The Perils of Valora 2: What a Scoop! - Now Complete!

[Damselbinder]

Last time, on the Perils of Valora: We meet Valerie Orville, a twenty-year old superheroine with vast strength and impressive durability. Working as a photographer, she struggles to support herself and her sickly father. She stumbles onto a botched operation of a new state funded superhero team called the Bombshells, and through her heroics is invited to join. However, it soon becomes clear that this team has been assembled as a propaganda exercise for the American military, humiliated by arch-villain the Supremacist over a period known as the 'Dark Days'. One of the military men involved slaps Valora after she saves a group of marines, and she sees red, and badly hurts him. This means she gets kicked out of the team, and she moves back to her home state of Maine in disgrace.

It was not, exactly, that Milo Patáky had been bullied as a child. His nervous manner, his hunched shoulders, his ratlike way of clasping his hands together: all of these might easily have made him the target for some loutish thug with a chip on their shoulder - but it didn't. Milo hadn't been befriended by his peers, it was true, but they never went out of their way to give him trouble. But small, frightened, sickly Milo had always known they could have, and he'd always felt they wanted to, and so he'd always hired a protector, just in case. Back in grade school that had meant bribing Billy Redgrave with twinkies when Billy's mother forced him to go on a desperately needed diet. In high school it had meant blackmailing Ralph Hoffman when Milo found out Ralph was having an affair with his homeroom teacher. Now, of course, Milo could just buy protection, and he spent a great amount of money on it. He scrimped and penny-pinched over just about everything else, but he was liberal indeed with the salaries of his bodyguards. His answer to 'who will guard the guards themselves?' was simple: "They watch themselves if you pay them well enough."


In Milo's expensive-ish home, there were five armed guards. One in the lobby, two at the back entrance, one on the upper floor, one in a side-room monitoring the security cameras, and one parked across the street watching from a distance. One was ex-military, two were ex-law enforcement, and the other two had both come highly recommended from others in Milo's business. Enough to reassure even the most paranoid man of his personal safety. Yet Milo, between gulps of coffee, was still tapping his fingers.


"Where is he?" Milo thought, glancing backwards at the door behind him. He ground his teeth when he was irritated, causing his already prominent cheekbones to look as if they were ready to burst through his skin. He tried to distract himself, and focused on his coffee, on the newspaper in front of him. It was a local rag, the Portland Sun. He'd never have sullied his hands with such "small-town bilge", but he had a vested interest in this issue in particular. The article, by one 'Saskia Dubois', was a simple enough little summary of the opinion poll deadlock between two candidates for Maine's state senate, in Portland's most populous district. Hardly end of the world stuff, but it was thence that Milo's anxiety came.


The door opened behind him. Milo wasn't prepossessed enough to stop himself from wheeling round expectantly. "James!" he spluttered, a drop of coffee flying from between his lips. But the first flush of embarrassment was quenched when he realised he'd been mistaken. It wasn't James - it was his wife.
"Good morning, Milo," she said, looking at him without really looking at him.
"Morning, Harper," Milo mumbled. His lips squirmed slightly, as close as he could get to a smile in his agitated state. His eyes flickered down to Harper's calves, sticking out from her knee-length nightdress. He was not admiring them, exactly, merely noting that they'd not been waxed quite as well as they normally were - but this was observation merely, not judgement. Harper's body, her thirty-four year old body, was her own business.


He watched her go about her morning routine with faint interest. She was still quite attractive, though she'd never been a great beauty. Her shoulders were narrow, her hips and her legs very straight, and an air of emaciation hung about her like a heavy mist. They didn't talk about it, but he guessed that Harper hadn't always been sure of a full belly when she was growing up. He felt sorry for her, even if only a little. She never tried to elicit his sympathies, though. He liked that about her. He liked quite a few things about her: she was efficient, relatively intelligent, and best of all she knew to keep herself to herself. He didn't love her, but she had never expected him to. That wasn't how this worked.


Milo observed Harper looking at him, saw her lively blue eyes - her only genuinely beautiful feature - fixed on his. He saw quite clearly her train of thought:
"He looks anxious. What's the matter with him?" Then: "No, I'd better not ask." Then: "As if I even wanted to know in the first place." Milo was frequently able to observe people's trains of thought in this manner. It meant that he didn't actually have to talk to them as much. With his wife, this was an especially useful talent.


So when James Oleander entered Milo's kitchen, Milo did not actually need to see him to realise he'd come. He saw it quite plainly in his wife's face. Her pupils dilated, her breathing quickened, and she began to sweat. Most men would have taken issue with their wives being so openly and unapologetically attracted to one of their subordinates, but Milo didn't mind. How could he? James Oleander was the most beautiful man he had ever seen in his life.


"Mornin' boss," James said, an easy smile on his outlandishly handsome face. He had chiselled, manly features, but with a touch of aristocratic dignity in them too. His eyes were such a light brown that in certain light they looked almost yellow. His smooth voice had a hint of his native New York, but was mostly stretched out into a thick, Bostonian drawl. "I can wait a while if you're still havin' your breakfast, boss."
"What? No, don't be ridiculous," Milo harrumphed, gesturing at the seat on the other side of the counter. James thanked him, moving into view with fluid, easy grace. He was tall, slim, broad-shouldered and strong-looking without seeming bulky. He moved and spoke with a kind of easy confidence that was impossible to fake, a confidence in himself so unshakeable and absolute that it was astonishing that it was he who worked for Milo and not the other way around. The way he spoke to Harper, the slight touch to her elbow, both polite and ingratiating, the quick, non-committing pleasantries that allowed Harper to say as much or as little as she liked without seeming dismissive or overbearing - masterful! Milo enjoyed watching James charm his wife the same way he would enjoy watching a craftsman work on an elaborate piece of furniture.


There was one thing, though, that gave James away: his fashion sense. He was wearing a double-breasted suit, and he thought he looked very suave in it, very á la mode. But Milo, who being so naturally unattractive had to make a huge effort with dress, knew that nobody who was anybody dressed like James Oleander. James thought it made him look like a city trader. Perhaps in the early nineties he'd have been right. Now? It made him look like a gangster, which was lucky, since that was exactly what he was.


"Well?" Milo said, pushing his newspaper to the side. He crossed his thin legs, lifted his chin a little.
"Nothing too dramatic," James replied. "We had a little problem with some cheating kids from New York, eh? Couple of math majors who thought they could get away with a bit of card-counting."
"I trust you put them to rights," Milo replied. "Not too savage, I hope?"
"Brandon got a little carried away," James replied, speaking of one of his security men at the Falmouth Grand, "broke a finger or two."
"Oh, that's hardly savagery," Milo said. "I'm sure Brandon was just being enthusiastic."


James laughed. Milo was aware he was putting it on, but he was putting it on convincingly. This pleased him: James felt the need to ingratiate himself with his boss, but at the same time respected him enough to make his flattery subtle, convincing. The forms, so to speak, were being observed.
"Boss, I'm sensing you didn't ask me here just for the, ah, minutiae," James said.
"You 'sense' right," Milo replied. He slid the newspaper he'd been reading across the counter top's smooth surface, spinning it in James' direction and jabbing his finger against the article that offended him. He saw James quickly read it, saw the flicker of concern in his sub-ordinate's face, but the easy confidence and control wasn't seriously challenged by the bad news. He even seemed slightly amused, and was about to say something conciliatory to his employer. This angered Milo a little: James thought he was being paranoid.
"This should not have happened," Milo hissed. "I hardly see the benefit in making a clandestine arrangement that ends up in the papers three days after its arrangement."


James had feared this would happen. Milo had been vacillating for years about whether or not to sidle into the political world. Normally his cautiousness was a strength: his organisation had slowly, humbly built itself over a very long time, but if he was going to keep expanding now, Milo Patáky had to grow a pair. Finally, finally James had managed to get him to make a hefty political donation, but Milo had griped and grumbled during the whole process.
"I don't like his platform," he'd said. "'Bob Barton' sounds like a gameshow host, not a state senator," he'd said. "It's not as if my reputation is particularly clean," he'd said, "so Barton might not want to take my money."
James, in an unguarded moment, had laughed in Milo's face at the notion that a politician would refuse money. He'd regretted this instantly: Milo was the kind of man who stored away humiliations, who kept them alive in his memory to savour his retaliation. But, through compliments and deference, cajoling - and the occasional 'accidental' touch on his boss' shoulder, or hand, or arm - James had managed to get back in Milo's good graces, and convince him of the scheme's utility.


Milo's first donation, of $850,000, was the subject of the offending headline. Legally, this was astronomically over the limit for a campaign contribution: it all but guaranteed Barton's election. But the donation technically came from a PAC, a PAC controlled by the Portland Culinary and Bar Worker's Union. Of course, most of the union's members worked in Milo's casinos. Hence Milo's anger: officially speaking, his name wasn't supposed to be connected with the donation.
"This was always going to happen eventually, eh, boss?" James said. He turned his head a little to the side, smiled, as if trying to placate a traffic cop. "It's just a little sooner than we expected."
"That is not true," Milo replied. "I understand that everyone would know that I was behind the donation: I stand to materially benefit from Barton's election in a hundred different ways. But this isn't rumour," he said, jabbing the newspaper three times with his index finger. "This - just...listen!" He straightened himself. "'The donation came as a much needed shot in the arm for the embattled senator's flagging campaign, and sources inside Barton's campaign have confirmed that the one behind it is would-be tycoon Milo Patáky, presumably seeking to expand the already sprawling Falmouth Grand Casino.' You see?"


James clicked his tongue. Milo had a point: the fact that the Portland Sun was willing to be so direct was a problem. Someone in Barton's campaign had spoken to the press, and there was now genuine danger of police involvement. Worse than that, there was going to be press attention on Milo himself.
"Are you going to speak to them?" James asked.
"To the press? Certainly not."
James smiled. "That's not what I meant, boss. I mean are you going to speak to Barton, or would you like me to do it?" His tone was exceptionally well-calculated. Milo had perfect liberty to refuse or accept without seeming dismissive, or demanding.
"You do it. If I start throwing my weight - such as it is - around the place, he might think I'm panicking, that I'm going to back out."


Milo frowned deeply. "I don't like this. Getting into bed with senators and governors and so on."
"It's how we push things to the next level, boss."
"To the next...?" Milo abhorred a neologism, but didn't let himself get distracted. "Owning a casino has one person at the top. Even selling drugs has a clear, neatly defined food chain, with one person at the top. In both cases, me. But this?" He shook his head, scowling deeply. "I can't control Barton. Even with the money I can't force him to do anything. He's said he's going to ensure my planning applications go through, but what do I do if he welshes? Merely threaten not to give him more money? There are too many uncertainties. I dislike uncertainties."
"Sir," James said, leaning forward and lowering the tone of his voice. "You don't exactly have a squeaky-clean reputation. Forgive me for being blunt, but you will never be able to expand your business in this state without buying favour. You could just leave things as they are, but..."
"'But you want to get out of drugs' - I know, I know. You're right, you're right." Milo massaged his temples. "Fine. Fine..." He tented his fingers. "Change of plans. I'll talk to Barton myself. One on one. Impress the importance of the situation, reassure him of my commitment and, ah, make a few veiled threats, I suppose. I want you dealing with Novák."
"The Bouncing Czech?" James smiled. Novák was a rival of Milo's - another man who fed Maine's drug trade. "What do you want me to do?""
"When I said 'dealing with Novák', I meant precisely that. Deal with him. Sell it all off as a package, if you can: our territory in Portland, our Canadian connections, our cooks - make a show of haggling, but it goes cheap, so be it."
"Don't you worry, boss," James said. "Never met a stone yet I couldn't squeeze blood out of."


James escorted his boss to his car, after flashing one last smile to Harper. She smiled back, biting her lower lip. James almost laughed at the brazenness of it. Sure enough, Milo noticed, but he didn't care: he knew full well that Harper was routinely unfaithful. If she were unfaithful with James, it would make no difference to him. Better someone Milo trusted than some rent-boy who might try to blackmail her or something. Still, trust was not friendship, exactly, so he and James barely spoke during the journey. There were practical reasons too: Milo may not have been Al Capone, but still he was always paranoid about being bugged by the police. Even if it was motivated by paranoia, the silence was still appreciated by both men. They both found each other a little difficult.


They were about eighty metres from the rear entrance to the Falmouth Grand when James spotted trouble. "Dang," he muttered. "Here come the vultures, eh?" By vultures he meant, of course, journalists. He wasn't too worried. The crowd wasn't large, and a few of his security men had with their burliness intimidated even the most vicious paparazzos into staying back, so there was a clear enough path for him to escort Milo to safety. He wasn't worried...but Milo didn't quite share his attitude.


"Oh hell!" His eyes, already prominent at the best of times, were bulging out of his head. "What are they doing here?!"
"They probably just want a few photographs, eh?" James said. "It's not a big deal."
But Milo didn't listen. He bellowed at the driver to push through the throng, and the driver tried to obey as much as he could, but there was only so far he could go. The journalists began to move towards the car. Milo had never seen so many press in one place before, certainly not because of him. Paranoia caught him by the throat: he was exposed, discovered - police would be waiting in his office to clap him in irons. He was about to make a very stupid order, to have the driver slam on the brakes and hard reverse. At best this would have produced some unspeakably bad press. At worst it might have made people more suspicious of him, drawn some real attention. But all was well: James Oleander was there.


He acted immediately. He grabbed Milo by the arm, pushed open the door, and all but dragged him out of the vehicle. Immediately the journalists pressed close, yelling out questions about Milo's donations, rumours of his gangland ties. Photographers pushed forward trying to get a good shot, but the security men kept them back. With that, and with the way that James was positioning himself relative to Milo, they couldn't get much that a newspaper would want to print.


Yet just as it seemed that James' quick-thinking had, if not saved the day, at least avoided an awkward and embarrassing situation there was the sound of a scuffle. The security guards were, to a man, huge and heavily built, and had been pretty easily holding back even the pushiest of the crowd of journalists. Yet suddenly there were shouts. One of the security men found himself knocked to the floor, and didn't understand how. Someone had broken through the lines, rushed right past them. They were so fast that neither James nor Milo had even noticed them until they were only a couple of metres away.


"Mr Patáky!"
Milo and James both turned their heads, just as the camera's flash went off. They were directly in frame, looking right down the lens: had the shot been planned meticulously in advance it could not have been clear, better focused, or with such dramatic depth of field.
"What the -?" James moved between the photographer and Milo, but he knew it was too late. So did the photographer: there were no more flashes. By that time the security guard who'd been knocked down had picked himself up, and barrelled up to grab his assailant by the arm. Already having snapped their prize, they didn't offer any resistance to being hauled off. But just as they lowered their camera, just as they turned around, their eyes and James' happened to meet.


It wasn't merely that this photographer was attractive. It wasn't merely her long, blonde hair, her buxom chest, her long legs and womanly curves that made James sit up and pay attention. It wasn't even her confident, sparkling blue eyes. It was something about her expression, something about the way that she looked at him and Milo - there was a kind of superiority about it. It was not merely the smugness of a paparrazo who'd got a good shot to sell. It was a kind of angry, dignified scorn. It struck him as familiar, as something quite specific, but he couldn't think why.


Yet just as he was about to put his finger on it, he heard a wheezing noise from behind him. Turning back, he saw that Milo was doubled over, gasping in desperation for breath. James almost couldn't believe it: Milo was having an asthma attack.
"Sir, your inhaler's in your left inside pocket." James watched Milo scramble for it, shove it in his mouth and take a few gasping lungfuls of air. He recovered relatively quickly, though he was obviously humiliated to have let James see him like that. Again.
"Thank you," Milo mumbled, straightening himself and his tie. "Alright, are you coming in or not?"
For a moment, James did not reply. He had to compose himself, had to make sure that the thought he had just had would not betray itself on his face. Milo would have seen it, and that would not have been good. He smiled, clapped Milo genially on the back, and escorted him inside. He looked over his shoulder one last time, trying to see that blonde photographer again. She worried him, and he wasn't sure why.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

For about twenty-five minutes after her sneak attack on Milo Patáky, Valerie felt great. She sashayed down the streets near Casco Bay, in her long, brown coat, feeling pretty damned pleased with herself. It was a great shot. She knew that without even having to look at the print. She'd get page 4 or 5 easy, maybe even the front page if it was a slow news day. And the look on their faces! She couldn't resist replaying it in her mind, the look of shock on Patáky's face, and of that other man too. Corrupt, rich men who hid behind the protection wealth could buy them, criminals who thought they could tamper with the democratic process, dumbstruck by one plucky girl with a camera.


"A camera and superhuman strength," Valerie reminded herself. She'd never have got her magnificent shot if she hadn't shoved aside that security guard. She almost felt as if that were cheating, in a way, using an advantage that none of her competitors had, but to the extent that she felt bad, she didn't feel bad for long. After all, how did she know the other photographers she'd been jostling with didn't have such 'advantages'? They might have had superhuman vision, or accuracy, or just an enhanced ability to keep a steady hand. Anyway, in her current straits, Valerie needed all the help she could get.


Three months since she'd left California. Three months since she'd been kicked out of Lance Van der Boek's Bombshells and moved back to Maine. Three months of skrimping and saving to support herself and her father, balancing her time between her photojournalism and her...other job. It wasn't easy. She didn't have much of anything in the way of spare cash - but she was getting by. Certainly a lot better than she'd been doing back in Cali.


Certainly a lot worse than she'd been doing as a Bombshell.


"Damn it!" Valerie kissed her teeth. She was aware that she'd developed a really bad habit over the past few months: every time she was in a good mood, she would torment herself with memory, memory of her anger and her foolishness. Memory of Maria, Debra and Cecily. Of Lance. Of Oliver. "But that's in the past," Valerie reminded herself. "It's over. Finished." Her rebuke stopped her from tumbling down a pit of reminiscence, but it didn't restore her good mood.


By the time she returned to the offices of the Portland Sun, Valerie's mood was truly foul. She went straight to the Herald's dark room, avoiding conversation as much as possible. To encourage their photographers to shoot with film, the Sun still kept up an in-house dark room, and that's where Valerie went to develop her negatives. This was the part she found most difficult about being a photographer, if only because it was quite technical, and rather tedious. Truth be told, she'd never really seen much of a difference between analogue and digital photography, especially when comparing the best to the best, but the - expensive - camera she owned was analogue, so she'd had to learn.


This had been routine for Valerie for some time now. Spend the day shooting, come back and develop, hand the shots to a sub-editor, rinse and repeat. She travelled all over the city, all over Maine sometimes, and she found satisfaction in that. She'd made friends with some of the other women her age who worked there, and hung out with them after work sometimes. She'd even gone to the gym with one of them, until six weeks had passed and her membership fee had become more than Valerie could afford. She had a life. She had a living. It was fine. She was fine.


A couple of hours after entering the dark room, Valerie had a selection of prints, in a variety of sizes and contrasts. She didn't enjoy the process of developing film, but there was a relaxing monotony about it. Getting a look at the prints themselves hadn't hurt either: it was easily the best candid photograph she'd ever taken. She kept a copy for her portfolio, and brought the rest upstairs, beginning to feel a touch of genuine pride in her work. It was certainly nice to find some somewhere.


The Portland Sun's offices weren't altogether impressive. They had four floors of a Bayside high-rise, including the basement they kept their darkroom in. A substantial downgrade from their old Eastside building, yes, but better than the digs of most of their competitors. Valerie quite liked it, as a paper as well as as an employer: there was a sort of tradition of promising Maine journalists cutting their teeth at the Sun, so the writing was generally high quality. Valerie saw one of those writers, a young woman named Saskia Dubois, in the office of their features editor, probably trying to wrangle time for another special report out of him. She was a rising star - it was doubtful that she'd even last the year before being snapped up by the Post or the Times. She was a woman of talent, and potential, and though she was always friendly - very friendly - Valerie envied her. She was going places fast. Valerie felt like she was going nowhere at all.


She dumped her prints on one of the sub-editors' desk with a note marked 'Pataky shots'. She hoped that the sub in question would be impressed: when they'd given her the assignment, they clearly hadn't been expecting fine art. "Just try to get his face in shot: we don't have any pictures of his face" - that was all they'd said. Valerie wondered idly why that was.
"Patáky likes to keep his face out of the papers," she thought. "He's probably more than just a shady casino owner." She had a vague feeling of wanting to know more, to investigate, but she was a photographer, not a journalist. She wouldn't really know where to begin. And as for her...other persona...well, that part of her life just didn't have the time. "Speaking of which..."


It was only the early afternoon, but Valerie was done for the day: she'd worked late the previous night covering a basketball game. So the lovely blonde found herself with a few hours of free time - yet there was to be no rest for her. As pleased and grateful as she was for her job at the Sun, it just wasn't enough by itself. Every other salaried photographer at the Sun had at least a minor in photojournalism, and they all - she knew - earned more than she did by quite some way. She wasn't resentful: her hire had been, she knew, a favour from the editor-in-chief to her father. And it was because of her father that it wasn't enough. She needed her other face to make up the difference.


She needed her other name.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Yeah, motherfucker, I got what you need," was certainly what Skee-Ball - real name James Thompson - was trying to say. It came out as something like: "Yrr, murrfurr, I gaatchu ni." Fortunately for Skee-Ball, his customers didn't care much about his diction. They stuffed some bills into his hand, he stuffed an 8-ball of coke into theirs, they drove or shuffled away. But Skee-Ball, alas, would never be at the head of some Escobarian drug empire. Everything was an affectation: the hoodie, the baggy trousers, the backwards baseball cap, the deliberately slurred way he talked - it was a ridiculous, insulting imitation of a West Coast gangster.


And it wasn't just that, of course. The man was a rank amateur: any dealer worth their salt would take the money from the customer, then send them to another guy to pick up the drugs themselves. But Skee-Ball had never quite figured this out, and any police officer watching would have seen the entire transaction, could have arrested him immediately on quite serious charges. Someone so incompetent wouldn't have been able to ingratiate themselves with bigwigs like Milo Patáky, even if he was on the absolute bottom rung of the ladder, and it was only for this that he had survived so long. He wasn't on anybody's radar. Certainly, he hadn't been on anyone's radar until about twenty minutes earlier.


Young superheroes and, alas, stupid superheroes often thought that crime was everywhere, that lawbreakers could be found under every rock. This was, alas, untrue. Your odds even in the worst-policed cities of actually finding a crime in progress if you just looked around randomly were very low. Valerie had found that out the hard way in her first few weeks, routinely missing her quotas. But she'd gradually reacquainted herself with Portland, had begun to map out the likely spots where she would find criminality. The West End was almost always the best place to start, and sure enough she'd found a target.


She spent a little time taking photographs - this time with a cheap, disposable camera - just to make sure that nobody down at the local precinct would try to screw her out of a collar. As a state-registered superhero she needed eight arrests a week to keep her salary going, and she'd discovered roadblock after roadblock to that process. The police wouldn't accept that she'd had probable cause, or they forgot to file the paperwork in time, or the county office didn't file it, or the state office didn't file it, and when that did happen then it took weeks to get it resolved and get backdated pay...the system was a mess.


However, right then the only one at fault was Valerie herself. It was Thursday, and she'd only made four arrests that week. She needed to spend the entire rest of her day, and all her free time the next day chasing after criminals if she was going to make it. Fortunately, there was no way in hell any police precinct could turn her away if she brought Skee-Ball in. She hadn't even been properly scouting yet, just getting a sense of the vibes of this part of Portland before really trying to sniff out potential targets. Yet there Skee-Ball had been, not even trying to hide the fact that he was a drug dealer. She still couldn't believe he was being so brazen.
"I oughta be able to arrest him just on grounds of taste," Valerie thought. But the drugs would have to do, and so Valerie prepared herself for what she imagined would be a very easy arrest.


"Yhh, yhh, mrrfhhhrr," Skee-Ball mumbled, as another car went by. They slowed down, obviously in the market for what he was selling, took one look at him, and immediately drove off. "Ah gatchuu - ey man, fuck you!" Skee-Ball waved all kinds of obscenities in the driver's direction. It would be untrue to say that he was known for patience and restraint. Still, eventually he ran out of invectives to hurl, and he turned back around. That was when his jaw dropped.
"I thought the customer was always right," the woman in front of him said. She was taller than him, shapely, poised and fantastically pretty. Her wavy, blonde hair framed a lovely face, with pouting red lips and bright blue eyes, and a confident, noble strength undimmed by her travails. She wore a kind of jacket-leotard, blue, made of some space-age fabric, partly unzipped to reveal her sumptuous cleavage, two large, pert breasts pushing tightly against the material of her leotard. Her calves were covered by dark-red boots, but from the knee to the waist her long legs were covered merely by translucent, satin tights, completely exposing her womanly thighs. She had that quality to her, that quality that in a lesser person would have made her look ridiculous - certainly dressed as she was - yet for some chosen few, it only made her all the more beautiful, all the more fearsome. She was an honest-to-God superhero, and she was there for him.
"The name's -" Valora didn't even have a chance to finish before Skee-Ball started running. "Really?" she muttered to herself, hands on her curvy hips. "Alright, chump, if that's how you want to do it..."


Say what you want about Skee-Ball's skills as a drug dealer, the boy could run. And run he did, jumping fences, vaulting into people's gardens, trying to leave as difficult a trail to follow as possible. But for all his genuinely impressive athleticism, Skee-Ball's fashion sense let him down more than just aesthetically. His baggy trousers kept slipping down, and he kept having to haul them back up as he ran, giving him a loping, stuttering gait. Still, he was going pretty fast, and he managed to get to an alley he'd been aiming for, hoping that his pursuer wouldn't see him turn down it. It wasn't too dumb a strategy: there were several other side-streets nearby, and Skee-Ball might have dodged into any of them. The only problem was, he was assuming that his opponent had the same view of things that he did.


Valora, of course, could not fly. She could, however, jump very high, and very far, and increasingly accurately as she got used to using her powers like this. So when Skee-Ball rounded a corner and she lost sight of him, all she had to do was jump, and she got an effective bird's eye view. It was all the better when he turned into that alley: she easily leapt up the five stories of the building on its South side, saw him scurrying, and hopped down to intercept him, dropping like a missile right in his path.


"What the - wh - the - the fuck - lady, you - I - aahhh!" Skee-Ball stammered. He tried to run again, but Valora grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, threw him onto the ground with an infinitesimal fraction of her strength.
"It's not worth it," Valora said, her voice cool, strong. "Right now I've only got you for distribution. Give me trouble and I'll have you for resisting arrest too."
"Y-you aren't a cop!" Skee-Ball retaliated, climbing back to his feet. His gangster affectations had noticeably slipped.
Valora pinched the bridge of her nose. She was getting a little sick of explaining herself. "I'm a registered super, chump. You're gonna be just as arrested as if I were a cop. Get it?"
"Bullshit!" Skee-Ball cried out, and then did more or less the stupidest thing he possibly could have done. He drew a knife.


Valora would have laughed if she'd been in a better mood. Did people not get it? After all these years did people not understand that there really wasn't any point in putting up a fight in situations like these? She was a superhuman. A very powerful superhuman at that. He could have no more harmed her with his knife than he could have with a cotton bud. Nevertheless, there was a silver lining to Skee-Ball's desperate stupidity: it gave Valora a chance to practice.


She took up a fighting stance, fists raised, the left side of her body turned towards him so that a right handed punch would have the most possible wind-up. She crouched slightly, narrowing her eyes as she focused on him. She had to admit, though, that other than just looking out for if he was about to attack her, she didn't have much of an idea of what she was looking for. Valora fancied herself as a powerful fighter, yes, but she was no martial artist. It occasionally worried her that she just coasted by on the level of her strength, and so when opportunities like this presented themselves, chances to hone her reflexes and skills, she took them.


Skee-Ball, of course, didn't realise any of this. He thought her fighting stance meant that she was not as mighty as she'd seemed, that she could be hurt by his weapon. So, he lunged at her, trying to slash her across the neck. But she stepped back, his knife hitting nothing but air. He tried again, aiming to thrust his knife in her stomach. This time she didn't just dodge: she caught him by the wrist and threw him past her, using his own momentum against him. Or at least that was the idea: she'd been trying to keep herself to a roughly human level of strength to make the practice as useful as possible, but she overdid it, and threw him about fifteen feet forward.
"Damn it," she muttered to herself. She wondered if the move would still have worked if he'd been as strong as her. Still, she was ultimately there to arrest him, not to spar with him. "Give up, kid," she said, her voice echoing like a clear, strong knell.


Skee-Ball heard her, and he was tempted to obey. Being as brainless as he was did not make life easy, and sometimes it did feel as if giving up would be easier. But he couldn't bring himself to. He had some strange pride in the way of life he'd chosen, and he felt that he at least owed it to himself to put up a fight. Growling, he leapt up, and charged at Valora, bellowing, fancying himself a warrior, a latter day bandit of the streets. And perhaps, since Valora was being sporting, he might have been able to give a fairly good accounting of himself. But as he sprang forward, his baggy trousers slipped down his waist, and bunched at his ankles. He slipped, flailed, and fell flat on his forehead, nearly knocking himself unconscious.
"...huh." Valora was a little irritated. The defeat of Skee-Ball would hardly go down in the annals of great superheroic deeds. She didn't even particularly feel like she'd made the world a better place. "But he's a criminal. Just because it was easy to arrest him doesn't mean he deserves punishment any less." Even if he was back out on the street again in two months, justice would still have been done. All the better, in fact - Valora could use him to fill her quota again.


Valora hauled Skee-Ball up, made sure that he wasn't actually in serious danger, and cuffed him. There was a special number given to registered heroes that she could call to have him picked up by the police, but that could sometimes take hours. Besides, the nearest precinct wasn't too far away, and it would probably be faster just to take him there herself - another fringe benefit of her enhanced strength. So far so good, she thought: a quick buck.


Yet as with so many things in Valerie's life, this was not going be as simple as it ought to have been. She did not realise that she was being watched as she made her arrest. She did not see the furious, desperate scowl on the face of the one watching her. She heard him right enough, though.
"HEY!!" The sound of his voice shattered glass in every window within a quarter mile, cracked everything within a half mile. Even Valora winced at the sheer noise. She looked up, saw a man blocking her way out of the alley. He was tall, thin - gaunt, even, with sunken cheeks and quite bony arms. dressed in black - a long coat, a bandanna covering everything above his mouth, and a black t-shirt. That t-shirt was the only part of his outfit that had any artistry: it was emblazoned with the Japanese character for 'cacophany'. "You!" he shouted, not quite so loud as last time, but still with astonishing force. "Put him down!"


For a moment, Valora felt the hero's blood within her begin to stir. It was just like when she'd fought Hell-Eye - he was a supervillain. A worthy cause! A worthy fight! She let Skee-Ball slump down to one side, and flexed her fingers, feeling her full strength surge through her mighty, beautiful limbs.
"So what, you're muscle for this scumbag's boss or something?" Valora said. "I'm not complaining. Happy to have two collars for the price of one."
"That's my - wait, what?" He cocked his head to the side. "You...you think I'm a supervillain?"
Valora's face fell. "You're not? What the hell are you defending this chump for?"
"Defending him? I'm not defending him! I was here to arrest him."


Valora rubbed her eyes. "You're a superhero."
"Damned right I am," he said, slapping the symbol on his chest. "I go by 'Cacophany'. Haven't you heard of me?"
"Yeah, I -" Valora was a little wrong-footed. "Yeah, I've heard your name. I just didn't recognise the -" She trailed off, gestured at his outfit. "I'm, uh, I'm Valora. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, I guess."
Cacophany paused. "Oh, wait, I've heard of you. You were in the Bombshells, weren't you?"
Even more wrong-footed, Valora shrugged and nodded. "That's me. Well, good to meet you, Cacophany, but I need to get this guy booked." She hauled Skee-Ball up again, and began to drag him towards the alley's exit. But Cacophany did not move out of her way. He planted his feet.
"I think there's been a misunderstanding," he said, extending his hand. "That's my collar. Hand him over." After a pause, he added: "Please."


Valora narrowed her eyes. The leather of her glove creaked as she clenched and unclenched her fist. "What the hell are you talking about? I chased him. I subdued him. I arrested him. You didn't..." She scoffed. "You didn't do anything. I didn't even know you were here until after he was already in handcuffs." It was only at the end of her sentence that she realised how annoyed she was. "I don't have time for this. Move aside, please."
He didn't move. "I've been following him for hours, making sure that I had PC to grab him. I even did a controlled buy and everything!" She saw his teeth grinding, one gold, replacing another he'd lost in a battle long ago. "And then you jumped him just as I was about to!"
"I'm sorry, but that's too bad," Valora said. "I put the work in. I risked my neck - well, in theory, anyway. I have a quota to fill, and I am filling it."
"I have a - I have a quota too!" Cacophany was obviously struggling to keep himself composed. "Look at you - dressing like that...this life's a joke to you! You just got lucky catching him, that's all!" He wasn't just being ignorant or selfish. There was real desperation in his voice. "This is my job - it's my life - I don't have any other skills!" He raked his fingernails through his dark hair, hard enough to draw a little blood. "I can't miss my quota again, damn it!"
Valerie couldn't help it. She felt sorry for this man. She'd not lied when she'd said he'd heard Cacophany's name before. He'd been a minor Maine celebrity in his teens, coming up under the auspices of a heroine named Falchion. But Falchion was dead now - and not just her. Cacophany had had to watch all the finest heroes of this part of America be slaughtered during the Dark Days - and now he was ageing, and clearly not doing well for himself. She found herself looking for an excuse to give him what he wanted.


"Do you...do you have a family?" she asked, through gritted teeth.
"What? No," he mumbled.
"Any dependents? Alimony, whatever?"
"No," he replied. "What does that have to -"
"Well I do," Valerie replied. "If...if it were just me, I would give him to you. I don't appreciate the way you talked to me, but you were kind of right. I am lucky. I'm stronger than most - but I'm not just doing this for myself. I can't afford to miss my quotas either: I literally can't afford it. I am sympathetic, but it..." She struggled to find the right words. "It would be negligent for me to give him to you."
"Well fuck you then," he said. Then he screamed.


Valora could not hear it, exactly. She knew that he was screaming because of the force of the wind coming from his mouth, from the agony in her ears, and the fact that Skee-Ball was writhing on the ground in pain. It was incredibly disorienting, and she found herself staggering, stumbling, having difficulty maintaining her balance. She leaned against a wall to keep herself from falling over, spots appearing in front of her eyes. A brief respite as Cacophany took a breath made the next onslaught almost more painful. Seeing Valora in distress, he strode towards her, his resentment at his poor, unglamorous lot in life channelled into raw and focused resentment of this beautiful young heroine who had snatched his prize from under his nose. He came closer to her, drawing breath and screaming again, looming over her as she covered her ears, trying to make her pass out. It was possible - just possible, mind - that he might have succeeded if he'd pushed his powers to the absolute limit. But he'd got carried away. He'd got too close.


"AAAAAAAGGHHHHHHH - urk!" A hand had closed around Cacophany's neck, choking his voice and his power with one squeeze.
"Shut. Up." As Valora stood, she lifted Cacophany higher, until his legs were kicking in the air, held up only by Valora's grip.
"L...lghhh! Lghhh!" Cacophany spluttered, trying to say 'let go'. He kicked Valora hard in the stomach, but it only made his foot throb with pain, and didn't affect her in the slightest. He looked down at her, down the length of the shapely arm that held him aloft, and saw her staring back at him. There was white-hot fury in her eyes.
"You...you're worse than he is!" Valora hissed, indicating Skee-Ball, who was still whimpering in pain. "You'd attack me...you'd attack me just to fill your damned quota?! How did you know your powers wouldn't deafen me? How did you know they wouldn't kill me? I don't care how bad your life is. I don't care how desperate you are. You crossed a fucking line, Cacophany, do you understand me?!"
"Yhhs...yhhs..." The so-called hero shook with fear, feeling Valora's fingers tighten even more. It was a serious struggle to breathe now. He looked down at Valora with terror, sure that she would kill him. But she didn't. She merely chokeslammed him.


Valora stood over him, fists clenched, her bloody rage still not satisfied. She wanted to hurt him more, the selfish bastard. She wanted justice, and she wanted to mete that justice out through violence. How dare he attack her? How dare he act as if she were in the wrong? How dare he call himself a superhero and then behave like that? He was an argument in favour of locking them all up and throwing away the key, a slime, a weak, selfish piece of filth who deserved to be imprisoned along with anyone he'd ever arrested. Worse. He deserved to - Valora wanted to -
"Stop. Stop," she said to herself. She moved away from him. "Stop." She was shaking, trembling with anger. She was flushed red, she was hyperventilating, sweating. This wasn't just because of Cacophany: this was a fury that ran deep, that had sunk itself into her bones. It was a fury that frightened her sometimes. "Well I hope it's frightened him," she thought. While she was a little afraid that she would have gone too far if she hadn't caught herself, she didn't feel the slightest guilt about anything she'd actually done.


It was only when the squad cars, attracted by the broken windows and several dozen noise complaints, rolled up to the entrance to the alleyway that she began to feel bad. Only when - dejected, tearful and cut to the quick by Valora's judgement - Cacophany confessed that it was all his fault did Valora's anger begin to dim. Along with Skee-Ball, Cacophany was hauled away as well, his mask pulled off to reveal prematurely old, baggy and tired eyes. Even if he didn't get locked up, his career as a state superhero was over. He'd probably end up on a dole queue before the month was up.


But there was an upside. At least Valora got credit for two arrests.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The next day promised more of the same. At the very least, with her two arrests, a little quota-pressure was taken off Valerie now. She showed up to work with a cloud hanging over her, her mood only slightly lifted by seeing that the Sun had indeed run her shot of Milo Patáky (and James Oleander) on the front page. This was a boon - for years to come, that shot would have pride of place in Valerie's portfolio. It even became slightly famous: a couple of local TV stations paid the Sun to use the image in their coverage of the matter, brief though it was. She would be glad of this when she found out - but as of then, her fight with Cacophany was still ringing in her ears, so to speak.


She now no longer wished that she didn't have to be Valora for money. That morning she didn't want to be Valora at all. All the romance had gone out of it, all sense that it made her more. No: it felt as if it cheapened her, lowered her. Her sensual warrant was no longer a proud declaration of her feminine strength it was...crass. If it hadn't been made of an extremely durable fabric she would have thrown it away. As a Bombshell she'd felt like her strength was a part of her, essentially, an expression of her identity when she used it. Now? It was a mere item of trivia in the list of her qualities.


With these and many other dour thoughts, Valerie was just about to head up to the deputy-editor's office - when she felt a hand on her arm, and a voice suddenly whisper in her ear.
"Come with me, darling," it said. "You're being kidnapped."
For a moment, Valerie was going to raise her arms in defence - until she saw who it was. "...Saskia?" It was indeed Saskia Dubois, the Sun's rising star. She was smiling wickedly and prettily, leaning in to speak with Valerie as though the two of them were bosom buddies. As a matter of fact they had spoken to each other perhaps four times since Valerie had been hired.
"I'm being dramatic. You're on secondment, darling." She laughed, obviously very excited. "I got Henry to lend you to me." She was referring to Henry Freeman, the Sun's editor.
"Well, that's great, but -"
"I'll explain everything, Valerie - but not here. It's so drab. Don't you think?"


It seemed that before Valerie could even answer, the two of them were sat in a bijou café a couple of blocks away from the Sun's office, with two steaming, and clearly excellent, cups of coffee before them.
"That's much better. N'est pas?" Saskia laughed. A well placed window bathed the young journalist in golden, morning light, and Valerie got her first real look at her. She was, for one thing, very pretty. She was slightly taller than Valerie, with exceptionally long, slender legs, quite amply exposed by a short, black dress. Her skin was a warm, light brown, her figure slim, but too womanly to be described as 'delicate'. Her features were charmingly elfin, at that delightful balance between cute and sharp that gave her this fairy-ish quality despite her height. Her black hair was cut short, but was quite fluffy and voluminous: "enough to grab onto nice and firm", as she occasionally deigned to put it. She wore a short leather jacket, too, a nice counterpoint to the light femininity of her dress. Oh yes, Saskia knew what she was doing when it came to her appearance. That was quite plain.


"You get such pretty sunrises here. Don't you think?" she asked, smiling charmingly at her colleague.
"What, in Portland?" Valerie replied. "Can't say I've ever noticed." She took a gulp of coffee. "Wow, not bad."
"The coffee's good, yes?" Saskia said, patting Valerie on the wrist. "But we're not here to discuss that, are we?"
"No. We're here to discuss my kidnapping, right?"
Saskia laughed, loudly and brightly. "Exactly right! So what's my fiendish plot, eh?"


She leaned back, letting the sunlight fall on her long, swanlike neck. "Well, Valerie," Saskia said, "I thought you did sterling work getting that shot of Patáky yesterday. Bravissimo."
"Thanks," Valerie said, not sure whether Saskia was being false, or just a bit eccentric.
"I mean it. I'd been looking into him for weeks, and I never got so much as a hint of his not-so-lovely visage. He is very reticent about having his face in the papers."
"Why? It's not as if people don't know who he is," Valerie said. "He's already got a reputation as a sleazeball, so what's the point in hiding his face?"
"Oooh, we've got a brain in that lovely skull, I see," Saskia said, touching Valerie on the hand. Valerie began to get a distinct impression that Saskia was flirting with her. "But you're quite right. I think it may be because he's a genuine paranoiac - but I suspect there's more than meets the eye as well."


She leaned in, beckoning Valerie closer. "As I was looking into that whole mess with the PAC he's been funnelling donations through, I started to hear about all sorts of delicious rumours. He made his money in the gambling industry, right?"
"R-" Valerie began to reply, but Saskia cut her off before she could get to "-ight".
"But he didn't work his way up gradually. He started big, buying a casino on Long Island. Not a great one, but still an entire casino. Un peux suspicious, hein?"
Valerie hadn't detected the slightest hint of a French accent in Saskia's voice. She suspected that these little droplets of French - and occasional Italian - were affectation - yet she didn't dislike it. It was probably because the artifice was so shallow - there was no attempt at deception. It was rather fun. She found herself smiling. She found herself relaxing.


"I heard tell," Saskia went on, "that Patáky made his start in an even seedier enterprise."
"Drugs?" Valerie ventured.
"Quite possible," Saskia replied. "What I want to do is to find out if that's true - even if it's not enough for him to be arrested or anything, I'm quite sure it would be a stopper to his nascent efforts in Maine politics, yes?"
"Sounds like you're pretty clear on what you want," Valerie said. "What do you need me for?"
"I need you for proof. I need you because I can't handle a camera to save my life. You? You've got flair." She popped down a copy of that day's Sun on the table, tapping the photograph Valerie had taken. "We want people to sit up and pay attention? A little more of that drama couldn't hurt. Come now, my darling," she said, "don't you want to hunt a real villain?"


A lifeline. A rubber ring hurled into a frothing, tumultuous ocean, with whose waves Valerie had been wrestling for months. A break from the monotony, of her life as a photographer and as a hero. A chance to do something good. A chance to do something right. Something that would make a difference! She didn't have to save the world. She didn't have to be famous. She just needed to be doing something that needed doing.
"I'm yours if you want me," Valerie said.
"Oh, are you indeed?" Saskia replied, winking and giggling slightly.
"And if you want more from me than just some pretty pictures," Valerie added, "I even have a suggestion for where we start."
"Oh?"


Valerie turned the paper around so Saskia could see it. "A man like Patáky, a private man, a paranoid man, he's going to be doing a lot of delegating. He's going to have a pointman." She jabbed her finger onto the image, indicating a handsome fellow in the foreground of the shot: a man named James Oleander. "Him. We start with him."

[Damselbinder]

Sometimes, James Oleander felt like a king. When he was looking out over the ocean of vice that was the Falmouth Grand Casino, when he heard the bells and whistles and whoops that made it seem like someone was always winning, when no woman could help but give him a second look if they passed him, and when every man was intimidated by his status and his masculine beauty, he felt truly lordly. He would deal with the cheats, the card-counters, the would-be-hustlers with actual aces up their sleeves, would turn away the drunks, would chasten and expel the men - and more women than you'd expect - who couldn't understand 'no'. He charmed the waitresses, the dealers, the bar staff. He treated the security guards like trusted lieutenants in a military unit. He was the perfect pit manager.

But that was the problem, wasn't it? He was just a manager. If the Falmouth Grand was a kingdom then James was, at best, a viceroy. Normally it didn't irritate him too much: his position still came with its share of prestige, and his pay was a very fair reflection of the amount of work he did. He had been happy to think that as Milo Patáky, who had that most pleasing combination of being both wealthy and fastidiously careful, rose in the world, he would rise with him. Eventually Milo would have an empire. At that point if James even had a piece of that empire to himself - well then he really would be a king.

But Milo wasn't going fast enough. James was already thirty-eight, and felt all too keenly the spectre of middle-age looming over him. He didn't want to be merely a manager in his forties. Hence pushing Milo into making investments, political donations, into rising higher and further than he ever would have without James at his side. But not high or far enough - and James was getting impatient. Impatient with Milo's eccentricities, his paranoia. His weakness.

So it was with mixed feelings that James drove his bulky, luxuriant BMW from Falmouth down to Biddeford. No city in Maine was huge, but Biddeford was...well it wasn't exactly that it was small. It was short. No building in the entire city, as far as James could tell, was taller than four stories. For someone who'd grown up, as James had, in New York and Boston, it felt like there was too much room above his head. It made him feel uncomfortable. Anxious, even. Had he ever spoken about this feeling to anyone, they might have suggested that James was a little agoraphobic. As it was, he blamed Biddeford.

James drove through the small, old, all too unlovely streets, until he reached a place called Bragdon's Wharf. Years ago, coal barges had moored there, but now it did very little business. A couple of private boats tugged idly against rusted cleats, but otherwise it was unused. As the years had worn on, this little part of the world had been left to rot. It was the sort of place where it always seemed as if it had just been raining. So what was James doing there, on a cold and misty morning, he who was at least trying to be an influential and important man? Well it just so happened that on this dilapidated, grimy and ruined little wharf, there was a diner.

Well, one called it a diner. That was technically what it was in the city's business register as. And yes, in theory, you could walk in and enjoy the grimy, stained seats and the peeling, sickly coloured wallpaper. You could buy a tepid, tasteless cup of coffee. But chances were you would walk in, see the men in their leather jackets and cheap trainers with that shark-like glassy-eyed meanness of someone who was used to violence. You would see them, and the slightly fat man in the corner around whom all the others orbited, and you would very quickly turn on your heel. But not James Oleander. He walked in smiling.

"Wow!" he said, punctuating his exclamation with a low whistle. "What a dump! It suits you perfectly, Novák."
A laugh rumbled out of a particularly gloomy, smoky corner. "Ahhhhhhhhh..." The sound was at once sigh, creak of age, and cough of mirth. Fanning some of the smoke out from his face, a rotund man with thinning, grey hair and a thick, brushy moustache "You've got some -"
But James interrupted with a low, gravelly growl. "'You've got some balls coming in here after everything you've done, Oleander,' right? Or maybe 'You've got some balls showin' up alone, Oleander!" or...well, you get the idea." He smiled. "Come on, Novák, let's not bore each other with the gangland clichés, huh?"
"You're spelling it wrong."
"I'm - ?" James blinked. "Well, I guess that's not a cliché, but -"
"My name. I can hear in the way you're pronouncing it. There's no accent on the 'a'. Always pisses me off when people try to get fancy."

Novak stood up, and James saw that despite his age and girth, there was still a fair bit of muscle in him. He wasn't even that old - only about fifty as far as James knew. But years of smoking and drinking, and a mild stroke which had left part of his face paralysed, made him appear ancient, craggy. But potent still.
"Why are you here?" Novak asked, flatly. His men all had their eyes on James, waiting for the command to kill him. James heard two men standing behind him, blocking his exit. But he assumed an easy, confident slouch, sticking his hands in his pockets.
"I'm here...I guess to surrender, eh?" He shrugged. "Or rather, my employer, Mr Patáky, is surrendering."
Novak took a step forward. There was a heavy crunch in the joint of his left knee, but he didn't so much as wince. "As far as I knew, Milo and I weren't at war. What's he surrendering? Or is that shrinking little peechka so careful that he's sent his gigolo to surrender for him just in case?"
"That would be a strange thing for him to do," James said, "given that he took nearly half your territory off you the last time you fought."

For at least one of Novak's men, this was too much. He was standing behind James, and raised his gun. He didn't actually intend to shoot him - certainly not without Novak's permission. But that distinction mattered little to James.He turned on the gunman with the speed of a mantis, seizing the man's right wrist, and twisting it painfully, pointing the gun's muzzle towards the ground. At the same time, his other hand snapped out, and before his enemy could register the agony in the tendons of their wrist, James' thumb and forefinger had forced his windpipe shut.

Naturally there were quite a few guns pointing at James a moment or two later. Yet he seemed quite calm still.
"Mr Novak," James said, keeping his precise, crushing grip without particular strain. "Please call your men off. I know we're all bad, bad men, so we had to do the whole macho strut before we got to talking, but I don't want to choke this guy here to death, and I really don't want to get shot."
Novak snorted. "Alright, alright. Lower your guns, gentlemen." They obeyed. James unclasped his fingers from his victim's throat, leaving them a gasping, wheezing mess on the floor. Another man might have felt rather pleased with himself for demonstrating his strength and deadliness with such brutal efficiency, might have been delighted with the elevation of his status. But if there was one area where James Oleander and Milo Patáky were alike, it was in their distaste for the macho posturing so common to their profession. He didn't feel sympathetic to his victim in the slightest, but the fact that he'd humiliated him in front of his boss and his colleagues was...well he'd never have used the word himself, but 'unseemly' was probably the best way to characterise what he thought about it.

Novak, however, liked it. He wasn't introspective or, to be frank, intelligent enough to realise it, but since he liked men to be manly and tough, to have all the qualities he imagined to be exemplified by himself, he was put strangely at ease by James' display of skill and violence. He invited him to sit, sat down in front of him. Noises were made for coffee to be fetched. James accepted the offer graciously.
"I should have called ahead." James chuckled. "We could have avoided all the bullshit." He popped the joints in his neck, then both sets of knuckles. It was the only tell of his nerves. "Mr Patáky is leaving the drug trade. He wants to sell of all his assets - his territory, his Canadian connection - we even have a couple of pretty decent meth labs out in the sticks. What d'you call that, a...a fire sale! Everything must go, right? And I've come to you first."

Novak was not stony-faced enough to fail to look surprised. This was quite impressive since he was actually completely flabbergasted. "Patáky moving out of the business...overnight?" he thought. "Bullshit. He's as tight fisted as Scrooge McDuck."
"3 million dollars," James said. "3 million for the whole kit and caboodle." He narrowed his eyes, trying to read Novak's expression, but all he could tell was that he was suspicious. He tried another tack. "You'll have no rivals, Novak. No-one in this state, or on the other side of the border, who's working against you. A monopoly."
"Why?" Novak said. "He makes good money. He has good territory. That's why we fought you so damned hard in '98. And now he's just going to give it back?"
"Sell it back. For 3 million dollars," James said. "As for why, he's just moving onto bigger and better things. And he's giving you a chance to do the same."

There was a stir of movement from Novak's men. One of them approached Novak, whispered something in his ear. James thought he heard the word 'article', realised that Novak's man was telling him about the articles on Milo's political connections. Realisation dawned on the old gangster's face.
"He's going straight," Novak said. "Leaving our evil little world behind for good." He grinned, showing some rather unhealthy looking gums. "I never thought he had it in him." He caught James' gaze, like he was looking right through the pinholes of his pupils, producing an extremely unsettling sensation. "Maybe he doesn't have it in him. But you do, don't you, gigolo?"
James wasn't sure what the best response to this insight would be, so he just shrugged.
"Doesn't matter," Novak said. "Tell Patáky I'll think about it. Three million...well if he's really offering all he's saying he is I can't argue with the price, but it's gonna take some time to pull cash like that together."
"Of course," James said, rising lithely from his seat. Novak rose as well, albeit rather more huffily and creakily. He shook James' hand, going out of his way to show what a strong grip he had. James had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. "I take it I can walk outta here without any of your pals shootin' me in the ass?"
"Sure," Novak said and, to James' surprise, shook his hand again, looking right through his pupils again. There was a rather awkward silence - evidently Novak's men thought it was a bit strange as well.

"Okay, I'm, uh...gonna go." James withdrew his hand, before realising that Novak had put a five dollar bill in it.
"Can't let a handsome gigolo like you go away without a gratuity," Novak said, winking. Laughter fluttered through his subordinates' ranks.
"Mr Novak, you have a...kinda fucked up sense of humour," James said, irritated that these small-timers in their dingy little den had the temerity to laugh at him. He stuffed the bill in his pocket without looking at it, and started walking out, moving with his slow, slouching, slightly feline gait.
"Really think about it, James!" Novak shouted, a statement so confusing that James was sure he'd completely misheard. For one thing, he hadn't thought that Novak knew his name, and for another...well, 'think about' what?

It was only a little later that James made sense of Novak's little joke. Feeling a little peckish on his way back to Portland, he decided to stop for a drive-thru. A vegetarian, he just ordered a couple of boxes of fries, and decided he might as well make use of Novak's 'gratuity'. He was just about to hand it over when he saw that there was something scrawled on top of Lincoln's portrait.
"Uh, sorry," he mumbled, snatching the bill back, and pushing a ten dollar bill into the cashier's hand instead. "Keep the - the, uh change." Before the cashier could point out that he hadn't even taken his fries yet, James hurled his car out of the drive-thru, screeching back onto the interstate.

The message was a simple one, simple enough to squeeze onto a five dollar bill anyway. It read, simply:
"Slit Patáky's throat. Keep the three mil. You want to be the viceroy your whole life?" If those last five words had been left off, the offer wouldn't have made James sweat, wouldn't have made him look anxiously over his shoulder. But this - it was like a text message from Lady Macbeth. It echoed his own heart, his own thoughts so precisely - it terrified him. How had Novak seen into his soul, into parts of his soul into which even James himself had never looked?

It would hardly have occurred to James, in the very mundane corner of the world in which he lived, that the fat, greasy, uncouth gangster he'd been sitting with had been, in fact, a telepath.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Ugh." Saskia folded her arms over her chest, shuddering with disgust. "What kind of person goes to a casino at one in the afternoon on a Wednesday?"
"The kind of people who shouldn't be allowed to gamble," Valerie replied, looking at the pit of human degradation that was the Falmouth Grand at one in the afternoon: the elderly frittering away their pensions, the hopelessly addicted spending pawned family silver, the homeless people who'd gathered up just enough change to be able to play the slots for a while. "And tourists, I guess."

They were there for information. They hadn't been able to find out much about James Oleander: all they knew was his name, that he had a Maine driving licence, and that he worked at Milo Patáky's casino. Other than that, they were in the dark.
"If anyone knows about this Oleander character," Saskia said, "they'll be here. Shouldn't be too hard to wring the proverbial cloth: all sorts of things come tumbling out of people's mouths when you're as pretty as I am." She brushed Valerie's shoulder slightly, winking. "As we are, I mean."
Valerie gave a lop-sided half-smile. "You're kind of a shameless flirt, you know that?"
"Oh, you don't mind, do you?"
The question seemed so genuine, Valerie couldn't help but smile more warmly, and broadly. "Not especially. I just want to know how you're gonna 'wring the cloth'."

If she'd had it her way, Valora wouldn't have been bothering with the information gathering: she'd have just waited for Oleander to show up and then followed him, hoped to catch some snaps of him doing something illegal, and printed it. But this wasn't her show: it was Saskia's, and she had to keep reminding herself not to try to take it over. Besides, she'd been at the eight-collars-a-week game for long enough that it was unusual for her to think long-term, to remember that they didn't really care about James Oleander, but about Milo Patáky. They were laying groundwork, that was all. This was only the beginning of a process that could take weeks.

Saskia, on the other hand, was brimming with excitement. For her there was no impatience - this was her favourite part of the investigative progress: hacking through the wilderness of ignorance, with no idea where the path would take her. But then, she loved all of it. She loved the late nights, the human interest stories, the editors slashing her columns to pieces, the long, hard graft of putting a story together from nothing. She was the sort of person who found joy in anything she was good at: she would love it first in general, then find reasons to love the specifics later. She was like that with backgammon, with every job she'd ever had - and with people too.

It was for this reason that Saskia was already beginning to like Valerie's air of authority, her seriousness, the glimpses of a warmer personality underneath. She rather liked what lay on the surface too: aside from her long coat, Valerie was wearing a fairly short, suede skirt, knee high, black boots, and a tight, black sweater. Certainly, she was a very attractive young woman, but Saskia was admiring Valerie's fashion sense more than her body. Besides, at that moment she was turning her attentions in a more masculine direction.

"I'm going to poke the hornet's nest," Saskia said. "You...do whatever comes naturally, darling." Before Valerie could reply, Saskia was off, darting away from a confused Valerie with a purposeful, high-speed sashay. "Hey, you there!" she called out. She wasn't talking to Valerie, but to a tall, thin, slick-haired man in a suit, standing a few metres away from the slender writer. Evidently, he'd been checking her out, because the moment she came towards him he turned embarrassedly away from her. "Excuse me!" she pressed, forcing him to turn back towards her.
"Uh, yes, ma'am?" he said. He was an employee, though it was hard to say whether he was security, management, or a little of both.
"Oh, hey there..." Saskia had been about to turn on the charm, to flirt with this man until he gave something up, but realised at the last moment that this would be wrong. He was too embarrassed about having been spotted looking at Saskia: he would have clammed up. No, Saskia was quick-witted enough to butter up his ego in a different way.

"Excuse me...Shawn?" she said, reading the small, brass pin attached to his blazer's pocket. "Am I right in thinking that you're in charge around here?"
"...I suppose so," he replied, puffing himself up, slightly. If one were being very generous, then there was perhaps a sense in which he was true. As James Oleander was to Milo Patáky, so Shawn Hendry was to James Oleander. He was James' immediate subordinate, and when James wasn't around, when he was being sent out on errands for Patáky too important for Shawn to know about, Shawn was the Pit Boss.
"Of course you are," Saskia laughed. "I can tell these things, y'know. Just from the way everybody else looks at you, Shawn."
"Oh you can, huh?" Shawn puffed himself up a little more. "Can I help you, ma'am, or...?"
"I think you can," Saskia replied. Doing as the Romans do, and all that, she decided to make a gamble. Reaching into the pocket of her short, leather jacket, she handed him her card. "Saskia Dubois, Portland Sun."
Immediately he tensed. "You're a reporter?" She wasn't the first journalist that day to be poking around after morning's scrum. They noticed, and started walking towards her. Saskia was aware, but feigned ignorance. Her gamble had not necessarily lost yet: she'd been right in her wager that her name, even if he'd read her article in the Sun, would mean nothing to him.
"Well, what else would I be, darling?" Saskia tilted her head slightly, feigning innocence. "I'm doing a little lifestyle piece on the Falmouth Grand Casino - something to tempt in the tourists, you know. I was wondering if I could get you on the record extolling its virtues. I mean...you are the man in charge, n'est pas? Who'd know better than you?"
"Look, lady, I don't know. We're not really supposed to talk to the press."

The security guard was only a few metres away. Saskia could see that Shawn wasn't going to budge so easily. An alteration of technique was called for.
"Look," she said, leaning in and lowering her voice to a level of hushed privacy, "I don't care a dime's worth about this story. My editor wants a few hundred words, and I just want to have enough to get him off my fantastic ass. So why don't you spend a few minutes telling me how wonderful this lovely place is, and then..." Saskia batted her eyelashes. "...maybe I'll let you buy me a drink or two."

Did Shawn know he was being gamed? Yes, he did. He hadn't read Saskia's article, didn't know her name, but he did know that Milo had been huffing and grumbling all day about some damning report of him, and about being mobbed by journalists that morning. So he knew that now, more than ever, he really ought to have been suspicious of journalists. But she was so pretty. And she smiled so naughtily and so charmingly. Besides, even though it was obvious she was trying to get something out of him, she was approaching him. He'd never had it be that way round. And after years of watching women fawn over James Oleander, after being made to feel for so very long like so much the beta male, he couldn't help himself.
"Yeah, okay," he said, straightening his tie. He gestured to the approaching security guard to leave Saskia to him. "Let me, ah, show you to my office."
"Ooh," Saskia cooed. "Fancy!" She walked in front of him, and in doing so gave him at least some reason to trust her: she did indeed have a fantastic ass.

Valerie, meanwhile, felt much less purposeful. She milled around the slot machines, the roulette wheels, unsure how to make herself useful. Really what she wanted was just to find James Oleander and tail him until he did something illegal. Grab a few snaps, back to the dark room, splash it in the papers, job's a good 'un. But he persistently failed to turn up no matter how long she waited. Even if he was at the casino, she might easily have missed him.

She wondered to herself whether she'd have approached the situation any differently with her mask on. It was hard to say: the public mood would probably have been that Valora should just stay out of it and leave such matters to the police. Ten years earlier, the mood would probably have been that she should just kill Milo Patáky and have done with it. Naturally, neither felt particularly satisfactory to Valerie. The rumour was, though, that Milo had extensive connections to the drug trade. Perhaps her strength would have best been put to use disrupting his operations, starving him of revenue - and it wouldn't hurt her quotas either.

Musing on whether, should she get a real line into frequent arrests, it would be worth going back to the confessional and asking for a full-time contract, she happened to pass the craps table. It drew her eye, partly because one of the dealers was surprisingly good-looking, but her eye didn't linger on him for long.
"Please, please, please, please..." A woman was clutching the side of the table, her knuckles white with the strain. She was obviously in some distress. She was dreadfully thin, sickly-looking, pale. Her hair was ragged, grey. She herself looked so ill she could have been anything from thirty-eight to fifty-five. There were three other players, and all were looking at her.
"Uh, miss?" The shooter, the player rolling the dice, spoke with what seemed like genuine concern. "That's - I mean are you sure you can afford that?"
"Uh-huh," she mumbled. She took one of her hands from the side of the table, bit on one of her fingers so hard she drew a little blood. "Would you just throw, please?"

Valerie looked at the table. She didn't understand the rules of craps very well, but she could see that the sickly woman had bet a substantial amount of money - many thousands of dollars. She didn't look like the sort of person who could afford it. "She probably got it from a loan shark, or remortgaged her house," Valerie thought. "Oh Jesus, she's probably a serious addict." She scowled at the four running the table. "Vultures. Literally profiting from people's sickness. How the hell is this all so normal? How can people come here for fun?"
"S-so, I win if the next roll is a...uh..."
"A two or a twelve," the player next to her said. He seemed more impatient than concerned. "Look, you've made a proposition bet. Just a simple dice roll - don't worry about anything else."
That was odd. This woman didn't appear to know the rules of the game very well. All the other players had spread their chips out in a fairly complex way, trying to hedge their bets, or so Valerie guessed. But this woman had staked everything she had on one simple dice roll: she didn't seem like a compulsive gambler. She seemed like someone desperate enough to do something incredibly stupid.

"Here goes..." the shooter said, looking at the dealers almost apologetically. He threw the dice - they bounced against the back of the board, happening to knock into each other mid bounce. This meant one of the dice landed before the other, skidding to a halt showing a single, black dot. The other die hit the table and bounced again, and again. Normally a craps table was full of hooting and shouting, but the dealers and players were all silent - they weren't even thinking about their own bets. They were thinking about how there was now a 5 in 6 chance that this sickly novice had flushed her life down the toilet.

The die finally ran out of momentum. It no longer bounced, but still tumbled, showing one face, then another, then another - until at last it could move no longer. It was about to land on a three. For just a fraction of a second, long enough for the sickly gambler to begin to muster the strength to cry out in despair, it seemed certain that it would. And then it didn't.
"Wh...huh?" She couldn't believe it. She was looking at it, but she couldn't believe it. A one. Both dice had come up on one. "I...I won?"
"Oh, um...snake-eyes!" the dealer announced, pulling the dice towards him, pulling in the chips from the other players. He, too, was rather disbelieving. He looked at the stickman, the oldest hand at the table apart from himself, and found him equally gripped by incredulity. They'd both been very wary of the sickly woman, worried that she might try something stupid, but she hadn't appeared to have done anything. It was only when the jubilant victor, weakly gathering up the mountain of chips that was passed to her, that the dealers' attention - and that of their floor manager, who been alerted immediately to the massive payout - was directed to the other woman at the table, who was now moving swiftly away from it.
The floor manager, a short man with powerful arms, a fat stomach and a sweaty brow, gripped his walkie-talkie in thick fingers. "Shawn," he said, "we've got an issue."

Of course, Valerie had interfered. At that fateful moment when the second die had been about to settle on three, she'd tapped her foot against the edge of the table. Just enough to send shockwaves through the table, enough to unsettle the die. That, too, had been a gamble: she'd had no way of knowing that the die would land on a one, but she'd just...she'd had to intervene. She didn't know that the woman was deserving: for all she knew, Valerie had just helped a woman who'd raided her kid's college fund or something. But no - she had seen the woman's eyes, just as she'd turned away. She'd realised what Valerie had done, even if she hadn't understood it, and Valerie had seen the gratitude in her eyes, had seen real, desperate need. Her conscience was clear. As for cheating the casino, that didn't bother her in the slightest. She'd have happily bankrupted them.

It was just as she resumed her fruitless search for James Oleander that she noticed Saskia walking towards her. In fact, she was walking as quickly as she could manage without running. For a moment Valerie thought something was wrong but Saskia, she realised, was smiling.
"'The lives of others', eh?" Saskia said, hooking her arm with Valerie, and steering the pair of them towards the exit. "They do pass us by, don't they?"
"Am I supposed to pretend I know what you're talking about?"
"No darling, of course not," Saskia laughed. "I'm being facetious, aren't I?"
"A little," Valerie replied. "But you're pleased, so I'm guessing you found something good."
"I surely did," she replied. "In fact, you're going to get your wish after all."
Valerie didn't take long to twig. "You know where Oleander is."

Saskia grinned wickedly. "Poor Shawn. Such a resentful man. So jealous. It turns out that he's seen very much as James Oleander's second fiddle, and not a fiddle that produces particularly lovely music either. It was, alas, altogether too easy to get him to start whingeing about his boss...and his boss' boss. Apparently Milo was very rude to Shawn just before he left the casino for a meeting. And wouldn't you know it, Oleander phoned Shawn to tell him to hold the fort because he's going to this meeting as well. Now, of course, Shawn didn't say whom his bosses were meeting, but..."
"The politician he donated to...uh...Barker!" Valerie began smiling too. "Your article must have spooked him - maybe Barker's threatening to welsch on whatever promises he made. How long ago did Patáky leave?"
"About an hour and a half," Saskia replied. "If we head over to Barker's campaign headquarters we might be able to get some juicy pictures of the three amigos getting chummy."
"Great. Let's do it." Valerie's blood was summoned. The reconnaissance had been mercifully brief: now was time for action.

As they hastened through the parking lot towards Saskia's car, the slender journalist filled Valerie in on what else she'd learned from Shawn: Milo wasn't just involved with drugs, he was in them up to his neck. That's where he'd got the money to buy the Falmouth Grand, as well as a couple of smaller places just north of the border. This was all off the record, things he'd said to impress Saskia with how much he knew about the inner circle. As for what he'd said on the record, just that James was a driving force behind Milo's expansions, and that - despite being massively jealous of him - he did actually quite like James. He was charming: it was hard not to like him.
"Alas, that's all I could get out of him," Saskia replied. "He had to rush off to deal with some problem with the craps table or something."
Valerie's stomach tightened. "...What problem?"
"No idea," Saskia replied. "Why do you -?" Her face fell. "You didn't do something silly, did you?"

"HEY!" The voice was predictably gruff, aggressive and macho. It came from a predictably gruff, aggressive and macho body, and there were a couple more built by the same firm flanking it. They didn't look happy.
"Uh...what say we make ourselves scarce, Valerie?" Saskia said, quickening her pace towards her car. But Valerie wasn't going faster. Valerie had stopped.
She couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe they were actually going to give her shit for helping that woman. She was astonished that they'd noticed. She clenched a fist. The temerity! The temerity of these parasites, the pond-scum, even to think of objecting to anyone who cheated them, let alone as selflessly as Valerie had done? She hadn't won anything, had she? She wasn't walking away with tens of thousands of dollars. But if they wanted trouble, she would give it to them. She began to advance on them, her long coat fluttering around her like a gunslinger's, her eyes narrowed for a fight. She wouldn't throw the first punch, but she'd certainly throw the last. She hoped they had guns, too. That would make it fairer.

"Valerie, what the hell are you doing?"
The mighty blonde turned, eyes full of righteous fury - but only until seeing Saskia's absolute confusion snapped her out of it. Making a gesture of apology, she turned back, quickly hopped into the passenger side of Saskia's car. "God damn it," she thought, "get a handle on your temper! That's what got you into this...mess in the first place."
Saskia's Nissan wasn't a sports car, but it was quick enough. Growling against the concrete ground, it lurched forward, skidding slightly as Saskia swung it to the right, and sped off, flummoxing the Falmouth Grand's security guards. They were, for the moment, safe.

"Nothing like a clean getaway," Saskia said, smiling winsomely at her companion. It was obviously a little forced: Saskia was brave, sure, but not used to danger in the same way Valerie was. She was going to say something else, but decided not to at the last moment.
"She was probably gonna ask what the hell you were thinking," Valerie thought. "Not that it'd do much good if she did: I don't have a clue myself."
It was true, yes, that Saskia was wondering why Valerie had been of such a combative disposition. But that was not her main point of interest. No, her main point of interest was wondering why the voluptuous blonde, tall and fit though she was, seemed to think she'd be capable of taking on three very large, well-built men. "Perhaps she's a martial artist or something," Saskia mused. It did occur to her, though, that that 'or something' contained some very interesting possibilities.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Oh, shit," said James, the moment that Milo came into sight. Coming back from Biddeford had taken longer than he'd thought, and the meeting with Barker was over before he'd arrived. He could tell that Milo was in a foul mood, and he had a fair idea as to why.
"The promises of a politician," Milo said as soon as he realised James was there, "are not so much worthless as irritating. Why make them? Who does he think he's fooling?" He'd come out the back of Barker's campaign HQ - naturally Milo was not the only one wary of press attention, and so the two men met in a rather unpleasant back alley.
"Did he go back on what he said?" James asked. "He's not going to help you get the planning permission for the Augusta casino?"
"Oh no, James, don't worry about that, it's all going to be fine, it's just that perhaps this upcoming session wouldn't be the best time for Barker to help me with my problem." He was impersonating Barker's unusual cadence. "Apparently there's too much 'heat' now. It would look suspicious." He scoffed. "That idiot! As if everyone doesn't already know he's crooked as hell." He made a kind of phlegmy growl. "I suppose it would be counter-productive to have him beaten by a few of our more ruthless goons?"

"Damn it," James thought. At least it didn't sound like Milo was just going to abandon the whole scheme, but now he had even more reason to be hesitant. "Uh, yeah," James said, assuming again his cloak of easy charm, "that probably wouldn't help matters. But you gotta think of this as breakage, boss. It's the price of doing business."
"Hmph," Milo huffed. "Speaking of which, how did things go with Novák?"
"I - uh -" The cloak fell. That five dollar bill still burned a very hot hole in James' pocket, and for a second or two that was all he could think about. But he caught hold of himself, and gave the most honest answer that he could. "I'm not sure. He said he'd think about it, but I'm not convinced he was taking it seriously."
"Hrrrm." Milo kissed his teeth, then growled in frustration when he happened to step on a discarded can of cherry cola. "Was it stupid, trying to make this deal with Novák?" The question was a genuine one.
"Even if it was pointless, it wasn't stupid, boss," James assured him. "Selling our organisation off piecemeal may be a more realistic way forward, but it was worth a shot."
"Our organisation?" Milo said, raising an eyebrow. "Tsk, tsk, James. Hubris and all that."
He obviously wasn't serious, but it still made James uncomfortable. "Sorry, sir."
Milo made a 'whatever' gesture. He was about to say something, but his face flickered. He seemed about to say something James wasn't going to like.

"Perhaps it's for the best that Novák refused," Milo said, turning his back to his confidant. "I've decided not to sell up."
James' pulse hastened. "...Sir?"
"Barker's being unreliable. Without setting up in Augusta, we won't be pulling in enough revenue without the, ah, other side of the business. Too much of my wealth is in property: I need liquidity as well to be secure."
"Sir, are you really in that much danger? Property investments are always safe," said James, still very much living in the year 2005. "Besides, isn't staying in drugs more dangerous? It's not a trade known for providing calm and easy living, sir."
"It is known to me, James. I understand it. I am not a property developer, nor am I used to greasing the backs of senators! All this...spreading out, this expansion - I don't like it." He scratched his nose. "You know how much I value your advice. And I know that you're no fool. I even know, before you remind me, that fortune favours the bold, et cetera, et cetera." He frowned. "But you put me in mind of Cassius."
"...Sir?"
"'Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look'," Milo orated. "Julius Caesar. Act one, scene three, if I'm not mistaken."

In fact, Milo was off by one scene, but James didn't know it. He knew the play, though. He knew what Cassius ended up doing to Caesar. And now Milo's back was turned to him. And Milo was right. He was lean. He was hungry. And he was getting sick of Milo's backsliding. The note scrawled on that five dollar bill burned in his mind, rang with Novak's gravelly voice. James felt sweat on his brow. He felt his heart beat slower, but harder. He saw Milo standing between him and greatness, and he couldn't take it anymore. He raised his pistol. He pointed it at the back of Milo's head. There was a click, and a flash.

The flash of a camera.

"What?!" James spun around, his gun still raised, but there was no-one on the other side of the alley. "What the fuck?!" He ran forward to where the alley joined the street, but there wasn't anyone there. "Wh - what the?"
"James, what the hell are you doing?!" Milo shouted. "Put your gun away, you idiot, before someone sees you!"
James did as he was told, but he was loath to put his weapon aside. "What the hell? D-did I imagine it?" It didn't seem like Milo had noticed the flash, and now even James saw no-one. He looked past Milo, to the other side of the alley, but it was blind. Besides, surely either he or Milo would have seen the photographer. What the fuck was going on?

And then, as James cooled down, as he began to think that maybe he really had imagined it, it was as if a spell Novak had cast on him had lifted. What the hell had he been thinking? Novak wasn't actually going to give him three million dollars - he'd probably have just killed James as well. Besides, were Milo's concerns really so foolish? Perhaps it was James, rather, who was being stupid, being much too impatient. Besides, as ridiculous as Milo was in many ways, James did feel...something approaching friendship towards him. James was a criminal, but he wasn't evil.
"Sorry, sir, I thought I - ah, forget it."
"Hmph. If you say so. Let's go, eh?" The two of them walked out of the alley together. Milo got into the back of James' car, waving away the driver who'd brought him there, still standing by his escalade a few metres away. James meanwhile, was laughing at himself for how ridiculously he had been behaving. He looked up - and he stopped laughing.

It was only for an instant. Had he looked up half a second later he wouldn't have seen them at all. But he did see. He saw movement. Somebody was standing on the roof of the building Milo had just come out of, someone who'd waited just to make sure that James didn't actually pull the trigger. A woman. A tall woman: dark-skinned, with short, black hair. They disappeared a moment later, but it would be easy for James to intercept them. But Milo stopped him.
"Hurry up," he grumbled. "I've spent enough of today wasting my time as it is."
James couldn't think of an excuse. He couldn't justify chasing the photographer. "Uh...sure, boss," he said, getting into the driver's side. He looked in the rear view mirror, saw Milo fussing with one of the buttons of his overcoat. He looked small. Ridiculous. Laughable, even. But this man was the head of the most extensive organised crime ring in the state. He had had dozens of people murdered over the years. And now someone had evidence of James pointing a gun at the back of this man's head. Either he'd be charged with attempted murder, or Milo would have him killed. He was, essentially, fucked.

Of course, James didn't see the woman who had actually taken the photograph. The voluptuous blonde in the short, suede skirt had been hidden from view, and so she - and Saskia neither - hadn't seen James notice them. They were both jubilant.
"Did we just walk into an episode of The Sopranos, or something?" Saskia said in a gleeful, hushed whisper. "What on earth was going on there?"
"No idea. That's just the kind of world people like them live in, I guess," Valerie said. She was delighted too. It wasn't such a good shot as the other she'd taken of the two men, but - well, capturing a moment like that was once-in-a-lifetime stuff. "We should warn Patáky his life's in danger," she said.
"Oh, don't worry about that," Saskia replied. "He'll find out when we publish tomorrow."

The two young women made their egress, naturally feeling rather pleased with themselves. But they had not been quite as incognito as they'd thought. For it was only as James drove away that he realised he'd been wrong about not knowing who had taken the shot. When that article in the Sun had come out, James had done a little digging on its author before his meeting with Novak. He might not have remembered what Saskia Dubois looked like, had it not been that she was a young and very lovely woman. But he did remember. Saskia Dubois was tall and dark-skinned, with short, black hair. And within the hour, James knew her address, too.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Had Valerie and Saskia been working at a larger newspaper, none of what took place would have come to pass. But they did, and so the editor-in-chief had already gone home by five-thirty in the afternoon. The next day's edition had already been sent to the printers, so there was no chance of them getting the picture printed yet. Still, Valerie had to develop the negatives. As she did that, Saskia made a quick write up.

'Gangland Violence in State Senator's Backyard - Literally' was the title she went for. Naturally the article started with an assurance that Milo hadn't actually been shot, and went on to use a lot of the colour she'd got from Shawn. As she wrote, she came more and more to realise that her article was more about James Oleander than about Patáky or Barker, so she re-edited it to read almost more like a first person narrative from James' perspective, ending the article by breaking the narration and essentially asking: 'Do we really want these sorts of people influencing politics?' It was pretty damning stuff, even if it wasn't the best thing she'd ever written.

By the time she was finishing up, Valerie was still toiling away in the dark room, so Saskia left, texting Valerie to thank her for what she'd done and "for being so delightfully singular", as she'd put it. Indeed, beginning to feel as if the matter of Milo Patáky was coming to an end rather faster than she'd suspected it would, Saskia turned her mind to a rather more comely mystery: Valerie Orville.
"Where did she come from, I wonder?" Saskia thought. She had some vague idea that Valerie had been given a chance at the Sun as a favour from their ed-in-chief, but she certainly justified her wages.

And yet something felt wrong. At first she thought that being a photographer didn't quite seem to suit Valerie's temperament. She could imagine her as a high ranking cop, or private eye or something, but not as a paparazzo. But then she thought again, and realised that this wasn't quite right. It was rather that she couldn't imagine Valerie as just a photographer. A proper photojournalist yes, but Valerie didn't know much about the business other than her way around a camera. Indeed, at her age of merely twenty, there was very little chance she even had a college degree. Why? She was certainly capable of working hard. Why deny herself better work and better wages? "There's a story there," Saskia mused. She thought again of what had happened in the casino parking lot, when she'd been about to face those men. She really had been about to fight them. And then it occurred to Saskia that there was another profession, besides policewoman or private eye, that she could imagine Valerie in. But if that were true, then it really was none of Saskia's business. Besides, her thoughts were already beginning to turn to another beautiful woman she happened to know.

Even when she turned the key of her ground floor apartment, Saskia could already smell the cooking. "Ooh, fajitas!" She crept in softly, enjoying the smell of caramelised onions sizzling as she took of her jacket, hung up her bag. Slipping out of her shoes, she moved quietly across the carpeted hallway, towards the kitchen at the far end of the apartment. She carefully opened the door, and - seeing what was inside - she bit her bottom lip.

Deftly balancing her attention between a pot and two pans - as well as an oven - a woman was standing over the stove, a pale-ish woman, with very close, very neat black curls. She was wearing a very tight, dark-red, velvet dress, a good two inches above the knee, which clung seductively to her figure. She was quite curvy in a charmingly petite way: a narrow waist tapered out into a pair of womanly hips, and she such a round, shapely behind that Saskia could spend - and had spent - long periods of time just looking at it. Her legs were warm, and soft, and she had a habit of pressing them very straight against each other when she was concentrating, as she was doing now, which only emphasised that softness. Her name was Piper, and she just so happened to be Saskia's girlfriend.

Saskia crept closer, wanting to get the catch her by surprise. Piper had, in Saskia's view, an 'adorable' scream when she was surprised, so Saskia tried to surprise her as often as possible. She crept closer, and closer, ready to reach out and grab Piper by that pretty waist. But just as she got within range, she found a half-fried bit of pepper flying at high speed in her direction.
"Hey!" she yelped. "Don't throw food at me!"
"Well don't try to sneak up on me then, you freak," Piper said, a slight rasping quality to her otherwise very feminine voice, giving her a kind of Brooklyn-ish dignity.
"I can't help myself," Saskia said, "your fear amuses me."
"You're a sadist," Piper replied, turning back to the food.
"Yeah? Well you're a coward."
"Psychopath."
"Yellow-belly."
"Stick insect!"
"Gnome."

Piper turned around, ablaze with anger. "I am not that short! 5'4" is a normal height for a woman!" Her ruby-red lips were pinched as thin as they could be. Her blue-brown eyes, slightly upturned at the corners, were wide with anger. Her face had a slightly mousy quality, in a way that fit the petite curviness of her body.
"Sorry, Piper, my love, my darling, my sweetie-poo-kins," Saskia giggled, coming closer. "I shouldn't tease just because all your mass went here," she said, giving Piper's perky and prominent breasts an affectionate stroke with her thumbs. As Saskia touched her, Piper noticed her girlfriend's eyes light up. "You're not wearing a bra."
"Well I've got to show off my mass, don't I?"
Saskia whistled, and began to move in for a kiss. "Mm...you are one sexy gnome..."

That was all Piper could take. She grabbed Saskia by the shoulders, bent her over, pulled up the skirt of her dress. "This is richly deserved," Piper said, and smacked her girlfriend hard on her tight, round rump.
"Unnhhh..." Saskia moaned, shivering as the shockwaves of Piper's spank travelled up her body. She turned to look over her shoulder, her mouth slightly open. "Oh, baby, you -" Saskia saw something that somewhat took the wind out of her sails. "...Did you spank me with our spatula?"
"Maybe."
"You're cooking with it!"
"So?"
"So did you get paprika on my ass?!"
Piper pretended to consider. "Let me see..." She lowered herself, still keeping Saskia bent over in front of her. "Hmm...I'm not sure. I'll just check."
"Ah!" Saskia gasped, as she felt Piper's tongue against the pit of her knee, then slowly travelling up her long, silky legs, until it reached her behind, rubbing in concentric circles around the area where Piper had spanked her. "...nope, that tastes more like cumin to me." She stood up. "That's what you get for calling me a gnome," Piper said, before opening her palm, and spanking Saskia again.
"Aahhhhhhh..." Saskia moaned, shivers travelling up the base of her spine. She stood up again, took Piper by the shoulders, and kissed her deeply, pressing her bosom against her girlfriend's, rubbing her thigh against Piper's skin, feeling the warmth of her skin and the caramel heat of her tongue, her lips. "Mmm...no!" She pulled away. "No sex now."
"You cocktease!" Piper pouted.
"I'm serious, darling, I'm starving. If I don't eat now I won't have enough energy to do more than half-heartedly flick your bean for ten minutes. But," she added, before Piper could object to her choice of words, "I'll finish the cooking. You put your feet up."
"Oh. Oh, that's nice of you, Sas. Yeah, okay, babe." She stroked Saskia's face. "Don't burn the chicken."
"Love you too, darling."
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A few minutes later, the two were eating in their living room. Save for the bathroom, it was the smallest room in the house, so Saskia had her plate perched on her lap on a beanbag, while Piper knelt neatly on a couch. Saskia had been silent while eating, but with her belly full, she became a little more talkative.
"Oh," she piped up. "I think I made a new friend today."
"You made a friend? No way."
"It's true!" She put her plate to one side, crossed her legs. "She's a photographer. Very young. Quite angry, I think. I can't say why, but I think I like her. There's a...depth to her, I think."
"Did you do that thing where you get all posh with people you don't know very well?"
"I...not that posh," Saskia mumbled, blushing. "One wants to make a good impression."
"You-are-very-clever-and-talented," Piper said, in a sing-song voice. Then in her normal speaking voice: "You don't need to impress people to make a good impression."
"Oh, how wise thou art!" Saskia replied. "Maybe you just don't want me to impress people too much. Afraid someone will steal me away from you."

There was a pause. Piper tapped her plate with her fork, looking down at it. Then without looking up, she asked: "Is she pretty?"
"Very pretty, if you must know," Saskia replied, perhaps a little too defiantly. "But even if I were unfaithful, which I'm not, I'm pretty certain she's straight."
"Mm-hm." Another pause. "You do flirt."
"It doesn't mean anything. You know that perfectly well."
"Yeah, okay." Another silence - but this was one too many.

"Damn it, Piper!" she said, angrily slapping her plate down on the floor. "You're coming across as really paranoid."
"I know, I'm sorry," Piper said, trying to get herself to acknowledge that it was she who was in the wrong, which was not something that came to her easily. And indeed, she did not wholly succeed. "It's just...I worry. When I think about the way we got together..."
"You were the one who already had a girlfriend," Saskia shot back, the frustration in her voice sounding too much like venom for Piper to tolerate.
"Okay, you're right," Piper said, quickly and quietly. "I'm going to bed." Piper couldn't even look at her. She rushed into the kitchen, practically threw her plate into the sink, and stomped into her bedroom, slamming the door.
"Oh for God's sake!" Saskia growled. "Piper, don't be childish! Piper!" There was no response. She rolled her eyes. "Fuck it." They had had this argument one too many times. But then she didn't often throw Piper's indiscretion in her face like that. Was it just frustration? Or had Piper been more right than Saskia had liked? Had she been looking a little too much at the voluptuous blonde she'd spent the day with? "Oh shit," Saskia mumbled. "I'm going to have to apologise..."

Eventually, Saskia decided that enough time had passed. She rose, grumbling, to her full height, and moved reluctantly towards the bedroom door. She rapped twice on it. "Piper? Piper, sweetheart, I'm sorry. I still maintain that we were both being dickish, but for the extent to which I was dickish, I am sorry, and for the extent to which you were dickish, I..." She pondered. "I suppose I want to say 'I forgive you', and I do, but that sounds too arch. Do you get what I mean?"
Silence.
"Piper, please. We were having a lovely evening. I would also really, really still like to have sex with you. Piper?"
Still silence.
"Piper!" This was getting weird. Piper could be stubborn, but not like this. Worried that something was wrong, Saskia opened the door. "Piper I - wh...?"

Piper had not been failing to reply because she was being stubborn. She had been failing to reply because there were three layers of duct tape wrapped around her pretty, soft mouth. Her arms were pulled behind her back, delicate wrists bound with tape, her gorgeous, plump breasts pushed up by tape wrapped around her torso, fixing her arms in place. Tape had been wrapped around her yielding thighs, three circuits squeezing them together, her velvet dress riding up, completely exposing her soft, peach-tone legs. Her ankles too were bound, fixing her legs into one wriggling limb. Her eyes were wide, and wet with tears of shock and fright. She whimpered "No! No!" over and over again, though it came out as merely "Nmmhhh!" each time. Her breasts heaved, her warm thighs rubbed together as she desperately wriggled, her feminine body failing utterly at the task of freeing her. True, many would have been panting with lust at seeing their girlfriend so helpless, so scantily clad, and hearing them moan so sonorously as they wriggled on one's bed. But, in the first instance, Saskia wasn't really a fan of bondage, certainly not such thorough and genuinely restraining bondage; in the second instance, it was difficult to feel aroused when there was a man in dollar-store camos and a black mask still putting the finishing touches on her girlfriend's bondage.
"Hm?" was his only reaction as he saw Saskia come in. Saskia's was a little more dramatic.

"AAAAAHHHHHHH!!" This was not a scream of terror, but a blood-curdling shriek of violence. Grabbing a candlestick from atop her dresser, Saskia leapt forward, raising it above her head like a sword. She swung it down with such force that, had the blow connected, she would certainly have stunned the assailant enough for her to knock him senseless with one or two more. But it didn't connect. The assailant hopped rolled to the side, completely off the side of Piper and Saskia's bed, but sprang up to his feet with terrific agility. He stood, and Saskia suddenly didn't feel quite so tall.

Nevertheless, she had a surfeit of courage. "Get out of my house! Get out!" Saskia shrieked, blood hissing with adrenaline, swinging the candlestick wildly. But too wildly. With another down swing, she pulled herself forward too much. Her assailant easily slipped past the blow, and snatched the candlestick out of her hands, tossing it away. Saskia tried to punch him, but he caught her wrist, turned the blow aside, pushed her in the back so that she stumbled forward. Before she could turn back to face him, he snagged her ankle with the edge of his foot, enough to make her stumble right into the nearest wall. She got her hands up in time to stop it hurting, but it didn't matter. He was on her.

Before she could so much as think, she felt tape pressing against her right wrist, and with strength that far exceeded hers, her attacker pulled both her arms together, and with the harsh angry growl of tape being torn from its roll, quickly and - to Saskia's mind - easily wound the tape around her wrists, her arms, all the way up to just beneath her shoulders in only a couple of seconds.
"Ah!" she gasped, astonished at how easily she was being caught. He wasn't just stronger than her: he really knew how to fight, and she didn't really have the slightest idea. "HELP!" she cried out. "SOMEONE HE - MMMMMMPHHHH!!" It was too late to scream. A strip of duct tape was slapped down over her lips, firmly sealing her voice. "MMGGHHMMPHH! HHHHRRRRMMMPHHH!!" Saskia screamed, beginning to pant with fear. She was already almost completely tied up, being effortlessly overpowered by the invader in her home. She was all but helpless against him, an antelope in the jaws of a leopard.

But an antelope could still kick, and that was what she tried to do as he turned her, trying to drive her knee into his groin. But he just sort of pushed her knee back down, and it was as if the attempt had never been made. Worse was still to come: her assailant dropped to his knees, wrapped one of his arms around Saskia's long, willowy legs, squeezing together her coffee-brown thighs. Discarding one roll, and producing another, he began binding her legs as well, foot after foot of tape being pressed tightly against Saskia's warm, immaculately smooth skin.
"NNNMMMHHHH!!" Saskia cried through her gag, almost bending over completely to watch in disbelief as her beautiful legs were bound, as she was restrained and captured like a trapped animal. Her eyes were wide in horror as she watched every moment of her binding, aghast and incredulous that she'd been caught and bound so easily. It wasn't as if she thought she was particularly formidable or anything - but surely it should have been harder than this to overpower her, to take her. For the first time, a note of humiliation added to the harmony of her fear and anger.

Once her attacker was satisfied with her legs' bondage he leapt up, pushing her in the chest and forcing her up as well, holding her tight against the wall as she wriggled. There was a moment of pause. Saskia got the feeling that he was really looking at her for the first time, rather than just capturing her. She was very aware of the shortness of her dress, the exposure of her naked legs, her shoulders, much of her chest. But he seemed able to stay professional: he'd touched her only insofar as he'd been trying to restrain her. This was no comfort - especially when he produced the syringe from a pouch in his jacket.
"Nmmhh! Nmmmhhh!" Saskia quailed, shaking her head from side to side. But this he wouldn't tolerate: he wrapped his left hand around her mouth, muzzling the beautiful journalist even more thoroughly than before, strong fingers clamping around her jaw. But it wasn't really her voice that he was interested in - rather, it was simply to keep her head still.

The strike was so precise that Saskia didn't immediately feel it. But she saw it, saw the syringe pierce her skin, saw the needle violating the skin of her long, supple neck.
"NNNMMMPHHH!!" Saskia screamed, as the plunger went down. She felt it, felt the liquid surge into her. She felt cold, cold from fear of what it was she'd been injected with. But, as the needle was carefully removed, she did not stay feeling cold for long. "Mhh...mmhh?"

Warmth. Warmth spreading through her blood. From her neck to her chest, from her chest to her heart, and from there, to everywhere else. A smooth, velveteen heat slipping seductively through her entire body. Her shoulders relaxed, began to droop. She felt her thighs, taped together with painful strictness, begin to relax as well, and she slipped down a little against the wall she was pushed against. "Mmmhhh...mmmhhh..." She couldn't help herself. Every part of her seemed to cry out for her to relax. Even her bondage no longer felt so uncomfortable. It was like being embraced, and Saskia couldn't help mewing a little as she felt it wrapping her, holding her.

"Mmmmhhhhhh..." Saskia sighed, her eyelids fluttering as a heavy sleepiness worked its way into her mind. She couldn't think. Couldn't move. She could, however, barely care. It felt so relaxing, even a little euphoric, as though subtle hands were drawing her into warm water. "Mff..." Her naked legs could no longer hold her up, and she flopped forward, her pretty face falling against her captor's chest. "Weak...can't...so sleepy..." That was about as cogent as her thoughts were under the effect of the sedative. Even her mind subdued, Saskia had been rendered truly helpless. The one mercy was that she was barely aware of what was happening to her once she'd passed a certain point.

Not so for Piper. She continued to scream, to thrash in her bondage as she watched her lover overpowered, bound and now drugged. Tears flowed from her eyes, not only of fear, but of remorse. She was afraid that she and Saskia were never going to talk to each other again, that either they were going to be killed or sold into slavery or something, and that the last thing they'd say to each other had been a stupid fight.

But, at the very least, their captor had no intent of killing them. As Saskia passed out, she began to fall, and he quickly slipped an arm under her legs, lifting her up into his arms like a bride. Her long, bare legs dangled in the air, her back arching, her swanlike neck falling back as she was gripped by her shoulder, exposing her in all her beauty and vulnerability. So, indeed, it was by no means implausible to say that someone might have decided to pluck her for her loveliness.

But, of course, all James Oleander wanted was her camera.

[Damselbinder]

Everyone is the hero of their own story', goes the old adage. Less politely, it might be said 'everyone is a self-centred hypocrite.' For certainly, if you had asked James Oleander if he felt like the hero of his story, that night he broke into the home of Saskia Dubois, assaulted her, tied her and her girlfriend up with duct tape and injected Saskia with a powerful sedative, he would have been unlikely to answer 'yes'. But he wouldn't have called himself a villain either: he was fighting for his life, and nothing mattered to James Oleander more than his own life. Besides, if he succeeded, all these women would suffer was fear, discomfort, and the humiliation of capture. If he failed, he would be killed. They really ought to have been grateful he was exercising such restraint.


Piper was not feeling grateful. She was terrified, terrified to the point where she literally couldn't move. She'd just watched - shivering, kneeling and whimpering - as the intruder had tied Saskia up. She was taller than Piper, and stronger than Piper, but it seemed as if the intruder had captured her even more easily. It had been trivially easy. And then he'd drugged her - or at least Piper prayed that he'd just drugged her - and she'd wilted in his arms. He'd barely looked as if he'd been trying.


The terrible thing was, as she lay captive and trussed in the intruder's arms, Saskia looked beautiful. The way her back arched, the way her long legs dangled in the air, the peace and repose in her delicate features. Even the way her bonds pushed her legs together and her smooth shoulders inwards was attractive in its own way. As her captor carried her towards Piper, Piper began to move beyond raw, animal terror, and start to wonder what it was this man wanted from the attractive young couple he'd assaulted, and bound with duct tape.


Piper did not know whether it was good or bad that the intruder laid Saskia down relatively carefully, her pretty face lying comfortably against a thick pillow. It could have meant that he didn't have any particular intention of hurting them. It could just have meant that he didn't want her to be damaged. Having laid his drugged captive down, the intruder began to stand, but hesitated. He seemed to have noticed something. Following what she guessed roughly was his line of sight, Piper saw that he was looking at the hem of Saskia's short dress, riding far up her bare thighs. She looked so delicate, so soft and vulnerable, the way her swanlike neck was exposed, the peace in her face, her stillness. Her skin was warm, and smooth, and moist. She was a beautiful woman, and she was absolutely defenceless against this man. He could do anything he liked.
"Nh...!" Piper choked, but in vain. His hand thrust out in the direction of Saskia's thighs. The first sparks of outrage began to wrestle with Piper's terror of her captor, but they did not have time to kindle flame before the intruder twisted the fabric of Saskia's hem in his fingers - and tugged it down.


"I'm not here for that," he said, his voice muffled by the cloth mask over his face. "So don't try anything. It's not worth the risk."
Piper was surprised. She'd expected a gruff thug, but her captor's voice was smooth, even intelligent. It didn't make her more afraid, exactly, but it firmly stifled any instinct to fight back, like a gloved hand closing slowly around a flame. She was suddenly very aware of the fact that she'd been made as helpless as a kitten with a few strips of tape, all agency robbed from her. She was completely in this man's power, and the shame of that made her shrink back. She lowered her eyes. She tried not to cry.


Hiding emotion was a little easier for James, what with the mask and everything. In his case, he wasn't trying to hide fear or shame, just the fact that he'd winced the moment he'd opened his mouth. What the hell was he talking for? Why did he need his captive to know he wasn't going to sexually assault her? He knew it, didn't he?
"I should have waited longer," he thought. "Until they were asleep. Snuck in and injected them both - they might not even have realised what I'd have done." He'd wanted to inject Piper the moment he was finished restraining her, but Saskia's interruption had prevented him. She seemed cowed now, though, and in no position to retaliate. Very much not an anaesthesiologist, James didn't want to take unnecessary risks with the dosages. Besides, there were advantages to having her awake.


"You," he said, imitating the bullying gruffness of a Hollywood hostage-taker. "You have the sense to be scared, so listen. I'm going to search this place. When I've found what I'm looking for, I'll have no reason to stick around. But you," he said, pointing his finger aggressively, making Piper jump and whimper, "you had better not do anything stupid. Do you understand me?"
Piper nodded quickly. She put James in mind of a little sparrow. Small, pretty and fragile. He felt a surge of...well, what was it exactly? He supposed after a moment's reflection that it was machismo. He was a physically powerful man, and the capture and domination of these two women - these two very attractive women - had made him acutely aware of that power.


And then, suddenly, James understood something that he'd never understood before. He understood why people became supervillains. The very idea, the very word, had always struck him as something of incalculable childishness. The codenames, the outfits, the moustache-twirling and maiden kidnapping ludicrosity of the whole scene had seemed infantile and repugnant, but now he understood. It was a simple expression of power, of power in its rawest form: physical, personal strength. It was a rush, a high even, and he felt it now. It was simple. He could imagine men devoting their entire lives to chasing that rush, even if it still seemed psychotic. He understood the need for power and status, though - and he returned to his efforts to protect his.

It was the camera he was after, the camera that had caught him levelling a gun at the head of his own employer. Though he'd since figured out that he could probably talk his way out of being charged with attempted murder if he had a good enough lawyer, he couldn't talk his way around Milo Patáky. If Milo saw the picture, he'd have James' head cut off. There was no way around that. Or rather, there was exactly one way: making sure that Milo didn't see it.


So he searched. At first, he was simply thorough. He rifled through Saskia's handbag, and all three of Piper's. He went through every drawer in their bedroom, as Piper watched him with tear-filled, terrified eyes. He rifled through their drawers, even the drawers in their drawers. He looked through wardrobes, and jewellery boxes. Yet in all this, there was no fear. He just didn't want to move to another room until he was sure the offending item wasn't there. Alas, it wasn't.


He made vaguely threatening gestures towards Piper - not that he needed to try very hard to keep her subdued - and moved into the living room. Again, he was thorough here. Calm. He knew he would find it eventually. So he looked swiftly, but methodically, through drawers, on tables, under seats, on top of the television, on windowsills, in jacket pockets. Still nothing, but no mind. He went to the hallway, looked through yet another handbag, in the pocket of a raincoat, more windowsills. It was when he started looking in a pair of shoes that James realised he might be in trouble.


But he wasn't done yet. He tried the kitchen, and with just a little more agitation he went through cutlery, pots, pans, cupboards of spices, on top of the fridge, on tables, aware that he was not leaving everything quite as tidy as he'd done up to that point. Still no luck, so he went into the bathroom, and by now he was happily turning things over, leaving perfumes and bottles of aspirin and shower gel overturned or spilled or broken. Still nothing.


So he looked in their airing cupboard, throwing out sheets and blankets and pillowcases, finding himself actually quite angry that it was taking as long as it was taking. Sweeping as much as he could onto the floor with a growl, James, for one hideous moment, thought that he'd run out of places to look - until he saw a small table sitting right by the door. It was the sort of thing you dumped letters on as you came in, and he realised that there was a drawer in it, one he'd not seen when approaching it from the other side. He reached it in two strides, threw it open - and saw a camera sitting right inside. Relieved, he grabbed it, surprised at how light it was - until he realised what it was he was holding.
"Disposable...it's disposable." Cheap, low-tech, the kind of thing you took on holidays with the family, not the kind of thing you took out to do investigative journalism with. It occurred to him that Saskia had a better camera, but it was being fixed or something and she was making do. Though that was possible, it was not possible that this camera had taken the offending photograph. He'd only realised he'd been photographed because he'd seen it flash. This camera didn't have a flash. And so, the long, caustic fingers of panic began to wrap around James' throat.


It had not yet occurred to James that there had been more than one woman on that rooftop, and to be added to the list of his mistakes was the dosage of sedative he'd given to Saskia. She wasn't supposed to wake up for about two hours, but she started to awaken after only twenty minutes. Indeed, as her dark, long-lashed eyes first fluttered open, James was still looking through their kitchen.
"Mph...mmhhh..." Saskia did what she always did when she woke up - she stretched her long legs, pointing her toes like a ballerina. She tried to lift her arms over her head, found that she could not, realised that she'd been bound and gagged, and then screamed.


"Nhh! Sthhp! Pllhhff, Sffhhkhh!" Piper tried to calm her down, fearful that their captor would return and punish them for making noise. It was not that Piper was cowardly, though she was certainly very afraid, but rather that she felt lucky. This man seemed not to have any particular interest in hurting them as an end, and she didn't want it to appear a means to an end either. She did not want to push their relative luck by testing the patience of a man who obviously had it in his power to kill both of them easily. Imagine her terror, then, when it seemed to her that her disoriented girlfriend's screams had drawn him back, for he entered with shoulders hunched, in a crouched posture of implied violence. She begged him not to hurt them, not to hurt Saskia in particular, but her gag rendered her pleas to nonsense. But it didn't matter. Saskia's screams weren't as loud as Piper was imagining: he hadn't even heard them. But he certainly was unhappy.


"Where's - is it?!" he shouted, stumbling over his words when he realised that Saskia was awake, and started addressing the question to her instead.
"Wh...whrhhff...?" Still groggy, Saskia tried to shift away from him, the shouting from her captor and the screaming from Piper turning her awakening into a confusing nightmare. She couldn't make sense of what was happening, wasn't even exactly afraid yet.
"Your camera, Ms Dubois," James said, regaining his composure. "Where is your camera?"
"Mhh...whh?" She tried to sit up, but with a weak, soft sigh she fell back onto the pillow that had been propping her head up, the drug still draining her strength. James saw this, and did not press the point immediately, waiting for her to recover her faculties.


As for Saskia, this only gave her the opportunity to assimilate what was happening into her sense of reality.
"I...I'm tied up. I'm tied up, and so is Piper, and there's a man in our bedroom... ." Feeling her limbs begin to tremble with fear, she tried to focus on facts, on information, on anything she could use to their advantage. "He... the way he caught me... it was like I was nothing... " This wasn't helping, so she tried to make things simpler. "He's strong, and he knows how to fight. He's a professional at this... . While I was unconscious he didn't... I - I don't think he... tried anything. So he wants something specific... wait, he said something specific, didn't he? Wh... what was it?"
"Your camera, Ms Dubois," James repeated. "Where is it?"
"My camera? I don't even own a decent camera... is this... is this about my work?" Her mind, at last, cut through the fog. She recalled her day's efforts with Valerie, recalled the near-showdown at the casino, then the once-in-a-lifetime shot Valerie had snapped of James levelling his pistol at his boss. "Oh shit."


It was James Oleander. He'd seen her on the rooftop, and he'd come to prevent himself from being exposed. But he'd only seen her. He didn't know about Valerie. He didn't know that she had the photograph. For a moment, a very brief moment, Saskia began to smile underneath her gag: the bastard had picked the wrong target. Patáky would still see what he'd tried to do, would still cut his head off. But that meant she didn't have what he wanted. That meant that this criminal, this man who would have blown a hole in his own boss' skull if Valerie hadn't interrupted him, would be... displeased.
"Oh god," Saskia thought. "We're going to die. He's going to murder us."


"I'm taking off your gag," James said. "If you scream, I'll have to do something unpleasant." He did as he'd said, peeling the tape away from Saskia's lips. She winced, and so did he. This had already gone too far. If he'd had it his way, he'd already have the camera, and he'd have left the two women tied up on their bed. But that wasn't a productive line of thought. "Tell me where you keep your camera, and I don't mean the disposable one I found in the drawer in your hallway."
"I d-don't own one," Saskia said, finding that she was having to stop her teeth from chattering. "I'm a writer, not a paparazzo. I don't need one."
"Then we have a problem," James said. "Because someone took a photo today, saw something... out of context. You know what I'm talking about." He gestured towards Piper. "I'm being vague for her benefit. The less she knows, the safer she'll be. Yes?"
Saskia nodded. She looked at Piper, tried to smile. "It's going to be okay, sweetheart," she said. "It's -"
"Look at me."


James hadn't spoken very loudly, but there was a threatening forcefulness in his voice that compelled Saskia to obey. "So if you didn't take the shot, who did?"
"I'm n-not telling you that," Saskia said. "For all I know that information is the only thing keeping me alive."
"For all you know, revealing it could be the only thing that'll keep you alive." He did, then, what he promised himself at the outset of this venture that he wouldn't do. He drew his handgun.


Piper shrieked, tried to wriggle herself in front of Saskia, but slipped and fell on her front, the strap of her dress slipping off her shoulder. Saskia just froze, locking her eyes on James'.
"Now," James said, keeping his handgun by his side for the moment, "tell me who took the photograph."
"It doesn't m-matter," Saskia said, very quietly. "They'll already have t-turned it in. You're too late."
James didn't speak for a few moments, considering his options. Then he raised his pistol, and pressed the muzzle against Saskia's forehead. "Am I really too late?"


It is too easy to forget, when one reads a work of fiction, what real human beings are like. By necessity, the heroes of our stories are always braver, smarter, more resourceful, more courageous, more emotive, more articulate, and more interesting than anyone we actually meet. No self-respecting heroine of the girl-detective stories that Saskia had read as a child would have given up as easily as she did. They would exchange banter, they would bluff, they would seduce or fight before surrendering information like this. But Saskia was not a hero of a girl-detective story. She was a young woman who had been assaulted and restrained, and she did not want her or her girlfriend to die. Shaking with terror, she said: "No, you're not. We couldn't...we were too late. I know that - that the photographer developed the negatives, but even if th-they put them on our editor's desk no-one will have seen them."
"Can I get inside at this time of night? Can I get them?"
"Yes," Saskia said, instantly. "I - I have a key."
"And what about the photographer? Who is he?"


Then again, Saskia was not wholly unlike those pulp heroines of her youth. Her courage was by no means infinite, but it was there. Truth be told, had Valerie been a sheer stranger to her, a name merely, then Saskia would probably have given her up straightaway. But silly though it was, Saskia now considered Valerie to be her friend. And she could not surrender a friend so easily.
"No. No, I won't tell you. I won't tell you. I won't tell you!" Saskia's courage mixed with hysteria, and she shook like a leaf.
"Listen to me," James said. "If I had found the camera, if the photographs had been here, I would have gone by now. I have no intention of killing you. I will if I have to, but only if I have to. I won't start with you, though. I'll kill her to show you that I'm serious. And then you. And then I'll probably find out who your photographer is anyway, and I'll be having this conversation with him. If you give up the name, I won't do anything worse to him than I've done to you already. No-one will die."
"Tough... sh-shit," Saskia hissed, though she could not hold his gaze as she said it. "You're the one doing this. It's your fault, not mine! Don't pretend it's mine!"


James felt hideous. He felt absolutely disgusted with himself for what he was doing. He'd seen men who'd been violent criminals all their lives who weren't this courageous, this defiant in the face of death. He admired Saskia terribly. She was beautiful, and brave and obviously a person of great integrity, and though when he began to consider these qualities in her, he'd suspected that he'd conclude he couldn't kill her, to his horror he found that he could kill her, and that he would kill her if she didn't give him what he wanted. That is, if someone didn't give him what he wanted.
"You," he said, pointing the gun at Piper now, and shoving Saskia back down onto the bed. "Do you know the name of the person I want?"
"Yhhs..." she whimpered.
"Piper, no," Saskia whispered, hoarsely. "Piper!"
James pulled the tape from Piper's face, more roughly than he'd intended, making her cry out in pain. He had to stop himself from apologising. "The one I want. What's his name?"
"Her name is Val -"
"Stop it!"
"- Valerie Orville. She's a photographer at the Sun." Piper didn't feel guilty when she gave Valerie up. To her, the photographer was just a stranger. She only felt bad when she saw Saskia's face, saw her sclerae cracked with red lines from the force of her tears, saw the astonishment and uncomprehension in her eyes. "I - MMPHH!"


James did not give her a chance to explain herself. He pushed the tape back over her lips, and after a moment's fumbling, added to it with another circuit of tape, pinching her rosy cheeks, and muzzling her thoroughly. He patted her cheek, making sure it was sticking well, but Saskia thought he was just being patronising.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" she said. "Two s-sexy ladies helpless in your grasp, right? I hope your pants aren't getting too tight around the crotch, you b... bastard." She found herself struggling to maintain the indignation in her voice. Almost of its own accord, her body was pulling away from her captor, curling up as the flash of adrenaline that had fuelled her defiance began to fade. So she didn't have much fight in her when James gripped her by the back of her neck and pulled her up towards him. He slapped a fresh strip of tape over Saskia's soft mouth, pressing his fingers against her lips as he smoothed it down. James generally liked his women a bit more petite and curvy than the tall and slender Saskia, but she was still a fine looking woman. Saskia's remark about his intentions had had the opposite effect that it had been intended to have: it hadn't chastened him; it had just made him very aware of how attractive his captives were.


But other considerations pushed themselves to the forefront of his mind. He realised now that he would have to take them with him, at least while he was getting the photographs from the Sun's offices. Already this was becoming much, much more complicated than he'd originally foreseen, and it was only going to get worse. There was nothing to do now, though, but wade further into the mire he'd stumbled into.
"I can't leave you here," he said. "I'm taking you with me, for now."
"Nhhhmmphh!" Saskia protested. "Jhhfft mhh! Pllhhhff!"
"'Just me'? Is that what you said?"
Saskia nodded.
"I'm sorry. That's not happening. But," he said, raising his hand to forestall more protests, "that hasn't changed the essential facts. If I get what I want, I'm not going to hurt either of you." He leaned towards them. "Unless I have to." Neither could look him in the eye. "Don't go anywhere," he said, moving quickly out of the room.


Saskia and Piper were not alone for long. But, while they were, much was said that was not said. They looked at each other, and while Saskia was still aghast, though not exactly angry, that Piper had given Valerie up, she was also obviously just as frightened as Piper. Seeing this, Piper felt an urge to wrap her arms around Saskia, to hold her and comfort her, but her captor had taken even that power from her. She did at least manage to wriggle close enough to push her forehead against Saskia's, and Saskia brushed her nose against Piper's in return, but Piper felt the hesitation in the gesture. Realising why, she felt a cold tightening of her stomach, and a feeling that she was very much the lesser of the two of them. Fortunately, this did not stay her chief concern for very long.


When James re-entered, they did not know what it was that he clutched in his right hand at first. Saskia thought that he'd been using the wet cloth to wipe away any physical evidence from their house, and indeed he had been doing that - but not with the cloth he had in his right hand. Or the one he had in his left. It was only when he got closer, only when the sharp, sweet chemical smell began pushing its way into the two captives' nostrils that they realised what James' intentions were.


He was as efficient as he'd been when he'd restrained Saskia. Standing at the head of the bed, James reached down over the headboard, and brought the drugged cloths down over Piper and Saskia's mouths and noses, depriving himself of the sight of much of their pretty faces as he smothered them, drowning their senses in chloroform.
"Mgghhmmphh! MMhhbbhhhhmmff!" Saskia's stifled screams barely carried past James' hand, past the strong fingers which gripped her cheeks and her fine jawline like a vice, gagging her with fearsome effectiveness. But of course, he wasn't just gagging her. "He's drugging us... he's drugging us! He - he's going to fucking kidnap us... !" She writhed and bucked against him, her naked legs damp with sweat as she kicked out. But where he was standing, which had seemed awkward at first, meant that there was no way they could hurt him or even get in his way. They could have wriggled free, but one hand each was all he needed to keep the damsels securely in distress.


Piper writhed even more desperately than Saskia, her small, busty frame wriggling like a snake in the jaws of a predator, feeling the thick, wet cloth muzzling, gagging, stifling. She moaned, and tried to scream, but she could already feel her capacity for resistance fading. The drug was taking effect.
"Nmmmhhhh! Mh...mmhhfff..." Saskia whimpered, beginning to feel it as well. Her bound body was weakening, sinking as surely as though she were tied to lead weights. It spread through her like ink staining paper, in little rivulets at first - tingling in her fingers and toes, an occasional flash of light-headedness - before pooling, and staining everything an obliviate black. That manifested in the fading of her struggles: kicks to wriggles; strains to shifts; writhing to shuffling. Her mind, too, was growing weak, confused. She couldn't string a sentence together in her head, now only aware of feelings: fear; weakness; humiliation. Her eyes - wide, intelligent, observant - began to fade to a meek sleepiness. Her shoulders sagged, her head sank back into her pillow. "Nhh... nhhhh.." she mewed, now no longer even afraid. Just embarrassed and angry, though for that last one she could no longer remember why, not until she felt something warm and yielding against her. Turning her head, she realised that it was Piper's skin.


"Mmhh... mhhh..." Piper was almost completely subdued. Her pretty, pale legs lay flat, and relatively still. Her upturned eyes were half-lidded, unfocused. Her cheeks blushed. Her buxom chest undulated as wave after wave of weakness pulsed through her. Saskia felt Piper's thigh against her own, a slim, soft shoulder. Watched Piper's breasts push against her red, velvet dress. She looked so sexy in velvet, Saskia thought, when other women would have just looked cheap. She called it the 'Pretty Woman effect'. She loved Piper, despite their squabbles, and she gave a piteous moan, for her love reminded her of her fear that she and Piper would be murdered.


As Saskia too began to feel the hooks pulling her down into sleep, her fear was again dulled, and her mind began to drift. Glimmers of the night's spat with her girlfriend pushed her memory towards when they'd first met, when Piper had been attached to a woman named Samantha. Samantha was intelligent, and successful, but cold and awkward, and Saskia, who was so playful and warm, had yanked Piper away from her easily. Piper had cheated on Samantha with Saskia for a month before finally summoning the courage to make a clean break of it. Piper wasn't a brave person, not really, and Saskia decided that that was why she'd given Valerie up. And so it was with thoughts of Valerie that Saskia finally gave into the chloroform. Her face. Her seriousness. The hopes that the glimmer of suspicion that Saskia had about her might just bear fruit when James came calling.


James held the cloths over their mouths for a few moments after they'd passed out, trying to channel some of Milo's fastidiousness. That done, he put the cloths into a plastic bag, a bag he'd later dispose of far from anywhere anyone would look for it. He couldn't believe he'd resorted to this sort of thing. He couldn't believe he'd been careless enough to put him in this ridiculous position. He remembered something that his boss had said once, in a similar situation, quoting some more bloody Shakespeare: "'I am stepped so far in blood...'" was how James misremembered it. Well, he hadn't stepped in any blood yet, but he got the idea. No time for doubts and hesitation now: he'd come too far.


With that in mind, he reached down towards Saskia, put both hands around her waist, and lifted her up to her feet. Her head rolled limply to the side, before flopping onto his chest as he tugged her closer. He handled her a little gingerly: while she was unconscious, while she was bound with tape, even the most utilitarian placement of his hands on her supple body felt like molestation. So the way he'd carried her before, cradling her in his arms, felt... well, it felt too intimate. So he slung her over his shoulder instead, holding her with one arm around her waist. It felt more practical.


Still, as he carried Saskia to his car, he couldn't help but feel the warmth of her coffee-brown skin; the shape of her; the weight of her against him; the satisfying 'thmp' as her limp body flopped over him; the surprising curviness in her hips and her behind that her slender figure kept hidden, almost; the way her bare legs bumped against his body as he carried her, swaying slightly from side to side with his paces. This too gave him a little insight into the mindset of the supervillain: carrying off a beautiful woman was an intoxicating injection of testosterone, despite his moral misgivings. He felt like Genghis Khan. Or something.


Dumping Saskia in the trunk of his car, he had to curl her up a bit to fit her inside with enough room for Piper. He had to tug her dress down again to preserve her modesty, but it wasn't well defended in any case. He wasn't normally a leg man, but Saskia possessed, he had to admit, a fantastic pair of pins: long and smooth and with just enough thickness that she didn't feel stick-like.
"Stop it," he grumbled to himself, slamming the boot shut just in case someone came by, before going back in for Piper.


He did the same thing with her that he'd done with Saskia. He grabbed her by the waist. He lifted her to her feet. Smaller and lighter than Saskia, manipulating the petite, dark-haired girl in the tight, velvet dress was not altogether difficult. The same amount of force made her head fall right against his chest, her plump breasts pushing up against him. He moved her a little ways back, and noticed that the strap of her dress had slipped down off her shoulder, exposing even more of her ripe, milky-white bust. Her dress clung so tightly to her curvy body, highlighting every contour, every ripple. He moved his hands back down to her pinched waist, and took hold of it. Christ, even her hip-bone felt womanly.
"Keep it together," he muttered, before throwing Piper's limp, slinky body over his shoulder. He felt her fall against him, her gorgeous breasts bouncing against his back three times before settling against him, then pressing gently just under his shoulder-blade every time she breathed. He kept hold of her by her thighs, rounder and more yielding than Saskia's, his fingers making fairly deep impressions into her pale skin. He meant to take her by the waist with his other hand, but found himself gripping her behind instead. It was just as prominent as he liked, heart-shaped, and it felt unbelievably smooth and soft through the velvet. He couldn't help himself. It wasn't enough to hold her. He gripped. He fondled. He squeezed.


He'd done this before, with consenting women that is. He'd showed off the strength of his beautifully masculine body to many women, picking them up, lifting them, carrying them, whatever. But it wasn't the same. It wasn't the same as taking advantage of a woman he'd bound and captured. The truth of his soul was laid bare in that moment, as he groped Piper's thighs and her behind: he was a man of greed and vanity, and he could not help himself. It had been greed and vanity that Novak had seen when he'd used his powers to see into James' heart, it had been greed and vanity that had made him consider the offer, and it had been greed and vanity that made him raise his gun against his faithful employer. Dear god, part of him felt as if he deserved a bit of gratification. He stopped himself, alright, and with a flush of embarrassment began taking her to her car, but he could not bring himself to be ashamed anymore.


Carrying Piper to his car, taking as long as he could with that sweet, curvy burden slumped over his shoulder, he dropped her into his trunk as well, tucking her legs up to her chest to fit her inside, arranging it so that her face was resting against Saskia's shapely calves. He didn't stop to admire the sight of the trussed up couple in their revealing dresses, but he fixed it into his mind nice and securely. Getting into the driver's seat of his car, he breathed slowly, reminding himself why he was doing what he was doing, and reminding himself how precarious his position truly was. He'd need to get those photographs from the Sun's office, and he'd need to find this Valerie Orville person.
"Wait a minute..." He realised that he had already met her. It had been her the other day, her that had pushed through Milo's guards and taken that picture of the two of them. He remembered what she looked like: she was a bona fide blonde bombshell. He smiled ironically to himself. He was in blood steeped in so far, after all - why not add another pretty damsel to his collection?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Certainly Valerie was having a better time of it than Saskia and Piper. However, it would have taken a fair amount of effort to convince her of this. Not at the beginning of the evening, though. At the beginning of the evening she'd actually been rather enjoying herself. She'd been catching up with some old friends, some from high school, some she'd met at a part time job she'd done when she was sixteen, a group that had been welded together by her return. Alas, the two she'd liked the most from her group had left Maine, one of whom was the only girl at her school whom Valerie had known was a superhuman. It had been hard to hide it: she had six huge, white, feathered wings. Even to her, however, Valerie had never shown her own powers. She'd never shown anyone, apart from her parents and the Bombshells. Certainly no-one in Maine but her father knew what she was.


In any case, she made do with what she had. They'd gone out to a bar, a bar which had a pretty good three-guitar punk band playing. Valerie had even felt able to buy a round for her friends, though she'd nearly panicked for a moment when the barman pressed the wrong button on the register, and made it look like Valerie would have to pay double what she owed. But he'd corrected the mistake without even realising that Valerie had noticed it, and all was well.


As she heard her friends recount the goings-on of their lives, catching her up with their love lives, their professional lives, new bands and venues they'd found, concerns about their diets and exercise routines, recommendations for gyms, it wasn't as though Valerie scorned them. She was hardly some great intellectual, and she didn't resent the warm, friendly small-talk. She just felt that she couldn't participate. At once greater and lesser than all of them - a superhero and an inveterate, violent idiot - she could not share her life with her old friends as they'd shared theirs with her. She began drinking really rather heavily, and though her powers gave her noticeably greater tolerance for alcohol than her friends, this tolerance was not in itself superhuman. She found herself very drunk and, embarrassed at her conduct, she went over to continue deadening her thoughts alone, by the bar.


But she did not stay alone for long. The bassist of the band - 'She Likes Cloth' - had been giving her the eye all night, and he obviously thought he'd try his luck. She probably would have turned him down immediately, but she'd noticed as the band had been tuning their instruments that he had an air of authority over his colleagues, unusual for a bassist, which she found attractive. He had nice arms, too, and a Van Dyke, sheer possession of which indicated admirable chutzpah. He was a little bit shorter than Valerie herself, a little stocky around the stomach, but well built in other places.
"Hey babe," he said, almost disqualifying himself instantly. "You like the show?"
"Yeah!" she replied, alcohol a solvent to any brusqueness. "You guys were way better than this place deserves."
"Sweet," he said. "I appreciate it when people are nice, y'know? Not like you have to be." Then: "I'm Richard. What's your name, darlin'?"
But she didn't reply. She burst out laughing. "You're kidding! Your name is Richard, and you have a Van Dyke beard?"
"What's wrong with that?"
"Didn't you ever see Mary Poppins? Or, I don't know, Diagnosis Murder?" When that didn't elucidate matters, she leaned in closer, and said, loudly into his ear: "Dick Van Dyke!"
"Sorry, babe, I don't get it," he said, flashing quite a cute smile. "Guess I'm not as cultured as you, y'know?"
"Hey, Dick," Valerie said, giggling a little with a drunken flush, "You know you seem kind of sweet, but you really need to cut it out with the 'babe' stuff. It's 2005."
"Sorry," he said, and meant it. "Force of habit."


His sheepishness charmed Valerie, so she put her hand on his shoulder. "Dick, you really don't need to try very hard tonight, okay? I am... very frustrated with a lot of things, and in major need of release, so you are not going to have to persuade me much to get me to let you fuck me."
"Wh -"
"Not that, I'll, you know, think any less of you if you don't want to," Valerie said, throwing back another shot of cheap vodka. "I'm not one of those assholes who thinks a man has to be all sex all the time. In fact, I'll probably respect you more if you say you don't want to fuck me. So... the best way to get me to let you fuck me, Dick... would be to tell me that you don't want to fuck me. Get it? Wow, I'm drunk."
"Usually the bassist isn't the one talking to the hottest chick - uh, I mean woman - at the bar," Richard replied. "So I think I'd better just not say anything."
"Richard," Valerie said, with a new earnestness in her voice, "tell me what you want."
"You," he replied, firmly. Less firmly, he added: "Since you seem up for it." He was decisive, it seemed. Valerie liked decisiveness. Decisiveness meant strength of character. And strength was very, very important to her.


Twenty-eight minutes later, Valerie was in Richard's living room, allowing her skirt to fall to her feet. She put his hands on her womanly hips, and kissed him. His fingernails traced downwards over her ass, and she smiled, and she smiled more when his fingernails traced up her back. It was gently ticklish, and she asked him to do it again, and he did. He asked if he could unhook her bra, and she said yes, and soon Valerie was enjoying the sensation of Richard's beard tickling her buxom, bare breasts as he kissed them, and as he struggled to think of a compliment for them that wouldn't sound either ridiculous, or sleazy or both. He settled on simply telling her that she had an amazing body, and she thanked him, and told him that he was handsome, and kissed the taut, dark skin of his neck, his chest and his shoulders.


They began to move towards the couch, and Richard began moving his hand towards Valerie's legs, intending on picking her up and carrying her to the couch. Realising this, Valerie considered letting him, but moved away at the last moment, and just pulled him over to the couch herself. They lay down, and she wrapped her shapely legs around him, and she held him tightly against her, and she kissed him again, and again, pressing her voluptuous body against him. He was about to pull off his boxers, but she suddenly stopped him.
"I'm a superhuman," she said, so quickly that he obviously hadn't understood, so she said it again.
"You're... huh?"
"I - I want you to know. I have... I have superhuman strength. A lot of it."
"Are - " Richard wasn't sure if his question would be insulting, but he asked it anyway. "Are your powers dangerous if we - ?"
"Have sex? No. Not unless I want them to be," she said.
"Then why tell me?"
"Because I want someone to know. I want someone in this God-forsaken place to know what I am. To know who I am." She hadn't intended to tell him when she entered his apartment. If you'd asked her then, she would have said her powers were not an important fact about her, not anymore. An 'item of trivia' was how she'd put it earlier. But now, when she was drunk, and naked, it didn't feel like trivia. In her other life, she'd secured a great victory that day, getting that picture of James Oleander - but she was not happy. She was not happy because she'd felt like her strength didn't matter. But in that moment it mattered more than anything.
"Shit," Richard laughed, "it's not like I have any right to be surprised or anything. I never even asked your fucking name." He looked down, and saw a pair of piercing blue eyes staring straight at him, with a strange, almost otherworldly expression.
"Valora," she said. "Call me Valora." She embraced him again, and began wriggling sensually against him as she pulled her panties down her thighs. But they hadn't yet got to her knees when she heard the phone she'd left in her jacket ringing.


"No," she thought. "Not now... not now, please..." She wouldn't have taken the call. She would have ignored it, and given Richard the night of his life, but she recognised the ringtone. She'd assigned it to a particular person, just so she wouldn't be taken off guard when she picked up. It was her father.
"Hey, wh...?" Richard mumbled as Valerie pushed him aside, hastily pulling her panties back on.
"I'm sorry," she said, "I have to take this." She knew before she even opened her phone that there was something wrong. He wouldn't have been calling this late if there hadn't been something wrong.
"Hey, Dad," she said. "No, it's okay, we can talk. What's up?"


Naturally, Richard was pretty peeved. He was hardly a genius at reading a room, but he could sense that it was very unlikely that she was going to climb back into bed with him. Or onto couch, anyway. She didn't do much talking. What she did say was mostly "yeah?" or "oh?", and she was facing away from Richard, so he couldn't see her expressions. Yet even so, he saw a change. Her stance, which had been so proud and confident, became withdrawn, defensive. Her strong shoulders were raised and tense, her shapely legs close together. He'd never have noticed, but for the fact that the change was so extreme.


"...okay," she eventually said. "I - I'll be there soon." She hung up, and ran her hands slowly through her long, thick blonde hair. "Richard, I'm really sorry."
"You've gotta go, right?" He was already pulling his jeans back on.
"Yeah, I do. I... " She shook her head, twisting her tongue in her mouth in a gesture of frustration. "It's just the way things go, I guess."
"Yeah, whatever," Richard replied. "Look, this is pretty fucking embarrassing, so if you're gonna go, could you just go, please?"
Valerie didn't say anything else. She just dressed herself, and walked out.


It took her almost an hour to get to her father's place. She had a key, so she let herself in. "Dad? Dad, it's Valerie." There was no answer. His house was small, by American standards, with peeling, tremendously unfashionable wallpaper. His kitchen was always dirty. The windows were gloomy, and grimy, and the whole place stank of damp. "Dad?" He wasn't in the living room, or the kitchen. She went upstairs, peeked into his bedroom. This was even filthier and more untidy than the front room: he never expected anyone to see it. Running out of places to look, Valerie lightly pushed on the bathroom door. It wasn't locked. "Oh, Jesus, Dad..."


Ulysses Orville was lying in the bathtub. It was empty, and he was fully clothed, but he wasn't dry. His face was covered in tears. He was sobbing, not uncontrollably, but slowly, with one heave and bitter moan every twenty seconds or so. His eyes were bloodshot, and dull. He didn't drink, but he stank of cigarette smoke. Valerie did drink, and she was embarrassed about her father seeing her while she was drunk, while she still smelt of Richard's cologne.
"I had a meeting today," Ulysses said. His voice had that strange, distant quality it always had. "With a publisher. I managed to get up. I managed to go to it." He had the manuscript of his latest attempt at a book in his hands. "They said... they said that it was awful. They tried to be nice, but they didn't do it very well."
Valerie winced. If that was indeed what the publishers had said, then she agreed. There was some rather clever dialogue here and there in her father's novel - a period mystery story - but the plot was almost incomprehensible, and the female characters were embarrassingly retrograde. She wouldn't have published it either. He'd never been good, but since Valerie's mother had left him he'd been a really terrible writer. "Look, Dad, maybe it just needs a redraft, huh?" She came in, knelt by the side of the bath. "Why don't you talk to Bill? He was always coming over to look at your manuscripts when I was a kid."
"Bill was your mother's friend," Ulysses said. "He doesn't even live in Maine anymore."
"Well then talk to someone else. Talk to -" For a moment she considered asking Saskia, but this was a product of her inebriation. For one, Saskia was a journalist, an essayist, not a writer of fiction. For another, she did not know Saskia anywhere near well enough to ask such a favour. "Can't you find another publisher?"

Ulysses leaned forward in the bath, crumpling the manuscript that he held between his swollen hands. "I have another interview the day after tomorrow," he said. "But what's the point? What's the point?!" He threw his manuscript at the wall opposite him, sending paper flying everywhere. He did not so much cry as just bellow, and Valerie had to hold him by the wrists - thankfully easy for her - to stop him from smashing his hands on the sides of the bath. She held him, and just tried to make sure that her didn't hurt himself as the wave passed.


This did not happen often, but it did happen. A natural proclivity to despondency, periods of outright clinical depression, and his persistent agony over the flight of his wife made him a deeply unstable man. That, and the fact that he suffered from the most severe case of Crohn's Disease that his doctors had ever seen meant he was not capable of holding down a normal job. He was sickly, and unhappy, and these episodes were becoming increasingly common. Valerie was not the only one he called: his brother and his friends had dealt with a lot of it when Valerie had lived in California. But Valerie was the one he called most often. And then she had to drop everything and come to deal with him, no matter what she was doing. She'd broken off dates, abandoned potential collars, even ditched work. But she was a dutiful daughter, and she did it without complaining, and she tried as hard as she could to be filial, to be loving and kind to her poor father. She held him, and kissed his head, and said comforting things to him. There was not much softness in Valerie, but she reserved what little there was for Ulysses.


Not that she got any in return. When Ulysses had calmed down, and sat in his armchair puffing away on another cigarette, he didn't exactly seem overflowing with gratitude.
"Thank you, Valerie," he said, in that distant way of his that made it unclear whether or not he was talking to you. "I hope I didn't interrupt anything important."
"It's fine, Dad," Valerie said, more or less sober now. "I just wish you wouldn't... you wouldn't do that."
"So do I," he said, patting her hand. It didn't quite feel affectionate.
"I know things have been hard since Mom left," Valerie said, trying to get something more out of him, "but you... ." She trailed off, not sure what to say. She had no advice to give other than "stop going crazy", but that would hardly be helpful.
"You don't have to call her that," her father said.
"I'm sorry?"
"You don't have to call her 'mom'. She's your stepmother. You can call her 'Victoria' if you want." He smiled, sort-of-looking at her. "I know you only call her 'mom' for my sake."


Ulysses was completely wrong. Valerie called Victoria 'mom' because Victoria had been married to her father since Valerie was eight and a half years old. She had never had a very good relationship with her stepmother, divorce or no divorce, but she had always thought of her as her - still thought of her - as her mother. But in the face of her father's absolute failure to understand his daughter's character, she could not find the will to explain herself.
"If you're okay, I'm gonna go, okay Dad? It's pretty late, and I have... a lot of stuff to do tomorrow."
"Sure, Valerie," Ulysses replied, but as she got up he put his hand on her wrist. "Would you mind paying me a visit tomorrow evening, too?"
Valerie felt a flash of irritation at his request, at his wish to garner yet another favour from her, but quashed that irritation with all her strength, crushed it down, stifled and killed any notion of being angry with him. He wanted to be in her company, she told herself. If that wasn't a way of expressing his affection, what was?
"Sure, Dad," she said. There was little else to say.


She took a bus home. Assuming she didn't have to wait long when she changed for a second bus, it would take her about forty-five minutes to get back to her place. Either way it gave her a lot of time to think. She tried to grab hold of that moment of triumph when she got that picture of Oleander with the gun. She held onto it for a while, but thoughts of her stepmother pushed it aside. Victoria had been a... hard woman. Ostentatious, and funny, but not warm. Valerie had happy memories of her, but few affectionate ones. She could not find it in herself to hate her, though. Not even for leaving her father: she knew full well how difficult he could be to live with.


And then from thoughts of her stepmother, there were thoughts of the woman who had given her that ratty old teddy bear she kept on her dresser. The woman who had actually given birth to Valerie, the woman whom Valerie remembered not just as 'mom', like Victoria, but as 'mama'. The woman who had died when Valerie was six: Esther Orville, Ulysses' first wife. Very, very infrequently did Valerie allow her mind to drift towards thoughts of her mother, but she felt very lonely, and the hazy memories she had of her were comforting. Yet Valerie had never had a very vivid visual memory, and she could scarcely remember Esther's face. Just her straw-yellow hair, and fingers which had seemed very, very long to a little child.
"Oh, stop it," Valerie grumbled. She didn't do this. She didn't boo-hoo about dead parents and seek infantile comfort in a rosary of warm memories. She didn't need to be comforted. She didn't even need to be distracted. She was not merely strong. She was durable.


When she finally got off the bus, on the cold, tree-less, unlovely street where the room she rented was located, Valerie felt calm. She did not feel good, but she felt more in command of herself. The prospect of another excellent photograph being put to her name when the Sun published her shot in the next day's edition helped lift her spirits as well. Her sub-editor would be in for a nice surprise when he opened the envelope she'd left on his desk, and found the treasure trove she'd left.


Except Valerie did not know that the envelope was no longer there. It, and its contents, had been first pilfered and then burned. True to her word, Saskia Dubois did have a key to the offices of the Portland Sun. It had been simplicity itself for James Oleander, leaving the beautiful Miss Dubois drugged and bound in his car boot, to find the photographs that Valerie had left and destroy them. Now the handsome criminal was concerned with the photographer herself.


It had actually been surprisingly difficult to find Valerie's address. It had taken a fair bit of digging before he found a landline number attached to her name. Finding the number was useful though: one of her flatmates had confirmed that Valerie wasn't there. So he'd parked himself in a spot where the streetlights did not shine (he'd had many to choose from), and had waited for Valerie to arrive.
"Wow." She was more attractive than he'd remembered. A buxom, voluptuous figure. Long, wavy blonde hair. Shapely, solid, womanly legs. She was like a fifties pin up - all perky, confident, unpretentious sexuality. He imagined what he was about to do, imagined her sinking, wilting into his grasp, moaning and sighing as she gave into the chloroform he had at the ready. Focusing on that, as degenerate as it was, was genuinely helpful. It distracted him from the fear of getting caught.


She was close now, almost close enough to smell. Close enough for him to see her proud, beautiful features, full of youth and strength, and and a self-assurance that pushed through her doubts and miseries. Well, James didn't quite think of it like that. His thoughts were more in the line of 'wowee, what a pretty lady', but he did see all those things, and he took them in whether he knew it or not. It was only when she was close enough that even in the darkness there was a decent chance of her spotting him, only then that he sprung his trap.


"Mmphh?!" A gloved hand clamped down over Valerie's full, peach-soft lips. A wet, sweet-smelling rag muffled her voice, covering her mouth and her nose. A strong arm wrapped around her torso, pulling her buxom, feminine body backwards, pressing her arms against her sides. Shock and astonishment flashed up like harsh red lights in Valerie's mind, as she felt what was happening to her. A man, in the dark, when she was alone in the middle of the night had grabbed her. He was trying to drug her. He was trying to kidnap her. She, who with her achingly gorgeous, curvaceous body, her low cut top and her short skirt, her inviting, Marilyn-Monroe-by-way-of-Bettie-Page beauty, was such a tempting and delicious target for any captor. She, who had once thrown a yacht at an oil tanker, and for whom the strength of James Oleander was about as dangerous a trap as a lasso made of candy floss.


"AAUUUUGGHHHH!!" James cried, as Valerie grabbed his wrist, twisted it until he dropped the rag he'd been trying to drug her with, and then kicked him in the chest, sending him hurtling backwards. He landed, bounced, landed again, and rolled for a couple of feet before he stopped. "Wh... hhh... what?" he spluttered, his body wracked with pain. He was very lucky that Valerie had been holding back as much as she had, or he would have been hurting far, far more.
"Brother did you ever pick the wrong night to try out that old chestnut," Valerie said, trying to check the instinct to snap this man's neck. "This isn't a warning. This is an announcement. I am going to knock you unconscious, and then I am going to throw you - and I do mean throw you - to the cops."
As one might imagine, this was not something James would allow. He drew his gun, levelled it at Valerie. She hesitated, not because of the gun - even the most powerful handgun would barely be able to bruise her - but because it might make it far too obvious that she was superhuman. Little did she know, James' thoughts were already veering in that direction.
"If she was twice my size and rippling with muscles she wouldn't have been able to do that!" James thought. He was strong, very strong, and it just shouldn't have been possible for a woman of Valerie's build to overpower him at all. He didn't know what to do. It was all going wrong. It was all going wrong again. This was not how it ought to have been. His confusion may well have cost him dearly, but he had a stroke of luck.


Valerie took a step towards him, but a sudden wave of light-headedness hit her, and she stumbled slightly. She had not breathed anywhere near enough chloroform to knock her out, or even to weaken her, but it had affected her a little, and in her disorientation, James fired, not at her, but at the nearest streetlight, plunging them both into darkness.
"HEY!" Valerie bellowed, crouching low as her eyes adjusted, wary of being ambushed. "Don't you run, you little bastard!"
Running was exactly what James was doing, far and fast. He was in his car before Valerie had noticed that he'd moved, and already speeding away by the time she realised that he'd got in his car. She could have given chase, but that really would have risked exposing herself. Still, this was worrying. The attempt to subdue her had been risible, but against a normal woman it would have been terrifyingly effective. "And he was waiting for me..." She began to consider her list of enemies, and she warily moved back towards her apartment. By the time she'd reached her door, she'd already narrowed it down to the man she'd photographed that day, a man with every reason to want to silence her.


A man, also, who was furiously pounding the wheel of his car, feeling as if the universe really did have it in for him.
"She's a superhuman. She's a fucking superhuman. What the hell am I supposed to do now?!" As the gears of his mind whirred in vain, he realised that he'd actually had warning of this. It was before, when Valerie had photographed him and Milo together outside the Falmouth Grand. He'd noticed something about her. A quality in her face, her stance, her expression, that had frightened him without him knowing why. Well he knew now. She had the bearing of an honest-to-God, capes and tights, villain-punching superhero. And that, as any criminal with any kind of survival instinct knew, was not a hornet's nest you wanted to poke. But he had poked it. And surely if she had any sense she would have figured out by now that it was him, for who else would have motive to attack her? He considered trying again, but surely he'd be even less successful. He'd done all this abduction as an alternative to murder, which would have been a last resort, but now he wasn't even sure that he could kill her. She'd not seemed very afraid of his pistol, and there was every chance now that this attitude was reasonable.


And yet, he had noticed something. He'd seen that little moment of wooziness. He'd seen that this blonde beauty was mighty, but not invincible. But no tool that he had available seemed like it could possibly be effective. That is, until his panic settled, and the gears started turning more productively. Then he realised that he did have a tool he could use. A tall, willowy, leggy tool stashed in the back of his car. Yes, James could certainly not defeat Valerie Orville. But Saskia Dubois could.

[Damselbinder]

If you had asked Saskia Dubois what captivity would be like, in advance of her abduction by James Oleander, she'd have probably said 'frightening', 'frustrating', 'uncomfortable', or 'embarrassing.' She might even have said 'exciting' if she hadn't been taking you very seriously, if she were teasing, as she so often did. But as she lay in the boot of James' car - not that it was his own car he was using, of course - she found that the most dominant emotion in her psyche was boredom. Her arms and her long, coffee-brown legs were bound, so she couldn't move. There were three layers of duct tape wrapped around her mouth, so she couldn't speak. The boot was shut tight, so she couldn't even see. All she could do was lie there, and wait.

And as she waited, she thought. Semi-hysterical, she'd thought at first about how her abductor would probably kill her and her fellow captive, her girlfriend Piper. She'd thought about how she'd never see her parents, her brother and sister. She'd thought about how her sister's children, whom Saskia loved deeply, were too young to remember Saskia by the time they were adults if they never saw her again. But that had only been at first. Panic and sorrow could only hold her attention for so long.

So she thought about her job. She thought about the first article she'd had published in the Sun: Saskia re-read her work frequently, and she winced at the clumsy prose. Thinking of clumsy prose made her mind wander to the last book she'd read, a laughable attempt at a guide to all things entrepreneurial by some fat Californian slug named Ronnie Morrow. Then she tried for a while to come up with an anagram of his name - the best she managed was 'Err, wino moron' - but that couldn't distract her for long either. The boredom was as oppressive and inescapable as the tape wrapped around her slim frame. The worst part of it was that by the time that boredom began to feel agonizing, only an hour had passed since she'd regained consciousness. The fear was no longer in her mind so much as in her marrow, and it gave her boredom the quality of a deep, thoroughgoing ache.

Piper had come to about twenty minutes after Saskia had. She'd given Saskia a little diversion from her boredom as they'd tried, fumbling and whimpering in the dark, to untie each other, but it was completely hopeless. So she, like her girlfriend, had had plenty of time to lie, to think. Perhaps mercifully, boredom for her was not the dominant emotion of her psyche. No, hers was a rather more engaging sensation: shame. Shame, yes, at being so easily overpowered and captured, but that shame did not sting quite so badly as the other.

Would she have betrayed the name of Saskia's colleague again, if she'd been given the chance? Yes, she probably would have done. Did she think that her decision was wrong? No, not exactly. She was trying to stop a criminal from murdering her and her girlfriend. No, it was not what she had done which stung her conscience. It was why. Oh, she knew that at the very least the majority of her motivation had been to save herself and Saskia. But the way that Saskia had talked about this Valerie, the fact that she obviously found her attractive - Piper couldn't get the notion out of her head that that jealousy had influenced her actions.

Alas, this was something of an emotional pattern with Piper. If you drilled down to her depths, you would find that she thought, overall, that she was a wicked person. So much the better when she actually did something wicked - she was willing to admit it. So much the worse when she didn't - she always thought the worst of herself. An upbringing by parents who seemed to grasp the 'you're born a sinner' part of Catholicism a lot more than the 'God loves you' part of Catholicism hadn't helped in that respect.

So the pair, bored and guilty respectively, were both almost relieved when the car in which they'd been imprisoned growled and shook, bumping them hard against each other as it accelerated quickly to top speed.
"Did something happen?" Saskia thought, reflexively drawing her legs closer to herself. Hurrah for justice if something went wrong for James, but it had every chance of making things more dangerous for his captives if he started getting desperate. The difficulty with being imaginative was that it was very, very easy to ponder all the horrible fates which might await one, and Saskia was doing a fair bit of pondering. Not just about what might happen, but what had happened to make James screech off in such a hurry. Little did she know that her captor had just encountered one of the most dangerous human beings on the planet. Not that it would have made a great deal of difference even if she had known - James was plenty dangerous himself.

For this reason, when the boot of the car was thrown open twenty minutes after the getaway, and about forty seconds after the two captives felt their motile prison come to a lurching stop, Saskia cried out in fear. She tried to kick the black-clad, masked figure who became suddenly visible as the boot opened, but this just made it easier for him to grab her. He hooked one arm around her slender, shapely calves, and forced them against his side. Trapping her limbs, he thrust his arm out towards her waist, forcing it underneath her, and grabbing her, his gloved fingers gripping Saskia just underneath her ribcage. The sensation was, for a moment, extremely ticklish, and Saskia squirmed at James' touch, almost giggling. It was stupid and embarrassing, and it took any drama or dignity out of the situation immediately. Flushing hot with embarrassment, Saskia was reminded very keenly how powerless she was. So, when James scooped all 5'10" of her up into his arms with a single, quiet grunt, though Saskia squirmed, she did not really fight.

As she was carried, bundled and bound in her captor's grip, Saskia was chiefly aware of two things. The first was where James had brought her: a garage. Grey. Concrete. Grimy. Cold. She doubted very much it belonged to Oleander himself, but it was the sort of place which was very unlikely to be disturbed. The second thing was her own legs. Naked and silky, they dangled in the air as James carried her, bouncing slightly with each step, over-firmly grasped by her abductor's gloved hand. But it was not so much this that Saskia's attention was directed to so much as the feeling of the duct tape pressing her thighs together. The feeling of the tape on her skin was scratchy and uncomfortable, but there was a strange satisfaction in the pressure of her thighs against each other. They were slender, but not spindly, and she could feel the subtle tone in her long limbs. She wondered why the hell this thought was occupying her attention so much, and concluded that it was simply because the situation was so bizarre and terrifying that her mind had thrown up its hands and given up behaving sensibly.

She was laid down, carefully enough that James seemed to be making some effort not to hurt her, onto the cold, concrete floor. James seemed to have intended to lay her down flat, but she immediately sat up, wriggled herself back against a wall, pulling her knees up to her chest. She knew that his intentions with her were, if not innocent, at least utilitarian, but she still knew the terrible vulnerability of her position. He pointed at her, authoritatively, and though she didn't squeal or even flinch much she still showed fear on her elfin face.

"Behave," James said, not particularly forcefully or angrily. She got the point: there was no sense in bullying her. He went back to the car, found Piper vainly shrinking from him. He took her by the shoulders, pulled her out of the car and onto her feet with one violent display of strength. Unintentionally violent, actually: she was much shorter, and much lighter than Saskia.
"Mmmrhhphhhhh!" Piper was not so much protesting as just expressing displeasure and surprise at being tossed about like a sack. A little dizzy, she began to stumble, and James gripped her slim shoulders to keep her in place. The pain of his grip was not severe, but it was startling, and Piper looked up at her captor in shock.

James froze. He held her tight, his pretty captive, this dark-haired, plump-breasted little thing in a deep-red dress, so womanly and fragile and looking up at him with such lively, dark, doe-ish eyes. He could even see the outline of her pillowy lips beneath the tape he'd pressed over her mouth. He didn't actually freeze for very long, but long enough for Piper to realise that he was looking.
"Mh..." she squeaked, and tried to pull away. Naturally, with her hands and feet bound, she didn't do very well. James let go of her shoulders, though - so that he could grab her legs.

"Mmhhh!!" Piper cried, as James' gloved hands gripped her bare, velvety skin. "Mmhhhh-hhhmmmm!!" She twisted herself this way and that, but there was very, very little she could do. "Mhhhhmm-ghhhnnnhmmm!" Before she knew it, she was up and over his shoulder, the world turned upside down, blood rushing to her head. Hand squeezing her thighs, her rear, holding her in place as she was slung over her captor's body. Her dress rode up her thighs, and James had every opportunity to fondle his meek and helpless conquest.

Well, helpless perhaps, but meek was not wholly fair. She didn't fight much, yes, but it was mostly because she was so tired, so aware of how feeble she was: even if she wriggled out of his grasp and got free of her bonds, what could she do? He wasn't just a strong man, he seemed really to know how to fight. He'd recapture her easily. So she stayed relatively still as her abductor bore his fetching burden across the cold, grey floor, through the flickering, dim light of a single, unenthusiastic lightbulb. And again, Piper feared that her heart was that of a coward's.

He put her down on her feet, right next to Saskia. He admired her for a moment, her shoulders hemmed in, her pretty legs pressed tight against each other. He was tempted. He was very tempted. But he managed to hold onto the last dregs of his self-respect all the same, and kept his hands to himself. Still, when he told her to sit down, he couldn't help it coming out as:
"On your knees."
Piper's eyes went wide, a cold feeling shooting through her. "Please, God, no."
"Just sit," James said, his mask hiding his sheepishness. He knew what Piper had just thought, and he could hardly blame her. She did as she was told, which wasn't easy with her thighs and her ankles bound, but she managed to get down without hurting herself by leaning against the wall and sliding gradually down.

To their surprise, James dropped to their level, squatting on his ankles. He wasn't done with them. More specifically, he wasn't done with Saskia. He reached forward, and with a swift motion he tore the tape away from her face.
"Ow!" Saskia's cheeks and lips stung. She glowered at James, but couldn't keep - nor was she particularly trying to keep - the fear from her eyes. Her captor held her gaze for a few seconds, evidently trying to intimidate her a bit more.
"Your friend," he said. "The blonde photographer. We need to talk about her."
"Wh-what about her?" Saskia said, struggling to remain cogent. "Valerie, obviously. But what's going on? What does he mean?" Two and two began moving towards their sum in her mind. That sudden high speed getaway in Oleander's car - had he been running away? It might have been interesting to know why - and from what. Earlier suspicions about her new acquaintance bubbled up again in Saskia's mind.

"Plan A - well, plan C by this point - didn't take. The photographer..." He wasn't sure whether to expose Valerie Orville's secret. Not, indeed, that he could be sure it was a secret that she was a superhuman. But it was conceivable that knowing her might would bolster his captives' courage, so he kept that card against his chest. "I couldn't, ah, get her by herself. So I'm going to need you to do me a favour, Saskia." He produced an item from his pocket - a Sony Ericsson K750: the very same model of phone that Saskia owned. In fact, from a small crack on the screen, she could see it was her phone.

"I want you to make a call," Oleander said. "Well, I'll make the call. You're gonna talk to..." He waved his hand, trying to remember the photographer's name. "Valerie. You'll arrange a meeting. Somewhere private."
"So you can kidnap her, or murder her, I take it?" Saskia's lip curled. "Another pretty girl for your collection? You're becoming q-quite the connoisseur."
"Don't get snippy. I don't want to do the tough-guy thing, but I am the one with the gun."
"So you are, darling," Saskia said, with all possible venom. "Do go on."
James felt as though his role demanded he slap her or something, but he elected not to. Discovering that this was not in his nature didn't exactly make him feel like a hero, though. "You're going to do exactly what I tell you. But," he said, raising his hand in anticipation of indignant interruption, "I've got a feeling threatening your life isn't going to work." He drew his pistol. "I don't think it takes a genius to figure out how this is going to go." He aimed the barrel of the weapon towards Piper, and fired.

He hadn't intended to hit her at all. He just wanted to scare her, out of her wits if possible. But his aim was a little off, and the bullet nicked Piper's cheek. It was only a graze, but she jerked so violently in response that Saskia thought James had actually shot Piper, and screamed. An instant and a short, sharp cry of terror from Piper proved that she was barely hurt at all, but the effect was powerful. In the most literal sense possible, Saskia was struggling to maintain her humanity: that is, not to react and think like a panicked animal, and either cower or surrender completely. She couldn't completely hold her composure, and she began to whimper, and tremble, her ears ringing from the sound of the gun. Her eyes were wet, her cheeks streaked with adrenaline tinged tears. It was a level of agonising fear, for the life of one she loved, that had been genuinely inconceivable to her before this moment, and she was doing well not to faint.

Piper did not do so well. Her eyes dulled, dimmed like lightbulbs at the ends of their lives. A heat melted through her in a single, vertiginous rush, and her eyes fluttered as conscious slipped from her. Her head lolled, waved as if in a breeze, and then she went completely limp in a single second. A helpless mew was just about audible through her gag before she fell, unconscious, onto Saskia's lap, cushioned by her lover's bare thighs.

"You get the picture, Miss Dubois?" James said. "I've got no reason to keep you or her alive if you don't help. So give me a reason to be nice." From the almost blank shock on Saskia's face, James figured his threat had hit its mark. He opened the phone, found Valerie's number in its address book. He held his finger over the 'call' button. "Are you going to do what I say?"
Saskia looked down, saw Piper lying on top of her. She knew Piper wasn't dead, but she so easily could have been. She so easily could be, at any time that Oleander chose. Yet, by some miracle, Saskia found that her first instinct was still to remain defiant. Oleander had taken off her gag so she could speak, but she wanted to use her mouth's freedom to spit in his face. For her, fear produced spite.

But Saskia choked that spite. To put it another way, her humanity reasserted itself. She realized that if she obeyed there was at least a chance that she and Piper - and Valerie, indeed - would live, since Oleander really didn't seem like he had any particular wish to kill them. That, and the fact that blood on Piper's lovely face seemed so disgustingly abhorrent, pushed her over the edge.
"Alright," Piper said, having to force every phoneme. "I'll do it."
"Thank you," James replied. Part of him was disappointed that her stubbornness had subsided, but not a large part of him. He held the phone to Saskia's ear. "Keep it simple. Keep it practical."
"Fine." Saskia couldn't manage a defiant look into his eyes. She was cold, tired, and too shaken to keep being courageous. She looked down at Piper, instead, as she hear the dial tone trill lightly in her right ear. "I'm such a hypocrite," she thought, remembering how shocked she'd been when Piper had blurted out Valerie's name. They'd ended up in the same place: terrified and browbeaten into obedience to their abductor. It had just taken Saskia a little bit longer.

There was something that lodged itself in Saskia's mind, though, as she gave in to her captor's demands. That being: why was he making these demands in the first place? Why did he need to be surreptitious when he was so easily able to kidnap her and Piper? What was so dangerous to a physically powerful, martially trained and - most importantly - gun-having man about a 5'8" photographer? Why, despite how afraid she was of James Oleander, did Saskia get the impression that he had someone to fear as well?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Alarmed. Concerned. Confused. Energized. Powerful. These and much more were the feelings in Valerie's mind as she reeled from Oleander's attempted abduction of her. Her nostrils twitched, irritated by her brief exposure to the anaesthetic fumes. Her fists clenched and unclenched, as if they themselves wanted to finish Oleander off.

And it was James Oleander who had attacked her. That was obvious. That is, it was obvious that he had arranged the attack. Yet more than this, Valerie felt sure that it had been Oleander himself. He could have sent someone to attack her for him, but that didn't even occur to Valerie. She felt, with a kind of warrior's instinct, that she had crossed swords with her foe directly. And he had been found sorely wanting. She found herself licking her lips, pulsing with excitement. She wanted to fight him again. She wanted to beat him within an inch of his life.

But what should she actually do? Of that she had no idea. As the adrenaline began to wear off, Valerie realised that she was still pretty drunk, and it was hard to think wholly straight. Should she call the police? She didn't have to call them as Valerie Orville; she could have done it through Sergeant Prezbyluv... Prezbyleiws... Prez... something-or-other, her official liaison to the police as Valora. If that sounds special and privileged, it wasn't: Prezbylewski ("oh yeah, that's it," Valerie muttered) dealt with eight others, and spent approximately 15% of his working time even remotely dealing with any of them. So Valerie dismissed him out of hand as an incompetent bureaucrat and waste of time. This was unfortunate: if she had just spoken with the police, dealing with the problems that followed would have been much easier. But partly out of pride and partly out of contempt, Valerie dismissed that option. What, then?

"Easy," Valerie said to herself. "Find the son of a bitch and kick his ass."
Er, to what end? When your pictures of him holding Milo Patáky to threat are published tomorrow he'll be under arrest anyway.
"Screw that. I want to teach him a lesson. Then I'll haul him off to jail myself."
But he attacked you at your home. Doesn't he probably know who you are? He certainly knows you're a superhuman. Besides, how would you prove to the police that it was James Oleander who attacked you?
"What, do you want me to kill him?"
No, no, but at least make sure he doesn't peg you as Valora.
"Yeah. Yeah, can't let that happen."

If you'd asked Valerie why the prospect of her identity being uncovered held such terror for her, she probably wouldn't have been able to give you a concrete answer. She'd have trotted out the usual clichés about the protection of her family and friends, and there was a degree to which that was part of it. But there was more to it than that. Maybe if you'd really forced her to think about it she'd have said something about the ill-feeling towards her kind that still lingered from the Dark Days, and yes there was truth to that too: she didn't want to make her 'civilian' life impossible if superheroes really fell out of fashion. Maybe the word 'shame' would have flickered briefly into her mind when she thought about the two sides of her life mixing.

But she wasn't examining her feelings, she was just having them. She wanted to bring Oleander to what was, in her mind, justice and she didn't want him to find out she was Valora. That was as deep as her thoughts on the subject got. She began forming the nascent embers of a plan in her mind, when her train of thought crashed hard: she'd failed to think of something really, really obvious.
"Saskia." If Oleander could find Valerie, then it wasn't much of a stretch to assume he could find Saskia as well. And if he'd tried on her what he'd tried on Valerie - well, the odds of Saskia also being a secret superhuman were pretty slim.

"Crap," Valerie growled, shaking off the last vestiges of her drunkenness. She grabbed her phone from the pocket of her skirt and dialled Saskia's number, immediately, from memory, using a talent she'd nurtured since childhood. It went straight to voicemail, which was not in itself alarming, since it was the middle of the night: in 2005, people much more often turned their phones off at night than would be habitual in later years. Nevertheless it made Valerie anxious, and she called again. Then again, and again, until in frustration she gave up, leaving a curt message asking Saskia to call her as soon as possible.

Absent Saskia's response, she wasn't sure what to do. She paced around her block for a while, on the off-chance that James was stupid enough to come back. When that failed, and as her adrenaline levels began to drop, Valerie began to feel the weight of the day on her. She hadn't slept in twenty hours, and her body was starting to make that very clear to her. She felt herself slowing. Calming. She felt less, now, the vengeful instinct to crush the man who'd dared to attack her. She felt now, ironically enough, precisely what Oleander had wished the inflict upon her: a powerful, irresistible impulse to sleep.

She slunk back to her shared apartment, being careful not to be too noisy, at least at first. She gave up stealth when she heard that the person in the room next to hers, an Australian barista, was having extremely noisy sex with his girlfriend. So when Valerie saw a cluster of ants scurrying past his door, she had no compunction about loudly and violently crushing them. She heard the couple inside yelp in surprise, and she couldn't help smirking.

It was a brief pleasure merely: by the time she reached her own door it had faded. She went in, locked the door behind her. Without thinking or even really noticing she was doing it, Valerie touched the teddy bear she kept on her dresser, the one her birth mother had given her. But the moment's sentimentality passed, and Valerie quickly slunk into her bed without even undressing. She made sure her phone was right by her ear just in case Saskia called, but she was deeply asleep within two minutes. A few minutes after that, she was dreaming.

It was a shame, really: it would have been a pleasant dream. Alas, it was not to be: Valerie was hauled back into the waking world when her phone screeched loudly in her ear. Valerie sprang awake.
"Hey, hi, hi," she said, each word more assertive than the last, in a 'how dare you even suggest that I might have been asleep' sort of way, trying to force herself out of being disoriented.
"Hello, Valerie," said the voice on the other end of the receiver. Then again, much more chirpily: "Hello, Valerie. I'm really dreadfully sorry to be bothering you with this, b-but ah-h-h..."

Had Valerie been more awake, she would have noticed the quivering fear in Saskia's voice. But she wasn't, so she didn't. By the time the exhausted blonde was of sufficiently quick wit to notice such things, Saskia had mastered herself. The only indication that she'd been abducted and was being held at gunpoint was that she was still being as posh as a Kennedy.
"Well, you must excuse me for calling you so late, Valerie. I do hope I didn't wake you. But then, a girl as pretty as you must have an evening's entertainment whenever you wish it. I know that I -"
"Saskia, are you okay?" Valerie interrupted, irritated by what she thought was genuine waffle. "You're not hurt or anything?"
There was a silence. "... yes, Valerie, I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Wait..." Valerie, confused, annoyed and tired, pinched the bridge of her nose. "You got my message, right?"
"Message? No, I -"
"Then why the hell are you calling me at 2.30 in the morning?!" Valerie heard a snapping sound. Without thinking, she'd cracked the hard, plastic case of her phone in three different places. "Look, I was attacked tonight. I'm pretty sure it was James Oleander who did it and I was trying to call you because I was worried he might go after you too."
"He attacked you?!" Not that Valerie could see it, of course, but Saskia was glaring furiously at her captor. "How?""
"He -" Valerie snorted. It sounded so stupid in her head. "He tried to kidnap me. With, y'know..." She was trying to think of the word 'chloroform', but it didn't come to her. "Like right out of a soap opera or something."
"But - you're alright, Valerie?"
"Yeah, I'm fine." Valerie took a deep breath, trying to wake herself properly. "I was more - uh, I mean, he wasn't so tough."

On the other side of the conversation, Saskia had to restrain herself from smiling. "'I was more', she said. You were more what, Valerie? More than Mr Oleander bargained for? No doubt of that. But how much more?" Out loud, she said: "I understand. You think he might come after me." She was so tempted to chance it, to cry out that Oleander was holding her captive, but the sound of the gunshot still rang in her ears. Piper still slept on her lap. James still loomed over her - still held a large, black pistol in his right hand.
"He might," Valerie replied. "Do you have somewhere else you can stay? With a friend? A relative, maybe?"
"At this hour? Oh, I shouldn't have thought so. But Piper and -" She had to stop. Her mask of sesquipedalian playfulness was in danger of slipping. If she made a mistake, even an unintended one, she and Piper were dead. "We can go to a motel, Valerie. We'll leave right away."
"Fine. Good. Great." She rubbed her forehead. "Wait a minute, wait a minute... if you never got my message, how come you called?"
"Ah - oh, yes," Saskia said. She looked up at her abductor, who made a rolling, fanning motion with his right hand: 'get a move on' was the clear message. So Saskia got to the point. "We need to meet, darling," she said. "Urgently."
"Why, what's the problem?"
"N-no problem, I -" James had already told Saskia what to say. "I've spoken to a source from inside Patáky's operation. I want you to meet them too, but they're being dreadfully paranoid. They'll only meet somewhere public."
Valerie could have interrogated, but she thought she already knew who Saskia was talking about: the man from the casino who'd told them where to find Patáky and Oleander earlier in the day. "Okay. When?"
Saskia had to check, looking up at her captor for instructions.
"Eight in the morning," he said, softly. Then abruptly: "No, nine."
"Nine," Saskia repeated, "If that's alright. A breakfast place called The Egg and I on Riverside Street."
"Riverside Street, fine," Valerie replied. "Look after yourself, Saskia. Don't think anybody'd be reading the Sun if you weren't writing for it."
"You're a sweetheart," Saskia replied. "Talk soon."
"Yup." Valerie hung up, threw her phone down on her dresser, and covered her face with her hands. The day had been long, confusing, and exceptionally tiring, and now that she knew that Saskia was likely to be safe, she allowed herself to fall asleep. As she did, her thoughts flitted from Saskia to her father, to her stepmother, to her mother, and finally - and much more pleasurably - to Richard, the man she'd narrowly missed out on having sex with that night. Whether by way of consolation or just because her subconscious was grinding its gears, she ended up having a dream about him, herself and Oliver Blane, which somewhat made up for it.

As it happened, Saskia fell unconscious at almost the exact same moment that Valerie did. She didn't dream at all, however: Oleander had knocked her out with the butt of his gun.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[Damselbinder]

Milo Patáky had no idea of what his lieutenant was getting up to. He'd have blanched if he knew that James had started kidnapping people. He'd probably have screeched if he knew that he'd tangled with a superhero, incognito or otherwise. But such woeful concerns were not occupying the mind of the most successful drug lord between Boston and Canada. He wasn't even vacillating about whether or not to stay in the drug business anymore: he'd resolved definitively now that he would. No, Milo's major problem was that he had a terrible, terrible cold.

"It's not just a cold," he explained to his irritated wife after his sniffing woke her up at quarter to six in the morning. "My nose is sufficiently blocked, Harper, that if you kissed me I would suffocate." He didn't particularly appreciate Harper's snort of derision at the notion of her kissing him. In fact that, plus the cold, forced him out of bed. He showered, which made him feel better for about five minutes, before making himself some breakfast. As the percolator percolated, he peered through the blinds of his - reinforced - kitchen windows. He made a rasping, harsh, breathy sound that was nearly unidentifiable as a sigh of relief, having seen that his protectors were still parked across the street, watching his house.

It was because of them that Milo frequently rose early. He got fits of paranoia that they were taking his money and fucking off once he turned in for the night. He would have to reassure himself of their presence, and then feel stupid for having needed to do so. He would sometimes wonder, afterwards, if it had all been worth it. If it had been worth all the grievously immoral things he'd done to get where he was, when he was so paranoid, indecisive and generally unhappy. He would then generally remind himself that he had always been like that, and that at least now he was paranoid, indecisive, unhappy and rich.

He went to his living room, an opulently decorated affair with a couch of the finest leather, two exquisitely upholstered armchairs, and a great big flatscreen television right in the middle of the room. He turned it on, switched it to one of the high-number cable channels, where it was showing an English soccer game. He hated soccer, both playing and watching, but there was something about the drone of English sports commentary that he found quite lulling. Any other night he would have fallen asleep in twenty minutes at most, but a series of sneezing fits kept him awake to such an extent that he actually started paying attention to the game, becoming aware - and to him this seemed like dread, eldritch knowledge - that the two teams were called 'Wolverhampton' and 'Millwall' respectively.

Eventually, he gave up, and drove into work, signalling his bodyguards to tail him. One advantage of owning a casino was that he could always go into work if he wanted. Besides, going in this early meant there was no chance of running into any more press. He drove up quietly to the back entrance, two men already waiting there to escort their employer to his office. They ushered him inside, he mumbled words of gratitude, and swept as imperiously as he could towards his grand office, which bore a large window overlooking the pit.
"An apt name," he reflected. Of course it benefited him that there were still people gambling away at twenty-five past six in the morning, but it disgusted him. Sometimes he would look down at the dregs that infested the Falmouth Grand and single out one person in particular. Then he would close one eye, and make it look to himself as though he were holding that person's head between his thumb and forefinger. He'd then imagine he had a superpower, that he was telekinetic or something, and then he'd squeeze, amusing himself with the thought of the horror of their head exploding and everyone screaming.

This thought kept him sufficiently entertained that he almost forgot about his cold. He busied himself pleasantly with the minutiae of running a large and profitable business. He spoke to his stockbroker, a similarly early riser, and made a couple of transactions that would net him a cool ninety-thousand dollars: he was not so wealthy that such sums could be sniffed at. Satisfied as he was, though, the notion of superhumanity returned to his mind as he hung up. He wondered if he'd been able to do better - if he would be better - if he had a power as well. He resolved quickly that this was unlikely, though. Despite his violent, puerile fantasising, superhumans had always disturbed him, even the most harmless ones. Occasionally his rivals had hired superhumans as muscle, and in the early days, when even Milo had to get involved in the day to day violence of running a drug business, James had tried to get him to do the same. But he had never relented. They were by their very nature unpredictable. It was also one of the reasons that he kept the major elements of his operation in Maine - there were very few superheroes to deal with. It was this, too, which made him so anxious about his name appearing in the press: if one particularly powerful one took notice of him and his operations, he could easily be finished. His protectors would be useless.

But as far as he knew, no such thing had occurred, and therefore he was both pleased and calmed when he received a phonecall from his lieutenant.
"Good morning, James," Milo said, finding himself relaxing without even thinking about it. "A little early for you, no?"
"Uh, haha, yeah, it - uh..."
This alone put Milo on alert. James always spoke with a kind of decisive ease: Milo had heard mor 'umms' and 'ahhs' from him in that one short burst than he had in the previous two years. "James, is everything alright?"
"Uh, no, boss. I, uh..." There was a sound that, over the loose connection, was impossible to identify. Just as well: it had been a quiet whimper from a semi-conscious woman. "I'm not going to be able to make it in today, sir."
"...oh?" Milo found himself gripping the armrest of his chair with painful tightness. "That is... inconvenient."
"Nothing I can do about it, boss," James insisted. "I'm sick. I've puked my guts out nine times over in the last hour."
"Pull yourself together, man." Milo stood up. He was speaking loudly. "You know full well I need you here."
"Sir, I can't. I can barely stand up."
"Don't be pathetic, man, just -"
"God damn it, Milo, I haven't taken time off sick once in nine years! You can handle things yourself for one fucking day!"

Milo stood stock still. On the other end of the line, James covered his mouth, aghast that his nervous desperation had caused him to snap at Milo so. But it got him exactly what he'd wanted.
"You're right of course. You always are. Take the day off." Milo hung up immediately, and slumped defeated into his chair. James had never once raised his voice to Milo before. The effect was extremely powerful: for there was no-one in the world that Milo admired and envied more than James. No-one with the capacity to wield such power over him.

He sank immediately into a bitter sulk. He wanted to be angry with James for taking such a tone with the man who paid his salary, but found that such anger was not in him. Rather he felt guilty. Guilty for not being more strong-willed. Guilty for needing James so much. Guilty for not giving him opportunity for advancement and greater prosperity. So, partly out of a desire to make it up to him, and partly to raise himself in James' estimation, he decided to take action.

He buzzed for one of his heavies. This wasn't a bodyguard, or a security man at his casino. The man Milo summoned was a through-and-through legbreaker: a physically powerful and none-too-bright gangster, with three gold teeth and a tattoo of a guillotine on the back of his neck. But he was bright enough to know it was weird that he was being asked to speak to Milo at all. Normally he got his orders from James, at best. But he was also bright enough to be polite.
"What's up, boss?" he asked, which to him was the height of civility.
Milo didn't answer immediately. He felt the instinctive pull of nervousness which had served him so well throughout his life. He felt it, and he spat at it. "Tell me," he said, "have you ever been to Biddeford?"
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Valerie was a little miffed by Saskia's choice of venue. A normal black coffee cost four dollars - a lot in 2005, and Valerie had ordered one before she'd realised the cost. She wouldn't have dreamed of actually ordering food there: she'd have turned her nose up at those prices even when she'd been a member of the Bombshells. But she actually quite liked the atmosphere. The name of the place had annoyed her, but the decor wasn't too folksy. It admitted openly that it was pricey.

So, other than the coffee's price ticking her off, and the grey, cold morning dulling her spirits, she found herself in an fairly good mood.
"Still riding the high of doing something worth doing," she thought. The fact that James had attacked her, and the fact that he had failed so humiliatingly miserably gave her a nice warm feeling too. Even the thought that the week was burning away and she didn't yet have enough collars to meet her quota was only making her slightly anxious. The previous night's miserable experience with her father was almost completely forgotten, too. Almost.

Therefore, when a tall, lean and very well-shaped man walked into The Egg and I, she was in a position to be pleased by his appearance. He was really fantastically handsome: he would not have looked out of place on the cover of GQ, and though he looked very tired, he had a determined, purposeful look about him, which Valerie found attractive. She was pleased, then, when he looked back at her through his thick sunglasses. She wasn't surprised he was looking: she knew how attractive she was, and her low-cut, white vest gave him plenty of reason to stare. Their eyes met, and he sort of - not recoiled, exactly. It was more like a twitch. He kept his determined expression, though, and then began striding towards her.

"Hey, pal," Valerie said, when the man stopped at her table. "I know I was looking too. On some other occasion I'd be happy to give you the time of day, but it's too damn early for getting hit on. Besides, I'm waiting for someone." She'd been half-smiling as he approached. When he sat down, that smile turned into quite an aggressive scowl. "Okay, maybe a guy as hot as you just isn't used to hearing 'no' that often, so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and -"

He hadn't interrupted her. He hadn't even taken off his sunglasses. It had just suddenly occurred to Valerie where she'd seen him before. "You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch!"
"Now, Miss," James Oleander said, "let's not do anything stupid."
"You mean like this?" Valerie said, before seizing James by the wrist, and squeezing. If James had had x-ray vision he'd have been satisfied that Valerie hadn't broken every bone in his wrist, but as it was he was sure that she had. It took all his willpower not to cry out in pain. "Wow, gee, I must be pretty strong, mustn't I?" Valerie growled, digging her thumbnail into his skin. "You've got Saskia stashed somewhere, right? Got her to arrange this meeting, right?"
"R-right," James said, close now to screaming in agony. "So I think you can guess the implied threat. You don't do as I - aghh!" Valerie was cutting off the blood to his hand. He couldn't believe anyone was this strong. He looked at her now, really looked at her. Her long, wavy, blonde hair. Her almost luminous blue eyes. The strength and prettiness of her face, the soft pink of her lips. The thrillingly generous, round and shapely bust that her vest so prominently displayed. She was outrageously sexy. She was frighteningly beautiful. But James could not afford to be cowed by her radiance. "You don't do exactly what I say," he managed to sputter out, "then she dies."
"Bull. I can squeeze your hand off right now and make you tell me where she is."
"No you won't," James hissed. "Not in front of all these people. No-one knows about your powers, do they?"

It wasn't enough to take him out of pain completely, but still he felt her grip loosen. "Yeah, that's right. You and I both have secrets about each other, don't we?"
Valerie felt stomach tighten. She wanted to crush him. To reach across the table, lift him over her head and slam him into the ground. But that would mean exposing herself - and dooming Saskia to death, if James was telling the truth. "...What do you want?"
"Simple. Give me any copies of the picture you took of me."
Valerie glared at him, her deep-blue eyes full of violence. "You stupid jackass. I already turned those pictures in at my paper!"
"Miss Dubois said the same thing," James replied. "I took care of that."
"You... ?"
"I broke into the Portland Sun's offices. I found the photographs. I destroyed them. So I need you to turn over the rest of the copies to me, and I need you to do it now."

Valerie didn't know whether to be impressed or appalled. She began to consider the mindset of a person who would do what James had done, all just to protect himself. He'd kidnapped Saskia. He'd tried to kidnap Valerie herself. He'd tracked down her photographs of him holding a gun to his boss' head, and now he'd tricked her into meeting him here. He was a shitstain, but a resourceful shitstain.
"I could just scream," Valerie said. "I don't have to use my powers. I could just scream and I'm sure some wannabe-hero would run over here to save the poor damsel in distress with the big tits."
"You seem to be under the impression that you have a lot of time to work with. You don't." He reached into his pocket with his non-crushed hand, took out his phone. "I took some photos myself."

He threw his phone across the table. He was sure that, if this Valerie person was being rational, she'd do as he said. But he saw her anger. He felt her power. He feared that she would not be rational. That she would reach over and snap his neck. He concealed it very well, but he was terrified. Yet for all that, Valerie did pick up his phone. She did see the photograph he'd taken with it. She shook with rage when she looked at it.
"There's no way," she said, quietly. "There's no way this ends with you alive." The photograph was of Saskia and a woman Valerie didn't recognise. They were tied up with duct tape, gagged, and there was blood on the stranger's cheek. There was also a gun pointed at them, on the extreme right of the frame.
That, so to speak, had been the easy part as far as James was concerned. Now came the hard part. Now came the lie. "If I don't check in," he said, "every half an hour, my friend holding the gun in that shot will shoot those two women in the head. I don't want him to do that. I don't particularly want anyone to get hurt. I just don't want my head getting cut off. So give me the pictures before something really fucking bad happens."

She thought about it. She thought very hard about it. She could feel that something was wrong with Oleander's claim, that she should doubt him, that under the circumstances it was very unlikely that he would have someone helping him. But she could not separate her instinct not to believe him from her desire to beat the hell out of him. She could not, then, allow herself to give into what felt like base impulse. She could not risk the neck of the one person who had shown her real warmth and friendship since she had come back to Maine.
"Alright," Valerie said. "Fine. You want the pictures? I'll give you the damn pictures." She let go of his hand, looking at him with utmost contempt. "Come on then. Let's head back to my place, James."
The release of his hand brought with it exquisite relief. James held it against his chest, nursing it. But it was not just that which soothed him. Valerie had bought his lie. He was on the home stretch now.

"That's not good enough. Now that I know how powerful you are, I'm going to need a bit more insurance."
"Cut the euphemisms. What do you mean?"
"I mean," James said, "I want you to drink your coffee. Just try this in it." With his now free - though still throbbing - hand he reached into his pocket, and pulled out a small, paper packet. It looked like a packet of sweetener or something.
"And what the hell is that?"
"It's a muscle relaxant," James replied. "Since we're dropping the euphemisms and everything. I need to be sure that you can't rip my heart out of my chest while we're getting the... "
James had trailed off because Valerie hadn't waited for him to finish. She'd ripped open the packet, emptied its contents into her coffee, and glugged it down.

Why had that been so easy? For the life of him, James couldn't figure it out. Or rather, the first impression in his mind was that she knew herself to be immune to the drug, but she had no such knowledge. She knew what he intended. She knew that he meant to weaken her, to capture her, but while she accepted that her great power did not make her invincible, somehow the idea of her being harmed or weakened by a man - a normal man - it just did not present itself to her as a live possibility. For so long had she lived with might that weakness was all but inconceivable.

And indeed, for a minute and a half, Valerie felt nothing. Believing the drug to have been ineffective, Valerie elected to pretend weakness, to wait for an opportune moment. But just as she began fluttering her eyelids, right before she was to put the back of her hand against her head, she did feel something.
"Whoa..." It was light-headedness, no different from what one might experience when getting up too quickly, or after too hot a bath. Yet Valerie had not experienced this sensation once since her abilities had manifested, for her blood flowed too efficiently to her powerful muscles. It was alien and almost frightening. Nor was this lightness confined to her head. As the seconds passed, it began spreading down and through her body. Her neck, her shoulders, her strong arms all felt as light as air - and then heavy.

"What the hell...?" Valerie murmured. Her shoulders sank. She was struggling to lift her arms from the table. Her buxom chest began heaving, her breaths heavy, deep and slow. Her legs were heavy too: they'd been crossed under the table, but she found she couldn't hold that position. Her curvy, womanly thighs slipped from each other, her feet flat against the ground. Her head felt like a solid ball of metal, and she felt it falling back. "Unnhh..." she moaned, her neck, her soft throat exposed as her body did what had seemed to her to be absolutely impossible: it began to lose its strength.

"Keep calm," she said to herself. "You...you knew this was possible. You knew the drug might work. Just wait... just wait for the right opportunity. You'll squash this scumbag. Just be patient."
But being patient was difficult. Especially when James stood up, and moved across to sit next to her. It looked perfectly natural to all the people who bothered to look at them: they'd appeared to have been holding hands for the last five minutes.
"Uhhh...hhnnn..." Valerie felt herself being jostled around as he sidled up to her, felt her head fall to the side, resting as if affectionately on his shoulder, her long, soft blonde hair falling like water over him. "You're...dead..." she said, though it sounded like a soft, affectionate whisper. "You're...fucking...dead."

James didn't have a reply. He had no witty banter prepared. He could not have thought of one if he had tried. He had moved over to Valerie's side genuinely to avoid attracting attention as the drug affected her, but now that he was there... he was transfixed. He felt her golden hair against the skin of his neck. He could see straight down her top, saw her ripe bosoms heaving and straining with every breath, saw the subtle peturbations in their ample smoothness as they were shaken by Valerie's movements. He saw beads of sweat trickling down them, and between them. He could see under the table now, could see her legs writhing and shuffling against each other. Her suede skirt was short, her knee-high boots tight. Her thighs looked moist, silky. They weren't slim and slender like Saskia's had been, but curvy, substantial, and soft all at the same time, perfectly proportioned to the rest of her voluptuous body.

But it wasn't just that which made James sweat. It wasn't just Valerie's extraordinary, full-on poetry-inducing beauty. It was the fact that she was weakening. It was the fact that he had made it happen. He had taken this superhuman's strength from her. She, who could a few moments ago have snapped him like a breadstick, was now gasping and moaning, falling against him. It felt illicit. Taboo. He put his hand on her thigh, and she grabbed his wrist again. She was still much, much stronger than she looked - but now he was stronger. He pulled her hand away. Then, he hooked her arm with his, hoisted her up to her feet, and began pulling her along.

It was now that Valerie realised that the drug wasn't just weakening her body. Her mind felt fuzzy, disordered. She couldn't gather her thoughts. As James hurried her along, she could not find the presence of mind to resist. She mumbled some threats, but James did not hear them.
"Keep awake," she said to herself. "Keep awake. It'll...wear off. Just gotta wait...it's part of the plan...he...hasn't beaten you."
James would very much have disagreed with that assessment. He led Valerie out of the restaurant. He took her round to a nearby alley, where he had parked his rented van. Holding Valerie up with one arm, he opened the back of the van with his free hand. "In," he ordered, shoving her up into the van's hold. He switched on the buzzing, fluorescent light inside, and shut the door behind them. And in doing so, he revealed to Valerie the extent of his deception.

"Mph...?" Kneeling, with half-lidded eyes, and expressions of defeated forlornness, were the two women James had already abducted. The two women that Valerie had, by allowing herself to be drugged, been trying to save.
"You...bastard..." she mumbled. "You were...alone..." Her heart began beating more rapidly. Her adrenal gland answered a sub-conscious call, and began pumping its namesake hormone into Valerie, but it was not enough to overpower the effects of the drug. Seeing Saskia in person, seeing what James had done to her - it stoked a now impotent rage.
"What can I say?" James replied. "I'm a real piece of shit." He said that with much more sincerity than he'd initially intended.

He pushed Valerie down, onto her knees. He pulled off her leather coat, throwing it roughly aside, leaving her in nothing but her vest, her skirt, and her boots. From here, Valerie could see that Saskia and the other woman (had Saskia mentioned a 'Penny' or a 'Piper' or something? Something like that, anyway) were not conscious enough to take notice of her. Her awareness was still hazy, though, and she was disoriented. Her head bobbed up and down as her body grew weaker and weaker, and she began to forget why the hell James had done all this in the first place. She didn't care at this point. She wanted to avenge herself.

But that was not within her power. Holding onto Valerie's smooth, bare arms, James yanked them behind her, folded them at right angles to each other. Holding them as securely as his injured hand could manage, he began to bind them, using cheap, but strong, polypropene rope. He wound it round and round and round her wrists and forearms, still fearful of the strength that lay in them. He pulled them so tightly that, had it not been for Valerie's undimmed durability, he would have been cutting off the circulation in her arms. As it was she was unharmed - but bound fast. Valerie tugged on her bonds, rolling her wrists and wriggling her warm, finely-shaped shoulders, and finding with a wave of heat down her spine, a physiological expression of her astonished shame, that she could not break them.

James did not remotely stop there. He knelt behind her, pulled her back, and began looping rope around her chest, lashing her up with thin, blue cord. Valerie felt her upper arms being compressed more and more rigidly against her back, felt astonished that this was still really within the realm of possibility. For this reason, when she felt James wrap rope above and beneath her breasts, and copping a generous feel of her ample, jiggling bosom into the bargain, she cried out: "No!" But this was not a bitter, helpless lament, or a prayer for help. It was genuine disbelief, less like "Oh no!" and more, really, like "Bullshit!" But it certainly sent a shiver through James when he heard it.

"Unnnhhh..." Valerie moaned, as he let her fall back completely. He moved around her, pulling her legs from their kneeling position, and laying them flat on the floor of the van. "Oohhh..." Valerie almost laughed as she felt James' quivering hands gripping her soft, naked thighs. "You're... loving this, aren't you? Tying...up a hot blonde... getting to grope her all you want... big man, huh? This how you like...your women, is it? Drugged and...helpless? Huh?"
"Look at me," James said, as he hooked his arm around Valerie's calves. "I don't mean to brag, but I'd say I'm as good looking as you are, in, y'know, a male kind of way. You think I can't get a woman if I want?" He wound a loop around Valerie's ankles. "You think I'd put myself in this much fucking danger just because I feel like it?" He pulled the circuit tight, snapping Valerie's long legs together. "No, no, no, this shit is just a bonus." He moved his hands further up, lifted Valerie's bare thighs to slip more rope beneath them. "I could just kill you. I could just kill all three of you, but I'm not. The fact that I'm just copping a feel here and there? You should be thanking me." He repeated the process, looping two, three, four, five circuits of polypropene cord around Valora's thighs, squeezing and pressing into her fine, silken skin, pushing her thighs together.
"You... are the lowest... mmgghhhhrhhphh!" Valerie's insult was cut short by a piece of cloth forced between her lips, cleave gagging her. She gave James a look that managed to be both sleepy and furious, but could not stop him pulling the gag tight, knotting it, and then shoving Valerie down onto the floor. His victim bound, he opened the hold of the van again, and stepped down, turning to give one last parting shot.
"Maybe I am the lowest," James said, "but I'd rather be low and alive than high-minded and dead." He slammed the door shut. The next thing Valerie knew, her prison was rumbling, and then moving.

"Mrrgghhhhphhh!" Valerie cried out. "MMRMRMGGGHHHH!!" She was incandescent with rage, and even more so that her drugged body could not express this rage properly. She kicked out, banging against the van's chassis, but to no avail. She couldn't break it, and she couldn't make enough noise to alert anyone. No-one that is, except for Saskia.
"Mm....?" The talented young writer woke up blearily and confusedly. Her head ached from where James had struck her, and her body was still awash with the chemicals he'd used to sedate her before. She wasn't much better than Valerie. "Wait... Valerie?" For a moment, Saskia's heart jumped for joy. She'd been right. Her guesses about her new friend had borne fruit, and Valerie had come to save them.

But no. With a deep, forlorn moan, Saskia saw that Valerie too was bound. Valerie too was captive. The two women's eyes met, and as Valerie realised that Saskia was awake, she saw unmistakable disappointment in her eyes. With her capture, her bondage, Valerie had until now felt only rage. Now she felt shame. Now she felt angry with herself for having let Saskia down.
"Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!" Valerie flagellated herself within her own mind again and again, at once blaming herself and blaming what seemed to be an unfair world. When she let her anger dominate her, it led to disaster. When she tried to control it, to act rationally, that led to disaster too. She couldn't get it right. And now she, and Saskia, and Piper were going to pay for it.

"No," she said. "No, we are not going to pay for it. He is going to pay for it." And then, in her mind, Valerie resolved seriously, and earnestly, to snap James Oleander's neck.

[Damselbinder]

Valerie had heard the stories. She'd seen it happen, you know, to weak heroines. To novices like the Bombshells. To those weekender-heroines who spent their whole time designing their outfits, fishing for endorsements and waiting for Instagram to be invented. Hell, if you believed what people said about Seacouver heroines it happened to people like her every other day. But she'd never thought it would happen to her. She'd never thought anyone would be able to capture her.

But they had. He had. It wasn't, to be fair to Valerie, the most humiliating of defeats. He'd taken two people hostage, and she'd glugged down a drugged drink willingly. He hadn't been able to force it on her: he'd never have been able to capture her without her co-operation, so to speak. She had acted morally. Nobly, even: putting herself at risk in defence of innocent life. On the other hand, she'd done so needlessly. If she'd dragged her captor outside by his hair she could easily have found and rescued Saskia Dubois and her girlfriend, and have been home in time for an early lunch.

But no. She hadn't done that. She hadn't come close to doing that. She'd blundered right into James Oleander's trap, and now she was lying bound and gagged in the back of a van, along with two other pretty girls James had plundered for himself. Valerie was drugged, tied up tight in polypropene cords, her pink lips parted with a thick, none-too-pleasant tasting cloth gag. Exactly once in her life had Valerie been in a situation like this: when Sinistrus had wrapped her in her viscous, gelatine body. But that had been a fight between Valerie and another superhuman. And Valerie had won.

But now? She - she! - was tied up. The cloth sat uncomfortably between her lips, pushing down her tongue. Cord pinched into her skin, restraining her shapely, mighty limbs. It pulled uncomfortably, even painfully at her arms, her shoulders. Every time Valerie moved, Oleander's drug leaving her with no option but to writhe drowsily, the ropes rubbed the underside of her breasts. Her boots creaked as she pulled and twisted against the rope binding her legs, the feeling of sweat between her bare thighs as they rubbed together becoming increasingly irritating. The whole experience of being tied up was so... frustrating! It was like having an itch all over her body that she couldn't scratch. She was like a bear trapped under an iron net, growling and bellowing and furious. Except a bear still looked frightening even when caught. A bear could roar. Even a bear in a net was not to be trifled with. Valerie was drugged, her claws taken from her, her roars muzzled. She looked as vulnerable and helpless as the pretty does that had been snatched up before her.

One of those does was particularly forlorn. Piper still slept, but Saskia's catlike eyes had fluttered open just in time to see James dump his newest prize in the back of the van. Just in time for her hopes to be dashed.
"What? But I thought... I thought she was... " How stupid Saskia felt now. How stupid to defer her moral responsibility because of a childish hope that Valerie was more than just a hot blonde she had been a little too keen on befriending. Yes, she and Piper would surely have died if she hadn't given into Oleander's demands, but - she - she couldn't - she should have -

Valerie heard, through the narcotised haze that numbed her mind and her body, a soft, slightly squeaky sound. She could not sit up, but she could just about lift her head, and blearily she looked up to see that Saskia was crying. She wasn't sobbing, or weeping, but tears were falling from her eyes. She sat with a straight back, and though she was obviously emotional, she was not losing control of herself. In a situation that might have had even a bold soul quivering with terror, Saskia had a dignity to her that Valerie found impressive. She didn't have any of Valerie's power, but in her fear, bravery could be seen quite clearly. None of Saskia's attempts at ingratiating herself with Valerie had opened her heart as much as this.

All the more, then, did Valerie try to strain in her bonds, tugging at them, wrestling against them, feeling the ropes pull tight against her voluptuous body, felt her breasts heave against her vest, felt sweat trickling between her thighs. But though she was still far stronger than a woman of her build ought to have been, the drug and James' ropework kept her totally restrained. But worse than that, was the effect the drug had on her mind.
"Keep... awake..." Valerie repeated to herself, thinking that that passive feeling, that vacuum beneath her anger was just sleepiness. But it wasn't. She was in no danger of losing consciousness now. But the drug was spreading a mist through her mind, dulling her, stifling her, confusing and disorienting her. It made it hard not only to struggle, but hard to want to struggle. She felt malleable. Pliable. The only thing that kept her in a position to resist was her resolve. Not, that is, her strength of character, at least not exactly. It was her resolve to kill James Oleander.
"He... he knows..." she thought, not able even within her own mind to articulate her meaning: Oleander knew about her powers. Did he know she was Valora? Did it make a difference? No. After what he'd done he had to die. It was perhaps a benefit of the drug's effects on her that she didn't have the capacity to give much thought to the ethics of life-taking. Of course, the point was largely moot. She couldn't do a thing to Oleander. She was a vengeful captive, sure, but a captive nevertheless.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Would anyone have been surprised at the extent to which James found his mind lingering on his captives? That is, his mind was entirely occupied with thoughts of his captives, given that he was in the middle of abducting them. But more than that: he found himself lingering on certain... virtues of the three young women he'd kidnapped. The way Saskia's legs had felt when he'd scooped her up for the first time. The way Piper's ass felt through her soft, velvet dress. The way Valerie's bosom heaved as the sedative he'd given her took effect. The way she looked at him when he gagged her. The feeling of her skin as he bound her arms. The satisfying solidity of her thighs. Her smell. Her softness. And the fact that she was a superhuman, a superhuman that he himself had tricked, subdued, and bound. It was too, too thrilling.

He was indulging himself, yes, but he was distracting himself too. When he had begun this villainous enterprise, his intention had been clear, and direct. He would find any copies of the photographs, destroy them, and leave his victims none the wiser. Distressed, perhaps, but unharmed. And that had still been his intention when he'd pounced on Saskia and Piper, and dumped them in the back of his boot. That had still been his intention when he'd tried to chloroform Valerie outside her house. Unbelievably, that had still been his intention even when he'd walked into that café and shown his face to his latest victim, despite the fact that it meant they could easily just report him to the police the moment he let them go. It was only when, upon throwing Valerie in the back of his van, he realised he wasn't worried at all about the fact that his captives. Why not?

Because he'd realised that he was going to murder them.

"No," he said to himself. "That's - that's too damned far." They were innocent. All they'd done was taken photographs of him. The journalist's girlfriend, the petite girl in the velvet dress, hadn't even done that. He'd killed before, but his victims had been Milo's enemies. They'd been criminals and villains all. Besides, his three captives were young, and beautiful and it seemed unconscionable just to... rub them out.

Oh was that it? Was James just getting squeamish because they were pretty? Would he have bothered tying them up and abducting them if they'd been dumpy, forty-five year old men? No. He'd have shot them in the head, and he probably wouldn't have felt too bad about it, either. He wasn't in a moral conundrum, not really. He was just caught between his vanity, his ruthlessness, and a kind of aesthetic desire not to sully their loveliness with blood.

He stopped the van. He'd pulled into a blind alley, about half a mile from his destination, Valerie's apartment. He got out, marched quickly to the back of the vehicle. He opened it, jumped in, and slammed the door shut behind him.
"Mrrghh...mrrhppmmhhh..."
James looked down. Valerie was glaring at him. He looked at Saskia. She looked down at the floor. Piper was still unconscious. He reached towards his belt. He felt his pistol. He felt his breath. He summoned up his blood. He slipped his hand around the pistol's grip. He drew it, keeping it at his side. He turned towards Valerie. Yes, Valerie, he'd start with her. She was the threat. She was the threat. He had to do it. He ought to do it. He drew his pistol. He raised it. Saskia saw him do it, and screamed. Valerie's eyes widened, but in frustrated agony, not in fear. James aimed it right at her forehead.

And then he realised that he hadn't got the photographs off her yet.

"Fuck," he muttered, sheepishly holstering his gun. "That's... that's so you know I'm serious," he said, trying quite half-heartedly to disguise his blunder. He ran his hands through his hair, feeling really, really stupid. At least he did actually have a reason to be here, so it wasn't a total loss. He did need to know where Valerie was hiding her copies of his incriminating photographs, so perhaps he could pass off his gun-idiocy as an attempt at intimidation. He shook his head, resummoned his resolve, bent down and, snarling as if it were Valerie's fault he'd made an idiot of himself, he grabbed her by her curvy hips and hauled her to her feet.

"Mmhhh...?" Powerful as she was, Valerie was still taken off guard with the ease with which James lifted her up. For a 'baseline', he was plenty strong himself. She never thought someone would be able to make her feel light. But he did, and he pushed her up against the metal wall of the inside of the van. She felt the metal against her skin, against her back and her thighs. Oleander held her by her shoulders, his strong, quite smooth hands against her upper arms. His thumbs curled around the straps of her vest, and the bra underneath it, almost pulling them off her shoulders, almost exposing her breasts, ripe and heaving. Even without looking, even with her vision blurry, Valerie could feel his eyes on her. She could feel him wanting her.

But Oleander stopped before completely exposing her. Instead, he reached back behind her neck, and twisted his fingers in Valerie's wavy, blonde hair. It was soft, and had a cheap but pleasant smell of soap from the generic, unscented shampoo that Valerie used. James untangled it in his fingers, moving it away from her face and neck. She made a muzzled protest, and writhed in a vain effort to get away, rubbing herself against him as she struggled weakly in his grip. And then, as James was admiring his voluptuous captive's feminine loveliness, his voluptuous captive gave him a lovely, feminine headbutt.

"Arrgghhhh!!" James cried out, almost stunned by the blow. If Valerie had hit him in the nose, as she'd intended, she might have broken it but their foreheads had collided instead. Somewhere in the haze of the drug it had occurred to Valerie that though her strength was dulled, her durability was not. To support the vast power of her muscles, her bones were much, much stronger and much, much harder than an ordinary person's. So even a weak blow, like the one she'd given James just then, was much more damaging and painful than it would have been from anyone else.

But it wasn't enough. James growled, took a fistful of Valerie's hair, and yanked her head back so hard that even she felt a glimmer of pain in her scalp.
"Naughty girl," he said, running the back of his other hand up her smooth neck, up her cheek, to the back of her head. It was only then that Valerie realised he hadn't been pulling her hair aside because he was being perverse, but because he was looking for the knot holding her gag in place. He undid it, and pulled it out from between Valerie's lips. "All I wanted to do was talk."
"One... word for you..." Valerie said. "Four... letters..."
"The rest of the photos you took. The negatives," James asked. "Where are they?"
"Fuck... y- mmmgghhmmphh!"

A hand, strong and deadly, a hand that had drawn blood and broken bone, clamped down hard over Valerie's pillow-soft, moist lips. On one side, Valora's smooth cheeks were squeezed by Oleander's fingers, on the other by the heel of his palm, his digits curling around her jawline. Valerie tried to get free, balking at the feeling of his hand pressing in so tight against her mouth. She couldn't open her lips at all, couldn't even turn her head. For now, at least, James was stronger than her, and he had impressed that fact upon her with brutal simplicity. She could tell her liked it, could see his reaction as he felt her tender mouth, her hot breath on his hand. Valerie got a sudden insight into what it was like for other women: to know that half the people in the world were in all likelihood much stronger than you, could overpower you at a moment's notice if they so chose. This insight did not frighten her, exactly, but it made her understand fear.

"Don't," James said, his voice taking on a disturbingly intimate hush. "Don't do the whole billy-badass thing, please. You know you're going to tell me where the photos are, for the same reason you got yourself into this in the first place." He inclined his head towards Saskia, who watched the pair with an expression that spoke more of a kind of frozen startledness than of fear, exactly. "I'll kill her," James whispered. "I'll kill the other, and then I'll kill you. So spare all of us the trouble, and tell me where the pictures are." Slowly, he released the pressure around Valerie's mouth, and took his hand away. He let go of her hair as well, letting it tumble about her face, her neck, her strong, supple shoulders. Valerie's eyes were only half-open, but he could see it in them. He could see that she'd been persuaded.

But the decision was easier for Valerie than James thought. There was no dilemma because she knew he'd find them. They weren't hidden. They were sitting right on her bedside table. Even if she refused his threats, even to the point where he killed all three of his captives, he knew where she lived. He'd take her keys, go inside, and look himself, and he'd find them in a second. She could have lied, made up some story about having sent them to a solicitor, but in her drugged state she simply didn't have the presence of mind.
"C'mon," James said, getting impatient. "Don't fuck me around, blondie." He took her by the chin, pursing her cheeks with his fingers and his thumb. "I know the stuff I gave you fogs up the brain, but if you've got the wit to headbutt me, you can say a few words about some photographs."
"They're not... hidden," Valerie said. "Go into my apartment... they're right... out in the open."
"And those are the only copies left?"
The words 'boy, nothing gets past you' formed in Valerie's mind, but she didn't have the strength actually to say them.
"Fine. Great. Then I don't need you to say anything else."

Valerie had expected the cleave-gag to be forced between her lips again, but it had become knotted and twisted as James had undone it. So, instead, Valerie heard a loud ripping sound, and then felt James' hand slap down over her mouth again.
"Mmgghhhhphh!" she complained, and sure enough he took his hand away, but he'd left a long strip of tape sealing her lips, from one cheek to the other. "Mhhgphh... mhh - mhh!" Valerie found her chin grabbed again - Oleander pressed more tape over her mouth, and then began wrapping, aggressively rolling it around her head, not only sealing her mouth, but pushing her hair against the sides of her face, compressing it in a manner that made it exquisitely obvious just how tightly Valerie was muzzled. James certainly liked the effect. That and her sleepy eyes made Valerie look passive. Tamed. And if she was tame, then shouldn't she get down on her knees?

James took a step back from Valerie, no longer pressing her up against the wall of the van. She just about managed to stand, but it was obviously very difficult. So James elected to make things worse: he put his hands on her shoulders, and pushed sharply down.
"Mmfff...!" It was like great weights had been attached to her lower body. She couldn't help but fall, landing hard on her knees. She knew that had been his intention, she knew he'd wanted to force the beautiful superhuman to kneel at his feet, but though she wanted to spit at him, she couldn't. All she could do was give him exactly what he wanted.

The thing of it was, though Valerie was too out of it to be cognisant of such details, Saskia had been watching everything very closely. She'd noticed James' awkward hesitation when he'd raised the gun and not fired. She'd seen the unease, and the relief in his eyes when he put the pistol away and began indulging himself with Valerie.
"What if he can't do it?" Saskia thought. "What if he can't bring himself to kill us?" A happy thought, of course, but Saskia's mind could not stay still. She began to wonder what else a man as unscrupulous as James Oleander might do with three pretty young women that he'd trussed up and thrown in the back of a van.

[Damselbinder]

It was strangely easy. It was the exact same place that, the previous night, James had almost had his ribs broken. Yet now he strolled in, casually as you like. He'd filched Valerie's keys, and so he walked straight in.
"Jesus..." he muttered. It was a dump. The wallpaper peeled, the carpet was stained, and there was a hideous smell coming from the kitchen. A boiler that had started to break down during the Carter presidency banged and rattled, and - to James' disgust - he saw piles of dishes to the side of the sink that had mould growing on them. James wasn't a clean-freak, but his mother had been, and that part of her that lived in him wanted to retch. He moved on.

He tried Valerie's key in the first room along the hallway. No luck, and just as well: James would have found a sleeping, naked, none-too-handsome man sprawled on the bed inside. He tried the second one, succeeded, and entered. Still he was astonished that this was the home of Valerie Orville. A woman so mesmerising in her beauty and strength ought to have been a world-famous superstar. What on earth was she doing slumming it in a place like this?

At the very least, Valerie kept her own space in some order. It wasn't the hideous mess of the shared part of the apartment. What on earth was keeping her in a place like this? It wasn't merely a lousy apartment: it smacked of out and out poverty. He found himself laughing, half in astonishment at the contrast between Valerie as a person and her situation, and half in purest schadenfreude. It gave him sadistic pleasure to know that this woman, who even as his captive seemed to tower over him, had such a shitty life.

Valerie was true to her word. The camera, the only thing in the entire building that looked remotely expensive, was right there on her desk. He picked it up, fiddled with it until the back of it popped open, and took the film out of it. For good measure, he took the unused film she had in a drawer underneath her desk, where he found - to his immense relief - the last piece of incriminating evidence.
"Oh thank God," he said, slumping down in the chair by Valerie's desk. "Oh thank God...!" He laughed. He leaned his head back, a joyous smile lighting up his handsome face, and gave a full, strong belly laugh. Finally! Finally he could undo his stupid mistake! All the nonsense, all the supervillainous bullshit he'd subjected himself to was done. He was safe.

He tore up the photographs, stuffed the pieces into a small plastic bag along with the negatives, and then shoved the bag into his pocket. He'd throw them down a storm drain when he had the opportunity. It seemed almost certain to him now that this effort would succeed. Yet as he sat, slowly the smile faded from his lips, lips which began to purse in anxiety. Yes, he was nearly safe from the consequences of his moment's madness, but now he had three young women tied up in the back of a van instead. He'd had a moment, there in that van, where he could have rid himself of them easily. But he'd lost his nerve, and it seemed very unlikely that he'd get it back again. Well if he couldn't bring himself to kill them, what the hell was he going to do with them?

He put the question to one side. His cunning would rescue him in time so, while he waited for it, he elected to display another virtue: prudence. Valerie had said the photos were on her desk and that they were the only copies, and James believed her. But one never knew, so he started rummaging through her things. Nothing in her desk was interesting, so he moved to the chipped, plywood box that Valerie's landlord generously described as a chest of drawers. Systematically James went through her drawers, again snickering at the cheapness of her clothing. He carefully removed each drawer from its slot, checking above, beneath, and on the sides of each, just in case Valerie had stashed more evidence against him. She hadn't - but James noticed that one of the drawers had a section cut out at the back, to allow something to be hidden behind it. Curious, he reached back into the dresser.

"Hm?" He was wearing gloves to stop himself getting his fingerpints everywhere, so at first he didn't realise what he was feeling. It was stuck with masking tape to the side of the dresser, and he had to yank it pretty firmly to get it free. It was a plastic bag, and at first he thought Valerie was just hiding some expensive shoes in it: the bag definitely contained a pair of boots. He opened the bag up, and sure enough there was a pair of somewhat gaudy red boots inside. But it wasn't just that. There was a piece of blue fabric - a strange material that James had never seen before. For a moment he took it to be a swimsuit, but he realised - with a cruel smile - that there was a more obvious answer. He found one other item in the bag, too, and his conclusion became certain.

Three minutes later, the hold of James's van opened again. He hopped in with an easy lightness, and strolled up to where Valerie was lying. She'd been trying to wriggle towards Saskia and Piper, but in the hour and half since she'd been abducted, the drug showed no signs whatsoever of wearing off. She could barely move her body at all. But she did move - when James grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her onto her back.
"Mmmhhhghh..." Valerie groaned. She began to raise her legs to kick at him, but James grabbed her just below the hem of her skirt and shoved her legs down flat against the cold metal the van's hold. He kept his hand there, his fingers pressing into her curvy thigh. He seemed different. More relaxed. More confident. Even the way he touched her thighs - he was openly groping his voluptuous captive now, instead of just handling her. Every time she saw him, it seemed, he had stepped down one rank of moral degradation.
"I saw your apartment," he said. "I'm surprised you can put up with that kind of squalor."
"Fhhgghh..."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. 'Fuck me'." He squeezed Valerie's thigh a little harder. "What a bastard, right? What a shithead. What a scumbag." He moved his other hand towards Valerie's neck. "All true, I'm sure. The thing of it is, Valerie, I'm better than you."

He slipped his hand under Valerie's shoulder blades, pushed her up into a sitting position. Some of her hair fell over her eyes, and James gently brushed it out of the way. He wanted to look her right in the eyes.
"You're powerful," he said. "You're drop-dead gorgeous. You're dignified. You're noble, completely willing to put yourself in danger to help people. You're a s - I mean, a good guy." He almost winked. "But you dress cheaply. You eat cheaply. You buy from the dollar-store. Your apartment is disgusting. It's tiny, and in a crappy part of town."
Valerie wanted to crack his skull. She found herself breathing hard, not only with rage; it was because Saskia was listening. She had to know that Valerie was a fair bit poorer than her but Valerie was ashamed, so ashamed of her situation, and it wasn't that she cared about Saskia's opinion of her in particular, she just didn't want it to be known, by anyone, the awful situation she was in.

"Me, on the other hand," James went on, "I'm a criminal. I sell drugs. Now, apparently, I kidnap young women and throw them in the backs of vans. I've killed people. I'm a drain on society. I should be locked up. But..." He came closer. "I have an expensively furnished, tastefully decorated house, in a nice part of town. I wear expensive clothes. I dine at good restaurants. Basically, Valerie, my life is better than yours in absolutely every way. I just want you to know that." Mostly it was still rage and frustration that he saw on Valerie's face, but he could see, behind it, just a glimmer of that shame she hid so deeply. It filled James with deep satisfaction, to degrade and humiliate this beautiful superhuman. And he wasn't done yet.

He had, aside from the photographs, taken one other item from Valerie's apartment. He took it in his right hand, and then placed that hand over Valerie's eyes. She squirmed in defiance as much as she was able, right up until she felt a familiar 'click' as something clipped to the bridge of her nose. Then she froze. When James took his hand away, her eyes were locked with his, wide, shocked. Those eyes which were framed so beautifully by a dark-red domino mask.
"I had to think pretty hard," James said, "but I realised I did recognise the outfit you had stashed in there. I don't normally keep up with the cape scene, but you? You stuck in my mind." He smirked. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Valora."

"Oh god... no!" Valerie's heart felt like it would burst. Her stomach tightened so hard it was like someone was twisting her bowels around their fingers. She began to sweat, panting with shock and distress. She looked over at Saskia, almost hyperventilating. But Saskia was not shocked, or alarmed, or even all that surprised.
"I knew it," she thought. "I knew it. I knew you were more. I knew you were special!" For Valerie this revelation had filled her with shame and dismay, for 'Valora' was not a name she wore proudly, and she was terrified of the consequences of its unveiling. But for Saskia, James' cruelty had backfired hard. He had rekindled her hope.

As for James himself, though, his realisation that Valerie was who she was had made things much clearer to him. He got out of the back of his van, leaving Valerie in her shock and her shame, and he took out a small, cheap, disposable phone. He dialled a number that he had not dialled since long before he had come to work for Milo. It was not a person he liked. It was, in fact, a person of whom he thought about as highly as the last piece of dog shit he'd stepped on. But it was a person who provided a service that he now had use of. For he'd realised that he had made an enemy of a hero: so it was perfectly obvious, now, what he was. And that brought with it a plan of action, a way to get rid of his captives without killing them. For what did villains do, when they had three pretty damsels in their clutches, especially thuggish, underworld sorts like himself? Simple.

They sold them.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It was a long, quiet drive. Valerie sat, shellshocked, in complete silence. She didn't even really think anything. She just sat on her back, feeling the van rumble underneath her. She couldn't even take the mask off. She felt naked, Saskia's eyes like lasers burning into her. Now, even if they got out of this, she would have this hanging over her. She didn't know Saskia. She seemed nice, sure, but she couldn't trust her. She didn't know what to do. She just stared up at the metal roof above her, imagining all the horrible ways this might destroy her life.

Saskia could see plainly how horrified Valerie was at being unmasked, so to speak. She could imagine all sorts of reasons that the blonde would want to keep this secret, but it was more than that, Saskia could tell. She wanted to comfort Valerie, to explain to her that she, at least, would never breathe a word to anyone. She wanted also to tell Valerie how wonderful she thought it was. Saskia had never personally met any superhumans, but her feeling about them was the precise opposite of Milo Patáky's: for him they were a sign of disorder, madness, chaos. For Saskia they brought magic into the world. More still than that: she knew how people felt about superheroes these days, and though Saskia had to own that she'd never actually heard the name 'Valora' before, she was grateful to all like her for their lonely, unloved service.

Yet there was a greater concern in Saskia's mind. When James had knocked her out in that garage, Piper had been unconscious, fainted in her lap. Though of course it was possible that she had awoken and been drugged again, it was still concerning that Piper was still asleep. Saskia was beginning to worry that something was seriously wrong with her.
"Mph..." Saskia shuffled closer to her girlfriend, nudged her with her shoulder. But Piper's head flopped limply to one side, and her eyes remained closed.
"Phhhphhrr!" Saskia nudged her again, and again, but still nothing. "Piper... Piper, wake up...!" It was a vain effort. Piper would not answer Saskia's plea. So Saskia turned again to hero that had been captured alongside her - to the hero who had been captured because of her - looking for aid. Indeed, though fear still gnawed at her, she nursed a hope that Valerie would help. That Valora, rather, would save them.

But if that were to happen, it wouldn't be for a long time. Oleander's sedative sapped Valerie's strength, mind and body, almost completely. None of what he had given her was supernatural, nor would any of its constituents have failed to exist if they'd lived in a world without superhumans in it. But no-one would have combined such a powerful combination of sedatives into a single pill before: it was designed precisely to sedate superhumans. If James had given it to Saskia or Piper, they'd have died within ten minutes. One never would have guessed, but before slipping into a life of crime, James had been training to be a pharmacologist.

The van came to a stop again. From the sound of the tyres, Saskia could tell that they were on a gravel or dirt road. Somewhere out of the way, at any rate. The hold of the van opened again, revealing not only Oleander, but a small, country road, secluded and leafy. There was a car parked a few metres away from them. James was dumping the van: it and he had been seen together, so it was a liability at this point. He jumped up into the hold, made straight for where Piper was lying. He too, noticed that she was still unconscious.
"Has she woken up at all?" he asked Saskia, who was rather caught off-guard by the simplicity of James' tone. She didn't answer. "I guess not," James said. Now he too was concerned. He hadn't sedated Piper in hours: she ought to have been awake. He knelt down next to her, put his finger against her throat, feeling for a pulse. It was there, steady as you like. Her breathing too. He even gingerly opened one of her eyes: it was rolled back, quivering slightly. "Hmmm..." James grumbled. But he let the matter lie. He didn't let Piper lie, though.

In a now practiced motion, he lifted Piper up to her feet by the scruff of her neck, her limpness no barrier to his purposes. He hoisted her up easily, grabbed her by her bare, soft legs, and scooped her up into his arms. The feeling of her petite, curvy frame was a familiar one by now, but no less pleasurable. She was warm, yielding, feminine. Or rather, she was to James what he thought femininity ought to be: fragility, vulnerability, softness. Her head fell back as he carried her out, her body absolutely helpless in his arms. He hopped down from the van, and he saw her breasts bounce pleasingly in the confines of her dress. She wasn't quite as busty as Valerie, but her narrow shoulders and petite frame made her bosom seem all the more prominent and generous.

Opening the back of his black Escalade (what gangster would be without one?), James laid Piper carefully in the back, propping her up quite comfortably. As he did, he noticed that the tape around Piper's ankles had come loose, and her legs were, therefore, unbound. But her arms were still tied, and she was still unconscious, so it didn't seem all that important. In fact, he decided to take advantage of it, or rather, to do Piper a favour. Gripping her left thigh, pale and supple, James lifted her leg, and crossed it over the other. Her velvet dress wasn't very short, but one could never be too careful.

Saskia was next, dragged to her feet by her shoulders. Taller than Piper, and heavier, she nevertheless presented no challenge to James' strength.
"Mmmph!" Saskia complained, feeling James hands gripping her long, naked legs, roughly clutching her by the midsection. It was humiliating, having a man hoist her around like this. Had she been in a more journalistic frame of mind she might have described it as 'subversive of my personhood: like being reduced to a sexual puppet - worse than being brainwashed and having your will eliminated, because your will is just ignored.' However, she was not in a journalistic frame of mind, and her thoughts amounted to: "oh God, get your hands off - what do I - ugh, this - how can - oh, Piper why did you tell him - why did I tell him - oh God, God, God..."

She struggled, of course, wriggling her slim, tall body in Oleander's arms, but James didn't have to try very hard to keep her restrained. He pulled her tight against his chest, and though her lithe, coffee-brown legs kicked out, he suppressed her efforts quite thoroughly. She could not escape. She could smell him, smell his sweat. Oh sure, he smelled because he'd been guarding his captives all night and hadn't had a chance to wash; he sweated because - strong as he was - lugging two adult women around was not massively easy. But she was sure she could smell more than that. She could feel quite plainly that James was getting his rocks off out of touching her legs, her body - but more and more she began to think she could smell it. She could smell something other than effort in his sweat. It repulsed her, but that repulsion expressed itself as a kind of cold, sickly-feeling blush. She had it in her mind that he would see, that he would think she was getting pleasure out of being fondled by him. She'd had to put up with a couple of men in her time who saw her homosexuality as some kind of challenge, who thought that they were James Bond and she was Pussy Galore, and with the right application of misogyny they could make her 'come to her senses'. She didn't know if this James was that particular brand of shithead - though he was certainly plenty of other brands - but with her mouth taped shut she couldn't tell him where to shove it. She found herself moaning in dismay, dismay at the notion that Oleander might think he was inflicting anything on her other than suffering and humiliation.

Oleander carried her to his Escalade, put her down next to Piper, then wrapped the middle seatbelt around her midsection, so when he buckled it she was held tightly in place. She wriggled frustratedly in her seat, and James noticed her legs rubbing against Piper's. He patted Saskia on the cheek.
"Keep Sleeping Beauty comfortable, huh?" he said, before shutting the door. He had just one more piece of cargo to load - and he'd been looking forward to lugging this one.

Valerie was very, very aware of the pinch of her mask on the bridge of her nose. It irritated her. It itched. She wanted to rip it off. She wanted to crush it under her foot. Then she wanted to take the crumpled remains and ram them down James Oleander's throat. When he hopped back into the hold of the van, she gave him a look of such venom that he thought for a moment she'd recovered her power. But it was venom merely: she had no fangs with which to inject it.
"Frrgghhhmmffhhh..." Valerie growled, as James approached her. He bent down, and plucked the mask from her face, stuffing it into his pocket.
"C'mon, don't get angry with me, Valora," James said. "You might have thought I was being cruel, revealing your secret and everything, but I think of it more as an exercise in empathy."
Suffice to say, Valerie didn't follow.
"When I showed Saskia that you were a -" He smiled, sheepishly. The word he'd been about to use fit ill in his mouth. "... That you were a superhero," he continued, "when I showed you that I knew, I did it to make you understand why I'm doing all this. Your shame, your fear at having your secret revealed - well take that, multiply it - oh - a few hundred times, and then you might, might just be able to understand what I'm feeling right now." He grabbed her by the waist, pulled her up to her feet, pulled her close so their faces were just centimetres apart. "I don't think you, someone like you, can understand what it's like to fear death. To fear the kind of death that's in store for me if my boss finds out what I almost did to him. He's... I mean he's such a coward in so many ways, but he's..."
Valerie assumed that James was trying to intimidate her, but it was she now who saw fear in his eyes. For all she thought of James, for all that she thought he was the dirtiest kind of filth, she could hardly imagine that he was afraid of the little wheezing man who'd been hiding behind him at the casino.
"Whatever," James muttered. He realised that he'd shown more of himself than he meant to. He moved Valerie a little further away from him. "Not as if it matters what you think. Just, ah, keep it in mind before you rush to judgement."

With relish, James slid his hands down over the contours of Valerie's body, feeling the gentle slope from her ribs, pinching inwards towards quite a narrow waist, before sweeping outwards to a pair of gorgeously curvy hips. He put his hands on them, and Valerie could barely keep her upper body from flopping against him. She felt his hands move down to her pelvis, pressing into the leather of her skirt, moving towards its hem.
"It's not enough...to be the dirtiest piece of filth I've ever met... you have to grope me too, you -" Her train of thought was cut off. James wasn't just feeling her up: when his hands reached the bottom of Valerie's pelvis, he gripped tight - and then he threw Valerie over his shoulder.

"Mmmhh!" Valerie gasped. She couldn't believe it. She literally couldn't believe it. She'd been drugged, tied up, gagged, pushed around, and as aggrieving as all of that had been, it didn't compare to this. Like a lightweight, like a weak and defenceless girl, Valerie had been taken, her body seized and tossed about, just because her captor had wished it. Her world was upended in a second. Her feet were lifted off the ground, her voluptuous, achingly enviable figure flopping meekly over James' body. Her breasts bounced against his lean, strong back, in danger of slipping out of her vest as her upper body dangled upside-down. Her hair fell in a golden cascade over her head, obscuring her vision - though since all she could see was the back of James' trousers, it wasn't depriving her of much. She was - was like a thing, an object - he'd just slung her over himself like a sack, and there was nothing she could do about it.

"Mph!" Valerie felt skin against her own: James had gripped her by her warm, curvaceous thighs. He clutched at her greedily, feeling the smoothness, the tightness, the yielding femininity of her creamy skin. The shape of her, the weight of her sunk against him, by the heave of her bosom against his back; the slow writhing of her long, curvy legs; the sensual gyrating of her hips - all pressing into him firmly and irresistibly that the captive he had bound and tossed over his shoulder was a woman. He began to carry her off, to take her where he willed, no matter what the trussed-up beauty thought about it. He hopped out of the van, and he felt her bounce, felt her breasts undulate against him. He had his hands on her bare legs, and he shivered at the raw, dominating pleasure of it. She was strong, so tough, but her skin was like satin. Golden haired, mighty, staggeringly beautiful - she was angelic. She was angelic and he had clipped her wings, torn her down from grace and humbled her. Valerie thought he considered her an object, but she was not quite right: she was, to him, a conquest, borne over his shoulder as spoils, a prize. He felt like a mongol warrior with a plundered maiden or something, and though he realised he was being pretentiously - and badly - poetic, he couldn't help it. Having a superheroine over one's shoulder tended rather to bring that out of one.

He took his pleasure of her, almost angrily clutching, stroking her legs, feeling as every touch on her body made her squirm against him, pressing her body into his. Her skin was going from warm to almost hot, as powerless frustration pulsed through her, as her naked thighs began to glisten with sweat, rubbing against each other, against the ropes binding her body - her perfect body - and against his groping, squeezing hands. Hands which now began to rove further.
"Mmhhph...!" Valerie's crystal-blue eyes shot wide open. She felt James' hand slide under her skirt, clamp down hard over her behind. It was round and prominent, and yielded splendidly when he grabbed it, getting a whole handful of Valerie's supple flesh, rubbing it, squishing it, massaging it as he had his way with her. He felt the ample, tempting roundness of her rear, felt her panties clinging jealously to her: scant defence against his grasping hand. Valerie felt her captor shiver with pleasure, and it disgusted her. She struggled harder, but in her weakened state it only meant that she rubbed against him with more vigour, which doubtless he was enjoying.

James carried her to the others, opening the car door and bundling the roped-up blonde in the back with the others.
"Mrgghh...mmmmhhhphhhh!!" Valerie groaned and growled, and tried again to smack James with her forehead. She hit him again, alright, but in the sternum, where her blow - respectable indeed from a heavily sedated, tied up woman - achieved nothing. He pushed her back against the seat, his hand sat comfortably between her breasts, before wrapping the seatbelt about her shoulders, pulling her in tight, fixing her in nice and securely.

Saskia whimpered in dismay as she saw Valerie being laid in next to her, struggling with all the more fervour to escape. But her struggles only made her very aware that there were two gorgeous women pressing in against her from both sides. Her long, naked legs rubbed against Piper's on one side and Valerie's on the other, the one so petite and soft, the other so voluptuous and substantial. It wasn't as though she was aroused, exactly: the situation was too desperate and horrible for that. It was just that she - well she felt them, and her body couldn't help but react. Intimacy was forced upon her, and she couldn't inure herself to it. Goosebumps raced up her body, tickling her, making her feel foolish: for, of all the things to be worried about, she was getting concerned that Piper would see just how attracted Saskia was to her colleague. It was acutely embarrassing, and she found herself looking at Piper, not just to check if she was still unconscious, but checking that she hadn't seen.

James got into the front seat, turned around to face them. He drank in the sight of his three captives writhing against each other. Well, two of them anyway. He noticed that Saskia was looking hard at her girlfriend, probably concerned about her continued slumber. He was, he had to admit, a little concerned himself. Now he had a vested interest in keeping her alive. Saskia noticed him looking at her, and sheepishly looked down at her feet. It was a funny reaction, but he certainly liked the meekness of her expression. He looked at Valerie hoping to see something similar: he didn't get it. Instead he got - he didn't know what he got. It might have been a product of the sedative in her bloodstream, or at least he hoped it was. She was just... staring at him, dead-eyed: beyond hostility, beyond anger. For all he had embarrassed her, shamed her, 'clipped her wings', whatever self-aggrandising euphemism James could muster, she still frightened him.

His macho reverie broken by Valerie's stare, self-loathing at his actions crept back in. He crushed it underfoot as literally as he could, by turning the key in his Escalade and then slamming down on the accelerator with all force. The car shot out of the dirt road and onto the highway with a low, confident growl, and James resettled himself.
"You know," he said, trying to turn the screw, "I've decided it really would be wrong of me to kill you. I can't do it: I mean that." He looked at them in the rear-view mirror "So I'm not going to. I'm still going to get you out of my way, though." He smiled wickedly. "I'm going to sell you."

From Saskia this had precisely the reaction he wanted. She moaned in dismay, opening her catlike eyes wide, and then falling into despair upon her girlfriend's shoulder. He looked at Valerie, knowing that a woman like her would never react like Saskia had, but he didn't get anything close. She barely even seemed to have heard him. She hadn't heard him, not really. James had passed a threshold of despicability, and now Valerie's ears just rang. She just stared at him, beyond even the point of cogent, articulate thought, to the point of an anger so cold that she almost shivered from it. It was hard to say exactly what had brought her to this point. It could have been James revealing her identity to Saskia. It could have been when James had taunted her about her poverty.

It might just have been when James decided to grab her ass.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Nobody knew why Dudley Bakker was called 'Hawk'. He had always been called that, or so it seemed, and it was one of those intractable mysteries for those who knew him. The reason anybody pondered it was because he really, really didn't look like a 'Hawk'. He was an eternally droopy, lanky figure, with a long, crooked nose and stringy, grey hair that made him look like he'd just crawled out of a swamp. People who worked with him - none of whom, it must be confessed, particularly enjoyed doing so - could not think of a man who looked less like a 'Hawk'. 'Rat' had been suggested. 'Lizard' was bandied about briefly. One wag even put 'nematode' in the running, but that was dismissed on grounds of insufficient pithiness. In the end, 'Hawk' was all he would answer to.

It was a shame that the answer to the mystery turned out to be so simple. Dudley Halls had insisted on being called 'Hawk' since he was in his twenties, simply on the grounds that 'Dudley' was not a sufficiently intimidating name for a master criminal. Not that Dudley was a master criminal, of course, but he'd always vaguely aspired to be. The only reason everyone agreed with his insistence was because most of his contemporaries who knew that he'd just plucked the name out of the air were long gone, either in far different parts of the world, or dead.

James Oleander had not known Hawk long enough to be aware of the origins of his nickname, but only just. In James' twenties Hawk had given him a job as his bodyguard. He hadn't lasted long in it, but he'd proven himself resourceful and clever enough to be trusted with much more than a bodyguard ordinarily would be. And certainly James had done him enough favours - before and after the tenure of his employment - to warrant a favour in return. Even a favour as big as this one.

When Oleander's bulky, black Escalade drove onto the pier, he saw Hawk immediately. He was grey against a grey sea, but somehow seemed to suck all the greyness in towards him like a black hole. "Grey hole," James muttered, as he turned the car onto the end of the pier. It might have seemed a stupid place to do something so blatantly illegal, but the pier was in a strange place, at the bottom of a steep hill, with a corridor of shipping containers arranged in such a way as to make observation from land almost impossible. The only thing that kept it from more frequent use by criminal elements was the fact that the jetty was underwater at high tide. But it was good enough for Hawk, and for James. He turned the car into a small building just at the base of the pier, normally used for storing maritime equipment, then got out of his car, glancing nervously around. Hawk had followed him inside.

"Ey. Alright?" Hawk said, his emphysema strangling the usually pleasing, clipped lilt of a South African accent. "You got yourself in a bit of a pickle, eh?"
"Nice to see you, Hawk," James said. "I'd love to chat, but I've really got to get this done quick."
"You call me out to the middle of nowhere," Hawk said, "after years and years, eh?, of not talking, yah? Not even a postcard at Christmas?"
"Like you have a fixed address, you creepy old hobo," James said, with a smile on his face.
"Oh! Oh, I see how it is!" Hawk crowed. "I'm going tah overlook that on the basis of your long years of service, yah?"
He strolled up towards James' car, pushing right past his old employee when a handshake was offered. James recoiled - not because of the push, but because Hawk stank.
"I know this was short notice," James said. "You sure you can find buyers this quick?"
"Matey, there's always a market for T&A, eh? You'd be surprised how easy it is to disappear someone these days. Everyone in this business has some yube or other for that kind of work." 'Yube' was a derogatory term for a superhuman. "Except your man, Patáky, eh? Not his line though, kidnapping, is it?"
"No it's not. And that's why I'm not taking a finder's fee, Hawk. So that you'll be... discreet."
"Ey, 'discreet' is my middle name."
"Huh. Better than 'Dudley', I guess."
"OI!" Hawk wheeled round on him with manic fury. "You don't bloody call me that, eh? You call me 'Awk and nothing but 'Awk, yah?!"
"'Awk' it is," James said, raising his hands in mock surrender. He gestured towards his Escalade, and Hawk marched quickly towards it.

The windows of James' Escalade were tinted, so Hawk had to open the door to see the cargo James had brought. "Bloody Jesus of Nazareth!" Hawk laughed, staring with sadistic pleasure at the young women bound in the back of the car. "You weren't kidding, yah? Oh, let's have a look at you peaches, eh?"
"Mrgghghhhfffhhh!" the first peach growled, as Hawk groped the blonde's legs, her breasts, evidently sizing her up as well as pleasuring himself. He undid the strap James had wrapped around her, and pulled Valerie out of the car. Grasping her by the chin, he turned her head from one side to the other.
"Oh yeah," Hawk said. "Very pretty. I can get a good price for her easy. Natural blondes are always an easy sell."
"Mrrghh..hrhrfff!" Valerie tried to fight back: she wasn't quite as loopy as she'd been before, but she still didn't have the strength to break her bonds. Her head nodded as she tried to look him in the eye.
"Bit loopy, eh? James been a naughty boy, has 'e? Given you something to make you sleepy? Tsk tsk. Wicked lad, I always said." He pushed Valerie to the side, and with her legs bound, she could not help but fall, collapsing onto the hard concrete of the pier. She looked around, hoping that someone would see them, but they were truly isolated.

Saskia was pulled out next, by her ankles, and stood up, pressed against the side of the car.
"Mmmhhhhpphh..." she whimpered, looking away as Hawk patted her down, sized her up like a piece of meat at market.
"Oh yeah," Hawk said. "This one's more to my tastes, eh? I always did like a leggy girl. Bit of a supermodel type, this one." He patted Saskia's bare thighs, eliciting moans and protests from her pretty, gagged mouth. "Aww, not happy, eh? Poor little thing. Afraid of me? You shouldn't be! My tender ministrations are going to be luxurious compared to what my buyers have in store for you, I'm sure."
"Mh...mmhh..." Saskia mewed. She glanced over to Valerie, her wide, wet eyes begging the heroine to intervene. To her shame, Valerie could do no such thing.
"Want to be with your friend, eh?" Hawk crowed. "Comfort 'er in your time of trouble? Well, who am I to refuse such a simple request?" He turned Saskia around, and then shoved her in the back.
"MMHH!" she cried, tumbling forward, falling right onto Valerie, her head falling flat against the blonde's midriff. She pulled her bare legs up to herself in an instinctively defensive gesture.
"What a lovely pair, eh?" Hawk said. It was just as he was turning his attention to Piper, that James took him by the arm.
"The blonde," he said, quietly. "There's, uh, something I didn't mention about her."
Valerie watched James pull Hawk in front of the car. Obviously he didn't want them hearing, but she heard a loud, South African "WHAT?!", so she gathered what they were discussing anyway. "He's telling him about me..."

She was right.
"No, no, no, no way, matey," Hawk said, tossing back his straggly hair. "I'm not dealing with any bloody yubes. Too much bloody hassle."
"Look, I managed to capture her, didn't I? Just keep her drugged."
"Mate, that's not the bloody problem. The problem is nobody's going to take on that kind of liability. I won't be able to sell her!"
"Oh, bullshit. Besides, she's not just a - a 'yube', she's a superhero.There's always some pervert out there who wants a superhero as a trophy. It's a bloody - a fucking - national fetish at this point. There's got to be someone!"
A strange look came over Hawk's face. At once a look of realisation and of a kind of cold fear. Hawk was not an easy man to make afraid, not because he was particularly courageous, but just because he was arrogant, and - James was sure - a diagnosable psychopath. But James saw fear in his eyes now.
"I... I might know someone. Or - I know someone who might know someone."
"Anyone in our circles?"
"No, matey. This guy... he's out on the West Coast. I'm not even really all that sure the boy exists., but... well you 'ear some pretty frightening stories, eh? And if what they say is true, I think he'd be your 'uckleberry, yah?"
"You don't have a name, do you?"
"A name?" He looked around. He wasn't being dramatic, either. He seemed genuinely worried about being overheard. "He's called H-"

Who could tell what Hawk had been about to say? It was swiftly forgotten in the events that followed. For Hawk and James both heard the sound of the Escalade starting. They turned - and James shouted in shock when he saw this - to see someone at the wheel of the car, with furious tears in her eyes, with trembling hands on the car's wheel, and with fiery, violent determination.
Piper had not been unconscious for several hours, not since she had woken from her fainting spell in James' garage where she and Saskia had been kept overnight. She had first kept still, and kept her eyes closed, out of fear. But then, as the hours went by, and James began paying less and less attention to her pseudo-somnolent form, that fear had turned into resolve. Slowly, slowly she had worked to loosen the tape binding her legs, and slowly she had succeeded. But her arms she could not have freed alone. When James had seen Saskia looking strangely at Piper, just when he'd put Valerie in the car, he hadn't given it a second thought - but she'd been looking strangely at her because Piper had just winked. As he'd driven them to the pier, Saskia had worked quietly with her long nails to cut Piper's hands free. Then it had simply been a matter of waiting for the opportune moment.
"AAAHHHH!!" Piper screamed, as she pressed down on the accelerator, and the car lurched forward. James had the sense and agility to leap out of the way, but Hawk was not so quick. The hood of the car struck him cleanly in the chest, pushing him backwards, until the car crushed him between itself and the concrete wall of the storage building, and he cried out in agony as he felt a crunch at the base of his ribs.

"Jesus Christ!" James spluttered, drawing his pistol and firing at the windshield. The first bullet would have struck Piper, but the windows were reinforced - James had had that done himself, and the bullet cracked the windshield, but didn't break it. Still, Piper didn't push her luck. She forced the Escalade into reverse, letting Hawk collapse onto the floor. She got out of the storage building, and tried to turn around, to make her escape and get help for the others when she could. But James was fast, and accurate, and his second shot did not miss his intended target. Piper was just getting the car moving forwards again, when James fired. Since the car was stationary, Piper didn't realise anything had happened, but when she tried another rapid acceleration, she heard a loud pop, and suddenly lost control of the vehicle. A tyre, pierced by James' second shot, had burst and, overcompensating when the car veered to the right, Piper crashed it into a shipping container on her left. Hurriedly, with shaking limbs, she got out of the car, and began to run, but James was on her too quickly.

"Don't run! Don't run!" he bellowed, firing a shot into the air. But she didn't stop, and he didn't have the heart to shoot her, so he caught up with Piper, and tackled her from behind, knocking her onto the ground.
"Unhh!" she gasped, forced onto the floor, struggling and wriggling against the hard concrete. "HELP!" she screamed. "Someone please HEL - MMMMMMPHHHHH!!!" James had muzzled her with his own hand, effectively silencing her, pressing tight into her soft, moist lips.
"You stupid, stupid woman!" James growled. "Do you know what you just did? Do you?!"
"HLLLPHHH! PPLLLHHHFFF!!" she moaned, but she was a fragile as a lily in his grasp. He holstered his gun, and grabbed both of her wrists with one hand, restraining the petite, dark-haired damsel easily. He pulled off his own tie, and quickly lashed it around her wrists, painfully pressing them tight against each other in a rough, but frighteningly effective form of bondage.
"I'll tell you what you did," he said. "You just drove a car into your only chance to get out of this alive!" He turned her around, and began frogmarching her towards the storage room, forcing her along while she wriggled and moaned helplessly in his powerful grip. But he didn't get far.

He saw someone standing before him. It wasn't Valora: she was still lying trussed in the storage room. It was a man. James almost recognised him. It wasn't Hawk either. It was a young man, young-ish anyway. James realised he did recognise him, and just as he remembered that he worked at the Falmouth Grand, this young-ish man drew his pistol. He thought he'd caught James completely flat-footed. But James was as fast as a viper, and you can hardly catch a snake flat-footed, can you?
"J -" was all the man managed to get out before James, out-drawing him with terrifying speed, shoved Piper to the ground and placed three bullets in him: one in his chest, one in his neck, and one gouging a trench in the top of his skull, in a pretty neat line upwards - James had started shooting as he'd raised his gun, and that was the result.

The man fell dead in a second, and for a moment James was like a machine, deadly and efficient, his eyes narrowed, his pulse steady. He had responded out of instinct, and had defended himself with extraordinary skill. But it was only once he was relatively safe that he began to think. He began to think why someone from the Falmouth Grand was here, trying to kill him. He began to think why he could hear the sounds of cars coming from two sides, and the sounds of men shouting as they approached. He began to wonder why Milo had sent men to kill him. He began to wonder how Milo had found out about his treachery. He began to panic.

And then he started screaming.

[Damselbinder]

They brought him in with a sack over his head. He was bleeding from about six different places: all serious wounds, but none so serious that they would kill him with any great speed. That had been quite intentional: Milo Patáky had made sure of it. The venue was appropriately foul: a cold, dark, wet basement-of-a-basement in a condemned building. It had been a frequent strategy of Patáky's, even since his earliest days of running illegal poker games, to work in such places. These days he was almost never had cause to be present when his men were doing something plainly illegal, but this time was special. This time he wanted to savour it.

Five men in total were present, lit by a loudly humming electric lamp. The first was Patáky himself: twitching; irritable; perpetually nervous. Three were Patáky's employees: two heavies, and one more senior lieutenant, who had a share of responsibility for Milo's empire in his own right. The lieutenant's name was Stanley ("like the knife, see?"), and though he lacked Oleander's charm and flair, he was a simple, cruel and effective enforcer and manager of Milo's more illicit affairs. The other man was the one with the sack on his head. Shaking, whimpering and bleeding, his was an especially painful ordeal. For it was not merely that he was afraid of them: he could feel quite clearly their intent to murder him. By gun, by knife, by simple percussion until their fists had reduced him to jelly, they weren't too fussed.

They dragged their guest to a cheap, plastic chair, shoved him into it. The heavies held him by the shoulders, making sure he didn't go anywhere, but it was relatively unnecessary: he was severely weakened by his blood loss. They held him there for a few moments. He breathed hard, trying and failing not to sound panicked.
"Stanley," came a voice from directly in front of the prisoner, "please remove his hood. He knows who we are."
"Sir," Stanley replied, and pulled the hood off, at which point the prisoner waxed bellicose and began protesting loudly.
"Patáky you little bitch, when I get my -"
Stanley slapped him across the face, with such shocking painfulness that his victim actually gasped in pain. "Shh," he added. The prisoner quietened down. Stanley moved aside, and revealed Milo standing behind him. He was holding a knife.
"Nice to see you again, Novak," Milo said.

The fat old gangster looked at his old rival with a mixture of rage and helpless confusion. "I - don't understand," he said. "We had a truce! We had a deal. I kept to it!"
"You kept to it because you had to," Milo explained. "Because you're weaker than I am. I kept to it until now because I had no wish to expand into your territories." He played with the knife between his fingers, inexpertly. "I now have such a wish, Novak. That is the only thing which has changed."

Desperately, Novak reached out with his powers, powers that Milo would have used to make himself the most powerful man in the world if he'd possessed them. His telepathy was an inversion of most: it was easiest for him to delve into the subconscious, to get a sense of a person's wants, needs, innermost fears. What they were actually thinking and feeling in the moment was very difficult for him to gauge. So, for instance, he knew at once that Stanley was a brutal, unfeeling sociopath who derived most of his pleasure from inflicting suffering on others, but he had no idea that Stanley was thinking about the New England Patriots' recent victory in the Superbowl. He could tell that Milo was a nervous, self-doubting, bitter and selfish man, but had to focus very, very hard to see that Milo was thinking about which eye of Novak's he wanted to stab out first. With great effort, though, he saw also that the image of a man's face kept popping into his mind. It was a face Milo recognised.

"Don't kill me," Novak said, trying to make it sound like a proposition, not a plea. "I - I'm more valuable to you alive."
Milo pinched the bridge of his nose. "...oh yes?" He turned to Stanley. "What do you think, Stanley? Should I indulge him?"
"I wouldn't presume to tell you that, sir."
Milo's face spasmed in a way that suggested he might have been trying to smile. "You'll have to forgive Stanley's manner, Novak. He spent a short time in the reserves in his youth, so he has some lingering military pretensions. Why were you discharged, again, Stanley?"
"Sir, for sexually harassing an inferior servicewoman, and assaulting a member of the Military Police."
"How did you assault that poor fellow, Stanley?"
"I punched him."
"How hard?"
"About this hard, sir," Stanley replied, before socking Novak across the face, so hard that he almost fell out of the chair, even with the two heavies holding him down.
"Thank you for the demonstration, Stanley," Milo said, as Novak - stunned by the blow - moaned in pain. "Now, please keep doing that until Novak has reached the consistency of almond paste."
"Yes, sir," Stanley said, and raised his fist with the intention of driving it into Novak's protruding, swollen abdomen. As it happened, he would have killed Novak almost immediately, as Novak had an ulcer that the blow would have burst, causing him to die of sepsis. But Novak, thinking as quickly as he could, played the only card that he possessed.
"James Oleander is planning to kill you."

The room had already been silent, apart from Novak's groaning, but, had it not been, it would have fallen so just then. Milo turned on Novak with an expression of demented calm.
"...I admit, Novak," Milo said, "I had not expected that to come out of your mouth. Would you care to tell me how you have come by this information?"
Novak had been about to say 'because I offered to pay him to', but thought that he might have kept that little tidbit to himself for the time being. "I'm a superhuman. A telepath - I can read minds! I know for a fact he wants to kill you!"

Milo was tempted to have Stanley slit Novak's throat then and there. If Novak had used any other name, if he had said literally anything else, Milo would have had him killed immediately. But Novak hadn't just played his card because he thought Milo would want to know about a plot against his life. He'd done it because he knew that unlike, say, Stanley, James was not just an underling to Milo. This was a wound that would hurt.
"You. You're a telepath?" Milo asked, genuinely incredulous.
"Yeah," Novak grunted back.
Milo scratched his head. "...Novak, there are, I think, something like nine-hundred thousand superhumans in the entire world. There are six billion people in total. That means the odds of any one person being a superhuman are, uh..."
"Fifteen in one-hundred-thousand, boss," the slightly smaller of the two heavies chimed in.
"Uh, yes, thank you, Argyle," Milo replied, astonished that Argyle even knew what a fraction was, let alone that he was capable of such speedy mental arithmetic. But he returned to the point. "In addition, I understand that telepathy is vanishingly rare, even among superhumans and, even among those, full-on mind-reading is all but unheard of!" He shook his head, laughing. "Honestly, Novak, I thought you might have been able to do better than that."
"I'll prove it," Novak said. Had he been sensible, he might then have said 'think of a number' or something, but he wasn't and he didn't. He was a pig, and a bigot, and he hated Milo, and so he couldn't stop himself from twisting the knife into what he believed was an open wound. "You think about him. About your gigolo. You want to fuck him, huh? Yeah, that's right!" he barked, speaking to the others. "Your boss is a fucking faggot!"

There was an awkward silence. The men just sort of looked at each other confusedly. It was not the reaction that Novak had been hoping for. Again, Milo pinched the bridge of his nose. "All present," he said, "if you're surprised to find out I have a bit of latent attraction to my extremely handsome employee, with whom I have worked closely for many years, please raise your hand."
Nobody did. Milo covered his mouth in mock surprise.

"Why," Milo said flatly, "would you look at that. I'm shocked. What is the world coming to, when even gangsters are bastions of liberality and tolerance. Stanley, slap him, please."
Stanley obeyed. He gave Novak a stinging, back-handed rebuke right across the face, hard enough to bruise. Novak cried out in pain, and growled angrily, but his vengeful glare was met only with the black-eyed dullness of Stanley's sociopathic calm.
"Novak, you obese troll," Milo hissed, running out of patience, "you are aware, aren't you, that we're currently in the sixth year of the twenty-first century? I -" He shook his head. "This is no longer amusing. One of you shoot him in the head, please."
"Wait!" Novak shouted, as Argyle drew his pistol, "I - I am a telepath! I..." In a panic, he pushed his power further than it could normally get him, and managed to hook onto something. "You're doing this for him! You're doing this to impress Oleander! He... he got angry with you about something, and you want to show him that you can be decisive! I'm telling the truth: please don't kill me!"

Oh, Milo wanted to be careless. He wanted to ignore Novak's prattling and let his men shoot him, but that - that was too close to the bone. That was too specific. "Wait," he ordered. "I, ah, apologise for wavering, gentlemen. A moment's patience." He took three short strides, and squatted down right in front of where Novak was sitting. "Alright. I have to admit that was rather good. I suppose I might as well be prudent." He squinted. "Alright, then, Novak. I'm going to think of a number. You -"
"Seven billion, three-hundred thousand and five!" It had never been this easy. Novak's power was responding to its master's desperation, and feeding him what he needed to survive, at least for a few more minutes.
"Again."
"Nine-hundred and six point three, three, three."
"Again."
"Six million, four-hundred and eighty-six thousand, one-hundred and one."
"Again."
"Uh..." Novak stammered. "...three."

Milo stood up. Partly this was because the backs of his thighs were hurting, but partly because he wanted to turn his face away. "He's telling the truth. At least about being telepathic." That didn't mean that he'd been telling the truth about James, but it meant he could be. "Why?" Milo asked. "Why is he trying to kill me?"
"He's..." Novak chose his words carefully. "He thinks you are a coward. Thinks you hold him back. He was... " He tried to think, to be as specific as possible. "You... you weren't moving forward with - uh - with something that he wanted. He wanted you out of - out of the way. He wanted to be in charge."
"He...?"

It was too plausible. James getting angry with him. James suddenly taking a day off. Even the weird way James had behaved in the alley the previous day, waving his gun about for no good reason. Alone. In an alley where no-one would have seen them.
"Was he... did he try to...?" Milo felt his chest tighten. He felt his breathing get faster, and faster. He began to wheeze, and had to take a dose from his inhaler. Suddenly all the walls were closing in, and he was about to be crushed by them.

It was too neat. It fit too well. It was too perfect a reflection of Milo's own fears. That he - cowardly, weedy little weasel that he was - would prove intolerable for James, who was so strong, so beautiful and so charismatic. Milo had always, always felt like an un-man, like an ageing child rather than an adult, and that was why he hewed so closely to James, why he loved him and hated him, and why he'd always been sure that James despised him. Little boys wanted to grow up to be like James, not like Milo. Milo was only strong because he surrounded himself with brutes like Argyle. Hell, even Argyle was preferable to him in the eyes of the world. Women would fuck Argyle. Even Milo's wife didn't fuck him. And because Milo was so bitter, so angry with himself for not being a man's man, and so resentful of a world which he perceived as judging him - even though he agreed with that judgement - he really did think that things were as simple as that, that because he was slight, weak and asthmatic he would always be looked down upon. Of course, then, James would want to kill him. He was right to.

But that didn't mean Milo was going to lie down and take it.
"We are going to investigate Novak's claims. James has taken the day off sick, so go to his home, Argyle. See if he really is convalescing. If not, find him."
"Just find him, boss?"
"Bring him to me. Willingly if possible. Unwillingly if necessary." He turned on his heel, began marching towards the door. "Sort this out quickly, Stanley."
"And Novak, sir?" Stanley asked
"What?" Upset and confused, Milo's purpose had become obscured. "Oh, yes, right." He thought for a moment. "When's your birthday, Stanley?"
"The twenty-ninth of - "
"No."
"... sir?"
"It's today, Stanley." He put the knife he'd been carrying into Stanley's hand. "Your birthday is today." He turned on Novak, grabbed his enemy's flabby cheeks between his fingers. "You know what you are, Novak? Hmm? You fucking hog, you engorged sewer-rat, you know what you are?"
"Wh...but I - I told you the truth! You have to let me -"
"Do you know what you are?!" Milo bellowed in his face. When Novak didn't answer, Milo made it clear for him. "The cake, Novak. You... are the cake." He let go of Novak's cheeks, directed his attention to Stanley. "Happy birthday."

Milo moved aside, and Novak found himself looking right into Stanley's glassy, black eyes. Only they weren't so glassy anymore. They had come alive, and Novak saw through them into Stanley's soul. Novak was so terrified that he didn't even realise Patáky's heavies weren't restraining him anymore. He saw what Stanley planned to do to him, and saw how much Stanley would enjoy it. The blubbering, crying and begging did not start in earnest until after Novak's third stab wound.

Those who offer their pity and mercy even to the lowliest of humanity's dregs, be comforted. Stanley only had the opportunity to torture Novak for ten minutes before he died of severe internal haemorrhaging.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

James Oleander had had Piper over his shoulder before. He'd taken his time with her curvy, trim little figure, fondling her legs, her behind, stroking and squeezing his velveteen damsel to his heart's delight. And this time would have been particularly delightful: he had both hands securely wrapped around Piper's yielding, pale thighs. She was wriggling and bucking against him, pressing her curves into him with every slinky little wriggle. All he needed to take this woman, to have her so utterly in his control, were his two strong hands, his belt wrapped around her ankles and his tie wrapped around her arms. It should have been yet another ego-trip.

But then, James had larger concerns than fondling young women and making himself feel big. There was a dead body in front of him - as it happened, the silent thug who'd accompanied Argyle in restraining Novak when Milo was interrogating him. He'd been discovered. He'd been found out. They knew. Milo knew. So, in a controlled panic, James had picked up Piper and legged it with all possible haste to the storage building where Valerie and Saskia still lay captive. There was, in all fairness to James, a genuine part of him which didn't want to leave the three to the mercies of Milo's men. Most of his motivation was abstractly pragmatic, though: he had a sense that, somehow, the three could be used against him.

He had been fortunate, in a way. Rhodey, the man he'd killed, knew James. He'd worked under him at the Falmouth Grand. He liked James, a lot, and he'd wanted to bring him in alive. So he'd asked to go in alone, to talk James down. James hadn't given him the chance, but it meant that the others were not actually on the pier when they heard the gunfire. When James rounded the corner to the storage building's front, he saw that the cars he'd heard were a little way off. His car was a wreck, but Hawk's wasn't. It, and potential salvation, stood but a few metres away. All thought for the good of his captives fled him, and he began to move towards it.
"Keys."

Still bearing the writhing, screaming Piper on his shoulder, he sprinted full tilt into the storage building. He found Saskia working vainly to untie Valerie's wrists, found Valerie shaking her head, stamping her feet in an apparent effort to restore herself to full wakefulness. They saw him return, saw him bearing Piper on his shoulder, and Saskia let out a long, muffled moan of despair, seeing her lover recaptured - though when she'd heard gunfire she'd feared worse than that: at least now she knew Piper was alive. James, however, was not interested in her emotions one way or the other. In fact, he roughly dumped Piper on her, pushing Saskia and Valerie apart like bowling pins.
"Let us go!" Piper cried out. "Let us go, you son of a bitch! They're not here for us, are they? They're here for you! So just untie us and let us out of here, and you - you can go back to shooting each other!"
"Shut up!" James barked, drawing his pistol, and waving it in her direction. "I'm quickly losing incentive to keep you alive, so cram it before you push me over the edge!"
Glaring tearfully, Piper complied.
"Fine. Fine." James ran over to Hawk's bloodied body, not even bothering to check if Hawk was alive. Instead he just rifled through his pockets, until he'd dug his car keys out. He'd found them on the inside pocket of his jacket and so, when he withdrew his hand, it was covered in Hawk's blood. He didn't much care about that either.

Valerie watched him. She perceived the mad urgency in his limbs, his face, his tone of voice. She, however, was not petty. Seeing him anxious and scared did not satisfy her. She would not be satisfied until he was beaten and bloody. But even she knew that vengeance was firmly secondary to survival. Something had happened: she'd heard gunfire, and screaming, and the sound of approaching cars, and given that James was making no effort to use the girls as hostages, Valerie could deduce that the new arrivals wouldn't care tuppence halfpenny about their lives.
"His boss found out," Valerie realised. "They're here to kill him." A happy thought, but Valerie wasn't stupid. Whatever happened here, they would be witnesses. If James was killed, there was a fair chance they would be too. "Mmrgghh...mmphhhh!!" Valerie struggled against her polypropene bonds, and heard them creak and groan as she put strain on them: her strength was beginning to return, but far too slowly. She was, perhaps, a little stronger now than a woman of her build ought to have been, but James had tied her up too thoroughly. "Come on...come the hell on!" She pulled on her bonds with every muscle in her body. She squeezed and stretched and pushed, but it wasn't happening. She couldn't escape with her own strength, and might not be able to do so for hours.
James didn't spare Valerie so much as a glance. With Hawk's keys in hand, he sprinted out of the storage building, towards Hawk's car. It was about twenty metres away from where he'd stashed his captives, a distance he could cover quickly. But it was not to be. As soon as he'd emerged from within the small structure, he saw just how fucked he was.

Two cars screeched in, swerving violently through the entrance from the narrow road that led into the pier. Another car had entered a couple of minutes before: it was parked on the other side of the pier, behind the storage building, and its occupants were already out of their vehicle, running towards James. He could hear them shouting: they'd just found Rhodey's body, and he could hear the rattle of weaponry in their hands. They began to round the corner, and James saw them emerge in his peripheral vision. At the same time, one of the two cars coming through the main path had already stopped, and the doors were beginning to open. James perceived all of this in about a second and a half, and realised that there was absolutely no way he was going to reach that vehicle before getting shot. He could only go back.

He fired three times, twice towards the men approaching on his left, and once towards the two cars that were pulling up. It was blind fire, designed just to make his enemies duck for cover, but he actually did hit one of them, splitting his left kneecap almost clean in two. It caused sufficient distraction for James' purposes, and he turned on his heel, running back inside the storage building. It offered spurious prospects of safety, though: the entrance to the building was high and wide enough to let a car in. Panicking, James looked up and saw that there was a way to close it: a metal shutter, like one you'd have in front of a shop that was closing for the day. But it was too high up to pull down. He looked around for something to hook onto it with, but it had been long years since anyone had moored their boat at the pier, and all the tools had long since been looted.

"On your left."
James wheeled around in hopeless confusion. The voice was Piper's, the sound distinctive by its slightly husky soprano quality, but he couldn't imagine why she was talking to him.
"On the left! There's controls for the shutters!" she shouted, looking like she wanted to slap him.
Again, James wheeled around, and saw that she was right. There was a big, yellow button on a wall that was parallel to the entrance, and he slammed his hand down on it, praying that the electrics were still connected to the grid. He was relieved to see that they were, but aghast when the steel shutters actually started to lower: the process was agonisingly slow. By now Milo's thugs had seen him definitively, and were moving towards him. All of them were armed, but it was only one of them who actually returned fire against James, missing wildly with four shots, but grazing him slightly with a fifth.

"Aaahh!" James cried out, ducking behind cover - though it would not be cover for much longer if the shutter didn't close soon.
"I got him!" the gunman cried out triumphantly, assuming himself to have dealt a mortal blow. But he felt a hard, stinging strike on the back of his head, and a thick, meaty hand grabbed his wrist, pointing the gun down.
"No," Argyle said. "Mr. Patáky wants James alive. He said so."
"Are you nuts?!" A third man yelled. "He's shooting at us! He killed Rhodey! Mr. Patáky's not stupid: he's not gonna blame us for fighting back, is he?"
"That building," Argyle said, "doesn't have any other exits." He watched the steel shutter close, and lock shut. It didn't alarm or even distress him. "He's trapped himself. He's got no way out. We can get him to come quietly."

But James had no intention of coming, quietly or otherwise. The instant the door was shut, he hurled himself towards the back of the room, going prone, pointing his gun towards the entrance. He was breathing hard and fast, and had to force himself to calm down to avoid hyperventilating. He examined the shutters, becoming pretty sure they couldn't be opened from the outside - but he couldn't tell how thick they were. Could a bullet be fired through them? Even if it couldn't, what could he do now? The building had no other exits. He was surrounded, penned in like an animal. Less the man he'd shot in the knee there were eight of them, all armed.
"Come out, James!" one of them shouted. "Come out right the fuck now or we will start shooting!"
"Go!" Piper hissed. "Just go! Let them take you, you son of a bitch, and maybe they'll leave us alone!"
James had been about to tell her to shut up again, but a chorus of bullets did it for him. All four of them pressed themselves as low to the ground as possible: some bullets did bounce off the steel grating, but some didn't, and they heard the deadly buzzing of lead whipping through the air, burying itself in the concrete of the back wall. Piper screamed. James screamed. He fired back, and screamed again, this time in rage. There were five of them, less the one he'd shot in the knee. There was no way, absolutely no way that he could fight them all off. He was only human.
"Only human..."

The blanket of drowsiness that hung over Valerie was now laced with barbed wire: it was agony to Valerie that she could not get free, could not fight. These men, this stupid little gangsters with their guns and their drugs and their internal strife, the idea that they could cause her concern was an abomination. It was not the order of things. But James had upset that order with one pill and a few yards of rope. He had shamed her, unmasked her, toyed with her. And now he was going to get her killed.

She saw James scrabbling towards her, trying to stay low. He reached her feet, and put his hand on her boot. He looked up at her with wild, frightened eyes, and said something to her. He had to say it twice, because the first time Valerie's brain just hadn't processed it.
"Help me."
She just stared at him.
"Help me, Valerie! These men won't just kill me. They'll torture me. They'll rip me limb from limb! And - and they'll do it to your friends too!" His eyes were bulging. He pulled at his collar, almost gasping for breath. "Listen just - just help me, alright? Help me, Valerie!"
She stared at him in cold, silent disgust.
"You want me to beg? I'll beg. I'm begging, I'm begging you to help me! I'm on my hands and knees! I don't care what happens afterwards: publish your photos, haul me off to jail, just - I don't want to die!"
More cold silence.
"Look, I'll untie you, okay?" he said, voice shaking. "You're a superhuman. You're a superhero. You have to help!"

Taking out a pocket knife, James began slashing at the cords, hacking at them. Soon, Valerie's upper body was loose, the uncomfortable pressure on her breasts released. With a speed borne of desperation, James sawed at the ropes binding Valerie's curvaceous thighs, her calves, her ankles, snapping them with a sharp, satisfying twang. For Valerie, it was a tremendously pleasant sensation, a relief similar to a deep, refreshing yawn feeling her limbs released. She pulled the tape away from her face, growling irritably as she untangled it from her hair. She was ungagged. Unbound. Free!
"Give me your knife," she said, with enough authority that he did it without thinking, so desperate for Valerie to help him that he didn't realise Valerie had pressed the point against his throat until blood started trickling down the blade.

"You... idiot!" Valerie growled. "You stupid... worthless... piece of dog-shit..." She pressed the point of the blade deeper, making James jerk and cry out in pain. "If you... wanted me to help you... if you wanted me to save you, then you shouldn't have drugged me!" She grabbed James' wrist, the same one she'd nearly broken before, and squeezed as hard as she could. Again he cried out, and the pistol fell from his hand as his whole arm throbbed with pain.
"What are you doing?!" he spluttered.
"I'm hurting you as much as I can," Valerie said. "As much as I can. If you hadn't dosed me... I'd have been able to squeeze through your wrist like butter. I'm pretty durable. I probably wouldn't get hurt by handguns like yours. But my guess? If two of your friends tried ganging up on me, tried wrestling me down, with me... in this state they'd probably succeed. If I fight all of those guys right now, I'll lose. So I can't save you, James. You made sure of that yourself!" She pushed James in the chest, and he fell back onto the floor, dumbstruck.

Valerie picked up James' gun, took out the magazine, emptied the round in the chamber - she had Oliver Blane to thank for her knowledge of how - and stuffed the gun itself into one of her pockets. Keeping low, she moved to where Piper and Saskia were lying, still bound, trembling in fear and trying hard to avoid getting shot.
"It's alright, Saskia," Valerie said as she started cutting the slender writer's bonds. "You're - you're okay, yeah?" Valerie didn't sound convinced, and Saskia didn't feel okay. She had been bound and gagged for the past eleven hours. Her limbs ached, and shook. When Valerie pulled a piece of tape away, it left a red mark on her skin. Though Valerie was relatively careful, given how quick she was trying to be, every piece of tape torn off stung Saskia terribly, and she winced each time. By the time Valerie took the tape from her mouth, Saskia had tears in her eyes.
"Thank you," she stammered, feeling as if she should say something more.
"Yeah, don't mention it," Valerie mumbled.

Valerie moved to free Piper, but before she could there was another hail of gunfire, more bellowed instructions for James to surrender himself. "Saskia, get behind me. I can... protect you, at least a little," Valerie said, moving so that she was between Piper and the entrance of the storage building.
"You're... you're bulletproof?" It still seemed unreal that Valerie was what she was.
"Yes. Now do what I tell you." Valerie did not shout, but raised her voice with a tone of complete, unquestionable authority. Indeed, Saskia obeyed her instantly. "Untie...uh..." Valerie couldn't remember Piper's name. "Untie your girlfriend."

Piper had already been through the pain and irritation of ripping the duct tape off herself. For her, being unbound was almost purely relieving. But there was still a pressing, urgent impatience as Saskia unwound James' tie from her soft arms, undid the belt from her slim ankles. At once she had finished, the two lovers seized each other in an embrace of desperate affection. Saskia buried her fingers in Piper's dark, curly hair, held her as tightly as she could.
"I'm sorry," Piper said, almost inaudibly. "I'm sorry I didn't get away. We could still - we could still all die because I -"
"Oh for God's sake, woman," Saskia said with a vibrato of hysterical laughter in her voice. "You crushed a man with a car! You were brave - you were so brave. For the rest of my life, I'm not going to forget that."
"That might only be a few minutes, Saskia." She wasn't trying to be glib. She genuinely blamed herself. She'd told James Valerie's name. She'd been used to make Saskia co-operate with James' plan to capture Valerie. She'd had an opportunity to escape, and she'd blown it.
"Well then I'll be overwhelmed with pride in you for a few minutes, you twat," Saskia said, stroking Piper's head and kissing her cheeks.

A few metres away, James watched the couple embracing. Cowering in a corner, James could no longer doublethink himself into anymore macho bravado. The legs of his strutting, bullish self-satisfaction had been taken out from under him completely, and now he had no barrier against the guilt he felt. He would die, and so would they, and his putting them through such torment would have been absolutely for nothing. Some part of him still blamed them for his situation, for their failure to be obedient little women, but it was a part that was being overpowered by his observation of their behaviour with each other. It was heartwarmingly sweet, and he felt like a dirtbag. For a tiny instant James felt like giving himself up to save these women, to be the macho-man from the other direction, so to speak. But the instinct was quashed almost immediately. Enough of fantasising. Enough of super-villainy and arrogant posturing. He didn't want to die, and the only remote hope that he might live was to cower, and pray.

Valerie, too, watched Piper and Saskia. It was odd seeing what a different world they lived in from her: for Valerie doing what Piper had done, crushing Hawk with the front of a car, would be - well not normal, exactly, but very much the sort of thing that superheroes did. If she'd been working with Freebird or Cecily, and one of them had pulled off something like that, Valerie would have given them a nod, said 'good job' and left it at that. But for Piper, it was probably the bravest thing she'd do in her entire life. There was a disconnect, Valerie realised, between herself and other people that ran deeper than the sheer fact of her superhumanity. Her powers, her experiences had made her intractably different. It was not a difference that brought her pride: if it had, she would not have felt such distress when James revealed her identity. But it was there. She felt within her power in its purest sense: the ability to do things. It did not matter that she was weakened. If James had stripped away her powers forever it would not have changed this aspect of her. So she stood.

"What are you doing?" Saskia asked in a hissed whisper.
"I'm... going to try to buy you some time," Valerie said. She panted. Just getting up had been tiring. She felt light-headed, shaky. The vast majority of her power was still inaccessible to her: she was strong enough to stand, but she was not strong.
"I thought you said you weren't powerful enough yet," James said, worried that she was going to open the steel shutters and get them killed.
"I'm not," Valerie said. "Not to beat them. Not to win. But maybe I can distract them long enough for you to get away. Not you," she said, with sudden venom, to Oleander. "I mean the women you abducted." To them, she said: "I'm not a tactical genius or anything. I can't tell you exactly what I'm going to do. Just keep your eyes open and look for an opening. I... I guess I'll try to keep their attention more towards the pier?" She shrugged. "Just try your best, I guess. I'll do mine."
"But you're still bulletproof, right?" Piper asked. "You said that, didn't you? Then how can they hurt you?"
Valerie winced. She hadn't processed until then that Piper - who was truly a complete stranger - also knew about her powers. "I'm bullet resistant," she said. "If they've got anything meaner than a handgun, they could injure me. Even if they can't, the state I'm in now, they could wrestle me down, smother me to death. Or, I don't know, chain me up, throw me off the pier." She shot a glance at James. "Sorry, that didn't give you a hard-on, did it?"
He scowled back - but remained silent.

Valerie began making her way forward. There was another hail of bullets, and she could see that some of Milo's men were getting closer, emboldened by the lack of return fire. One of the bullets pierced right through the metal shutters, and hit Valerie directly in the stomach. It bounced off - it wouldn't even leave a bruise, but Valora certainly felt it. She wondered, too, how much force had been taken off the bullet by its piercing the steel shutter. Still she marched on. Despite the drugs, despite her weakness, there was a kind of grandeur in her. There was mortal peril before her, and instead of running, she was approaching it. They all watched her, watched her nearly stumble as another bullet hit her. But she didn't stop.

Suddenly, Saskia leapt to her feet.
"Saskia, what the fuck?!" Piper almost screamed.
Saskia ignored her. She ran over to Valerie, her beautiful, coltishly long legs closing the distance in four graceful strides. She grabbed Valerie by the shoulder, and turned her around.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Valerie shouted, as Saskia began to pull her back towards where they'd been taking cover.
"If I'm strong enough to pull you," Saskia said, "then going out there won't buy us any time at all! You'll just get killed!"
"What the hell other choice do we have?" Valerie hissed.
"You're not just a powerful superhuman, Valerie," Saskia said. "You're that most wonderfully impossible of things: you're a real life superhero."
"So?"
"So a superhero doesn't just fight with their powers, do they?"
"...I kinda think we do," Valerie said, beginning to lose her patience.
"No, Valerie," Saskia said. "You fight with presence, with charisma. And Valerie, darling, you are oozing presence. When those men see you, they are going to be stunned. So you need to take advantage of that. Give them a real show." Before Valerie could reply, Saskia turned on James, the tall, slender young woman towering over him as he lay prone on the ground. "And you, James? You're going to help."
"Help? How?"
"Easy," Saskia said. "It'll be a familiar role for you, by now." She gave him a pretty perfect imitation of his cruel, smug smile. "You're going to play the damsel in distress."
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When the shutter began to open, Milo's men dropped back immediately. James was wily - who knew what trick he might pull? And even if his wits had deserted him, he might just decide to go down swinging. He was a damned good shot, and since they didn't know that James hitting their comrade in the knee had been luck, they were in real fear of his marksmanship. Nevertheless, there were a hell of a lot of them. Their advantage was fairly decisive.
"James!" Argyle shouted. "Enough of this crap! Just come out with your hands up, and we don't have to make this anymore painful than it needs to be!"
"James, you motherfucker, get out here before we have to come inside and shoot your balls off!" exhorted a somewhat less reserved member of Milo's organisation.
There was silence. Argyle, who had taken de facto command, signalled to the others to go closer. Before they could follow it, though, James finally obeyed their command.

They might have just shot him on the spot, as he stumbled clumsily out of the storage building. They probably would have done, whether he had a gun in his hand or not. But, when James came out, it wasn't just that he was unarmed. His hands were bound with duct tape.
"Urrghh!" he grunted, as an unseen hand shoved him to the ground.
"What the fuck is going on?" Argyle muttered, lowering his weapon. But he swiftly raised it again. "Who's there? Show yourself?"

She strutted out. It was not the strut of a fashion model, though she was surely lovely enough and poised enough to be one. It was, rather, the strut of a cowboy, a real fastest-gun-in-the-West type. Confident, controlled, and deadly. She had her arms akimbo, as if daring anyone to challenge her. Her gorgeous, fine-boned face was framed by a red domino mask - taken back from James - through which her crystal blue eyes looked upon them in proud contempt. Her pillowy, pink lips were turned down in a slight scowl. The rest of her outfit was not quite so unusual: a short, leather skirt and knee-high black boots which showed off a pair of smooth, curvaceous thighs. A long leather jacket - pinched from Hawk - gave the effect of a long cape. Beautiful and confident, she cut a dramatic, imposing figure. There was really only one conclusion to reach.
"If you know the name 'Valora', start running," she said. "If you don't know it, get it memorised and then start running."
"Oh no," Argyle said. "Oh no, no, no." It was what they all dreaded. Worse than rival gangs, worse than police, worse than anything. "A superhero? In Maine?"

"You!" Valora shouted. "You need to back off right now! This man is my prisoner!" She projected her voice as much as she could, trying to sound as grandiloquent as possible without taking the piss.
"Bitch, you need to step the fuck off!" one of them retorted, shaming the entire profession of hired goons in a single stroke.
"That's not gonna happen," Valora replied. "I'm arresting him. If the rest of you have a problem with that, then he's not gonna be the only one I'm dragging to a cell this afternoon. So back off!" She tried to disguise as much as possible how heavily she was breathing. Every second brought her just a little more strength, but she was still woozy and tired. If they saw that, if they saw weakness, it would mean death.
Argyle was not a stupid person, not essentially. He had never heard the name Valora, but it was obvious what it was intended to signify. Who knew what she was? Who knew what she could do? Perhaps she could shoot microwaves out of her eyes, or rip all the iron out of her enemies' blood. Perhaps all she could do was make pretty sparks come out of her hands. Or perhaps she was making it up completely. There was no way, in advance, for Argyle to know. So he simply tried to calculate whether he was more afraid of her, or more afraid of his boss.
"Shoot her."

If Valerie had to guess, the feeling of the bullets hitting her was like being stung by hornets. Each one was a sharp, acidic sting, a hot, searing jolt of pain wherever they struck. The bullet that had hit her through the shutter of the storage building must have lost a lot of force in piercing the steel barrier, because that one hadn't hurt Valerie nearly as much. They hit her in the chest, the neck, the face; they struck her legs, ripping her boots in a couple of places, tearing Swiss-cheese holes into Hawk's bloodied jacket. It was extremely painful, and Valerie began to worry that she was being done serious injury. But no: the barrier of her fair skin held. Her muscles, sapped of power but not of fortitude, bore up. Even her soft tissues could take it, and after something like the twenty-fifth bullet impact, Valerie began to wonder if she'd not underestimated just how durable she was. Even so, it was hard to stand her ground. It was not enough that they saw they could not damage her. She had to appear invincible. She could not fall back so much as a step.

But her resolve was more than sufficient. By the time the fourth man had unloaded his magazine completely, the rate of fire began to slow. It was becoming abundantly clear that they were wasting bullets. The last shot rang out, and the bullet struck Valerie harmlessly on the forehead. She hardly even felt that one: those parts of her body where her bone was closest to skin were near to indestructible. She stood, fists clenched, eyes narrowed, chest rising and falling deeply. Her enemies could not know that her fists were clenched so she could dig her nails into her palm to keep herself alert. They could not know her eyes were narrowed so they would not see them flutter from time to time. They could not know she was breathing so hard because much of her body was begging her to fall asleep, and she was trying to get as much oxygen to her system as possible. They just saw a superhero who'd taken a salvo of bullets directly to her beautiful body, and hadn't even taken one step back. Saskia, hiding with Piper as far back into the corner of the storage building as possible, saw it too. She watched Valora with breathless awe.
"She's invincible," one of them whimpered.
"She's not just some weekender," another said, addressing Argyle. "She's not some cape-and-tights wannabe, Argyle! She's a proper superhero! She's gonna slaughter us if we try to fight her!"
Some of them were already running. They used their injured comrade and Rhodey's dead body - shoved unlovingly in their trunk - as an excuse, jumped in their car, and screeched out of the pier, leaving Argyle with only four other men. But even they were close to panic. Seeing Valora laugh off their attack brought straight into their minds the terror of the reality of the superhuman; the difference between learning about lightning and being struck by it. They were terrified - but Argyle was curious.

What had James been doing at this pier? How had this Valora person found him? What was she after him for? She'd obviously come out from inside the storage building, so what had she been doing in there when James had been shooting Rhodey, and being chased inside by Argyle and his men? If Valora were so invincible, why was she bothering with threats? Why not just run out and clobber the lot of them? It just didn't fit. So Argyle began to approach her.
"Are you serious?" Valora shouted. "You're coming closer? Instead of running away like your buddies, you're coming closer to me?"
"Way I figure," Argyle said, "most superhumans aren't that powerful. I know the real big boys like Lady Corvid and the Generator can do crazy shit, but most aren't that strong. You're tough. Amazingly tough. But that doesn't mean you're strong." He holstered his gun, rolled up his sleeves. "I used to wrestle in high school. If you're as strong as you are tough, I'm dead. But if you're only as strong as you look..."

He'd called her bluff. He had a canniness that she'd hoped dearly Milo's men lacked. If she got into close-quarters with this man, this well-built, strong looking once-wrestler, she didn't know that she could win in her present state. Even if she could, it would become clear quite quickly that she was not invincible, and others would rush to help Argyle. She tried to think about how she could bluff further, but everything in her head sounded desperately lame, sounded exactly like she was trying to avoid confrontation. She needed a show of force, real force.

So she concentrated. She felt the weakness in her system, the drug still doing its damnedest to drag her down. But beneath it, fighting from a heavily barred cage, she felt her strength. She felt the core of it, a warm fire in her that spread into her limbs like molten honey at her merest gesture. It came to her so easily that she needed to make an effort not to summon it - at least most of the time. She called on it now, but that surge did not come - it only trickled in a rivulet to her. It was nowhere near enough to sustain her body in a fight. But perhaps she did not need a whole fight.
"You," she said, raising her right foot, "are one...dumb...son of a bitch." She focused everything she had, every drop of energy, every quantum of adrenaline into the muscles of her hip and thigh. "You want strong? I'll show you strong!" She stamped down. She did not get what she'd expected.

She'd expected to crack the concrete immediately beneath her feet. She'd expected to knock Argyle off his feet. She had not expected that her heel would shatter all the concrete within a five metre radius of her, spraying dust and fragments of stone in a much wider radius than that. Argyle was thrown off his feet completely, before landing hard on his back, but not just him: only one of his remaining men was left standing, and only because he happened to be holding onto the door of their vehicle.
"Oh, wow, looks like I am 'that powerful'!" Valora shouted, more in anger than in superiority. "So why don't you run while you can, pond-scum?!"

She didn't need to tell them twice. Within a minute, the men had barrelled into Argyle's vehicle like clowns, the car tearing away before Argyle himself had even climbed in. Shaken and terrified, the men retreated, wondering what the hell they were going to say to Milo. Argyle was sure 'Mr. Patáky' would have his head. But after her display, none of them were more afraid of their twitching, nervous employer than they were of the strategic-grade superhuman.

So when the dust settled, literally, only two were left. Valerie, panting, exhausted, but victorious. And, of course, James, now grey all over with powdered concrete, his ribs bruised from the shockwave of Valerie's stomp, and cut all over from the pieces of it that had shot out. He struggled to his feet, in disbelief that he had survived. She had saved him. She turned around, mighty and beautiful, and looked him right in the eye, a true vision of superhuman beauty. She began to walk towards him. There was a kind of ease to her stride that he had not seen before. Her back was straight. Her eyes were alert. She did not look like the drug was affecting her at all.
"Oh," James said. "Shit."

Of course, the drug was still affecting her. If it hadn't been, her first punch would have taken his head off. As it was, the first blow just put a hairline fracture in James' cheekbone. The second knocked out one of his teeth. The third cleanly broke two of his ribs. She didn't punch him a fourth time: she simply grabbed him by the neck and threw him his full height into the air. He crashed back down groaning in pain, and found Valerie's hand on his chest, holding him tight against the ground.
"When you captured me," Valerie said, "when I realised what you'd done, I said to myself that I would kill you."
"Please... stop!" James gasped. That gasp turned into a wheeze when Valerie began to push down with the flat of her palm.
"You know you deserve it. You're not a psycho, right? You can feel at least a little guilt? So you know you deserve it."
"Yes, yes I deserve it! Please don't kill me!"

But his pleas were pointless: Valerie had no intention of killing him. When he was a dangerous mastermind who might have to be killed if he was going to be brought to any justice at all, then she'd considered it. But now? Now he was pathetic. He'd fallen at her feet begging for his life, after he'd kidnapped and molested her. He was scum, through and through: a selfish, avaricious, lascivious wretch. James, indeed, with all his masculine loveliness, was the very quintessence of a polished turd. But - not one for whom Valerie would stain her conscience. She took her hand off him just as Saskia and Piper emerged from hiding.

"Is it over?" Saskia asked.
"Yeah," Valerie replied. She took off Hawk's coat. It stank and she was happy to shed it. She took off her mask, too, stuffing it into her pocket.
"Oh, thank God," Piper said, falling against Saskia's shoulder, shaking from the after-affects of massive amounts of adrenaline. "What do we do now?"
"I call the cops. I have a, uh, a guy. It'll take a while but they'll send someone to pick this toe-rag up."
"Don't!" James pleaded. "Don't give me to the cops, please!"
Saskia laughed bitterly. "Are you out of your mind? Do you have any idea of the situation you're in? We've won. You are beaten. You no longer have the slightest say in what happens to you!" To complement her point, Saskia took advantage of James' restraints, and gave him a good, solid kick in the ribs. His broken ribs.

He howled in agony. For Piper this was too much, now that he was beaten and helpless, and Valerie's feelings towards him had a tired neutrality to his emotional wellbeing, but Saskia needed a little physical revenge of her own.
"Listen, listen!" James gasped. "If you send me to jail, if you send me to the cops, I'm as good as dead. Milo has people everywhere! Well, maybe not everywhere, but definitely in the prison system! I'll be dead within a week!"
"Oh no. How terrible." Valerie almost laughed. "You'll be a ward of the state, James. Their problem. Not ours."
"No, no, but - but -" He thought. He thought hard, and fast, trying to find something he could use, something he could manipulate. He could not touch her physically. He could not appeal to her mercy. But he realised there was something he could appeal to: her shame.

"I'll talk," he said. "Not to the cops about Milo. To the press about you." He did not smile exactly, but sort of snarled. "I'll tell everyone you're Valora. I'll live long enough to say that, at least."
"You are the weakest person I've ever met," Valerie said, quite calmly.
James felt like ice had touched his heart from her cool, bitterly conclusive judgement. But he couldn't falter. "And you're the strongest person I've ever met," James shot back, "so blackmail won't be enough, will it? You won't take that deal, because it's a loss, and you need to win today. All I've offered so far is stick: so here's the carrot." He took a deep breath, coughed painfully. "First thing, you'll never see me again. Publish whatever you want about me, I won't stop you. I'll be out of the country in a day. But more than that: I'll give you Milo's organisation. Names. Places where they deal. Places where they buy weapons. People they wholesale from. When the shipments come in. Hell, I'd give you Milo too, but he almost never touches anything illegal himself these day."
"I don't understand," Valerie said. "What do I get out of this?"
"Collars." James let the word hang in the air. He watched the gears in Valerie's mind tick. He saw her get it. "Yeah, that's right," he said. "I've seen the shitty state you live in. You need money. You need it bad. Well with what I've given you, you could have a quota of fifteen collars a week and meet it easily."
"Fifteen...?" That was full-time work. That was full-time money. It would mean a very serious increase in her income. "No way. I'm not gonna let you go because I could get money out of it! You're bribing me!"
"Ah, but don't you see, Valerie," James said, "you can't not take it! It's perfect. You don't have to feel guilty about giving into blackmail, because I've given something up, and you've still beaten me. You don't have to feel guilty about taking the money from your extra collars, because if you don't, I'll reveal your identity and your career as a superhero is, at the very least, a hell of a lot more difficult. There's no side of this where you're doing anything wrong. You're trapped - into having what you want!"
"I -" Valerie panted. She wanted just to thwart him, to spit in his face, but she imagined the shame of exposure, the jeers, the effect it would have on her father. She imagined, too the difference to her life that this extra money would make. Nobody brought in fifteen collars a week. She might start to get recognised. And that meant endorsement deals. Television appearances. She didn't care about the fame - she just cared about not living in vile, bitter poverty anymore. She couldn't decide - and then she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Valerie," Saskia said, with earnest softness. "Take the deal. Wring every scrap of information out of him. What does it matter to you if he's behind bars or not? He's finished. He'll have to run far, and fast, and we'll never see him again."
"And you'll be undermining a major criminal organisation," James interjected. "Be utilitarian about this. I'm small fry compared to Milo Patáky!"
"Yeah, I'll bet," Piper said. James had not meant to say something quite so true, and it hit him hard. But he wanted to survive. He would debase himself a thousand times over for that.
"I can't... I can't!" Valerie cried out. "What he did to you - to us... I can't let him - I...!"
"You've already beaten him," Saskia said. "He's lost. This is his surrender." She barely knew Valerie, really. But she had good instincts. She hooked onto something within Valerie, and said: "It isn't always wrong to have what you want."

The words bounced between the four corners of Valerie's skull. They resonated. They shook her with a power that even Saskia had had no way of knowing they would have. She bent down, clutched James by the throat, and lifted him to his feet.
"You leave nothing out," she said. "You make me a god damned expert in everything he does."
"Yes," he said. "Yes, of course."


It took about an hour and a half for him to explain everything. By the time he was done, Valerie was indeed an expert, and had copious written notes - thanks to Saskia's ability to write freehand - on everything about Milo Patáky's organisation. She didn't just know where his men did their business - she practically had formulae that could determine where they would do business a year, two years, three years into the future. She even knew about things that Milo didn't know about, that he'd trusted James to organise and run himself. Once Valerie was convinced of the completeness of James' information, she grudgingly sent him on his way.
"I really hope I don't regret this," she said, watching his loping, limping run as he vanished into the distance. Shaking her head, she turned back to Piper and Saskia. "What is it?"
The two were looking at her with expressions of great significance. "Thank you," Saskia said. "Thank you so much, Valerie. If - if you hadn't done what you'd done... if you hadn't been who you are... we'd be dead."
"If I hadn't let him trick me, I would have rescued you five hours ago," Valerie said. "But - yeah, I mean you're welcome, of course. And for what it's worth, I think you were both incredibly brave. I..." She scratched the back of her neck. "I don't know if I'd be able to be that brave if I was, y'know, normal."

"Listen to me," Piper said, approaching Valerie with an expression of extreme urgency. "There's two things. First - I'm never gonna tell a fucking soul about you being Valora. Neither of us are. Maybe if you torture us with hot pokers or something, but anything short of that, no-one will ever know. You will never have to worry about us. I swear to God," she said, in a tone that indicated this actually meant something to her, "I will never tell a soul."
"Yeah, okay, Piper," Valerie replied, remembering her name just in time. "I believe you."
"Second," Piper said. "You have to let us make it up to you, or pay you back or... or something."
"It doesn't really work like that," Valerie said. "But if it means that much to you, I don't know..."
"Maybe we can buy you dinner? Or you can come over and we'll cook. I'll cook. Saskia's not as good as I am."
Saskia considered protesting, but ultimately had to bow to the truth.
"Uh, yeah, sure," Valerie said. "Look, could you give me a sec? Technically I work for the state so, there are rules. I have to call all this shit in or they dock my pay."

She stepped away, made the call, leaving Saskia and Piper by themselves.
"You're attracted to her," Piper said, "aren't you?"
"Well, of course I am," Saskia replied. "Aren't you?"
"Wh - it's not the same! You work with her!"
"Well, we're going to have her over, right? So we can find out with relative ease which of us she wants to pork."
Piper huffed. What had started in relative jest had stabbed her in a sore spot.
"Look," Saskia said. She turned to face Piper directly, but one hand on Piper's cheek. "She's lovely, but she's not you. She doesn't wear velvet on weekdays with that naughty shade of lipstick. She doesn't spank me with paprika. She doesn't run over slave-traders with SUVs, even though she doesn't have any powers, even though she's terrified and feels weak, and small, and helpless. I fucking love you, Piper."

They kissed, and when they parted Piper looped her arms around Saskia's neck. "How much therapy d'you think we're going to need after this?" she said.
"You joke," Saskia replied, "but it might not be a bad idea. Seriously."
"Mm." Piper's eyes narrowed. "You know I don't think she's going to get any therapy, Saskia."
"Oh, she doesn't need it," Saskia laughed. "Even if she did, she hardly seems the type."
"That's my point, isn't it?" Piper shook her head. She watched Valerie talk, saw the obvious frustration on her face, though she couldn't hear her. "There's something a bit sad about her. Don't you think?"
"Yes," Saskia replied. "I tend to agree."
"I think she might need a bit of looking after, Sas."
"Yes. Yeah," Saskia said, contemplating her mysterious new friend. "Don't worry. I'll take care of her."
Valerie turned directly to them. Not exactly sure where she was, she was trying to describe the police to her contact, Sergeant Prezbylwski, but this happened to mean that she looked right at the couple she'd rescued. They smiled back at her, and Valerie got a feeling that, later, she would dismiss. She would dismiss it as sheer relief after a haggard emotional ordeal. She would dismiss it as childish, and desperate, and simply an indication that she needed more friends. But at the time, in that moment, when she saw Piper's admiration and gratitude, and Saskia's sly, but warm friendliness, for the first time since she'd returned to her home state, it felt like...home.

[DrDominator9]

Terrific chapter, DB! A tiny bit camp and a whole lot of thoughtful insight into a superheroine's mindset on an intriguing number of aspects of what it means to be a "super." Enjoyed it thoroughly.

[Damselbinder]

Terrific chapter, DB! A tiny bit camp and a whole lot of thoughtful insight into a superheroine's mindset on an intriguing number of aspects of what it means to be a "super." Enjoyed it thoroughly.

Thank you! Damn, you caught up quick!

[Damselbinder]

For days now, a devil had been plaguing them. It didn't matter where they went, how careful they were, when they met - the devil would always be there. No-one wanted to stand guard anymore, whether it was a drug buy, the purchase of weapons, smuggled luxuries - nothing. The devil would always be there. Their low-level dealers were under constant harassment as well, from an enemy who would strike like a bomb, vanish like a storm, and who for all intents and purposes seemed completely unstoppable.

Security had to be escalated. Stanley, who had following James Oleander's disappearance essentially become the man's replacement, was called in to supervise almost everything. He had been given permission to spend a great deal more money on not only hiring pros to protect Milo's interests, but on arming them heavily. Handguns had proven ineffective against the devil: it was logical that heavier ordinance should be tried. Getting that ordinance had been difficult. The first time they'd tried to buy some AR-15s, they'd been struck - lost two men, lost all the wares. But the second time had been unproblematic. Stanley had noticed that, since their rapid expansion into Novak's territory, their operations in Novak's territory had been much, much less likely to be attacked. He'd therefore done the buy in Biddeford, and it had all gone well.

This buy, however, was in Portland, right in the heart of Milo's core territory, exactly the sort of place where the demon would be most likely to ambush them. But that had been Stanley's intention. He'd made it much more widely known than usual what was happening: he wanted the devil to come. He wanted to tear the devil apart with his lovely new weaponry. It had been set up quite militarily: there were gunmen overlooking the blind alley where the buy was to take place. There were men about half a mile away in cars, fully armed, waiting to race to the scene the moment the devil arrived. They would surround her. They would overwhelm her. They would cut her down.

Stanley paced, running a hand over his shaved head. He liked pacing. He liked it especially when he had a gun in his hand: he felt like he was marching. It was not so much that he really wanted to be a soldier again, or anything like that. He simply had a bit of military fetishism, as Milo had described it, and he was perfectly well-aware how dishonest it was. Indeed, plenty of the new men he'd hired had served extensively in the armed forces, and found Stanley's cartoonish imitation of soldiery rather irritating. But at least he wasn't stupid: they generally agreed with his tactics.

So it was much to the surprise of all present when they heard a cry from above them, the sound of panic-fire, and then another cry - or rather, a scream.
"She's here!" Stanley shouted, his eyes lighting up with excitement. He raised his gun towards the rooftops overlooking them, but didn't shoot yet: he wouldn't panic. He could be patient. The others not so much, and they fired short bursts of heavy firepower into the shadows above them, to no avail. In fact, all they did was blind themselves with the bright muzzle-flashes on the unlit street. They didn't see the devil descend, dropping five storeys without even blinking, landing hard against the pavement. They saw her before she effortlessly dropped one of Stanley's new gunmen, but not in time to do anything about it. She just sort of touched him vaguely in the stomach, and he crumpled over like he'd been snapped in two at the waist.

The second gunman fired, but the devil - in a flash of blue and gold - was astonishingly fast. If she and the bullet that had been fired at her had been racing in a straight line - well, the bullet would have won quite comfortably, but by a lot less than one would have thought. Still, she closed the distance easily, plucked the weapon out of his hand, and battered him over the head with it. He went down like he'd been turned off with a switch. This left only Stanley, and he backed away as the devil turned on him, leading her further and further down the alley. Just as Stanley ran out of room he heard the sound of cars pulling up, saw that behind the devil his reinforcements had arrived. Five men, each armed with heavy weapons.

"You cannot get away!" Stanley shouted. "You're outflanked. You're outgunned. And it doesn't matter if you're strong: under sustained, heavy firepower, even you'll be cut down."
The devil stepped out of the shadow, into the low light cast by a streetlamp twelve metres away. She, who had quickly garnered a reputation as an unstoppable, terrifying demon in the ranks of Milo's subordinates, did not look anything like what Stanley had expected. She'd even been described perfectly accurately by his men before, but he hadn't quite got his head round it. He'd imagined a figure in black, faceless and terrifying - but she could not have been more different. She wore bright, primary colours. She wore a leotard, zipped down to expose her bust. She had long, wavy blonde hair. She who haunted their nights seemed so much a creature of daylight. Stanley looked at the voluptuous superhero whom he had caught in an ambush, and his imagination began turning in all sorts of hideous directions. He didn't know if knives could cut her fair skin, if needles would pierce her lovely flesh, but he wanted to find out. Stanley's black eyes began to come alive again, as his mind delighted him with new forms of foulness he could inflict on this 'Valora'.

Unfortunately for Stanley, he had been so preoccupied with his torturous fantasising that he didn't notice Valora scoop out like ice cream a chunk of brickwork from a nearby wall, and then bean him in the head with it.
"Oh, boy," he said, quite lucidly, when the brick struck him in the forehead before, with a kind of 'nyeeuuhhhhhhh?' sound, Stanley dropped like a stone.
"Creep," Valora muttered.

This was the cue for the men behind her to open fire. But Valora leapt above them, disappearing from view into the night's gloom. The gunmen were taken completely off guard, and began shooting in wildly different directions. She'd leapt, but she'd not landed: where the hell had she gone? They began to wonder if she could fly - not such a silly surmise, really - but really she'd just leapt back up to a rooftop overlooking the alley. She leapt down again, unseen by all - but quite by chance one of them saw her descend, as her blonde hair glinted in the low light. They raised their rifle and fired a burst of automatic fire. For an instant he saw blood, and thought he'd slain his enemy. But it was a scratch merely: a testament to the power of his weapon that it had been able to do even that much against Valora, but it was barely a pinprick. Before he had time to realise his failure, he was looking up at the sky, feeling like he'd just been hit by a wrecking ball.

The scratch ended up being the most serious injury that Valora received during the entire battle. She was too fast. Too tough. Too strong, and too confident in the use of her power for them to touch her. She defeated the other four gunmen with three punches - she managed to punch one into one of his allies - and claimed another overwhelming victory. It had taken her less than three minutes.
"This is more god damned like it," Valerie thought. These were real victories. Her enemies weren't superhumans, but they were well-armed, well-organised, serious criminals. Her victories were easy, but meaningful. And the numbers - she had met her quota for arrests in a single night. Not only did this mean she'd get a degree of bonus pay, but she'd already dispatched an application to be given a full-time contract, which would mean getting twelve collars a week instead of eight. But with the numbers of arrests she was making, it would be easy to meet that quota, and to keep her job at the Sun at the same time. Not to mention, she was doing serious damage to Milo Pataky's business, to the point where it had even occurred to her that eventually she would break it entirely. Hopefully by then she would have got enough recognition that it wouldn't matter - and in the meantime, the money would really, really help.

And she had James Oleander to thank for it. The conniving, manipulative bastard really had helped her. She was not grateful, exactly, but it certainly amused her that his attempt at silencing and eliminating her had resulted in such a boon to Valerie's life. She hoped she would never see him again, but she did wonder what had happened to him...
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

For as much as James wanted to see it as a victory, he had to own that it was a defeat. In the end he hadn't been able to escure his position: he'd had to do what he might easily have done the moment he'd seen himself being photographed and just flee for his life. Being in Maine, that had meant going North of the border, to Canada. He'd ended up, as it happened, in London, Ontario. It wasn't too bad a place: nicer than Portland, in its way, but James hated being there.

What was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to earn money? He was, essentially, an illegal immigrant, so that would make his life far more difficult than it might have otherwise been. He had some connections in America's neighbour-to-the-North, but he'd made them all through Milo. Now that he was on the run from his employer, it would hardly be prudent for him to get pally with Milo's business contacts.

In the end, he determined that his best chances were to resuscitate his old career as a pharmacologist, if only for the time being. This would mean a new identity, false degree paperwork, falsified identity documents. It would mean a serious amount of planning to establish a cover story. It would mean paranoia and looking over his shoulder for a long time. Not the rest of his life, though: he planned to return to America after, say, a year, once the heat had died down. Milo would have stopped looking for him by then, surely, and though it was possible the police were looking for him at least in connection to his kidnapping Valerie and the other two, he didn't know for a fact that they were. Certainly they'd give up quickly enough.

But for now, he needed to be able to live in Ontario without going destitute. He'd been staying in a cheap motel, and he hated it. He'd mocked Valerie for her poverty, and now he could almost hear the proud beauty laughing back at him, seeing the state he'd been reduced to after the disaster that had been his little supervillain's adventure. He thought about Valerie often. He thought about the smell of her, the feel of her body in his hands, in his arms. He thought about what he'd do if he ever managed to get his hands on her again. In some corner of his mind, he resolved that he would do just that.

But that would have to wait. He'd managed to reconnect with someone who, though known to Milo, would have no stake in ratting James out to him, who would be able to supply him with the documents he needed. The man's name was Flint, and he was a person of excellent utility. Milo had used him in the past to forge documents for cheap foreign labour at his casinos, and though he had since moved away from such practices to keep his clean businesses as clean as possible, it hadn't been because of the lack of quality of Flint's work. The only problem James had with him was that, when James had suggested meeting somewhere scuzzy and out of the way for them to meet, Flint had unknowingly suggested the very motel that James was staying at.

Naturally that wouldn't do, so James made his way to the other side of town, to a motel that was almost as scuzzy as the one he'd chosen. The arrangement had been that he would book a room, a room to which Flint had already obtained a cloned key, such that he could arrive an hour earlier, and no-one would see the two men arrive, or leave, together. So James got the key from an ornery manager, and made his way to the upper level of the complex. He wanted to look inside the room, but the curtains were drawn. This made sense: the room was meant to be unoccupied if James was going to rent it, so Flint wouldn't want anyone to see he was in there.

James entered, having to wrestle a bit with the key, and went inside. It irritated him immediately: it was much nicer than where he was staying, and it cost pretty much the same amount. But the unfairness of his living situation was not his only concern: Flint wasn't there.
"Hello?" James said, cautiously. "Flint?" No answer. James frowned: Flint was supposed to have been there for an hour already. Had he lost his patience and left? No, he was one of those people who made a really big deal out of his professionalism: he'd never have bugged out for no good reason. He moved further in: the place was dingy in content, but immaculate in presentation, and undisturbed. It seemed as if Flint not only wasn't there, but had never been there. He moved towards the bathroom, and discovered a fairly simple answer to the mystery of Flint's absence: he was sitting on the toilet.

Or, rather, his bloodied, severed head was sitting on the toilet.

James did not scream, exactly, but he shouted in shock and alarm. He did not see until it was much too late the two masked men in black who were waiting on either side of the doorframe. The first made the mistake of trying to grapple with James, who like a cobra snapped into vicious action, and hit his attacker with devastating force in three different places. But as they crumpled away, doubling in pain the second, more practical man, simply shot James in the leg.
This time James did scream, howling in pain as two bullets tore through his right thigh. Collapsing in pain, he was unable to defend himself from the first man, who took the opportunity to revenge himself by grabbing James' head, and driving his knee directly into it. James head jerked back from the impact, putting a dangerous amount of pressure on the vertebrae of his neck, and slamming back against a nearby wall. Dazed, James was defenceless as the two men dragged him to his feet, pulled him back into the bedroom, and threw him into a cheap, wooden chair. Still reeling, James didn't even realise that they had handcuffed him to it until he tried to move his arm, and found that he could not. He might have asked what was going on. He might have told them to go and fuck themselves. He might even have made threats with respect to his own underworld connections. But all such protests became pointless the moment Milo Patáky walked in.

His nose was red: evidently the fresh Canadian climate hadn't made his cold any better. He was wrapped in a thick, woollen coat, with a bulky, flap-eared hat on that made him look like a Soviet commissar. And yet, for the comical figure he cut, James was still more afraid of him than he had ever been in his life.
"I... ah..." He couldn't think of anything. He couldn't think of anything to say that might even vaguely curb Milo's wrath. He wanted to plead innocence, to deny that he had actually been going to do anything against Milo, that he'd just defended himself when Milo's men had come for him. But he couldn't. Not against what he saw in Milo's eyes. Not against a hatred that pure.

He could have just told his men to kill James. He didn't have to do it himself. He didn't want to do it himself, in a way, but it sent out the right sort of messages to his underlings. Intimate betrayals required intimate resolutions.
"I misjudged you," Milo said, clenching and unclenching his fists. "I compared you to Cassius, didn't I?"
"Wh...?"
"But that was a poor comparison, now that, ah... now that I think about it." Milo put his hands behind his back. He didn't seem to know what to do with them. "Cassius was a blowhard and a fool, who was too much of a coward to take charge of Caesar's assassination himself. No, no, no, he's not a good fit for you at all. You're Casca. Do you know who Casca was, James?"
"No. But, look, boss, I - AARRGGHHH!!"
The man who had shot him had poured salt into his wound, literally. Milo winced, seeing James writhe in tremendous pain, but he could not quite bring himself to look away.

"Casca," he continued, "was the man who was first to put the knife in Caesar's back. A real go-getter, eh? Just like you." He walked closer. "With just one difference." He knelt down, right in front of James. "Casca didn't miss."
Milo's men grabbed James by the shoulders and arms, holding him rigidly in his seat. James had a horrible feeling he knew what was coming next. "Boss," he stammered, "please."
"There is a reason," Milo said, his voice trembling, "that men like Stanley do so well in this business. You know: sociopaths. It makes it easier to do things like this. It makes it easier not to get attached." He drew a blade. It was long, sharp, and serrated. It was designed not just to kill, but to agonise.
"Boss," James whimpered. "Milo, please."
"'Please' what?" Milo replied. He brought his knife up towards James' neck, then his face, delicately stroking James' handsome face with the flat of the blade. "'Please' what, James?"
James, as one might imagine, had been about to beg Milo for his life. But he was not stupid. He knew he was past that point. "Please... please make it quick."
"Quick?" Milo hissed. "Fine, James. But not painless." With a breathy grunt, he gripped the handle of his knife with both hands, and stabbed James in the chest.

The first blow had been shallow. Blood spurted from the wound, but did not pour. Milo was not confident with a knife, and much within him did not want to kill James, and had that been James' only wound he wouldn't have died if he'd kept still long enough to scab. But seeing the blood, hearing James cry out in horror at seeing it come out - well, it gave Milo an unexpected jolt of pleasure. A manic grin flashed on his face, and he elected not to stab, but to slash. He left shallow gouges on James' chest, on his face and neck, but each one was deeper and deeper. Blood sprayed over him, over his underlings, and James groaned as he watched Milo tear him apart. Milo turned the blade around to the serrated side, and the wounds he inflicted on James got not only deeper now, but uglier.

"You were supposed to protect me!" Milo bellowed, swinging the blade wildly, slashing at James' throat. "You were supposed to keep me safe! But then you betray me to my rivals! You conspire against me! You kill my men! You draw the attention of the authorities! You get a superhero on my trail, grinding my business to a complete halt! Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do now?! How am I going to deal with all this without you?!" He wrapped his hands around the handle of the knife, lifted it above his head. James, his chest and face torn to ribbons, screamed in pure animal terror.
"You wanted me to be decisive, James?!" Milo screeched. "Well, have it your way, then!!" Bellowing, Milo plunged the knife through the top of James' head, killing him instantly.

Milo left the knife in its gristly sheath. He staggered backwards, covered in blood, almost blind with how much had got into his eyes. He fell back against the nearest wall, panting, gasping. He might have just slumped down right there, but he felt a swell of nausea within him, and ran into the bathroom, emptying the contents of his stomach into the toilet. His men had to wait for a good five minutes as he retched over the bowl, groaning and shaking. A further five minutes as he sat on the floor of the bathroom in paralysed shock, his ears ringing, his eyes burning, his whole body shaking like a petal. But, eventually, he collected himself. He stood. He made some brief effort to wash his hands and face, muttering something to himself about all the perfumes of Arabia.

When he walked back into the bedroom he was relatively composed. He looked at James' corpse, still able to see a degree of the beauty that he had rent and destroyed. His face was unrecognisable, would have been even if you'd wiped off the blood. His chest was a grisly mesh of torn flesh, blood, and twisted, ruined clothing. There were two bullet holes in his thigh. There were knife wounds all over his body. There was, in fact, a knife buried in his skull.
"I don't suppose," Milo said, with a kind of manic calm, "that we could pass this off as suicide?"
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Things had not been going swimmingly for Lance Van der Boek since the departure of Valerie Orville. Despite Sinistrus' arrest, and what had gone out publicly as a major PR victory for the military - with the vaguest intimations that the Bombshells might have had something to do with her capture - had in private circles made people look very askance at Van der Boek's methods. Many young men had died in the operation, and when it had been discovered that Van der Boek and Colonel Doyle had deliberately tried to keep Valora out of the battle just so the marines could have the victory to themselves, even when their heavy losses were becoming clear - well, it had not made either of them popular.

In fact, Doyle had been transferred out of the program immediately, silenced with a promotion and a relatively cushy posting, and replaced by another Colonel named Laura Greenberg, a square and efficient woman who, while not exactly personable, was a summer's breeze compared to the foul-tempered Doyle. It was on her insistence that, with the view that no-one was taking the Bombshells remotely seriously and that the young women were just not up to the task, that they be given much, much better training.

And so, between the time of Valerie's leaving Maine, and her first meeting with Saskia Dubois, the Bombshells were put quite seriously through their paces. Debra ('Maiden America') was given training in a variety of martial arts to take advantage of her limitless stamina; Maria ('Freebird') had made her energy projection significantly more powerful, and more precise, now being able to use her powers both as cutting beams and wide-beam bursts to knock out large numbers of assailants; Cecily (er... 'Cecily') became able to increase the output of her sheer telekinetic strength by about seventy percent. Even reduced to just three, steadily they began to accrue a respectable tally of victories.

They had rescued a police SWAT team from a pair of pyrokinetic twins, whom Cecily had defeated by surreptitiously encasing in a thin telekinetic barrier, so that they swooned on their own fumes. They had performed a genuinely joint operation with Colonel Greenberg's contingent of marines to defeat a group of mercenaries who had been acting as agents provocateurs for an unknown foreign power, with Freebird personally duelling and defeating their superhuman leader, a woman with the ability to form motile golems out of concrete. They had even provided assistance to a young superhero named Giulio Mauritane, who could turn himself into a nigh-invulnerable metal sphere, in his arrest of a new threat named Black Bison.

Indeed, so successful had the Bombshells been, that Lance had argued that they were in danger of completely thwarting the very purpose for which they'd been assembled.
"Let's not beat around the bush," he said to General Molyneux, the same man he'd managed to persuade to start the program in the first place. "The whole reason we started the Bombshells was to use them to make you look good. If they're just another team of superhumans, then what's the point?"
"Listen to me, Van der Boek," Molyneux said, trying to make his dislike as obvious as possible, "I know public relations are important. I know we've taken a beating over the last few years, but I honestly don't give a shit about that if our methods to get back in the public's good books are going to get people killed. Get our people killed."
"General, if you're talking about the Sinistrus incident, I had no control over tactical aspects of -"
"If I didn't already know that," Molyneux said, "I'd be consulting with our lawyers over whether we could find some way to court martial you." He shook his head.

Molyneux leaned back in his chair. "You hit onto something effective here. Whether it was for PR's sake or not, you've given us a pretty effective way to circumvent the Madrid Treaty. We've essentially got superhumans as operational assets now. So hats off."
"Well, good, but -"
"We're considering expanding the program. Finding other ways of getting around the Madrid Treaty."
Lance saw something on Molyneux's desk: a set of blueprints. He couldn't really tell what they were of, but as best he could see it looked like a suit of armour. Molyneux noticed he'd noticed. "Just something we're considering," he explained.
"None of my business, right?" Lance said, with a sleazy smile.
"You're more right than you know, Lance," Molyneux said. "You're done."
"Wh...?" Lance gripped the desk with both hands. "I'm fired?"
"And a long time coming it was," Molyneux said. "I should have done this weeks ago. You didn't just get my men killed. Thanks to you, we lost the best asset in your whole team."
"General, Orville was going to go public. She was going to take credit for arresting Sinistrus!"
"She did arrest Sinistrus."
"And if the public hadn't known that, would you have got that little bump in this year's federal budget? You wouldn't even be able to look the rest of the world in the eye if I hadn't blackballed her!"
"And if you hadn't mishandled her so badly, we'd have had Orville working for us and the budget increase!" Molyneux barked. He was in danger of completely losing his temper. "Look," he said, "out of respect for the fact that this was your idea, you've got a week to tender your resignation. You'll get a golden handshake. You'll be publicly praised for your work with us. I'll even make sure your firm gets some juicy government contracts. So don't worry, Lance," he said, "I'm sure a greasy son of a bitch like you'll land on his feet. Now, uh..." He looked at Lance like he was being stupid. "Get out."

Lance was silenced. He stumbled out of Molyneux's office like he'd just been shot in the stomach. He genuinely didn't understand what he'd done wrong: he, as far as he could see, had done exactly what he was supposed to have done. The Sinistrus incident wasn't his fault: he really believed that. Besides, even if he had been the one at fault, it wouldn't have been the first time a military had sacrificed a few of its own for a publicity coup. He felt wronged, bitterly, bitterly wronged. They were going to take his idea and, what, make a franchise out of it? Without him at the helm? Without him getting any credit? The nerve! The unrepentant nerve! He could have strangled Molyneux - not just that he wanted to, he could have: he was ex-military, young and strong, whereas despite Molyneux's commission, he was old and fat. He was beyond enraged.

So it was commendable in the extreme when, not two hours later, he marched into the Bombshells' headquarters with a winning smile on his face, proceeding street to the lounge where the three were waiting for him.
"Afternoon, girls," he said.
"Good afternoon Lance," Cecily replied. The elegant redhead had a special way of making herself sound polite to everyone else, but communicating absolute coldness to the one to whom she spoke. She had never forgiven him for the circumstances of Valerie's departure.
"Uh, hi," he mumbled. "So! We've got a humdinger for you today, huh?"
"Humdinger because it's gonna be easy," Debra asked, "or humdinger 'cause it's gonna be hard?"
"As easy as Monica Lewinsky," Lance said, winking. He laughed. The others didn't. "Uh, well, yeah. So it's a small-timer. Just a drug-bust... but we figured you guys could do it without escort this time."
"Seriously?" Maria was surprised. They hadn't had a solo mission since Valerie had been part of their contingent.
"Oh yeah. We can't stagnate, Maria."
"No," Maria replied quickly, "of course we can't."

Maria crossed and uncrossed her toned, chocolate-brown legs, trepidatious and excited all at once. Unknown to all but herself, Maria's experience the day of Sinistrus' arrest had lit a gentle but unquenchable fire within her. She would not be satisfied with the meagre strength she'd once possessed. She would never forget the consequences of weakness, and would never again permit it within herself. She had waited for an opportunity like this for a long time: for while the Bombshells had had some victories, it was perfectly clear that no-one took them remotely seriously.

Debra too was excited, though in a much more simplistic way. The curvy young maiden had begun to get a taste for a life of excitement, and relished any mission which was, if you like, low-stakes enough that she had a moral right to enjoy herself in its execution. Only Cecily's feelings were mostly negative. In her case it was not fear, but suspicion. She knew that Lance had lost a bit of status with his military co-ordinators, and given that she knew full well that he'd arranged for the three of them - and their other alumna, Lupus - to be captured in their first mission. She feared he might be about to pull something similar again. But she elected to go along with it all until she had positive evidence that something was amiss.
"Where?" Cecily asked.
"Near San-Fran," Lance replied. "A little outside our, ah, usual operational perimeter."
"And why aren't SFPD handling it, then?" Cecily pressed.
"Same reason as always. One of the scumbags is a superhuman, and that's our area."
"Do we have a specific location?" Maria interjected.
Lance nodded, then smiled sheepishly. "It's a, uh, well..."


It was, of course, an abandoned warehouse. Or at least not in use: there were seasons to these things. But it was big, and empty, and grey, and it was a pretty good place to meet if you didn't want anyone to watch you.
"What's it look like?" Debra said to Cecily over her two-way radio. Cecily had been scouting for a fair amount of time - a very fair amount of time, actually, using her powers to float around the warehouse. "Is it like what Lance said?"
Cecily had to admit that it was. Wary of a trap or ambush, she'd been looking for anything, anything at all that might be out of place: cameras watching them, or hidden contingents of men waiting to spring upon and capture them - but she saw nothing. Just the four men inside. Only one of them had a gun.

So the fair, dignified redhead landed next to Debra, the hem of her short, green-and gold dress and the sash around her waist fluttering slightly in the upswell made by her powers. "It seems entirely what Lance said it would be," she said, with a gentle precision.
"Awesome," Debra said, stretching like an athlete in her red-white-and-blue leotard. She placed a small, blue, domino mask over her eyes, excited and energetic. "C'mon, let's kick some tush!"
"Not yet," Maria ordered. "We don't know which of them is the superhuman." She frowned. "Cecily, I have an idea."

The poor fellows within hadn't the slightest idea what was coming. They were not the smallest of small-time, but they weren't big. Two of them had managed to get some money together to buy a respectable sized cocaine package, while the other two were from the wholesaler providing it. Both were rather paranoid that the other side were undercover cops, and so there'd been a bit of tension about checking each other for wires and so on. But they were all honestly criminal, so now they were arguing about price. One side insisted on the agreed amount, the other side insisted that the cocaine wasn't as pure as they'd agreed, and demanded a reduction. So they didn't notice when, immediately above their heads, a section of the ceiling began to glow red. They were right into the middle of an angry shouting match when, finally, the piece of ceiling had melted to a sufficient extent that it would have fallen right on them - but it didn't, plucked away just in time by Cecily's precise and delicate application of her powers. She applied them again when Freebird jumped through the hole, slowing her leader's descent so that it would not hurt her.

"What the -?" Finally, they noticed her, just as she landed, about three metres away from them. They gaped. She was very, very attractive: slim and athletic, with a gymnastic solidity woven into the feminine shape of her legs, her arms, her flat, taut stomach. She wore a short, lycra red dress shot through with futuristic blue highlights, which hugged her trim figure with amorous tightness, save for the pleated hem. Her face was covered with a mask that covered her eyes, cheekbones and forehead, with her hair flowing out behind her in a chestnut ponytail. Her eyes themselves were covered with a material out of which she could see perfectly, but which looked white from the other side.

"I -" one of them began to say, but Freebird didn't give them much of a chance. She raised her right hand, opened her palm, and a cone of red light poured out of it, enveloping all four men. All of them were thrown back, and knocked instantly unconscious. One of them was, indeed, a superhuman - in later years he'd go by the name 'Big-Shot' - but it hadn't made a difference to his chances.
"Oh," Maria said, a little deflated. "Well, that wasn't so hard."

Elegantly, Cecily floated down through the same hole Maria had used, having brought her leader up there in the first place with her powers. "Oh, Maria," she said, with a vibrato of delight in her tone, "I had no idea you could do that."
"I've done it in training," she said, "but I've never had the chance to use it in the field." She shook her head. "I - I can't believe it worked!" She laughed, happily, and Cecily touched her softly on the shoulder.
"You've become very strong, Maria," Cecily said. "I was worried that..."
"What, Cecily?" She took Cecily's hand off her shoulder - but didn't let it go.
"I was worried that something bad would happen today." Cecily took a deep, sharp, anxious breath. "There's something I need to tell you."
"Er - oh?" Maria said, self-consciously letting go of Cecily's hand. "What is it?"
"It's about us. All of us. It's about why Valerie had to leave - and it's about Lance." She looked nervous, which Maria had never seen before. "Debra ought to hear this too."
"Uh, alright," Maria said, narrowing her eyes. She touched the device attached to the outside of her ear. "Debra, we've beaten them. You don't need to cover the exit. Could you come inside, actually?"
No answer.
"Debra? Hello?" Maria frowned, puzzled. "Try yours?"
Cecily did so. There was still no answer. Grumbling about unreliable tech, Maria turned to the entrance where Debra had been standing guard, and just shouted at her to come in. She was certainly close enough to hear. And, indeed, Debra started moving towards them. It was simply that she did not do so under her own power.

It was like living blackness. It was hard to make out details of its shape, so absolutely dark was the figure that approached them. It was in a kind of bodysuit, or thin armour - it was hard to tell which. Its face was covered, too, in what looked like a simple motorcycle helmet. They were also holding Debra over their shoulder: she was unconscious, her petite, busty frame dangling limp over the top of her black-clad captor.
"What the -?!" Maria gasped. "H-hey! Put her down!"
"I knew it!" Cecily hissed. "I knew he was planning something like this!" Anticipating Maria's confused reaction, Cecily said: "It's to do with what I was about to tell you, and I will tell you, but -"
"But we've got to stop him first. Right." She turned her attention on their new enemy. "Put her down, now, or I will attack!" Memories of calloused hands and drug-soaked sacks flooded back into her mind. She would not allow that to happen again - not to her, and not to the others, either.
The figure stopped. They cocked their head to the side and, in a voice that was clearly being electronically modulated, they said, simply: "Fine." They dropped Debra, letting her fall onto her pretty knees, before slumping to one side. And then they charged.

It was not superhuman speed, exactly. Those with specifically enhanced speed tended to be much faster than this obsidian menace. But it was not human, either: rather, it was the speed of a charging bull. It was a speed borne of strength.
"You asked for it!" Maria did not aim simply to stun this time: she raised her power to a level high enough to do serious harm. Two beams lanced out, and struck her enemy dead in the chest - and it didn't even slow them down. Maria dialled it up, seeing that her opponent was obviously superhuman, with enough force to wound. Then to maim. Then to kill. Then as much as she had - and finally her enemy did start to slow down - but they didn't stop. They pushed unrelentingly against Freebird's power, stamping forward in a slow motion stampede.
Cecily now joined the efforts, trying to bring their enemy to their knees, putting as much force as she could on the back of their neck, trying to force them down, but it didn't work. They continued surging forward, pushing through the high-heat onslaught of Freebird's abilities, and shrugging off Cecily's attack completely. Or at least, it seemed that way because, when they were about five metres away, they finally ground to a halt, planting their feet in an apparent effort not to be blown away.
"Did you think it would be so easy?!" Freebird shouted, pushing as much power as she could muster into her attack. "Did you think you could attack us, did you think you could hurt my friend and get away with it? Did you think we were just some helpless little girls you could crush like we were nothing?!"
The figure in black replied, simply: "Yes." And then they leapt.

They jumped so high, and so hard, that they actually turned in mid-air and kicked off the roof, turning again to land with a loud 'THEKK' sound directly behind Cecily and Freebird. They turned around, completely off-guard, just in time to see their enemy's hands reaching for them. Just in time to see the white cloths in each hand. Just in time for Maria to whimper 'no' before the cloths went over their noses and their pretty, soft mouths.

"MMMMMMMPPPPHHHHHHHH!!" came the sensual chorus of moans, as the two heroines began wrestling with their enemy. The grip of their obsidian foe was like cold death, to be caught in it like being held in place by two battleships pressing you from either side. And the smell, the sweet, ether smell poured into their nostrils and their mouths with a furious chemical intensity, a shockwave of dizziness surging into them almost immediately. Oh, they fought. Maria blasted her enemy with furious panic fire, but could not shift them, could not hurt them at all. Cecily could do still less, the grip of her telekinetic power a stiff breeze next to the hurricane of this figure's fatal strength.

The figure in black pushed them, lightly tapping each of their ankles with their feet at the same time, easily enough to take them completely off balance, tripping them and allowing their enemy to get them onto their backs, looming over them, bending down to keep the chemical onslaught going.
"Mmmmphhh!! Mmmhhhh-nnnhhhhmmmphhhhh!!" Maria cried out, realising that her enemy was not just looking to defeat her, or kill her even - but to capture her. She heard her protests echoed by Cecily, and the sound stabbed at Maria's gentle heart, as she felt weakness begin to flow through her, and knew it was taking hold of her friend as well.

Their eyes - Cecily's blue, Maria's an almost yellow brown - were wide with shock and fear, sparkling delightfully as their enemy seized and drugged them - but only at first. As the seconds ticked by, a listlessness began to work its way in, and first Maria's, then Cecily's eyes fluttered.
"Down you go," their umbral enemy crowed, "down... down... down..."
"No...no, no..." Maria thought. "I can't... can't let her... get taken again..." She raised her right hand, and called on every quantum of power she had. "I have to...have to..." She focused everything she had. A burning red glow surrounded her hand. She willed it to release, and it did - by fading, sputtering and dying. "Mmmmphhh...." she mewed, as her arm dropped to her side, and a glint of tears welled in her eyes. "I tried... Cecily, I tried..."

As their muffled whimpers became softer, gentler, their attacker - their captor - pressed them in closer against each other. Their smooth, bare legs, which writhed and kicked vainly as the two fought, began to rub together, inadvertently stroke each other. Their warm thighs - Cecily's long and slender; Maria's taut and gymnastic - caressed each other with an almost tender intimacy, their svelte limbs becoming slightly entangled as they shifted and shuffled with ever greater weakness.
"Mmmmmmmhhhhhhhhh..." Cecily sighed, feeling Maria's legs against hers, blushing deeply from a sensual humiliation, her beautiful body almost totally overpowered. A soft haziness wrapped itself around her mind, subduing her thought as much as her body. Her head fell to one side, resting against one of her slowly rolling, naked shoulders. She saw Maria, saw the forlorn sorrow on her sweet face, and instinctively reached out for her hand, entwined her fingers with Maria's. Slowly, Maria turned to meet her gaze, and gave a soft mew of emotion, as she realised that Cecily was trying to comfort her, trying even then to tell Maria that it wasn't her fault. If only she could have believed it.

But soon even such simple communication became impossible. The drug stultified and drained them, and after only a minute, they were lying completely flat, helpless and tamed, their bodies sapped of all strength. The two capable, if not mighty, superheroines had once again been reduced to pretty damsels in short skirts, moaning softly, pulsing with weakness as they were brought under.
"Can't... can't fight..." was about as cogent as their thoughts got. "I - I'm too weak..."
"Beat us so easily..."
"Who... are they?"
"Lance... did you...?"
"Lance... save us..."
"So drowsy..."
"So sleepy..."
"Maria..."
"Cecily..."
"I..."
"I..."

That was all they could take. With two fetching sighs they faded, shivered, and fell into deep unconsciousness. Their captor took their gloved hand away, leaving the drugged cloths draped over their mouths and noses. They moved away from the fallen maidens, before grabbing Debra from where they'd dropped her, dragging her across the ground by one foot, Debra's arms falling behind her as if reaching for aid. But her cute, charming face was still and her pretty mouth was silent: she was just as unconscious as her comrades. She was dragged next to Cecily, and then left to lie there.

But as the figure in black took their hand from Debra, something strange happened. They jerked away suddenly, as if stung, moving away from Debra as if the knocked out, busty girl was some kind of threat. They carefully approached her, took her by her leotard and lifted her up to her feet. Her head tilted back, completely limp. Her captor then lifted her up with one arm, raising her right above their head. They held her there for a few moments, then, apparently satisfied, laid her back down in a crumpled heap next to the others. Something had happened, but whatever it was, the figure in black with their terrifying strength seemed satisfied it had not injured them.

So they got to work. They took Cecily first, by the ankles, and knelt down, resting her feet in their lap. Then they produced a thick, dark grey roll of vet-wrap, a kind of self-cohesive tape with the consistency and softness of a bandage. They then began to do precisely what the name of the stuff suggested: wrap.

Round the stuff went, round and round Cecily's ankles, then her silky calves, covering every inch of her fair skin, binding her more and more every second; not only covering her but restraining her, pressing her calves together. Next, Cecily's tender, supple thighs, squeezed together by more and more vet-wrap, which clung easily to her fine skin. Soon the hem of her green dress vanished beneath the tape, then her stomach, and now her arms began to be subsumed as well. Her delicate fingers, her wrists, her slim forearms, were pressed against her sides, and as more and more wrapping was added, 'pressed' turned to 'squeezed' turned almost to 'crushed', as Cecily was wrapped up like a fly.

Her captor paused at Cecily's small, pretty bosom, just long enough to give it a good squeeze, before continuing the process. Cecily's upper arms were overtaken by the soft, strong material, then her damp, silky, naked shoulders. Still more was wound around her, and soon Cecily's slender neck had been covered, then her jaw. Her mouth was already covered by a drugged cloth, and her captor did not remove it. Rather, they just secured it in place with more vet-wrap, ensuring that Cecily would remain a powerless, yielding victim, and not a potential nuisance. Even when Cecily's mouth was covered they kept going, covering her nose, her forehead, even bundling up her hair and covering that too. Only a hole was left for her eyes so that, when she woke, she could see the extent of her helplessness. She was completely mummified, entombed in wrappings from head to toe. She was so tightly tied up that her bondage had a naked quality to it, for one could see every contour of the sweet young lady's slim, graceful body.

Maria was next, and her obsidian foe gave her the same treatment - only applied differently. Maria was lifted by her ankles, dangling in the air, her arms flopping downwards, her hands brushing the floor. Her dress failed her utterly, its skirt falling back to reveal completely Maria's slim, taut legs, her blue panties, and her firm, tight ass. Her captor squeezed it, and her thighs, before beginning to bind her too. Her feet, her legs, her abdomen were covered, bound in vet-wrap, her beautiful skin subsumed in dull, gunmetal grey. For her upper body, her captor had to hold Maria's arms behind her back, as they too were bound, her stomach, chest, and shoulders all wrapped up too. The soft tape was wound around her throat, her chin. Her enemy plucked the cloth, which had fallen off Maria's mouth when she'd been picked up, from the floor, and held it in place while it was secured. Lastly, Maria's mask was ripped off, revealing her pretty, feminine face, before it was covered again. She allowed Maria's eyes, again, to be uncovered, as well as letting her ponytail flow freely, but otherwise she too was entombed.

Debra was last, and the short, curvy girl was the easiest task of all, for she was so light, so yielding, and so very soft. As her thighs were bound, for instance, her captor noted that the tape pressed into them, causing them to bulge slightly when squeezed from below. Liking the effect, her captor made a second layer of tape around the one they'd already made, to preserve it. They couldn't see the effect of course, but they liked knowing it was there. This was true of her stomach, too, and her arms, and her buxom chest most of all. Her captor took their time binding it up, making a criss-cross of vet wrap between Debra's generous bosoms, before covering them too. They heaved and strained against the wrappings, to delectable effect, but in the end she was the same as the others. She, too was unmasked. She too had her neck and head wrapped up, but for her eyes. She too was utterly defeated.

As tightly and totally trussed as her two friends, Debra was allowed to drop between them, the three limp, encased beauties seeming to snuggle fondly with each other as they lay in absolute captivity, three sleepy, dominated damsels, powerlessly and overwhelmingly bound, by an enemy who had outclassed them to such an absurd extent.
"You're mine," that enemy crowed, fondling, stroking, helping themselves to the feeling of the three maidens' bodies, all tight and snugly trussed, limp and soft and captured.

When the four forgotten criminals woke up a few minutes later, all convinced the others had double-crossed them, they wondered if they'd hallucinated that beautiful girl in red. For she was not there. No-one was, but them. The only trace of them that remained was a lingering scent of something sharp, and sweet in the air...
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
One week later...

"It's done." They'd had to take their mask off. The filter over their voice made it completely impossible for them to be understood over the phone. It was a relief to get the damned thing off, anyway. So a woman's face was revealed: pretty, but rather sharp, long, blue hair flowing in a neon ponytail down her back.
"Good work," a voice on the other end of the line said. Their voice, too, was being digitally filtered, though the disguising effect was not quite as effective as they thought it was. "Are they hurt?"
"What am I, a doctor? They're breathing." She poked one of the bundled up young women lying at her feet.
It was Maiden-America, as it happened. Her busty little figure wriggled slightly, though she soon settled back into slumber.
That was good enough for her kidnapper. "Yeah," she said. "They're fine. When do I get paid?"
"Once you've done the rest," her employer replied.
"Fine. I don't know why, and I don't need to know, but you're paying me to do some fucked-up shit, you know that?"
"Stow it. Just get it done."
"Whatever."

Was there any displeasure in her heart, as she mulled over what she'd done? No. Not really. It had been fun. It had been exciting. But now that it was done, there was a kind of... itch. She moved away from them, turned to look out of the nearest window in the building where she'd stashed her hostages. Did they deserve it? Probably not. But then, she wasn't doing this to Cecily and Debra and... er... the other one. She wasn't doing it to three individuals. She was doing it to the Bombshells. Not the people. The idea. They were superheroes, weren't they? They should be used to the idea of standing in for something, being, y'know, symbols. So looking at it like that, they absolutely deserved it. They had wronged her. They had humiliated her. They had thrown her away like rotten meat. Well no-one did that and got away with it.

Not to Lupus.