The Perils of Enhancegirl 9: Powerless!

[Damselbinder]

"Mmmhhh..." Sophie Scott sighed, as she sank down into a warm bath, her lovely body embraced by the steaming, soapy water. She let it cover her up to her neck, the water almost overflowing. She lay back, feeling the water lapping against her as she moved. She felt her muscles relax, and she lifted her long, pale legs slightly, her knees poking out above the water.

She stared up at the ceiling, feeling her red hair dampen as it fell into the water.
"What the hell have I been doing with myself?" she said to herself. It had been two weeks since her battle with the Supremacist. Two weeks since her capture, and ignominious public exposure by the villainous Nyx. Since then, Seacouver had not seen a great deal of Enhancegirl.

There had been an almost gleeful response to Sophie's public humiliation in the local rags. While her fellow heroine Valora had also been the subject of ridicule, she hadn't got it as badly as Enhancegirl. There had been a corresponding degree of outrage at this ridicule from other writers, who pointed out how many lives Sophie's defeat of the Supremacist had saved.

"Even if Enhancegirl had never done, and would never do again, anything else of note for the rest of her career," one writer had said, "even if every attempted feat of heroism other than this ended in utter failure, the world still owes her a debt of gratitude for her part in the Supremacist's defeat. And unlike some of the 'journalists' at the Herald seem to think, there is no indication that she 'pushed random buttons and got lucky'. What was done to Sophie and Valora was a concerted effort to produce exactly this kind of sadistic response." The title of the piece had been 'Is this what we owe our Heroes?' It had been received well, and gradually opinion was beginning to turn against writers like Jack Bing, who'd been the first and loudest in shouting Sophie down.

And yet, while the detractors had targeted Enhancegirl, their opponents' attacks inevitably became more generalised, about the public's attitude to superheroes in general. Enhancegirl was mentioned, but merely as an example. The story wasn't about her anymore. And the public's memory did fade. Two weeks could be rather a long time.

In fact, if she had put earnest effort into doing so, the public mood could probably have been pushed back by Sophie into her favour. The Supremacist's defeat had left a power vacuum in the criminal underworld that no-one had realised would even exist, and plenty had tried to step up to the plate. Enhancegirl might have made her mark in any number of ways. And in all probability, she would have done - despite what certain hacks, and some of the more arrogant cape-crowd, might have thought, she was extremely skilled, and this would doubtless have made itself relatively plain after one or two heroic outings.

Yet something had happened to Sophie which had captured almost all of her attention...and had taken up most of her nights, too. Even the telepathic Insyte wouldn't have been able to work out quite the passage of thought which had led her to it - but some way or another, Sophie had fallen into the arms of Rachel Artesia...otherwise known as the thief, Ocelot.

Sophie still didn't understand it herself. When she'd first met Rachel, the thief had kidnapped her, drugging her into paralysis and tying her helpless body up. It was by no means the only time something like that had happened to the slender redhead, and had it been anyone else she'd have been nothing but furious. But Rachel had lit a fire within Sophie, and she couldn't put it out - not that she'd been trying very hard. The last two weeks had been the most sexually exciting of Sophie's life.

Rachel seemed to know exactly how to make her paramour feel anything she liked. At times she was forceful, stimulating a nascent submissive side in the headstrong damsel: binding her, spanking her, doing everything to make the redhead feel totally dominated. Yet at other times, she was surprisingly gentle with Sophie, caressing her, her kisses soft, and thrillingly intimate..
"Mmm..." Sophie sighed, sinking into the water even deeper, her left hand slipping down to her thighs.

A few minutes later, Sophie got out of the bath, her soft skin almost glowing, steam rising from every inch of her. She slipped on her white underwear, and a short, silky, black nightdress. She would never have bought such a thing for herself, but it had been a present from Rachel. For all Sophie knew, it had been bought with the proceeds from Ocelot's thievery - yet she couldn't get herself to work up a great deal of moral outrage.

She walked through the living area she shared with Kirsten and Lucy, her two roommates. Kirsten had been a friend since her high school days, but she hardly knew Lucy at all. The two of them were watching television. A tall, handsome Englishman was expostulating dramatically to his pretty, brunette companion about something which he seemed to think was very important.
"Oh my gawd, I love English dudes!" Kirsten gasped. "I, like, seriously don't get why he and Clara aren't screwing. I would be all over David Tennant's ass in no time flat..."
"Oh em gee, I know, right?" Lucy replied. "The other dude was hotter though. Paul...something."
"No way!" Kirsten said. "He was, like, a - a fop. No gravitas. Can't believe he held on for three seasons. I'd have even preferred that weird guy from the movie. With the ears?"
"No way, he was such a little troll!"
"Yeah, but he was, like, intense, you know."
"Isn't this show about time travel?" Sophie said. Neither had noticed her come in before that.

"Oh, hey, Sophie - whoa!" Kirsten gawked at what Sophie was wearing. "Geez, girl, who are you, like, trying to impress?"
"Nobody in particular," Sophie said. Quickly changing the subject, she said: "I can't believe you're watching this."
"You don't like Dr Who?" Lucy asked.
"I'll explain why." She grabbed the remote, and switched off the sound.

"Oh, Doctor!" she said, mouthing over the words of the leading lady. "Can't the two of us ever be together?"
"No, Chezmerelda," she continued, now as the hero of the tale, putting on a truly appalling English accent, "for I am a Time King or something and an immortal - whereas you humans are as mayflies."
"But then why do you keep giving me longing looks every other shot?"
"Because I'm tortured, Delilia! I'm an immortal super genius who can go anywhere he wants, for as long as he wants, and doesn't even seem to have a job - and oh, it's so painful being this...handsome! Aahh, stop!"

The last two words were in her own accent, as she batted away cushions being hurled at her by her old friend.
"You're such an asshole!" Kirsten hurled pillow after pillow at her.
"Fine! Enjoy your crappy sci-fi!" Sophie laughed. "But when you turn the sound back on, I freaking guarantee you'll have lost nothing!" She retreated into her room.
"Such a smartass!" Kirsten shouted. She switched the sound back on, and saw the female lead staring mournfully into the Englishman's eyes.
"I'm pretty sure she got the gist right," Lucy admitted.

Sophie shut the door behind her, turned around - and gasped.
"Rachel!" Sitting rather comfortably on her bed, as casually as you like, was the slinky, gorgeous figure of a certain olive-skinned thief.
"Hey, sugar," she said. "Loving the bachelorette pad." She was dressed in her Ocelot garb - a black body-stocking that left her arms, shapely legs and the upper parts of her breasts but thinly protected, while her torso was also covered with a black piece of body armour. A belt full of all kinds of gadgets and tools of her criminal trade was normally slung around her belt, but she'd already taken it off.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Sophie said, glancing a little nervously at her door. "I'm not alone tonight..." Despite her words, she couldn't keep her eyes off Rachel's body.

"See, Sophie, I was just coming back from a job and...what do you know? I find myself swinging right by your campus. Thought I might drop by, and check on my favourite redhead."
"Yeah, I'm sure that was a total coincidence," Sophie said.
"Hey, you're the one dressed for the occasion." Just as Sophie was staring at Rachel, Rachel found her eyes glued to her new lover. Her smooth, pale legs, scarcely covered at all by her nightdress, were sharply contrasted by the dark material above them. Sophie lifted her right leg, rubbing one of her calves with her foot. As she did so, she gave Rachel just a hint of what lay under the hem of her dress. "Get your tight little ass over here," the thief commanded.

Sophie obeyed. She walked over to Ocelot, but she didn't get all the way to the bed. The thief sprang up, seizing Sophie by the shoulders, and pulling her in.
"Mmhh..." Sophie sighed, as her paramour kissed her, their tongues caressing each other, their bodies pressing tightly against each other. The redhead felt Rachel's hands running up her thigh, gripping tightly, but just the right side of painfully. Sophie's own arms went to Rachel's waist, feeling the feminine curve of her hips. She ran her hands back up, over Rachel's breasts, her skin feeling delightfully smooth under her body stocking. The two lovely young woman broke the kiss.

"You're such a minx," Rachel said, slipping her hand under Sophie's dress, squeezing her rear, feeling its yielding firmness - a rather apt metaphor, it seemed to Rachel, for Sophie herself. She gave Sophie a quick, sharp, slap, to which she responded with a delightfully feminine gasp. "So naughty...walking around your dorm dressed like that..." She gave Sophie a look. "I don't need to be worried about your little roommates, do I?"
"Uh, no, I'm pretty sure they're straight," Sophie said, recalling her friends' mooning over that actor. "Why? You the jealous type?"
"I can be...when I think I've got something worth stealing."

She began kissing Sophie's neck and shoulders, rubbing her stocking-covered thigh against Sophie's.
"Oohh...Rachel..." Sophie sighed, biting her lip, her sensitive skin tingling wherever Rachel kissed her.
"Come on, babe," Rachel said. She stood up, putting her hand on the small of Sophie's back, and guided her towards the bed. Sophie lay down, arching one of her legs, letting her dress fall back, and making no attempt to push it into place.
"What'll be my lady's pleasure?" Sophie said, a shudder of sensual coyness going through her on the last word.
"It's not my pleasure I'm interested in tonight."

Rachel had brought a small knapsack with her, and she took out a long, satin scarf, shimmering and glossy..
"What are you going to do with that?" Sophie said, breathing hard. She began instinctively placing her wrists together - she'd found herself tied up more often in the last two weeks than in the rest of her career as a superheroine combined, after all.

But Rachel didn't bind her. She wound the satin ribbon around her own hand, and then slowly ran the loose end of it up Sophie's bare legs.
"Aahh..." Sophie sighed, feeling the sensually soft material against her skin. She writhed slowly, running her hands against her sheets.
"You like that?"
"Uh-huh..." Sophie said. She looked up at her lover, saw her sharp eyes, catlike grin...but just a hint of something softer underneath. "Hey, Rachel?" the redhead said.
"Yeah?"
"You know I think you look hot as hell in that outfit...but would you mind taking it off?" Sophie smiled coyly at her. "Makes it feel like I'm more of your 'work'."
"Oh, honey, believe me," Rachel said, "you're play."

Ocelot did indeed take off her outfit, allowing the body stocking to fall in a crumpled heap on Sophie's bed, and throwing her chestplate to the side.
"Like what you see?" she said. Sophie looked her up and down - her curvy thighs, her hips, the swell of her kissable - and indeed, oft kissed, as of late - breasts.
"Kinda thinking I do," Sophie replied, still trembling with the expectation of pleasure. "Unhh..." she sighed, as Ocelot ran both her hands up Sophie's legs, parting them and kneeling between them. "What...about you?"
"Oh, you have no idea," Ocelot said. She lifted Sophie's dress, and kissed her midriff, just below her navel.

This was Rachel at her softest, her warmest. It almost made Sophie wonder whether there was something to what they had other than just lust...
"Oh, my gorgeous little jewel..." Rachel sighed, as she slipped Sophie's dress off altogether, covering her bare breasts in kisses.
"Ohh...yeah..." Sophie moaned. Her lover knew exactly how to touch her, rapidly learning exactly what made the flame-haired maiden blush most brightly, sigh the most helplessly. Yet even in her pleasure, there was doubt. The way Rachel had referred to her: "her jewel" - was she just another pretty bauble to the thief?

But Sophie's doubts rapidly were consumed by the overweening pleasure of Rachel's touch. She was getting a little more forceful now, gripping Sophie's legs with her own, kissing her roughly, even biting Sophie's long, slender neck.
"Unnnhhhh..." Sophie whimpered, feeling sensuously controlled. Naked and beautiful, Sophie drew Rachel closer to her, inviting the curvy, olive-skinned thief to take her pleasure of her. This she did, with ardent, passionate enthusiasm...


An hour later, the platinum blonde thief and the red-haired student were lying next to each other, sweating and exhausted, their limbs intertwined, their bodies moist, the tangy, heady scent of sex in the air. The moon shone in, making Sophie's pale skin positively luminescent. She breathed hard, eyes half open, still trembling, unable to stop her thighs from shifting against each other, perpetuating the pleasure throbbing between them. Her own skin felt moist - damp, even - from the liquid of her amorous exertions.

"Hey...that was...fun..." Rachel said, panting. "I'll call you, yeah?" She started to get up, but Sophie took her hand.
"Don't go..." Sophie said. "I just...I mean, don't you ever just want to talk?" Rachel seemed to find this amusing.
"You're a superhero, I'm a thief," Rachel laughed. "What exactly is there to talk about?"
"You're a human being, aren't you?" Sophie said. "So am I, last time I checked. Isn't there anything you want to know about me? Or anything you want to tell me about yourself?"
"Oh, you're such a cutie," Rachel said. "I prefer to communicate in...other ways." She began sliding her hand up Sophie's thigh.
"Hey, cut it out," Sophie said, batting her hand away. Rachel looked at her askance.
"Alright then, what do you want to know?" There was a tinge of irritation in her voice.

Sophie thought for a moment. Indeed, up until that point, she'd been happy just to be Rachel's...prize, and she hadn't really thought of talking in this way. Their affair had been illicit, primal, physical...but Sophie couldn't give herself to someone and not want to know them.
"Oh, yeah..." Sophie thought of something. "Aerogirl said that you never do jobs on Saturdays."
"So?"
"Well, I was wondering if you were Jewish." Rachel stared at her for a moment.

"Ahahaha!" she laughed uproariously.
"Ssshh, Rachel!" Sophie hissed. "Okay, whatever, you're not Jewish! Keep fuckin' quiet, would you? It's hard enough keeping the heroine thing secret! "
"Sorry," Rachel said, restraining herself. "Ah, it's just..." She looked at Sophie with a strangely wistful expression. "You're half right. I'm a...lapsed Jew, I guess. My parents were in the Tribe, anyway."
"If you're not religious, how come you don't work on Saturdays? You didn't even see me on Saturday."
"Oh not even you, huh?" Rachel said, giving Sophie a playful flick. "It's...oh fuck, how did gjyshe put it..."

She sat up, and hunched her shoulders, putting on a rather unusual accent.
"'If Hashem sees a life full of righteousness, and only one sin, he says: 'Tsk tsk. You were so close to getting it right.' On the other hand, if he sees a life full of sin...but with one little smidgen of virtue, he says: 'Oy, Shaytan, take a look at this! Didn't I tell you she wasn't all bad?'" The imitation had an odd touch of verisimilitude to it, and Sophie laughed gently. Rachel laughed back, and the two women shared a more human moment with each other than at any time in the previous fortnight.

"Do you still talk to them?" Sophie asked, sidling up closer.
"Oh, god no, I -" Rachel stopped. The ease that had come over her vanished. "Oh, you little devil! Got me spilling all the beans, huh? Well sorry, but that's as far as this cat goes."
"I was just asking," Sophie said quietly. "I want to know about my...my lover."
"Uh-huh," she replied, arching her eyebrow. "Not convinced, sweetie." Sophie saw the wall go up high and strong - Ocelot was back.
"Hey, I didn't mean to stick my nose in, Rachel," Sophie said. "I didn't mean to, like, upset you."
"Oh, get real, sister," Rachel laughed. "Just gotta maintain the mystique, is all."

Sophie gave up, and turned to lie on her back again. She felt her phone buzzing, picked it up from her dresser. It was a text from May. She smiled just seeing her name. The blonde reporter had been caught up in the events of Sophie's capture and public humiliation, but had put heroic effort into defending Sophie in the press. Since that day, Enhancegirl had been seen exactly twice - and both times had been with the thought of not wanting to let May's efforts go to waste.

"Hey hot stuff," it read. "Got a chance for a girl to impress for you: couple of no name jackoffs named Fracas and - I shit you not - Huxtable Duxtable just ripped off about 700,000 dollars worth in diamonds from an armoured car. Holed up in the apartment above the Crab Shack on the corner of Landsdowne and Lafeyette. You can't miss it - it's the one surrounded by all the cops. Have fun, EG."

Sophie thought for a moment.
"What the hell have I been doing?" she thought. She'd spent the last two weeks wrapped up in her own thoughts, or in Rachel's arms, completely neglecting her duties - for she saw them as duties - as a heroine. "Fuck the press. Fuck the people. Fuck the whole lot of them. I'll help out whether they laugh at me or not. I'm not Weregild, for Christ's sake. I don't need everyone - I don't need anyone - cheering my damned name."

She got up.
"I've gotta go out," she said to Rachel. "Enhancegirl has to go out."
"Oh, now who's running off?" Rachel said. "Thought you wanted to talk."
"This is important," Sophie said. "Take a look." She pointed at her phone. Rachel read the text...and got a funny look in her eye.
"Wow," she said. "Big, important, hero stuff, huh?"

"That's more or less the idea," Sophie said. She didn't dress fully - with her transformational powers, she didn't really need to if she was going as Enhancegirl - but she at the least put her panties back on. She faced the window: she'd used it as an egress many times, after all. "Okay...let's do this," she thought. "Enhannnnmmmphhh?!" Sophie heard her changeword reduced to gagged nonsense - as Rachel slapped a strip of black duct tape over her mouth.

"Mmmh...?" Sophie reached up to feel it, to make sure it was really there, so caught off guard was she. But the shocked redhead didn't have time to try to remove it. Her wrists were both grabbed, and forced to her sides. "Wh-what's she doing?" Sophie thought. "Mmh!" The gasp came when Sophie felt something against her flat midriff - a sheet of thin, clear plastic. "Whhgghhmphh?!"
"Sorry, sweetie," Sophie's paramour said, as she deftly whirled a roll of saran wrap around her lover, binding her slim arms tightly against her sides, the redhead's hands fluttering against her hips. "But I can't have you going after those two goons."

She continued to bind Sophie, wrapping the plastic up her torso, catching her elbows and upper arms, covering her heretofore bare breasts in plastic.
"Mmmphh-nnnmmphh!" Sophie mewed, seized and bound by her lover. "I - I don't get it!" This had more meaning than it seemed: not only did she not get why Ocelot was tying her up, she didn't get why she found being captured like this so exciting. She'd wanted to do something - and Rachel had just stopped her. Easily. Remorselessly. It should have been enraging, but it wasn't. It should have been humiliating - and it was. But it was a species of humiliation which made Sophie sensuously, pleasurably passive, even in her shock and confusion.

"You see, Sophie," Rachel said, "those goons don't know their asses from their elbows. They're probably so distracted by fighting the cops, they've forgotten all about the shit they stole. In fact, they've been so brazenly dumb it might have just been an excuse to pick a fight with them. Hell, could even be some kind of trap for one of you capes." There was, in fact, a degree of truth to this. Huxtable Duxtable was feuding with the hero Cougarman, and had been trying to draw him out unsuccessfully for weeks. He would be unsuccessful this time too: Cougarman had retired to Alaska the previous week.

"Whhdd?" Sophie still didn't understand.
"Don't worry, silly, I'm not after the diamonds. I've got plenty of those." She smiled. "I'm after the 18th Century antique locket in the apartment one building over from where they're holed up."
"Mhh..." Sophie understood now. As Rachel begin winding plastic back down her torso, squeezing her arms even tighter with a second layer of wrap, she realised the plan. "They cause chaos, bust into that apartment she's after, and she sneaks in and grabs the locket...no-one would even realise there'd been a robbery. They'd just assume the locket was destroyed, or maybe taken by Fracas." She looked down at Ocelot, who was now drawing plastic around her hips and her bare, wet thighs.

She'd always imagined her paramour sneaking quietly into the homes of the filthy rich, taking what she desired quietly, then stealing away before anyone noticed. But this - this was devious, underhanded - fiendish, even. Sophie realised that she was dealing with a dangerous woman.

Yet as Sophie felt her thighs, calves and ankles being tightly drawn together by the tape, she realised that none of that seemed to matter much. As the redhead felt her body being bound, mummified in saran wrap, she felt utterly seduced by Rachel's dominance over her. It wasn't even just that. She could feel, as her long, smooth legs were bound together, how moist and soft she herself was. She was so hot - literally - and getting warmer as the saran wrap hemmed her gorgeous body in. Ocelot wasn't exactly effusive with compliments, but she'd let Sophie know just how sexy she thought she was on many occasions - and she felt that strongly now. But it was a fragile sensuality, the beauty of a maiden, a damsel - not a heroine.

Somehow being bound in plastic like this - all wrapped up, yet her body still visible, left Sophie with the feeling that she was being...stolen. Rendered helpless, but with all her feminine charms still displayed. Yet if Rachel noticed this, it didn't carry much weight with her. Even as her helpless lover wriggled in her grip, she wasn't finished with her.

Taking again the roll of tape she'd used to gag Sophie, she pressed the black tape over the plastic around her ankles, and began winding it round.
"Mmmph!" Sophie mewed, half in dismay, half in forbidden delight, as she felt the strong, sticky plastic covering the saran wrap, and tightening Ocelot's control of her slender body. Sophie's calves, then her thighs, became completely covered in tape. "Mmmhh..." She looked over her shoulder at her captor, blushing sensually.
"See," Ocelot said, kissing her bare shoulders, "I knew you'd come round to my way of thinking." She continued strengthening the redhead's bonds, covering her hips and hands in tape, feeling her wriggle in feeble protest, every touch of Sophie's body against hers an utter delight.

Sophie felt her arms squeezed even tighter against her body, her feminine form covered more and more in the sticky black tape. Her pert breasts vanished under the tape, as she felt herself so tightly bound that she could barely twitch below her shoulders.
"Mmmhhhh...mmmphh..." Sophie sighed, feeling her capacity to resist diminishing. "How does she do this to me?"

Once her paramour's body was wrapped up all the way to just above her breasts, Ocelot was satisfied.
"You look so sexy all wrapped up, Sophie..." She squeezed her breasts, grinding against her tight, round ass.
"Mmmhhh..." Sophie felt almost delirious with pleasure. She could smell Ocelot, could smell herself, the scent of lovemaking becoming associated in her erotic helplessness with her own softness and vulnerability, pleasure and weakness being mixed in her mind as she fell into the very core of Rachel's power over her.

"Mmph?" Sophie bleated, as Rachel took her by the shoulders and thighs, before scooping the gorgeous redhead into her arms. Sophie was being cradled like a bride, and it only seemed to add to the submissive pleasure of what Rachel was doing to her. Her newfound resolve was forgotten, swallowed up in her erotic captivity.
"See, Sophie, you don't get to be a heroine tonight. You're gonna be my trussed up, moaning little sex-kitten...and you're gonna like it."
"Mmmhhhh..." Sophie sighed, aroused - and a little intimidated - by the way Rachel talked to her.

She was thrown down on her bed, and Rachel straddled her waist, squeezing her with her thighs. It is worth pointing out that Rachel was completely naked as she captured Sophie. One might have thought that this would have produced an incongruity, that Rachel seemed vulnerable in her nude state, while Sophie's bondage covered her up...but it produced a rather different effect. Rachel's poise and sexual assertiveness made her seem stronger, more in control, when she was wearing nothing. Her being naked while Sophie was tightly wrapped up, only her bare shoulders still weakly writhing, only heightened the disparity of power between the two of them.

"Now, you're going to stay here, like a well-behaved damsel should," Rachel said. "Got it?" Sophie hesitated - but then weakly nodded. "Good girl." Rachel dressed herself, making herself Ocelot once again. "Now, Sophie," she said, as she buckled her belt, "feel free to have fun without me." She grinned wickedly. "If you can, of course." She leaned down, and kissed Sophie's gagged lips.
"Mmmhh..." the sweet maiden sighed, feeling Rachel's mouth even through the tape. "God, why does this turn me on so fucking much? Why do I let her...?" She closed her green eyes, feeling Rachel lightly stroking her shoulders, but then slowly moving her hands down. "MMH!" she gasped, as she felt Rachel kiss her between her thighs. "Mmmnnmmhhhmmphhh!" she moaned, feeling an electric tingle of pleasure travel in waves up and down her body. "Mmmhhh..." she sighed. "Why...is that so easy for her?"

"See you later, Sofe," she said. "That was just a taste of what I'll do to you next time. As for now...pretty late, huh?" Sophie glanced at the alarm clock. It was two thirty in the morning. "Better get you all tucked in..." She grabbed the wrinkled duvet, and pulled it slowly over Sophie's body, covering her just up to where her bonds stopped. Were it not for the gag, it wouldn't have looked like she was tied up.

"See you later, sweetie," Ocelot said, blowing her a kiss, before slipping deftly through the window.
"Mmmhhh..." Sophie mewed. She couldn't believe Ocelot had just...left her like that. It was insulting, treating her like an object, tying her up to prevent her from doing what she'd dedicated half her life to. And yet, it was such a perfect expression of Ocelot's mysterious control over her...it was thrilling. Even the way she'd drawn the blanket over her was so casually dominating.

"Mmmhhh..." Sophie sighed. After a few token wriggles, she'd quickly given up trying to get free. She was no match for her bindings, and she began to allow herself to drift off to sleep. She didn't feel comfortable exactly, but the feeling of her tight, inescapable mummification was...satisfying, somehow, and her bonds seemed to cradle her as she gave in to her pleasured drowziness. "Might as well...just..." she thought sleepily, before her sparkling eyes grew heavy, and closed in sleep.


Sophie had a very strange dream that night. She dreamt that she was floating in water - not on it surface, but about three metres below it. She could breathe comfortably though. Oddly, the water seemed colder above her in the light, but - somehow beautifully cold. She felt a duty to warm the cold water. It was gorgeous as well, crystal clear - and its frigidity made Sophie strangely sad.
"Why is it so cold?" she said. Though it was icy, it didn't seem able to take any warmth from Sophie. "Doesn't it...want me to warm it?"

Yet beneath her, in the darkness, the water was warm. Smotheringly warm, like a hot house or an opium den. Sophie found herself sinking into it, unable to move her limbs. She found herself drawn down into obsidian depths, pleasurable, yet terrifyingly inescapable.
"I can't get out..." she thought, now feeling a touch of panic. Suddenly, she couldn't breathe anymore, and her panic began in earnest. "No! I'm sinking! I can't - can't get out!" Her eyes went wide as the darkness swallowed her up. "Help me! Someone save me, please! Help me, M -"

"Sophie!"
"Mmmph!!" Sophie started awake, in a cold sweat. She would have shot straight up, but she was still tightly wrapped up. "Whhmmph? Hmmhh?!" She looked down at herself, disoriented by her sudden awakening...but then she remembered. "Oh yeah, right..."

Unfortunately, Kirsten did not understand. The half-filipina was simply shocked to find Sophie as she had. She'd only come in because the two were meant to play tennis on Tuesday mornings, but they were already due to have left and Sophie showed no signs of waking. Normally she was a very early riser, but whether it was a side effect of her powers or a lucky accident, Sophie generally required scarce little sleep.

"Oh, my god, Sophie, what happened?!" She pulled the gag off Sophie's mouth.
"Ow! Geez, Kirsten, did you have to do it so hard?"
"Sorry, Sophie, I'm a little freaked out!" Kirsten was going to try to untie her, but she didn't know where to start. "Sophie, what the fuck? Why are you so calm?" She looked around. She'd thought Sophie had been robbed or something, but nothing of value - nothing at all - was missing. "Who did this?"
"I...don't know..." Sophie lied. "Someone, um, just grabbed me in the night and tied me up."
"Oh my god! Did they...?"
"No, no! God no. I mean...well..." Kirsten stared straight into her.
"Okay, spill it. What the hell is going on?"

It was no good. She was a bad liar at the best of times, and even worse to Kirsten.
"I...uh...I have a new girlfriend," Sophie mumbled. She wasn't sure how else to describe Rachel. "I guess things got a little kinky..."
"You're not kidding!" Kirsten looked around, and found a pair of nail scissors. She began cutting Sophie loose, though the thick tape, though this was by no means easy. "Where the hell is she?"
"Sh-she had to go..." Sophie stammered, feeling as her arms became free. For as much as she'd liked it at the time, she now felt witheringly embarrassed by what Rachel had done to her.
"What the actual fuck?" Kirsten said, just finishing freeing Sophie's legs. "And she just left you here?"
"Look, Kirsten," Sophie said, sitting up, flexing her by now rather uncomfortable limbs, "it's not how you think, it's -"
"Sophie, it's messed up. I don't mean her tying you up or whatever, that's...a thing, I guess - but she left you for - what, hours?" Sophie's sheepish look was all the confirmation she needed. "Fucking...was it, like - oh, gawd, I don't know - a...game? Like a sexy thing? Did you ask her to do it?"

Sophie wasn't quite sure how to answer that. Certainly she hadn't asked for it...but nor had she fought very hard to stop it.
"This is messed up," Kirsten said. "Who the hell is she anyway?"
"Her name's Rachel. You don't know her." It was rather a relief to be able to say something true. "Hey, look, it was a...sexy thing, okay? I was, uh...trying to see if I could get out of it, myself..." Kirsten shook her head.
"Riiiiight. Well...are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," she said. "C'mon, let's get going." Sophie got up. "We've still got the court booked, right?"

Kirsten shook her head. She'd known Sophie for a while, but for about a year she'd felt like she understood her less and less. This was simply the latest example of how her redhead roommate mystified her. She didn't know what to ask her at this point.
"Yeah," she said, relenting. "Sure, let's go." She'd been a little concerned by Sophie's occasional disappearances, and her sporadic attendance at social functions...but this was the first time she'd been genuinely worried about her. "What the hell kind of person does that to their girlfriend?"
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"I'm tellin' ya, I don't know where it is!" Huxtable Duxtable shouted, putting his hands up in vain defence. His shirt was burned, he could barely see, and there were shallow, yet debilitating cuts all over his body.
"You do realise that this is not the most plausible of stories," the woman who'd so effortlessly defeated him said. "You - a thief - and your ally - another thief - hide from the police after committing - shock of shocks - an act of theft. A hole is blown open in the wall to the next building. A very expensive and rare antique is stolen." The sumptuously attractive, tall maiden narrowed her jade eyes. "Personally, I don't care in the slightest about it, but it would lend a certain neatness to the situation."

"I don't know!" Duxtable shouted. "I really don't know!" The short, muscular criminal had been no match for the waiflike beauty. Despite his ability to control earth, the limits of his less-than-potent powers, and the sheer skill and strength of his light-wielding enemy had combined to make it a very short fight. "Fucking Fracas ran off with the diamonds! I got no idea about the other thing." The young beauty held her hand out, creating a ball of energy. "Ah, geez, don't blow me up, I really don't know!"

Spectra, for it was she, considered for a moment. Duxtable didn't seem like the bravest soul in the world - he really didn't know.
"Fine," she said. "Now don't make anymore trouble, you understand?"
"Y-yes ma'am," he said.

As Spectra kicked Huxtable Duxtable through the doors of the closest police station, and grateful but confused officers hauled him off, she almost bumped into someone else coming in after her. It was, as it happened, the other thief, Fracas. He was not coming willingly. He was handcuffed, and he looked pretty badly burned.

"Holy shit!" One of the cops started, and the others, upon seeing what he'd seen began backing hurriedly away. Not from Fracas - he was fairly powerful, but not enough to produce that reaction. It had been provoked by the man who'd brought him in. A sharp looking, sallow fellow in a long coat walked in, a faint orange glow about him.

"Oh come on, lads," Ivan Nazarov - otherwise known as Zjarrus - said, "he's not that scary, is he?" He flashed a wide, toothy grin.
"Just dump him and get the hell out, Nucleon!" one of the sergeants shouted.
"Oh, come now," Ivan said. "I decide to get back into the hero trade, and you lot treat me like a pariah! Well, I never. The ingratitude!"
"They'd rather not be blown to smithereens, Zjarrus." Ivan turned around, and saw a slender, stunningly attractive young woman looking askance at him. "They don't know how much control you have over your power. Neither do I."

"Ahem! I mean, that is to say -" Ivan shoved Fracas away, and turned to face the tall heroine. He straightened his tie. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"We've already met," Spectra said, walking out.
"Um, I know, but, er -" Ivan was about to go after her, but he couldn't resist taunting the villain he'd beaten. "Ciao, Fracas! Until next time! Sorry about the broken leg. Well...not that sorry."
"Fuck you, Zjarrus!" Fracas shouted back. "I'll get you for this, you lava-lamp piece of shit!"
"Sure you will, chum." Ivan winked, before he pursued the lovely heroine.

"I say!" Spectra heard the pale man calling after her, and resisted the urge to run. He caught up with her, and started walking backwards alongside her. "Dear me, we're going at quite a pace, eh? What's the hurry?"
"No hurry," Spectra said. "I merely walk quickly. If you find the pace too fast, feel free to go away. In fact," she said, "why don't you do that in either case?"
"Really, nothing?" Ivan said.
"What?" Spectra was growing impatient. "What do you -? Oh, right..." She stopped walking, looking again at the dark haired attaché. She remembered exactly what he had done for her. "Thank you," she said. She clearly meant it.
"Oh, uh, you're welcome," Ivan said. He hadn't expected her to say it like that.

Zjarrus had not only been instrumental in defeating the Supremacist, buying time for Enhancegirl's stroke of genius that won the day, he had also freed both the gold-clad redhead and Spectra herself from the tyrannical Australian's grasp. For Mariko, however, it was Zjarrus' last ditch attack on his former master, when he'd been about to murder Sophie, that had really won the oriental beauty's gratitude. The gratitude was felt all the more deeply because, as it so happened, Mariko was head over heels in love with the woman he'd saved.

It had been a little while since she'd recognised this fact, and her ardent affections for Sophie were undiminished. Sophie didn't know - nobody did. Mariko was convinced that her love would always be unrequited, and though she couldn't pretend it didn't exist, she could focus on other things, force herself to continue with her life. In the last fortnight, Seacouver hadn't seen very much of Enhancegirl, but it had seen a great deal of Spectra. Indeed, the only reason that she'd gone after someone as low rent as Huxtable Duxtable was that she was running out of villains to foil. In the past week, she'd taken down Regulus (again), Commandant Quake, Glitch, Damus, the Corvid, Monsieur-The-Bomb and Catastrophe, and that wasn't mentioning the number of normal human robbers, mob bosses, and even one ninja, that she'd taken down as well.

Mariko had found satisfaction in work: if she couldn't be with Sophie, she was still growing in power. Every day, she grew just a little bit stronger, and she held onto that. Sometimes, it felt like all she had.
"You alright, m'dear?" Zjarrus said.
"What?" Spectra had been lost in thought. Ivan had his sister's yellow eyes, and he was training them with a rather striking intensity on her. "Er, yes, I'm quite alright." She continued walking off. She didn't like being out in the open like this in the daytime. People were beginning to look.

"Say, I owe you a debt of thanks as well," Ivan said, pursuing Mariko. "For my sister."
"What do you mean?" Spectra didn't recall having helped Natalya with anything recently.
"I suppose it was rather a long time ago...about four years, I think?" That really had been a long time ago. Mariko had just been discovering her powers then - she even went by a different nom-de-crime, calling herself 'Lumina.'
"Well, you're welcome," she said curtly. "Will you please go away now?"
"By all means, my dear," Ivan said, "but, perhaps you'd let me thank you properly sometime?" He was holding something out to her. It appeared to be a business card. She looked at it as one might look at a proffered piece of rotting fish.
"If I take this," she said, "will you go away?"
"Swifter than arrow from Tartar's -"
"I get it." She snatched the card out of his hand. "Now please leave." Bowing slightly, and grinning like a hyena, he did. "What a strange person..." Mariko remarked to herself.

As hard as she was working, even Spectra needed rest. She'd been up all night hunting the wicked, and unlike Sophie she did not require less sleep than the average person, a fact which was beginning to take its toll on her. She made her way home, her powers switched off as soon as she got the chance.

She entered her house in a ruffled, loose dress, which she quickly took off. She walked through her house in nothing but her black underwear and heels, tracing a hand down her stomach. Much as she took pride in her power, she took pride in her body too. Sometimes, especially when she was celebrating a victory, she would strip of all her clothes, and exult in her beauty and her strength, feeling mighty in her solitude, like a tigress.

Yet she didn't much enjoy her solitude as of late. There was someone, of course, that she would have greatly wished to share her celebrations with, but that was out of the question. Mariko had found a way to stop her lovesickness from paralysing her, but the emotional effort this required rather drained the fun out of everything else. Not only that, but Mariko, who had a tendency toward the wrathful, was fighting the urge to resent Sophie. To hate her, even, for not returning her feelings. But she would not permit herself that.
"I will not let this become something ugly..."

She ascended the stairs to her bedroom, and ran her hands through her short, black hair.
"What have I been doing with myself?" she thought. "I know that I can't make these feelings go away...but do they have to fill my thoughts so completely?" She went into her room, not really noticing her surroundings. But when she felt her high-heeled foot sticking a little to the floor, her attention was prompted.

There was something on the ground in front of her bed - a long sheet of plastic about five and a half feet wide, and at least eight feet long. It was white, and sticky: getting her foot off it wasn't easy. Mariko wasn't sure what it was at first, until she saw the part where her foot had been curl inward slightly - revealing that it was slick silver on the other side.
"Duct tape?" Mariko furrowed her eyebrows. "Why would - MMPHHH!!"

In an instant, Mariko was gripped with shock - someone had just slapped a strip of that same tape over her mouth. Hands roughly seized her by both her arms, stopping her from reaching up to pull it off.
"MMMNNMMPHH!!" the maiden screamed through her gag - unable to speak, she couldn't turn on her powers. "MMRGGHHMMPHH!!" Wriggling in the two sets of arms which had grabbed her, Mariko thrust her elbow back, catching one of them in the stomach.
"Ooff!" they grunted, in a woman's voice. Desperate, Mariko tried to press the advantage, but she wasn't much of a close quarters fighter. Her next blow caught the woman in the ribcage, which was painful, but by no means debilitating. The same woman took tighter hold of Mariko's arm, and both the beauty's captors - holding her tightly - lifted her up off her feet.

"Whhhmmphh?!" the gagged heroine intoned, as her heeled feet wiggled in the air. "What are they doing?!" Her desperate confusion was answered, though, as Mariko felt a third set of hands grabbing her ankles. "Nnnnmmphhh!!" she moaned, as she was turned by her captors, so she was looking up at the ceiling. The third woman struggled to control Mariko's long, angrily kicking legs, but all three of them were, individually, significantly physically stronger than Mariko, and they kept their hold of the shocked damsel.

"Down you go, Spectra!" one of them laughed, as the three forced her down onto the ground, right onto the end of the long sheet of tape. Mariko didn't notice that, though - she just stared in wide-eyed fear at what had been said.
"They know who I am?" How was it possible? How had they found out? How had they got the better of her so quickly?
"Quickly, roll 'er!" one of the women ordered the others, in a faintly familiar voice. Keeping tight hold of her writhing body, the three women began rolling Mariko in the sticky plastic. In her shock at being seized and found out, Mariko didn't start fighting this until it was far too late.

As Mariko was rolled, her captors bound her, the tape clinging hungrily to her soft, tan skin. Her slim arms were squeezed against her sides, her long, smooth legs forced into one useless, wriggling limb.
"NNNMMPHHH!!" the trussed-up damsel screamed, as she felt herself being bound with merciless tightness. "Yhh chhhhnnndd! NNNMMMPHH!!" Mariko squirmed desperately, strong tape covering her completely from her ankles up to her neck, keeping her completely helpless. "GGRRMMPHHH!!" Mariko growled at her captors, rage and embarrassment at the speed and totality of her capture keeping up her furious struggles.

"Doesn't she look adorable? So cute when she's mad." one of the womenn said. All three were wearing black bodysuits and featureless black masks. "I think she was my favourite." Mariko felt herself being looked up and down - the tape was strong, but not all that thick. Most every contour of her willowy body was clearly displayed, her supple figure not disguised in any way.
"Oh, do you remember rubbing all that gel into her? That was lovely."
"Now now girls," the third said, "let's not chit-chat on the job."
"Mmph!" Something about the way she spoke, the the way the 'th' sounds turned into 'z's... . "Oh no...no!" Mariko remembered her now. When she'd been captured by Madam Black in her near-disastrous rescue of Enhancegirl, one of the slaver's chief lieutenants had been a blonde Frenchwoman - and that comment they'd made about the gel confirmed it. That was just how they'd captured her the last time.
"Not her," Mariko thought. "For God's sake, not her!"

"All wrapped up like a Christmas present, eh?" Madeleine, the Frenchwoman, said, leaning down to where her taped up captive writhed and moaned through her gag. She ran a gloved finger down Mariko's neck, between her pert breasts, all the way down her body to where her high-heeled feet twitched and fumbled against each other. "And 'ow appropriate," Mariko's captor continued. "Because you're going to make someone very 'appy."
She motioned to one of her underlings, who handed her a small spraybottle. From her own pocket, Madeleine took a white piece of cloth, about the size of a man's hand. She sprayed the cloth with the contents of the bottle, until the fabric was soaking wet. It was only after the fifth spray that the taped up damsel smelled the bottle's contents. She wasn't Enhancegirl, but she recognised the scent as soon as it met her nostrils.
"Chloroform..." Mariko realised, giving a small, involuntary whimper.

"To think," Madeleine said, "the great Spectra caught and wrapped up by three perfectly ordinary women...and then knocked out cold."
"Dhhhnn!" Mariko protested, crimsoning at the embarrassment of her situation. She'd been ambushed in her underwear, captured and trussed up in her own home. It was humiliating - and she had an awful feeling that it was only going to get worse.

Madeleine brought the cloth close to the Japanese damsel's nose, and Mariko could already feel the drug's cloying, chemical sweetness assaulting her senses.
"Why is this happening?" Mariko thought, already starting to feel slightly dizzy. "I...was just starting...to be alright! Why did this have to happen now?" She writhed, trying to wriggle her tall, yet waiflike body away from the drugged cloth, feeling the binding tape clinging to her acres of naked skin. But it was no good. Madeleine just pulled her back. "I really am helpless..." she thought.

"It's a shame we 'ave to cover up those pretty lips of yours," Madeleine said. "Can't 'ave you shooting us with laser beams, or whatever it is you do, can we?" She leaned in, smiling. "Oh...per'aps just a peek..." With practiced ease, the Frenchwoman stripped the tape off Mariko's mouth.

"Spectrum is Gr-mmgghghhmmhhphhh!!" She couldn't get the words out fast enough. Madeleine got her glance at Mariko's lips - before pressing the damp cloth tightly over them. "Mmgghhmpphh...nnnhhhmmmhh!" Already, Mariko could feel a warm weakness spreading through her, sliding into and softening her long limbs. "Nhh..." She felt the first wave of drowziness hit her, her small but perky breasts undulating in her bonds as she was drugged.

But Madeleine didn't seem to have time to finish. She hissed under her breath, holding out her free hand to one of her underlings. She was handed a roll of duct tape, and she swiftly tore some off. She wrapped it three times around Mariko's mouth, pressing the cloth down even tighter, and holding it in place.
"Mmmbbhhhhmm..." Mariko whimpered, feeling all the strength of her beautiful, slender body slipping away from her. She couldn't barely move, sinuously writhing in the sticky embrace of the duct tape. She shook her head, but couldn't even begin to get the cloth away from her. She slowly wiggled her shoulders. "Unhhh...it's too tight...I can't move...getting so...weak..."

Madeleine lifted Mariko to her feet, seeing the helpless, drowzy expression on the proud heroine's face, her jade eyes dull and fluttering. She was going limp, and her head fell onto one of her shoulders.
"See 'ow little you can do?" Madeleine said. "All your strength counting for nothing at all. 'Ow sad." She took Mariko by the waist, and slung the tall, lovely damsel over her shoulder. Mariko's gorgeous legs draped down her front, and Madeline could feel her even now slowly shifting, quietly whimpering to herself.

"Mhh..." Mariko mewed, as she felt Madeleine's hands squeezing her tight rear, running up her supple thighs. Even through the tape, it felt rather disturbingly intimate. "I'm so...soft..." she thought as she began to go under. "I tried so hard...to be strong...but she made me soft...undid everything...oohhh..." She felt herself slung over her captor's shoulder, completely helpless, defeated before she could even try to fight back in any serious capacity. She imagined herself floating, suspended in mid-air, immobilised and powerless - she was stranded in warm darkness, all strength drained out of her, mental and physical. "Sophie..." she thought, in her last flickers of wakefulness, "Sophie...why did you make me so weak?"

With that thought, the willowy beauty gave in, and passed out meekly over her captor's shoulder: one of Seacouver's most powerful heroines reduced to the status of a simpering, mewing damsel in distress...and then even less than that. Unconscious and unresisting, Mariko was carried down to front of her house, her thighs and her rear constantly squeezed and caressed, where a car was already waiting for them. It had a large trunk, but Madeleine didn't put Spectra inside it. She lowered her back down to her feet, her head flopping onto Madeleine's.

The Frenchwoman eased the limp heroine inside the car, buckling her into place, her taped up form so easy to manipulate, being trussed so tightly.
"Clotilde, Florence," she said to her two partners, "take the van and get the other one." They nodded in acquiescence, and hurried off. Madeleine sat down next to her, and smiled. It would take at least an hour for the vehicle to arrive at its destination - and she had one of the most beautiful women she'd ever seen tied up and unconscious in the seat next to her. It was going to be a very enjoyable trip...
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Uh!"
"Hah!"
"Ah!"

Sophie and Kirsten exchanged shot after shot with each other in a furious rally, which was already in its ninth shot. Kirsten had given a fiendish backhand slice, which nicked the top of the net as it passed in a shallow arc across the court. But even without her powers, Sophie's reactions were fast. She sprinted in from almost the back of the court, and managed to get past the ball. She turned, and planted her foot firmly between the tramlines, before giving a short, sharp forehand that bounced precipitously on the inside tramline on Kirsten's side, before spinning wildly away. But they both saw the chalk - Sophie had won.

She had won the point, that is. She was down four games to love in the second set, and had lost the first set six games to two. Kirsten was definitely the better player, but not that much better. Something was definitely off with her - and it wasn't a great mystery, even to Kirsten, though she didn't know the details.

Sophie didn't understand how she'd allowed Rachel to do to her what she'd done. It was, she realised, a terrible betrayal. Both a betrayal of whatever respect Rachel was supposed to have to her, and a betrayal of Sophie by herself: a betrayal of Enhancegirl, to put it another way.
"Hey, doesn't exactly look like I'm making a comeback," she said. "Can we call it there?"
"Sure," Kirsten said. Now she was really worried. Normally Sophie was more tenacious when she was losing. The red-haired girl's head was spinning, though, and she just couldn't concentrate.

She should have been angry, she thought. She should have been tracking Ocelot down and punching her in the face...but she couldn't. Whenever she thought of what Rachel had done - any of it - she felt a spark of pleasure.
"What's she done to me?" Sophie wondered.

As the two young women walked back to the locker room, they drew quite a few stares. Both of them were wearing short, white tennis dresses, with pleated, rather bouncy hems. The only difference was that Kirsten was wearing a pair of short-shorts under dress - Sophie wasn't. Her long, now rather moist, legs were completely on show whenever she moved, and almost completely on show whenever she didn't.

The two girls went straight through the locker room - their dorm room was so close to the courts that there was hardly any point changing there. Walking out of the entrance, the two did not notice a black van nearby. They didn't even notice as it started along after them, slowly, keeping about fifty metres behind them. The two bare-legged co-eds chatted with each other, not noticing it at all.

"No way," Sophie insisted. "Talia's no good for him."
"Ugh, you are such a downer," Kirsten huffed. "They're, like, perfect for each other. He's an asshole, she's an asshole - it fits."
"Yeah, but Jerry isn't a total asshole," Sophie riposted. "She'll make him totally fucking intolerable." She didn't know either Talia or Jerry very well, mostly just through Kirsten's assessments of them. But it was nice just to be gossiping again.

If she was in a very very optimistic mood, then Sophie could reflect that the advantage of her public humiliation, and subsequent reticence to fight as Enhancegirl, it was that she had caught up with friends - and her coursework - over the last couple of weeks. If it hadn't been prompted in the way it had, it would have felt like a much needed holiday.

But Sophie still appreciated catching up with her old friend. She felt like she hadn't really talked to anyone in a long time. She'd been striking up that kind of relationship with Mariko, in fact, and Sophie had begun seeing it as a very intimate, and surprisingly deep friendship. After all, it was to Mariko that Sophie had run after her escape from the Sin Eater, and her friend had been heartwarmingly sweet and comforting to her, and that night she'd been the dearest person in the world to Sophie. Yet since Nyx...since Ocelot...Sophie had felt strangely guilty whenever she'd thought of speaking to Mariko. She didn't understand it - but whatever the reason, it had taken Mariko away from her when she needed a close friend. She was grateful to Kirsten. She wasn't the sort of person who took effusive compliments well, so Sophie would need to think of how to express her appreciation.

It was as she was thinking about this that the van following them accelerated. It rapidly shot up to top speed, before braking hard right in front of the two girls. The side door was thrown open, and two women in black bodysuits and masks leapt out, lunging straight towards Sophie.
"What?!" Sophie spluttered. They both grabbed her, one of them forcing a thick, beige cloth gag over her mouth. "MMMNNMMPHHH!!" The redhead's green eyes went wide. "What...what's going on?!" The woman began hauling her towards the van. Just like Mariko, Sophie couldn't turn on her powers while gagged. To her horror, she felt her hands pulled behind her back, and thin ropes being spun around her wrists. "Oh my god - they're...they're kidnapping me!"

"Hey, what the fuck are you doing?!" Kirsten screamed. She took her tennis racket, and smacked the edge of it as hard as she could into the woman who'd tied off Sophie's gag.
"Ow!" the kidnapper shouted, but she didn't loosen her grip. Kirsten hit her again, and with Sophie's long, bare legs still furiously kicking in her panic, it seemed like between them they'd be able to get Sophie free. But Kirsten didn't see a hand reaching out of the driver's side window, holding a long, black billy club. The wielder took aim, and struck.

"Aah! Uuunnhhh..." Kirsten yelped, but her eyes rolled back into her head an instant later. Her body went limp, and she fell in a crumpled heap on the ground, completely knocked out.
"NNNHHMMPHH!" Sophie moaned through her gag. "Khhhrphhhthhnn!!" It was now much easier. One of the women took Sophie by the arms, and hauled her inside while the other wrapped her arms around her calves, keeping her from kicking. The instant the wriggling redhead was inside, the door slammed shut. But Sophie was not driven away - not yet.

By this time, the screams had drawn attention, and a few nobly intentioned jocks were sprinting towards the scene. The driver threw something out of the window before they arrived - a small metal canister which exploded, scattering a thick white smoke, and completely obscuring the van.

"Mmnnnnggmhhmmphhh!!" Sophie writhed and struggled, but they had a firm grip on her svelte body. Ropes were being twisted round her forearms, connecting them together, the same length of thin hemp wound round Sophie's tender breasts, squeezing them from above and below, before being anchored to rope the was drawn over each shoulder as well. The effect was to create a harness, that not only tightly pressed up against Sophie's bosom, but kept her arms imprisoned, uselessly wiggling behind her back.

"Mgghhmph?" Sophie mewed, shocked into a kind of passivity by the speed and skill with which she was tied up. The other woman had not been idle. She was binding Sophie's creamy legs, feeling how moist and silky her skin was even as she covered it in rope. The dark brown hemp was twisted round her thighs, four tight circuits from just above her knees upwards. Sophie's supple calves were tightened together by cords drawn around her slim ankles.

"Mmmm-NNMPHH!!" Sophie protested, bound hand and foot, and almost instantly helpless. "I don't get it - who are they? Why are they doing this to me?"
"C'mon, before the smoke clears!" one of the women shouted. She threw open the door opposite the one Sophie had been brought in through, and helped haul her back out. Bewildered and completely overpowered, Sophie could only give muffled, wordless protests, and wriggle her tightly trussed limbs as she was hauled around like a package.

From the quite suspicious looking black van, Sophie was brought to a much more nondescript little Ford, hidden in the smoke. She was thrown into the backseat, and despite her helpless writhings, her two captors began tying her even tighter, holding her in place by entwining her in the backseats' belts.
"Go!" one of them shouted, but the car didn't move. She was shouting at the van's driver, for its wheels squealed, and it zoomed away. Sophie heard the jocks shouting angrily, some of them even vainly continuing the chase.

"They can't see me...no-one saw them put me in the car..." Sophie realised. When the smoke had cleared, and there were enough other cars on the road that no-one would notice any one in particular, Sophie's ride began driving away.
"Phew..." The woman who'd bound her legs said. She took off her mask, and Sophie thought that she recognised her for a moment, but couldn't place it. "There we go, Enhancegirl, all safe and snug."
"She knows who I am!" Admittedly, Sophie rather assumed almost immediately that she was kidnapped because of who she really was - but it was still shocking. These women had found her where she lived, almost, and had stolen her in the middle of the day. She felt terribly vulnerable in these women's hands. It wasn't even like being defeated and imprisoned as a heroine. She was just a pretty girl in short, white dress, who'd been grabbed and kidnapped.
"Just a helpless victim..."

"So, Miss Scott," her captor said, "don't you worry about a thing. We're going to take very good care of you." She began stroking Sophie's naked, creamy legs, not out of any particular enjoyment - but just to emphasise the point to the gagged, moaning damsel: "You're in our power, and we can do anything we like to you."
"Madam's gonna be so pleased, isn't she?" the other said. "She's been looking for you for a long time."
"Mhh..." Sophie's eyes went wide. Her wriggles stopped completely. A coldness washed through her - she felt as though she'd been paralysed. She knew now where she recognised the woman who was touching her legs. She'd been one of Madam Black's servants - one of her maids. "No...no, she found me!" Sophie felt a kind of powerless inevitability about it. "Of course she found me..."

For the rest of the drive, Sophie was completely passive, even as her svelte form was petted and groped. She was brought right to the outskirts of the city - outside it, in fact, officially speaking.
"Come on, Miss Scott," one of them said, unwinding the belts. "That's a long enough rest, don't you think?" She took her by the ankles, and hauled her roughly out, pulling her onto her feet.

"Mhhgghmmphh!" the gagged redhead complained. She looked around, to see if it was worth screaming for help - but no-one was around. There was just this sprawling, one floored house - it looked more like a bunker, really. It would make a perfect base.
"C'mon doll," the driver said, getting out along with Sophie's other kidnapper. "The Madam's waiting."

Sophie was suddenly hit by a vivid series of flashbacks. Madam Black had discovered her weakness, had almost enslaved her and the others - had them brainwashed, stripped, drugged...
"MMPHH!!" Panicked, Sophie began desperately hopping away, her tightly bound, slender legs not letting her do anything else.
"Ahaha!" the driver laughed. "Not exactly going anywhere in a hurry like that, Miss Scott."
"Mmm-nnmmphhh!!" Sophie whimpered, continuing to hop, her skirt flying up every time she jumped. "NNNMMPHH!!" she screamed, when she felt her egress halted. She was seized, spun around, and thrown roughly over her captor's shoulder. "NNNMPHH!! NNNMMPHH LHHD MHH GHHH!" she screamed, wriggling and kicking.
"Settle down," the woman carrying her said, gripping her thighs with one hand - then lifting her dress with the other, and giving her a firm, sharp spank.
"MMHHHHHH!!" Sophie whimpered. "No...no, she's gonna enslave me!" That thought, however, and her captor's viciously dominating gesture subdued her. "Mmmhhh..." she sighed, allowing herself to flop limply over her captor. "I'm helpless anyway..." she thought, in her dismay.

Sophie didn't fight as she was brought inside. She was taken through a surprisingly livable looking complex, taken down two flights of stairs, into a deep basement. They took her to a plain room, and roughly tossed her inside.
"Mmhh!" she mewed, landing on her side, and rolling a couple of times. "Mmhh...MHH!"

Sophie realised with shock that she was not alone. There was another maiden in there with her, just as gorgeous, but mummified in silver tape. She was slender, tall, dark-haired, and had flawlessly delicate features.
"Shh...Shhphh..." the woman mewed, her jade eyes opening with an expression that was two parts fear, and one part helpless desperation. "Nhhh...nhh!"
"Mhhrrhhkkhh..." The two young beauties knew each other all too well, and stared at each other in disbelief and dismay. Mariko and Sophie couldn't take their eyes from each other, filled with an almost surreal sense of helplessness as they saw the other had been kidnapped as well.
"Why...why did they take her too?" Sophie thought.
"Why her...of all people, why her?!" Mariko's eyes were wet.

"I hope you're enjoying my hospitality, girls." A woman had just walked in. Tall, dressed in black, with wave, light blue hair.
"Madam!" one of her servants gasped. She hadn't expected her to be in the building at all. The woman walked in, and looked down, smirking at her captives.
"Whhmph?" Sophie and Mariko stared.

"Who the fuck is that?"

[Damselbinder]

"Mmmgghmmphh?" Sophie whimpered through a thick, beige cloth tied over her mouth. The tightly bound captive lay helplessly on the ground, her lithe body wriggling, trussed and restrained in hemp ropes, in such a way that her breasts were squeezed every time she moved her arms, her long, bare legs inseparable from each other, her smooth skin squeezed by tough, binding cords. She was staring up at the woman standing over her. She had thought that she knew who had arranged for her kidnapping, ordering her underlings to seize Sophie right off the street: Madam Black, her old enemy. But no. This woman had Black's staff - but she was not the same person.

For one thing, she was younger, about thirty. Her hair was blue, wavy, her eyes so pale as to almost seem white. She dressed in a tight, sleeveless, black leather top - or what had at first seemed like a top. It turned out to be a leotard, her legs covered in opaque, black tights. In fact, most of the length of her legs was covered by a pair of black boots, with heels that looked like spikes. She smiled down at her captives, the side of her mouth curling, her smile somehow looking like a scowl.

"Now isn't this a pretty sight?" she laughed. Her voice was in about as low a register as one could get while still sounding female. "Two sexy girls, all tied up in my basement."
"Mmmm-mmphhh!" Mariko complained, wriggling in her tight, mummifying bonds, taped up from her ankles to her throat. "Who is she? Why is this happening?" She looked over at Sophie, seeing the headstrong redhead trussed up in thin ropes, muffled by her gag, her breasts bobbing up and down as she fought her bonds, her silky legs -
"Stop it!" Mariko shook her head. This really wasn't the time for ogling. "I have to think. There must be a way out of this! If I can just get this gag off, I can fry them all in a second!"

Sophie, however, was thinking more about the whys and wherefores. This person didn't just have them captured - she knew who they were. Who they really were. Sophie just didn't understand how.
"Sorry if my goons were a little rough with you," she said, before giving a sharp laugh. "Oh who am I kidding, I don't give a shit." She bent down, and seized Sophie by the ropes around her breasts, hauling the writhing damsel onto her feet.
"Mmnnmphh!" Sophie protested, struggling in the ropes binding her, but helpless to get away. "Mmmhhh!" She found herself pushed back, forcefully shoved against the room's back wall.

"Aren't you a peach, girlie?" the blue-haired woman said, sliding her hands over her captive's naked legs.
"Whhhgghhmmmphh!!" Sophie moaned, feeling her skin come under her captor's cold touch. "What's going on?!"
"So smooth, isn't she, girls?" the woman said to her underlings, over the sound of Sophie's protests, and Mariko's even louder protests.
"Yes, Miss Adrienne," one of them replied.

"Adrienne? That name means nothing to me," Mariko thought. "Why has she had us abducted?" She tried not to give too much voice to her feelings of sharp anger as she watched the woman run her hands all over Sophie's legs.
"You know, by all rights, I should have been enjoying your fine-ass body a long time ago," Adrienne said, now cupping her captive's breasts with one hand, while continuing to roughly squeeze her creamy thighs with the other. "I paid a lot for you - you and your little buddies."
"Paid for us? What's she talking about?" Sophie thought. Mariko was equally mystified.
"Oh, don't tell me you don't remember, Enhancegirl," Adrienne said, with hideous sarcasm on Sophie's pseudonym. "I gather you spent rather a while in her company."
"Mhh?" Sophie thought - and then realised. "She's talking about Madam Black!" The memory was stirred now - when she, Mariko and Natalya had been in Black's clutches, she'd threatened them with enslavement, said that she'd already secured a buyer. "This woman...she was gonna buy us," Sophie realised.

Mariko had come to the same conclusion.
"I still don't get it. Why does she want us? Is it -" She suddenly felt a tinge of embarrassment, seeing her slender, willowy body so tightly bound. "Is it just because we're - we're pretty?"
"Mhhphh..." Sophie whimpered as Adrienne felt her up. Her fears had been confirmed - no, it wasn't Madam Black, but it might even have been worse than that - fate had simply cut out the middleman this time. Sophie looked at Mariko, and felt a wave of pity and desperation for her radiant friend. "She shouldn't look like that..." the redhead thought, seeing her wriggling and whimpering in ignominious captivity. Mariko should be powerful, mightily beautiful, not a captive - not with that awful, desperate expression in her eyes, Sophie thought. She didn't understand, though, quite why Mariko looked as dismayed as she did whenever their eyes met.

"So, you see, girls," Adrienne said, "you haven't been kidnapped. You already belonged to me." She took Sophie by the shoulders, and shoved her down onto the floor.
"Mmmhh!" Sophie fell straight on her back, her soft limbs too tightly tied for her to be able even to attempt balance. Her rear and her back met hard concrete, but Sophie found her shoulders and her head cushioned by something altogether softer. "Mmmhh..." Sophie realised that she had partly fallen onto her fellow captive, her head resting on Mariko's thighs.
"Shhphh..." Mariko mumbled through the tape over her lips. Having the lovely object of her affections cushioned by her thighs seemed almost like the world laughing at her: "Oh, so you want to protect her, eh? Sure thing!"

"I've worked with S - with Madam Black quite a few times, you know." Adrienne said, again standing over her captives, thoroughly enjoying the sight of having the attractive young maidens wriggling at her feet. "She's never welshed on me before...but you and the other two damn near put her out of business. She had to sell her whole operation to recoup costs...and she even loaned me some of her better staff just to keep me sweet." She smirked. "Now there's a woman who knows how to maintain an alliance."

"Well, that explains that, I guess," Sophie thought. "But now what? What's she gonna do with us?" She shrank back a little. Her short, white dress gave her a sense of purity that made her feel all the more vulnerable. She looked up at Mariko, silently pleading with her to think of something.
"Mmmhhh..." Mariko whimpered in reply. She could see now that Sophie wanted her to help her. She felt a pang of guilt - this time, Sophie did want Mariko's help - help that she was powerless to give.

Adrienne bent down by her two muzzled, writhing captives. "Oh, I've been waiting for this," she said, licking her lips. She was trembling with excitement.
"Mmmphhh!!" Mariko whimpered, disturbed by the look of raw avarice on Adrienne's face. She tried to back away, but with her whole body cocooned in duct tape, she could scarcely move an inch. Sophie and Mariko's captor knelt down next to them, grinning wickedly. She ran her hands over their bodies, travelling inexorably upwards.

"Mgghh!" Sophie groaned, as her pert bosom was groped. Yet the hand didn't stay on her for long. Adrienne slid her hand up Sophie's neck, and over her mouth, muffling her whimpers to almost total silence. She did the same to Mariko, her hand pressing the tape even more tightly against the Japanese beauty's lips.
"Yes..." Adrienne moaned, with a rather alarming intensity. "Yes, give it all to -"

She stopped herself mid-sentence. She looked at the two bound damsels with confusion.
"Why isn't it working?" She looked at her own hands. "This isn't possible!" She gripped the two even tighter, her fingers pressing painfully into their cheeks.
"Mmmmhhhphh!" Sophie whimpered. "What's she doing?" She had a look of increasing frustration on her face, her frustration even appearing as though it were giving way to outright fear.
"I don't understand it," Adrienne said. She shot a look at a confused Madeleine. "Susanne said that these two were Enhancegirl and Spectra! Why can't I - ?" Her brow furrowed for a moment - and then her whole expression changed. "Ahahaha! Oh, right - ahahahaha!"

"She's completely unhinged," Mariko thought. "What is she blabbering about?"
"I get it now," Adrienne said. "Ha! You know Madeleine, for a moment there, I was strongly considering killing all of you. Ahahaha! Ahahahaha!" Even her underlings seemed a little perturbed by this rather...odd behaviour. Yes, after the collapse of Madam Black's criminal empire they had been happy to find new positions so quickly, but for however severe their old employer could be, she was perfectly sane. The jury was still out as regarded Adrienne.

"They're shifters, aren't they?" the blue-haired woman said. By this, she meant a superhuman who could turn their powers on and off, rather than just always having them, like Insyte or Valora.
"Yes, Madáme," Madeleine replied.
"Of course. Ha! A momentary lapse in intelligence on my part." She beckoned to one of the others. "Take Miss Asakura. Stuff her somewhere out of the way until I'm done with the redhead."
"Certainly, Madáme." One of Madeleine's understudies came forward, and rolled Mariko out from underneath Sophie.

"Mmph!" the willowy damsel complained, embarrassed by the ease with which her body was manipulated. "Mmmnnnmmphh!" The point was only driven home further when the woman who'd rolled her hauled her up to her feet. "Mmhh..." Mariko felt doubly embarrassed: this woman was almost a foot shorter than her. And yet Mariko was helpless in her hands.
"Alley-oop, darling," she said, before grabbing her waist and thighs, bending and letting the mummified maiden simply fold over her shoulder.

"Mmmnnnmmpphh!" Sophie called out, as she watched the proud heroine being treated like a stolen prize, carried whimpering and struggling away. "Mrhngh!" she called out after her, feeling her heart thumping in her chest. "Whht hrm nhh dhnng wnth hmr?!" she said through her thick, cloth gag.
"Worrying about your friend?" Adrienne said, in a mocking voice. "D'aww, how sweet." She stood over Sophie, legs either side of her captive's waist. "But pointless. I'll do whatever I want to her, and I'll do whatever I want to you. That's just the way it's gonna be."
"Mmmphhh!" Sophie moaned, as her captor roughly flipped her onto her back, her soft breasts now pressed against the concrete. "Nnnmmghhhmmhh!" she protested, as she felt Adrienne's hands on her slender legs. She felt them stroking, squeezing: behaviour that the oft-bound, leggy redhead had come rather to expect from those who had her tied up in their grip.

However, she did not expect what she felt next: her legs being unbound. Roughly, but fastidiously, the knots cinching Sophie's legs together were untied. Surprised, she didn't even use her newfound freedom to start kicking. It was almost as if she didn't want to make Adrienne realise what she was doing. Sure enough, she kept going, undoing the strict harness pressing against Sophie's breasts, and untying her arms.

"Mhh!" As soon as her arms were free, the redhead wriggled out from under Adrienne. She leapt to her feet, and forcefully ripped off her gag. "What's going on?!" she shouted. "Why did you untie me?"
"You don't need to know," she replied. She looked Sophie up and down. "Go on, Enhancegirl. Do your thing."

It was a trap. Somehow, it was a trap. Sophie knew that perfectly well, she just didn't know how. How could it have been a trap when she'd already been completely helpless? What was there to lose?
"And besides," she thought, "she wouldn't be the first person to underestimate me." She breathed hard. Something felt awfully wrong about all this. "Enhance!"

There was a bright flash. Sophie's white dress and sneakers melted away, replaced by silver, ankle-high boots, a tight, strapless gold mini-dress and long gloves, a red domino mask over her eyes.
"Well," she said, "you wanted Enhancegirl. Now you've got her."
"Oh, I know," Adrienne said.
"You know what I can do, right?"
"In great detail, sweetheart."
"Good. Then I don't need to feel bad about this."

Like a puma, Enhancegirl pounced, leaping forward, closing the gap between the two women in a single bound. Adrienne had not expected her to be so quick, and was caught off guard. Sophie shot a wicked left cross out at Adrienne, catching her in the chin.
"Augh!" she cried out, genuinely startled by Sophie's speed and accuracy. Enhancegirl had no intention of letting her get a breather, however, and hopped up, driving her knee into the leather-clad woman's back.

"Aagghh!!" Adrienne was knocked forward a couple of steps. She turned around to face her opponent, but just as she did Sophie's calf collided with the side of her face. Stunned, she wouldn't have had the presence of mind to react to even a sluggish attack - and Enhancegirl was far from sluggish. She let herself drop, landing on her hands, and then driving both her legs into Adrienne's knees.

With a pained grunt, Adrienne fell hard, her left knee in particular throbbing with pain. On all fours, she panted, completely astonished by Enhancegirl's power.
"Had enough?" the redhead asked, the corner of her mouth curling as she hopped athletically to her feet. More than a little concerned by the sight of their boss having her posterior handed her, Adrienne's employees were about to leap to her defence.
"No!" Adrienne ordered. "Don't you dare interfere. I'll slit both your throats if you do!" They wisely retreated.

Adrienne got back on her feet.
"You're...very good," she said. "I'll admit, I mostly had you kidnapped just out of a sense of completion. I didn't think your gifts would be much compared to Spectra's."
"Well, I'm fucking flattered," Sophie said. "Now that you know what I can do, maybe you'll think it's smart to get the hell out of my way."
"No dice, honey," Adrienne said. "Now I want you more than ever."
"Are you shitting me?" Enhancegirl growled, the discovery of quite how powerful she was now an adrenaline rush that made her teeth clench, her muscles tighten, coiled in preparation for further violence. "I can see what move you're going to make before the nerve signals have even travelled to your spine. I can break your arm in three places with one throw of a golf ball. I can dodge bullets, for Christ's sake!" She slammed her fist against her chest. "I'm Enhancegirl, you twisted fuck, and I could put you in hospital for a month without even trying! So back - the fuck - off!"

She was panting. She wasn't even tired, but she was panting like a she-wolf.
"This is who I am. I'm a fucking superhero, not a sex-slave!" she said to herself. "How dare she - how dare she?!" It took Sophie a moment to realise that she was not mentally assigning the pronoun 'she' to Adrienne. "Huh." The desperation and fear of her genuine captivity had cut through the sensual blanket of passivity that Rachel had wrapped her in. Mariko's presence had helped as well. Partly this was because, as with most people, another person's peril always brought out Sophie's heroic instincts more than her own. There was another reason too why Mariko's being there had helped her to see more clearly - but Sophie couldn't quite work out what it was.

"So violent!" Adrienne laughed. "I like you, pussycat." She held out her hands. "I suppose I'll have to surrender. I mean, what with those wonderful powers of yours..." Enhancegirl didn't imagine that she was serious, but she didn't expect quite the response that Adrienne gave that quickly put the lie to her supposed surrender

Few would have seen it, fewer still in enough time to both wonder at what was happening; work out what was happening; and get out of the way. But Sophie saw the small organs on the inside of Adrienne's wrists open, saw the disturbances in the air as some sort of jet of nigh-on invisible gas came out. At first, Enhancegirl feared that it was a sedative, but no - it smelled more like butane than halothane.

She saw the muscles in Adrienne's hands tense as she made to snap her fingers, saw the glimmer of a spark as her forefinger touched her thumb.
"Oh shit!" Sophie exclaimed, pre-emptively leaping out of the way. As she suspected, a powerful jet of flame shot out from Adrienne's hands. She felt the searing heat of it, saw the semi-liquid vapour in the air boiled away. The flame jets hit the concrete wall, searing the brick, scorching it to a thick, scarred black. Adrienne was no Zjarrus - he would blown straight through the wall with a flick of the wrist - but she was more than powerful enough to kill Sophie.

But power wasn't everything. As Enhancegirl scanned her enemy to find a weakness, she found that one presented it to her readily. The organs in Adrienne's hands, the ones that had produced the gas she'd ignited, were hard at work producing more of it. But as Enhancegirl used her supernaturally powerful vision, she saw that they were replenishing the gas very slowly.
"What are you smiling about?" Adrienne said.
"That power of yours. You blew your load too early. You'll be out cold before you get another shot."
"Oh, I don't intend to use it again," Adrienne replied. "Even if I could, I wouldn't. That was a test - I wouldn't want to hurt you, after all. Not yet anyway."
"Whatever," Enhancegirl said. She made to move again - but she sensed something. Something was moving in the walls - large numbers of somethings. She put her hand on the wall, tracking their movements by vibration while she kept her eyes on Adrienne. It was like a cloud, a flurry of something moving too fast and in too many contradictory directions for Sophie to track with total accuracy.

She maintained her gaze on Adrienne, but her bruised captor did not return the favour. She was looking at the wall - in the exact same place that Sophie could sense the cloud.
"Is she making it?" Sophie thought. "She's got other powers?" But before she could contemplate the situation any further, the cloud burst out of the wall, in frenzy of buzzing, black violence.

"Aah!" Enhancegirl cried out, as the cloud of fat, red-eyed flies assailed her. "Get off, you little bastards!" Sophie exclaimed, batting furiously but ineffectually at the storm of insects. She stumbled back, half-blinded as the flies covered her head so thickly that they plunged it into darkness. "Ugh!" Sophie cried out, feeling their fuzzy, swollen bodies batting against her face as they swirled around her. Her senses were overwhelmed. They tried automatically to lock onto the movements of particular flies, but they just couldn't keep up with the swirling mass.

In ironically favourable comparison with the Greek hero Menelaus, first husband of Helen, Homer once remarked that there was nothing in the world with as much courage as a fly. Sophie was not aware of this passage, but similar sentiments went through her mind: she squashed fly after fly, their mass guaranteeing a few good strikes here and there, but they mass itself didn't lose any of its vicious temerity.

Until it did. All at once, the tornado of pestilence shot up into the air, dismissed. Sophie blinked a few times, her sensitive eyes readusting to the light. When they did, she saw that Adrienne was standing right by her. There was something on her back, some sort of gristly, squamous organ that had manifested itself when Adrienne had summoned it. Emerging from this formless, yet somehow rugged, mass, were four tendrils. They were beige, and oddly fleshlike, but darker than Adrienne's skin - a kind of foul, mottled grey in colour, like cobras in thickness and prehensile flexibility.

In half a second, Enhancegirl's powers allowed her to perceive all this, and make the beginnings of an analysis. But she was disoriented, and though her brain and nerves worked faster than a normal human's, her body didn't. And when Sophie did perceive them...they were only a centimetre from her body.

"N-" was all Enhancegirl had time to get out before the tendrils seized her. By the time her lips had formed the 'o', one tendril had caught her white arms, forcing them behind her back, and coiling round them, holding them in place, constricting them and covering Sophie's gloves completely. Another tendril had seized her torso, writhing around her midriff, before shooting up to her pert breasts, slipping under them, over them, between them, even - squeezing Sophie's tender bosom.

"Uugghh!" Enhancegirl cried out, feeling the tendrils snaking over her body, smooth and strong, like long fingers grabbing at her. And not just that - she shuddered as she felt how slippery and wet they felt, leaving a foul, clear slime on her soft, white skin, her upper chest and the tops of her breasts coated with the slick goo as the tentacles bound her. "Unnhhh!" Sophie moaned, wriggling her bare shoulders, now an expanse of creamy softness above the grey slickness of her living bonds.

"Oh, there we are, there we are, ahahahahahaa!" Adrienne laughed, feeling Sophie writhing in her grip. "So fast, so clever, so deadly, aren't you, girl? But it's just not good enough! Ahahahahaaaaa!" Another of her tendrils shot out, seizing Sophie by her warm, smooth thighs.
"Ugh! N-no! Ugghh!" Sophie cried out in disgust, feeling her naked, sensitive legs slammed together by the slippery tendril, which wrapped itself like a python about her thighs, weaving between them as well as around them. Sophie blushed, as she felt the wet, oozing limbs pulsing against her legs, slick but inescapably tight. The tendril continued, shooting down to Sophie's slim ankles, before grabbing them, and pressing them together too, before travelling upwards to feel the gentle curve of her calves, holding Sophie's legs too tightly to move.

"Get off! Get off me!" Sophie almost screamed, feeling her deadly, lightning-fast agility taken away from her as her body was captured, her limbs seized and bound. She writhed desperately - surely, with her bonds being so wet and slimy, she could wriggle out of them? But no - she was held fast. "Let go, you fucking - MMMPHH!!"
"You kiss your mother with those lips?" Adrienne laughed.

A fourth tendril had taken Sophie as well, coiling round her mouth, gagging her sweet lips, and defiling them with the wet ooze that coated Adrienne's tentacles.
"Mmgghhmphh!" Sophie moaned, feeling terrible shame at her defeat after all her boasting. "She's got me...I'm a god-damned captive again!" She writhed in her bonds, but they seemed to writhe back. "Mmmhh...!" Sophie gasped, as she felt the tendrils binding her pale, naked legs squeeze, and run back and forth against her supple limbs.

"Ghhmm-nnnmmphhh!" Sophie felt her cheeks redden, as the wet, warm slime ran down her thighs. Her long legs were wet with the moisture now, glinting in the light as though they'd been rubbed with massage oil. Her chest and breasts too shone with the clear slime that coated them as they were grabbed and groped. "Mh!" The tentacle around her mouth squeezed her slightly, discharging some of its ooze onto her mouth. "Ghhhhphh!" To her great displeasure, she found herself tasting the stuff - it was sharp, like bitter lemon.
"There," Adrienne said, "that should clean that foul mouth out a little." She drew Sophie closer to her, and lifted her up, her tendrils easily strong enough to hold her in the air.

"Mmmnnmmmmphh!" Sophie cried out in a long, desperate moan, feeling her slinky, gorgeous body trussed up and helpless, her flawless skin stained and discharged by the wet ooze that ran all over her.
"Oh, don't you feel marvellous, Sophie!" Adrienne laughed. "Such a lithe, nubile body..." She smiled cruelly, and Sophie felt the bonds tighten, felt the intensity of their frottage of her grow. "These tentacles are lovely, aren't they?" Adrienne said. "And do you know what the best part is, my leggy little damsel?" She touched her own chest, giving a mocking sigh of pleasure. "They're part of my body...I feel everything they feel!"

"Mmmnnmmph!" Sophie gasped. "She's...feeling me?" Her bosoms, her lips, her naked legs - all were under the tight, writhing grip of Adrienne's tentacles - and, Sophie realised with a chill, all her tender smoothness was being felt up directly by her captor, her bindings the very instrument of her lust. "Oh...oh, they're disgusting!" she thought, feeling the chitinous limbs gyrate against her.

Sophie suddenly felt very foolish indeed for her vicious bragging, felt entirely girlish and helpless, wet and whimpering, her lovely body totally defenceless against Adrienne's depredations.
"I'm such an idiot..." she thought. "I'm such a fucking idiot..."


A few minutes earlier, just as Adrienne had been untying Sophie, Mariko was thrown roughly into a tiny closet next to the room she'd first been brought to.
"Mmmhhgghhmphh!" she complained, landing hard on her rump.
"Oh, look, Jenny," the woman who'd had the writhing maiden over her shoulder said, "she wants the attention instead of the redhead."
"Is that really surprising?" Jenny replied. "This is Spectra we're dealing with,: she's more of an attention whore than Weregild."
"Whhghhmphh!!" Mariko complained, wriggling and thrashing in the cocoon of duct tape she was caught in.
"You know she's practically naked under there, right?" Jenny said.
"Oh, get out!" the other replied.
"I'm serious. When we found her she was wearing heels, tiny little black underwear, and that's it."
"Okay, you win." She grinned. "I'm totally jealous. Mmm...really makes you want to peel that stuff off her doesn't it?"
"Oh, no, you know what the boss is like," Jenny replied. "She always wants first - hey, what the hell?"

While she and the other had been chatting, an odd turn had been coming over Mariko. She was still struggling, but now in a very different way. Her body was contorting, her chest looking as if it were straining painfully against the tape.
"Ghph...hhph..." she grunted from behind her gag, her face beginning to turn red.
"Joan, something's wrong with her," Jenny said. The beauty's eyes looked dull, unfocused. Her captor held her fingers underneath the woman's nose. "She's not breathing through her nose!"
"Oh, fuck," Joan replied. "Hey, how tight did you guys tie her?"
"Oh, don't look at me! Madeleine was the one who wrapped her up." Mariko continued to grunt breathlessly. "What do we do?" Joan thought for a moment.
"Take the gag off."
"Are you crazy? She'll fry us!"
"Better risk that than letting Ms Carly know that we let Spectra die before she had a chance to get to her! I'd rather go out fast than take whatever she'll do to us." Jenny frowned deeply.
"Alright, but on your own head be it..."

Gingerly, Jenny pulled off the gag.
"Aaahh!" Mariko gasped. "Uhh...hhh..." She panted, drawing air into tired, strained lungs. "Th...thank...you..." she said, closing her eyes in relief.
"Aww, so polite!" Jenny laughed. "No worries, sweetie. We like to keep our captives in the best condition possible."
"Thank you..." Mariko said again. Suddenly her countenance took on a much less breathless quality. "Thank you so much, for being so stupid."
"Quick, gag her again!" Joan screeched. But it was too late.
"Spectrum is Green!" A pure light washed over her. Under her cocoon of tape, it was a less dramatic transformation than usual, as Mariko Asakura became Spectra, Mistress of Light.

Her two captors saw her mask appear, and her shoes change to the silver boots of her heroine identity.
"Oh - fuck..." spoke Joan quietly.
"Well said," Spectra replied, before tearing away her bonds with two lances of light. Jenny, fear making her uselessly daring, ran forward, only to be blasted backwards as Mariko stood up, Joan ran the other way, but the silver clad beauty hit her in the back, sending her flying about ten feet, where she crashed, groaning, on her front.

Spectra strode out of the closet where she'd been about to be confined, orbs of light gathered in her palms, a shining, white aura of power around her body. This was something she'd long since learned to control, as it was a waste of energy. But her corona was intimidating, and that was something she had no problem with.

"Oh, hell!" Some of Adrienne's other underlings saw the mighty maiden's blinding aura, and promptly ran for it. They weren't fools - yes, the Supremacist had been more than a match for Spectra in a fair fight - but there were very, very few who were, and none of them worked for Adrienne. Spectra, partly as an intimidation tactic, and partly just because she felt like it, carved a deep scar in the ceiling above her, slicing through solid concrete with a fraction of her power.

She strode back to where she'd awoken in captivity, her lip curling in a hate-filled sneer. She walked in, scattering Adrienne's servants with fear.
"Where are they?!" she demanded, blocking one woman's egress with a spear of light either side of her. "Lie, or move in a way that I dislike, and I will bisect you. So talk. Now."
"Th - they went upstairs!" the woman spluttered.
"We shall see," Mariko replied. "Ha!" She sent a photonic pulsewave at her informant, striking her in the stomach with sheer force.
"Unhh..." she groaned, doubling over, before collapsing on the ground.
"Be thankful that you live," Spectra hissed.

She hurried through the compound, going up the only set of stairs that she could find. As she ascended them, however, she realised that she was on the verge of blundering into a trap.
"She must have heard me escaping," the heroine muttered to herself. She suppressed her instinct to simply run in, all guns blazing. "I have to play this more intelligently. I will not allow her to make off with my - with Sophie..."

Mariko was right to be suspicious. As she slowly ascended the stairwell, she did not - could not - see that Adrienne had sidled up against the wall immediately to the stairwell's left. She held Sophie tightly in her tendrils, keeping the beautiful redhead tightly restrained and muzzled, held in front of her, a human shield.
"Mmmphh! MMMPHH!!" Enhancegirl moaned, trying to let Spectra hear her. Mariko couldn't see them, but Sophie could certainly see her. She saw the willowy maiden slowly, carefully coming towards them, but she was helpless to communicate with her.
"Keep quiet, girl," Adrienne hissed. Rather confusingly, she punctuated this remark by starting to unwind the tendril around Sophie's mouth - but the redhead got less than a second with her mouth uncovered.

"Spectrhhhmmphh!!" As soon as Adrienne's slippery appendage was off her lips, a hand seized her mouth. "Mmgghhmphh!!" Enhancegirl moaned. If anything, she was more tightly gagged now, as strong fingers clamped over her face, pressing into her cheeks. Sophie shook her head, but Adrienne's hand stayed firmly in place, hot and iron-hard over Sophie's lips and face. "Mmhh..." Sophie mewed, embarrassed at being so easily kept helpless.

She nevertheless watched as Mariko ascended the stairway...but she was heading for the wrong side. Instead of going left, she began to turn right, away from the two women, captor and lithe, slippery-skinned captive.
"Nnnmmphh!" Sophie whimpered, seeing her beautiful would-be-rescuer heading away from her. "Nhhmphh! Mhrrghh, hhhllp mhhh!" She moaned desperately through the powerful hand muzzling her lovely lips. "Hhhllp mhh, pllhhhss!" But Mariko disappeared into the other part of the complex. "HHHHLLLPPP!!" Sophie screamed, prompted into moaning desperation by the slick, organic bonds squeezing and fondling her defenceless body. "Please, Mariko, don't let her do this to me..."

Sophie found herself spun around, now looking right into the eyes of her unhinged captor.
"Oh, isn't that tragic?" Adrienne laughed. "She didn't even notice you were there! Some heroine, huh?" She roughly grabbed Sophie's round ass with her free hand, reaching right under her dress' hem. "Wouldn't it be sad if she made her escape...and left you all alone with me?"
"Mmph!" Sophie whimpered, as she felt a rough spank of her yielding, peachlike flesh. "Nnmmph..." She writhed her naked shoulders, but that only meant that she rubbed her breasts against the slimy tentacle all the more vigorously. Sophie was all-too aware that Adrienne could feel this herself.

"Such a lovely girl..." Adrienne said. "If I had a different disposition, I might just let your friend scurry off. I'm sure you'd keep me fairly well entertained."
"Mmghhmphh..." Sophie mewed, turning her eyes away. "I can't do anything..."
"Now, perhaps this might be a good time..." Adrienne said. "I mean, while I have you here, anyway and -"

To describe Adrienne's feelings in the next few seconds following her half sentence would not have been easy. To wit: she went from smug, domineering pleasure, to simple surprise, to shock - to hideous, agonising pain. For, using her powers over light to bend the light around her, Mariko had been slowly moving towards Sophie and Adrienne while cloaked. She'd known which side to turn, and had deliberately gone the other way. As the light went around her, it didn't reach her eyes, and she was therefore blinded as she made her way there. But slowly, feeling her way, helped by Adrienne's taunts and Sophie's quiet whimpers, she got within range, and continued until she was inches away from the pair.

Uncloaking herself, she'd taken a second to recharge her stores of light, as Adrienne blinked in astonishment at her apparently teleporting abductee.
"What the -?" Despite her fairly good information on the two, Adrienne had had no idea that Mariko could make herself invisible, even if it was only for a minute at a time. "AAAGGHHH!!" Before she could think of what to do with this rather surprising turn of events, Mariko created a blade of light, and severed every one of her tendrils from her body. Adrienne barely stopped her hand from sharing her tendrils' fate. She fell back, shaking with pain. Pieces of her tentacles fell to the floor, one severed almost entirely. But her pain didn't end there. Mariko blasted her in the stomach with a mixture of thermal and light energy, throwing her back. Adrienne landed groaning on her back.

"Sophie!" When Mariko had cut away the tendrils from Adrienne's body, the ones binding Sophie hadn't gone anywhere - in fact they had tightened reflexively, binding Sophie all the more strictly. She'd begun to fall onto her back, but Mariko had debilitated Adrienne so quickly that she had time to catch her. The redhead fell into her arms, her skin moist, her body glinting and slippery, the gorgeous damsel completely helpless in Mariko's grip.

"Sophie, are you alright?" the willowy heroine asked.
"Yeah, I'm okay," she replied, smiling, but embarrassed at her bound state. "Nothing bruised but my pride, I guess." She shifted a little, and Mariko realised she had her hand on Sophie's legs.
"Oh!" she gasped, letting them go, her face flushing.
"I know, it's fucking gross," Sophie said, thinking Mariko was reacting to the slime on her lovely limbs. "Think you could cut me loose?"
"Yes, of course," Mariko said, quickly. She created a small blade of light at her fingertip, ready to cut Sophie free. "I -"
"What?" Sophie said. Then more gently: "What is it, Mariko?"
"N-nothing," Mariko said. "I'm just glad you're alright." Sophie smiled at her, with a generous sweetness. Mariko's proud heart skipped a beat.

The two maidens found themselves staring into each other's eyes. Sophie felt a sense of relief. They'd barely spoken for the last two weeks, yet she saw nothing but friendship and affection in Mariko's expression. Even in their present state, even with her limbs bound in slimy tentacles, having been humiliatingly defeated, she felt comfort in her beautiful friend's gaze. Her bright, sparkling, jade eyes...

So fixed were Sophie's attentions on her tall, slender saviour, that she - even she - did not notice something moving behind Mariko. Something was moving towards her, slithering on the ground like a snake. Like a slug, it left a trail of slime on the floor, and when it was right next to the tall young woman, it shot out at her like a bullwhip.

"Aah!" Spectra gasped, as she felt the slithery tendril take hold of her. It grabbed her around the stomach, before sliding up her slender body, too quickly for her to grab. It coiled over her throat, and for a moment Mariko thought it meant to strangle her - but it didn't stop there either. It snaked up to her head, ignoring her mouth and coiling about her eyes.

"NO!" Spectra cried out. Blindfolded, she couldn't access her powers, the blade of light on her fingertip instantly fading to nothingness. She reached up, grabbing at the slippery appendage, pulling hard on it, but not able to get it off. Plunged into darkness, Mariko stood up, straining and wrestling with her serpentine blindfold.

"Mariko!" Sophie's cry was not a mere expression of alarm: she was trying to warn her. With a wild, half-crazed look in her eye, Adrienne was looming up behind the blinded heroine. As Sophie looked on in horror, she saw six tendrils emerging from the gristly organ on the woman's back. "Mariko, just run!"

But even if she'd wanted to, it wouldn't have been possible.
"Aaahh!" Mariko felt slippery, rubbery tentacles seizing her willowy form. They wrapped around her torso, binding her slim arms to her sides, her hands and forearms vanishing beneath the mottled-grey appendage. They slid up over her silver leotard, winding around her pert breasts in a figure of eight, before running up over her naked shoulders, up and around her tender throat - before finally twisting itself around her mouth.

"MMPHH!!" Mariko felt herself bound, fondled and gagged by the same tendril, its ooze now befouling her skin as well. She writhed, struggling fiercely in her bindings, shaking her shoulders from side to side. But with every wriggle, she only found her wet bonds sliding against her gorgeous body with even greater intensity.

"Mh! MHH!" Mariko's first gasp was one of surprise, and dismay, as she felt another tentacle take her by the ankles, pressing her boot-covered calves against each other. The second, however, was of shock and disgust, as yet another tendril whipped around her bare thighs, tightly cinching them together, as well as rubbing furiously against her naked, tan skin, making Spectra's legs moist and slippery with their slime.

"You naughty, naughty girl!" Adrienne hissed, arousal at feeling the slender beauty wriggling in her grip mixed with rage at the pain that had been inflicted on her. Holding Spectra in her tentacles, she lifted her up, moving her to one side, her feet kicking in the air. "That hurt, my pretty little cherry blossom," she laughed. "But it didn't really help you, did it?"
"Mmmhhphh..." Mariko whimpered, trussed up, gagged and blindfolded, whimpering as she felt her bonds fondle her.

"No..." Sophie moaned breathlessly, seeing Spectra caught, her saviour ambushed and defeated. She tried again to wriggle free, but it was no use. Any weakness she could sense in her restraints was quickly corrected by them - even separated from their master, they were still reacting to her wishes. "Ah!" Gripped by fear, Sophie saw Adrienne looming over her, and tried to wriggle away - but she was far too tightly tied up to make any real progress.

"Join the fun, gorgeous," Adrienne laughed, reaching down and taking Sophie by her soft shoulders, hauling her up to her feet and shoving her against a wall.
"No! No, let us go, you psychopath!" Sophie demanded.
"Oh, I will," Adrienne said. "No, really!" she laughed, as Sophie's eyes narrowed in confusion. "In a few minutes, I'm not going to have any need for either of you."

Sophie watched with dread as two more tendrils began slowly emerging from the organ on Adrienne's back. They seemed a little thicker than the others, and they moved with a repulsive slowness towards each of the woman's captives. Mariko's reached her first, seeming to prompt the tendril gagging her to wind back, satisfying itself with slipping even more of its loops around the Japanese heroine's bosom and shoulders, kneading her pert breasts as it bound her body.

"Ugh..." the blindfolded maiden groaned, spitting the slime that had collected on her mouth. "Wh...what's going on? Sophie, what's happening?" But the redhead didn't answer. She couldn't. The tentacle edging towards Mariko's mouth pointed its tip directly at her - but 'tip' soon became the wrong word. It opened, forming a kind of mouth, vaguely triangular in shape, dripping wet, its inside obviously coated with slime even more than its outside. It suddenly snapped forward - clamping itself over Mariko's mouth and nose.
"Mmgghhmphhh!!" Mariko whimpered, as what felt like the nozzle of a pipe covered her lips, forming a tight seal. She was worried that she wouldn't be able to breathe, but it seemed to be supplying her with oxygen. "Mmmhh..." she mewed, overwhelmed by Adrienne's foul tentacles.

"No - no!" Sophie mewed as another of these pipe-tendrils came for her as well. She tried to turn her face away from it, but it simply followed her. "Please, don't d-hhhmmmphhhh!!" Sophie's pleas were reduced to wordless whimpers, as the slimy nozzle took her, covering her mouth and her nose, sealing them under it. She turned to Mariko - dismayed, helpless - but the oriental damsel couldn't even see her.

"Now my loves," Adrienne began, but she couldn't finish the sentence. She was having far too much squeezing her beautiful captives' supple, warm bodies, coating them in her tendrils' slick ooze, feeling every writhe, every wriggle of their long legs, every bounce of their perky breasts, every movement of their soft, sealed lips. "Whoo..." she said, running a hand up her own thigh, "almost got...distracted there. Where was I? Oohh yes!" She looked right at Sophie. "First...let's soften you up a bit."

"Mmh?" Sophie felt something moving within the pipe-tendril over her mouth. "Mmmmmhh!" Her sensitive nose smelt it before it reached her sense of test: a thick, cloyingly sweet smell, with an organic tang to it that Sophie found oddly replulsiv
"Mhhggmphh!!" Mariko cried out. Sophie turned to see her shaking her head back and forth, the tentacle gagging her pulsing something into her mouth.
"Mmh!" Sophie now felt it too, a thick gas being forced into her, her mouth and nose unable to breathe anything else. "Nnnmmphh! Nmm-MMPHH!!" she protested. The lovely maidens knew fully well what was about to happen. "Mmmphh..."

Shorter than Mariko, and her powers making her all the more sensitive, it was Sophie who felt the weakness first. She felt it in her chest, slowing her breathing, making her shoulders writhe more slowly and sinuously. It spread through into her arms, reducing the pace of her struggles. Sophie's supple legs were next, beginning to feel heavy and immovable, like they were stuck in tar.

"Hllphhh..." she mewed, beginning to feel dazed. "Drrhhhgghhd..." She continued to fight, but she felt a girlish helplessness seizing control of her, the gas pumped into her tender body making her tamed, and cowed. "Help me...uhh...I'm all tied up..." she thought, drowzy and disoriented. "Hhllphh..." she continued to whimper, her pretty eyes fluttering open and shut. "I'm...oohh...so soft..."

"Mhh...mhhh..." Mariko whimpered, as she too felt the effects of the gas. They weren't quite as powerful on her, however. Instead of overwhelming, drowzy sleepiness, she felt as if she were growing limp, her long, slender legs growing still, her head sagging onto a wet, bare shoulder. "I can't...believe I let this happen to us..." she thought, doubly distraught by the thought that the same thing was happening to Sophie. Spectra received a moment of hope when she felt the tentacle around her eyes withdraw - but as she blinked into the light, she realised that the careful concentration her powers required was beyond her. "Nnhhmmphh..." she mewed, made so weak that she couldn't use her powers even in the light that sustained them.

"There we are, my delicious little damsels," Adrienne laughed. "All sleepy and tame, just how I like 'em. Hahahaha!"
"Mmph..." Sophie mewed, barely able to follow what Adrienne was saying.
"Mgghrmph!" Mariko was a bit more alert, but still humiliatingly subdued.
"I think it's high time I revealed what the two of you are really doing here." She grinned. "You see...I'm something of a collector."
"A...collector?" Mariko thought. Whatever she meant by that, it couldn't be good.

"You didn't see, my lovely cherry blossom - but your flame-haired friend did, didn't you?"
"Whmph?" Sophie mewed, only half awake.
"Wasn't it weird, all those powers I have?" she said, addressing Enhancegirl. "I can shoot fire out of my wrists, control flies, and I've got these lovely tentacles...seems strange, no? No-one has a power set that crazy, right?"
"I...don't understand..." Sophie thought. But Mariko did.
"No...no, no, no, she can't mean that. She's bluffing. Trying to intimidate us. She can't mean that!"

Adrienne saw the look of fear on Mariko's face.
"That's right, my darlings. These powers of mine - all except one - are stolen. I took them from pretty ladies just like you." She laughed. "Except the flies one - would you believe someone actually asked me to - but I digress. Guess what I'm going to do to you now." This, even in her addled state, Sophie reacted to.
"Nn...nhh!" she mewed, her half-closed eyes going wide.
"Yhh knnnd! NNHHH!!" Mariko screamed into the gag, adrenaline wakening her a little. She tried to summon a spear of light, but though there was a tiny shimmer, it flickered and died. "She can't...she can't!"

"You've had your fun, girls," Adrienne said, "running around in those sexy little costumes, fighting the darkness or whatever the hell it is you delude yourselves into thinking you do. But now...the fun is over." She stroked the two tendrils gagging and drugging her captives, smiling wickedly. "Drink up, boys."

The tendrils shivered, their pulsing coming to a halt. But some change seemed to come over them - and they began pulsing once again. But something was different this time. Instead of pumping something into the gorgeous girls, they were sucking something out.
"Mmmhh?" Sophie felt her bonds begin to throb against her body, in time with the tentacle over her mouth. "Mph!" she mewed, feeling like they were squeezing something out of her.

And then she felt it. Weakness; weakness throughout every inch of her. It wasn't weakness like being knocked out, or even being paralysed. It was like someone had uncorked her, and everything was flowing out.
"Mmmhhh...mmmhhhh..." she moaned, massaged by her bonds, squeezed and fondled even as she was drained. And she was being drained. Weakened by the drug she'd been forced to breathe in, it was a little difficult to tell at first, but something was happening to her. Her hyper-sensitive vision was growing duller. She could see the veins beneath Adrienne's skin if she wanted to - but no longer. She could no longer feel in such exquisite detail every fibre of her dress, every squamous inch of her slippery bonds.

"What's...happening to me?" Sophie thought, as the world seemed to grow less and less detailed around her, like switching from high definition to standard, and then from standard to an old CRT. The explosion of colour and vivid scents, tremors - it was all slipping away.
"My...powers..." she realised. "Oh god, she's taking my powers!"

"Mph! NNNMMPHHH!!" Mariko screamed, summoning every last bit of energy to thrash in her slippery bonds. For her, the change could not be felt through an alteration of her senses. It was found within: she felt herself drained, the foul pipe over her mouth sucking out every last bit of strength she possessed. "This isn't happening! This can't be happening!" Mariko felt a horrible feebleness taking her, as her body seemed to try to absorb the light around her, but couldn't remember how. "Pllhhss..." she whimpered, "plhhhss nhhhh..." Adrienne responded to her muffled plea, with a short, sharp cackle.

"Mhhh..." the two damsels moaned, as they felt - with ruinous dismay - their wondrous powers being stolen from them. Weakness seemed like an actual, physical force, holding them captive, suppressing them, controlling them. The two drained maidens looked at each other, as their lascivious bonds squeezed them, pumping out every last drop of power. Their green eyes met, both pairs half-closed, wet and helpless.

"Mmmmmhhh..." Sophie mewed, barely able to stay conscious, that awful draining feeling continued, her vision now scarcely any better than her entirely human sense of hearing. "Mariko...oh, god, Mariko!" Even in her despair at the draining of her powers, she had feeling left for her friend. She knew how important being Spectra was to her. While being Enhancegirl was perhaps half of Sophie's life, being Spectra was almost the entirety of Mariko's. "No...no, she doesn't...have anyone to...to..." She couldn't finish the thought. "Oh...ooohh...I can't I - unhh...never felt so...weak..." She felt as if she'd been wrapped in darkness, absorbing everything out of her lithe body.

"Mmhh...nnmmphhh..." Mariko whimpered, looking straight into her fellow captive's eyes, her own helplessness reflected in Sophie. "No...no this isn't...oh...no, I can feel it!" Mariko perceived with all too great clarity as her powers diminished, fading away into nothingness. It felt like part of her was dying. "It's all going...all my power..." She was on the verge of losing consciousness, not from weakness, but from the overwhelming shock of what was happening to her. But she had mental alacrity to see Sophie's face, to see her expression.

It was one of dismay, hopelessness, just the same as Mariko's - and yet not the same. Mariko could see that Sophie was thinking of her, at least as much as she was fearful for herself.
"Oh god," Mariko thought, "I've failed you...I could have saved you and I didn't...forgive me... . Please forgive me, my - my love..." She strained one of her slender arms in her bonds, far too weak to extricate herself from them. In her drained, weakened state, she instinctively tried to reach out to her, wanting to comfort her even as she felt her own powerless dismay. What she didn't know was that Sophie was trying to the same thing. If they could have done, the two damsels would have clasped their hands together, just to offer each other a little comfort in their utter, devastating defeat.

There was something else she didn't know. As Adrienne drained the beautiful, writhing damsels, she took more than just their powers. Abilities like theirs, which took a great deal of skill and practice to wield, would have been almost useless to her for weeks if she'd just taken the power. She felt an incredible rush, as Spectra's power over light, and Sophie's vast, superhuman senses became hers, their power now becoming her power - and that rush might well have overwhelmed her. But as she stole their precious gifts, she also sifted through their thoughts and memories, acquiring their skill as well as their strength - though these, at least, she merely copied, rather than burgled.

Yet as she did so, she found something she had not expected.
"Please forgive me, my - my love..." she heard from Mariko's addled mind.
"What's this?" she said to herself, her lip curling into a wicked smile. "Oh, no, no, this is just too delicious!" She probed further, feeling that the proud, now whimpering, heroine was deeply - intractably - in love with Sophie. She felt her ardent desire, her pain at her self-assurance that Sophie would never be hers, her admiration and maidenly passion for the sweet, impulsive young woman.

Now vilely curious, Adrienne probed Sophie's mind as well, knowing that she would not have another chance to look once the process was complete. She searched through the helpless damsel's thoughts, probing them with no resistance at all, until she found something that caught her fancy.
"Well, isn't that interesting?" she thought. She got a wicked thought.

"Mmhh...?" Sophie whimpered, drained almost to point of total immobility, no longer able to feel her powers at all. She found herself pulled in towards her captor, her hands grabbing her by her white shoulders. But she was hardly satisfied with that, grabbing her naked, slippery legs and squeezing her thighs. Drowzy and powerless, Sophie was defenceless against Adrienne's rough groping of her body. "Mmnnnmmphhh..." Sophie mewed softly. "She...already has our powers...why does she have to do this to us?"

"Oh...Sophie, you're so lovely..." Adrienne said, beginning to massage her tender breasts. "So gorgeous and sexy..."
"Mmhhh..." the redhead moaned, almost completely unconscious. She felt as Adrienne grabbed her long, red hair, roughing holding it up - and then sniffing it.
"Mmmm...isn't she beautiful?" the vile woman said. She was looking straight at Mariko. "Such soft skin, such a feminine figure...I bet anyone would want to get their hands all over her, right?" She ran her fingers over her slender neck, feeling the silkiness of her skin. "And she's not just hot...she's so brave, so empathetic, and she fights harder than anyone I know to help the people in front of her."

Mariko felt a chill in her stomach, a fear-within-fear as she bemoaned the loss of her powers. "Those aren't her words."
"Mmmm...oh, what a woman!" Adrienne laughed. "Just the sort of person you could fall completely in love with..."
"Mmgghmmphh!" Mariko whimpered, eyes wide in terrible shock. "She's...reading my thoughts!" There was a whisper of fear that Natalya had been her victim at some point too - but no, this seemed connected with her draining power.

Either way, Mariko was now gripped by a new fear. Not only was almost on the point of tears as she felt her powers stolen away from her, but now her secret passions were on the cusp of being revealed.
"Mmph..." but Sophie was on the verge of total unconsciousness anyway, still feeling the last feeble remnants of her abilities being drunk away from her. She wasn't in a position to pick up hints. Moreover, as Adrienne gave Sophie back to her tentacles, holding her up in the air again, she looked at Mariko, and tapped the side of her nose. "Our little secret", she seemed to be saying. It was simply more fun that way.

The two damsels were now held closer together, able to watch each other's wet, limp bodies have all the strength sucked out of them, saw their living bonds throbbing pleasurably against their thighs and bosoms.
"It's almost over, girls," Adrienne said. "Everything you have is almost completely mine..."
"Nmmhh...nnmmph..." Sophie whimpered sleepily, her senses feeling duller than her civilian state by force of contrast. "We're powerless..." she thought.

But there was just a drop left. "Mh!" Sophie mewed, as she felt her bonds squeeze her even tighter.
"Mmh!" Mariko echoed, as she felt the same, the throbbing against her vulnerable willowy body growing ever more intense. The two maidens felt a very odd sensation throughout their bodies, as the last flickers of power were sucked out of them. "Mmmhh...mmhhh!" Mariko gasped, blushing as a terrible sensation of pleasure went through her. "It's...it's like she's - lubricating us!" she thought. "Making it easier to - to - oh!"

Now both maidens felt their own bodies throbbing along with their bonds, felt something pulse as their dying embers of power were taken away.
"Mmmhhhph! MMPHH!" Sophie moaned, cheeks flushed red. "Wh-what's happening? Oh! OH! N-no! Not like this!"
"Mmhhphh...NNNMMPHH!" Mariko gasped, turning to her fellow captive. "S-Sophie...I can't stop it...help...help me, I -" But there was nothing Sophie - or Mariko - could do about it.

"Mhh - mhh - MMMMMMMMMMPPPPHHHH!!" the two helpless maidens screamed, as all the last dregs were drained from them, forced out in the most humiliating way possible. And in that moment, something awful happened: for both maidens, their costumes were part of their power sets, built in disguises that had made it that little bit easier to be active heroines. But with their powers totally drained, their boots, masks, Sophie's dress and Mariko's leotard - they vanished. They didn't even return to their original clothes, for they had no power left to switch. The two drained damsels were left in nothing but their skimpy underwear, Sophie's white, Mariko's black - stripped as they were stripped of their power.

"Mmmhhh..." the damsels sighed, drowning in shame and powerlessness. They could both feel it - there was nothing left. They were utterly defeated: their powers were lost. They looked at each other, panting, their cheeks bright, their shapely legs glinting with sweat as well as with Adrienne's slime.
"Was that good for you too, girls?"

The two damsels were allowed to sink down to their knees, humbled before the one who had stolen their abilities. Now scarcely covered at all, the scantily clad damsels were rubbed with even greater intensity by their bonds, with slithered all over them, apparently keen to coat their flat midriffs, their gently curving backs - everything in the foul, slippery liquid which oozed off them.
"Mmhhh...mmhh..." Sophie moaned. Overwhelmed by humiliation and defeat, and already so weak from the drug that had made her weak before the awful draining, the lovely redhead could take no more. She swooned, her eyes fluttering, before they fell closed completely. She sagged forward, limp and beautiful in her defeat.

"Mmhh...mmphh..." Spectra - if one could still call her that - moaned weakly, only barely more alert than her unconscious beloved. "It's over..." she thought, filled with despair. "It's all over..."
"Oooh, that was the most fun I've had in a long time," Adrienne said. She seemed to twitch, filled to the brim with new strength. "And all this power...ahahaha!" She opened her palm, manifesting a ball of light in it.
"Nnmph..." Mariko whimpered, seeing her power, her most precious treasure in the hands of another - the most precious treasure she'd possessed at least.
"Let's see...how was it you do that again? Ah, right." She pointed upwards, and fired the light ball in a mighty blast, slicing a deep scar in the concrete. With Enhancegirl's vision, she could see that it had gone right the way through, slicing the stone apart like butter. "Holy shit!" she laughed. "I didn't know you were this powerful!" She looked at Mariko. "You - you could have killed me. You could have cut me in two and I wouldn't have been able to do a thing about it! Aahahahahahahaha! AHAHAHAHAHAA!" Even more unhinged by the rush of power, she doubled over with crazed laughter. "Oh that's good! Oh that's too good! You were too noble, is that it? You don't kill, right? Ohohoho, I bet you'd kill me now if you had the chance!"
"Mmhh..." Mariko felt rage building up within her despair. Adrienne wasn't wrong in her assessment.

Adrienne withdrew her tendrils from Sophie and Mariko's mouths. She left them bound though - actually detaching the tentacles that bound Mariko's body, leaving them to hold her fast.
"Uhh..." Mariko, ungagged, moaned. "Why...why have you done this to us?"
"Pfft - ahaaha!" Adrienne laughed sharply. "Oh, that's no mystery, surely? I want power, you stupid little tramp."
"Just...just finish me off..." Mariko said quietly.
"Oh no, that's no fun," Adrienne said. "You'll live. You'll live knowing that I took away the only thing that made you special. The only thing that made anyone notice you. The only thing that made her notice you."
"Wh-what?"

Sophie's swooned body was hauled up, and pressed against Adrienne's body. She held her by the small of her back, Sophie leaning away, delicately, like she was Adrienne's partner in a dance.
"I think you figured that I get a little...information when I steal a little hottie's powers," the villain said. "Well I got something from her too." She put her fingers on Sophie's lips. "'Gawd, Mariko's like, such a bitch. She treats me like an idiot, like a little girl. Where does she get off being so smug?'"
"She...she doesn't...she's too kind to -"
"Ahahaha! But don't you see, Mariko, that's exactly it!" She grinned. "She's too kind. She knows you don't have any real friends apart from her. She tolerates you, because she's kind." She began slowly running a finger up Sophie's naked, pale thighs. "Y'know that night she ran to you? After the...the brainwashing thing, I didn't get a name - you probably could have got her to fuck you if you'd played your cards right. She was pretty vulnerable that night - but then you seem to have a problem with going in for the kill, don't you?"

Mariko stared up at Adrienne and Sophie with a feeling that she didn't have words for. She was enraged, and defeated, and distraught all at the same time. It expressed itself simply with an involuntary whimper. "She's lying...she's lying..." Mariko told herself...but it only seemed to confirm everything she'd feared, every reason she'd had not to tell her beloved how she felt. It did not occur to her that these fears had been accessible to Adrienne along with everything else.
"The point is, my little cherry blossom, the only good feeling she had for you was because you did - to your credit, I admit! - save her from some jams a few times." Her lip curled. "But you're powerless now. She will never love you."

With that, she pulled the helpless, sleeping redhead - who would have been screaming furious, anguished denials of every one of Adrienne's claims - and kissed her, roughly caressing the inside of her mouth with her tongue. Mariko looked on - and only a lifetime of strength and emotional restraint stopped her from weeping.

"So sweet, isn't she?" Adrienne said. She let Sophie fall at her feet, tumbling in a crumpled heap onto the floor. "Well, a promise is a promise!" she said. "I really am gonna let you go. I mean...what the hell do I need you for now, huh?" She looked over Mariko's breathtakingly beautiful, half-naked body. "Hmmm..." She looked at her carefully, scanning her. "You know, your friend's powers really are incredible. You know I can actually see your nervous system!" She got a look in her eye. "And if I were to pinch right here..." She placed her thumb and forefinger on one of Mariko's traps, and then gave a sharp squeeze.

"Ah!" Mariko whimpered, as she felt what seemed like an electric shock through her mind. "Uhh...uuhhhh..." she sighed. Her jade eyes fluttered, and she fell back, what last remained of her body's strength taken away, by the very powers of the object of her desires. "Ooohh..." With that last whimper, she faded into unconsciousness.

Adrienne took a long look at the two powerless beauties whom she'd utterly defeated. She smiled broadly. It would have been a consummate pleasure simply to deprive them of their powers, let alone taking them for herself.
"Madeleine you coward, get in here!" she shouted. The Frenchwoman, who'd been sensibly keeping away from the battle, came in, rather gingerly. "First, get me a pen and paper. I've acquired a very interesting list of names from these pretty little heads. Second, get your goons together. I need you to make one more outing..."

She looked again at her beautiful, near-naked captives. She had taken powers from pretty girls before - but never quite like this. It was simply too delicious.
"And she doesn't even know it herself," she laughed. "How beautifully tragic..." She laughed, and sauntered off, revelling in her new powers, as Mariko and Sophie were hauled onto the shoulders of her servants, carried away, in absolute, crushing defeat.

[SGWriter]

Excellent start DB!

[DrDominator9]

Fantastic!!

[Damselbinder]

"Mmmhhh..." Sophie whimpered, as she gradually came to. "Where...am I?" She felt rather pleasantly cool, a gentle breeze stroking her half naked body. "Whh - mmmmphhhhh!!" As Sophie took stock of her surroundings, she was shocked into wakefulness. She was in nothing but her underwear, gagged with a strip of cloth between her pretty lips, and her body was wrapped in thick, metal chains, from her shoulders to her ankles - but in a criss-cross pattern to leave her body on show. Not only that - but she was ten feet from the ground. "Whhggmmphh?" Sophie looked up, to see that she was suspended from a street lamp by the chain binding her. "Mmph! MMPHH!" she moaned, struggling fiercely. "She really did let us go - she drained us dry and then she just left us here!"

That was a point - was it 'us'? Sophie looked behind her - and saw that Mariko was there too.
"Mmh..." she whimpered softly, humiliated and forlorn, bound the same way as Sophie, her slender limbs helplessly restrained. Sophie realised that the two were actually bound together, back to back, their long, still-wet legs rubbing against each other as Sophie struggled. Mariko's limbs were so soft - but neither could find any pleasure in what was happening.

This was not least because a crowd was beginning to gather. As the two damsels looked down, they saw people pointing up at them, one man on a cellphone, calling the police.
"Nmmphh...mmmnnnhhh..." Mariko moaned. The crowd was beginning to increase in size. It wasn't exactly Times Square, but anyone chained to a lamp post would have drawn a bit of attention, let alone two beautiful, half-naked women.

"Hey..." one of the bystanders said. "I think I recognise one of 'em."
"Mhh...nhhh!" Sophie mewed. "Oh god, not again! Not like this, please..."
"Oh, yeah, yeah," another said. "It's that model who got kidnapped last year, uh...that Asian chick, Mariko Sakura or something."

Mariko had almost forgotten that she was something of a celebrity in her own right, even without being Spectra. There was a very small amount of relief in this - at the very least, Spectra and Enhancegirl were not recognised as such - but she was still being publicly paraded.
"Mmh?" Sophie realised that there was something around her neck. It felt like a necklace, but when she looked down, she realised that a cardboard sign was hanging from her, attached by a piece of string. It look a little painful craning of her neck, but she managed to read it:

'Hi! I'm Enhancegirl. A supervillain defeated me and stole my powers, so now my sexy ass is completely useless. Anyone who finds me, feel free to do whatever you want with me - I'm not much good to anyone now!'

"Mmhph!" Sophie whimpered, feeling a stab of further embarrassment at this slap in the face from the one who'd taken her powers from her. But then realisation dawned on her - it was worse than that. When she was cut down, her rescuers would be able to see it. Everyone would know.

"Nnnmmphh..." Mariko moaned, finding her own sign around her neck as well.
'My name is Spectra - or it used to be, anyway. Now my powers are gone and I'm worth about as much as the cardboard this is written on - but can someone please validate me? I'll do anything you like...'
"Mmmrrghh! NNNMPHH!!" Mariko moaned, hanging her head. "They'll know...they'll all see!"

As the two maidens writhed weakly in their chains, they felt a terrible sense of finality. Once it was seen what had happened, once it was public knowledge that their powers were stolen, it would be real. Enhancegirl and Spectra would be gone forever. They saw someone bringing a tall ladder. Once it was ascended, even if they couldn't be cut down, they'd see the signs round the chained-up maidens' necks.
"Nmmphh...nnnnhhh..." Sophie whimpered, distraught beyond anything she'd known before.

The man below them set the ladder up - it seemed as if his hands would just about reach Sophie and Mariko's feet if he stood right at the top.
"You just hang on in there, girls!" he shouted up. He began to ascend - he was an older guy, strong looking, but creaky like an old oak door. "Ah, geez..." he complained, edging closer.
"Nnnmmphh!" Sophie mewed, not wanting to be seen any closer.
"Don't worry darlin'," he replied, misinterpreting her whimpers as cries for help. "I won't be able to get you down with this, but maybe I can see the -" His eyes narrowed after he took another step. "Hey...what's that? Hey, Phil!" he shouted down at a man holding the ladder steady for him.
"Yeah?!" he shouted back.
"There's something on their necks! Some kinda sign!"
"Well what's it fuckin' say?"

"Nnnnmm! NNMHH!!" Mariko screamed through her gag. "Please don't read it, please!"
"God, can't see without my damned glasses..."
"Nnnmmmmmppphhhhh!!" Sophie moaned, helpless as her shame was on the precipice of revelation.
"Hi, I'm...Enchantress?" the man read, straining his eyes. Sophie shut her eyes in humiliation. She began to feel cold.

But that cold was strange. It was like her shoulders were being dusted with it. As Sophie took a closer look, she realised that it was snow, incredibly fine snow.
"Whhmh?" She looked up, but in the twilight she could see that there wasn't a cloud in the sky. There seemed to be nowhere for the snow to be coming from - and then she saw her.

Dancing round her and Mariko's heads, suspended on a platform of ice, an astonishingly beautiful young woman was circling the two captives. She had ethereal, ghostly white skin, but with a phosphorescent glow on her cheeks, like an aurora. She was clad in a loose, midnight-blue chiffon dress, loose, baring her arms and showing off a pair of flawless legs with every swish and twirl of her tight, petite body. Her long hair was ice-blue.
"Oh my god...oh my god!" Sophie thought, this time with a wave of almost tearful relief. "Stellar!"

The stunning Korean heroine and pop idol, in her guise as the Blue Star, was circling round the lamp post where Sophie and Mariko were suspended, creating a whirl of frost that separated them from the bewildered crowd.
"Holy shit!" the man who'd been climbing, slid in a panic down the ladder, he and Phil rushing through the frost tornado while they still had the chance. The whirl became a cylinder of ice protecting them, shielding them from onlookers' stares.

As the two looked on in amazement, they saw Stellar floating down, cooling the air beneath her to the point where it was dense enough to hold her up, to a point, until she had landed on the lamp post above them.
"A Black Star!" sounded her lovely voice. Her chiffon vanished, replaced in a swirl of colour by a much less elegant ensemble - though this had an appeal all its own. She was dressed in a tiny leather skirt, and bright, white vest top. Her hands were equipped with spiked, fingerless gloves, and sharply spiked elbow pads. She stood with a kind of tough grace in her flat shoes, as she took the chain the two were bound with, and snapped it from the lamp post with her vastly increased strength.

"Mph!" Mariko mewed, as the two damsels began swaying from side to side. She was worried Stellar's grip would slip - but with her strength, there was very little chance of that. Sliding skillfully down the lamp post, Stellar eased the two chained up damsels down as slowly as she could.

"Oh no, this won't do!" she exclaimed, ripping off the mocking signs on their chests, before snapping the heavy, metal chains binding them. Both Sophie and Mariko felt a relief as their bound bodies were freed, flexing their limbs.
"Ugh..." Mariko pulled of her gag, and spat. She could still taste some of the slime of Adrienne's tendrils. Once she'd done that, however, she was frozen. She had no idea what to do, even what direction to take a step in.

Sophie was frozen too, but for altogether different reasons. She stared at Stellar, the gorgeous, powerful superstar that she'd admired so much. She'd appeared at Sophie's very darkest moment, like a fairy from a storybook. Certainly she had an adorable, pixie-like quality to her, and she'd come out of nowhere, like magic.

Sophie was rather taken aback when Stellar came up to her, standing an inch or so shorter - and tightly embraced her.
"Sophie, I'm sorry! I'm so very sorry!" She hugged the bewildered redhead tightly, almost painfully.
"I - I don't get it," Sophie mumbled. Saying anything was hard - she felt a terrible emptiness where there should have been energy. Anything other than sinking to her knees in despair was hard. "Yumi, what are you doing here?"

Stellar seemed not to hear.
"I should have been there sooner," she said. "This is my fault. Enhancegirl, Spectra...please forgive me!"
"I don't understand," Mariko said sharply. She turned towards them, hugging her arms over her chest. Her feet were turned in, pigeon-toed. She looked as lovely as ever, but there was something just plain wrong about seeing the tall, once-powerful maiden in such a posture. "Why are you here? I - I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but how could you know where to find us?" Her voice was trembling slightly.

Stellar breathed hard. She looked at her two fellow heroines, seeing them stripped and powerless. Her heart sank. She was no telepath, but she could feel their anguish. She was no poet, but she wished her command of English had been a little better than it was. She opened her mouth, seeking words of comfort, but none came.
"This is not - ah, isn't - a good place for talk," was all she could say. "I'm, uh, staying in a hotel, but is there somewhere...closer...?"
"My house is nearby," Mariko said. "We'll go there." She looked at Sophie, about to say something to her, but words failed her. Sophie too couldn't find the words. Now that they were no longer Spectra and Enhancegirl, they felt, they didn't know where to start.

"What's she going to see in me now?" was a decent approximation of both young women's thoughts. For Mariko, however, it was far more bitter, as Adrienne's cruel taunts rang in her ears.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"A Star Fades." As Stellar entered the tasteful, spacious living room of Mariko Asakura, she spoke the words which deactivated her powers entirely, leaving her once more as Yumi Tae-Yeong. She was dressed in a tight, thin, black sweater, and short, pleated skirt, her flawless, shapely legs thinly covered with transparent stockings, and white high heels. Her golden-brown hair ran straight down, halfway down her back, her sweet, elfin face masterfully made up.

She was alone at the moment, waiting for Sophie and Mariko to dress themselves. Her last trip to America had been enlightening, to say the least. The country - this city in particular - seemed fraught with peril. When she had tracked that awful woman down, it hadn't been greatly surprising to find that she was here. It seemed, however, a painful twist of fate that she had found Spectra and Enhancegirl as her latest victims. It wasn't exactly a coincidence - her captivity alongside them in the prior year had been what had put her on this villain's trail, in a way, so they were connected to events already...but it was a point of personal failure to Stellar that she had failed to help them. Perhaps - perhaps it was not too late, but -

"Oh, Sophie!" The redhead came down in a tight, plain grey t-shirt and ruffled blue skirt - it was all she could find in the taller Mariko's cupboards that remotely fit her.
"Hi," the redhead mumbled. The initial, awful shock of what had happened was still there, but Sophie could now think, at least. "Thank you, Yumi," she said. "I - I don't think you know what it means that it was you there." Stellar wasn't just a cape to Sophie - she was one of her heroes. It felt like she'd been tumbling down a cliff - and at the last moment, fate had reached out and caught her hand. For all her dismay at the loss of her powers, Stellar was hope.
"Thank you." Yumi smiled, but she didn't quite get what Sophie was driving at. "I should have stopped all this..."

So quietly did the tall, slender model in whose home they gathered enter the room that the other two almost didn't notice her. She entered in the longest dress she'd been able to find - short of a couple of ballgowns - a white number that came right down to her knees.
"Mariko," Sophie began, but couldn't find a way to continue. The lovely maiden had an almost glazed look in her eye, as if she wasn't quite capable of taking in what had happened, or what was happening now. She was floating, it seemed.

"Yumi," Sophie said, "you...seemed to know about what happened to us. You know about Adrienne?" Yumi looked at her quizzically.
"Is that her Christian name? Her - oh, 아호," she said, fumbling for the English word.
"Pseudonym," Mariko proffered, dryly.
"Oh, thank you! Yes, her pseudonym is...um, 익살 연극."
"I - uh...might just stick to Adrienne," Sophie said. Even Mariko, who spoke a little Korean, was confused.
"Her pseudonym is 'Humorous'?"

"How do you know her?" Mariko said, sounding almost bored, like she had nothing better to do than participate in the conversation.
"She did something to a - a friend of mine," Yumi said, seeming a little shy as she said it. "She...burgled her power. She used to be able to - how to say it... she could throw fire."

Sophie clucked her tongue.
"Yeah, we've seen that one," she said. "Is that why you're in the States? To get your friend's power back?" Yumi nodded.
"She..." She bared her teeth a little. Sophie was a little taken aback. She looked angry - that was not an emotion she'd ever seen on Stellar's face before. "익살 연극 - I mean, Adrienne - she wanted me. But Kaylee..." Her fist tightened. It was clearly a painful memory. "I...found where Adrienne was. Came to fight her, but - I saw the two of you carrying - ah, being carried - outside." She came forward, and seized Sophie's left hand. "I'm sorry - I'm sorry I didn't come sooner."
"It's okay," Sophie said. "How could you know, right?"

"You say you came to fight her," Mariko chimed in. "Not to restore the powers of your friend. Can our powers be returned to us?" Her tone seemed to suggest that she didn't expect an answer in the affirmative.
"I - don't know," Yumi said. "But if they can - I promise I'll give them back for you!"
"Don't be a fool," Mariko said.
"What do you -?"
"I said don't be a fool!" Mariko snapped. "With my powers and Sophie's she's far more than a match for you. You will lose and you will suffer the same fate as the two of us."
"Hey, Mariko," Sophie said, "don't be -"
"The choice is yours, Stellar," Mariko said coldly. "But I don't recommend it." She got up, and made to leave.

"Mariko!" Sophie called out, running up to her. "Don't be like this. There could still be a way to get our powers back. We have to -" But she stopped when Mariko looked at her. Her eyes were wet, and forlorn, but more than that. She seemed...
"Heartbroken..." Sophie felt a pang of sympathy even in her own distress. "I knew how much being Spectra mattered to her, but..." Mariko looked back at her, saw the kindness in her sharp, but soft emerald eyes. The sympathy, the good-heartedness - but not the love. Just that awful kindness which Adrienne had used like a bullwhip.
"Sorry," Mariko mumbled, before going out.

Sophie turned back to Yumi, not quite sure exactly what she was seeking from her.
"I...um..." Yumi said, feeling a little awkward. Being so famous, so much larger than life as a heroine and a singer made it difficult for her to be in these more...mundane situations. For as much as she liked Sophie, and as much as she empathised with her and admired her strength in this trying circumstance, Yumi hid a rather shy conversationalist behind her veneer of glamorous confidence.
"You need to go, right?" Sophie said. She forced a weak smile. "Hero stuff to do." Yumi nodded.
"I will do whatever I can," Yumi said. "And, um, it's not just because you're a friend!" She seemed strangely insistent. "You two...this city wants - 아이씨! - needs you both."
"Hey, it's Seacouver," Sophie said. "Plenty of heroes around." Yumi shook her head.
"Americans use this word too much: all police are 'heroes'; all soldiers are 'heroes'; Everyone with powers are 'heroes'. Seacouver has lots of people with powers - only a few real heroes." She smiled, much more warmly than Sophie was able to.

"Wait a minute," Sophie said, as Yumi began to leave.
"Mm?"
"Mariko...Mariko's right. You shouldn't go. What if she takes your powers too?"
"We always take risk," Yumi replied. "You - risk always your life as Enhancegirl, yes? My power is worth...not as much." Sophie couldn't think of a way to argue with her, try as she might. Stellar walked out, as Sophie tried to think of a way to force her not to. But nothing came.

The upshot was that Sophie was left entirely alone. She felt stranded. Stellar being there had buoyed her, given her hope - but now she was gone. It hadn't occurred to either of them for Sophie to join her - what could she contribute now? It even seemed like Stellar knew more about Adrienne than she did.

Sophie sat down, her head in her hands.
"Oh God..." she sighed. "What the fuck do I do now?" She started to imagine life without her powers. Would she give up being a superheroine? Certainly she'd developed some pretty formidable martial arts skills by now - but no style she'd learned had quite suited her powers, all being too restrictive. Her style was a blend of judo, kickboxing, Wu-Tang style kung-fu, even a little bare-knuckle boxing, which had made Enhancegirl a force to be reckoned with. But she hadn't mastered any of them - it hadn't been a helpful exercise to try.
"Maybe I could learn a bit more," she thought, "or...or..."

But she couldn't imagine it. Being Enhancegirl without her powers, even if she could get good enough to be effective without them. Without that rush, that sensory intensity - how could she do it? How could she stand all she'd been through without the high of seeing more of the world than anyone else could dream of?
"And...and what's she going to think of me now?" Sophie whispered to herself. She knew that Rachel found a satisfaction in having a superheroine all to herself. Now that Sophie was - in her mind - just another pretty redhead, would Ocelot still have the slightest interest in her?

She was about to call her, or at least check if she'd been called - when she realised that she didn't have her phones with her. Not that she knew it, but they'd been picked up by Kirsten, after her kidnappers had tossed them to stop her being tracked.
"Great..." Sophie groaned. She leaned her head back, wondering if Rachel had other lovers she would call if she couldn't reach Sophie. "If I'm even top of the list..." The two had never exactly agreed on 'rules', doing most of the talking with their hips.

In Sophie's distress, she'd entirely forgotten her newfound resolve at how Ocelot had treated her. She brought her legs up to her chest, hugging them against herself.
"M-maybe she'll even like it," Sophie thought. "That I'm basically just...just a pretty girl now..." She could almost imagine a wry, aroused smile from her paramour, a stroke up her thighs...

"Sophie."
"Oh! Ah, shit, Mariko, you scared the crap out of me." She turned around, saw Mariko lingering almost shyly in the doorway. "What is it?" Neither found it easy to look the other in the eye.
"There's something I haven't had the chance to mention," Mariko said, talking so quickly that she was almost hard to follow. "When Adrienne took -" Her voice quavered. "When she drained us, she - I'm not sure how conscious you were - she seemed to be able to read our minds as she was doing it."
"Fuck," Sophie said. Her stomach tightened at the thought of Adrienne knowing about her illicit tryst. "Do you know what she got?"
"How to use our powers effectively, I should imagine," Mariko said. "But that's not -" She hissed sharply, finding herself frustratingly tongue-tied. "That's not my chief concern."

She stepped a little further in.
"I've been spending the last few minutes making contact with all the heroes whose identities I know. They could be compromised. Insyte, Titania, Thaddeus, Mimette - I've spoken to them already. There's a few others...but I - I know Aerogirl's name too. Could you -?"
"What? Oh, right, yeah. Sure thing."
"Thank you."

Mariko just stood there for a moment. She seemed almost paralysed. Sophie opened her mouth, but swiftly shut it again. She'd been about to ask if Mariko was alright, but this suddenly felt like a very stupid question.
"It's late," Mariko mumbled. "You can stay here if you like."
"Oh, I -"
"You don't have to." Before Sophie could say anything else, Mariko was out of the room again.

Sophie sighed deeply. Under the circumstances, Mariko's reaction was surprisingly subdued. But then, she was hardly the most expressive of people. It occurred to Sophie that even if Mariko had wanted to be more emotive, she might not have been able to. Even she herself felt a kind of hollow where emotion should have been - it was not quite grief, but something akin to it.

With little else to do, Sophie started looking around Mariko's living room, idly running her fingers past a bookshelf. She looked at its contents: a somewhat eclectic collection of classics and modern American literature. She noticed that most of the books by American writers were more recent purchases, as if Spectra were attempting a deliberate study of her home nation's culture. There was Altman's Guide to the American Literary Renaissance of the mid 19th Century, Favreau's Melville: Seeing Past the White Whale and even What did the Yanks ever do for us, chum? by Harold Pinter.

Suddenly, Sophie remembered a conversation they'd had on one of their little gatherings, when Mariko had been showing Sophie one of her favourite haunts, an old blues bar on Howitzer and Eighth:

"I come here for the ambiénce," Mariko explained. "Not the music."
"You don't like blues?"
"I'm told that blues, and its associated genres are Americans' chief contribution to the world's culture. I've listened to Fats Waller, Howlin' Wolf, the truly ghastly Louis Armstrong -"
"Ghastly? I'm not exactly big into blues myself, but how can you not like him?" She started to hum the first few bars of 'What a Wonderful World'.
"Good God, if I have to listen to that crooning, sentimental bilge one more time, I'll have a - a conniption."
"A 'conniption'? What are you, Jane Eyre? 'If that Mr Rochester speaks to me in that fashion once more, I shall veritably have a conniption!'" Mariko tried to maintain haughty disapproval at Sophie's awful English accent, but she wasn't able to contain her laughter.

"Look, you don't have to like blues, but you can't just, like, dismiss the whole of American culture."
"I'll sample the sonnets of Ronald McDonald and John Wayne, shall I?" Mariko snorted. "Your country - our country - is barely two centuries old. Culturally speaking it's the equivalent of a petulant teenager - scribbling poetry about, oh I don't know, blood and - and vampires which it's convinced is 'deep.' It's only natural." She sipped her drink coolly. "You know I'm correct. I mean, Martin Amis is English, and he's your favourite novelist isn't he?"
"Wow," Sophie said. "Some grade-A logic there, Mariko. I like English novels...therefore American ones suck? And - what - you've never read any Melville? Emily Dickinson? Anything like that? I mean, there's a lot that you can't have come across."
"Sophie, when one wishes to sample the toxicity of a lake, one doesn't drain the lake. A glassful will give a perfectly accurate picture."
"And if there's no fish in the cup, are there -" She rolled her eyes. "You know what - whatever. You're right. We're all gun-toting rubes."

Sophie hadn't thought about that conversation more than once since it had happened. Much less had she expected it to have any effect on Mariko at all. Yet clearly she'd taken Sophie's words to heart, and - if she'd read even a third of these texts - devoured vast quantities of literature on the subject. She opened one of them, Altman's volume, and saw that Mariko had been scribbling marginal notes, references to books Sophie had never heard of.
"Did what I said matter that much to her?" she thought.

She sat down on the couch where she'd fallen asleep once before. She curled up on it like a tabby cat, her legs tucked against her body, and her arms almost covering her face. She might have expected herself to, once she attempted to sleep, to become susceptible then to the crushing dismay she felt at the loss of her powers. Yet she found her thoughts lingering on Mariko.

For all her pride, her apparent attitude that Enhancegirl wasn't up to scratch with Spectra, she took the younger redhead so seriously that she'd devoted - as it happened - a whole month's worth of spare time towards seeing what Sophie had been driving at. It was small, really - for all she knew, Mariko might have been doing it just to be capable of winning the next argument more conclusively...but no. She could feel it wasn't that. Even after everything that had happened, Sophie found herself smiling.

"Aaaahhhh!" Sophie leapt to her feet, hearing the sound of someone - obviously Mariko - screaming. She ran up the stairs, frustrated that she couldn't see an obvious weapon to grab. She ran right up to Mariko's bedroom door - but stopped before she ran in. She could hear Mariko inside, and bodily speaking she was perfectly safe.

But she was far from alright. She was curled up on the bed, naked, clutching at her own arms, her body trembling as she fought with all her strength not to cry.
"It's not over...it's not over..." she said to herself, again and again. "I'm still here...I'm not dead..." She was on the point of manic hysteria. It was too much. She'd been taught since she was a child that restraint and control were the same as strength. But she couldn't hold this back - and the dammed river bursts its banks far more destructively than one which flows. She wasn't crying - she couldn't. It was all going inwards, tearing at her.

"I'm not dead..." Mariko repeated mentally, unable to speak out loud without making herself sob. But despite her insistence to the contrary, that was exactly how she felt. Her powers were gone. The woman she loved would never be hers. And more than that - the very fact that those things made her so distraught was the worst thing of all. "I'm a shell..." she thought. "A veneer of culture and strength and pride - but there's nothing underneath." A person - a real person - couldn't be so...hollowed out, Mariko thought, by the loss of a talent and an unrequited love; wouldn't be devastated in this way. A real person would have a sense of self beyond their abilities and people who loved them. Would her mother have broken down like this if she couldn't perform surgeries anymore? Had she done so when her husband had left her? Of course not. "Oh god...oh god - I..."

And then she felt her. She hadn't heard her come in. She hadn't even felt her lie down on the bed. But she felt her slender, white arms gently folding over her, holding Mariko's willowy body close.
"S - Sophie..." Mariko whimpered, now feeling hot tears rolling down her cheeks, unable to hold them back anymore. She felt her love's body against hers, her warmth, her gentleness.
"Sshhh..." Sophie whispered in her ear. "It's okay. You're okay..." She hugged the gorgeous maiden against her a little more tightly.
"I've no right," Mariko said, tensing. "We're in the same position, I have no right to have you comforting me!"
"You think this isn't comforting for me?" Sophie said, very softly. Her voice made Mariko's spine tingle. "I'm here because I want to be. It's not a favour. Something awful happened to me and my closest friend, and...we should be there for each other. That's all..." She came a little closer, her forehead resting against Mariko's shoulder.

Mariko felt her panicked breathing begin to slow. She reached up, gingerly putting her hand onto Sophie's.
"Her...closest friend?" At another moment, this might have been ironically painful to hear, but not now. She heard the soft, half-whispered warmth in Sophie's voice. She wasn't lying. She couldn't, not then. Sometimes Mariko didn't understand the more complicated aspects of a modern emotional life, but in this case it helped her. "The woman I love thinks well of me..." Whether she returned Mariko's romantic affections or not, it was still a deep, soothing comfort to know that someone for whom she had such powerful romantic love had any kind of love for her at all. That was good - that the two loves didn't match was irrelevant in that moment.

"Hey, Mariko?" Sophie said quietly, nestling closer in the warm darkness.
"Mm?" she replied, her voice still shaking.
"I saw your books downstairs," the redhead explained. "The new ones...were those -"
"Because of our conversation?" Mariko laughed slightly. She hadn't expected that to come up. "Y-yes, that's right."
"You put so much work into it..." Sophie too felt soothed by her proximity to her beautiful friend.
"Of course I did," Mariko said simply, almost surprised to hear Sophie asking this. "I...respect your way of looking at things."

Sophie felt something inside herself being deeply touched by this. It was a simple admission, to be sure - but it put things into sudden context. She too now saw Mariko's pride as a veneer - or her arrogance, at least - but she did not intend this as an insult. She'd felt like Spectra didn't take her as seriously as she should have, as Enhancegirl, didn't quite see her capability and strength. And yet only now did she realise how trivial and unimportant a fact that was. In every other respect, she saw her as a complete equal - as an intellect, as a person. As a woman, Mariko respected Sophie. Now - especially now - that was very, very important to her.

Mariko had, in the silence that followed what she'd said, begun drifting back towards more painful thoughts. Certainly, Sophie might draw strength from Spectra - could she do so from just Mariko? Would she want to? Yet as Sophie slipped her arms around the willowy beauty's stomach, tightening her embrace, Mariko felt her question answered.
"Sophie?"
"Yeah?"
"Will you..." She swallowed. "Will you stay with me...until I fall asleep?" Mariko heard Sophie laugh a little, felt her silky red hair brushing against her neck.
"Why do you think I'm here, Mariko? I'm not going anywhere..." Sophie felt a new strength within herself at this. To be needed so much by someone she cared for so deeply - it helped to fill the hollow Adrienne had left.

Mariko felt Sophie, who was beginning to drift off, nuzzling more closely to her, her warm, pale legs touching Mariko's long, tan limbs as she snuggled against her. Mariko sighed...but in that moment, she didn't lust for anything more than she had. She was experiencing a beautiful moment - one that would never leave her, for as long as she lived. She dared not ask for more in that instant.

As for Sophie, as she felt Mariko's beautiful, still slightly trembling body against hers, couldn't keep a smile off her face. She felt an intense warmth throughout herself, in finally being this close to her enigmatic friend. She found herself falling asleep. Her pain wasn't gone. Her anguish at what Adrienne had done to them wasn't gone. She just felt...soothed.

Mariko felt Sophie's breath on the back of her neck, heard her breath become slower and more regular.
"Sophie?" she said, extremely quietly. There was no response: she'd fallen asleep. Mariko turned to face her, slowly, to make sure that she didn't wake her.

She saw the redhead sleeping next to her, her sweet, lightly freckled face, her slender figure - and she had to suppress a moan.
"Oh, hell..." she thought, with a rather tired, ironical smile: she could feel herself falling even more deeply in love with Sophie. And yet, for the first time, this led to something other than anguish. She relished in how deep this feeling went, even the pain it caused her - a shell couldn't feel anything like this. "It should be something good," she thought. "I have it, it's not going away - so it should be something noble. Even if it hurts, I'll make it my strength..."

She felt a powerful impulse to take the sleeping maiden next to her tightly in her arms, to kiss her, to make love to her - but she settled for simply stroking her red hair. Eventually she too fell asleep, the two young women finding solace in each other's arms.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Madeleine did not find herself idle after she had strung Enhancegirl and Spectra up. Her employer had obtained a great deal of information from the pretty heads of her two captives but not, it seemed, in the most ordered fashion. She'd been mostly looking for the methods by which her new powers could be used - perfectly logical - and information she could use to taunt the two heroines as she'd drained them. While amusing, this was hardly businesslike. Madam Black had been so much more...professional.

She had plenty of names: 'Maya', 'Valerie', 'Clotilde', - but very few full names. The only one which actually seemed to lead to the possibility of another heroine being obtained was 'Natalya.' This was likely Natalya Nazarov, whom Madeleine and her ilk had long suspected of being the heroine Insyte, partly because of her relation to Ivan Nazarov, the man who called himself 'Zjarrus.' It wasn't much to go on, and she was reduced to simply browsing social media websites, hoping to find someone of the names she was given.

"Why is this room so damned cold?" she thought. She put her hand on a nearby radiator - it was on full blast. She was in what amounted to an underground bunker, with a nigh-on scalding hot radiator, and it was still freezing. She went to open the door to see if she was the only one with the problem, but the door was stuck. She gave it a kick, and it moved a little, but there was something blocking it. Frustrated, Madeleine drew her leg back, and kicked as hard as she could. With a sound like glass splintering, the door moved open far enough for Madeleine to squeeze through.
"C'est quoi ce merdier?!"

Madeleine looked around to see that the floor was covered in ice, a great chunk of it having been what had wedged her door closed. Two of her underlings were shackled to the wall with frozen water, straining and struggling to free themselves.
"Quoi passé?" Madeleine shouted at them. "What 'appened?"
"It's - it's her!" one of them gasped. "It's Stellar!"

"Aaaarrgghhh!" Madeleine barely got out of the way in time, as her employer was hurled headlong through a wall. "Urrghh!" Adrienne groaned, as she landed on the frozen floor, sliding almost ten metres before a wall stopped her. "You little witch!"
"It's you who are the witch." Through the hole that her enemy had left, a gorgeous, petite woman with ethereally pale skin, floating just above the ground came forth. "You take what isn't yours, for your pleasure."
"Oh, boo-hoo!" Adrienne clambered to her feet. "Think you're so high-and-mighty, do you? Think you're so fucking virtuous?"
"No," Stellar said. "But I'll beat you anyway."

Stellar's ingress into the complex had not been difficult. Walls and doors had been built that could withstand the raw strength of the Black Star - but none of them were part of this building. Adrienne's staff had not been prepared for the frigid onslaught of the Blue Star, and it had not been long before only their leader was capable of fighting back.

Adrienne had almost relished the chance for battle when Stellar had appeared. She'd not been able to get her hands on her before - Stellar was another of the four women she'd bought from Madam Black, after all - and besides, it would be a good test of her powers. However, despite the fact that she'd absorbed knowledge from Spectra and Enhancegirl on how their powers worked, applying that knowledge was a little like a Newtonian physicist using his Ph.D paper to play the perfect game of basketball.

As Stellar readied another blast of ice, Adrienne could see long in advance what she was about to do. She saw her slender arms flexing, saw the air altering its currents as it grew colder, saw the muscles in her chest tighten slightly - but as to what any of that meant she had no idea. She leapt to the side, and did indeed miss being hit by the majority of the icy blast, but only at first. Stellar's powers were not like the flame jets Adrienne had stolen, and she simply redirected the blast.

"Urrghh!" Adrienne fell on her back, her arms now frozen together. "Damn it!"
"What you have taken," Stellar said, "I will take back. If not - I will just never allow you to have it."
"You're welcome to try. But I have far more power even than you!" Adrienne channeled the ability she'd taken from Spectra, and shattered her icy shackle with one blast. "Aah!" She sent a broad, unfocused beam of photonic energy at her opponent, not having had much opportunity to explore the depth of her new power.

Stellar raised a thin shield of ice, deflecting it easily. But as Adrienne, in her irritation, saw her attack fail, she noticed many other things as well. She perceived the precise angle of every part of her attack as it bounced off, saw the consistency, sheen and curve of all the ice, both Stellar's shield, and the ice on the floor beneath her.
"So...if I do it like this..." Adrienne pointed her hand at an odd angle. She gathered Spectra's power, and fired a more intense, focused beam this time. It bounced, two, three times - far faster than anyone but Adrienne herself could perceive.

"Augh!" Stellar cried out, as the beam hit her in the back, smashing her through the barrier she'd raised in front of herself to block it. "Unnh..." she groaned, having to use her powers to get herself back up. "Oh no!" She had little time to recover. Adrienne assailed her with blast after blast, coming from every conceivable angle. Stellar had the presence of mind to cover herself, however, with a sphere of ice. She constantly thickened it, Adrienne's blasts now not doing damage faster than Stellar could fix it.

But with every second, the power-thief's control over her abilities grew. She began to understand the reams of sensory data she was receiving, her neural pathways adjusting to Enhancegirl's power, processing it better and better with each moment. She grinned, as she spotted a weakness in the icy dome. Using her index and middle fingers like the sight on a gun, she took aim, and fired, shattering the dome into a million fragments.

"Wh-what?" Stellar gasped, not understanding how such a weak shot had totally destroyed her barrier. Before she could think further, another blast hit her, sending her flying back against the door Madeleine had struggled to open.
"Uunnhh..." she moaned, stunned, her chiffon slipping back as her legs weakly writhed on the floor.

"You know, Stellar," Adrienne said, strutting towards her. "I have to admit, I was a little worried when I saw you'd turned up. After all, you're such a big star! And you've got almost as many different powers as I do. Except you can't use them all at once, can you?" She laughed heartily. "I can though. And ho-ly shit these two go together well! I can see everything you're about to do way before you do it, and I can respond as fast as light. Literally! Aahahahahhaaa!"

She held her hand out again, this time spreading out her palm.
"Don't worry, little Missy," she said. "This won't kill you. I mean, we still have lots of fun to get to, right?" The power built in her hand, readying the same kind of pulsewave that Mariko had used to knock out one of her goons. "Nighty-night, sugar."
"A White Star!"

At the very moment that the blast hit her, a transformation came over Stellar. Her icy chiffon vanished, replaced by a tight, lycra, white mini-dress and matching white boots. Her skin became a more natural colour, her hair blonde. The blast of light hit her - and did absolutely nothing.
"What?!" Adrienne hissed. Stellar smiled at her, with all the practiced sweetness of someone whose career revolved around capturing people's hearts.
"Get back," she said. Her words hit Adrienne with the force of a hurricane.

"Aaauugghhh!!" Adrienne was hurled back, smashed into a wall so hard that she left a dent in the concrete. "Wh-what the fuck?" Stellar climbed to her feet, taking on the favourite of her three personae: this one, perhaps, was the closest to her real self: cheery, bubbly and joyful.
"You'd better give those powers back," she said, in a slightly sing-song voice. "I could shout your whole house down." Even in her cheeriness, there was just a tinge of threat.

"Damn you!" Adrienne said, firing out another blast of light, this time powerful enough to do her real damage. But it when it hit the White Star, it did absolutely nothing to her. There was a reason for this - the White Star's powers were similar to Mariko's, as she absorbed light through her skin. However, instead of emitting it back out as light, her body turned it into sound. However, this was not part of the information that Adrienne had gleaned from Sophie or Mariko.

As such, Adrienne's blasts filled Stellar with a rush of power: she'd never received her energies in such bursts before. Hardly able to control it, she unleashed her sonic fury in a destructive, omnidirectional burst that left a sphere of total destruction around her. Adrienne was hurled back again, nearly knocked unconscious outright.

"Ugh..." she grunted. She had expected Stellar to be formidable - but not with this much power. She didn't know what to do. Her mighty new power was useless. She thought of using her flame jets, but she'd expended them futilely against the Blue Star earlier. She couldn't think of anything. "Fuck!" she growled, slamming her fist on the ground. She looked daggers at Stellar.

And then she saw. Wherever Stellar's sumptuous skin was bare, the light seemed a little dimmer. It was strange, and at first Adrienne's enhanced senses didn't much help her understand what she was seeing - but she was adjusting.
"It's like she's...absorbing the light..." Adrienne almost wanted to slap herself on the back of the head. "Oh, ho ho! I get it..." She grinned.

"I could let you give up now," Stellar said. "Your powers aren't very good against me." She giggled slightly. "I really promise I won't make you hurt - I mean, I won't hurt you -" she corrected, trying to keep her English as idiomatic as possible, "if you give them back."
"No dice, girlie," Adrienne hissed. "These powers are mine. And yours will be too." She pointed her arm up, and fired a razor thin beam of light into the ceiling.

By the time the beam reached its target, it didn't even have enough energy to do a remotely disabling amount of damage to anyone. But it didn't need to. Adrienne had used Enhancegirl's powers to find one of the building's circuit breakers. The beam of light didn't damage them - but it was enough to trip them.

The combatants were suddenly plunged into darkness - total darkness, for they were underground. Stellar was caught off guard, not understanding that it had been a deliberate move. She forgot that Adrienne had Sophie's enhanced senses, and thought she'd be just as blinded. But she was not. Her ability to see through walls used the constant stream of more exotic radiation that could pierce the walls of her bunker - and she could still see Stellar. She stepped towards her carefully, but quickly. She'd figure it out soon.

This she did. Realising that she was vulnerable without the source of her powers, she was about to switch - but she wasn't sure which to switch to. Eventually settling on the Black Star simply because Adrienne hadn't yet tested herself against it, she didn't see the tendrils snaking towards her, or the vicious smile of the woman controlling them.

"A Black St - MMMPHHH!!" Stellar whimpered, feeling something strong and slippery coil around her mouth, like a snake. She reached up to pull it away, but her arms were grabbed too. "MMNNMPHH!!" Stellar squealed, her lips made wet with the tendrils' slime. She felt her arms forced against her sides, the tentacle coiling four, five, six times round her, covering her torso from her hips to just underneath her breasts.

"No! No, they're too strong!" Yumi felt her supple, petite body tightly squeezed, her hands flapping uselessly at her hips.
"Got you, my dear," said a voice in the darkness.
"Mmhhh!" the gorgeous popstar quailed. She writhed, feeling the slick bonds squeeze against her, not knowing what to do. It was like she'd been seized by a monster, some hideous, squamous horror that overwhelmed her slight, feminine frame, easily capturing her for some dread purpose - or no purpose at all.

"Such a lovely body...ahahahaha!" Adrienne laughed, as she entwined Yumi's bare thighs in her slippery tentacle, pressing them tightly together. Her boot-covered calves twitched and kicked, but to no effect. Yumi felt her flawless legs being squeezed, the slick tentacle rubbing against her naked skin.

The lights came on at that point, and Stellar whimpered fearfully as she saw fully what was happening to her. Adrienne was leering over her, grinning wickedly, feeling every inch of the young woman as she kept her bound. The tentacles were thick, grey and squirming against her vulnerable, slender form.
"MMMPHH!!" Stellar screamed. "NNMMMPHH!!" The tendrils gagging her trembled a little, but didn't budge. She was helpless: with her mouth sealed, and with so much of her skin covered by the tentacles she couldn't build up enough sonic energy. "No! I'm...I'm captured!"

"Oooh, this has been a very, very good day, you naughty little minx!" Adrienne laughed. She yanked Stellar closer to her, taking her by her uncovered shoulders, gripping them roughly as the petite beauty wriggled in her slimy bonds. "Finally recovering all my property." As she said that last word, she lifted Yumi's dress with one hand, before turning her whimpering captive, and bending her over.

"Nngghmmphh!" Yumi pleaded, feeling her smooth behind wiggling in the air, her dress doing nothing to cover it. She looked up at Adrienne, eyes wet and wide. "MPH!" As she'd dreaded, she felt Adrienne's hand smack hard against her tender skin. "NMPH! MPH! MMMPH! MMMMMHHH!!" Each whimper accompanied another spank. With the first two she'd become more flustered and embarrassed - but the next two only made her realise just how helpless she was, and how quickly she'd been made that way. "Nnhh..."

Adrienne hauled her back up, and shoved her against a wall.
"You know what happens now, cutie," she laughed.
"Nnnmphh! NNNMMPHH!" Stellar moaned. "Oh, Sophie - Mariko, I'm sorry! Hyeri...I couldn't do it..."

Stellar felt the tendrils around her mouth loosening, and slipping off, but before she could even draw breath Adrienne's hand slammed down over her mouth.
"Ghhmph!" Yumi gasped, feeling an iron grip over her lips. She shook her head, but couldn't get free. "Whhgm? Mmm-mmmph..."

She felt it. She hadn't realised she would feel anything - that her powers would be there one minute, and gone the next. "Mmph..." She felt herself being drained, felt her too come under the control and domination of this selfish madwoman. She felt a terrible weakness running through her, as if every muscle in her body had just given up all at once. Her head lolled to the side.

"Mmmgghmphh..." Yumi whimpered into the tight grip of her captor's hand. She felt her cheeks flushing - it felt like something very private and intimate was being drawn out of her. She felt the Black Star being taken first - the symbol of all Yumi's strength, tenacity and courage. She suddenly felt girlish and feeble, a whimpering damsel in distress with no real power at all.
"Oh, that's good - that's...mmm, that's really nice!" Adrienne laughed. "It tastes so...hmm, how do I describe it! Tough, but tasty...like a good steak! HAHAHA!" Adrienne had been longing for an ability like this, to increase her physical strength. All the highest tier superhumans had at least some degree of enhanced physical might.

"Mmhhh..." Yumi mewed, as she felt her lovely, supple legs losing their ability to even attempt resistance. She felt a sudden aversion to her own beauty, to her effortless, sexy charm - her gorgeous body was now just something to attract the lascivious attention of her captor. She was so slender, and petite, so fragile and feminine...

"Mmh!" As Yumi thought this, she realised what was being taken from her. It was the Blue Star now, and with it the mystery of Stellar's beauty and power, her mystique. She felt naked, like she'd been laid open for all to see, nude and defenceless: her loveliness now a prize to be seized by anyone with a care to. She felt in that moment like if someone had approached her, announced that they were kidnapping her, she would have whimperingly, passively allowed this to happen, and tamely flopped over their shoulder without resistance.

There was more to come. Worst of all, Stellar felt the White Star's light begin to fade.
"Mmmhhh..." Stellar sighed, physical weakness accompanying the inner siphoning of her power. She felt the tendrils squeezing her slowly, pulsing against her nubile body. Her appearance was changing, flickering back and forth between her white-clad persona and the bare truth of Yumi Tae-Yeong. As the last of her power was taken away, she felt now as if her capacity for joy and excitement were being taken away as well.

"Mmph...mph..." Yumi mewed softly, looking into Adrienne's cruel, hungry eyes, and almost paralysed by the malice she found there. She could see Adrienne burning with power, shaking with it as Stellar's wonderful abilities were drawn into her.
"What a mind..." Adrienne said, grinning. "I could look in here for days and still know jack shit about who you really are. You don't even know yourself, do you? Your personae - you don't know which is the real you. None of them are! The only thing that I really know is you want to be adored."
"Mmmph?" Yumi didn't get it. "Is...is she telepathic?"

"Oh, yeah, I see it now..." Adrienne grinned. "That's why you get up on that stage and wiggle that cute little ass for all your fans in those teensy outfits. I mean, don't delude yourself into thinking that that poppy bullshit is real music - they're there because you're hot, and they all want to see you gyrate for 'em. But even that isn't good enough for you - you have to be a superhero too? What an attention whore! Though with a body like that, I see how you get it so easily..."
"Mgghmphh..." Yumi whimpered. In her weak, helpless state, she couldn't think of a response to what Adrienne was saying, even in her own mind. "She's right, I - I don't know myself at all..."

"Oh don't worry, sweetie," Adrienne said, seizing Yumi's thigh and massaging it roughly. "If it's attention you want, I'll give you plenty."
"Mmmh..." Yumi could barely keep her eyes open now. As Adrienne's hand and her slithering tendrils pressed into her tight body, she felt as if she were sinking into an inky blackness, where there was no strength, no light - no sense of self. She felt pulse-waves of an insidious pleasure throbbing through her, but unlike Sophie and Mariko, she didn't even try to resist it. There was nothing in her, she felt, that she had left to resist with. "Mmgghmph!" she gasped, feeling herself throb, her lovely cheeks blushing as her dress faded away, her hair returned to its natural light brown. She was wearing nothing but her black bra and slightly frilly panties, now almost naked as she whimpered, her petite, shapely figure squeezed and fondled, her supple skin defenceless.

"I lost..." Yumi thought. "I'm all...weak...and naked...oohh..." Her eyelids fluttered as she felt the last of her strength flowing away from her. She felt not like she'd just been robbed of her powers...but of her very self. Moaning, and sighing, she closed her eyes, giving in to the helplessness coursing through her, and swooning.

Adrienne felt her go limp. She grinned, and slowly unwound her tendrils from the maiden's body, withdrawing them into the organ on her back. She allowed Yumi to sink slowly down to her knees, and she did so in a manner so delicate and aesthetic that for a moment Adrienne thought she was still conscious. But no - she had given in utterly.

With her hands, Adrienne took Yumi by the shoulders, and lifted her up. Adrienne wasn't especially tall, but she seemed it next to the petite maiden she'd drained and defeated. She held her close, feeling the beautiful young popstar's maidenly curves, her small but perky breasts, her supple, perfect skin. And the way she had fainted...like a vestal virgin offering herself as a sacrifice to a mighty but cruel god.
"That more or less describes me now," Adrienne said, grinning. She took Yumi by her narrow waist and, using the might of the Black Star, she easily hurled the slender pop-princess over her shoulder. Her gorgeous body was draped over her vile captor, warm and soft against her, her smooth legs and delicately curved rear mercilessly stroked and fondled by the one who'd taken her strength.

She couldn't help herself. Her hands weren't enough: almost instinctively her tendrils burst forth and coiled around the beautiful maiden, binding her arms behind her back, tying her legs together again, squeezing, kneading her soft breasts, and stroking her pink lips as they gagged her. With Sophie's powers, Adrienne could feel Yumi in such exquisite detail: she was a perfect specimen of delicate, waiflike femininity, such a beautiful, smooth figure - she in her loveliness and her goodness was a perfect contrast with Adrienne's vile cruelty.

She squeezed Yumi's rear, feeling how it yielded to her touch just like Yumi herself had done. She seemed to be writhing, so intense was the fondling of her lovely body.
"Naughty naughty," Adrienne laughed, imagining that Yumi was still struggling, and spanking her hard. Yumi didn't so much as twitch, at least not of her own volition. She was a soft, helpless prize in Adrienne's grasp - and this was not one she'd any intention of so easily throwing aside.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Mmmh..." Sophie sighed, as she began to wake up. Soft light filtered in, and while Sophie found herself awakening with a heavy heart, it was not quite as heavy as it might have been. She brushed her hair out of her face, and instinctively reached out for the woman she'd fallen asleep next to. Her hand came to rest upon smooth, sleek black hair, the owner of which rubbed sleepily, but affectionately against Sophie's hand.

As her eyes opened, however, Sophie realised that it was not Mariko she was touching.
"Mow?" A tiny black cat with yellow eyes and a white patch over one eye looked back at the redhead, apparently just as surprised to find that it wasn't Mariko he was looking at. He hissed unconvincingly, and then scarpered, running full tilt out the door.
"Fucking fine, you little asshat!" Sophie growled, irritated by the beast's rejection of her. It stuck its head back in, and hissed again. She hissed back this time.
"Prrow!" it replied, startled, before running away in earnest.

Sophie followed it, partly to make sure she hadn't dreamed the eccentric creature. She passed a clock in the hallway - it was nearly eight. She had a lecture to attend - but rather thought she might give this one a miss. She followed the cat - who kept stopping to stare and hiss at her - into Mariko's kitchen.

"Prrrrow!" the cat complained, finding the calf of its master.
"Good morning, Arthur," Mariko said, in Japanese. She hadn't noticed Sophie. She had her back to her, preoccupied with something on the table.
"Arthur? Didn't figure you for a cat person, Mariko."

The Japanese beauty turned around. She had a strange smile on her face as she saw the redhead.
"This is a large house," she explained. "Arthur keeps the mice away."
"How come I've never seen him before?" Sophie asked, coming closer.
"He's extremely shy." She nudged the cowering cat with her foot. "Aren't you, you little sociopath?" Her insults seemed to offend it, because it nipped Mariko's heel - licked it - and then ran away at full speed.

Sophie came closer to see what Mariko seemed to be so engaged with, and when she saw, she was more than a little put out.
"Mariko, what the hell is that?"
"I can't remember the name of the model," she said. "The purveyor seemed very impressed with it - some string of very tough sounding numbers." Mariko was practicing loading and unloading a small, but rather ferocious looking pistol. "Oh, perhaps I should be more basic. This, Sophie, is a gun."
"Yeah, I can see that," Sophie said. "Where did you get it?" Mariko laughed.
"Sophie, remember what country we're in. I assure you, it wasn't difficult."

Sophie was, in a way, relieved to hear the cool sharpness back in Mariko's voice, especially after her near-breakdown the previous night. The gun, however, prompted less relief.
"What are you going to do with that?"
"Sophie, this time yesterday I routinely went around with enough power to - with a bit of concentration - level a building. I don't know why you sound so alarmed by a pistol."
"'Cause handguns don't exactly have stun settings, Mariko!" She moved round the table to look in Mariko's eyes. "They just kill people."
"I am well aware of that," Mariko said. "But it may well be that this is what it takes to get your - our powers back." Sophie noticed her slip.
"I don't want you to do that for me," she said. "I don't want you to murder someone just because -" Mariko shook her head.
"I don't intend to kill her, as much as I'd like to. But I don't imagine too many people were calling for the Indigo Titan's arrest when it was thought he'd killed the Supremacist. If Adrienne dies today, it will be because she forced my hand."

Mariko was wearing a practical, not-quite knee-length black and white dress, and flat shoes. Sophie realised that outside of her costume as Spectra, she'd never seen in her out of heels before. She clearly meant business. But there was a problem.
"Mariko, it won't work."
"No power she has, even if Stellar has lost to her - which I assume she has, by now - makes her immune to bullets."
"Oh, god, Yumi!" Sophie gasped. In her sleepy haze she'd forgotten her completely. "We have to -"
"Precisely," Mariko said. "That's why I must do this."
"No, Mariko, it won't..." She centered herself. "She has my powers too, right?" The sentence almost made her choke up. "If you had that thing an inch from my head, and my hands were tied, I'd still be out of the way before the powder in the bullet went off. Guns give way too much away, all that clicking and shaking - and you can see a person tense up before they fire, even the best. You'd be better off with throwing knives."
"Well, what then?" Mariko said, suppressing her frustration. She wanted to be heroic - Sophie had given her the strength, at least temporarily, to shut out her pain and act, so why was she now holding her back? However, as she thought about it, she grudgingly realised that Sophie had a point.

"She's got weaknesses, right?" Sophie said. "Your power won't work if she shuts her eyes, right?"
"Right."
"But she's got my power too. Her eyes will be really sensitive to light. We can dazzle her from range, we don't need to get up close. For my money, the fastest way of beating her will be -" But Mariko was shaking her head.
"One of the secondary effects of my powers," she explained, "is that they make - made - my eyes immune to being dazzled. It won't work."
"Fuck." Sophie clicked her tongue. "You got any other ideas?"

Mariko thought for a second. Something was presenting itself.
"We...we could use -"
"What?" Sophie said. But her face changed as she realised what Mariko was thinking. "Oh! Right, chloroform! It'll totally fuck with her!" She grinned. "I guess you have the experience in that area."
"Sophie!" Mariko hissed. She was making an oblique reference to the time that Mariko had drugged her to facilitate a plan to sabotage her when they'd first met. It was a memory of which Mariko was deeply ashamed. She'd been out of sorts at the time - she'd just received a piece of very perturbing news beforehand - but that was no excuse. Still, the fact that Sophie was joking about it put her a little at ease.
"The only question is where to get some," Mariko said. "When I - that time...I had some by chance: some idiot tried to kidnap me with it, and I kept it for an occasion such as we're in now." She thought. "I'm sure we could get some, but it might take quite a while..."

Sophie had a thought. She knew where she could get chloroform, and easily, but something made her afraid. Afraid to go to that person again after what had happened to her. Afraid to see her in her powerless state, still unsure of just what she would think of her now. And more surprisingly, afraid to tell Mariko. And not just afraid either; but guilty.

But she put it aside. For Mariko, and for herself, she had to be strong.
"I...know where we can get some," she said.
"Oh? Where?"
"I..." Sophie couldn't begin to think of what lie to tell. "Let's just say a kind of unsavoury acquaintance."
"Oh, the thief! Er...Ocelot!" Sophie's stomach tightened. "I should think that would be the least she could do after what you and Natalya did for her. Excellent idea." The redhead relaxed slightly. Mariko didn't get it.
"I'll be back in a couple of hours," she said.
"Right," Mariko replied. "Then we'll show that vile woman, that sickening freak...even if I don't get to kill her, I'll make her feel everything she's done, tenfold."
"Oh, man," Sophie thought. "This is going to be really..." She couldn't finish the thought. She had no idea what it was going to be.

[shevek]

Great job, Damselbinder! I loved how hot the depowering scenes were, and the bondage stuff was great too. It's very cool how you're able to write such a long and detailed story and make it so stimulating without including any actual sex scenes at all (even the one with Rachel was just basically a "fade to black" left to the imagination). I also love how Stellar has three incarnations she can change between - the more transformations, the better!

So I'm guessing that you're Jewish (Rachel don't roll on Shabbos?) and not from the United States? (I've seen one of your stories mention "boot" instead of car trunk). Let's see if I'm right on both accounts. Are you female as well?

Finally, I'm wondering if Rachel's character is inspired by the incredibly gorgeous Eros Comix character The Ocelot (1994). Anyway, fantastic!

[DrDominator9]

Ditto to everything shevek said above. The power draining scenes are better than most of the sex scenes I've read.

One question though... I was expecting the draining muzzle with the forced gas effect to be used on Stellar, not just Adrienne's hand. The fact that she didn't need to use that muzzle to absorb Stellar's powers is even scarier than before!

[Damselbinder]

Great job, Damselbinder! I loved how hot the depowering scenes were, and the bondage stuff was great too. It's very cool how you're able to write such a long and detailed story and make it so stimulating without including any actual sex scenes at all (even the one with Rachel was just basically a "fade to black" left to the imagination). I also love how Stellar has three incarnations she can change between - the more transformations, the better!

So I'm guessing that you're Jewish (Rachel don't roll on Shabbos?) and not from the United States? (I've seen one of your stories mention "boot" instead of car trunk). Let's see if I'm right on both accounts. Are you female as well?

Finally, I'm wondering if Rachel's character is inspired by the incredibly gorgeous Eros Comix character The Ocelot (1994). Anyway, fantastic!

As it happens, you're one third right! I'm not female, I'm not Jewish, but you're right in thinking I'm not from the United States. I'm from the UK. And I've never heard of that character! Ocelot was just my take on the Black Cat/Catwoman mould of character.

And thank you for your comments! It was very appreciated. I'm glad that people can enjoy even my stuff, which is much 'softer' than most of the stories on this site.

[Damselbinder]

Ditto to everything shevek said above. The power draining scenes are better than most of the sex scenes I've read.

One question though... I was expecting the draining muzzle with the forced gas effect to be used on Stellar, not just Adrienne's hand. The fact that she didn't need to use that muzzle to absorb Stellar's powers is even scarier than before!

Well, that's very high praise, thank you!

In fact, if you notice, Adrienne TRIED to just use her hands to take Sophie and Mariko's powers, before she realised that their powers weren't active, and so couldn't be taken.

[Damselbinder]

Rachel Artesia did, in theory, have a day job. Admittedly, she didn't spend much time at this day job, nor did she actually do any work for them at all. In point of fact, it was Rachel who paid them to keep her on the books so that people wouldn't ask too many questions about what she did with her time. But every so often, just to maintain the cover, the woman named Ocelot did make an appearance.

She was about to leave her spacious apartment, when something happened that did not happen often. Her doorbell rang.
"Hmm?" Rachel didn't receive visitors uninvited, and she had standing instructions for any packages delivered to her to be left with the doorman. "Hello?" she said, somewhat nervously, into the intercom. The last time someone had just rung unannounced it had been the police - and that had not been something Rachel had wanted to repeat.

"Hey," came a familiar, subdued voice. "Can - can I come in?"
"Sophie?" Rachel was more than a little surprised. "What are you doing here?"
"I - it's hard to explain."
"Listen, sweetie, now's not the best time. Tell you what - you head home, and I'll swing by if I can. You can even start the fun without me if you -"
"Rachel, please. It's really important." There was a strange force to her voice. It wasn't assertive, exactly; it had a desperate urgency to it.
"Okay," Rachel said, a little reluctantly.

She admitted Sophie inside, and she immediately knew something was wrong. Normally when Sophie came into her presence, she was aflame with submissive passion, gasping with every touch - every glance, even. But this time, she felt oddly subdued: nervous, even.
"Hi," she said, quietly.
"Well, what's so important, hot stuff?" Rachel said. Sophie opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Rachel's sensuality, the way the slinky thief held herself, the way every movement was an act of seduction: normally it was entrancing, but now it made Sophie feel almost ashamed.

"I need something," she said. She could barely look her paramour in the eye. "Do you, um, I mean..."
"Um, uh, ah," Rachel imitated. She meant it as cajoling, rather than mocking, but Sophie's cheeks reddened in embarrassment. "Come on, Sofe, spit it out."
"I need - fuck, this is gonna sound stupid - I need some chloroform."

Rachel looked at her for a moment. She didn't know if she was serious.
"Really? And tell me, Miss Good-Girl Superhero, what exactly are you planning on doing with it? Oooh, you're not going into the kidnapping trade, are ya? I hear it can be very-"
"No, no, it's for...y'know, hero shit." Sophie forced a smile. "Going up against someone with my...with similar powers to me."
"No shit?" Rachel said. "You know what? Go for it, sweet-cheeks." She gestured to her workshop. "Plenty in there."

Sophie hurried in, and saw a shelf filled with jars of all kinds, labelled in their chemical equations.
"C'mon, ChCl3, ChCl3..." Sophie repeated. In an attempt to figure out a suitable countermeasure, she'd done a bit of research on the stuff - but hadn't turned up anything.
"And you're sure it's not for, uh, recreational use?" Rachel said, walking in. She moved slowly, admiring the redhead's form from behind. She'd bought some fresh clothes to avoid having to go home: a tight, black skirt, and white vest top. She'd only got them because they were cheap, but Rachel didn't mind the ensemble on bit.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Sophie distractedly replied. Rachel sidled up behind her, putting her hands on her hips. "Hey, maybe another time," Sophie said, wriggling uncomfortably.
"Oh, come on, Sofe," Rachel said. "You come into this spider's lair, you'd better expect to get wrapped up..." She ran her hands up Sophie's sides, her fingers cupping the damsel's breasts. Her thighs began sliding against Sophie's, her stocking-clad legs smooth against her lover's bare limbs. "And you could always give that stuff to me...you remember what happened to you the last time I had you whimpering under the cloth..." She whispered in her ear: "Whimpering...gasping...moaning oh-so sweetly..."

"Ooh..." Sophie mewed, feeling a familiar - but no less thrilling for it - tingle up her thighs. It would be so easy to forget it all, to just let Rachel have her, do whatever she wanted with her, taking pleasure in the fact that Rachel took pleasure from her. "No!" She wriggled free.
"Hey, what's wrong with you?" Rachel asked.
"Is it so fucking hard to believe I don't want to have sex with you right now?" Sophie hissed. "I'm in the middle of something real god-damned important, so can I just take what I need, and get the fuck out of here?"

For a moment, Rachel was furious - but this wasn't normal.
"Is this because of the other night?"
"What?"
"When I wrapped you up and -" Rachel seemed oddly nervous. "I thought you'd like that."
"No, it's nothing to do with that..." Sophie said. "That was..."
"So you did like it?"

Sophie shook her head, not as a response, but to try to clear the fog that was settling. She felt Ocelot's hands on her skin again, and she gasped. It was like she was falling under a spell. Away from Kirsten, away from Mariko, she couldn't help being putty in this woman's hands. That warm strength and solace she'd felt lying next to her distraught friend was draining away from her in Ocelot's presence. Every dark desire was licensed, encouraged even. What did her powers matter? What did being Enhancegirl matter? What did Mariko -

No. That was too far, even for Rachel's seductions.
"Look, I really have to go, okay?" She spotted the relevant jar at last, and grabbed it, having chosen one small enough to fit in a large pocket.
"Sophie, what happened?" Rachel said. She put her hand on her shoulder, not as a sexual advance this time.
"Nothing, I -" She tried to avoid Rachel's hazel eyes. They peered into her, probing into places that Sophie would not willingly have opened to her. "Someone..." She didn't want to say it. She couldn't stop herself. "Someone's taken away my powers."

However she might have expected Rachel to react, she didn't expect this. She simply stared at Sophie, apparently dumbstruck.
"Wh - I...what?" she stammered. "How? Who?"
"It doesn't matter. Look, I'm gonna try to get 'em back, right? That's what I needed the chloroform for."
"Sophie - I'm..." She was frozen on the spot. Sophie had expected...well, had imagined all sorts of things. Disappointment. A facade of sympathy. Arousal, even. But not...this.
"Hey, I'm sure this sort of thing happens to every super at some point right?" Sophie said, strangely feeling that it was she who had to do the reassuring. "Rite of passage, or something."

Sophie left before Rachel could think of anything to say. She was dumbstruck. Not so much by Sophie's revelation, which was shocking in itself, but by her own reaction to it. Her relationship with Sophie had felt like a game, a game in which she had all the winning cards, and where the prize was something worth rather more than money - but her emotions weren't supposed to come into it.

So why did she now feel so shocked? Upset, even - not for herself, but for Sophie. She must have been shocked, humiliated, aggrieved. Rachel didn't want that. It wasn't even just that she didn't want to know about it. She didn't want it as such: she didn't want her paramour to suffer like that. A thought came into her mind: a terrible thought, that seemed to go against the rather comfortable emotional high-ground Rachel had built for herself.
"I have to... I want to help her."
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Mmmhhh....nnnmphh..." Yumi moaned as she awoke from her swoon. There was no confusion, no drug in her system clouding her thoughts. She was fully cognizant the moment she awoke, in the pit of her dismay. She was half-naked, stripped of her powers. Propped up against a wall, she turned her head to see thin, hemp ropes binding her arms behind her back. The tough cords were connected to her elbows, and twisted around her chest as well, pushing up her perky breasts. In fact, as she looked closer, she saw that ropes were criss-crossed all over her body, completely binding her up, while leaving almost all of her smooth skin on show.

As she looked down, she saw her legs splayed out in front of her, and realised that this mesh of ropes went the whole way down her body, her supple, slender legs bound tightly together as well. She was completely roped up, and was powerless to extricate herself. A thin piece of fabric was pulled between her lips, keeping her soft, red mouth from emitting anything but whimpers. The cleave-gagged damsel wiggled her petite body a little, but she couldn't escape. She knew it.

She was equivalent to a princess locked away in a dungeon: feminine, beautiful, desirable - but with no motive or power of her own. All she could do was wait for rescue - if rescue would ever come.
"What do I even want now?" Yumi thought. She was powerless. She probably could still have her career as a popstar - but did she even want that anymore? Adrienne's words had cut her to the quick: what was she underneath all her personae? She did not, thankfully, have the same crushing, nihilistic anxiety as Mariko had done. She knew there was something there...but what? While she was a captive, though, it didn't seem to matter very much.

"'Ello, my dear," Madeleine said, entering Yumi's cell. She knelt down beside the gorgeous maiden, and there was a damp cloth in her hand.
"Nmmph..." Yumi mewed, looking pleadingly at Madeleine. "Pllhss...plhhs nnhh..."
"Oh, my dear, zere is no sense in pleading with me." Madeline smiled sheepishly. "I'm just one of ze troops." She held the drugged cloth near Yumi's face, not quite touching her with it.
"Mmhh! Mmhh..." Yumi whimpered, already beginning to feel feeble.

"My employer invites you to 'ave supper with 'er this evening," Madeleine said. "She intends to make you very comfortable for as long as you are our guest."
"Ghhmphh..." Yumi whimpered, writhing in the tight ropes which bit so strictly into her bare, soft skin, feeling the humiliation of not even being able freely to move. She wasn't just a defeated superheroine...she was a strictly bound, beautiful damsel in distress, the way the ropes pressed her body so tightly highlighting every subtle curve.

Emphasising the radiant captive's helpless state even further, Madeleine took her by the back of the head and pressed her mouth and nose into the cloth.
"MGHHMPHH!" Yumi moaned. "Nmmph!" She felt this new weakness take her, running through her already defeated form. "Mh! Mh...mmmhhh..." The petite maiden was no match for the chloroform drugging her, and began to sink into soft, inescapable slumber. "Nnmh...mmmhh..." She remembered when this had first happened to her, after Arachna had kidnapped her. As shocking as it had been to have her weaknesses discovered and exploited, the sensuous draining of the sweet-smelling drug had been terribly affecting: she had even had nightmares about being chloroformed and kidnapped since then.

"Nnhhhmmphh..." But this was a waking nightmare. Gorgeous and vulnerable, Yumi found herself incapable of fighting. Her eyes rolled back into her head, as their lids fluttered weakly. "Mhhh..." she sighed, in the grips of powerlessness, her head flopping onto on of her uncovered, slim shoulders, exposing her slender neck.

Madeleine couldn't help copping a feel: the last thing Yumi perceived before she passed out was the feeling of her captor's touch on her long, nude legs, before she gave in completely, and slipped into unconsciousness - a blush on her cheeks, and the tiniest crinkle of her eyebrows were the only things that even hinted that she was not tamely accepting her fate in its entirety.

Madeline hauled the fainted maiden onto her feet, about to toss her over her shoulder. But she paused. Yumi Tae-Yeong was right there in front of her, naked, beautiful and helpless. She couldn't resist, and pulled the maiden against herself, before whipping her gag out and roughly kissing her, Yumi's unconscious body powerless to stop her. She pressed her up against a wall as she continued avariciously making out with Yumi, stroking the inside of her mouth with her tongue, wetting the defeated heroine's rosy lips as well. She ran her hands up and down her thighs, feeling just how smooth and sexy she was, perfectly passive and meek, oh so meek, and supple...

She was getting carried away, ironically enough. It was Yumi who should have been getting carried away.
"Hon!" Madeleine laughed, complimenting herself for making a pun in a language not her own. She gripped Yumi's legs tightly, taking the small of her back as well, before scooping the light, delicate damsel into her arms. She hung limply, defeated. Madeleine began to carry her out, but to her alarm, she bumped into a rather cross-looking Adrienne on the way out.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, backing off a few steps. "Madáme, I -"
"Put her down." Madeleine did so, laying Yumi down onto her knees.
"'Ow can I -" Madeleine did not get a chance to finish, because Adrienne gave her a vicious backhand slap. With her enhanced strength, this sent Madeleine flying. It also seriously bruised her jaw. "Uggh!" Madeleine groaned. "What are you doing?"
"I can see through walls, remember?" Adrienne said. "I saw you with those filthy little frog hands all over my slave-girl. Do that again and I'll freeze your blood in your veins...or maybe I'll just pop your head off like a grape! Aahahahaha!"
"You cannot treat me like that! You aren't ze Supremacist! If people think you're completely crazy, you won't be able to work with anybody!" Madeleine was getting a little sick of her unhinged employer. "Even psychopaths can't afford to be stupid! What is a criminal without other criminals?"

"No, I'm not the Supremacist," Adrienne said. "But he's out of the picture, isn't he? And with all this power..." She grinned. "Soon, I'm not going to need people like you." She gestured at Yumi. "Get on with it."
"Hrrrghh..." Madeleine growled. She knew she had to obey. Adrienne didn't seem like the kind of person who would take her resignation well. She picked Yumi up again, finding her just as soft and passive as before. She gave Adrienne a black look, but the madwoman didn't seem to care very much. After all, what had she to fear now?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ricardo Hosenfluss was not an impressive man to look at, by any stretch of the imagination. He was short, about 5'6", and though his face was quite handsome in and of itself, he twisted it with a smug sneer almost all his waking moments. He'd made an effort to bulk up, so he was pretty muscular. In his desire to show off, he always wore suits which were slightly too tight, so that those with whom he did business would see just how strong he was.

"Good morning, my dear," he said, as he walked past his rather skimpily dressed receptionist, a petite, but curvy brunette. He lowered his sunglasses and winked.
"Hello, Mr President, sir," she said. She'd been told that any other form of address was risky. She uncomfortably crossed her stocking clad legs. Every time he looked at her it felt like he was making a pass at her.

"Rubio, Stantz," he said, addressing his two bodyguards, one beefy, one surprisingly slight. "In here." He entered his awfully decorated, but still sumptuously furnished office. He strutted to his desk, sitting down.
"Brief me, gents," he said, leaning back.
"Project IT2 is coming along better now," Rubio said. He was the slight one: bald, and a little twitchy. "Science Team Gamma reports that new subjects aren't getting lasting harm anymore."
"Hey, alright!" Hosenfluss laughed. "Emilia," he said, talking into the intercom on his desk, "raises for everybody in Science Team Gamma."
"Sorry, sir," Stantz said. "There's a new problem with the infusion method."
"Oh, darn," Ricardo groaned. "What now?"
"It just doesn't last," Rubio explained. "They get power, better than we've seen from the first subjects, but it won't stick."
"Emilia," Ricardo said, "pay cuts for everybody in Science Team Gamma."

"Well, sir," Rubio continued, "they say they do have a way to make it stick."
"Man, guys, you're leading me on a real rollercoaster ride here!" Ricardo said, guffawing in the way that only a real yuppie can. "What's the problem then?"
"They need..." Rubio checked his notes, not remembering how they described it. "Exotic...metaffective radiation to induce full reaction in the Dexite."
"Gentlemen," Hosenfluss laughed. "Please, I'm a simple entrepeneur. Layman's terms."
"They need a superhuman," Stantz interjected. "A powerful one." Hosenfluss looked slyly at Rubio.

"Sorry, sir," the man said. "Wrong kind. My powers are genetic. They need something a bit..." He checked his notes again. "...weirder." He flashed a smile underneath his shades. "Lucky for me, sir: apparently the process would probably kill the subject."
"Well, start looking," Hosenfluss ordered. "Plenty of expendable supers in this town."


As Hosenfluss and his man were having his conversation, a sharply dressed woman in a a knee-length dress slit all the way up to her waist, arrived at the top floor of the building. She had smooth, olive-brown skin, and platinum-blonde hair. She strode straight past Emilia, towards the door to Hosenfluss' office.

"Hey, Miss," Emilia said. "You can't go in there." She was ignored. "Miss!" She got up, her black heels tapping against the plastic floor. "I'm not kidding, Mr Hosenfluss has bodyguards that'll -" It occurred to Emilia that this woman might be deaf. She was concerned that she would walk in and get badly hurt - or worse - by Stantz and Rubio. She tapped her on the shoulder.

"Oh!" Emilia saw a lightning fast movement from the mysterious woman, and felt a sharp pinprick in her wrist. "Hey," she protested. "What did you just...just..." The lovely, curvy young woman felt strange. "What's going...on?" Her pretty knees shook, and she collapsed in a crumpled heap on the ground. "I...can't...move..." she whimpered, her legs folded over each other, one arm on her chest, another seeming to reach out towards Hosenfluss' door. "Help...I'm...paralysed!"

"You sure are, sweetie," Ocelot said. "Don't worry, it'll wear off." She turned her head. "Wow, you are cute," she laughed. "Might just have to drop by later, honey." She winked, and Emilia whimpered fearfully in her helplessness...and she blushed as well.


"Hey, on the fucking ground lady!" Stantz barked, as Rachel walked in, casual as you like. He drew a pistol, but a small blade ran across his hand, hurled in one smooth movement. "Augh!" he cried, dropping his weapon as blood splashed from his deep wound. "You fucking -" Rachel closed the distance between them before he could finish, and high kicked him in the forehead, her stiletto heel making this attack even more devastating. He fell back, clutching his head in pain.

"Cute tricks, little girl," Rubio said. He flicked off his glasses - his eyes were burning red underneath. "But you ain't ever seen tricks like these before." An aura of red light began to gather around him. "You're about to -"
"No!" Ricardo barked. "Don't do it!"
"But, sir, she -"
"Do as I say!" Rubio obeyed. His aura settled, and he covered his eyes again. Ricardo was smiling. He stood up, and stretched out his arms.

"Well well - the prodigal daughter returns!" he laughed heartily. "Who'd have thought it? After all this time...the Ocelot is back."
"Don't get any funny ideas, Richard," Ocelot spat, with no respect for his Latin affectations. "I'm not here to come back to work for you."
"No indeed," Richard replied. "I figured that when you hospitalised the rest of your old squad." Strictly speaking, that had been Aerogirl, not Ocelot herself, but there was hardly any sense in correcting him.

"So what do you want then, Raquel?" Hosenfluss' smug smile faltered. "We didn't exactly part under the best circumstances. You know, I really thought that was ungrateful after all I did for -"
"I owe you nothing. You took plenty more than you gave," Ocelot spat. "That's not the point. I want information."
"Oh, you do, do you?" Hosenfluss laughed. "Oh, Raquel, you are a very brave young lady, aren't you?" He lowered his glasses, looking straight at her with quite piercing blue eyes. "What do you want?"

"I need to know about a local superhuman. I know you've got your grubby little fingers in every seedy pie."
"What a way you have of winning someone over, Raquel." Hosenfluss smiled at Rubio, who obediently laughed at his boss' joke.
"I need to know about a power thief. Someone who's targeting local supers, maybe a -"
"Rubio knows her," Hosenfluss said instantly. "He knows exactly who you're talking about. He knows who she is, where she is - and even knows a secret weakness, don't you, Rubio?"
"That's right, boss."
"But there's a problem, isn't there, Rubio?"
"There sure is, boss."
"What's the problem, Rubio?"
"Problem is I ain't tellin' this girl shit, boss."
"Oh dear," Ricardo said. "That is a problem, isn't it? I suppose you could, you know...offer me something in return."

Rachel realised that she had got all this way, and hadn't thought of what she was going to give him. But, as it happened, she knew the answer already.
"One favour. One time only." She dropped her hands, which had been in a fighting position. She now looked uncharacteristically passive. "Take whatever you like." Ricardo stared at her intently for a moment, then threw his head back and laughed.
"Holy shit, you're serious, aren't you? Man, you want this, real bad!" He considered. "You know what? Alright, honey."
"So...what do you want?" Rachel said, eyes to the ground.
"Oh, I haven't decided yet." He grinned. "But I'll fill my end first. Rubio?" The bodyguard tapped a tablet computer, bringing up the relevant file.
"Adrienne Carly," he says. "Age thirty four. Confirmed superhuman since about ten years ago. We think it was a late manifestation of your standard teenage -" Rachel snatched the device out of his hand. "Fine. Whatever. Just tryin' to be helpful..."

Rachel scanned through it quickly, moving through the irrelevant stuff, until she came to what she wanted.
"Powers...absorbs others' abilities through touch...prehensile tendrils..." This was all useful, but it wasn't the key - and then she saw it. "Yes, this is it!" She looked up at Hosenfluss almost with gratitude, until she realised at whom she was looking. "I...I owe you." It took a great, great deal of effort for her to say this.
"I know, Raquel," he said, grinning wickedly. "You run along now. I'll be in touch."
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Mhhgghh...nnnhhh..." Yumi moaned as she woke, heavily. "Mhh..." She tried to move her head, but it limply lolled to the side. "Ghhmmhhh..." She was still weak, and almost completely immobilised. "Mmhh..." Finding her strength, she lifted her head, sleepily looking down at herself. She was sitting in a chair, still tightly trussed, the same as before. Only now, she had been stuffed into a tiny, white cocktail dress, pale satin that shimmered in the low light. Her legs were bare, but she was now wearing a pair of matching white heels. Around her head was a small tiara of flowers.

"Mmghmph..." As Yumi realised just how she appeared, she almost would have preferred to be stripped. She looked delicate, feminine - as innocent and lovely as a dryad.
"Morning, Yumi," came a voice from across the table at which the captive popstar was sat. It was Adrienne, grinning lasciviously at her, drinking a large glass of blood red wine.
"Mmmh!" she gasped, as she downed it one long gulp. "God DAMN that is good! I'm seriously going to have to watch my weight now. Your little friend's power makes everything taste so...ha! So fucking good!"

Yumi sat there watching her eating an entire meal. She wasn't messy exactly, but she ate it with terrifying voraciousness.
"What she wants, she just...takes..." Yumi thought, her thighs pressing a little tighter together, fearfully defending her maidenly virtue.
"Now, let's get down to business," she said. "I'm going to give you a choice." She gestured at the table. Her meal had not emptied it. "You can either be a good little slave-girl, nice and tame - I'll let you have the odd whimper now and again, but otherwise you keep quiet -" She grinned, the very thought of having Yumi as a meek, obedient slave intensely exciting.

"Either that," she restarted, "or you can fight. You can wriggle, and kick, and complain. You can attempt escape, and get recaptured every time - and you will. Either one: it's entirely up to you, sweetie." She stood up. "But let me make this clear. The good girl gets invited to the dinner table. The good girl gets books, a television...maybe even the company of the other girls if she swings that way." She licked her lips. "The naughty slave doesn't get that. The naughty slave gets spanked, and wrapped up in chains, and kept in the dungeon until I want her for something. Then she goes right back when I'm done. The naughty slave doesn't get the pretty dresses either."

To make her point, she shot out one of her tendrils towards her beautiful captive. It seized the soft, shimmering satin, and tore it away, leaving Yumi in tiny, blue silk underwear.
"Mmh!" Yumi gasped. She had not been wearing that when she'd been captured. In her unconsciousness, they'd stripped her naked, and put these on instead. "Mmmhhhmmphhh..." she whimpered, cheeks red.
"I'll let you keep the heels, though," Adrienne laughed. "I mean, a hot Asian chick in underwear and high heels? Can't get much better than that." Yumi hung her head, hearing Adrienne describe exactly what she was reduced to.

Where things might have gone from there was difficult to say, but perhaps to Yumi's advantage, there was an interruption.
"Madáme." A slightly bruised Madeleine entered the room, bowing - but with a regal bearing.
"Yes?" Adrienne hissed.
"Pardonnez-moi, but I 'ave captured two intruders." She looked up at her employer. "I thought you might wish to be made aware."
"Intruders?!" Adrienne leapt to her feet, gathering a ball of light in one hand, and an icy aura in the other. "Who? More...more heroines?"
"'Eroines, yes," Madeleine said. "But not more 'eroines."
"What are you talking about, you stupid shit?" Adrienna barked.
"Zey are the same ones as before." She snapped her fingers, and two of her underlings walked in - with two beautiful young women slung over their shoulders.

"MMMPHHHH!!" Sophie whimpered. "MMMNNGGHHH!!" She wriggled her shapely, slender body, but she couldn't seem to escape. "NMH!"
"Mmmhh...nnnnhh..." Mariko echoed, tightly bound hand and foot, her long legs slung over one of Adrienne's goons, her eyes half closed in the shame of defeat.
"Mh!"
"Mmh..." The two maidens moaned, as they were hurled down onto the floor, wiggling helplessly, bleating into their thick, cloth gags at they vainly struggled.

"Aha..." Adrienne laughed. "Ahaha...ahaha! Ahahahahha! AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! She screamed with laughter, pointing at them, giggling. "You...aahahha...you stupid bimbos...AAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!" The whole room shook as she cackled, the White Star's power giving vicious force to her bellowing laugh. "What...what were you trying to do? Rescue the popstar? Get your powers back? You idiots - I let you go! You were free to get on with your stupid little lives!" She came closer. "What the hell is wrong with you? Get it through your heads!" Her amusement had given way to rage at a perceived act of defiance. "You're not superheroines anymore," she said. "You're leggy little hotties with a penchant for skimpy outfits." Indeed, both damsels' outfits had their long, smooth legs on show.

"Mmh..." Mariko and Sophie looked at each other, blushing deeply, moaning to each other in pity - while also begging for the other somehow to free them. They looked so beautiful and vulnerable, their moans almost sensually helpless.
"Mmhh..." Sophie whimpered, allowing her head to fall on Mariko's chest. "Mmmghhmphh..." It was a stunning display of whimpering, feminine affection and subdual, and Adrienne couldn't take her eyes off them.

Which, of course, was the entire point.

"What?!" Adrienne spun around, as she heard a crash at her feet. She looked down, and saw a small glass jar, broken in pieces, some kind of chemical having spilled out of it. It was colourless, but cloying. It smelled thick, powerful and sweet.
"Ooh..." the villainess sighed. "What...what the hell?" She felt weak. "What...what the fuck is happening...?" She began to stumble back, the strength of her legs failing her. "What's...going...on?"
"I believe," Madeleine - the one who had thrown the bottle at her feet - said, "that zis is chloroform, yes?"

With horror, she watched as Sophie and Mariko casually undid their bonds, the knots tied to be as easy to slip as possible. They pulled off their gags, Mariko looking daggers at her, while Sophie grinned viciously.
"Not so fun having my powers now is it, you psycho fuck!" the redhead spat. Adrienne, horrified, fell back, as Yumi looked on with astonishment at this reversal of fortunes.
"How..." Adrienne tried to summon her other powers - light, ice, fire, sound - but nothing was working. Enhancegirl's power made her too weak, too unfocused. "How is this...possible?" As it happened, it was a rather funny story.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

One hour earlier...

"Ugh!" Sophie grunted, slamming her knee into the solar plexus of the guard to Adrienne's complex. It was nowhere near as easy without her powers, but she still had some skill, and she'd got the element of surprise. As the woman went down, she beckoned over to Mariko. The tall beauty found it a little embarrassing that, without their powers, Sophie was definitely the most formidable.

The two crept inside, both thinking of all sorts of ways they could have used their powers to help themselves - none of which were, of course, available to them. Wary of any cameras, they moved slowly, frustratingly slowly. It was just possible that Stellar hadn't been drained yet, that she was merely languishing in captivity. Time might yet be of the essence.

The two were almost caught, but they ducked into a side room just in time to avoid the guards.
"That was way too -" Sophie started, but the two of them realised they were not alone. " - easy?" Madeleine was sitting at her desk, drinking a cup of coffee. She looked at them, rather alarmed.
"Er...bonjour..."

Sophie leapt forward, not sure whether she had the ability to take on this opponent without her powers, but not wanting her to have a moment of action. She leapt forward, and seized Madeleine by the scruff of her neck.
"'Ey, 'ey, wait!" Madeleine hissed. "I'm not -" Sophie interrupted her by punching her solidly on the other side of her face to where Adrienne had hit her. "Ah!" Madeleine fell off her chair. "Stop for 'eaven's sake!"
"Why? Why should we?" Mariko said.
"Because you're 'ere to get Adrienne, oui?"
"Worked that out by yourself, didja?" Sophie laughed.
"Good. I want to 'elp you," Madeleine said.

Mariko and Sophie looked at each other.
"And why, pray," Mariko said, "ought we to believe you?"
"Because I could already 'ave sounded the alarm if I'd wanted to," she replied.
"And why haven't you then?" Sophie said. She looked briefly around, and saw a small switch under Madeleine's desk. Indeed - she could have pressed it.
"If you want a motive...that damn woman - elle est fou!" Madeleine rubbed the bruise her employer had given her. "The insane are just as ineffective in ze criminal world as in any other organisation. We will all end up in prison, or dead if we allow 'er to go on like this."
"Alright," Mariko said. "We're listening."
"Quoi?" Madeleine laughed. "I don't 'ave a plan! I assumed you would 'ave one!"
"Sophie, let's just knock her out," Mariko said. But there was a funny look on the redhead's face.
"No, Mariko," she grinned. "I think I might 'ave thought of something. Adrienne won't fucking know what 'it 'er. Hon hon hon..."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Unnghh...hhh..." Adrienne groaned. "No...way...all my power...can't happen to me!"
"I'm afraid it can," Mariko said. "And it is." She walked over to her, fierce anger in her eyes. "In this state, I could easily kill you. You have one opportunity to avoid this." She leaned in. "Return our powers to us. Now."
"No..." Adrienne gasped. "Never!"
"Then you make this easy," Mariko said. She drew her pistol.

"Mariko!" Sophie gasped. She didn't realise she'd brought it.
"Five seconds. Four. Three-"
"Mariko, you can't do this," Sophie insisted.
"I'll do what I must!" Mariko barked. "Don't you understand this is for you?" she thought.

But whomever it was for, it distracted Mariko. Weakly, but still with the strength of the Black Star making even her weakness potent, Adrienne shoved Mariko aside with a tendril, knocking the gun out of her hand.
"Ugh!" Mariko groaned, landing hard on her back.

"Not...going...to end this way," Adrienne gasped, before opening one of her nozzle-like tendrils - and clamping it down over her own mouth and nose.
"What the hell?" Sophie didn't understand - but that uncomprehension didn't last long. "Oh shit!" She realised that Adreinne had just formed an airtight seal over her airways. Those nozzles didn't just weaken and drain power - they'd provided Sophie and Mariko with oxygen. She'd made a gas mask for herself.

"Hhnnhh...hnnhh..." Adrienne breathed, cutting herself off from the weakening effects of the chloroform.
"No you don't!" Sophie shouted. "No you fucking don't!" This time it was she who dove for the weapon. She seized it, and drew aim at Adrienne. She pointed it right at the insane woman's head - with one shot, she could end the threat, at least, possibly even return their powers...or she might be killing them forever.

"Mhhrrghh!" Adrienne roared, summoning her slowly returning strength to shoot out another tendril at Sophie. But it was slow, and even without her super senses, Sophie had time to readjust her aim.
"Now or never!" She fired - at the tendril supplying Adrienne with oxygen.

Enhancegirl wouldn't have missed the shot. With her reactions and accuracy, it simply wouldn't have been possible for her to miss, miracles excepted. But Sophie did not have those powers. She had never fired a gun before. She'd intended to sever the tendril, exposing Adrienne to the drug again...but she missed. The bullet whizzed past the villain, flying harmlessly into a wall.

"Oh...shit..." Sophie mumbled. Adrienne laughed - and then seized her.
"Aaaghh!" Sophie cried out, as a squamous, vile tendril grabbed her round the chest, pinning her arms and hauling her up, her long, pale legs kicking wildly in the air. "Unnhh!" She was squeezed painfully hard, and the gun fell out of her hand, clattering to the floor in the puddle of chloroform.
"Sophie!!" Mariko thrust herself to her feet, dashed for the weapon again. But she didn't even get close to it. Adrienne was getting stronger all the time, and a jet of fire appeared to block Mariko's path - and indeed to blast the gun into uselessness, and evaporating the chloroform to boot.

"Damn!" Mariko cursed. She hesitated, trying to think of some new action to take, but nothing presented itself. Another tentacle grabbed her, winding all the way down her body in slippery, writhing circuits, crushing her arms against her sides, and squeezing her long, tan legs together as well. "Nnnhh...no!" Mariko cried out, held fast by the writhing, living bindings.

"Mari - MMPHH!!" Sophie screamed through the slimy appendage as it writhed over her mouth too. "Mmmgghhmmphhh..."
"Hhhh hhh hhh...HHH HHH HHH HHH!!" Adrienne laughed. She squeezed them even tighter, delighting in every helpless wriggle of their slender bodies.
"Y-you...evil...psychopathic...MMPH!" Mariko too was gagged, and now both maidens were just as much Adrienne's captives as Yumi.

"Nnnhhh! NNHHH!!" Yumi whimpered, still sat passive and helpless in the chair where she'd been put, watching her would-be rescuers caught and defeated. "No...no I can't help them!" Once more, she felt like the helpless princess locked in the tower, and she blushed.
"Hhhhh hhhhhh!!" Adrienne's wordless laugh, her mad eyes - she now appeared utterly monstrous to her captives, wild and vicious, a predator rather than a villain, a rapacious beast.

"What...what do we do?" Sophie thought. "I can't...what was I thinking? Without my powers...what the hell was I really supposed to do?"
"Sophie...Sophie..." Mariko whimpered in her head again and again, as the squeezing tendrils took their pleasure of her, wriggling against every inch of her beautiful, willowy figure. The two looked at each other, this time genuinely desperate.
"I'm defeated..." Sophie lamented, feeling her heart sink. "I'm...completely defeated..." Her gorgeous, creamy legs stopped kicking. She hung her head - she'd given in completely.

Madeleine, watching this gruesome spectacle, decided that: as discretion was the better part of valour, so too was cowardice the better part of discretion. By the same token, running away was the better part of cowardice...so Madeleine valorously ran away. As she desperately hurled herself out, rather wisely judging that while Adrienne would like nothing better than to enslave Mariko and Sophie alongside Yumi, she would happily snap Madeleine's neck.

It was as she ran that she noticed someone running in the opposite direction. She was not one of Madeleine's underlings, nor apparently anyone else who worked for Adrienne. She was dressed oddly, in black, corset-like body armour, and a black bodystocking. But Madeleine thought no more of it, and scarpered.

"Whhmph?" Yumi whimpered. In her position, she was the only one of the three damsels to see this newcomer enter. "Wh...who is that?" Adrienne rather echoed her thoughts. She perceived her completely, and fired a blast of ice at her. But she was running too quickly, and Adrienne was still affected by her exposure to the chloroform. She missed.

"HRrrghhh!" the madwoman roared, whipping out yet another tendril as Ocelot - for it was she - circled her. This was to have hit, but Ocelot hurled a small disk at her. Adrienne swatted it out of the air - but the moment she touched it, her body was wracked with pain. "HHHRRHHHH!!" she screamed, as electricity coursed through her.

Ocelot used this distraction, and Sophie finally saw her.
"R-Rachel! She's come!" Sophie couldn't believe her eyes. "She's come to save me!" Using her moment of vantage, Ocelot ran up to the gristly organ at Adrienne's back - and plunged her hand into it.

"AAAAAAAARRRGGHHHHHH!!" Adrienne whipped the tendril off her mouth as she howled in pan. "D-don't you - AAHHH!!" Sophie's powers didn't exactly make her more sensitive to pain, but the feeling as Ocelot plunged her hand into the organ on her back was awfully disturbing and disorienting.

"Gotcha!" Ocelot felt what she was looking for, a hard, stone crystal in the disgusting wetness of the gristly organ. With all her strength, she wrested it out. Adrienne screamed in a way that onomatopoeia was powerless to render accurately.
"Y - you!!" Adrienne roared, her face twisted into inhuman expression. "That is MINE!" She raised all her tendrils, unwinding them from Sophie and Mariko, and letting them drop onto the floor.
"No, you fucking lunatic," Ocelot said. "It's not yours. It's hers!" She threw the stone on the ground, and crushed it underfoot.

"You little tramp," Adrienne said. "You do realise I'm going to kill you for that."
"No, sugar," Ocelot replied. "I really don't think you are." Adrienne turned around - and even she balked at what she saw. The tall, lovely Japanese woman who'd been moaning helplessly in her grip a moment before was transformed.

"All of you," Spectra said. "Get out of this room." Adrienne faced down with the restored heroine, now devoting all her attention to this new threat. Sophie just stared - not at Spectra, but at Ocelot, who had started to untie Yumi.
"She came for me..." she thought.
"NOW!" Spectra roared. "RrrgggghhhhAAAAHHHH!!" Surrounding herself in a golden, brilliant aura, Spectra opened her eyes fearfully wide, absorbing as much light as she possibly could. Sophie still didn't get the hint that sticking around was a bad idea - but Ocelot did. She ran past Spectra, and grabbed her hand, pulling her out with her, the lovely redhead overwhelmed with powerful emotion, followed by a bewildered Stellar.

"You lost to me before," Adrienne said. "You'll lose to me again. And I'll take those back."
"You will not," Spectra said. "You have no chance against me now." Adrienne grinned. She knew something Spectra seemed not to: she still had Yumi's power to absorb light.
"We'll see."

"HAAAGGHHHH!!" Spectra roared, sending a thick, powerful beam of light right into Adrienne. The villainess grinned - the beam hit her body, and was completely absorbed. The problem was, she had lost her immunity to being dazzled. The blast of light covered her whole body - and her eyes were blinded.
"AAAAGHH!" Adrienne roared, howling in pain. Her howl was released as a might burst of sound, but Spectra created a barrier to protect herself. Around her, though, the complex shook, and Adrienne's servants quickly deserted her, fleeing for their lives along with Madeleine. None of them were being paid enough to risk their lives for a madwoman.

"I'll get you!" Adrienne began firing off all her powers, blindly, her soundwaves, flame jets, blasts of ice - all were tearing her bunker to pieces. But she'd neglected Enhancegirl's power. They caused too many vibrations, too much shaking, so she didn't detect Spectra approaching her. She came right up behind her, and blasted her again - with heat.

"AUUGHH!" Adrienne collapsed, the bases of her tendrils burned to a crisp. They fell off her body, stinking of burning flesh.
"You had your chance," Spectra said. She plunged her hand into the gristly organ - and began tearing.
"Augh!!" Adrienne roared, as she lost her power over flies. "NNGHH!!" She lost her strength, her power over ice, and her sonic powers, as the abilities of Stellar were torn away. "HUUAGGHH!" The first power she'd ever taken, an immunity to nuclear radiation, was torn from her next. Then her flame jets. Then, last of all her senses dulled to uselessness, as Enhancegirl's powers left her. "Nnno...no..." she whimpered, exhausted and unbelieving.
"Yes," Spectra said, simply. She thrust her hand in one last time, to fry Adrienne from the inside.

But she couldn't do it. She thought of Sophie's face, her gentleness, her kindness...she couldn't betray that. She hauled Adrienne up, turning her around, holding her by the scruff of the neck.
"That love you sensed," Mariko said, "the love you mocked me with - that love just saved your life."
"Wh -" She didn't get a chance to say anything. Spectra focused her powers into a concussive blast, and hit Adrienne so hard that when doctors finally got to her, two hours later, they thought she was in a coma.

Spectra turned to the crystals. She focused her power and shattered each of them with a single beam of light. Thousands of miles away, in Korea, a woman felt two organs in her wrists regrow. Closer to home, a woman felt with shock that she could once again control insects. Another didn't notice anything as they regained their immunity to radiation - they had never needed it, and would never in their lives.

"Aah!!" Yumi Tae-Yeong gasped, a wonderful, tingling sensation running through her whole body as the Stars shone within her once again. "Y-yes...yes!" Sophie was almost tearful as she felt the rush of energy flow into her, her incredible senses returned to her, the world exploding with scent and colour.
"It's done," Spectra said. She let loose another blast at nothing in particular. She just wanted to make sure.

Awash with indescribable relief, Spectra walked slowly over to the other heroines that she and Ocelot had restored. She felt a wave of energy inside her, it felt strong and beautiful, like a mighty river inside her, flowing free throughout all of her. She smiled, then laughed. "I'm back...I'm back..." she said.

And a sudden thought came over her. She thought again of the feisty, yet gentle maiden who had saved her from total collapse, who had so sweetly taken her in her arms, and slept with her the entire night. She recalled the words they'd exchanged...and she wondered. Sophie seemed to know, to understand at least the respect Mariko had for her. If that was true then... had she been right? Was it so impossible that Sophie might return her -

And then she saw. In gratitude, and desperate relief, Enhancegirl hadn't been able to resist - she'd thrown herself into Ocelot's arms, and kissed her passionately, again and again and again.
"I'm yours..." she said, between each kiss. "Rachel, you - you fucking saved me again!"

Mariko stared, her arms dropping to her sides. Sophie's back was to her, so Ocelot was facing her. She happened to open her eyes slightly, even in the throes of her passion. She saw. She saw Mariko staring at them, saw the shock in her eyes, the paralysed, helpless expression. Ocelot saw, and Mariko saw that she saw. Ocelot smiled...and returned to Sophie's passionate embrace.

"Ahh..." Sophie sighed, as she finally broke the kiss. She remembered Mariko, and expected to see her panting and proud, her honour as a heroine, as a warrior restored. She expected to see a look of haughty satisfaction, and gratification, beauty, grace and power combined into one scintillating figure. It was perfect, after all: it had been Ocelot who had restored her power, but Spectra had defeated Adrienne, in a dazzling display of her raw might.

But she didn't see pride. She didn't see strength, rage, haughtiness, or any of the other things she would have expected from Spectra in a moment of what must surely have been a cathartic triumph. She saw only confusion, shock and - in what Sophie mistook for disapproval - heartache.
"Oh, Mar-, uh, Spectra," she stammered. "I...I guess I never, um...this is - oh, fuck..."
"Ocelot," the thief said. "Pleasure." Her smile was broad and sharp.
"Likewise," the heroine replied, now affecting the pride and poise that ordinarily came so naturally to her. She strutted, as if on a catwalk.
"Mariko, let me explain," Sophie said hurriedly, as the beautiful maiden passed her. "She's....Ocelot is - is -"
"Sophie," she said, coldly. "I assure you, there is no need to explain. In the first instance, you certainly aren't accountable to me for this sort of thing. In the second, the fact that she is here -" Mariko could not quite keep the venom out of her voice. "The fact that she is here," she continued, "rather suggests that she is more virtuous than you'd led me to believe." Addressing Rachel, she said: "All three of us owe you a great deal. Without your intervention, I cannot think what would have happened. You have my gratitude." She bowed slightly, and then strutted away.

"What's wrong with me?" Sophie thought. "Why do I...why do I feel so guilty?"
"Hey, hot stuff," Ocelot said. Sophie looked at her with those sparkling, emeald eyes that Ocelot found herself so drawn to of late. Forgetting Mariko as she was clasped in her paramour's arms, Sophie was full of gratitude and sweet submission. Rachel had done this, had saved Sophie from her ignominious fate, out of real wish to help her, a genuine desire to do something good. But it had also pushed Sophie right back to her - and this was not a side-effect about which Rachel had any complaints.

Yumi, meanwhile, paid scarce little attention to the human drama playing out before her. Her powers were back, she was satisfied with the nobility - if the futility - of her efforts. And yet all was not well. Adrienne's words had affected he so much because - Yumi realised - there was something in what she'd been saying. Who was she? Idol? Heroine? Both? Neither? She didn't know.
"What do I really want?" she said to herself. She didn't know that either. But this didn't make Yumi despair, or doubt herself. It gave her resolve. She would stay, here, in this country, where she was an unfamiliar face. She would find the space to discover just who Yumi Tae-Yeong really was - and if she could live in the same body as Stellar.

"Come on, Sofe," Ocelot said. "Let's get that sweet ass outta here."
"Sh-shut up," Sophie said. But she couldn't resist sidling up to her lover, and allowing the thief's hands to go wherever they pleased. If Rachel had ordered her - right there and then - to strip and have sex with her right there in the ruins of Adrienne's base, the only resistance she would have given would have been asking Stellar to turn around. And even then, if Rachel had asked...
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A few minutes before he opened the door to his faintly, though not consistently, stylish apartment, Ivan Nazarov had received a telephone call. Though he had in some sense been eager to receive such a call, especially from the person from whom he did - in fact - receive it, he had not held out high expectations of so doing.

"Good God, I look terrible!" he grumbled, obsessing in a mirror over the parting of his sleek, jet-black hair. "Why, of all nights, is my natural suaverie failing me tonight?" He quickly changed out of his work-clothes into what was, for all intents and purposes, an identical black suit, but cut slightly differently. "More rakish," Ivan said to himself.

As he heard a knock on his door, he almost yelped.
"Shitting balls-fuck!" he growled. A dash of hair gel - a quick adjustment to his tie - a couple of practices of his most seductive, yet relaxed, smile in the mirror - and he was ready.

He opened the door as casually as you like, as if there were all sorts of things that he could be doing, but he'd elected on a mere whim to admit this guest.
"Well, hello there my dear, I - well, hey there!" A pair of slender arms seized him round the midsection, as the tall, stunning young woman who had insisted on coming over kissed him with furious intensity.
"Mmmm..." Mariko whimpered into Ivan's mouth, pushing the two of them into the apartment, a high-heeled foot kicking at the door to shut it.

"Hey, Spectra," Ivan gasped, "didn't realise that you - whoa!" Mariko had maneuvered the two of them onto his felt couch, and he fell back as Mariko laid on top of him.
"This is what you want, right?" she said, her voice quavering. She was wearing a truly tiny black dress, barely going past her hips at all, and she took Ivan's hand, and pressed it against her right thigh. "You've lusted after me, I take it?"
"Well, that's put a little inelegantly," Ivan said, not exactly perturbed, but certainly surprised. "But - yes, I suppose that's the long and short of it."
"Then have me." She started grinding against him, her supple, willowy body soft and delicate.
"Wow, I didn't think it would be this easy!" Ivan thought to himself. He looked at Mariko's lovely face, her soft mouth, her smallish, rather cute nose, the graceful curve of her cheekbones: she was elegant, and radiant and - distraught. She was trying to hide it, but Ivan could see it in her eyes, and he wasn't even particularly good at reading people.

"Oh no," he thought.
"I'm not a nice guy," he thought.
"I've killed people!" he thought.
"This is nothing!" he thought.
"Oh...fuck," he said.

"What?" Mariko almost barked. "What's the problem?" Ivan almost didn't want to say. Here she was, one of the most attractive women he'd ever seen in his life, almost literally throwing herself at him - but it was just wrong. Not morally wrong - but Ivan just couldn't bring himself to have sex with a woman he didn't think would enjoy it.
"Something's up, dearie," he said. He gradually shuffled out from under her. "You're not here because of my rugged, masculine charms, are you?"
"What do you care?" Mariko snapped. She grabbed his wrist again, this time pressing it against her round, pert breast. "I'm pretty; you're a Lothario. Just do it!"
"Spectra - fuck's sake, this would be better if I actually knew your name - I may be a Lothario, a Casanova - a man for whom a night spent outside the arms of a lovely lady is -"
"I get it."
"Ah, right. My point is, I'm a cad...but not an utter cad." He looked at her more seriously. "Something's upset you, and you could probably had your pick of a hundred men. Women too, no doubt, if that's your thing. Yet you came to me."
"I had your card, didn't I?" Spectra shifted back. In her tiny, revealing dress, she now felt a little vulnerable, the initial illusion of passion having faded.

"My impression is you didn't think much of me," Ivan said. "I mean, I'm sure with a few glasses of fine wine, discussing just what a fine fellow I really am when you get to know me, I could have changed your mind - but as of right now, you think I'm a fool, and a dandy."
"You are."
"That's not the point," Ivan said, irritated at Mariko's superior mastery of the laconic. "My point is you came to someone for whom you had zero respect. Why? I'm sure you could have found someone you liked easily."
"I - you're quite handsome..." Mariko said, not able to meet his eye.
"I'm very handsome, but that isn't it either. You...wanted to do something you were ashamed of, didn't you?" Mariko looked him in the eye, and the words rang so sharply in her ear that she genuinely wondered if he shared a portion of his sister's gift. "Don't give me too much credit. I've seen it before. I've done it before." She looked shocked, afraid, even. "Well, I think you've figured out that this is a bad idea, so -"

"I -" Had Mariko been one iota weaker, or less reserved, or had she not restored a modicum of her self-belief by her vicious pummeling of Adrienne, she would have collapsed into tears. She would have wept that after all that, Sophie had chosen this thief, this criminal - a woman who, to Mariko's knowledge, had made a point of humiliating Sophie when she'd captured her. With her easy bearing, her sneer, her open sexuality - she was the opposite of everything Mariko was. And Sophie had chosen her. Mariko would have wept - but she was Mariko Asakura, and this man was hardly more than a stranger.

"You're right," Mariko said. "This was a mistake. I apologise for wasting your time." She stood up, began walking out.
"Hey, are you going to be alright?" Ivan said.
"Remember who you're talking to," she said. "I suppose I'm not quite as powerful as you...but I'm still Spectra. A city at night holds no perils for me."
"That's not what I mean."
"I know," Mariko said. "I...didn't expect you to be so -"
"Manly? Charming? Debonair?" Mariko smiled slightly.
"Gallant." She walked out, and Ivan watched the tall, long-legged beauty leave, with just the hint of a sense that he wished he was more villainous, sometimes, than he actually was.

It was as Mariko was walking along the streets that she happened to pass another young beauty, not quite as tall or long-limbed, but more voluptuous, and paler too. It was Natalya Nazarov, otherwise known as the heroine Insyte. She was visiting her brother in a bit of a rage - he had almost killed the villain Monsieur-The-Bomb earlier that day, when the man had escaped during a transfer from ordinary prison to the Penitentiary Supreme - and had then gloated about it afterwards to the police.

"If he's going to be an active superhero again," she thought. "He cannot behave in this -" It was just at that moment, however, when Mariko happened to pass her. The Japanese heroine did not notice her, and she was gone too quickly for the shy Natalya to call after her. But in those brief moments, she felt a powerful telepathic impression from her.

She felt love. Deep, rich, romantic love, born of a slowly kindled affection and the blossoming of a friendship. It was couched in firm respect and admiration, kept aflame by sensual passion and longing. It was a love which took in the whole of the person being loved, where even the faults added to the sweet, tender ardour of Mariko's desire. It was such a beautiful feeling that Natalya was deeply moved just sensing it. She wondered who it was who had made the proud, closed off young woman feel such rich passion for.

And then an image popped into her mind: Mariko and Sophie, Sophie Scott, the heroine Enhancegirl. She saw their limbs entwined as they lay next to each other in bed, Sophie gently nuzzling against her, whispering in her ear. She saw, now, Sophie asleep, and Mariko tenderly stroking her hair.
"Oh, how wonderful!" Natalya gasped, interpreting what she saw - which she knew to be memory, not fantasy - as the tender embraces of two lovers. She forgot her anger for Ivan in an instant, clutching her hands against her chest in selfless joy that these two had found each other. Even being a telepath, it seemed, did not remove the possibility for misunderstanding.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Mmmh..." Sophie mewed, as she woke from a deep sleep. Her body still tingled with pleasure - she and Rachel had spent half the night making love in ways that Sophie had never imagined were possible, the maiden thrilling as Rachel did with the gorgeous redhead whatever she liked, and Sophie accepted all of it. Even as she woke she was still exhausted. "Ah, crap..." she sighed, seeing that the clock had gone past eleven. This time she'd missed a seminar - but she didn't think that was why she still had that guilty feeling in her stomach.

"Hey," she said to Rachel as she came into the living room.
"Hi," the thief said, surprisingly curtly. "I guess you slept well."
"You're not kidding," Sophie smiled. She touched Rachel's hand. "Especially after everything you did to me..." She giggled. "I didn't know I could bend that way..." But Rachel gave merely the faintest of smiles in response. "Weird..." Sophie thought. But she didn't think too much of it. Rachel continued to be utterly mysterious to her in many ways.

As Sophie fixed herself a bagel, she felt her phone buzzing. Before Rachel had whisked her off, she'd stopped at her dorm to let Kirsten know that she was alright; extricating herself from that conversation had taken a pretty silver tongue (she'd said she needed to give a statement to the police), but she'd manage to get her phones back. As it was, she expected it to be Kirsten calling to check up on her - but it was not.

"Hello?"
"Sophie it's...it's Natalya," she heard a shy voice from the other end of the line.
"Hey, Nat," Sophie said, a little concerned. "What's the damage?"
"What? Oh, no, no - nothing like that." Her tone of voice was strange. Not quite as shy as it normally was. Admittedly she was a little better on the telephone than in face-to-face conversation because she couldn't sense people's thoughts, but this was different.
"So what is it?"
"I just wanted to say how happy I am for you, Sophie. I've sensed the thoughts of...of thousands of people, and I've only very rarely felt a love like that."
"A - a love? What do you mean?"
"I suppose I only saw her briefly," Natalya explained. "And I didn't mean to pry...but it was there. Sophie, she loves you so much."
"She - she does?" Sophie looked at Rachel, and Rachel looked back, a little confused. But Sophie was staring at her with soft eyes, astonished, but excited at the same time. "Natalya only met her before we started...she already loved me? She loves me now?" Sophie surmised that she was only telling her now because she knew that they were in a relationship. "Mariko must have told her..."

"I was so surprised," Natalya said.
"I'll fucking bet you were!" Sophie laughed, feeling light, and a little confused. Did Ocelot really love her? She had come to save her after all - twice - risking life and limb for Sophie's protection.
"She's so closed off...so proud...but she's opened herself to you. She's so deeply in love with you, it's...it's beautiful." Natalya laughed slightly.
"I don't know if I'd describe her as proud, exactly," Sophie laughed, a little giddy. "Kinda smug, maybe."
"Oh, I never thought Mariko was smug," Natalya said. "She's always been...genteel, even in her self-assurance. Sophie? Hello, Sophie?" The line dropped.

Sophie's arms shook. She suddenly felt hot all over, her legs trembled. She turned away from Rachel, almost on the point of hyperventilating.
"Something the matter?" Rachel said. "Not bad news, I hope."
"I have to go," Sophie mumbled, and ran full tilt out of the apartment. She slammed the door shut - but then stopped, leaning against it. "She...Mariko's in love with me?" She felt herself sinking down to the floor. "Mariko...Mariko loves me..." she repeated endlessly in her head. Each time was like a hammerblow inside her. She clutched at her chest, feeling her heart pound violently and rapidly. There were spots in front of her eyes - she felt like she was about to faint. "Mariko's in love with me..." she said again, and felt something tingling inside her.

Inside, Rachel was unaware of Sophie's realisation, but she was still in a fury. It was just as the two of them had finished their fourth lovemaking session of the night, and an exhausted Sophie had flopped, asleep, onto the bed. Rachel had kissed her as she slept, tenderly, affectionately, feeling for the first time that Sophie wasn't just someone to dominate and control. She felt like she had a girlfriend, a partner. And she liked it. And the she heard a soft, tender whisper from Sophie's lovely lips.
"Mariko..."

[DrDominator9]

The human dynamics are as much fun as the peril. Terrific chapter.

Man, you write fast!! Or was this all written earlier and is just being posted gradually?

[Damselbinder]

The human dynamics are as much fun as the peril. Terrific chapter.

Man, you write fast!! Or was this all written earlier and is just being posted gradually?

Thank you! The romance angle is working well then?

It was written earlier, but the gap in parts is representative of the writing time. I finished the second part of EG-10 about an hour ago and will be posting both parts gradually throughout the week.

[shevek]

Uh, oh. Love triangle. Rachel's gonna get pissed. Ocelot vs Spectra battle! The writing is great, man!