks for sharing.

chase251 wrote: ↑

7 years ago

Man, I hope I can write SHIP stories as good as you do one day. Everyone of your stories are always fun and interesting. I'm just now getting over a bout of writer's block. Please keep it up and thanks for sharing.

Aww, thanks for the compliment! I'm sorry about your writer's block, braw.

Damselbinder wrote: ↑

7 years ago

chase251 wrote: ↑

7 years ago

Man, I hope I can write SHIP stories as good as you do one day. Everyone of your stories are always fun and interesting. I'm just now getting over a bout of writer's block. Please keep it up and thanks for sharing.

Aww, thanks for the compliment! I'm sorry about your writer's block, braw.

Nah I'm good in fact I just posted the finale to my Batgirl/Spiderman crossover story. Feel free to check out if you want. Peace out man

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=31589&p=166289#p166289

Damn. I'd really like to commend the part on the hypnosis especially, it was really great — her confidence it wouldn't work turning into fear it was working and finally into being controlled — Nice!

Great stuff as usual, Damselbinder. And you continue to be the master in your descriptions of characters. There's so much more to your stories, but that alone would keep me reading.

CJS wrote: ↑

7 years ago

Great stuff as usual, Damselbinder. And you continue to be the master in your descriptions of characters. There's so much more to your stories, but that alone would keep me reading.

Thanks!

"Mhhhh... mhhh...?" Another disorienting awakening. Another pang of embarrassment as Valora remembered how she'd been drugged unconscious. Deceived again. Made a fool of again. "Mffhhh..." She sat up, slowly, trying to toss aside the grogginess and weakness that had kept her asleep. But she needn't have worried. When she saw what Senza had done to her in her sleep, she woke up fast enough.
"MMMMMHHHGGGHHHHHHRRRRRGGHHHHFFFF!!" Valora screamed, a woeful rage twisting her insides as she looked down at herself, saw what had been done.

In fact, the first thing was that she'd obviously been bathed in her sleep. The grime that she'd inevitably picked up from being rolled around on various unclean floors had been scrubbed clean. Her hair felt soft, light.
"They even shaved my god-damned legs!" The thought of herself dragged about, prettied up and washed while she slept... it made her skin crawl. But that hadn't been what she'd noticed at first. That hadn't been what had made her spit with anger. No, that been what they'd dressed her in.

A thin, tight, white bustier; partly see-through, sumptuously soft, leaving Valora's breasts half exposed, just barely covering her buds. Her silky shoulders, her neck, her prominent decolletage, all were left completely open to view. Beneath that, an item that Valora could scarcely believe was something people still made: a garter belt, connected by a series of straps to a pair of translucent, white stockings, clinging intimately to Valora's long, smooth, supple legs, the bands at the stop squishing just a little inwards, making a subtle groove into Valora's thighs, showing just how soft the blonde damsel was. Valora was aghast at the sight of herself, not so much for how revealing her clothing was, but because of how... feminising it was. Lacy, and delicate and prettifying. It would have been better, much better, if they'd just left her naked.

Her clothes weren't the only thing that gave her umbrage, of course. She was tied up again, but this time whoever had done it - Senza, presumably - had developed what they imagined was a sense of humour. As a contrast with the vicious bundling up in rope Valora had been subjected to before, she'd been sweetly secured in cool, soft silk.
"Mmhhphh... MMMPHHH!!" Valora groaned, fuming that such weak, thin straps were enough to keep her helpless. They were around her wrists, her elbows, tying her hands behind her back. They were around her chest, fixing her arms in place and gently pressing against her breasts from beneath. They were above her knees, wound three or four times around, pushing her curvy thighs together, allowing Valora to create only a small gap between them, just below her crotch, only for the strap to pull them back together again. They were around her ankles, too, making sure her shapely calves were nice and snugly secured. And finally, one long, silk strap had been wrapped around her mouth, four full circuits stifling, gagging the fulsome young woman who lay powerless and captive in her cell.

It wasn't just that the silk gagged her either. It stroked her. Every time she shook her head, wrestling futilely against her bonds, the silk caressed her plump, wet lips. Every time she cried out, her lips sealed and secured tightly shut, they rubbed against the cloth gagging her. It felt soft, intimate, even pleasant. It was aggrieving in the extreme.
"Why... is this happening?!" Valora thought, pulling herself up into a sitting position. She still felt that strange, dull ache in the small of her back, but the humiliation of her stripping and her bondage took precedent. At the very least, she was alone in the cell. Perhaps there was something she could use to free herself, something she could use as a weapon. She swung her legs off the side of the bed, planted her feet - bare but for the stockings - and tried to stand up.
"Valora!"

Naturally, Valora's head turned sharply in the direction of the cell door, but there was nothing, and no-one there. "What... the hell?" Valora looked from one side of the cell to the other, but couldn't see anyone. It certainly hadn't been Senza's voice - it hadn't sounded like any woman. The possibility that the sleeping drugs had made her hallucinate was not an absurd one, but an invisible enemy was by no means impossible - not in this world.
"Valora!" The shout was louder now, and there was a further element that Valora had not noticed before: the voice had an accent, South African, or cockney something. No, actually that wasn't it. It was... it was...
"Australian." Not, it must be said, that an Australian accent was an inherently intimidating prospect, but Valora had enough awareness of her situation to know that it was an ill omen. And, almost as if responding to her realisation, the voice acquired a form.

It was wispy, at first. Man-shaped, definitely, but no man in particular. Then Valora could see that it was hovering; not hovering above the ground, but with its wispy legs at awkward right angles, as though there were an invisible chair beneath it. As the figure became more clear, she began to see more of his features. He was broad. Muscular, but not hugely so. Towards the latter end of middle-age, with a slouch that - if it wasn't deliberate posing - was a sign of serious back problems. Texture appeared now: he was in a jumpsuit, his shirt low cut enough that Valora could see a fair amount of greyish chest-hair - and scars. A spider-web of burns reaching all the way from his sternum to his worn cheeks.
"Martin Sontag," Valora realised. "The Supremacist!"

How he was there, Valora didn't know, but it soon began to seem to Valora that, well, that he wasn't really there at all. He had a ghostly, bluish glow. One of his feet seemed to clip into the nearby sink, as though it were intangible.
"Valora," he said again, and though his voice was clearer this time, it echoed in a decidedly ghostly fashion. "It's been too long, love."
"Mmmphh!" Valora's blue eyes went wide, a fear piercing even her courageous heart, a fear that could perhaps only be compared to a child's fear of the Boogeyman. The only difference was that Valora's fear - the fear of any confronting Martin Sontag - was completely rational.
"Nice digs you've got there," he said. "Not quite as cushy as the Pen Supreme but, y'know. Not too bad." He smiled. He looked her up and down, her voluptuous, scantily clad, trussed-up body and he grinned. "Now that's what I'm bloody talking about. That's a woman." He stood up. Walked towards her. She tried to wriggle away, but her bonds were too tight, her body too weak. He reached over towards her, his hands grasping, clutching, and Valora gave a revolted shout of anguish as his hands touched her. Only they didn't touch her. They went through her.

"Nice," Sontag grunted. "Real bloody nice." He looked over his shoulder, and glowered, as if there were someone there, before looking back at Valora.. "Don't suppose there's any chance I can convince you I'm a ghost, is there?" He gave a hacking belly-laugh, before collapsing into a fit of coughing. He did not seem a well man.
"As if I give a shit," Valora thought. "How am I seeing him? What the hell is going on?"
Sontag read her expression, and his smile became less lascivious, but crueller. "So. Time for answers, eh? Three big questions." He went back to where he'd seemed to have been sitting before, 'sat down' again. "One: how am I here? Two: why are you here? And three..." He bared his teeth in a frighteningly wide grin. "Three: why aren't your powers working?"

Valora went cold, and still. More even than seeing the Supremacist in her cell, this thrust dread into her chest. She'd idly wondered if, given that this 'Pit' was a prison for superhumans, that something had been done on her arrival, but then the others still had their abilities. No. It had been him.
"So in order," Sontag said, obviously enjoying stringing Valora along. "Number One: I'm not here. I'm still tucked the fuck away in my cell. I've got a pal, see? Bribed a guard into letting him inside." He scratched the back of his his head. "He's special. Like you and me used to be."
"Used to be." Oh god. Was it permanent? Was her strength... gone for good?
"He lets me see you," Sontag went on, "and lets you see me. Convenient, eh? Now, onto number two..."

He got up again. Evidently it took more effort than he wanted it to, but he forced himself back over to where Valora was. He loomed over her, obviously lusting over the helpless blonde, but obviously full of hate for her as well. "I don't have much left, Valora," he said, in a quiet, guttural growl. "I'm old. Even if the world I wanted happens, the world where we're on top and the normies are bowing at our feet, I'll never live to see it." He banged his hand on an invisible surface: obviously the walls of his cell were much closer than the walls of Valora's. "When you, and Nazarov, and that little tart 'Enhancegirl' b -" He had been about to say the word 'beat', but that he had been beaten was not something he could say easily. "When you tricked me," he continued, "you bloody crippled me, didn't you? Bloody ruined my powers! My powers! I'm the strongest man in the fucking world and now I c... can't..."

He'd pushed himself too hard. He staggered, stumbled, and almost fell, just barely catching himself on the edge of something Valora couldn't see. He sat down, again appearing to float in mid-air while doing so, breathing hard. "You... you jumped up little bint, you did this to me!" Spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke.
"Mrrghhhphh! Hhhds yhhhrr hwwn fffhhhlld!" Valora said, or tried to say. The gag wrapped around her mouth burned her with embarrassment now more than ever. This maniac, this would-be tyrant got to declaim and rant and preen his bloated ego as much as he liked, and Valora just had to sit there, look pretty, and listen. "God," she thought, "I really want to punch this jackass."

"So!" Sontag spat, finding his humour again. "This is my revenge, this is why I had Sinistrus snatch you. Just so I could entertain myself with the thought of you, stuck here. No way out. Just like me, no powers and no escape. Ever. Even if you broke out of this cell, even if you got your powers back - there's no way out. Just the Barrier. Even I wouldn't be able to break it. Do you understand me, Valora? You're going to be here forever."
"Nhh... !" Valora breathed, feeling like she'd been punched in the gut. "Forever? I - no. Bullshit. There has to be a way out!"
"Aww, is that shock on your pretty fucking face?" Sontag laughed. "Poor thing. Don't worry. Senza'll take good care of you, girl."
"MRGGGHHH! MMMMM-MMMMPHHH!! NNNNHHHHHMMHHH!!" Valora shouted, trying to get her hands free, trying not to be so - so - helpless. She was like a bull kept in a cage only slightly bigger than itself, the pressing walls, the immobility making anger rise, rise, rise but with no channel, no way to get out. Except Valora's cage was made of silk. Silk straps wound around her shapely limbs - that was all it took to shackle her.

"Believe me or don't. You'll come to realise it's true. Eventually. So onto point three." He leaned back, trying to look imperious. "Riddle me this: you feel a pain in your back, at all?"
She did. She'd felt a dull ache, on and off, since she'd woken in the Pit.
"We've clipped your wings, Valora. We've put a teensy little implant on the base of your spine, that saps away your strength. See, my lads figured out that there's nothing special about your muscles, not exactly. Your body sends out a... I don't remember the details. Some kind of electric field that pumps up your muscles' strength. Your toughness, that you get to keep. But the strength? Gone."

He did not see what he'd wanted to see. He did not see despair. He did not hear wailing, or see tears in her eyes. He realised that his wish to gloat had backfired: he should have kept it an agonising mystery. Even though he knew, or thought he knew, that Valora was stuck in the Pit for good, she was probably thinking that a good surgeon could get the chip out, could get her strength back. Anything explained, anything comprehensible, becomes much less frightening. And indeed, Valora was almost relieved. Some super-sciencey bollocks that could be corrected wasn't scary. It was threatening, but that wasn't the same thing.

Yet as he saw hope begin to rekindle within his curvaceous captive, the Supremacist realised that he had one more trick up his sleeve. One more way to snatch that hope away.
"'Oh wait!'" he said, putting on a sing-song valley-girl voice that Valora supposed was meant to be an impression of her. "'I won't be here forever! Someone will realise I'm gone! My friends will come to save me!'" He rose again. He walked over to her again. He leaned over her, leaned into her, the image of him clipping into Valora's body, his head inside her head. "Maybe that'd be true," he said. "Maybe they would come to save you. But the thing is... they're never going to know you're gone." A second later he was gone, and Valora was left alone once more, in fear and silence.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When Senza did return, perhaps an hour after the Supremacist had vanished, she looked different. She was tired, underslept, and there was a light bruise on her chin. But her face lit up when she saw Valora.
"Morning, doll," she said, finding Valora still vainly struggling. "Oohhhh, man!" She giggled with delight, looking Valora up and down. "Look at you! Man, you could have had a good career as an underwear model without too much effort. I mean damn. What a woman!" She sat down on the edge of the bed, grabbed Valora's calves, and pulled them onto her lap. She began stroking the captive damsel's shapely legs, the skin of her palm making a satisfying 'swish-swish' sound against Valora's stockings as Senza caressed her.
"Mrrhhhmmmphhh!" Valora protested, trying to pull her legs away. But all Senza had to do was hold her ankles with one hand, and Valora was powerless to stop her.
"Such pretty legs..." Senza cooed. "I like a lady with a bit of substance, huh? Girls like Nova and Spectra are all skinny and petite, not really my speed. But you, babe? You're full on voluptuous." She slipped herself onto the bed, next to Valora, turning the wriggling blonde so that her back was against Senza's chest. The jailbird coiled her up, wrapping her legs around Valora's, and her arm around Valora's abdomen, pinning the damsel against her.

"Nmmmhh! Nmmmphhhh!!" Valora felt a hot sting in her cheeks, a blush as her half-naked body was fondled, Senza's hands snaking all over her, patting and squeezing and stroking, the blonde powerless to resist.
"You know," Senza whispered, "the two of us are stuck here for the same reason." She nibbled Valora's ear, kissed it. She nuzzled her, pressed her hips against Valora's ass, tousled her hair, kissed her smooth, bare shoulders. "Well, because of the same guy, anyway."
"Mhh?" It didn't take a genius to work out that Senza had ties to the Supremacist, but it still wasn't something Valora wanted to hear.
"Don't get too excited," Senza whispered. "I'm not gonna reveal all my secrets. Let's just say... I only became a criminal after I got sent to jail."

She turned Valora around, easily manipulating the buxom beauty, controlling her quite as she pleased. They were facing each other now, and Valora felt her deep, angry breaths pushing her bosom against her captor, felt her wriggling make her rub her thighs and her hips against Senza's. She tried to be defiant, to meet Senza's eyes, but she couldn't. She found herself looking down. Something throbbed in her, and she immediately realised why. It was shame: Senza had just given her another defeat, and it pulsed within her.
"Mmmhhh... man, this is a good look for you," Senza said, in a hushed mockery of intimacy. "White lingerie... it's like a visual contradiction, know what I mean? All sexy and revealing and slinky... but pure. Just like a bride, right?" She put both her hands on Valora's thighs, her thumbs playing with the straps connecting them to the garter belt, teasing her prisoner's silky skin. "What do grooms... do with brides...?" Her thumbs began to move slowly towards Valora's inner thighs, making soft impressions, producing a tickling sensation in Valora's legs, sending shivers up her spine.
"Wh... what's she going to do to me?" the blonde wondered, a harsh blush rising in her cheeks. Then, a sharp, rebellious impulse rose against it, and she tried to smash her captor's nose with her forehead. But she wasn't anywhere near fast enough. Senza's slim hands snapped into action, her fingers twisting in Valora's hair and yanking her head back. "MMMPHHH!!" Valora cried out, her head pulled back, her strength easily countered.
"Naughty girl," Senza laughed, giving Valora's neck a rough, playful kiss. "You're starting to give me the impression that you like it rough." Her eyes flashed. Above their heads, a cloud gathered, dark grey, crackling with electricity - a thunderstorm in miniature. "But there's a difference between 'rough' and 'me zapping you with a lightning bolt'. Capisce?"
"Mrrghh..." Valora cast her eyes down. She still possessed her superhuman durability, but even that had its limits. She wasn't Imperion - she wasn't even Valora, really.
"Aww, there's a good little damsel," Senza laughed. "Now... what was I saying?"

Senza slipped off the bed, regarded with a playfully cool eye her trussed captive. "Something about what grooms do with brides, right? Now what was that... oh yeah!" She licked her lips. Valora withdrew, but Senza was too quick. Not only that, but a burst of air pressure from behind her pushed her right into Senza's arms. She pulled her up with a great heave, and before Valora knew it, she was suspended in a dominating embrace, Senza's hands clutching her thighs, her shoulders, pulling her in tight against her body, almost crushing her legs against Senza's torso. So for all Valora tried to wriggle her way out of Senza's grasp, she couldn't do it. It disgusted her, this parody of romance, but she couldn't escape it.
"Get the picture, babe? Grooms carry brides over the threshold."

That was exactly what she did. She pulled open the cell door with another burst of air pressure, and strode proudly out of it, bearing the scantily-clad Valora in her arms, the maiden suspended helplessly in her arms, arms which seemed too thin to bear the weight of the mighty hero; showing, rather, how mighty Valora was not. As Senza carried her curvaceous captive down the metal stairway, other prisoners began to pop their heads out of their cells, to view the spectacle. In truth, they were sparsely scattered amongst three thousand cells: there had been grand plans for the Pit once, but none of them had borne fruit. It was a shameful not-quite-secret of the U.S. Justice Department, and only freak accidents of politics had prevented it from being emptied out years ago. But for all that, there were enough eyes on Valora as she was taken, enough whoops and hollers and jeers. Valora heard the cacophonous, echoing laughter, laughter that pounded into her skull, laughter which made her wriggle with impotent fury in Senza's arms, and scream bloody murder - that is, scream threats of bloody murder - from behind her gag. But it didn't do her any good. Indeed, the more she struggled, the more Senza egged on the cheers of the hundreds of spectators to her bondage, her humiliating captivity.

Senza took Valora down to where she'd been attacked by the mob, where Senza had made her 'ownership' of Valora quite clear. Many of the prisoners were nervous of Senza, but almost all of them stole glances at Valora as often as they could. It was not just that many of them found her attractive - she was, after all, a celebrity. It was a hell of an excitement in the flavourless doldrums of incarcerated tedium. Senza set Valora down at a table, sitting her and then roughly throwing her arm around Valora's shapely shoulders, holding her close, making sure everyone saw, and - occasionally - copping a feel of Valora's thinly covered bosom, teasing the edges of her bustier to make Valora fear that her breasts would spill out of her top entirely.

"Hey!" Senza brayed at a tall, nervous looking woman. She'd been one of the only people who'd seemed to be actively avoiding looking at Valora or Senza. The tall woman flinched when she realised Senza was looking at her, and tried to walk on - but a dark cloud swirled around her feet, corralling her back, until she was standing before Senza like a peasant supplicating a king.
"Um... what do you want?" she mumbled.
"Be polite, Sally," Senza said. "Say 'how can I help you?'."
"Uh... how can I help you?" Sally said. She wasn't as cowardly as her instant surrender suggested. Rather, she'd talked back to Senza before. As for what Senza had done in response... well, it had been a year and a half, and the pain in her shoulder still kept Sally awake sometimes.
"Well Sally," Senza said, allowing a wicked smile to creep slowly up her face, and surrounding her supplicant with cold, wet, charcoal-grey vapour. "I think what I really want... what I really desire right now..."
"Y... yes?"
Senza's grin now looked positively murderous. She allowed lightning to crackle in the cloud she'd made, heard Sally whimpering in fear. "What I want... is just for you to grab me some grub." In an instant, the clouds vanished. "Geez, Sally. Chill out. You look like I was gonna ask you to kill the President or something."
"Whatever..."

A minute or two later, Senza was scarfing down the same unappetising slop that Valora had had the previous night. And Valora? She just... sat there. She wasn't even there for safe-keeping. She was just as powerless in Senza's cell as she was here. She was just on display. Senza's status symbol. Her trophy. And then, when Senza was done eating, she wiped her face, hoisted Valora into her arms again, and carried her right back to her cell. Her bonds were loosened. Senza left the cell for her to untie herself, for Valora to eat and wash and so on. And then, once again, Valora felt sleepy, weak. Once again her food had been drugged.

The next day she woke up. She was trussed, this time in ropes, this time dressed in nothing but a yellow bikini. She was bound in duct tape. She spent the day like that, sometimes with Senza feeling her up, sometimes alone. She was carried down to the dining area for Senza to show off. She was carried back. Her bonds were loosened. She ate. She felt sleepy. She collapsed. She woke up, dressed differently, bound differently. And then it all happened again the next day.

And the next day.

And the next day.

And the next day.

And in this way, two months passed...

"Mmmphhh..." Valora woke yet again from a drugged haze. She'd been dosed so often, now, that a sleepy haze coloured even her waking moments. It was better for Senza. It made her prisoner easier to manipulate. Easier to control. She knew she'd feel Senza's hands on her body, and though she complained, and fought, the fire had gone out of her protests. It was not that Valora had been broken by her long captivity, or had surrendered: she was just bored.

Every day the same. Every day humiliating. Every day another defeat. Senza did with Valora as she pleased, never going as far as she might have done, but not out of any moral fortitude. She would leave Valora sometimes, for a day or two. Locked in, but untied. Just enough that Valora didn't go mad. Just enough that she was still enjoyable. Valora had attempted escape many times, but either she wouldn't get past Senza's powers or - on one day when Senza had had a stomach bug - the other prisoners would pull her down and tie her up themselves.

One day, after another failed attempt, Senza had decided to show Valora just how helpless she was. She had carried her right to the top, to the grated platform that led to the outside, or rather it didn't. She'd put Valora down and made her watch as Senza threw every last quantum of her great power at the Membrane, and didn't even dent it.
"See?" she'd said. "Even if you get past me... even if you jab a fork in my neck and kill my ass - you're stuck. No-one gets out. Ever."

And yet for all that, for all the parade of humiliations she'd suffered, what Valora discovered when she awoke that morning was particularly aggrieving. Senza had gone through a bit of a cycle in terms of dressing her up and tying her up, but today was something new. Valora had begun to understand that prisoners took advantage of the Membrane's properties, that while nothing could go out, anything could go in. That was how food was dropped off to them, and soap and even clothes. But even so, Valora found it difficult to imagine how Senza had obtained... this.

The clothes? Not so mysterious. A black bra, with a rather redundant push-up effect, and black panties. No stockings this time, Valora's sumptuous legs left entirely bare. High-heels too, which was especially annoying because Valora had always hated wearing high heels. But no, even the shoes were not what was confounding her. It was how Senza had bound her.

She supposed 'cuffs' would be the best word for them. Around her calves, and around her arms, two leather binders, laced up with red string, closed around her limbs so tightly and so snugly that Valora almost hadn't noticed them at first.
"Mhhph?!" Valora looked over her shoulder, saw the brown leather sheath encasing her arms. "Mnghh?!" They'd been laced up so strictly that Valora couldn't even bend her elbows. It was infuriating, a little how she imagined it would feel to be in a straitjacket. She tried to reach the strings with her fingers, but it just wasn't happening. She was stuck. "Mrrhhmmpfff... mff?!" With her muffled lament, for the first time she realised the manner in which she'd been gagged: a hard, leather panel, buckled into place behind her head, and locked with a small padlock. Clearly, Senza didn't want to hear a sound from her. "Mgghmmphh! MMGHMMPHHH!!" Valora cried out, trying to throw the gag off just by the force of turning her neck. Of course, it didn't work. All it accomplished was making her feel even more humiliated.

When Senza came in, she didn't need to say anything. She just strolled in, saw the look on Valora's face, saw how Valora couldn't look back. She sat down on the bed. She put her hand on Valora's thigh, stroked it quite gently. "Don't ask me how this stuff got smuggled in," she said. "I don't even think it had anything to do with you. I took 'em off one of the others." She ran her fingers over the strings securing Valora's leg-binder, producing quite a pleasant sound. "C'mon, babe," Senza said. "I wantcha to meet some friends of mine."

She pulled Valora up to her feet. There was little resistance. She knelt, hooked Valora's waist and lifted her up and over her shoulder, carrying her like a fireman with some poor, charred casualty. But Valora, though captive, though exhausted, remained pristine. Her thighs, clutched tight in Senza's hands, were ever soft, ever tight. Her ass, her hips, round and womanly and - by Senza's standards of aesthetics at least - just about perfect. She took her out of the cell, and back into the cavernous expanse of the Pit.

There were, shooting off from the main column like spokes of a wheel, eight corridors leading deeper into the rock on every level, and it was down one of these corridors that Valora was taken, after Senza had brought her two levels down. To Valora's great surprise, the room into which she was taken wasn't another cell. It was... comfy. There was a sofa, dilapidated but still relatively nice-looking. There was a rug. There was a television. And there were others.

From the expressions they wore, from the way they held themselves, it was clear that these weren't like the yapping, shrieking horde that had tied her up before. They were powerful. At least, by the standards of the Pit. They were the relative-elite. One of the three in there Valora didn't recognise. One she knew, a villain called Blastocyst with a corrupting, burning touch. The last had her back to Valora, but even she was vaguely familiar. Short - very short - with messy, blonde hair. There was a ring of familiarity, but Valora wasn't interested enough to rack her brain.

"What's all this?" Blastocyst grumbled, in the deepest voice that Valora had ever heard from a woman. She looked at Valora, cradled like a stolen bride in Senza's grasp, the buxom beauty in revealing lingerie with crystal-blue eyes and striking, strong, arresting features. She looked at all this, and rolled her eyes. "Oh great!" she shouted, in a violent bark of a laugh. "Why is it always the chicks? Why is it always the god-damned superchicks who get the damsel in distress treatment?" She shook her head. "You never hear about the Couvie bondage-freaks snatching, I don't know, Askancepoint, or Doveman, or Caduceus. Supremacist couldn't give us a hot guy to play with, noooooo, it has to be another dumb blonde."
"I don't mind." One of the unknowns, a tall, wide-shouldered woman with a shaved head. "I mean, I don't get off on it, but uhh... makes you feel better about the whole 'life of crime' thing. Yeah, we ended up here, but so did one of the goody-goodies. Guy or girl, it's nice to see." She stood up, stuck her tongue out. That is, she stuck it all the way out, twelve feet out, and - to Valora's horror - licked her, sliding her tongue between her breasts, over her collarbone, and up her neck, hot and wet and probing.

"Hey, Bufo, get your tongue off my girl!" Senza pulled Valora away from her, and Bufo's tongue snapped back into her mouth with a squelching 'pop'.
"What? I'm just having a little taste," Bufo said, flatly. "You know what your problem is? You never learned to share."
"My problem is I'm a not-so-high functioning sociopath," Senza said, winking, carrying Valora to the couch, and sitting down, laying Valora in her lap, and keeping her there with a nice firm grip of her thighs.
"Mrhhmph!" Valora complained, struggling in Senza's grip, but with little energy. It was difficult to see what the point was anymore.

"What's on the box?" Senza asked the woman sitting next to her. "Hey, Trish?"
'Trish' didn't immediately answer. She was staring at the screen with open-mouthed awe.
"Hey," she said, as if in a dream. "That's super weird." She looked at Valora, and grinned. "Oh, wow, this is - like - the best thing ever!"
Now Valora remembered her. The tiny woman with blonde hair and a row of strangely sharp-looking teeth was Ribbon - she'd never personally fought her, but Enhancegirl had. She was a low-ranking neophyte in the Supremacist's latter-day organisation, beaten up by Enhancegirl and obviously thrown in here. But she was unimportant. What was important, Valora realised, was what was on the television set.

The sound was poor, the speakers long-since blown out. The picture was fuzzy. The screen was cracked, but Valora could see well enough. Fortunately, American news broadcasts always had the vital statistics running at the bottom of the display, so she didn't need to hear anything. It read:
"'Valora's Rampage: Brainwashed Heroine Runs Amok in San Fran'."

Oh, yes, she was confused. Even the other prisoners seemed pretty bewildered. But it wasn't just confusion. It was like her brain had just... frozen, just unable to process what it appeared to be perceiving. There was certainly footage playing of someone doing some rampaging, chucking cars around and such, laughing maniacally and sending screaming civilians running for cover. And that someone certainly looked a hell of a lot like Valora. She was the right shape, wearing the right outfit, had the right features... in fact, she had exactly the right features. But it wasn't her. It couldn't be her. It said it was a live broadcast, and Valora was locked in a secret super-jail. It was... and... what? Brainwashed? What? What the hell was going on?!

"Did we get a ringer?" Bufo asked. "Did I just molest a ringer? That would be annoying."
"No, sweetie," Ribbon replied, still staring at Valora. "This is the best part. This is the best part of all!" She turned the volume on the television up, having to physically get up and push buttons on the thing itself.
"...ldering claims, confirmed by footage released to press early this morning," the television burbled, before the view suddenly changed.

It was Valora. This time it didn't just look like Valora, it was her. She was standing, trussed in glowing blue ropes, in the basement of a parking lot. There was a woman holding her, but the shot had been framed perfectly to keep her face out of view. Valora's face was easily visible, however. Her expression was sleepy, blank - even serene. The woman whispered in Valora's ear, or seemed to, but was too quiet to hear. But when Valora spoke, she could be heard clearly.
"My will has been stolen," Valora said. Then, after a pause: "I'm the Supremacist's slave." Another pause. "I'm his mindless, obedient slave-girl." And then, finally: "If you told me to kill, I would..."

Now she remembered. That is, she didn't remember those words coming out of her mouth, but she remembered what Sinistrus had done to her, months ago when she'd first been kidnapped. She remembered the necklace, the tarred words that had slowed and trapped her mind. She remembered being hypnotised. She remembered, too, the illusion of the Supremacist that had tormented her in her cell when she'd first arrived, and she remembered his words.
"They're never going to know you're gone."

"So... that's not Valora?" Blastocyst asked, pointing at the television. "That's a fake Valora, and we've got the real Valora?"
"Right," Senza replied. "Never settle for imitations." She twisted her fingers in Valora's hair, pulled her head to the side. "See, this way," she said, "you get to stay here as long as you like. Isn't that fun?"
"Mrrhhhmmhhphh!" Had Valora not been gagged she'd have made an earnest effort to bite off Senza's nose. She bucked and writhed, but it accomplished no more than it had before.

"Awwwww, poor baby," Ribbon giggled, swinging her legs underneath her and sitting on her knees. "All locked away and no-one to come get you! And not just that, huh? Now all your pretty superfriends aren't just gonna wonder where you went. They're gonna think you're evil! Hehehehehe!" She clasped her hands to her face in a foul, faux-childishness. "No-one's ever gonna remember the good things you did. They're only gonna remember this. That's all anyone'll remember Valora for, forever and ever and ever and - "
"This is fucked up."

It was Blastocyst. "Okay, I know we're criminals and everything, but this is really, really fucking evil." She ran a hand through her red hair, obviously distressed.
"Grown a conscience all of a sudden?" Senza asked. Valora could feel her stiffen, slightly. She was beginning to prepare for a fight.
"Since when does being a criminal mean that you don't have a conscience? This is about as bad as it gets. I'd get the Supremacist killing her. That's just the game - but this? Locking her away forever? Making a doppelganger just to tarnish her reputation? It's pointless." Blastocyst spat at her own feet. "You know, it's when people start buying into the whole 'supervillain' thing that places like this get built."
"Tell me, Blastocyst: how many men have you killed?"
"None," Blastocyst replied. "I've killed two women, though."

There was a long silence. Senza's powers were long-range, but Blastocyst could maim or cripple her with a single touch if she got close enough. Like any sensible predators, they were reluctant to fight others like them.
"There's some bad air in here," Senza said. "Fuck it. I'm gonna go get some food. Ribbon, look after our guest, will you?"
"Oh, sure," she purred. "I'll make her feel super welcome."

Senza hadn't been out of the room for ten seconds before Ribbon pounced. She spread her hands out, and from them, shimmering green bands of energy shot out, grabbing Valora by her chest and her calves, and hauling her into the air, over Ribbon's head.
"MMMHHH!!" Valora cried out, suspended like a feather in a breeze, seized in the clutches of yet another villain. The bands were tight, extraordinarily tight, strong enough that even with her powers it wouldn't have been a cakewalk breaking out of them.
"Aww, are you sad 'cause you're all tied up? Don't be sad. It's like a big hug, really. A big hug all over you."

More. More and more and more. The glowing bands poured out of Ribbon's hands, gossamer thin, but wide, and strong. They flowed like liquid over Valora as they snaked into place, but when they tightened, they became all too solid.
"MMMPHH!!" Valora cried out, as band after band after band secured itself around her, slamming into her body with hard thuds, encompassing and enveloping her, squeezing her like one great, two-dimensional cobra. It smothered every inch of her: her feet, her ankles, her calves, all disappearing behind band after band of green. Her wriggling, womanly hips vanished next, the bindings tight enough for the shape of Valora's delectably curvy contours to be totally visible. Around her full, feminine thighs the bands revolved, squeezing and submerging, and pressing so hard against each other that Valora felt as if she only had one leg.

Her arms too, already bound behind her, were now crushed against her back, bands wrapping around her shoulders, her neck, her mouth. She couldn't move them at all. Not an inch. Not a tenth of an inch. And it wasn't just her arms: her shoulders could barely move. Her mouth was stifled so tightly that she couldn't open her lips at all. Her nose was covered, her hair - a lock of it stuck out from beneath the bindings around her forehead, but the rest of it was covered. She thrashed in the air, moaning desperately as she was packaged up like a parcel, looking down at her chest in dismay as her stomach, her ribs and her heaving, buxom breasts all vanished beneath the glowing ribbons, ribbons that tightened with a rubbery creak, until Valora was utterly subsumed. From head to toe she was wrapped in gossamer bands, mummified like an Egyptian princess.

"Poor Valora," Ribbon crowed, lowering the heroine back down - all the way down, onto the cold, grimy floor. She knelt down, took the encased blonde by the chin, and squeezed her cheeks between her thumb and her other fingers. "Poor, poor, Valora... locked away... abandoned... and all - tied - up!"
"Mbhhmff! Mhhh... mhhhbfffhhhh!" Valora mewed, her whole body bound with overwhelming strictness. From every side she was suppressed, captured, though the bands were only as thick as a hair. The texture too was... it was somewhere between water and silk, squirming all over her voluptuous body.

"You know I could just smother you to death." The childish ease with which Ribbon said this made it no less disturbing. "I'm only not doing that because I know he doesn't want me to. But I do want to!" She kicked Valora in the side. It didn't hurt, but it did roll the bundled damsel over, so she was resting on her front. "I wish he'd asked me to... but he didn't. And you should feel real lucky that he didn't! The Supremacist is the biggest, baddest bad guy there is - and all he decides to do is put you here. You should be drowning at the bottom of the ocean right now!" She hopped onto Valora, sitting on her thighs, grabbing her ass with both hands.

"Mrrgghhhhh!!" Valora complained, as Ribbon's hands roved freely and inexpertly over her body, her body crushed in from all sides by the wrappings. She was utterly helpless, immobilised - nearly paralysed with the excruciating strictness of her bondage, and Ribbon was taking every advantage. Or at least she could have. As she grabbed at Valora's mummified body, the captive damsel didn't have the feeling that Ribbon was groping her. More that she was just sort of playing with her. Annoying Valora, for her own amusement. Valora supposed that if she had to choose between Ribbon's ministrations and Senza's she preferred Ribbon's - but it was all agonisingly embarrassing.

"My turn." Blastocyst was the one speaking. She shoved Ribbon off of Valora, and picked the mummified heroine up, pushing her back onto the couch. She sat down next to her, threw her arm around the blonde's wriggling shoulders.
"Mmphh!" Valora complained, barely able to move in Ribbon's bonds.
"Wh - hey!" Ribbon whined. "I thought you said this was evil, you hypocrite!"
"Ahh, what are you gonna do?" Blastocyst huffed. "She's here now, isn't she? Nothing I can do about it. Might as well enjoy it. Might as well enjoy her." She put her hand on Valora's chest. She wasn't groping Valora, exactly, just... holding her hand there. For a moment that appeared to be all she was doing. Until Valora caught whiff of an acrid smell in the air. Heard a hissing, and sizzling. She looked down.
"MMMPHHH!!"

Blastocyst's hand was glowing with a sickly, yellow light. And beneath that light, the emerald bands binding Valora were vanishing. She was not untying Valora, however. She had directed her power in a very specific area: she was exposing Valora's breasts.
"Mhhhhh!!" Valora cried, looking down in horror as not only the bands vanished, but even her bra, completing denuding her beautiful, round bosoms. The glow faded before Blastocyst could do any damage to Valora herself, but the damage to her pride was perfectly substantial. "Mhhh! MMMFFHGHHGHHH!!" It was an almost painfully titillating image: Valora completely wrapped up, even her face mostly covered - but her breasts naked, seeming to burst out from her bonds. It was though nothing about her mattered anymore, except her loveliness, and her helplessness.

"You know really it's just the doppelganger thing I think is fucked up. I don't mind actually having the sexy superheroine to play with." She slipped her hand between Valora's breasts, the outside of them tickled by the torn bands as Blastocyst fondled her.
"Mmmhhhhffghh..." Valora, twice gagged and thrice three thousand times aggrieved, blushed with furious shame at this latest insult. And it wasn't just what Blastocyst was doing it was that Senza had just... left her lying around. Left her for her friends to share between them. Being... passed around like this, a beautiful object to be enjoyed by anyone in Senza's good graces. A belonging. Blastocyst put her mouth next to Valora's ear, started muttering sweet nothings. Valora ignored them. That is, she ignored them until she realised that they weren't sweet nothings at all.

"In three days," she whispered, "Bufo gets released. They send the superhuman who made the Gate, who's shut us all in, and he opens it on both sides. She gets out. That'll be your only chance." She pulled away, turned Valora's head by the chin to face her. Out loud she said: "You like it when I talk dirty, Val? Yeah, I know you do."
For a moment Valora wasn't sure if she'd been hallucinating. She hadn't even known that people got released at all. The way Senza had made it sound was that the Pit was forever. A death sentence the long way around.
"But then," Valora realised, "she'd want me to think that, wouldn't she? She'd want me never to think there was a point to fighting!"

Belatedly, she played along with Blastocyst's taunt, thrashing and moaning and doing everything that the role required of her. But this hardly required much of her mental attention, and so as she struggled, she wondered what the hell had happened to Blastocyst to make her the sort of person who would help her and at the same time be the sort of person who would end up here. The sort of person who would have killed two women - whatever the circumstance behind that might be. She wondered too what had happened to Senza to make her how she was, to make her get in bed with the Supremacist of all people. Normally when Valora was mopping up the pond-scum she didn't give much thought to their fates after they were put away. But having experienced two months of imprisonment, two months with her freedom stripped away, her perspective had shifted a little. People - including Valora - generally thought of imprisonment as a humane alternative to the death penalty, but she was beginning to wonder whether it wasn't the other way around.

Philosophising wasn't Valora's strong suit, however, and she didn't reach any substantial conclusions before Senza returned.
"Everybody been nice to my new gal-pal?" she asked. She then saw the state of Valora, and burst out laughing.
"Mhhh..." Valora lowered her eyes. She didn't want her tormentor to see her like this. Her mummification's only mercy was that her cheeks were covered, and one couldn't see her blushing.
"You fuckers!" Senza exclaimed. "You absolute fuckers. I leave you alone for fifteen minutes, and you do this. Wrap her up and whip her boobs out too. Fiends. Fiends!" She sat down next to Valora, pulled the helpless blonde towards her, cradled her in her lap. "I mean, not that I'm complaining."

Blastocyst rose, muttered something vaguely insulting about Senza, and then made to leave. But just before she did, she caught Valora's eye. "Three days," she mouthed, and then left, hoping that what she'd said was enough. Perhaps, if Valora did escape, then her conscience might be salved, just a little bit.

Sweet, things are now really getting interesting.

The three days passed with little incident. Senza seemed a little less rapacious, if anything. It occurred to Valora that she might be getting bored of their routine, or that she might even feel guilty. It was only later that Valora realised what the problem was. Though she did not suspect that Valora was plotting escape, she knew that - on the day of Bufo's release - the lies she'd told would become apparent, and Valora would know that, at least in theory, leaving the Pit was possible. She had longed to inflict on her prisoner a total, crushing despair. It was hard to say if that would remain possible.

So when Valora awoke on the morning of that day, it was hardly surprising for her to find that Senza had taken a little extra care. She was bound in rope, criss-crossed up her entire body - her thighs, calves, her arms crossed and bound and squashed behind her back. And not just that, but leather belts, wrapped around her ankles, above her knees; binding her forearms, and pressing her upper arms in, wound around her torso, tight against her ribcage. Around her mouth, two layers of duct tape, wrapped around her head, squishing her hair in against her ears and jawline, with a thick, white cloth wrapped over that, covering Valora's mouth and nose, muzzling her. She lay flat on the bed, barely able to wriggle.

Senza was already up, pacing. When she saw that Valora was awake, she seemed nervous for a moment, but stifled those nerves and gave a wicked grin.
"Morning, darling," she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. She slid her fingers up and down Valora's legs, looking deeply into her eyes. "You know what the great thing about us is?" she said. "It's like any good relationship. Even after a while... touching you still excites me. Does it excite you, Valora?"
"Hymmhh...phhh... " Valora whimpered, always pretty groggy first thing in the morning. Senza woke her up a little more by swinging herself on top of her, pressing Valora's hips between her thighs.
"It excites me," she said. She twitched slightly, betraying her disingenuousness.
"Here it comes," Valora thought. "She's gonna try to spin Bufo's release..."

"You're... gonna hear some things," Senza said. "You're gonna hear a lot of noise, and shouting, and some... strange things are gonna happen. But you don't need to worry. All you need to know, is that I'm gonna keep you safe, Valora." She hesitated. "Oh, uh... also, you might not see Bufo around anymore. But you don't need to worry about that."
"Jesus, that's it?" Valora almost laughed. Senza clearly hadn't planned for this at all. Even if Blastocyst hadn't told her what was going to happen, she'd have known in a second that Senza was talking complete bollocks.

But then, Valora didn't have much of a plan either. She didn't know, really, what was going to happen, so she didn't know how to take advantage of it. She didn't know that she could. She only had the vaguest of inklings. She would have to cast the dice. A lesser woman, it is true, might have been afraid of doing so, or would have been so worked up that they'd just immediately bugger up their chances: but not Valora. It was not only because of her heroic virtues, though she possessed those in abundance. No - it was because of what the Supremacist had done. It was because of the doppelganger. It was because her legacy was being threatened. Evil was being done in her name. Retribution needed to be meted out.

There were disadvantages to having such a heroic countenance as Valora's. Her face was a little too honest; a little too open. She could not hide the resolve she had summoned, and Senza perceived it straightaway. She began to realise that Valora knew more than it had seemed.
"See, this is where we sort the wheat from the chaff," she said. "Are you gonna be the kind of girl who understands when her ticket's punched... or are you gonna be stupid, and arrogant and think that you're special, somehow? That you, of all people, have something the rest of us don't? In fact, it's the other way around! You're the one who got your powers taken away! You're the one with that chip on your spine! You're the one who's tied up on my bed!" Of course, you didn't have to be heroic to give too much away. Valora had spent a great deal of time in this woman's company. She knew when Senza was taunting because she wanted to make Valora feel like shit - and she knew when Senza was taunting to disguise her own insecurity. That didn't mean it was ineffective, though. Indeed, with that chip on her spine suppressing her abilities, what could she do? She couldn't even escape her bonds, much less this prison. Valora had to own that she'd got through most of her career as a heroine with sheer bull-headedness. Master plans were not her strong suit. It was just as she was thinking that, perhaps, a re-examination of her plot was called for that it became clear she had no time.

An alarm blared. Actually no, it screamed. It was the kind of alarm that goes off when a nuclear power plant is about to explode, only much, much more intense. Senza had obviously gone through this before, but even she flinched, covering her ears with both hands.
"This is your one and only warning," boomed a voice over the loudspeakers, louder than the alarm had been. "The main shaft of this facility is about to be purged. You have three minutes to return to your cells, after which time the doors will lock. Anyone outside of their cells after that time will be killed. Prisoner 13481, make your way to the Gate at once."
"Purged? What the hell is going on?!" Valora tried to look outside, but Senza shut the door, locked it herself.
"You don't wanna be out there right now," Senza said. "Trust me, the results aren't pretty. The whole Pit gets bathed in... I don't know what it is, but it's not natural." She gave a mirthless smile. "Anything that gets caught in it dies, except - ah..." She cut herself off, but Valora had already figured it out.
"Except whoever's getting released. Whoever's getting released is immune to the purge. How - how do they do that?"

'How' was yet another thing Valora didn't know. But, after three minutes had passed, she heard an echoing clank, the sound of every cell door at once locking tight. The alarm stopped. There was an eerie, sickly silence. Then, the light came.
"Ahh!" Senza cried out, looking away from her door's small window, covering her eyes. An unnatural purple light poured in, illuminating the cell in an ethereal glow, suddenly revealing thousands of particles of dust swirling in the air. "I know it looks s-scary, babe, but - we're safe in here. It's kinda crazy when you think about it, just a door keeping us from -"
"AAAAAIIIIIEEEE!!"

Whether it was someone who had overestimated their own power, someone who had fucked up an escape plan, or someone who just couldn't take imprisonment anymore, someone had just died.
"Every god damned time," Senza said, but with a shaking in her voice. Evidently she wasn't used to this yet.
"This is... horrible," Valora thought. "There's no excuse for this!" She knew that, during the Dark Days, all kinds of measures had been sanctioned for dealing with superhuman criminals but this was obscene. She wasn't much of a patriot, but she couldn't believe her country, a nation which was in theory liberal and democratic, would condone such a thing. It was vile. But reforming America's prison system would have to wait. She needed to get out - and she needed to do it now. Senza was staring through the window, trying to see her fellow prisoner's corpse. Her back was to Valora. Now was the time.

"MRRGGHHH!!" she growled, hauling herself up to her feet, balancing precariously with her bound legs, and hopping towards where Senza was standing. It was embarrassing enough having to move like this, each hop potentially bringing her to her feet, every two-footed step making her bosoms shake uncomfortably in her strapless bra. But she got closer, and closer, and closer. Eventually she found the right spot. She made sure she had enough purchase. "MMPHHH!!" she cried out, deliberately drawing Senza's attention. She turned around, and Valora struck.

Or rather, she tried to. She'd meant to headbutt Senza, but she was too slow. Senza just caught her by the shoulders, turned her around, and shoved her onto the floor.
"MMHHHPHHH!!" Valora groaned, hitting the ground hard.
"You dumb fuck," Senza laughed. "What, did you think that today somehow things would magically be different? Did you think that I didn't think you might pull something? You - ow!"
Valora had kicked her in the shin. She wasn't wearing any shoes, but it still hurt, and it caught Senza off guard. She stumbled slightly, and Valora pressed the advantage, drawing both her legs back, and thrusting the balls of her feet directly into Senza's midsection.

"AUUGHHH!!" Senza cried out, not winded, but still hurt, her ribs bruised by Valora's vicious kick. Before she could respond, another, and another, and the third one did wind her, and before she knew it she was lying on the ground, spluttering and gasping. Valora didn't let up for a second, thrusting herself forward like a snake, and slamming both feet into the bottom of Senza's chin.
"Urghhh..." she groaned, stunned by the sudden violence of Valora's attack.
"Okay, now or never," the blonde thought. "Got to get out... got to get out!"

She thrashed. She fought. She writhed, and wriggled and squirmed. Indeed, she exhausted just about every synonym for 'struggle' that one might use. But it achieved nothing. She achieved nothing. By the time Senza had recovered, she had made absolutely no headway untying herself whatsoever.
"No! No, no, no!" Valora grew every more desperate as she saw Senza stir. "Nmmhh! NNMMMHHHHPPPHHHH!!"
But she couldn't stop it. Senza rose, with an expression as ugly as sin, her chin bleeding. "Okay... this isn't fun anymore. This isn't fucking entertaining. Fifteen years. Fifteen years I've been locked up because of him. Because I believed in the fucking Supremacist... I hadn't even killed anyone before I got here! But he sends me a pretty girl, and that's supposed to make me feel better? No, fuck that. Fuck that and fuck you." A cloud gathered over her head, dark and forboding. "The sexy-bondage-funtimes are over now, Valora. Now I'm just gonna kill you. I know he told me not to but, uh... what are you gonna do?" She grinned. The cloud crackled. The air hissed, smelling of ammonia. And then Valora was struck by lightning.

Again, and again, and again Senza hit her. Again, and again, and again she was struck with Olympian bolts, raining down on her like divine fury. She didn't even cry out. She just lay, shivering and convulsing as Senza poured out her rage, the blue-white light of the lightning mixing with the mauve of the light of the Purge. The effect was almost blinding. And through it all, Senza screamed, screamed bloodily and viciously, sometimes laughing, sometimes just howling. And when it was all over, she slumped down, leaving Valora twitching, her bonds sizzling and smoking. Not even looking at her, Senza laughed, emptily. Then she heard a snap.

Then she felt a hand closing around her throat.

"You know," Valora growled, lifting Senza by her neck with a single hand, "this was actually my plan A. Getting you to do this. But I rejected it, because I didn't think you'd be dumb enough to fill me full of electricity, when the only thing stopping me from snapping your neck is a microchip on my spine!" The effect had been instantaneous. Senza had destroyed the inhibitor chip completely, and Valora's full strength surged back into her limbs. It was like she'd been drowning for months - and she'd finally put her head above water. She didn't know if she was imagining it, or if her powers actually came with a slight tinge of enhanced senses, but it seemed suddenly as if the world had more colour. More texture.

She bellowed mightily, hurling Senza across the room.
"Hide!" she commanded. "I'm opening this door. That... radiation, whatever it is, won't do shit to me. You? It'll fry. So stay in the shadows. It's where you belong." And then, with a fraction of the strength in her possession, she snapped the lock like a twig, and strode out into the violet light.

Truth be told, it was painful. It was like needles pricking her on every inch of her much-exposed skin. And it was difficult to see - but it was obviously designed for a lower calibre of superhuman. It was death to them. It was an itch to Valora. And, shouting with anger, she leapt in great bursts of strength upwards, up through the light, up the long, long, walkways, up past Bufo even, who watched bemused as Valora leapt past her. The great, sickly-blue barrier that shone above her grew ever closer. She kept jumping, scrabbling, leaping, scratching her way out. She summoned more of her strength, more desperately, than she ever had done in her life, thanking God above for her power, for her strength that, at last, had returned to her, had saved her, had allowed her to save herself. But then something strange happened. For all the force she put in, the barrier wasn't getting any closer anymore. She used every ounce of her strength, screaming with the effort - but it seemed to do nothing. She couldn't escape. She couldn't leave - until she realised that she wasn't ascending to the gate anymore. She had long since passed it. She was looking at the sky.

She looked around. She realised that she heard shouting. Something was tapping her on the chest. It kind of stung, actually, and she realised that it was gunfire. There were armed guards surrounding her, obviously very, very confused as to why she was where she was. There were towers all around her, all facing inwards, each with a sniper manning it, making sure that what was in was to stay in. Valora distantly heard someone yelling for the gunfire to stop, that the 'blonde chick' wasn't any of the people who were supposed to be imprisoned there. But the chaos didn't matter. The gunfire didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the simple, core truth.

Valora was free.

"Stop, you idiots!!" A woman in her fifties, grey haired with a crooked back and small, keen features finally got the guards to stop shooting. "You!" she shouted. "You aren't... you aren't the one being released today. How did you get out? How did you survive the radiation cascade?!"
But Valora didn't respond. Valora barely even noticed her. She just laughed, joyfully. It was a strikingly beautiful sound. Belatedly she registered she question, turned on the grey haired woman, giving her a cocky smile. "You did this, didn't you?"
"I -?"
"You're the odd one out. You're the only one who's not in kevlar and holding a gun. You're in charge of this 'facility', right? In fact..." She took a couple of steps closer, and the woman backed away without thinking. "In fact," Valora went on, "I'll bet you're a superhuman. I'll bet you created the Membrane." She advanced in a manner that might well have been taken to be threatening. "You know, you should try taking a look down there yourself. It's... it's Hell. You made Hell. You, and anyone involved in this facility, I swear to God, you're going down."
"I -"
"Oh, and you want to know how I survived?" Valora spat, a ringing note of almost-hysteria in her voice. "For the same reason that you should be shaking in your god damned boots when I tell you you're going down." She stepped close to her unwitting jailer, close enough to smell her. "Because I'm Valora. And now," she said, amidst confused, awed whispers, "it's time to get my name back."

The following represents an alternate ending to this story.


She thrashed. She fought. She writhed, and wriggled and squirmed. Indeed, she exhausted just about every synonym for 'struggle' that one might use. But it achieved nothing. She achieved nothing. By the time Senza had recovered, she had made absolutely no headway untying herself whatsoever.
"No! No, no, no!" Valora grew every more desperate as she saw Senza stir. "Nmmhh! NNMMMHHHHPPPHHHH!!"
But she couldn't stop it. Senza rose, with an expression as ugly as sin, her chin bleeding. "Okay... this isn't fun anymore. This isn't fucking entertaining. Fifteen years. Fifteen years I've been locked up because of him. Because I believed in the fucking Supremacist... I hadn't even killed anyone before I got here! But he sends me a pretty girl, and that's supposed to make me feel better? No, fuck that. Fuck that and fuck you." A cloud gathered over her head, dark and forboding. "The sexy-bondage-funtimes are over now, Valora. Now I'm just gonna kill you. I know he told me not to but, uh... what are you gonna do?" She grinned. The cloud crackled. The air hissed, smelling of ammonia. And then Valora was struck by lightning.

One shot. One blinding, blue-white blast, making Valora cry out in pain, shudder and convulse. She rolled onto her front, and though Senza could have repeated her attack, she found that she was not able. It was not that she felt guilty about keeping Valora captive for all these weeks. It was simply that she could not abide torturing someone who wanted just what she herself wanted: freedom.
"Fuck," she muttered, simply. She slumped down, closed her eyes

Then she felt a hand closing around her throat.

"You know," Valora growled, lifting Senza by her neck with a single hand, "this was actually my plan A. Getting you to do this. But I rejected it, because I didn't think you'd be dumb enough to zap me with electricity, when the only thing stopping me from snapping your neck is a microchip on my spine!" The effect had been instantaneous. Senza had disabled the inhibitor chip, and Valora's full strength surged back into her limbs. It was like she'd been drowning for months - and she'd finally put her head above water. She didn't know if she was imagining it, or if her powers actually came with a slight tinge of enhanced senses, but it seemed suddenly as if the world had more colour. More texture.

She bellowed mightily, hurling Senza across the room.
"Hide!" she commanded. "I'm opening this door. That... radiation, whatever it is, won't do shit to me. You? It'll fry. So stay in the shadows. It's where you belong." And then, with a fraction of the strength in her possession, she snapped the lock like a twig and strode out into the violet light.

Truth be told, it was painful. It was like needles pricking her on every inch of her much-exposed skin. And it was difficult to see - but it was obviously designed for a lower calibre of superhuman. It was death to them. It was an itch to Valora. And, shouting with anger, she leapt in great bursts of strength upwards, up through the light, up the long, long, walkways, up past Bufo even, who watched bemused as Valora leapt past her. The great, sickly-blue barrier that shone above her grew ever closer. She kept jumping, scrabbling, leaping, scratching her way out. She summoned more of her strength, more desperately, than she ever had done in her life, thanking God above for her power, for her strength that, at last, had returned to her, had saved her, had allowed her to save herself. But then something strange happened. For all the force she put in, the barrier wasn't getting any closer anymore. She used every ounce of her strength, screaming with the effort - but it seemed to do nothing. She couldn't escape. She couldn't leave - until she realised that she wasn't ascending to the gate anymore. She had long since passed it. She was looking at the sky.

She looked around. She realised that she heard shouting. Something was tapping her on the chest. It kind of stung, actually, and she realised that it was gunfire. There were armed guards surrounding her, obviously very, very confused as to why she was where she was. There were towers all around her, all facing inwards, each with a sniper manning it, making sure that what was in was to stay in. Valora distantly heard someone yelling for the gunfire to stop, that the 'blonde chick' wasn't any of the people who were supposed to be imprisoned there. But the chaos didn't matter. The gunfire didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the simple, core truth.

"I'm fr - arrghhh!!"

A sudden, sharp pain in her back, like being electrified. Of course, Senza had just done exactly that - but this time it actually hurt. The sensation was unfamiliar - but the location wasn't. It was exactly where the power-suppressing chip had been implanted into her. She fell to one knee, supporting herself with one hand. The weight of her body pressed down onto her. The lightness of her limbs, a feeling she had known her entire life, was slipping away from her. Again. "Oh no... no!"

Most of the guards, and the grey-haired woman standing among them who was responsible for the creation of the Membrane, had no idea what was going on. This blonde woman had, somehow, managed to survive the Purge completely unscathed, and had laughed off their gunfire to such an extent that she hadn't even noticed it. And now, she was collapsing. It was all very mysterious - except to one of them. One of the guards knew exactly who she was, or at least the name she went by publicly. He knew exactly how she'd survived the Purge: she was simply too powerful for it to affect. And he had a sneaking suspicion that he knew what was happening to her now. For it was her, after all, whom Sinistrus had contacted to arrange for Valora to be dumped into the Pit. It was he who had ensured that there would be no security camera footage on the night of her imprisonment. And it was he who, now, raised his weapon and fired.

It was not a rifle, not exactly. It was an ugly, square-looking thing with a flattened, oversized tube for a barrel. But it was quite effective. When he squeezed the trigger it launched not a bullet, but two steel balls, balls attached by a thick wire between them. When they struck Valora in the torso, it acted like a bola whip, spinning around the shapely heroine, binding her, squeezing her arms against her sides, criss crossing down her entire body, pressing tightly against her, pushing her voluptuous thighs, her calves together, immobilising the blonde beauty in only a couple of seconds.
"No!" Valora screamed, managing to remain standing, but looking down in horror at her bondage. She strained, and squirmed, but she'd been right: the chip hadn't been destroyed by Senza's lightning, only momentarily disrupted. Her strength was fully suppressed again, and she could not free herself. "Listen to me!" she shouted, her desperation making her sound no less imperious than she normally did when addressing crowds. "I'm not supposed to be here. And I - ungghhh - I don't mean I was wrongly convicted or any of that bullshit! I was kidnapped and dumped here! I'm - AUUUNNGGHHHHH!!!"

From the coils wrapped around her gorgeous body, a crimson energy poured out, surging into her. Such strength that remained in her was sucked out in an instant, like bathwater draining down a plughole. She fell to her knees, bound tight and weak as a kitten.
"Don't worry ma'am," said the guard who'd tied her up. "Don't listen to that jabberjaw bullshit." He strode up to her, quickly, while there was still enough confusion that no-one would order him not to. He hoisted her back to her feet, dragged her back to the edge of the Pit.
"P... please..." she moaned. "Please... listen to me... there's someone... pretending to be me... have... to stop her..."
"Whatever, convict," he replied. "Seriously think we'd listen to some bullshit story like that?" He held her right over the edge, leaning her over it and holding her by the cords wrapped around her torso, his other hand getting a good helping of the damsel's generous curves. He leaned towards her, and whispered in her ear: "The Supremacist sends his regards." And then he pushed her.
"NO!!" Valora cried, as she tumbled down into the Pit - but her voice was too weak to carry. She watched the figure of the guard growing smaller, blinked at the flash when she passed through the Membrane, which was perfectly happy to accept her back in. And as she fell, she saw another woman ascending the stairs that led out, that led through the Membrane. It was Bufo. She saw Valora. She looked confused for a moment. And then, realising what had happened, she smiled, winked, and waved. Then she stepped out into freedom, and Valora fell back into captivity.

When she hit the ground, at last, landing on the metal grille that was the topmost floor of the prison itself, she was not injured. Her durability, as ever, stayed with her. She felt stunned, though, and hot. Shaking her head, weakly, she realised that she had fainted for a few seconds. The purging light was gone, and Valora was trapped once again. "No," she mumbled, shot through with a disappointment and grief almost beyond measure at the nearness of her escape. "No, this can't... can't be..." Her cheeks were red. She felt small. Weak. Helpless. Her attempt, perhaps the one attempt she would get at a real chance of escape, had failed. For the first time, she really began to believe that she would not be able to escape. Weak, and faint, and almost delirious, she began to cry out. "Please... help... help, someone! Please... someone...rescue me..."
And then, as though her plea had been heard, two arms slipped under Valora's body, and the trussed heroine was being cradled in an all-too familiar pair of arms.
"Don't worry," Senza said. "I'll rescue you as often as you like."

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How long passed between her failed escape and the day of the sale, Valora did not know. At least as long again as she had already been imprisoned, perhaps more. The days went by in a melted haze of piteous weakness and bound helplessness. Hope had been discarded quite some time ago. But today, for all the good it did her, was a little different. When she woke up, it was not bound on Senza's bed. She wasn't even lying down, but was slumped on her knees. Oh, she was bound, yes, but she was... she was on a sort of raised platform. Made of wood, maybe. She looked out and saw that there were people sitting in rows of chairs, facing her.

"Mmh...?" She was gagged, of course. A black panel gag, pressed tight over her mouth, strapped with steel buckles, and padlocked into place. Around her wrists, leather belts, or straps, or something of the sort. Coiled around her upper arms, fixing them against her back, and squeezing her bosoms from above and below, highlighting with an almost egregious strenuousness the amplitude of Valora's bust. More straps twisted around her thighs, and ankles, creaking whenever Valora moved. But it was not just her bonds that aggrieved her this time. It was what she was wearing.

A simple, blue leotard: low cut, tight, and soft against her skin. Red boots, about two-thirds of the way up her calves. And on her face, Valora realised, was a domino mask. Her domino mask. "Wh... they've dressed me up like... like..."
"Valora! That's right ladies, one of you lucky cons is going to get a superheroine all to herself, to do with... well, whatever you want!" It was Senza. She was standing in front of Valora, addressing the crowd, who cheered and hollered and whistled. "It's been a fun few months having her all to myself but, frankly, I just feel selfish. So I'm giving her away. Well, not giving her - auctioning her!" Senza threw her arms upwards, laughing madly. The others cheered even louder.
"She... she's auctioning me off?!" Valora pulled herself up straight, began an inevitably futile struggle with the straps binding her. She raised her eyes - and saw that everyone was looking at her.

"Aww, I think our sleeping beauty's woken up!" Senza laughed. "Give her a hand!"
There was a loud round of applause, raucous cheers.
"I'll give her more than a hand!" Valora heard someone shout, prompting a rather foul chorus of laughter.
"Mhhh... MPHHHH!!" Valora protested, shaking her head from side to side, casting her blonde hair all about her as she fought. To the other prisoners, she looked the very picture of sensual defiance. But Senza could tell that it was more a show of defiance than anything. Valora could not allow herself to be seen to be meek and simpering.

"Now let's just go over what you're buying here," Senza said. She whirled round, thin fingers grasping at Valora with prodigious strength, hauling her up to her feet, presenting her to the crowd like meat before a market, holding the heroine close against her.
"Now first off," Senza crowed, "we've got the concept. Knowing that this do-gooding damsel is yours to keep, and there's jack shit she can do about it. Knowing that after all those years of fighting the good fight... her reward is being your trussed up... helpless... slave-girl. I mean, can you put a price on that? Well - yes! Because I'm doing that right now!"

Senza knelt down, and Valora felt hands on her calves. She squirmed, but couldn't get Senza off her.
"Now to the specifics," the prisoner said. "Let's start with the gams. Pretty long. Nice and curvy." She spread her hands up, taking hold of Valora's thighs. "And her thighs - I mean, just great. I don't wanna say 'juicy' 'cause that sounds kinda gross, but... it's heading in that sort of direction." Her hands went further up. "Phenomenal hips. Got all the contours, y'know. Slipping up into a slinky lil' waist... and if we go further up - oh, have I reached the main attraction?"

With both hands, Senza grasped Valora's breasts from underneath, kneading them like dough between her fingers, massaging them, and making Valora realise that there was no bra beneath her leotard. She blushed at the thought, and at the actions of Senza's slender fingers. "Now that's what I call buxom," Senza laughed, to even more cheers. Her victim moaned, and writhed, but this only spurred her on.
"You know this is the good shit. I mean, you can see them. Now what are you willing to pay to feel 'em? What'll you pay to run your fingers through this silky, blonde hair? What'll you pay to kiss the ruby-reds lurking under this big, mean gag I slapped on her? What'll you pay for this fantastic piece of ass we've got ourselves?" She grabbed Valora by the shoulders, bent her over, turned her so that her behind was facing the audience, and spanked her round, smooth ass, as Valora moaned at the humiliating loss of her dignity, and a the crowd screeched with lustful laughter.

The offers came in quickly. Some offered cigarettes. Some offered alcohol. One woman even offered a bunch of cigars, and there was a little scuffle, a yelp, and then someone else was offering the bunch of cigars. But it didn't really matter all that much to Valora. They could have been offering gold bullion and she still would have felt achingly aggrieved: for they were bartering for her. They were buying her. Senza was selling her. And then one offer in particular caught Valora's - and Senza's - attention.

It was Ribbon. She was waving at Senza, drawing her attention by shaping her supernatural bands into a large arrow, pointing at Ribbon.
"Hush everybody," Senza commanded. "Looks like everyone's least favourite little miss has something to say."
"Um, go fuck yourself Senza," Ribbon replied, sweetly. "Nobody likes you. They're just scared of you."
"As well they should be," Senza replied. "What do you want?"
"What do you think I want, silly? I want the busty blonde."
"Yeah, I get that," Senza replied. "So... what are you offering?"
On Ribbon's face, a viciously self-satisfied look appeared.
"A fair trade."
It was only then that it became apparent that Ribbon had something with her. A sack. A big burlap sack. A big burlap sack that was thrashing, and wriggling. Small, muffled whimpers were coming out of it. The sound of a woman's voice, suppressed by a gag.
"Oh god," Valora thought. "Oh god no."

"See, I know you and the Supremacist used to be pally back in the day. You were pretty cute in your twenties, so he mighta had a little crush on you, even. But, men always trade in for the younger models, right?" She picked the sack up over her shoulder, and it wriggled so much that she needed her bands to hold the occupant in place. "Oh, in this metaphor, I'm the younger model, and you're the washed up old hag." She walked towards the stage, obviously not quite strong enough to bear the weight of her captive comfortably. "But I'm not a man, see?"
"I'd never have guessed."
"No, silly - I mean I want to trade in for the older model." Ribbon brought her sack up onto to the ramshackle wooden platform, placed it down. She untied the bottom of it, which was by its occupant's feet. She took the sack by its edge, and yanked it off. Valora saw who had been inside. She saw who had been chosen to share her fate, and she almost wept with grief.

Slender as a lily, and with skin as fine and as white as the petals of that flower. Legs, long and slender and left quite bare by her short, silver boots and her short, golden dress. Her shoulders were slim, and smooth and silky, and quite naked, drawing the eye to her lovely decolletage, her perky, shapely bust. Her features were delicate, but not weak. Green eyes, sharp and almost radiant, eyes which could be narrowed in rapid, analytical cunning, or wide and generous and sweet. Her lips were a soft pink, a little thinner than Valora's, but softer. Her hair was longer, a little less wavy, but a burnished, fiery red. She was exquisite. She was beautiful. She was Enhancegirl, and now she, too, was captive.

"Mmh?! Mhhhphh?!" she whimpered, catching sight of Valora. "Vllhhrhhh! Vllhhrhhh, nhhh! NHHHH!!" She was bound and gagged in rope. It was criss-crossed all over her body, in a complex network. It was like a harness around her breasts, coiled around and between both, linked to ropes snaking over her shoulders. That rope was tied to her hands, which were bound in a reverse prayer position, pointing upwards, held absolutely immobile by the tension of the ropes connected to her breasts. Her legs were bound too, of course, with x-es of thick, hemp rope going all the way down her lovely, long legs, binding them with strictness that suggested that they'd had to be re-tied, that she'd managed almost to escape - but had been thwarted. And the rope was in her mouth, too, pulled between her pretty lips, cleave gagging her with cord.

"Oooooohhhh!" Senza cooed. "Okay, Ribbon, you've got me this time. That is - I mean, holy crap. She's... she's -"
"Enhancegirl," Ribbon said. "I think the Supremacist has a grudge against her, 'n' all, but she's not just here for that. She's here because she almost figured it out."
"Oh god... oh Sophie, no!" It made perfect sense. Sophie had probably realised that the fake Valora was what she was immediately. She'd have investigated. She'd have put her life on the line to stop the plot, to help Valora. And this was her reward. "Not you... not you too..."

"Well, uh... sold!" Senza cackled, leaping forward and seizing Enhancegirl, lifting her up and twisting her fingers in her burning, red hair. She pulled Sophie's head to the side, and kissed her slender, pale neck, as the bright-eyed maiden moaned and wriggled in her grasp. Valora saw the tears in Enhancegirl's emerald eyes, saw her looking to - looking to her. Looking to her with pleading, feminine helplessness in her manner, in her face, in her slender, supple body. Even seeing her bound and vanquished, even knowing that she'd been imprisoned here for months - Enhancegirl still looked to the mighty Valora for aid. Still begged with her lovely eyes for Valora, legendary hero, to save her. But Valora couldn't even save herself.

The fallen heroine watched as Senza claimed her new victim. She watched Senza throw the moaning, squirming redhead over her shoulder, lifting her short, gold dress to stroke and squeeze and spank her prominent, perky, round ass, and run her hands all over Enhancegirl's pale, coltish, silky legs. She watched her carrying Enhancegirl away, heard the moans fill the air, heard her become the target of the cheers and mocking laughter and wolf-whistles.

So when Ribbon picked Valora up, she did not fight back. When Ribbon's hands and bands roved over her, she did not fight back. When Ribbon thrust her hands down her leotard and hungrily pawed at her beautiful breasts, Valora did not fight back. She couldn't. She was a prisoner. The No Law Gang had bound her. Sinistrus had made her sleep. Senza had stripped her. But it was Enhancegirl, in the end, with her pleading eyes and her soft, piteous moans, who had defeated Valora utterly. And so, with a soft, sensual whimper -

- Valora surrendered.

Wow, that was great. I didn't even know this existed. I didn't see it on your DA page.

Blx wrote: ↑

6 years ago

Wow, that was great. I didn't even know this existed. I didn't see it on your DA page.

Thanks very much! I haven't put it on my DA page. I don't want to confuse the people who are following the ongoing series.

Nice tale, but needs two sequels to the alternate ending:

Enhancegirl's journey to her capture (What Sinistrous can do to the enhanced senses?)

Spectra's search

Hmm, you may unwittingly have begun a saga.

dravatar wrote: ↑

6 years ago

Nice tale, but needs two sequels to the alternate ending:

Enhancegirl's journey to her capture (What Sinistrous can do to the enhanced senses?)

Spectra's search

Hmm, you may unwittingly have begun a saga.

Thanks for the comment! Actually Sinistrus and Enhancegirl have already tangled, in Enhancegirl 13. So you can see who wins that particular matchup.