Enhancegirl 6: A Thief's Allure

[Damselbinder]

"We having any trouble?" asked a tall-ish, dark-ish, young-ish man in a thick coat. He drew his coat closer to himself. It was the beginning of autumn in Seacouver and he, used to eternally warm New Mexico, was not coping well with the drop in temperature.
"Not anymore," one of his cohorts replied. This man was a Seacouver resident, and used to its harsh autumns.
"What do you mean, 'anymore'?" the New Mexican asked. The other laughed.
"Oh, you missed the party?" he said. "Now that's a damn shame." He grinned.

The two were standing in front of a Hosenfluss Industries warehouse. It wasn't vacant, but it was supposed to be. The two men's boss hadn't given them the details, but he'd got wind that Hosenfluss were storing something there off the books, and he had a client that was plenty interested in whatever it was. The rest of the gang was loading the thing up: these two were stuck on guard duty.

"Okay," the New Mexican said, "I'll bite. What party?"
"Oh, man, you're gonna kick yerself for showin' up late." The shorter man lit a cigarette, and whipped it ostentatiously into his mouth. "You know this town's got a real glut of those costumed types, right?"
"Right."
"Well get this: we start loading up, and one of those goils gets the jump on us!"
"No shit!"
"Yes indeed shit." He took a drag, and grinned. "Unfortunately...she had a, uh, rather unfortunate vulnerability, of which we took advantage. We got 'er stashed in back somewhere."
"'Her'? You mean you bastards got to tie up a supergal?"
"Y'er damn right!" He took another drag and laughed.
"Typical luck," the out-of-towner said. He thought for a moment. "I got a question for you - why does everyone I work with in this town sound like they're from fuckin' Brooklyn?"

As the two criminals discussed this most urgent of matters, they did not see a young woman of eighteen, with flaming red hair and sharp, green eyes, descend on the, from where she'd been perched on a nearby lamp post. In truth, she hadn't needed to watch them from so close. She could have read their lips perfectly from a mile away, quite literally.

For this was no ordinary eighteen-year-old. This was Sophie Scott, better known to the city of Seacouver as Enhancegirl.
"Personally," she said, startling the others with her casual tone as much as with her presence, "I think all the thugs here sound like they're from New Jersey."
"Who the fu-" The Seacouverite was interrupted mid curse before he could even reach for his weapon, the superhuman senses of Enhancegirl telling her exactly where to strike in order to bring him down.
"What the fu-" The New Mexican had the sense to reach for his gun as he spoke, but he was no match for Sophie. She struck him once in the stomach and twice in the throat.

Both men went down like sacks of hammers. For someone with her strength - and her slim build was a fair indication of her physical power - she seemed to hit much harder than she should have been able to. That was the benefit of being able to see people's weak spots from tiny tremors, invisible to the eye of a normal person, and changes in posture.

She left the two men groaning on the floor, the hem of her gold mini-dress swishing around her slender hips as she tripped stealthily into the warehouse. Her uncovered legs carried her gracefully within, her silver ankle boots making scarcely a sound. She, like the first thug she'd downed, was used to Seacouver's colder months, even in the skimpy uniform of her superheroine identity.

The rest of the goons were spread unevenly throughout the warehouse. It was dark, but Enhancegirl needed only the scantest amount of light. She could have done pretty well with no light. Every few feet she came across one thug or another, and dispatched them without effort. Sophie had been at the superhero-ing business for a little under a year now, and was more than capable of taking out even the burliest of these criminals.

Indeed, while she certainly wouldn't have been able to beat all of them, Sophie's skills had advanced to the point where she probably would have been able to fight evenly with even the strongest man there without her powers. Despite her lack of formal training, she was becoming quite skilled.

Eventually, Sophie found the heart of the matter. There were nine or ten men, all packing something into a large truck. The boxes they were throwing in were small, but clearly extremely heavy. Even the largest of them was struggling. Using her enhanced vision, Sophie peered inside the boxes, but this didn't yield many answers either. They each contained cubes of a very dense metal. Either it was something with lead-like properties, which concealed from even Sophie's vision what lay within it, or it was solid all the way through. Either way, Sophie was mystified.

"I'm guessing it wouldn't be a great move to let them wander off with 'em, though..." she thought to herself. She was trying to work out the best plan of attack, when she noticed a tenth man standing off to one side. He wasn't helping the others, so either he was their boss, or -

"A bodyguard." He was wearing a mask, and Sophie was about to look through it to see if he had an identity worth concealing. But a faint scent wafted into her nostrils from him, and she recognised it instantly. "Oh, this loser again?"
"Hurry it up!" he growled at the others. The loser in question was Mindblow, one of the members of the Catastrophe Gang, a team of superpowered criminals. When Sophie had last seen him, he and most of the others had been co-opted into being goons for Madam Black, a vile woman who had until recently run a rather profitable kidnapping ring - of which Sophie had almost been a victim.

At any rate, it was now clear that he would have to be dealt with first.
"Hey, who the hell is that?" one of the goons cried out. Enhancegirl had been spotted.
"Nothing else for it," she hissed, as he dropped the box he'd been carrying, and reached for his weapon.

But Sophie was on him too quickly. Before he'd even turned off the safety, she'd booted him hard in the chin, sending him crashing into the side of the truck.
"Oh, shit!" There was general confusion. The goons drew their guns, but most had no idea where to start firing. Mindblow jumped forward, and raised his hand. "Don't fire! You'll set them off!" He ordered.

This was good news for Sophie, but it made her even more confused about what was going on. She struck at one man in the back of the knee with a painfully hard kick, then another in the stomach. A third she knocked outright unconscious, by slamming her palm into his forehead.

"What are the chances?" Mindblow growled. If he could just make eye contact with Sophie, his power would let him knock her unconscious instantly. But he just couldn't get a bead on her. At one point he thought he had, but all he managed to do was knock out one of his own men by mistake.

After a few minutes, Sophie and Mindblow between them had taken out all but two of his goons. The rest fled, bruised or just afraid.
"This job ain't paying enough to take her on!" one of them said. Sophie grinned. Enhancegirl was beginning to become infamous.
"Fine!" Mindblow spat. "Who needs you?!" He turned to Sophie. "I got no beef with you, Enhancegirl. I already had to deal with one superchica tonight - why don't you just back off before I add another notch to my belt?"

Sophie didn't reply. She knew he was trying to get her to look at him. But something bothered her all the same.
"Another superchica? What the hell's he talking about?" She didn't have time to wonder about it. He ran towards her, trying to get her to make eye contact by force. He lunged wildly - obviously strong, but without that much skill. Sophie dodged, and it was awkward trying to avoid looking at your target. Her other senses more than made up for it, though. She could feel the vibrations in the air as he shifted one way or another, and she was able to predict his movements pretty well.

"Argh!" Well enough, in fact, to hit him square in the stomach. Unfortunately, Mindblow was made of sterner stuff than his underlings, and he wasn't winded. But he had the sense to pretend that he was. "Urrgghh..." he groaned. Sophie put her hand on her hip, smiling in sureness of victory.
"Oh, I'm sorry, did I hit you too hard?" Sophie crooned.
"Hehe..." Mindblow laughed. "Not hard ENOUGH!" His head snapped up, and his eyes flashed a brilliant blue.

"Wha-?" Enhancegirl whimpered. "Oh...oh!" she gasped, as her whole body shook. Her pretty knees trembled, and her sparkling eyes began to flutter. "No..." she mewed, as the slender redhead dropped down to her knees.
"Ahahahahaha!" Mindblow cackled. "So much for the great -"

In a way it was lucky for Mindblow that he was interrupted before he finished his sentence, because he'd been about to call her 'Entrancegirl.' So, having avoided the fate of making a fool of himself, he was instead made a fool by Enhancegirl. She had seen his trick coming a mile away, and had simply played along (keeping her eyes closed until after the flash), until she had the opportunity to sock him square on the chin.
"Wow," Enhancegirl said, getting back up. "You guys are morons."

Before she could begin any kind of interrogation, however, her senses detected the arrival of a large number of men. She could smell the metal of their guns, and feel the floor shake with their heavy steps. She had enough time to hide herself, though, and she ducked into a side room.

"Ah, hell." She heard the men's leader say. "Hosenfluss is not going to be happy."
"I get it." Sophie frowned. "Private security...think they could have shown up before I did all the hard work for them?" Watching through the wall, Enhancegirl watched as the security men led off the goons, while others stayed behind to check on the goods. They seemed much more concerned with the boxes than with the criminals.

"It's all here," one of them said.
"Alright..." Their leader thought. "Shit...I guess we need to move this stuff now. Keep loading it up!" he ordered. "We might as well use their truck to do it."

Sophie waited until the security guards had cleared out. She had a feeling that getting involved with them with the very small amount of information she had would be a trifle unwise. So even when she thought they were probably gone, she still used her enhanced vision to scan the entire warehouse. It was only then that something she'd put at the back of her mind came right to the forefront.
"Who the hell...?"

Enhancegirl hopped out of the side room, and ascended a rickety set of metal stairs to a catwalk above the main warehouse floor. There was a small door on that level which was her target. She dashed up to it, and saw that it had been hastily but rather effectively jammed closed from the outside. She pulled aside the metal pipe keeping it shut, and thrust open the door.
"Oh no," Sophie said, a tinge of sympathy entering her voice. "Not you..."

Sophie had entered a small supply room, but it wasn't the supplies which drew her interest. Lying on the floor, right at Sophie's feet, was a fantastically attractive young woman. She had smooth, light brown skin, dark brown eyes and long, wavy black hair. The maiden had clearly been captured, as her body - not tall, certainly, but sumptuous and feminine - was bound in duct tape, around her slim ankles, binding her wrists behind her back, and squeezing her soft thighs against each other.

"Mmph..." she mewed, looking up at Sophie with wide, damp eyes. Her pouting lips pressed up visibly against her gag. Her skin was moist, her supple limbs wiggling sinuously - sensually, even - in her bonds. She seemed the very picture of a helpless victim. Except she was not - or at least she wasn't supposed to be. The beautiful young latina was not just anyone: Enhancegirl had never met her, but she knew who she was. She was Aerogirl - a superheroine.

That she was a superheroine explained her outfit: she wore tight yellow and green crop-top, and a short, yellow skirt with a pleated hem. Both were made of spandex, and she wore heeled yellow boots to go with them, knee-high. She wore no mask, but there was a symbol on her chest - a sort of runic emblem. It might have been surprising for Enhancegirl to find a superheroine reduced to such a state but such low-rent thugs, but it wasn't in this case.

Aerogirl was certainly famous, that was for sure. But it wasn't because of her heroic exploits, or her powers - which allowed her control over air currents - but for her weakness. It was common knowledge that Aerogirl's powers could be taken away from her...by tying her up.

For a beautiful young superheroine, there could scarcely have been a worse weakness. It was a guarantee that she ended up bound and helpless virtually every single time she went on a mission. She was the superheroic community's byword for a complete joke.
"Unh..." she moaned, as Enhancegirl pulled off her gag. "Th-thank you..." she mumbled, obviously embarrassed to be found in such a state. "Again..."
"You're Aerogirl, right?" Enhancegirl said. "I'm Enhancegirl. I'm kinda surprised we haven't bumped into each other before." She began untying her, peeling the tape from her limbs.
"Oh, I...I think I've heard of you," Aerogirl said, in a slight Puerto Rican accent. Her limbs freed, she gingerly stood up, rubbing her wrists. "Thank you for saving me." She cast her eyes down. Many times she'd had to say that to another hero. "Did...did you stop them?"
"What? Oh, the goons? Yeah, I kicked their asses alright." Aerogirl forced a smile.
"What happened?" Sophie asked, although she instantly realised that she shouldn't have done so.

Aerogirl saw the look on her face. She smiled, and this time it wasn't forced. This girl's easy confidence was instantly endearing, a far cry from the haughtiness of some heroines she had known - and indeed been rescued by. A year ago, she'd been saved by an Asian heroine named Spectra, who had made no attempt to disguise her scorn as she untied the hapless maiden. Nor indeed had it been much better when, wrapped in chains and bound to the conveyor of a sawmill, she had been rescued by the heroine Valora. She'd been so patronising that Maya - for that was her real name - had almost been put off superheroics altogether.

Time after time, after time, Aerogirl had been taken off guard and tied up, the sinking, draining feeling of her powers slipping away becoming all too familiar. She'd lost count of the amount of times lecherous or cruel thugs had photographed her in her helpless state, and there were dozens of photographs of her gagged and bound floating around the Internet. There was even a dedicated subreddit when she'd last looked. Try as she might, she could never get away from her image as a failure - albeit an alluring one.

"I don't know what happened," she said at last. "I..." She thought back to the events of the night. She'd swept in, gliding silently through the night air, and had been pleasantly surprised to find the men inside were completely unprepared for her. Summoning great tendrils of wind, she'd swatted aside a number of the thugs, until a man in a mask had stood before her. She'd prepared to fight, but his eyes flashed, and suddenly Maya had been unable to move or think. She'd fainted, and awoken taped up and gagged: powerless.

She'd wriggled around feebly - she was, sadly, used to defeat and capture, but the suddenness of this had been frightening for the lovely young woman. She wondered if she'd imagined the flash of the man's eyes, that she'd simply fainted out of fear. It took Enhancegirl to set her straight on that respect.

"You bumped into a dude called Mindblow," Enhancegirl explained. "He's from a pretty two-bit outfit, but he's some kinda telepath...or that's how I understand it, anyway." It was difficult to know, in a world of superhuman powers, how much internal logic there was to peoples' various abilities. Did Mindblow's mental cudgels operate on the same principle as Insyte's mind-reading? It was a mystery that no-one seemed overly bothered to explain.

"Oh, right," Aerogirl mumbled quietly. For a few moments, neither said anything. Sophie felt extremely awkward about the meeting. Normally encountering a new ally was an exciting prospect. True, Aerogirl wasn't exactly the darling of the superhero community, but that sort of thing didn't matter to Sophie. If she'd met Maya Cierra a couple of months ago, she probably would have declared the two of them friends instantly, and insisted on coming along on her next heroic outing.

Yet something made her hesitate. It had been a while since Madam Black had kidnapped her, and she knew she was stronger and more skilled than ever. But she had never felt so helpless and humiliated in her entire life, and somehow seeing Aerogirl - so demure and meek - gave her a nasty impression of precisely what her abductors had tried to turn her into.

Aerogirl's body language suggested that she was about to leave. Sophie wouldn't have that.
"Hey wait a minute," she said. "We're superheroes, we just met for the first time..." Maya looked quizzical. "Don't we, like, need to have a stupid misunderstanding and get into a fight?"
"Haha!" Aerogirl laughed, becoming even more lovely as the smile lit up her face.
"What were you doing here, anyway? I just got lucky and found these guys, but it seems like you were here deliberately."
"I was," Maya said. "I found shipping records from Hosenfluss that seemed suspicious, and there's rumours that Joseph Hosenfluss has been trying to stockpile dexite. I just came here to investigate, but I wasn't the only one who knew about it."
"What's dexite?"
"It's the mineral that gave the Indigo Titan his powers." The Titan was widely regarded as one of the most powerful superhumans in the world, perhaps second only to Imperion. "The rumour is Hosenfluss has been trying to give himself powers for years, but he's never found a way to do it reliably." Enhancegirl was staring at her. "Wh...what?"
"You're a pretty awesome detective, huh?" Sophie said. "I'd never have been able to find out that kinda stuff."
"Th...thanks," Maya said. "I mean, it was luck, mostly..."

Sophie was, thanks to a journalist friend named May, generally favoured with pretty good press as Enhancegirl. But after a very public defeat at the hands of Cybelle she'd been rather nastily mocked for a time. She didn't overly care about having good or bad press - it was Spectra who was so focussed on her reputation - but she could easily see how someone like Maya, who hardly seemed aware of her good qualities anyway, would have her confidence quite seriously affected. It didn't seem fair.
"Hey, Aerogirl," Sophie said, "you think I'd be able to help you with this? Some goons drove off with whatever was being stored here, and if it was dexite, I'm guessing they were bringing it to Hosenfluss. Maybe we can get it off him before he works out how to use it."
"You...want to work with me?"
"You bet your ass I do," Sophie replied, grinning. "All I've fought recently are dumb thugs - looks like this could be a bit more fulfilling."

Maya wasn't sure what to say. She'd worked with other superhumans before, but it almost always ended up with them having to save her, and she never felt like she contributed much. She'd come to prefer working alone - at least then her defeats had a chance of being private. But this girl's energy, her open-heartedness...it was irresistible.
"Great!" Sophie exclaimed, without waiting for Maya's answer. "Where do we start?"


It turned out that where the two of them started was, while it wasn't exactly the Batcave, a fairly impressive little setup of computers, hidden beneath the streets of Seacouver. Enhancegirl came in costume, but she found Maya wearing a loose fitting yellow dress. She evidently made no attempts to hide her identity - with the number of times she'd been captured and photographed, it was sort of an open secret. Sophie felt a little overdressed. As for her base, it wouldn't have made a bad studio apartment, decorated quite warmly, with a single bed in the corner.
"How'd you get this place?" Sophie asked.
"I come from an old family...old money," Maya explained. "We own a lot of property in and around the city. It does make this part of it a little easier...not that I had to earn any of that money myself, of course."
"Who gives a crap?" Enhancegirl said. "You're using it pretty well as far as I can see." Maya smiled slightly.

Enhancegirl was glad that Aerogirl had this setup. Any time before she'd had to work closely with a heroine, she'd had to reveal her identity. She didn't really have a base, or headquarters, or anything like that. When she did detective work, she had to do it in her apartment.
"Maybe I can get Mariko to front me some cash for, like, an Enhance-cave." She thought for a moment. "I'll wait until I think of a better name..."

"Here," Aerogirl said, bringing something up on one of the screens. "I pulled this from Hosenfluss' servers." In her civilian life, Maya Cierra was a software engineer of some talent. Hacking into Hosenfluss hadn't been easy (so much so that it is not within the technical ability of this chronicler fully to describe it), but she was good at what she did. Finding information on her enemies was something Maya excelled at - it was defeating them that was the problem.

"I didn't know you were a hacker. Nice work!" Sophie scanned it for a few moments. "Uhh...what is it?"
"It's a record of property purchases in Seacouver in the last few weeks by a hedge fund called Vistafund. They give an impression of being pretty normal, with a diverse group of investors, but when I did some digging I found that about 90% of the money came from holdings companies that are owned by Hosenfluss anyway." Sophie stared at her. Maya was confused - what she'd said wasn't that complicated. It was only after a moment that she realised she'd slipped into Spanish halfway through. "Oh! I'm so sorry," she said, flustered, before repeating in English.

"Wait, that's fraud, right?" Sophie said, once she'd comprehended. "Couldn't you just hand this over to the cops?" Maya shook her head.
"I don't think this would work in court," she said. "The way I got it isn't exactly legal. It would be better just to use it ourselves." Sophie was astonished. The way Aerogirl had been reported, and indeed what she'd heard from others in the 'community' was that she was completely, uselessly passive and incompetent. Even her murmuring, apologetic patterns of speech had changed somewhat.
"She's a better hacker than a superhero," Sophie thought.

"This doesn't actually get us very far," Maya said. "If he's moved the dexite out of the city, then there's nothing we can do about it." She frowned. "Even if he hasn't, then we have no way of knowing which one he's moved it to." Sophie looked closer.
"Wait, isn't that...?" She grinned. "I know where we need to start."


Hosenfluss' acquisition of Seacouver's most beloved museum had caused no controversy when it had happened two years prior. It had caused no protests from citizens concerned that one of their city's treasures was being put in even less trustworthy hands than it had been in before. There had been no angry letters of any kind.

There certainly would have been, except for the fact that the transaction had been completely fraudulent, and conducted entirely in secret. Nevertheless, Maya's skills had allowed her to discover his ownership of it and now she, in costume, and Enhancegirl were attempting to break in.
"Why do you think he had his men bring the dexite here?" Maya asked. She looked around nervously, her arms crossed, standing pigeon-toed in a way that belied the power that the beautiful latina possessed. Her tiny skirt fluttered in the chill breeze.
"When I saw Hosenfluss owned the Musée Seacouver," Sophie said, as her dextrous fingers manipulated the lock on the museum's staff entrance, "It reminded me of something."
"What do you mean?"
"I have a...friend who writes a stupid gossip column." The pretty redhead grinned as the lock came loose. "She wrote - I say 'wrote' - an article about some rich asshole who keeps closing the museum to host private rich asshole parties with his rich asshole friends. The dude who spoke to Ma - uh, my friend, said that the guy uses the vaults for his own private art collection and stuff." She clucked her tongue in annoyance. "I've got a weird feeling that he'll be keeping it here. In fact, I'd bet good money on it," she said, smiling.

"Okay, I didn't bet any actual money, right?" Sophie said, a few minutes later. Despite a scan of the museum's vaults with her enhanced super-vision, she couldn't find a trace of anything remotely unusual, save for some particularly gaudy and expensive artwork which Hosenfluss had indeed been storing there. There was one empty vault, but it hardly seemed significant.

"Damn it!" Enhancegirl hissed. She paced up and down the vaults, scanning in every direction she could think to look. "Okay, Detective Scully I ain't," she muttered to herself. "I'm starting to feel like this was a dumb idea."
"It's my fault," Aerogirl said. "The information I found wasn't good enough."
"What's with her?" Sophie thought. "This was completely my idea! She's got to be pretty twisted up to blame herself...and she really believes it, too." She was about to give some consoling words, when she sensed something. Vibrations in the ground, consistent with the footsteps of a huge man on the floor above them. "Like, Arnold Schwarzenegger large...I guess Hosenfluss left us some goons."
"Hmm?" Maya felt something too. Her senses were by no means as powerful as Enhancegirl's, but her abilities gave her a trifle more sensitivity to aerial vibrations. "Enhancegirl, there's something above us!"

Sophie hadn't needed to be told. In fact, as Maya tried to warn her, the redhead was already in the process of diving at Maya to push her out of the way. The two were sent tumbling onto the ground, their slender limbs entangled, but it was a price worth paying. Something, indeed someone, crashed through the ceiling above where Maya had been standing, and he would have crushed her if she hadn't been pushed out of the way.

"Hmmm...you aren't the ones..." The man who'd come through the ceiling did not have a frame which particularly suggested weight. He was short, and thin, with a long, crooked nose. He was dressed in an ill-fitting suit, and his eyes were dull, and far apart. "I guess I'll have to deal with you anyway..." He turned to face the pair. "I'll show you what Mr Hosenfluss has given me!"
"I don't like the looks of this," Sophie muttered to herself. She could sense that this man weighed almost three-hundred pounds, but he looked more like a hundred and fifty. He clenched a fist, and purple sparks spat out from his hand.
"Gyaaagghhh!!" he cried, and swung his fist at Sophie. She ducked, and kicked at the left side of his right knee, sensing that he was avoiding putting weight on it.

"AAGHH!" she cried out. It had been like punching reinforced concrete. "Ughh..." She clutched her throbbing foot. Had she made a mistake? No: the place she'd kicked had definitely been his weak point. "But...just because it's weaker than the rest of him doesn't mean I can actually hurt it!" She looked at him again. Sparks were flying off his entire body. "Indigo sparks...and the density level of his body...oh shit!"

Sophie realised now exactly what the two were facing.
"Maya, he's been exposed to dexite! He has powers like Indigo Titan's!"
"Wh-what?!" Aerogirl gasped. She'd heard the stories. They all had. The man who once broke The Supremacist's jaw with a blow that almost turned California into an island. The man who'd killed the Fifty Fractals - twice. "We...can't fight someone like that..." Aerogirl whispered.
"Don't panic," Sophie said, getting back on her feet. "I don't think he's as strong as the real thing. We might be able to -" Another blow came. It was easily dodged, but it tore through the wall to her left like it was nothing.

"You...shouldn't be here!" the superpowered thug moaned, punching again. He swung full force, but this time the wall put up quite a lot more resistance. That was not to Sophie's benefit - a chunk of plaster flew off and hit her square in the chest, knocking her down.
"Ughh..." she groaned, a little winded, and struggling to get back to her feet. She looked up to see her attacker looming over her. He raised his foot, a bizarre smile tearing a scar across his face. Sophie had seen that he wasn't as powerful as the Titan's, but this man was easily strong enough to kill her - and his mad smile made Sophie think he was perfectly willing to do so.

"Crush...crush...crrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuussssssshhhhhhhh!!" The man half roared, half cackled.
"This guy's freaking lost it!" Sophie thought. She had just about recovered from her winding, and might have been able to dodge - but it didn't come to that.
"Crush you! Crush! Crr...huh?" The man halted. He looked at his hand, and tried to move it again, but there was something holding him. What made this all the more galling was that it was something he couldn't see. "Hhhnnnrrghh!" he growled, trying to move his arms, but neither would obey. He was mystified. Sophie, however, was not. She could see the swirling air currents like tendrils around his arms, sheer pressure forcing them into a semblance of form and solidity.
"She's doing this!" Sophie looked back to see Maya - to see Aerogirl - her hand outstretched, her eyes glowing as she manifested her power. Despite her skimpy attire, despite what Sophie knew about her personality, she looked fearsome. "She can really restrain someone this strong? She's way more powerful than I thought!"

"Aaaaaggghhhhh!!" their enemy growled. With great effort, he ripped one of his arms free and turned to face the one who'd restrained him. "You...die...!" he hissed.
"Uh..." Maya whimpered, obviously intimidated. She shrank back, the glow around her eyes fading. The other tendril grew weaker, and it no longer seemed to be holding their opponent back at all. Maya stumbled back, tripping and falling.
"Stupid little girl..." the man growled. He got closer to her, and Sophie watched as Maya's air-tendril faded completely.
"Shit," the redhead thought. "He's going to kill her!" She leapt forward to attack, but hesitated. How could she hurt him? Even an attack to his weakest point had done more damage to her than to him. She scanned him again, hoping to find a new weakness, though she didn't hold out much hope.

But she did see something new, that had not been there before. With her enhanced vision, she could see that the bones in his right hand were almost broken. It had taken so much effort for him to free himself that he'd almost snapped the bones in his palm. Clearly this man was nowhere near as strong as the Titan, but Enhancegirl was more taken aback by the fact that Maya had managed to hurt him so badly.

A thought flashed across Sophie's mind. Three years earlier, when Hypnotra had used the Indigo Titan as a weapon, he had eventually been defeated. A combined attack from Imperion, the Warden of the Penitentiary Supreme, Thaddeus Murderball and Victory Falls - as well as the Titan's archnemesis Lord Delirious - had managed to take him down. It turned out that if you could break one of his bones, his powers automatically devoted themselves to healing him, leaving him essentially powerless until they were fixed.
"Idea..." Sophie thought, grinning wickedly.

"No, stay b-back!" Maya whimpered, batting ineffectually at the pseudo-Titan with gusts of wind.
"You shouldn't have come here..." he said. "Master knew you'd come! We'll - " He stopped talking. He looked down at his hand. His hand that Enhancegirl had just kicked at full force. "Yee...YYYYEEEEEAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH!!!"

He dropped to his knees, howling in pain.
"Augh!" Sophie dropped as well, falling to one knee. Her attack had been successful, but it had been incredibly painful. "Note to self: buy steel capped boots..." Aerogirl stepped forward, confused. Without Sophie's senses, she'd had no idea that she'd created a weakness in the pseudo-Titan.
"What happened?" she said.
"He's down, but he's not out!" Sophie barked, still clutching her foot. "His powers will come back when he heals! You have to knock him out!"
"R-right!" Maya placed her hands together in front of her, and focussed for a few seconds. Air gathered into her palms, gathering into one high-pressure ball. The whistling, rushing sound it made as Aerogirl gathered her strength was almost deafening.
"Haa!" The ball flew out almost too fast for even Enhancegirl to keep track of it. It struck the pseudo-Titan in the face. This had three major effects: the ball of wind blasted him across the room; it knocked him unconscious; and it broke his nose.

"Well," Sophie said, standing up as the throbbing in her foot died down, "looks like we make a pretty good team, Aerogirl. That was awesome!" She smiled warmly.
"Th-thanks," Maya said, smiling back. She looked again at the prone, felled madman. She'd...won. She knew that Sophie had made it possible, but even so - she'd teamed up with other heroes and she'd always seemed to mess up there too. But she'd been successful. She'd actually accomplished something as a superheroine.

"C'mon," Enhancegirl said. "Let's get the hell outta here before any more psycho-goons show up." She did a brief, super-vision aided scan. "Oh, crap."
"What is it? Wh-what's wrong?"
"There's dudes coming in the way we came." She clicked her tongue in frustration. "Screw it, let's go out through the main entrance. I'll bet we could take them, but they might have another enhanced goon with them. There's nothing here for us, anyway."

Following Sophie's lead, the two went up into the museum itself.
"This is a little creepy," Maya thought. She had a point: in the light of day, full of people and bright light, the museum looked perfectly ordinary. But in the darkness, the neo-Gothic building had a cavernous quality to it, and the mannequins in suits of armour, and ancient, looming objets d'art. Still, the darkness was concealing, and the two stole through the old place without too much risk of being discovered by Hosenfluss' men.

"Okay, Maya," Enhancegirl said, "let's just get outta here and -" Enhancegirl's head snapped to the side, suddenly aware of something moving a few feet away. "Wait - someone's watching us." She scanned around, and for a fraction of a second, she saw someone rushing through the shadows. But she could only devote her attention to it for a brief instant - there was something else coming at her from another direction - but she didn't have time to turn around.

"Aaahh!" The supple-limbed redhead was strick in the back by something which knocked her forward a few steps. She suddenly felt her arms becoming trapped against her sides. Looking down with shock at her own body, she saw coils of thin, strong ropes entwining her from her shoulders to her waist. "Wh...what?!" Sophie spluttered. She stared, unbelieving that she'd been ambushed and tied up so quickly. She hadn't felt it coming, hadn't seen it. The bolo whip had been launched at her with perfect timing, at just the moment when she'd been distracted by the figure in the shadows. "Urrghh!!" Wriggling her soft, bare shoulders, Sophie blushed with embarrassment at how quickly she'd been caught. Her pert breasts, obscured by the ropes, strained against her tight bonds with every breath.

"S-Enhancegirl!" Maya cried out, stopping herself from using Sophie's real name just in time. She dithered, trying to think of a quick way to cut Sophie loose, but she didn't think quickly enough. Sophie sensed something else coming towards her, but it snapped out too fast for her to react. Again, something wrapped around her, just below her shoulders. This time, it pulled her, and Sophie found herself yanked backwards.

"Ughhh! Let me -" Sophie started, but something made her stop. She'd been pulled back into the arms of the one who'd set the trap for her, and she could feel her chest against. She could feel a pair of soft bosoms pushing against her back, could feel a pair of smooth, stocking-clad legs rubbing against Sophie's bare limbs, and two strong but soft hands holding her naked shoulders.
"Hey there," came a silky voice in Sophie's ear. "Don't believe we've met."
"Wh-l...un-untie me!" Enhancegirl finally managed to say. Her breasts were pushing against her bonds with even more rapidity. A bead of sweat trickled down her neck.
"You seemed nervous, girlie. Never been tied up by a sexy cat-burglar before?"
"Uh!" Sophie felt her captor sweep her feet out from under her, and she fell to her knees.
"Just one sec, sweetness. Let me just deal with my old pal over here."

Sophie had not recognised the voice. Nor should she have done - she'd never heard it before. But Maya had - and it was enough to freeze her in place. She'd faced more evil, more powerful - she'd faced both not ten minutes previously - but no-one had ever rubbed Maya's humiliating weakness in her face more often than the woman who went by the name -
"Ocelot..." Maya barely even whispered.
"Well, everyone's favourite damsel-in-distress remembers me." Two full, red lips parted with a sly smile. "How long's it been since we last, uh, fought?"

It had, in fact, been a few months, but Maya had not forgotten Ocelot for an instant. It would be very difficult to do so. Ocelot was not tall, about the same height as Sophie, but her height was accentuated by a pair of tall, black high heels. Her legs were long and supple, covered thinly by translucent, black stockings. In fact, her entire body up to her neck was covered in a bodystocking, revealing a curvy, feminine figure. In only one place did she have anything underneath the stocking - her torso, over which she had a piece of custom built body armour, shaped like a corset, so her shapely bosom was still more-or-less visible. Slung around her shapely hips and her right thigh were two belts, containing a very wide variety of tools of her trade: that being thievery.

Ocelot's face was uncovered - a device built into her suit that scrambled electronic surveillance gave her confidence that her face would not be recorded. She was lovely, with full, red lips, wide blue-grey eyes, and feminine features. Her smooth skin was lighter than Maya's, a gorgeous, milky-chocolate colour, offset by her long, platinum-blonde hair.
"Wow..." Sophie thought, seeing her for the first time as she stepped into the light. It was a little while before she realised that she was staring.

"So, Aero-chica," Ocelot said, "you want to try to put up a fight, or shall we just stick to how this normally ends?" Maya hesitated. She was genuinely tempted to give up. But she looked to the side, and saw Enhancegirl, kneeling and bound behind her old foe. She couldn't do it. Not this time.
"Even if I lose," Aerogirl said, summoning her courage and her power, "I will fight you!" She began to rise into the air, her beautiful body carressed by the air currents she controlled. "Whatever you're doing, however you're connected to all this, I know you! You serve only yourself, and I...I can't just l-let you have your way!" Air swirled round her in an ever increasing tempest, as paintings crashed from the walls, and full suits of armour were knocked over.
"Wow," Ocelot said, raising her voice over the squall. She turned back to look at Sophie. "You find my girl a backbone, sweetness?" She winked, and Sophie blushed, growling in frustration as she continued to writhe in her bonds.

"P-prepare yourself, Ocelot!" Aerogirl said, trying her damnedest to sound like a superheroine should.
"Oh, honey," Ocelot said, smiling, "I'm plenty prepared." She pressed something in her palm with her index finger.
"I mean it!" Aerogirl said, with a degree of conviction. With her sumptuous, gorgeous body, her flowing black hair, and the tempest of her own creation ready to do whatever its beautiful mistress commanded from its formidable might, carrying her aloft, Maya looked almost like a goddess.

Briefly.

"Huh?" Maya didn't notice it in time. The drone that Ocelot had used to ambush and tie up Sophie struck again, launching a twirling combo of rope and metal that pierced Maya's tempest, and hit her in the back. It twisted down her shapely body, swiftly binding her arms against her sides, squeezing her breasts and her bare midriff. Maya felt her hands snap against her hips, bound into place in an instant. Her torso was completely covered with rope, from the tops of her breasts to her waist.
"Oh..." she mewed, as she felt an all too familiar draining sensation in the pit of her stomach. The winds died down, and faded to nothing. The rattling of the paintings on the museum wall stopped. With a defeated sigh, Maya - now completely powerless - fell to the ground. In less than two seconds, the 'goddess' had been vanquished.

She didn't quite fall to the ground. Ocelot was ready to catch her. Maya dropped straight into her arms, and soon found her caramel coloured legs and shoulders gripped by her captor's slender fingers.
"Oh, chica -wrapping you up never gets old," Ocelot said, smiling wickedly. "You just look so...crestfallen! It's too adorable!" Maya looked down. She wriggled slightly, but she wasn't fighting very hard. Her unbound legs were still in Ocelot's arms, and she made no attempt to free herself. "I lost again..." she thought. "I shouldn't have expected it to be any different...I'm so weak..."
"Don't feel too bad, chica," Ocelot said. "You've got a really unfair weakness - and my skill set is practically built to take advantage of it." She set Maya down on her feet, the shy beauty going pigeon-toed, blushing brightly in her shame and captivity. "So, two minutes, two supercuties all trussed up! Not quite a record, but close." She turned to check on Sophie. "Hey, where'd she wriggle off t-"

When the blow came, it hit so hard that a light flashed before Ocelot's eyes. She was sent flying by a solid kick that connected with the small of her back, a solid strike from her opponent's calf. She was hurled forward, and only her well-trained instincts let her recover and quickly orient herself so she landed on her feet. Her head snapped up, and she saw a lovely, nubile redhead in a tight, short, golden dress standing over her. Her poise was alert, but relaxed, her green eyes focussed, but full of humour. It was Ocelot's turn to stare.

"What, never got your ass kicked by a redhead in a mini-dress before?" Enhancegirl said.
"Well, you're a little more dangerous than I thought you'd be," Ocelot said, standing back up. "How'd you untie yourself?" Enhancegirl snorted.
"Why don't you figure that out for yourself, Miss Cat-Burglar?"
"Fine," Ocelot said. She crouched, as if about to launch herself forward, but at the last moment she threw something at her superpowered enemy. Her pretense was extremely convincing, and even Sophie was almost fooled, but her vision was too acute. She dodged the shiny, grey projectile, also scanning it at the same time.

"Tranquiliser darts, huh?" she said. "What are you, a thief, or a zookeeper?"
"Oh, we are feisty, aren't we?" Ocelot said. "How'd you wind up teamed up with Miss Molly Meek over there?"
"How'd a thief end up working for a suit like Hosenfluss?" Enhancegirl shot back. Before Ocelot could reply, the redhead dashed forward. Taken aback by her speed, Ocelot threw out two more darts, but Enhancegirl effortlessly sidestepped one, and actually swatted the other out of mid-air.

Realising that she'd not slowed Sophie down in the least, Ocelot tried to back off to make more room, but the heroine was too quick. She got to Ocelot's side and kicked at her ankles. She avoided it, cartwheeling backwards and attempting to kick Sophie as she did. But the redhead saw through this move as well, seizing Ocelot by the ankles, and throwing her down to the floor.

"Ooof!" Ocelot grunted, now lying on the ground with Sophie standing over her. She drew one stocking covered leg back, looking up with a mixture of frustration and admiration. "You're...pretty good."
"That's funny," Sophie replied, "because you actually kinda suck."
"Oh, you are going straight the hell down," Ocelot growled. She leapt back to her feet, and sent a lightning-fast high kick at Sophie's chin. The redhead dodged, but not by much, and at the same time Ocelot fired something out of her gauntlet: a plastic wire with a metal prong. As it travelled towards Sophie, it sparked slightly.
"A taser!" The gold clad heroine was in danger of getting a very painful and debilitating shock. But even for someone as crafty as Ocelot, her senses were simply too potent. She snatched the wire out of mid air, and used it to haul Ocelot forward. The thief stumbled, astonished at the rapidity of Sophie's reactions, before a spinning kick connected with the back of her neck, slamming her down onto the floor.

"Wh..whoa..." Aerogirl gasped, still kneeling on the ground, tightly bound, watching the fight take place. She had thought of Ocelot as an almost ultimate threat, too skilled and tactically expert to lose one-on-one to anybody short of Thaddeus Murderball. But Enhancegirl was completely taking her apart. "She's amazing!"

"You want to go again?" Sophie said. "Or do you want to get your boss to send some effective goons?" She didn't think as little of Ocelot's skills as she was making it seem. She knew she was facing a truly dangerous opponent - but Ocelot had no idea how powerful Sophie was. If she made her defence seem effortless, it would lead Ocelot to overestimate her, which could be just as damaging as underestimation in the right circumstance.
"Hosenfluss isn't my boss," Ocelot hissed, and for the first time she sounded angry. "I'm robbing him, genius!" She narrowed her eyes. "Wait a minute...you weren't here for me...you were after the dexite as well!"
"The dexite?" Sophie said. "You mean it was here?" Ocelot smiled.
"Looks like I'm right on the money, as usual." She got up again, hesitantly, wary of being slammed back down again. "You just missed it, girls." Sophie smirked.
"Then I guess all that's left is to kick your ass and get outta here."
"You can try."

Two things happened in the same instant. One was that Sophie again launched herself at her enemy. The second was that Ocelot pressed the switch on her left wrists. A near-silent, hovering drone, about two feet in diamater, locked onto Sophie as a non-neutralised hostile target, selected its weapon, and fired. In the gap of time between Ocelot pressing the switch, and the drone firing, Sophie had closed the short distance between herself and her opponent. She was about to attack, but felt the aerial vibrations of another bolo whip coming towards her. The instant that Ocelot saw that she had taken notice, she tossed out a small capsule from one of her belt's compartments.

But she'd again underestimated the power of Enhancegirl. The beautiful heroine not only simultaneously dodged both the capsule and the bolo, she caught the bolo by one end and redirected it in mid-air, sending it spinning at an utterly incredulous Ocelot.
"What the fuck?!" she cried out, as the sensuous thief found herself being entwined in her own bolo. Her arms and pert, buxom chest were squeezed from all sides as her body was wrapped up, just like Maya's and Sophie's had been. "No way! No way! She tied me up! She tied me up!" Looking, mouth agape at the formidable redhead, Ocelot could hardly believe what had just happened. "She's unbelievable!"

Enhancegirl cocked her head to the side, flexing the fingers of her right hand, as if totally uninterested in her enemy's galling defeat.
"You know," she said, "I think this is the first time I've ever tied anyone up." She looked up and down at the sexy, scantily clad young woman wriggling furiously in her bonds, her bosom heaving against the tight, brown ropes. "I guess I see the appeal."

Ocelot stared. She had never been defeated like this before. She'd been driven off, or had to run away from heroes and villains much more powerful than herself, but not like this. A sudden fear gripped her.
"Am...am I going to be arrested?" Thoughts of handcuffs, bars and cells filled her mind. Nothing terrified her quite like the thought of a cage. Despairingly she saw the capsule she'd thrown at Sophie burst into a puff of pink smoke, about twenty feet away from the redhead. "Oh, that really helped! If I get outta this I need to make those burst on less impact..." But as she cursed her tools, she noticed something.

Enhancegirl had stopped still. She was staring straight forward, a strange look on her face.
"Uhhh...uuhhnnn..." she moaned, her pretty knees trembling. She seemed as if the wind had been completely taken out of her.
"What the...?" Ocelot raised an eyebrow. "Something's wrong with her...do her powers have some kind of time limit?" She saw as Sophie looked over her shoulder at the distant, already dispersing cloud of pink gas. Her face seemed to fall, and she whimpered fearfully. "Ohhhh!" Ocelot grinned. "Now I get it."

"No...not...not now!" Sophie thought. She realised what Ocelot had been trying to do: the capsule had been full of some kind of sleeping gas. On anyone else, it would have had no effect at all at that distance - it was closer to Maya, who was unaffected - but not to Enhancegirl.

As a side effect of her vastly enhanced senses, that her made her an almost unbeatable superwoman in close combat, made her as fragile as untempered glass to the slightest whiff of aerial sedatives.
"Uhhh..." Sophie mewed. She could feel it happening again. That overwhelming sweetness flooding her senses, sucking all strength right out of her. "My...my body..." Her long, moist legs were shaking, her arms flopped uselessly by her sides. She felt a warmth filling her, as if it were trying to trick her into thinking her weakness was pleasurable, comforting. Overcome, Sophie fell to her knees.

"Well, isn't this a turn up for the books?" Ocelot said slowly. "Weird time to surrender, sweet-cheeks!" With able dexterity, Ocelot managed to press the button on her right palm to summon her drone to her aid. It hovered over, carried by four propellors, assessing its master's situation, and then deploying a small blade from a metal arm. It made three quick slices, and the ropes fell loose from Ocelot's body. "Thanks, buddy," she said. It didn't answer.

"No...I...I can't...lose now..." Sophie thought, trying desperately to get her body to move, but with every effort to engage her muscles, the faster they seemed to weaken.
"I think I've got you figured out, sweetness," Ocelot said. "You've got super-senses, right?" She strutted towards her fallen enemy. "That's how you managed to make me look like an amateur. That's how you got out of those ropes. And that's how my little smoke-bomb made you go all weak-kneed and floppy." She grinned. "It's a great look for you, by the way."
"You...you...can't...ooohhh..." Sophie fell, about to land flat on her face. But at the last moment Ocelot caught her, easing her down onto her front.
"You're pretty good, red," Ocelot crowed. Her eyes ran up and down Sophie's body, appreciating just how svelte the fallen heroine was. She knelt down, and took something out of one of her pouches.
"Unnhh..." Sophie moaned, writhing weakly. She felt her arms being placed behind her back, and blushed as she realised what was coming. "No...please don't..."
"Hey, you're the one who convinced me what a badass you are," Ocelot said. "You didn't give me much choice."

The item she'd taken from her pouch was a roll of silver tape. Sophie heard a familiar tearing sound, before feeling something sticking to her wrist. With speed and skill that could only come from experience, Ocelot wound the tape around Sophie's wrists, binding them together, pinching Sophie's pale skin. With a brutal ripping sound, Ocelot continued to wrap tape up Sophie's arms, covering her long gloves, and fixing her arms together ever more tightly, until she was taped up to her elbows.

"Enhancegirl..." Aerogirl mewed, seeing her fiery companion dampened and tamed, now seemingly as weak as Maya herself. Not that she could immediately think how, but she blamed herself entirely. She watched as the weakly struggling redhead was spun around, tape wound around her midriff to keep her arms in place, turned over and over like the victim of a spider.

In the end, Sophie ended lying on her back, face up, staring with half-closed eyes at the woman who was capturing her. Sophie felt warm, and drowzy, and in her silken bodystocking, Ocelot felt smooth against her wherever she was touched. She was firm, but not cruel as she bound her ever weakening captive. The sensuous thief put her hands on Sophie's naked legs to straighten them, and Sophie blushed as she was touched there. She felt tape cling to the tender skin of her thighs, squeezing her lovely limbs together, trapping her every more tightly. But Sophie wasn't watching. In her sleepy, subdued state she couldn't take her eyes off Ocelot's face.

"If there's anything that goes with a supergirl, it's a short skirt," Ocelot said, running her hands from Sophie's thighs all the way to her ankles.
"Mmmmmm..." Sophie moaned. Her powers, her drugged state, and the smooth fabric on Ocelot's hands, combined to make her legs tingle as Ocelot touched them. Even as the softness of her stockinged hands was replaced with the adhesive harshness of binding tipe, Sophie still tingled. She felt soft, warm and feminine.
"What's...going on...? It's...never been like...like this..." The humiliating reversal of their fortunes had subdued something within Sophie, and her drugged, confused mind was somehow susceptible. She felt strange, like she was being punished for her carelessness - she didn't realise that Ocelot's victory had been more or less accidental. She thought that her weakness had been analysed and exploited. Yet that punishment had some quality of reward to it as well.

"Wow," Ocelot said. "And I thought you were hot when you were kicking my ass."
"Hhhh...k...kiss...my...ass..." Sophie summoned up the will to protest.
"Maybe later, sweet cheeks," Ocelot said. She tucked her arms under Sophie's legs and shoulders, and with a little effort the helpless damsel lying at her feet was lifted up into her arms.
"Unnnhhh..." Sophie moaned, as she found herself being carried by her captor like a bride: nubile and slightly girlish, a beautiful possession of the woman who'd turned the tables on her.

As Ocelot walked, she appreciated the weight of the gorgeous, sleepy heroine in her arms, that unmatchable feeling of a beautiful maiden lying in one's grip, so exposed and vulnerable. Her hands firmly gripped, though nowhere near painfully, the pale, lovely skin of her captive's long legs and bare shoulders. Sophie, for her part, looked up at her sumptuous captor, heavy eyelids dimming her view of Ocelot, but not obscuring it.
"Wh...what are you...gonna...do to me?" she mumbled, her cheeks reddening slightly as she spoke. She felt like she was floating as she was being carried, so light-headed did the fallen maiden feel.
"I'm just gonna stash you away, sweet-cheeks," Ocelot said. "Don't want Hosenfluss' goons finding you, do we?" Confused and dizzy, Sophie got the events of what had happened to her mixed up, as the sedative keeping her powerless messed with her short term memory.
"Who...who caught me? I... I beat... that woman...uuuhh... who.. .tied me up? Was it that guy we fought?"

Sophie was taken to a small supply cupboard, and carefully laid inside. Perhaps intentionally, perhaps not, Ocelot set Sophie down with her knees raised, so the hem of her dress slipped down her thighs. She looked up at Ocelot, the curvy beauty, standing over her, slinky and strong, like a wound coil.
"Did...did you...rescue me... ?" Sophie mumbled. "Or...did you...capture me... ? I...can't remember..."
"Wow, I really did a number on you, huh?" Ocelot said. "I liked you feisty..." She grinned. "But I kinda like you all weak and pathetic too." She leaned down, looking straight into Sophie's emerald-green eyes. "Such pretty lips," she said, lightly brushing Sophie's mouth with her thumb. She leaned in a little closer. "Really makes me want to..."
"Mmph?!"
"...slap duct tape on 'em!" That was exactly what she had done. Sophie now found her mouth sealed with a strip of the same tape which bound her supple figure, now muzzled as well as restrained. The strip of tape was pressed so hard against her, from cheek to cheek, that her lips were still faintly visible beneath the tape.
"Mmmmmmphhh..." she moaned, bound, gagged, and humiliated.

While this happend, Maya remained obediently on her knees where she had watched Enhancegirl be subdued and captured. She could have stood up and run away, but it never even occurred to her. The vanquished damsel, stripped of her powers by her tight bonds, stayed where she'd been put by Ocelot.
"She got both of us..." Maya thought, despondent. "Even Sophie was captured..."

The lovely latina heard soft footfalls behind her. Ocelot wanted her to hear them - if she hadn't, Maya would have heard nothing.
"Come on, chica," Maya heard from behind her. Hands gripped her shoulders, and the bound damsel was hoisted to her feet. She was turned around, pointed in the direction of where Sophie had been put.
"Ah!" Maya gasped, as she received a sharp smack to her firm behind.
"Get moving, girlie," Ocelot said, "or am I going to have to sling you over my shoulder again like last time? No skin off my nose if I do - that's a real short skirt your wearing, after all..."
"I - I'll obey..." Maya said, not wanting to increase her embarrassment by having Ocelot's hands all over her. She started walking where she was pointed, her short, yellow boots squeaking against the polished floor.

Aerogirl was marched over to where Sophie had been stashed, and a wave of pity and dismay hit her as she saw her fallen companion. She lay, moaning softly, sleepy and helpless, reduced from a feisty heroine to a simpering captive.
"S-Sophie..." Aerogirl wanted to do something. She wanted to let Sophie know how impressive she was - say anything to get that awful, helpless look out of her eyes. "Mmmphh!" Maya whimpered, as Ocelot's hand pressed over her mouth, gagging her.
"Best seen and not heard, huh?" Ocelot whispered.
"Mmmmmmhhh..." As Ocelot took her hand away, Maya found that her powers of speech had not returned to her. A strip of duct tape had been left over her mouth, keeping the damsel quiet. "Mmmph!" Maya found herself pushed in the back, and she slipped, falling. In the tight confines of the closet, she ended up landing right on top of Sophie.

"Mmmhhnn...?" the redhead mewed, looking up into Maya's wet, wide eyes.
"Mmm-mmmphhh..." she whimpered back. The two maidens shifted powerlessly against each other, their long, smooth legs rubbing together as they did, their individual charm magnified by their tender proximity with each other.
"Wow," Ocelot said, laughing. "Okay, I don't even give a crap, I'm taking some pictures." Whipping out a small digital camera, the slinky thief knelt down to get a better angle. "Smile, gals!"
"Mmmm-mmmphhh..." they whimpered, as their bound bodies were illuminated by the camera's flash.
"N...not again..." This wasn't the first time someone had taken a souvenir picture of a trussed up Aerogirl, and she writhed away from the camera. But this only served to have her soft legs caress Sophie's all the more assiduously, giving the amateur photographer plenty to work with.

"Okay, that should be enough to keep the memories fresh," Ocelot said, putting the camera away. However, she took something else out as well, a small object which she kept hidden from view. "It's been super fun, girls," she said, "but I gotta get outta here. And don't worry about the dexite. I won't let that psycho piece of shit get any. See ya later!" With that, she slammed the door on them, shutting the two beauties inside with only each other for company, and only their muffled whimpers for conversation. They were weakly illuminated by an anemic bulb above them, but it was still dark, dark enough that Maya did not notice that Ocelot had left something for them.

"Mmmmhhh..." Enhancegirl mewed. The concentration of sedative in the air was next to zero now, and she was beginning to recover her senses. "Oh, man..." she thought, now aware enough of her situation for the humiliation to hit her. "I can't believe I let her...let her do this to me..." Defeat had been snatched from the jaws of victory, and that stung more than a decisive, one sided defeat could ever have done. She looked over at Maya. "I...thought I was helping her...but I got taken down too..."
"I'm so sorry..." Maya thought. "This never would have happened if she hadn't tried to help me out..." Sunken by their defeat, the two damsels almost didn't notice the cracking sound from their feet - but they both noticed the hiss, and the cloud of pink vapour coming out of the capsule Ocelot had left them.

"Mmmmphhh!! Mmmm-nnnmmphhh!" Maya squealed, as she felt herself breathing in the sweet, cloying vapour.
"Nnnnnnmm...mmm..." Sophie whimpered. In the small, confined room, the gas was at a much greater concentration than it had been before. She didn't stand a chance. Her long legs slackened, her head drooped, what little struggle she'd been putting up ceased immediately as the sweet gas blew away all the strength Enhancegirl still had. "Mmmmhhh..." Lying against her gorgeous fellow captive, Sophie felt weightless and warm, as if her clothes had melted off her, and her limp, naked body was being wrapped in warm, pink clouds. "I...should just...just sleep...I'm...so weak anyway...doesn't...matter..." As she thought this, her consciousness gave out. Her bright eyes, turned dull and listless by her drugged induced faintness, eased shut. With a half whimper, half sigh, Sophie passed out, her head falling against Maya's shoulder.

As for Maya, she wasn't faring much better. She could feel herself becoming warm and numb, could feel her caramel coloured, wriggling legs become still. Her shoulders wiggled to try vainly to loosen her bonds, but they fell still too. Maya felt her whole body becoming devoid of strength. "I'm...so helpless..." she thought, whimpering softly through her tape gag.

As she grew ever drowzier, ever closer to total oblivion, she recalled the words of her mother the day she'd inherited her powers from her.
"Little Maya," the stern warrior had said, "you must remember - these powers are not ours. They are lent to us by the Spirits of the Air. We must be as the wind is - free, and strong and beautiful. If you are not, then you do not deserve their aid, and they will take it from you in an instant. For this reason, you must never allow yourself to become a prisoner. For as long as chains bind your limbs, you will be helpless. But you have the strength within you now for this never to happen. Isn't that right, little Maya?" Aerogirl looked down at her body. She could see, for all her lack of confidence, that she was beautiful. But free? Strong?
"The spirts must...be...ashamed of me..." Maya thought, as her eyelids fluttered like stunned moths. "Mmmmmhhhh..." she sighed, as she too swooned, and passed out against her fellow captive. Ocelot had reduced both stunning young women to limp, trussed up eye candy - soft, supple, and helpless.

[SGWriter]

Very nicely done sir. I love how Enhancegirl got to be a mentor to Aerogirl and their capture was a lot of fun as well

[flirty_but_nice]

I very much enjoyed this, especially in the way that defeat had been snatched from the jaws of victory ... a most excellent turn!

I wonder, though ... It does not say the end and the story kind of begs for more. Is more still to come?

[Damselbinder]

I very much enjoyed this, especially in the way that defeat had been snatched from the jaws of victory ... a most excellent turn!

I wonder, though ... It does not say the end and the story kind of begs for more. Is more still to come?

More certainly is still to come! The second half is under construction as we speak!

[DrDominator9]

Enhance Girl is fast becoming one of my favorite heroines not named Supergirl or Wonder Woman. Her and Fuscia Fox and Spydra are all consistently well written and entertaining.

[Abductorenmadrid]

I very much enjoyed this, especially in the way that defeat had been snatched from the jaws of victory ... a most excellent turn!

This!

[Damselbinder]

Life had not been easy for Vincent 'Vinnie' Maguire in the past few months. He'd spent five of them in prison, after having been arrested for his part in the theft of Dr Takagawa's solar reactor. He'd been paroled for good behaviour, and for helping some of his younger fellow inmates with their G.E.Ds. Still, life outside wasn't as enjoyable as he'd remembered. This was partly because he'd decided to try going straight, and a janatorial job at the museum was pretty much the best he could manage.

The canny ex-thug had had to rise at 5 in the morning to get to work at 6, but he was surprised to see that he was not the first person there. It was swarming with police. Instincitively nervous, he had to remind himself that he hadn't done anything illegal when he went in.

There'd apparently been some kind of break in, and some of the exhibits had been trashed.
"Hey, Maguire!" Vinnie shuddered. That had been the voice of his supervisor, Newman.
"Yes, boss?" he replied archly. The two men hated each other. Maguire hated Newman because he was a fatuous busybody, and Newman hated Maguire because he liked to rub it in Newman's face how much more intelligent he was.
"Are you gonna start cleaning up here or what?!" The plump little buffoon was tapping his foot impatiently. He looked exhausted - her normally wasn't in until hours later.
"You don't it might go a little faster if I had a, uh, broom or somethin'? I mean I'll lick it all off the floor if that's what you want, but don't expect it to -"
"Maguire, shut the fuck up and get your shit together!"
"And by that you mean go and get my supplies like I was about to do before you started talkin' to me?"
"You'd better watch it Mister!" Newman barked, adjusting his toupée. "Or do you want me to tell your parole officer that you've been sniffin' glue in the toilets?"
"You know why that threat's never gonna work, boss?" Vinnie replied. "Because around your fat ass, I fuckin' yearn for jail." Defeated, Newman let him go.

"What a raging jackass," Vinnie muttered to himself. He found the supply closet and fiddled with the handle. "What the fuck?" he muttered. There was an odd little plastic gizmo connecting the handle to the frame, clearly put there to prevent the handle from turning. He pulled it away, confused. "Why would anyone put that here? It wouldn't even stop someone getting in, just someone getting out." He opened the door, and one question was answered by what he found inside. A thousand more were raised.

"Mmmmhhh...mmhhhnnn..." the two beautiful women lying bound and gagged in the closet whimpered sleepily at him, still weakened and drowzy from the effects of the gas which had knocked them out.
"Hhhhlllpp..." moaned a beautiful latina in a tiny yellow skirt.
"Hhhhlll..." her companion, a gorgeous redhead in a gold dress and red mask, tried to echo, but she seemed weaker than her companion.

Vinnie stared agape at them.
"What the...who...was it... ?" His mind boggled. "Why the hell do I keep running into superheroines all the god damned time?!"
"Mmmm... ?" the redhead's brow furrowed, as she looked quizically at the man before her.
"Hey, you look kinda familiar," Vinnie said. "Wait a minute - you're the chick who got me arrested before! Yeah, yeah, I caught your buddy, and you served me my ass in five different styles!" Her expression changed, first to one of recognition, then fear. She seemed to think his grudge might make him do something untoward, for she tucked her bare legs closer to her body.
"Oh, geez, kid, I keep tellin' you people, I'm not that kind of guy!" He ran his hands through his hair. "I have a boyfriend, for Chrissake..."
"Mmmhhh?" Maya whimpered, not understanding the exchange.
"Oh god...just...just let me get you loose, okay darlin'?"


"I don't believe you," Sophie's companion said. "I don't know why you've felt the need to embellish, but there's no way it was him."
"I'm telling you Mariko!" Sophie insisted. "It was the guy from when we first met! The one who captured you and -"
"Yes, Sophie," the lovely Japanese woman hissed, "I remember perfectly well." It had been almost a year since the two of them had first met, both trying to stop the theft of a new kind of reactor. Mariko had been tricked and captured by the canny Vincent Maguire, and had had to be rescued by Sophie. "I'm beginning to regret agreeing to do this."

The two heroines had known each other for quite some time, but this was the first time that they had met up for purely social reasons. They were in a favourite bar of Sophie's, not too far from her campus, but far enough away that they wouldn't bump into her normal crowd.
"This place is filthy," Mariko said, looking down her nose at the rest of the clientele. She sipped her drink, a Long-Island ice tea. "At least their cocktails are tolerable."
"Oh, I'm sorry, Mariko," Sophie said, smiling. She lifted her head, imitating Mariko's haughty expression. "'A bar should be the height of sophistication and style, a corunucopia of genteel intoxication, juxtaposed with only the choicest muzak over the most expensive speakers, for beautiful elegant - and most importantly rich - people like me'."
"I don't sound like that!" Mariko growled. "And why, pray, do I sound British in your oh-so-clever little impersonation?"
"'Your peasant-like cadence could never hope to match the melifluous melange of high-class verbage that trips from my exquisite' - ah!" Sophie dodged an olive.

"You're incorrigible. And by incorrigible, I mean obnoxious," Mariko said, though she couldn't keep the traces of a smile off her face. "Tell me again why you chose to make a partnership with the single least-competent superhero in a city brimming with them?" Sophie had already related most of the previous night's events.
"Because she's got a good heart. She's not interested in glory - she wants to do good. People mock her, and she still tries to do what's right."
"A good heart isn't enough," Mariko replied. She crossed her legs, shown off by a short, high necked grey dress. "She could get killed. She could get you killed if you keep working with her." There was a strange intensity in Mariko's eyes as she said this.
"She isn't the reason I messed up yesterday."
"I know. That weakness of yours is ridiculous. Couldn't you try noseplugs or something?"
"They don't work," Sophie said, slightly embarrassed. "My senses are too powerful."

She leaned back in her chair, remembering her humiliating ordeal. She remembered the cold dread as she first smelled the narcotising gas which had ruined her chances for victory. Yet she also remembered the warm feeling as Ocelot's nimble hands touched her, bound her...
"Well?"
"Huh?"
"Are you?"
"Am I what?" Sophie hadn't been listening.
"I asked you if you intended to go after this Hosenfluss again."
"I don't know," Sophie said. "I'm not sure if Aerogirl will want to, after last time." She looked at Mariko, an idea forming in her mind. But Mariko saw it too.
"Don't even ask," she said. "I'm having nothing to do with her."
"Oh my god, Mariko, you are such an asshole! I mean -" She leaned in a little closer. "The two of us have been captured and tied up enough times. Are we really any better?" Mariko frowned.
"I'll thank you not to imply that my...misadventures with you are representative of my general success rate." The two of them both still smarted from not only their near-enslavement at the hands of Madam Black, but also their embarrassing ambush and defeat by Nyx, the self-styled 'Mistress of Sleep', who'd tricked and chloroformed the lovely pair simply to remind them that she could.

"I'll admit," Mariko said, "the reason Aerogirl has such a poor reputation is because she has terrible luck. If one actually looks at the accounts of her heroics, she doesn't tend to do too badly when she's helping people in burning buildings, or stopping tornadoes, and that sort of thing. She's saved plenty of lives, and I suppose that's worth something."
"You're a real compassionate person, you know that?"
"You misunderstand, as usual," Mariko said. "A hero's reputation is entirely dependent on the press, and the press just isn't that interested in disaster-rescues. That stopped being interesting to people in the seventies - I mean, thanks to people like us there hasn't been a plane crash since 1982."
"'84. The Supremacist's debut, remember?"
"Right. What I mean is, all anyone is interested in now is who can defeat whom. Who can beat the most, and strongest villains? At the very least, who can break up the most crime rings? You only really got famous when you started taking on some of this city's more colourful characters. Aerogirl loses virtually whenever she fights someone, so her reputation is as a joke."
"That's total bullshit," Sophie replied. "We're trying to help people, we're not sports teams!" Mariko shrugged.
"It's just the way the game works," she replied, somewhat wistfully. "I -"
"What?"
"I...admire the way you look at things. You're very earnest, Sophie."
"Uh, thanks," Sophie replied.
"And naive, of course," Mariko added quickly.
"There's the Mariko I know."

Before the conversation could continue, Sophie spotted someone across the bar. Or rather, she spotted that someone had spotted the pair of them, and was swaggering over, apparently in full confidence that he'd be able to seduce the lovely pair.
"Oh, man," Sophie groaned. Whether it was his half opened shirt, slicked back hair, or lecherous smile that tipped her off, Sophie quickly judged their prospective suitor to be an asshole. "Mariko, quick, put your hand on my leg."
"What?!" Mariko spluttered. "Wh-why?"
"Oh, just do it!" Sophie snatched Mariko's wrist and placed her hand on her right thigh, covered by one of her flesh-tone stockings, but otherwise shown off by a short, frilly skirt.

It had the desired effect. The lothario stopped, peeked over the top of his sunglasses, ogled the gorgeous twosome for a few moments, then tried his luck elsewhere.
"Sorry, Mariko," Sophie said. "I just hate dealing with slimy jackoffs." She let go of Mariko's wrist, and the model snapped her hand back.
"D-don't do that!" she said, turning her head away. She was blushing.
"Oh c'mon, don't be such a prude," Sophie laughed.
"Sh-shut up!" Mariko shot back. "I knew I'd regret this..."

After a couple more hours, and a few more drinks, the two heroines were about to go their separate ways.
"Hey, Mariko?" Sophie asked, just as the Japanese beauty was turning around to leave.
"Yes?"
"Why did you agree to come out with me? It seemed like you didn't really want to be there. You coulda just blown me off."
"I..." Mariko hesitated. Something seemed to come over her and for a moment, Sophie had the strangest impression that her countenance became more feminine than it normally was. "Don't...get the wrong impression. I know I can be curt but...I - I enjoy your company, Sophie. I have admirers but not many people I'd call friends." She smiled slightly. "You're one of them." Her countenance suddenly returned to its normal severity. "Agh, I'm drunk...ignore me, I'm rambling." She turned away and began hastily walking off, but stopped after a few paces. "This was...this was nice, Sophie."
"Weird," Sophie thought, "She was almost...sweet." She watched the tall, thin young heroine walking away.

Sophie had known Mariko for quite a long time now. They'd fought together many times - indeed Sophie would have called Spectra Enhancegirl's closest ally. She thought of Mariko as a friend - but she was such an enigma. She seemed so proud, but there was an odd fragility to her. Sophie's mind cast back to her captivity at the hands of Madam Black, of Spectra's doomed rescue attempt. The two had been tied up together, stripped and brainwashed. The maidens had been forced to touch each other, to rub their half-naked bodies together, even to kiss. She remembered Mariko's expression the moment they became aware of what had happened - she'd never seen anyone look so delicate and vulnerable, not even Maya.
"She's so solitary...I hope she has someone to take care of her..."

As the redhead went home, not a little inebriated, she felt her phone buzzing in her pocket.
"Hello?" There was no response. She looked again, and saw that it wasn't ringing. "Huh? Oh!" She reached into her other pocket, and took out her other phone. This was the one whose number she gave to people who wanted to reach Enhancegirl, rather than Sophie Scott. "Uh, hello? Oh, Maya, hey!" Her eyes went wide. "You want to do what?!"


"They got sloppy," Maya explained, when Sophie came to meet her in person the following day. "I think someone panicked after what happened the other night. Anyway, someone sent this." Maya brought up onto one of her base's many computer screens the message in question. It read:

"Subject: Not ready yet
to: r&[email protected]
from: 112-A
Message: H. furious about near loss of DX and failure of Subject Upsilon. Test subjects proving too unstable, imminent use no longer desired for H. Take remaining DX to H. HQ 2 until Project I.T.2.0 perfects methodology."

"I don't get it," Sophie said, when she'd finished reading. "I mostly understand what it means - I'm guessing 'DX' is the dexite - but why does that mean you want to break into Hosenfluss' house?"
"'H. HQ2' means Hosenfluss' country house. It's a few miles outside the city," Maya explained. "That's a nickname they use on unencrypted e-mails all the time, even on their delivery receipts. Someone messed up badly by using it for this - the e-mail was only on their servers for a minute and a half."
"Nice catch," Sophie said.
"It was lucky," Maya replied. "I programmed a protocol that saves a copy of every e-mail their system uses which mentions certain keywords: 'HQ 2' was one of them."
"God damn it, I wish she could be this confident in costume!" Sophie thought.

"I think you should go there tonight," Maya said. "It might get moved again, or they might figure out how to make it work properly."
"Yeah, sure, that makes -" Sophie realised what she'd just said. "You aren't coming with me?"
"I - I don't want to get in your way," Maya said. "I was watching you fight before and - and you were amazing, Sophie. You don't need my help." This was not cowardice. Maya genuinely believed that Sophie's chances would be better without her.
"You and I remember things very differently," Sophie replied. "That dude we fought? He would have killed me if you hadn't been there. I guess I'm sharper in single combat, but I don't have anything like the kind of power you've got." She got closer, putting a hand on Maya's shoulder. "Maya, if we're going to do this, I need you."

Maya looked straight into Sophie's bright, earnest eyes. She had been thanked for saving people before, she had been congratulated on her few successes, but in her life as a superheroine, no-one had ever told her they needed her.
"O-okay," she said. "If you're sure."
"Damn straight," Sophie replied. "Now we need to plan what happens if we run into Ocelot again. She's sharp as a tack - we'll need a strategy."
"We won't." Sophie looked quizically at her. "I've run into her a...a lot of times. I've kept records of her robberies, run them through some analytical software." She frowned. "It didn't really tell me anything helpful...but there is one thing. She never does robberies on Saturdays. Ever."
"Seriously? How come?"
"Well, um, to be a little more precise, she - she never does robberies from Friday evenings onwards. And I have hundreds of recorded crimes." Sophie thought for a moment.
"Oh, duh!" Sophie laughed. Maya didn't understand. "She's Jewish! She can't work on the sabbath. She can't even do the nights because she'd have to prepare during the day. Gotta admit, I wasn't expecting that!"
"Oh." Maya was dubious. The prospect of the scantily-clad cat-burglar being sufficiently religious to keep the Sabbath didn't quite match up with what she knew of her. "But...anyway, we can use this to make sure we don't have to deal with her."

Sophie was about to agree. After all, it made sense not to have to deal with an additional threat if they didn't have to. Why run the risk? The threat of a dexite-empowered Hosenfluss was too serious to trifle with. Yet something in her was resistant to what Maya was saying.
"No. We should - we should go when we know she is gonna be there." Sophie anticipated Maya's objection: "I know she's dangerous. I know it seems like asking for trouble. But we've - we can't let what happened last time be the last word."
"But - I mean...she knows about your weakness now. She has all those gadgets and drones...won't she be ready for us?"
"Maybe. But this time, we'll be ready for her."


The following night was cold, and blustery. As Sophie made her way to the spot where she'd agreed to meet Maya, she shivered. She was dressed in a white blouse, short tartan skirt and white stockings, with blue kitten heels on her feet.
"Why did this damn place have to be so far outta the way?" she muttered. Checking the GPS on her phone, she determined she was in the right spot.

The bluster seemed to grow in intensity. Sophie hugged her arms to her chest, and looked up - there was a reason the wind had increased. A yellow streak whipped through the air, slowing until it resolved itself into the shape of a young woman. Aerogirl had arrived.
"Have I mentioned," Sophie said, as Aerogirl landed, "how freaking awesome it is that you can fly?" Maya smiled. "You ready?"
"Si," Aerogirl said. She remembered the plan she and Sophie had agreed, but was still somewhat unsure.
"Enhance!" Sophie said, and there was a flash of light. When it faded, two superheroines stood face to face. "Let's do this."

A few hundred yards away, two men were patrolling the front gate of Hosenfluss' sprawling, gaudy mansion. Both carried assault rifles.
"Keep your eyes out," the older of the two said. "This isn't like usual. The boss was nervous."
"You think something's gonna happen?" the other asked.
"I don't know. He's into some pretty shady stuff, after all." The other grinned.
"I guess that's why the pay's so good. Hey, you ever -" Both men stopped and pointed their weapons in the same direction. They'd heard a loud crack in the trees ahead of them.
"If it moves," the older man said, "shoot the shit out of it." They held their pose for a moment. Nothing happened. The older man lowered his weapon. "Keep an eye on that spot. It could be -"

He'd been about to say 'a trick'. Unfortunately, he was right. As the two men were focussed on the spot where Enhancegirl had deliberately broken a branch, a beautiful young latina woman floated down on soft, silent currents of air behind them. She concentrated for a moment, and blasted both of them in the back with powerful gusts of wind. They were rapidly taken out of the runnings.

"Nice," Enhancegirl said, appearing from where she'd concealed herself. She moved quickly towards the gate, avoiding the eye of a camera looking back and forth nearby. "Damn," she said, observing the lock on the gate. It was electronic, which her enhanced senses gave her no increased ability to bypass. "Don't suppose you'd be able to hack this?"
"Hmm..." Maya looked at it for a moment. "I...don't think so." She glanced up. "There's an easier way, I think. You...um..."
"What?"
"You have to hold onto me..." Maya said, a little embarassed.
"Yeah, okay," Sophie said. She came close and put her arms around the scantily clad brunette. "What n- oh!" Enhancegirl found herself launched into the air, along with the yellow-and-green clad sorceress of the air holding her. They were raised aloft by Maya's winds, carried gently over the gate, and to the other side.

"Are you okay?" Maya said, seeing that Sophie looked a little discombobulated.
"That was...that was awesome!" Sophie's bright smile again beamed into Maya's eyes. "We were flying! We are doing that again, sometime, okay?" The two realised how close they were, and moved apart with an embarrased start.
"S - sure," Maya replied, her cheeks reddening.

The two made their way carefully towards the mansion, Enhancegirl's senses allowing them to evade any guards or cameras. Not foolish enough to try the front door, the two heroines made their way to the staff entrance. Maya had been able to obtain the building's blueprints in advance, and they'd planned their ingress carefully. The staff door had a physical lock, and with naught but a hairpin (and her powers, of course), she managed to jimmy it open.

The two of them crept in, and Sophie had to admit that she was impressed by the scale, if not the decor, of Hosenfluss' place. It was built in dizzying concentric circles of stairways around a central chamber, which was filled with what an extremely expensive interior decorator had assured Hosenfluss was a supremely tasteful main focus. In fact, it was a hideous imitation of Rodin's The Thinker, rendered in awfully shiny brass.
"Wow," Sophie said. "What an asshole!"

Using Sophie's senses to guide them, the two superheroines moved through the building carefully.
"Enhancegirl," Maya whispered, "there are no guards..."
"Maybe he doesn't want 'the help' inside his place..." Sophie replied. But she agreed it was suspicious. She couldn't see anyone in the whole building, couldn't smell anyone except traces of those who had been there in the past. "Shit," she thought. "Maybe we're too late..."

But as she scanned the upper floors, she saw something. Or rather, she didn't. There was something through which she couldn't see, a fist sized object behind what seemed like a steel door. Enhancegirl recalled the warehouse where she'd first met Maya - she hadn't been able to see through the metal they'd been unloading then either. This was it.
"Maya, I think I've found it," Enhancegirl said. "Two floors above us."

The two of them made their way up. Sure enough, there was a locked door. It looked normal, but Sophie could see that it was strongly reinforced.
"It's about two inches of reinforced steel. Can you bust it open?" Sophie asked.
"I...I think so," Maya said. She placed her hand on the door. She concentrated, closing her eyes. After a few seconds, there was a sharp, wrenching sound, and then a loud bang. Maya tapped the door, and it opened. The lock had been completely blasted out of where it had been.
"Nice!" Enhancegirl whistled. "How'd you do that?"
"I made a vacuum on the inside of the door, then pushed through on this side too." She smiled. Just being around Sophie made her feel more capable.

The two went inside, and were appalled at what they discovered.
"Oh my god!" Maya gasped.
"It's horrific!" Sophie stared open mouthed at the horrors the two maidens found within. They were looking at perhaps the vilest thing they had yet seen, and both had had a taste of ugliness in their careers as superheroes.

It was, without doubt, the gaudiest, most tasteless room either of them had ever seen in their lives. The bed was tiger-print, the carpet was leopard print, and everything else was purple. There were awful imitation-classic statues of women in various states of undress, and - most disgraceful of all, a fountain, not even centrally placed.
"Ugh, god damn," Sophie said, "this guy's...I don't even know what this guy is. Can you imagine if he had the Titan's power? There'd be tiger print rugs in every home in America."
"Hmmm..." Maya seemed thoughtful. "I wonder...what does he want with that power?"
"Who knows?" Sophie said, looking around for the dexite. "He probably just wants it for the sake of having it. Wants it to be just another thing he can...ah!"

It was when Enhancegirl happened to try to look through the fountain that she realised that she was in the right place. The fountain was not just a (hideous) ornament: there was something concealed inside. She pressed a hidden catch - not hidden to her, of course - and something slid out.

It was a small lock-box, a little bigger than a fist. Enhancegirl tried to look into it, but found her vision blocked.
"Found it!" she said. "I get the hiding it in plain sight thing, but this was a little too easy." She felt for some way to open the container - it made sense to check, after all.
"Wait, Sophie," Maya said. "What if - ?"

But it was too late. Because the contents were concealed by a layer of lead, Sophie didn't see that there was, in fact, nothing within the box - except for a small, delicate canister. A small wire connected it to the opening - and when Enhancegirl jimmied it open, the wire snapped the canister open. Even for Enhancegirl, there simply wasn't enough time to prevent the gas within to rush out of its pressurised container, straight into the redhead's face.

"Ahhh! Ahhh...ahhhhh...ooohhh..." Sophie whimpered. Her sensitive body didn't stand a chance against the narcotising gas that she'd breathed in. "Unnhh...no! I...I..." She didn't even have time to think. Her supple limbs lost all strength in an instant, the container clattering to the floor as her arms fell to her sides. Her eyes stared straight forward, tensed slightly in shock, but soon became dull and listless. The skilled, formidable heroine was transformed in a second into a delicate, softly mewing damsel by a mere puff of sleeping gas.

"Oooh..." she sighed softly, as her eyes fell shut. She swayed for a moment, like a leaf in a light breeze, before her long legs gave way, and she began tumbling down to her knees.
"Sophie!" Maya cried out. She caught Sophie, clumsily making sure she didn't fall too hard. She eased her onto her back, Sophie's red hair spread out like a burning halo behind her, in sure contrast to the subdued, tamed maiden lying at Maya's feet. "Sophie, wake up!" She tapped her fellow heroine's face, but the gold-clad maiden was completely insensate.

It was at this moment, while Maya was trying to awaken her new ally, that another intruder happened upon this scene. Her slinky, translucently covered body crept far too quietly for Maya to hear. Her drone hovered a few metres away from her, ready to support its master. It had something tucked in a small claw on its underside. Ocelot was about to strike at the crouching latina, but it was only when she was about ten feet away that she noticed Maya was not alone.

"Sophie, please!" Maya implored, her brow furrowed with concentration, her hand pressed against the bare skin just above her fellow heroine's breasts. Ocelot was more than a little pleased to see that this was Enhancegirl, the ravishing redhead she'd fought before.
"Sophie, huh?" she thought. "That's cute...wait a sec - why is she already knocked out? Not that I'm complaining, of course." She inched closer, ready to grab Maya, quickly bind her, and render her just as powerless as her sleeping comrade.

But Ocelot's confusion, though perhaps forgivable, bought Maya a precious couple of seconds. Her slightly increased awareness of air currents, in the darkened, quiet room, let her know that there was someone breathing behind her, even though that breathing was essentially silent. Just before Ocelot grabbed her, Maya instinctively let out an omnidirectional blast of air.

"Ugh!" Ocelot wasn't exactly hurt by this attack, but it did knock her back quite far. Catlike, she steadied herself quickly.
"Y-you!" Aerogirl was already facing her. Her heart thumped with fear in her chest. Would this be yet another humiliating defeat?
"Well who else would it be, sweetheart?" Ocelot said. She thought for a second. "I see your feisty buddy fell for my trap?" Aerogirl gasped.
"You set the trap?"
"I know." She smiled, showing off a row of sparkling white teeth. "I'm so naughty, aren't I?" Aerogirl took a step back. The conflict hadn't even started, and already Enhancegirl was defeated. What chance did she stand alone?

"It's not impossible that she takes me out during the fight. She knows my weakness, and I might not be able to stop her from using it against me. If that happens, remember that she's just human. You have so much potential power, Maya. Yeah, she's smart, but that only counts for so much."

Maya remembered Sophie's words, as the two had prepared for their mission.
"I...can do this..." she reassured herself. "I...can protect her!"
"Hmm?" Ocelot saw a strangely determined look in Aerogirl's eyes.
"Haaa!"

Enhancegirl would have been able to dodge the attack without too much trouble. It was telegraphed, the direction of the wind blast was obvious, and the beautiful damsel's battlecry made it obvious what she was about to do. But Ocelot, skilled as she was, was not Enhancegirl. Yes, she dodged, but barely. She herself was fine, but then, she was not what Maya had been aiming at.

Ocelot turned her head back for a moment, and she gritted her teeth. Her drone had been smashed, and was lying in a sparking heap on the floor.
"Didn't think she'd be that clever," Ocelot said to herself.

"She's a good fighter, but she seems to want to avoid hand-to-hand if she can. I dunno, maybe she's been different other times, but she kinda seems like her drone thing does most of the work. She mostly uses herself as a distraction to keep attention away from it. Take it out as soon as you have a chance." Sophie smiled. "Then she'll have to get up close and personal. That's when I step in."

It had worked - Ocelot seemed disconcerted, but there was no step two to the plan without Enhancegirl. But she had to use the opportunity she'd created. She tried to grab Ocelot as she had the Pseudo-Titan, using a tendril of air. But Ocelot was not so easily ensnared. Maya lunged, but inaccurately. Yes, she'd been taken aback by Aerogirl's first attack, but now Ocelot was all business. She made every indication of being about to leap right, but somehow, her fluid, balletic movements deceived, and she dodged left instead. Aerogirl's intention was distracted, and Ocelot struck. With one quick movement, she removed a small, compact bundle of wire from one of her pockets, and hurled it with frightening speed at Aerogirl.

The beautiful, caramel-skinned heroine had no time to dodge. She didn't even have time to see that it was a bolo whip spinning towards her. But then, she didn't need to see it.
*ZZZEWWW*
The whip made an almost comical buzzing sound as it changed direction in mid-air, entangling not the supple body of Aerogirl, but the gaudy fountain of Hosenfluss. Ocelot instantly moved to another spot, making sure Aerogirl couldn't get a bead on her, but she was frustrated.
"How did she block that? She definitely didn't see it coming... . Come on, girlie, why aren't you a pushover this time?" She looked at Aerogirl again. Was something different this time?

"Those little bolo whips she uses are pretty nasty, huh?" Enhancegirl thought for a moment. "Hmmm...do you think you could make, like, a shield around you? Nothing too strong, so she doesn't notice it, but just enough to deflect something that's spinning fast."
"I...I'll try..." Maya said, thoroughly un-confident. She focussed for a moment, and wind started gathering around her, but it wasn't behaving like she wanted.
"Ease up, Maya," Sophie said. "I can see your muscles - you get super tense whenever you use your powers. Try to relax. Have some fun with them." Maya nodded, and tried to concentrate again. "You're doing it again. Don't worry so much. Maybe you get it wrong. So freakin' what?" Maya breathed. She allowed her body to relax, trying not to be so nervous about her abilities. She attempted a different tack - instead of forcing the wind to do what she wanted, she breathed out slowly, imagining that her breath kept going, and became a protective, gentle cloud around her.
"Hey, that's awesome!" Sophie could see the air currents spinning around their lovely mistress. "See? You can do it!"

"It worked!" Maya exclaimed. "I - I can do it!" She turned her brown eyes onto the astonished thief. "I can...I can beat you!!" Aerogirl stretched out her hand.
"Well, sugar, I guess we'll - whoa!" Ocelot was taken off guard. She'd been expecting more attacks from in front of her, but a barrage of aerial bullets shot out from behind her, and in front of her at the same time. "Ugh!" Ocelot hurled herself down to the ground, flattening herself as much as she could. She managed to dodge the bullets, but she'd been put in a thoroughly disadvantageous position. Even with her fast reflexes, Ocelot couldn't get up in time to stop Aerogirl from attacking again.

But for all Sophie's tips, for all the advantage that Aerogirl had created for herself, there was more than one reason why Maya did not have much luck in fights. She simply lacked the killer instinct that a fighter needs to develop to be truly successful: she saw Ocelot prone on the ground, aimed her attack - and hesitated. It hit her that if she was going to defeat Ocelot, she would probably need to hurt her quite badly. She had decent control over her powers by now - but if she made a mistake, she could cripple or kill her entirely human opponent. In her compassion, she gave control back to her opponent.

"Unhh!" Ocelot grunted as she threw herself up, in a motion like a leopard pouncing backwards. In the same movement, she threw something down on the ground which burst instantly, spreading a cloud of sparkling powder into the air.
"Oh no!" Maya cried out. Reacting relatively quickly, she blew the gas away from herself, wary of meeting the same narcotised fate as Enhancegirl. But the gas had no anaesthetic properties: it was merely a distraction. In the instant that Aerogirl was distracted, the sharp-eyed thief hurled a small, silver needle at Aerogirl's slender neck.

"Ah!" the latina cried out - as the needle stopped three centimetres away from her neck. It was caught between two gold-covered fingers.
"Sorry, Maya," Enhancegirl said. "Didn't mean to get caught sleeping on the job."
"What?" Ocelot again had to recalibrate. "How did Pippi Longstocking get up so damned quick? Whoever did knock her out must have used something pretty weak..."

She was mistaken. The trap that Sophie had been caught in had been perfectly potent, but it had not taken account of Aerogirl. For Maya did not merely have power over air - that was just one part of her power. She had a natural ability to control oxygen. When Sophie had been knocked out, Maya had immediately tried to revive her by pushing pure oxygen into her lungs. It had been working - until Ocelot had interrupted. But she'd done enough, and Enhancegirl had managed the rest of her recovery herself.

"You okay?" Sophie asked. Maya nodded. "Awesome." She saw Ocelot was standing there, saw the signs of battle in the room. But her eyes quickly went back to the thief.
"Hey, Pippi," Ocelot said, noticing her looking, winking at the redhead heroine. "I'm real glad you woke up. It would have been so dull stringing up the señorita by herself. No offence, sweetness," she added to Maya. Enhancegirl looked the thief over again - even in battle, her posture was one of total confidence. Naturally, Enhancegirl's powers gave her a rather good sense of a poker face, and she couldn't see the slightest betrayal of artifice. Ocelot really believed she would win.
"I don't know why you look so freaking smug," Sophie said. "Looks like Aerogirl was giving you a little more than you can handle this time."
"Oh, honey, you have no idea what I can handle." Her eyes looked up and down Sophie's short dress. The redhead found herself blushing slightly, but readied herself to attack.

Both heroines were a little nervous. They weren't sure what their versatile opponent would do next. Sophie sensed tensing in her arms, like she was about to reach for something.
"No you don't!" Enhancegirl leapt forward, her long legs carrying her far in a single bound. Whatever Ocelot was doing, she'd stopped. She only became reticent about this course of action when she saw a glimmer of a smile on her opponent's face.

But there was no time for regrets. Enhancegirl engaged Ocelot directly, and the two began trading a serious of lightning fast blows. Ocelot was much more defensive this time, not allowing herself the luxury of daring strikes on which Enhancegirl could easily capitalise. She fluidly shifted her centre of gravity, not allowing Enhancegirl to find glaring weak spots either.

Enhancegirl sussed out her fighting style quickly. She realised what she was trying to do. For a moment, she was frustrated - but she realised what a disadvantage Ocelot had put herself at. It was entirely up to Sophie to determine the pace of the fight.
"What's the matter, kitty-cat?" she said, after dodging a fast, but too-short jab. "You had sharper claws last time."
"So you were looking, huh?" Ocelot said. She moved back. In fact, she'd been gradually moving back since the two had started going at it hand to hand. "I thought heroines were supposed to just provide the eye candy, not eat it." Ocelot traced her body-stocking clad thighs with one hand, and for just an instant, drew her opponent's eyes.
"Wh - " Sophie hesitated, and it cost her. Ocelot spotted her chance, and delivered three pinpoint strikes to her calf, her side, and her chest. "Aah!" She sensed the attacks coming quickly enough to avoid being really hurt by them, but she lost ground.

For her part, Aerogirl was desperately trying to find an angle of attack, but Ocelot was deliberately manoeuvring such that Aerogirl couldn't attack her without hitting Sophie as well.

"'Kitty-cat', huh?" Ocelot said, as she pressed the attack. "I guess that makes you my cute little mouse." She was hemming Sophie in with a flurry of kicks, punches, and thrown drugged darts. Sophie dodged all of them, but she couldn't find the space to counter without risking getting pricked by one of Ocelot's darts, kept between her fingers between throws. "Not gonna fight back, little mouse? Getting all timid? Or maybe some mice like getting caught by sexy kitties." Enhancegirl seemed to lose balance, crouching, and Ocelot took the opportunity to deliver a solid knee strike towards her stomach.

But there was simply no getting used to the gold-clad redhead's preternatural reaction times. Enhancegirl caught Ocelot's knee between her elbows, holding it tightly in place.
"Okay, sure," Sophie said. "You're pretty hot. I noticed." She grinned. "But if you think that's gonna stop me from kicking your ass, you really don't know me." She lunged forward, using the momentum from ascending from her crouch to throw Ocelot full force.

"Ugh!" Ocelot landed hard on her back. As Enhancegirl came forward, she rolled back to get on her feet again, and just barely blocked another solid calf-kick. There was another, and another, coming so hard and fast that all Ocelot could do was hold her arms in a blocking stance, as Enhancegirl rained blows upon her. She couldn't hold out for much longer.

But after about the eighth blow, which damn near knocked Ocelot flat again, Sophie's attacks began to slow. At first only she noticed, then Ocelot - then eventually even Maya saw that her ferocity was diminishing.
"Wait, what's happening to her? Is she getting tired?"
"Unnhhh...something's...wrong..." Sophie thought. Her blows were definitely becoming sluggish, and more inaccurate. The heroine was no fool - she immediately thought that Ocelot must have drugged her somehow - but how? When? And wouldn't she be able to detect the drug in the air? "It must be from when I was drugged before...I haven't recovered as much as I thought! No...I know Maya completely got the sleeping gas outta my system, I could feel it! I...oohh...I need to finish this now!" She drew her leg back, and aimed her kick higher, to try to knock Ocelot out entirely.

But now it was her turn to be out-speeded. Ocelot saw the attack coming, and caught Sophie's calf, stopping it dead.
"Uh-oh. Not feeling yourself, Pippi?" Ocelot grinned. "Such a shame. And you were doing so well too." She squeezed Sophie's calf, quite gently, before pointing her right wrist at Sophie. "I guess I win," she said, mockingly. She reached into one of the pouches in her belt, and threw out a length of thin wire attached to two metal balls. It spun round in the air, and to her dismay, the lovely Enhancegirl found it twisting itself around her.

"No!" she cried out, as the rope curled itself in mid-air. With her enhanced sight she could see exactly the trajectory it would take, but in her as-yet unexplained weakness, she just couldn't react in time. The bolo coiled round her like a serpent, seizing her just below her breasts and then winding down her chest, pressing Sophie's arms against her sides. All the redhead could do was stare in dismay as she watched herself being bound, saw her gold dress disappearing beneath the wire. She felt her arms again snapping against her sides, now useless to her, the bolo continuing to wrap her body up until it had gone down just below the hem of her dress.

Before Sophie could even begin to wriggle her shoulders, Ocelot seized on her advantage and tossed out yet another whip. This one seized Sophie's legs, hitting her just below her knees. With a brutal efficiency, Sophie's soft calves were suddenly trussed, all the way down to her short, silver boots.
"Unnhh...no..." Sophie mewed, writhing in her swiftly-applied bonds, shaking her head both in vain denial of her humiliatingly swift capture, and to try to shake the grogginess she felt. It wasn't like the floating light-headedness she got from chloroform - she felt as though she were wading through mud to get to even the simplest thought or action.

"Well, well," Ocelot said, "looks like I caught myself a cute little redhead." She got close, and took Enhancegirl by the shoulders. The maiden's enhanced senses made her particularly aware of the softness of Ocelot's hands on her bare skin.
"Nnhhh..." The weakened heroine found her eyes drawn into Ocelot's, her soft mouth slightly open. She couldn't think of anything to say, all tied up in Ocelot's grasp as she was. "I..." But before she could finish, Ocelot pushed her lightly in the chest. With her much-flaunted legs tied together, Enhancegirl couldn't balance, and she tumbled to the ground.

"Unh!" she groaned, landing hard on her back. Before the trussed-up girl could even begin to struggle again, she felt something on her chest. She looked to see that it was a high-heeled foot, stepping on her chest just firmly enough for her to feel it. Her eyes ran gradually up a long, slender, stocking clad leg, over a pair of slinky hips, a shapely chest, and a sharp-eyed, but beautiful face.
"Oh, Pippi," Ocelot said, biting her lip. "I just love watching you fall at my feet."
"Sh...shut up..." Sophie protested, but her heart wasn't in it. She stared up at the woman who'd once again turned her into a weakened captive. "Sh...she caught me..." Sophie didn't understand it. How had she become so weak? So easy to capture? As she looked up at the gorgeous, slinky figure of her captor, a rather unpleasant thought came to her. "Did...did I let her beat me?"

In reality, she should not have been quite so self-doubting. As she had plotted with Maya about how to take Ocelot on, so too had Ocelot been thinking about how to deal with Enhancegirl. She figured that Sophie might have some kind of strategy in place if she tried to use simple sleeping gas again - the trick was to weaken her without her realising it. When Enhancegirl had been repeatedly striking at her arms, she'd actually been releasing into the air an incredibly fine mist. It was odourless, and colourless, and it wouldn't have had the slightest effect on anyone else. But breathing hard, and with her natural sensitivity to sedatives, it affected Sophie just enough to slow her down, and make her easier prey. She considered taunting her fallen foe with this knowledge, but she saw her bewilderment - and decided to let her stew in it.

There was just one thing she had forgotten. Enhancegirl was under her foot, yes, but Aerogirl was not. The latina had been almost paralysed with shock as she saw her newfound mentor once again caught and bound, but that shock had worn off.
"G-get away from her!" she yelled, sending out a wall of wind that forced Ocelot back, throwing her entirely out of the gaudy room.

"Enhancegirl!" Maya cried out, running over to her tied-up ally.
"I'm sorry," Sophie said, writhing sinuously in the tight ropes wrapped around her slender figure. "I messed up..." She realised just how much like Maya she'd just sounded. "Ah, damn it!" she hissed, trying to focus on the anger she felt at being bound, rather than the embarrassment. "Think you can get me out of this?"

Ocelot, in the meantime, recovered herself from Aerogirl's unexpected attack. She looked up, seeing Aerogirl crouching over her fallen ally. She hissed under her breath. If Aerogirl freed Sophie, Ocelot would be straight back to square one. She had to stop her. Thinking quickly, she looked at the sparking wreck of her broken drone: she opened a socket on its outside, and pulled out another bolo whip from within, this one thicker and heavier. Bracing herself, she hurled it at full force towards Aerogirl.

"Maya, watch out!" Sophie exclaimed. The latina looked up, seeing the spinning bolo whip coming towards her. She hesitated - but only for an instant, and managed to swat the whip out of the air. But that wasn't the point - the point was to get her attention. For Ocelot had taken something else from her drone, something that had been slung underneath it.
"Well, lookee what I found," Ocelot said, effecting a Southern drawl. "Hey...this looks pretty important!" Sophie craned her neck to look, and saw a small canister in her hands. It was ordinary steel, but it was what was within it that interested Enhancegirl. Using her powers, she peered inside the canister, and saw a lump of odd looking rock. It was brown, but cut through with glowing, orange veins, as though there were magma within the rock.
"Maya!" Sophie exclaimed, "that's the dexite! You have to get it!"

Seeing that the trap had been sprung, Ocelot turned tail, and began to run.
"Shit, Maya, get after her!" Sophie insisted. "If she gets away, we have no idea what she might do with it! She might sell it to someone just as bad as Hosenfluss!" A thought came into her mind of Madam Black acquiring the powers the dexite could bestow, and she shuddered.
"But -"
"Don't worry, I'll get myself out of this and come back you up. But you can't wait!"
"R-right!" Maya said. There was some hesitance, but she reminded herself of what had, alas, become her motto. "Being defeated doesn't matter. Not fighting matters." She lifted herself up on currents of air, and flew at speed after Ocelot.
"Man, I wish I could do that..." Sophie muttered. She looked down at her bound body and sighed. "Okay...how am I gonna untie myself this time?"


Ocelot heard Aerogirl coming after her. No superhuman, she still had sharp ears, and she could hear the rush of wind as Aerogirl flew. She decided to take advantage of the spiral structure of Hosenfluss' complex, using a grappling hook secreted away in a metal cuff around her wrist to swing underneath the part of the stairway she was on.

"Huh?" Aerogirl had been following her down the stairs, but she'd suddenly vanished. Wary of ambush, Aerogirl floated into the centre of the spiral, looking every which way for signs of Ocelot, ready to strike as soon as she came into view. But the canny thief didn't need to come into view in order to strike. She opened several compartments on her belt, and after a moment, seven small, grey objects rose out of them. They were shaped like stretched-out eggs, with a deep depression in the centre, and an experimental ionised propulsion system. They began to float around their inventor, hovering patiently. "Egg Shen one through seven: seek and subdue." There was a gentle hum of assent, and the gently floating devices suddenly shot forward at high speed.

"What are those?" Aerogirl saw the seven faint blue lights zipping back and forth in erratic patterns in mid-air, and deduced that they had something to do with Ocelot, but she couldn't tell what. She watched them flying around, in a vague pattern, but not a wholly purposeful one. She moved to get a slightly better look - and that was when they detected her.

In an instant, the seven 'Egg Shens' launched themselves towards the scantily clad latina. Realising they intended her harm, Aerogirl sent blasts of wind out to stop them, but they dodged with lightning speed. Not only that, but even the ones she did hit did not seem overly perturbed. Their solid construction, and their aerodynamic shape, meant that she could only seem to score glancing blows at best.

Their dizzying light patterns made afterimages, and made it difficult for Maya to track them. She tried to focus on one at a time, using her slightly heightened sense of air currents to help her as well. She focussed hard, waiting for her chance. She fired a highly pressurised blast - and hit one of the Egg Shens dead centre. It shattered into a thousand pieces, which were scattered on the ground below.

But focussing on one Shen had not been the best strategy. For as Aerogirl destroyed one, two more approached her from behind. The latina didn't see them, and as they approached, they started to spool out fibrous, slightly sticky white cords. At the same time, they each looped their cords around one of Maya's wrists, and then before the maiden could react, pulled her arms behind her back.

"No!" Aerogirl screamed, as she felt the Shens ravelling ropes around her slim arms, binding them together all the way from her wrists to her elbows, securing them with unbelievable rapidity and strictness. Even as this was happening, two other Shens seized the opportunity to seize her, and Aerogirl felt one of them spinning dizzyingly quickly around her chest, binding her arms against her back, zipping over her shoulders and pulling rope between her plump breasts, forming a kind of harness. The other attended to her long, brown legs: Maya felt her supple, toned thighs snapping together, as rope was criss crossed down her acres of smooth, bare skin. Her knees were forced against each other, then her calves and her slim ankles, as the yellow and green clad heroine felt herself being bound hand and foot - a damsel in distress, suspended in mid-air.

But she was not suspended for long. As soon as her arms were tied, Maya felt her powers draining away. "Oh no... !" she exclaimed in a breathless whimper, as she began to feel that tingling weakness drawing her abilities out of her, as she lost the favour of her patron spirits. The wind currents holding her up faded, and died, and the defeated heroine began to fall.

"Aaaahhh!!" Maya screamed, as she began plummeting down to the floor. She was about three stories up - and in very serious danger. But as she fell, she felt herself begin to slow. She'd been desperately willing for this, so for a small moment she thought her powers might have returned to her. But no - it was merely that the Shen's were still attached to her, and were using their propulsion systems to slow her fall. The falling heroine hung her head in her defeat as she sank down. When her feet reached the floor, she didn't even try to stand, instead allowing herself to drop straight to her knees.

"Hey look!" came a voice from behind Maya. "An angel's fallen from heaven! I mean, she must be an angel: she can fly, she's oh-so gorgeous...except wait, aren't angels supposed to be powerful?"
"Mmph!" Maya whimpered, as she found a strip of duct tape applied to her mouth. She heard the vicious tearing sound of Ocelot's spool continue, as tape continued to be wrapped around her mouth, sealing her voice almost completely. "Mmmmnnnmmm..." she mewed quietly. "All that planning..." she thought, despondently, "and I still got caught...I'm still completely helpless..." She felt Ocelot's hands on her shoulders, not with any degree of pressure, but just enough for the implication to be clear: "You're mine, now."
"Brave heart, sweetness," the thief said. "You've still got a part to play in all this." She bent down, and took Maya by the hips, lifting her from her knees onto her feet.

"Mmmm-mmmphhh..." Maya mewed, trying to avoid Ocelot's gaze. "Mmph!" she squealed, as she felt her hips and thighs being gripped. "Whhgghmmphh!!" Maya began wriggling, but there was nothing the beautiful, scantily clad maiden could do. Ocelot lifted her up, and slowly draped her over her shoulder.
"Alley-oop, sweetness," Ocelot giggled, feeling her lovely captive's long, supple legs against her scarcely-covered skin. This was one of her favourite parts of her entanglements with Aerogirl, getting to feel her soft, feminine body draped over her shoulder, to appreciate her shapely curves in that uniquely intimate fashion. "Oh, honey, you were just born to be shoulder-candy, weren't you?"
"Mmmm-mmmphhh..." Aerogirl whimpered, her humiliation increasing ever further. "Mph!" she squealed, as she felt a sharp slap against the exposed skin of her round, firm behind.
"Sorry, señorita, I couldn't resist!" Ocelot laughed. She began carrying Aerogirl away, the luscious maiden mewling softly as she was taken. The thief still had plans for the helpless, defeated heroine.

[DrDominator9]

Man, poor Enhancegirl and Aerogirl! They've gone 0 - 2 against Ocelot. I liked the mist take-down working slowly against EG to drain off her energy but I still believe she'd have seen it with her senses. Another question: How did the dextrite get under the drone and if Ocelot had it all the time, why linger to fight the two heroines instead of just booking out of there? Despite that nitpicking, enjoyed the chapter very much.

[SGWriter]

Loved the Supergirl-esque trap for EG in this one, seems she and SG should be careful around lead boxes

[Damselbinder]

"Unnnhhh!!" Sophie groaned, still straining in the tight cords that Ocelot had bound her in. She'd heard Aerogirl's scream, and while she'd made some progress loosening her bonds, she realised just how slow she'd been. Her weakness hadn't helped her, but she'd mostly cleared that fog. She needed to untie herself, and fast. Concentrating, she tried to feel exactly how the mesh of ropes around her was tied: which cord rested over which, where were knots, how tight were they, and so on. She closed her eyes - and spotted a weakness.

Doubling over, she found that the cords over her left hand seemed to loosen slightly. With that, she was able to slide her hand back, reaching one of the metal balls of the bolo. Calculating precisely, she yanked on it. Sure enough, she was right, and the coils around her became much, much looser. From there, it was just a matter of wriggling with sufficient intensity, and after about another minute, Sophie's upper body was completely free. She untied her legs easily, and hopped to her feet. She shook her head.
"I'm okay..." she said to herself. Her binding had shaken her confidence a bit, but untangling herself had taken a great deal of skill - she was sure that she was back to full capacity. She was ready to take Ocelot on again.

She rushed out onto the stairwell, scanning intently for sign of either friend or foe. But she couldn't see either of them. As she concentrated, though, she could smell them. They'd gone into one of the side rooms a floor below her, if she was sensing things correctly. The nimble heroine hopped down, and went after them.

She succeeded - or rather, half succeeded - not a minute and a half later. She found Maya, right enough. But that didn't solve anything.
"Mmmmhhh...mmmhhh..." the curvy damsel moaned gently, bound in white ropes and gagged with duct tape. She moved softly, and slowly, her warm, velvetine skin moist - glistening even. She was lying on her back on a sumptuously soft-looking bed, with a thick, red quilt. Enhancegirl was about to step forward to help her, but she stopped herself.

Maya's lovely legs were not glistening with sweat - it was liquid of quite another kind.
"Unnhh..." Sophie could already feel the effects of the chloroform which Ocelot had drizzled all over her captive's skin. She stepped back out into the hallway, fearful of being defeated just by her proximity to Maya. As for Aerogirl herself, in a groggy, semi-drugged daze, she nonetheless was ashamed that she had not been reduced to being a captive - but to a booby trap.

"Okay, Sophie, think..." Enhancegirl said to herself. There were two apparent possibilities. One: Ocelot hoped for her to stumble in, get knocked out by the fumes, and then she'd be captured at leisure. Two: it was all a ploy - she already had the dexite, and was just delaying Sophie, stopping her from giving chase by making it difficult for her to free Maya.

There was only one way for Enhancegirl to free Maya - and that was not as Enhancegirl. "Downgrade." There was a flash of light, and Sophie's gold dress and mask vanished. They were replaced by a tight, white blouse, short, tartan skirt, and blue kitten heels. Her long legs were covered with white stockings - but those were not the significant changes. Enhancegirl felt her senses dull to fractions of what they had been moments ago, but that was precisely what she'd wanted. She had eliminated her vulnerability to chloroform.

As she crept in, she kept a weather eye out for any sign of trouble, but of course her eyes were not what they had been.
"Nnmmhh...nmmhhh..." Maya mewed, seeing Sophie reverted to her powerless state.
"It's okay," Sophie whispered, "I'll get you outta this." She crept over to the bed.
"Nmmmhhh...nnnmmhhh..." Maya slowly shook her head from side to side. Her eyes, half-closed, seemed unfocussed. She wasn't even looking at Sophie.
"Oh, believe you me, I am gonna flatten her for this," Sophie said.
"Oh, really?"

Sophie didn't quite know what she felt when she heard Ocelot's voice behind her. Fear? Shock? Something...warmer? Suffice to say, she turned around, but without her powers she wasn't fast enough.
"HMMMPHHH!!" Sophie screamed through a soft, thick cloth, as Ocelot clamped it down over her mouth and nose. "HMMMMMMMM-NNMMMPPPHHHH!!" She grabbed Ocelot's arm, trying to pull it away, but the cunning thief, kicked at her heel, causing her to lose balance. Because of that, Ocelot was able to push her down onto the bed, grabbing both of the supple redhead's wrists with one hand, and clamping Sophie's thighs together with her own. "NNNNNMMMPHHH!!" Sophie moaned, feeling herself restrained, feeling the familiar sweet smell begin to take hold of her again, its narcotising fumes already making her svelte, feminine body begin to weaken. "No! No!! Don't knock me out again!"

"Wow, Pippi," Ocelot said, finding Sophie a little more difficult to restrain than she'd thought she'd be, her whole body thrashing and wriggling. "You've got that whole - urghh - girl detective thing going on! I think I'm - agh - getting a new fetish!" She expected Sophie to be just as easy to knock out as when they'd first met, where barely a whiff of knockout gas had made her helpless. She was putting up much more of a fight. But it didn't take Ocelot long to connect the dots.

"So, you can turn your powers off and on, huh? Cute trick..." She could feel Sophie's supple, stocking clad legs rubbing against the insides of her thighs, and it was by no means an unpleasant sensation. "Except now, without your super senses, you're about as helpless as the señorita over there."
"Mmmmphhh! Mmmmnn..." Sophie could feel the cloud descending again, taking away not just her strength, but her thoughts, as though soft hands were drawing her deep underwater. "Unnhh...getting weak..." She felt hot, and moist, as she became more lissome, more pliable. She looked up at her slinky captor, saw her poise and strength, feeling girlish and impotent by comparison. It began to feel right, somehow, that she be wriggling helplessly beneath such a powerful beauty. "No...NO!" Sophie fought through the fog, the soft warmth of her own body, and of Ocelot's. She would not let herself be cowed. "MMMPHHH!!" With heroic effort, she got her legs free from Ocelot's, and thrust both knees squarely into the thief's stomach.

"Unngghhhh!!" Ocelot groaned, seriously winded. Even weakened, Sophie was able to push her off. She fell back, doubled over in pain.
"Unnhhh...hhhh..." Sophie struggled to get back to her feet. She was light headed, and dizzy. She wasn't even quite sure what it was she wanted to do now that she was up. "Have to...get..." She wasn't sure whether the sentence should have ended with 'away', 'the dexite' or even 'Maya out of here.' She shook her head, trying to shrug off the effects, but it wasn't working. She stood, stranded in the centre of the room, too disoriented to capitalise on the glimmer of opportunity she'd given herself. The room swam, her knees trembled, and the lovely young woman felt as if she was about to faint. "Have to stay focussed..." she said to herself, trying again to centre herself, and meeting with a little more success this time.

But even that didn't help her. As she was trying to recover from what Ocelot had done to her, likewise Ocelot was trying to restore herself from Sophie's attack. Only it was a lot easier for her. She got back to her feet, breathing hard, but otherwise normally again. She looked up,and saw Sophie standing in front of her, but seemingly unaware of her presence. She looked her up and down - how tight her blouse was against her chest, how charming her lightly freckled face was, how long and caressable her legs looked, how lovely her sparkling green eyes were. And now, looking like this, so weak and dazed, and in that awfully cute outfit, Ocelot couldn't believe Enhancegirl had given her so much trouble.
"I think it's time to show her how it's really supposed to go down when a cute redhead in a mini-skirt takes me on."

"Wh-?" Sophie was startled by Ocelot taking hold of her shoulders. She'd almost forgotten the thief was there. She looked straight into Ocelot's cunning, dark-brown eyes.
"Okay," the thief said. "You've had your little act of rebellion. Now I think I'd better show you your place, Pippi."
"Y...you - ah!" Sophie found herself spun around, and shoved against a wall. "Aah! MMMPHHH!!" Once again, Sophie felt the soft, damp, sweet-smelling cloth pressed down over her nose and mouth. "MMMPHHH!! Mmmmhhhh..." Immediately she could feel her weakness increasing ever further. She reached up to try to pull the cloth away, but both her arms were now no match for even one of Ocelot's.

The thief pushed herself right against the gorgeous, whimpering redhead. She slipped one stocking-clad leg between both of Sophie's, the two maidens' hips pressing tightly against each other. Sophie could feel her own pert breasts rubbing against Ocelot's every time she took a heavy, slow breath.
"Mmmmphhh...mmmmhhhnnn..." she moaned, feeling her captor's lovely body rubbing so closely against hers. A crushing wave of sensuality crashed into her with every breath, and as she grew ever closer to losing consciousness completely, her body began undulating softly. "Wh...why...does it feel...like this?"

"Feel that, Pippi?" Ocelot whispered breathily. "That's you falling under my spell. It's a sweet kind of softness, isn't it?" she said, using her free hand to fondle Sophie's legs.
"Mmmhh...mmmhhh..." Sophie moaned, as her arms fell to her sides, devoid of any strength. She felt Ocelot's hand gently squeezing her thighs, felt her own legs - as they shifted weakly - rubbing against Ocelot's. "She's...so smooth..." Sophie thought sleepily, as their hips continued to grind together, as they 'fought' against each other. Ocelot slipped her hand under Sophie's skirt, and started feeling up her tight, round ass. "Mmmhhh..." Sophie whimpered gently, her cheeks almost as red as her hair. She felt humiliated - thrillingly humiliated.

As the chloroform made her ever softer and more pliable, she began to tingle all over; she felt as sensitive to being touched as she was with her powers, as if the chloroform, in suppressing her consciousness and strength, was allowing something else to come to the fore, something fragile, feminine and sensuously vulnerable.
"Mmmhhh..." she sighed, as she felt her body losing almost all ability to move. "What's...she doing to me? I've never...oohh..."

Ocelot saw her helpless little mouse growing all the more soft and defenceless. As she pressed herself against the drugged damsel again and again, she felt the heat from the redhead's body, as Sophie felt the heat from hers. She lifted her knee slightly, feeling how damp and slick Sophie's long legs were becoming, even through her white stockings.

The two intertwined beauties stared into each other's eyes: Ocelot's focussed and wide, Sophie's half open and meekly languorous in expression. Ocelot could feel Sophie was fading, and Sophie herself could feel it too. "So...so warm..." Sophie thought, as she felt Ocelot's legs, her full bosom, her soft, expertly lascivious hands. An understanding passed between the two of them, through their bodies and through their eyes.

"Give in," Ocelot breathed, leaning in close, and whispering right in Sophie's ear: "give into it."
"Mmmhhh-hhhmmmphhh..." Sophie whimpered obediently, already no longer really conscious, but somewhere between a dream and a fantasy. She felt her eyes begin to settle, felt her weakly shuffling limbs becoming completely still, felt the undulations of her helpless form begin to die down as she became limp and utterly powerless in Ocelot's grip. "Mmmphhh...mmmhhh..." the heroine sighed, as she felt Ocelot's knee lift a little higher between her legs.

"Mmmhhh...." She was going over the edge. Her body was powerless to stop what was happening, no resistance left whatsoever. Her eyelids fluttered gently, her breasts rising and falling more and more slowly. "Mmm...mhhh - mmmph?!" Just before Sophie passed out, Ocelot saw her eyes opening again. "Mmh! Mmmmhh!" Her supple body trembled slightly, her long, moist legs shivering. "Mmmm-mmmhhh!!" Sophie whimpered. "Mh! Mh! MMH!" Her eyes went wide, she shivered. "MMMHHHH!!" she moaned through the cloth - and then gave in. "Mmmmmmmmmhhhhhhhhh..." she sighed, a long slow, kittenish sigh as her wet green eyes fell completely shut. Ocelot, seeing her victory, took the cloth away. Sophie, defeated and utterly spent, was allowed to fall slowly against her captor's body. Her head came to rest on Ocelot's shoulder, her nose gently nuzzling her captor's neck.

Ocelot held Sophie against her for a few moments, feeling every curve, feeling the heat of her body. Eventually, though, she slowly ran her hands back down to Sophie's legs, slipping them beneath her thighs. She dropped the drugged cloth on the ground, before lifting the gently sighing maiden into her arms. Sophie's head fell back as she was lifted up, exposing her slender neck, her heaving bosom. The defeated, overwhelmed superheroine was totally passive as she was slowly carried towards the bed where Maya lay.

Ocelot took her time, enjoying the feeling of her supple captive's weight in her arms, the feeling of her legs in her hands, the way her red hair trailed back. The slender, innocent maiden had been totally overcome by the sensual thief, and now lay like a bride in her arms, thrillingly, deliciously vulnerable. She was laid down, gradually, onto the bed, next to the distraught Maya, who had watched Sophie be ambushed, subdued and recaptured.

But there was more to it than that, and Maya was not, Ocelot knew full well, a part of that. She looked over the sleeping maiden, she herself breathing hard, her limbs moist with sweat. She ran her fingers gently over Sophie's damp legs, up her chest, her neck. She stroked the lovely redhead's cheek, smiling, half-wickedly.
"Well now," she said, "isn't that turn up for the books? I never thought you'd - MMMPHHH??!!"

It hit her like a semi-truck. Not the leather-gloved hand that clamped the cloth she'd discarded. Not the strong arm which wrapped around her chest, pinning her arms. No - it was the realisation that she had lingered for far too long - she'd been bewitched by the charms of her two captives, and had forgotten what she had come here to do.
"MMMMMPHHHH!!" Ocelot screamed, thrashing and wriggling. But it did no good. Her new enemy completely had the drop on her. "I...I messed up..."

"Really, Ocelot," the woman holding her said, "did you really think that this would work?"
"Hmmmbbhhhhmmhhhmmphh..." Ocelot moaned incoherently. She tried to reach for her belt, but a new pair of hands reached in and unhooked it, pulling it away from her. "Nnnnmpphhh..."
"You stupid little traitor," the owner of these hands said. Ocelot found herself turned around, now facing the woman chloroforming her. She recognised the face at once. "Lynx..." It was a hard, though certainly attractive face, and it looked at Ocelot with nothing but contempt. "They found me!"

"While you were busy amusing yourself with these costumed freaks," said the one who'd taken her belt, "we've been securing that piece of dexite."
"Nmmmphh..." Ocelot mewed, her slinky body getting even weaker. She tried to kick at Lynx, but she was already too feeble to hurt her. "No...no, I'm getting weak! This...can't...happen to...me..." Already her dark brown eyes were fluttering.
"Puma, Bobcat," the woman holding Ocelot's belt ordered, "tie the little traitor up." Two more women came forward, dressed in the same tight, leather catsuits that all of the squad wore. They grabbed Ocelot's arms and legs respectively. They were roughly folded behind her back, and her long legs forced together.

"Mmmmhhh..." Ocelot mewed, her head already drooping, her thrashes and struggles already reduced to helpless shuffles. She felt not the bite of rope around her limbs, but chains, about an inch across, being lashed around her arms, binding them into a strict box-tie, before being wrapped around and around her forearms, until they vanished beneath the metal binding them. Chains were wrapped around her chest, too, above and below her firm breasts, keeping her arms completely secured. "No! No! I can't let them! I...I can't...be in his cage again...I...won't!"

As for her legs, much in the same way that her Egg Shens had done to Maya, chains were criss-crossed down her thighs, past her knees and around her calves, binding them tightly into one useless limb, but keeping as much of her thinly covered skin on view as possible.
"Mmmhhh...nnmmmhhh..." Ocelot whimpered, barely able even to think now. She felt the sting of humiliation as her gorgeous, shapely figure became soft and lissome, far too weak to even rattle the chains binding her, let alone escape them.

"You always were soft, Ocelot," Lynx said. "Now you're going to pay for it." She grabbed the back of Ocelot's head, and pushed her ever more tightly into the cloth.
"Mmmphhh...mmphh..." the thief whimpered, her eyes beginning to roll sleepily back into her head. "No...I'm...too smart for this...too...too skilled..." But despite her protests, reality wasn't budging. The chained up damsel couldn't hold on any longer, and with a despairing sigh, she passed out.

As Lynx roughly lugged the defeated thief over her shoulder, Bocat and Puma were looking at the other two helpless maidens that chance had dropped into their laps.
"Tigress," Puma - a short, perky-looking blonde - said, "what about the capes?"
"No witnesses," their leader said. "We take them too."

"Mmmphh?!" Maya squealed through her gag. She'd been trying to keep quiet, hoping that this was lucky chance that had defeated Ocelot for them, and not yet more misfortune for the unlucky damsel. She shook her head, pleadingly. "Nmmmhh, nmmmphhh!"
"Hey, I know this one," Bobcat said. She was only a little taller than Puma, with ebony-dark skin, and a small scar under her right eye. "This is Aerogirl! You know, the cape whose weakness is getting tied up?" Maya blushed in embarrassment.
"What about the other one?" Puma said. "She just looks like a normal girl - and she hasn't seen our faces or anything, so -"
"Her too," Tigress commanded. "I don't want Master Hosenfluss thinking we've gone soft."
"No, of course not," Puma said, immediately brought into line.

She and Bobcat set about doing to Sophie's unconscious form what they'd done to Ocelot. They lifted her chest up so that she was sitting, Puma holding her arms behind her while Bobcat began binding them, though this time they used duct tape instead, hot pink against Sophie's pale arms. The helpless maiden offered not even the slightest protest as she was taped up - Ocelot had made sure of that.

They bound Sophie's arms to her back, completely covering her stomach and forearms in tape, so that her arms were doubly bound, both to her back and to each other. They attended to her legs, next, both villains delighting in feeling her long, smooth, limbs. Just before they bound them, Bobcat giggled, and whispered something to Puma. They both giggled. Removing her shoes, they peeled Sophie's stockings from her legs, before neatly replacing her shoes. The now bare-legged damsel's mouth was opened, and one of her stockings, rolled into a tight ball, was placed inside. Her mouth was closed, and the other stocking pulled tightly over her lips, and tied in place, Sophie's own hosiery used to gag her.

Going back to Sophie's legs, they wrapped them in tape, layer after layer around her thighs and around her ankles, the tape sticking easily to her moist skin. As they did this, Lynx took Maya, grabbing her by the ankles and hauling her over.
"Mmm-nnnmphhh!" Maya protested, as her bare legs were seized, before she was lifted up to her feet, held tightly in place by one shoulder.
"Goodnight," Lynx said.
"Whmph? MPH!" Maya felt herself struck by a frighteningly fast chop, just above her left clavicle. "Mmmm! Mmm..." The effect was instant. Her ochre eyes went wide, then fluttered shut immediately, the rapidity and brutality of her knockout a stark contrast to the gentle, soft maiden on whom it was inflicted. Her whole body went limp. She began falling forward, and Lynx simply knelt down to make sure she flopped down over her shoulder, then stood up with Maya along for the ride.

Sophie, for her part, was taken by Bobcat. She touched her new captive softly, almost caringly. But like the others, soon Sophie was slung helplessly over the shoulder of one of her captors. She was lifted by her newely-bared legs and just held up, before gravity did the rest of the work, and she fell forward onto Bobcat's shoulder, long fingers tracing the bare skin of her supple thighs.

The helpless, unconscious trio were carried outside to an unmarked black van. The hold was opened, and the three were roughly tossed in, their beautiful bodies, their lissome legs, becoming entangled in the pile of helpless, defeated young women.
"This is what you've become, Ocelot," Tigress said, looking over the bound, knocked-out maidens. "Just as soft and easily caught as a pretty little cape-ette. I hope it was worth betraying us for." Lynx and Puma hopped inside to keep guard, while Tigress and Bobcat got in the front, Bobcat taking the wheel.
"Where to, Tigress?"
"Where to?" the tall, deathly pale young woman replied. "To the lake, of course. Let's take these girls for a swim."


"Mmmhhh...mmhhh..." Sophie mewed, as she began to come to. "Wh...where?" She felt something shaking underneath her, and looked around to get her bearings. "A van?" She looked down at herself. "And I'm taped up..." She shifted a little, feeling the tape creak slightly as she wriggled around, but she could feel that the bonds were too tight to break or wriggle out of. "Has...Ocelot kidnapped me?" A blush touched her cheek. "And...she took off my stockings? Why would -?" Only then did she realise what that feeling over her mouth was, that damp smoothness against her lips. She could taste her own perfume, mixed with a little of her own sweat. She realised a moment later that she could taste Ocelot as well, and that scent triggered a flood of memories of how the thief had captured her - and her cheeks went bright scarlet.

"Mmmhhh..." Sophie turned her head to see Ocelot next to her, likewise bound and gagged. The two looked plaintively into each other's eyes, drinking in the other's helplessness.
"You didn't have to take her too!" Sophie thought. She writhed a little, and to her surprise felt someone on the other side of her - their soft, stocking covered legs slowly stroking her own, along with the touch of cold metal against her skin. Sophie turned her head to the other side - and saw Ocelot.

"Whhhmmphh?!" Sophie was startled into full wakefulness.
"Mmmmmm! HHHMMMPPHHH!!" Ocelot moaned desperately, thrusting her beautiful chest out, shaking her slinky body. She saw that Sophie had seen her captive state, and there was a look of deep embarrassment.
"Mmmmnnmphhh..." Sophie mewed back. "Wh...what the hell is going on? If she's tied up too, then who -?"

It was then that she saw Puma and Lynx.
"Awake, are we girls?" Lynx said. "Good."
"I hope you know," Puma added, "that it's the fault of that one -" (here she pointed at Ocelot) "-that you heroes are in this situation."
"Whhh?" Maya squeaked.
"What you're looking at right now," Lynx said, "is half of the elite espionage squad Felicis. When Master Hosenfluss really needs something done, he calls us in."
"We would have said 'two fifths' of the squad," Puma said, "except that Ocelot decided to strike out on her own. Rebel against the master."
"Rhhbbhhlll? Hhhsss chhhmmpllhhhttlhhh hnnssnnn!!" Ocelot screamed through her gag. She thrashed and thrashed, distraught by her inability to free herself.
"Mhh..." Maya looked at her. For so long she'd thought of Ocelot as not only invincible, but completely confident, secure, and always with some kind of plan to win. But looking at her now, for all that she resented her - perhaps as close to hating her that someone as gentle as Maya could get - she felt a pang of sympathy. Ocelot's name seemed all the more appropriate. She was like a beautiful wild animal - fierce, and untamed - to muzzle her, to chain her was the cruellest thing that one could possibly have done to someone like that. Maya also realised that these people knew that. They were doing to Ocelot out of bitter malice what Ocelot had done to Maya out of caprice.

The van stopped. Lynx threw the doors open, while Puma grabbed Ocelot, dragging her by her bare, light-brown legs, before hauling her up and over her shoulder, roughly squeezing her supple thighs, and roughly manhandling her tight behind. She writhed, and moaned, but there was nothing she could do. She was helpless; enchained.

"Get up," Lynx said to the two bound heroines. The two looked at each other, as if to say: doesn't she see we're tied up? "Oh, that's right," the villain said. "You can't, can you?" She leant down, and grabbed both damsels by their collars.
"Mmmphhh!" Sophie complained as she was hauled up. Maya kept silent, cowed into submission. To the girls' surprise, Lynx bent down, and seized both captives by their waists.
"Hrrk!" she groaned, before hoisting them both up at the same time.
"Mmmmphhh!!" the two maidens whimpered in unison. The shock and humiliation was almost too much to bear - they were superheroines, possessed of more power than most people would ever being to know; and yet, they'd been reduced to such a state that one strong woman could easily sling both of them over her shoulder at the same time.

Carried outside, Sophie struggled, her long legs kicking and wriggling as the two maidens were lugged around, but it accomplished nothing. The lissome damsels were brought round the van, and their abductor continued to walk with them into the darkness.
"Where are we?" Sophie thought. "What the hell are they going to do to us?!" It was only when she heard the gentle lapping of water that she realised. "Oh my god!" she thought. "They're...going to drown us!"

Sure enough, the two wriggling heroines were carried onto a long pier. At the end, waiting for them, were the other three Felicis members, and Ocelot, still writhing and moaning.
"Do the redhead first," Tigress ordered. Lynx pushed Sophie off her shoulder, the redhead landing hard on her back. But she didn't stay long. Hauled to her feet, she was dragged by the arms to the end of the pier. "Nmmmphh!" she whimpered. "Nnmmhhh! Yhh nnmgghhmmphh!"

They ignored her protests. One of them buckled a clamp to her ankles. Sophie saw with horror that it was connected to a small, but heavy steel ball on a chain. They dragged her even closer to the edge.
"NNMMPHHH!!" she screamed - before they shoved her off the edge.

"NNNNNNMMMPHHHH!!! NNmmmm-gglllhhbbhhhhmmhphh!" With the weight attached to her, Sophie sank like a stone, pulled instantly into the dark, cold waters. She thrashed, and wriggled, but her lovely body, now soaked with water, couldn't break her bonds. "No...no...it can't end like this!" Sophie thought. Already her lungs were straining desperately, trying to force her to take a breath, even though she knew this would doom her. "Mmgghhlllbbhhhmphhh..." She continued wriggling, but by this point she knew it was almost pointless.

The steel ball hit the lake bed hard. Sophie didn't follow it all the way, but was now tethered to it. She bobbed up and down, her hair rising around her like a halo. She could feel the dreadful pressure in her chest - and couldn't hold it in any longer. She breathed out the last air she had left, and she could feel her lungs beginning to fill with water.
"I can't...believe...this is it..." she thought, as her world started to grow dark. "There's...so...much...I...never...I...Mar..."

"SSHHHPHHHHHHH!!" Maya screamed, eyes wet with tears as she saw Sophie go plummeting down into the depths.
"The cape next." The same terrible process occurred with Maya. Her slender ankles were clamped together as well, the beautiful latina brought to the edge, and then unceremoniously hurled off. "NNMMMPPHHH!! Nnnmphhh! Gllhhbbhhmmbhhmm...ghghlbhmm..." She whimpered fearfully as she sank down as well.

She would never have been able to find Sophie in the dark waters, but she happened to drop very close to her. "Gllhhbhhmm..." She was unconscious - Maya hoped she was unconscious.
"This is all my fault," the young beauty thought. "If I wasn't so weak...if I'd been stronger...you wouldn't...this...wouldn't have..." Maya was, theoretically at least, a Catholic, but she didn't really pray. She prayed now - but not to her God. "Spirits...my p-patrons...my lords...I know you don't grant your favour to the weak, the chained - but please - don't you give me power to help people?" She felt no answer. "Why? Why does she have to die just...because...uhh..." She was starting to give in as well. "Just...because you chose wrong? Th...that's not my fault! If - if you chose a poor champion...then that's YOUR fault! It's not mine...and it's not Sophie's!"

There was an awful silence. Maya received no answer.
"They don't care..." But just as the latina was about to give into the inky blackness, she felt a swell of water behind her. She turned her head - and there was nothing. She gave one last shuffle, more of a twitch, really...and she felt her bonds come loose. Her spirits hadn't listened. Others had.

"NNNMPPHHH!!" Ocelot screamed, as her former allies began to drag her to the edge as well.
"You stupid, stupid little bitch," Tigress hissed, spitting in Ocelot's face. "Did you think this wouldn't happen? Did you think we wouldn't find you? You didn't even have the sense to just run away - you had to try to fight the Master! Well, you've lost. And now you're going to suffer the consequences." Just to add insult to injury, she slapped Ocelot in the face.

"Mmmghhrrmmphhh!!" Fear now giving way to fury, Ocelot thrust herself forward, and headbutted Tigress right in the face, breaking her nose with a sickening crunch.
"AAAGHHHHH!!" she cried out, stumbling back, and almost falling in herself. "Throw her in!!" she screamed. Lynx and Puma pulled her back - but they never got to throwing her in.

There was something happening to the lake. The water was swirling, the pace increasing. The still lake was now churning, frothing, and it didn't seem to be stopping. On the contrary, the swirl was increasing in intensity.
"What the hell is going on?" Bobcat asked, vocalising the others' feelings completely.

The swirl was now a full blown whirlpool, and it was getting faster. It spun with such speed that jets of water were being thrown out of it at random intervals.
"Ugh!" Puma was hit by one of these jets, and knocked flat. Just as it seemed that the entire lake would be thrown out by the whirlpool, something burst out of its centre. A woman - but she was not just a woman. Her eyes glowed with fierce fury, the very wind obeyed her commands, marshalling the waters for her. From her hands, tornadoes, from her breath, hurricanes. This was not just a woman. This was not even just a superheroine. This was a goddess.

"Do something!" Tigress shrieked. But what was there to do? The winds forced the group apart, one blast hurling Puma against a tree and knocking her completely unconscious - and breaking three of her ribs. A tendril of wind grabbed Bobcat by the leg, and smashed her against the ground so hard she left a small crater. As for Tigress, she was assailed from both sides by counterspinning wind currents of deadly speed. When both hit her, she was knocked from one to the other almost too fast for the eye to see. She groaned, and collapse. She was to walk again, but it was also to take about six months of recovery.

"Th...this is Aerogirl?!" Ocelot gaped. "This is the chica I've taken down about a hundred times? How the hell am I not dead?!" With the defeat of Felicis, the winds began slowly to die back down. Aerogirl, eyes still ablaze, landed on the pier, right next to where Ocelot knelt, wrapped in chains. Ocelot looked up at her, almost more scared now. In the wind-master's arms, lay the unconscious - but breathing - body of Sophie Scott.
"She's alive!" Ocelot was surprised at just how relieved she was to know this.

Maya laid Sophie down gently. As she did this, the glow in her eyes began to fade. She suddenly got a strange look in here eyes.
"Wh...what just happened?" She looked around, seeing the flattened trees, the still churning lake, the battered bodies of the Felicis agents, and Ocelot looking up at her, terrified. "Did...I do this?" Maya knew she had a lot of power at her disposal - but she had never done anything like this before. "H-how...did I...?" She stared down at her hands. "What...am I?"


"Unnhh..." Sophie mewed, beginning to come to. "M...Ma..." she whimpered, half-conscious, as her eyelids fluttered open. She sat up slowly, rubbing her head. "How did I get here?" She looked around, saw Maya standing over her. Saw Ocelot standing nearby, rubbing her wrists, a pile of chains at her feet.
"Aerogirl," she murmured quietly, not wanting to use her real name around Ocelot. "What happened?"
"I..." Aerogirl didn't seem able to answer.
"She saved you," Ocelot said. "She saved all three of us."
"What? How?" Answer came there none.

Sophie tried to stand, but still felt a little weak. With a little help from Maya, she managed to get onto her feet. She looked into her gentle new friend's eyes - and she embraced her tightly.
"Thank you...thank you so much!" She held her by the shoulders, staring intently into her eyes. "I thought I was gonna die. I was gonna die! You saved my life. I literally owe you my life!" She hugged her tighter than she'd hugged anyone in her life, her dripping wet body stealing the warmth from Maya's.

As Sophie finally released Maya, she realised that she'd lost track of Ocelot. She looked around, and saw her finally, pulling something from the wreck of the van. It was the dexite.
"Oh, come on!" Sophie shouted. "Are you freaking serious?! You want to make us fight you again?! You don't have any of those damned gadgets, so I'll happily kick your ass my -"
"I don't want it for myself," Ocelot said. She walked back over to the pier. "I just...I just didn't want Hosenfluss to get it. I don't want that motherfucker to get anything." She stood at the edge of the pier. "I did my research on this stuff. It's volatile, doesn't seem to obey normal physical properties, can kill you if it doesn't give you superpowers..." She dropped it over the edge. "And it dissolves in water."

She walked back to the pair of heroines.
"Aerogirl," she said. "Maya. I'm promising you now - if you're ever the one trying to stop me on a job..." She breathed in. This was clearly difficult for her to say. "I'll back off. Don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna let you catch me, and if you really try to make it impossible for me to leave, I'll fight you. But otherwise...I won't tangle with you. I..." Again, it seemed difficult. "I owe you that much." She looked at Sophie now. "As for you, Pippi Longstockings? All bets are off." She winked, and turned on her heel, vanishing into the dusk.

"How come she gets to make the cool exit?" Sophie huffed. She'd had a feeling that she wanted to say something more to the beautiful thief, but she couldn't think what. All she knew was that when she looked at her, her legs still tingled.

"We...did it," Maya said. It was as if she was trying to convince herself. "We...I succeeded!"
"You're damned right," Sophie said. It had certainly been a helter-skelter turn of events, one which she didn't quite understand yet - in many ways. "But listen to me, Maya...there are gonna be defeats." The latina looked at her quizzically. "You're gonna lose again. So will I. We'll win too, but the defeats kinda kick your ass more than the victories...do...whatever the antonym of kicking your ass is."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying, Maya," Sophie said, smiling warmly, "even if you fail literally every single time you go on a mission from now on - you won't, but just listen! - even if everyone says you're not strong, or you shouldn't be in the hero game, whatever...I just want you to remember something."
"What, Sophie?"
"You're always gonna be my hero."

[DrDominator9]

Nicely done...again.

[SGWriter]

Indeed awesome capture there of Sophie in her secret ID! Also enjoyed Aerogirl's awesome escape, great work

[Damselbinder]

"Mmmm..." Enhancegirl sighed. She was standing atop one of the tallest structures in her part of Seacouver, the Zonzo building. To be precise, she was standing on top of a helipad, allowing the wind to blow through her hair. Sometimes she liked to do this to unwind: she would go somewhere high up, switch on her powers and just...feel. Enjoy the breadth of her abilities, the way she could almost feel each individual skin cell being stroked by the chill breeze as it passed her.

She sat down, letting her bare legs hang off the side of the helipad. She was glad to have this space for herself, especially after the events of the past few days. She'd been captured, drugged into unconsciousness more than once - and then there had been her encounter with Ocelot. She remembered the feeling of the thief's hands on her skin, caressing and squeezing her tender body as Sophie had gone weak and soft in her grasp.
"Mmm..." Sophie hummed quietly to herself. She crossed her legs tightly.

Yet there was still so much unresolved. The Felicis members, some sort of all-female hit squad for Hosenfluss, had said that Ocelot used to work with them. Yet she seemed to hate them - there was a story there, to be sure. And what about Maya? How had she accessed that level of power? And why did it seem to terrify her so much? Sophie didn't even know exactly what she'd done - she'd been passed out at the time.

"Ah, whatever," she said. As far as Sophie was concerned, not every mystery was one that desperately needed to be solved. Plus, she had other things to worry about. There were whispers in the caped-crusader circles that something big was about to go down. Sophie normally didn't have too much interaction with the 'higher-tier' heroes, but even she'd heard the rumours - that the Supremacist had been seen, that some of his old allies had been crawling out of the woodwork. If he came back to Seacouver - even if he came back to California - Enhancegirl would feel it one way or the other.

It was as she was trying to recall to herself exactly what the Supremacist's powers actually were, when she became aware of something. She could smell someone was nearby, a woman, probably in her mid-twenties, who was -
The hairs on the back of Sophie's neck stood up. She recognised this particular scent.
"Ocelot!" She turned around, but she wasn't on the helipad. She stood up, and began scanning for her. Her heart was racing - she found herself more than a little excited. Few things could hide from Enhancegirl, and the redhead quickly found her target.

The thief was standing on a small platform, flattened against a wall, so that the overhang of the helipad was on top of her. Sophie grinned. Presumably Ocelot knew Sophie was there, but that didn't mean that she could see her. The redhead decided that, this time, she would get the drop on her. She ran to the edge of the helipad, and gracefully flipped off the edge.

It was at the very moment that Sophie jumped off that she sensed them. Two drones, hovering about twenty metres away from her on either side of the helipad. She hadn't noticed them before because she simply hadn't been looking. She only noticed them now because of what they'd done. Namely: they had fired two darts straight towards the lithe maiden.

"Oh shit!" she exclaimed. Time seemed to slow down - she realised that Ocelot had been perfectly aware of her presence, and had waited for her to do something like this - whether she could sense the darts or not, she couldn't fly. She was travelling with a certain trajectory, and there was nothing she could do about that.

But the thief had, seemingly, underestimated her. Enhancegirl, in a split second, worked out exactly where on her body the darts would hit. In response, she twisted herself in mid-air, arching her back, and bending her legs back. As it was, both darts missed her body completely.

Unfortunately, they didn't need to hit her. As soon as they got within ten centimetres of her, both darts burst, and scattered a fine, yellow dust all over the gold-clad heroine.
"Ahh! Ahh...unnnhhh..." Sophie felt it as soon as she took a breath. The dust was a soporific dust - and the sensitive beauty was all too vulnerable to its effects. She felt it even as she fell - it was not a great distance at all, but her powerful senses came with an increased ability to process them, and she felt everything that was happening to her in slow motion. She felt her hands, balled into fists, relax open. She felt her slender arms going numb, felt her long legs becoming floppy and motionless.

"N...no...getting...so weak...unhh..." Sophie thought, as her perfectly calculated posture deteriorated into helpless disorder. She tried to brush some of the dust off herself, but it clung to her long gloves and dress too well. She could barely even move her arms. She tumbled down inexorably, like a wounded falcon, all strength taken, beautiful and vulnerable in equal measure. "She...got me...so...unhh...easily..."

By the time she reached the ground, she was barely conscious at all, her mind groggy and confused.
"Unhh..." she moaned softly as she fell into the waiting arms of the lovely thief who'd caught her once again.
"Hey, good lookin'." came a smooth, luxuriant voice. "I was going to say 'thanks from dropping by' - but is that too easy?"
"Nnnhh..." Sophie mewed, wriggling a little in Sophie's arms, her dangling legs kicking feebly, her arms batting pathetically at Ocelot's chest. "L...let me...go..."
"Can't do that, Pippi," Ocelot says. "Not until you've heard my proposition." She let go of Sophie's legs, allowing her feet to drop to the floor, holding her in place by her shoulders. Sophie's legs shuffled a little, but they were too drained of strength for the girl actually to be described as standing.

Weakened and seized, Sophie looked up into Ocelot's dark-brown eyes. They peered back, as if meeting a challenge that she was not nearly strong enough to make.
"O...Ocelot...I - uhh..." Sophie said, but she was silenced by a soft finger on her softer lips.
"Don't talk," Ocelot said. "There's only one thing you need to do right now." She pointed the wrist of her free hand at Sophie's face. Something clicked, and a fine, white mist sprayed out, straight into Enhancegirl's pretty face. "Sleeeep..."

"Ohhh....oooohhh..." Enhancegirl sighed, as the second drug was forced upon her. Already weak, she didn't stand the slightest chance. "I'm...I'm...uuunhhh..." Her thoughts slowed to a halt. She whimpered quietly, her body now completely still. She felt Ocelot's hands on her bare legs, and her last shred of resistance crumbled. The damsel swooned, her head falling back as her green eyes fell shut. She gave one, long sigh, and then obeyed Ocelot's command.

"Good girl," Ocelot said, feeling her captive pass out in her arms. She was getting rather familiar with how Sophie's legs felt, and she slid her fingers down over her smooth, white skin. She reached her knees, then lifted the maiden into her arms again. Her fainted bride whimpered quietly in her sleep, but without a real implication of protest.
"C'mon Pippi," Ocelot said, "let's get you somewhere a little more comfortable."


"Unnhhh...oohh..." Enhancegirl mewed, as she started to awaken. Her eyes fluttered once or twice, before her vision returned to her. She lay on her back, staring straight up. She felt a strange stillness and passivity - normally upon waking up from being drugged, she would be anxiously trying to ascertain her status and location - but this time she just lay there.

Still, the question arose - where was she? Nowhere she knew, from the smell. She could tell that she was lying on top of a soft rug, apparently in the middle of a living room. She tried to get up and look around, but she couldn't. She couldn't lift her arms, or her legs. She couldn't even raise her head.
"Wh...what?" Now Sophie was anxious. She first thought that she was bound, or strapped down - but she wasn't. Her powers were still active, and she could feel that she wasn't tied up.

"Morning, gorgeous." A shiver ran up Sophie's spine when she heard Ocelot's voice. "Don't panic: you're paralysed - temporarily. You'll be back on your feet in a couple' hours."
"Y...you...paralysed me?" Sophie could still speak, but her lips felt strange. Ocelot walked into view, and Sophie was suddenly aware of her position. She was in the presence of, at the least, a cunning and fiendish criminal, whose priorities and desires seemed to shift in the breeze. She was totally paralysed, her entire body completely and utterly helpless before anything the thief might do. To top it all off, she was in this woman's power - and in a tight, extremely revealing dress.

"Didn't want you wriggling away on me, Pippi," the thief said. "Not until you've heard what I have to say."
"Y...you could have just...asked to...talk to me..." Enhancegirl said. "You didn't...have to kidnap me." Her cheeks reddened slightly on the penultimate word of the sentence.
"I know I didn't have to." She crouched down, and lightly touched Sophie's calf with her fingers. "But if I only did the things I had to, I'd probably be a good little housewife for some yeshiva student or something, and I wouldn't be having a nice chat with a pretty young redhead, now would I?"
"Just...say what you gotta say..." Sophie replied. She was feeling a little less groggy and sleepy, but she still couldn't move a muscle.

"Well, the thing is, Pippi," the thief said, sitting in a nearby chair and folding her long, stocking-clad legs one over the other, "you might be lying there as weak as a kitten now...but you've got some pretty good moves. Plus, those super senses? Well, with a little training, you could probably be a pretty good thief."
"So...what?"
"So what?" Ocelot cocked an eyebrow. "Isn't it obvious? I want you to be my partner." She grinned. "In crime, that is."
"Wh...what?" Sophie looked at her, astonished. She seemed serious. "You...want me to team up with you?"
"That's right, sweet thing. Whaddya say?" To Ocelot's frustration, Sophie opened her mouth to speak - and laughed instead.
"Are you...kidding me?" Sophie found it hard to smile in her state of helplessness, but she managed it at Ocelot's suggestion. "No, I don't want to...rob people for a living..."

Ocelot gave her a long look.
"I don't give this offer to many people, Pippi. Think long and hard about your answer." She glared at the redhead, with intense eyes.
"I...don't really need to...think about it..." Sophie said. "Doesn't my...job...kinda suggest that I'm not the criminal type?"
"So you're on the side of the angels are you?" Ocelot replied. "Totally selfless, huh?"
"I like...helping people," Sophie said. "I do it because I like it, sure...but what I like is helping people." She looked Ocelot straight in the eye. "The answer is no."

Ocelot stood up, and went over to Sophie with two strides. She crouched down beside her again.
"The people of this city love Enhancegirl. I know that - and I bet you get off on it." She had something in her hand, and she put it on Sophie's chest - a newspaper. "But you know what a knife-edge you're on, right?" She lifted Sophie's head, holding her by the back of the neck.
"Ah!" Sophie gasped at this domineering gesture. But her eyes came to rest on the newspaper, and she saw what Ocelot had intended her to see: it was the cover of the L.A. Times, from the day after her first encounter with Archna, Stellar, and her hated enemy Cybelle.

'Stellar Kidnapped & Enhancegirl Defeated: Golden Girl No Match For Villainous Cybelle'
"S...so what?" Sophie said. "That's what...happened..." In truth, the reaction to her very public defeat had been a source of deep shame at the time.
"This is the only time you've made the front page of a paper this big," Ocelot said. "I've checked. When you win, it doesn't even register. When you lose...that's what everyone's itching to see."
"You're...wrong..." Sophie said.
"Is that so? Do you think people are really good and warm and gentle and nice on the inside? Trust me, Pippi, I've seen what people are really like, and -"
"No...you idiot," Sophie said sharply. "A fucking...celebrity got kidnapped from a live concert. She's world...famous...of course that's gonna make the front pages."

This was a little too defiant for Ocelot's liking. She leapt forward, appropriately catlike. She grabbed Sophie's waist between her thighs, squeezing her tightly, before leaning over the paralysed damsel's face.
"You don't get it," she hissed. "People's love for you will vanish in a second. I've seen it happen! I -" She stopped herself, composed herself. "I was stupid for thinking I could convince you so quickly, I see. But I'll bring you round."

"Unnhh..." Sophie felt Ocelot's pelvis against her own, and her cheeks reddened again. She was getting flashbacks to when Ocelot had her up against that wall in Hosenfluss' mansion, drugging her, fondling her, grinding against her...
"You've got a quick tongue, girlie," Ocelot said, "but you're not all that smart, I think. Eventually, with that delicious weakness of yours...you're gonna get publicaly humiliated one too many times, you'll be no better than Aerogirl in people's eyes."
"I'd...be proud...to be half the hero she is..." She was breathing hard, her perky breasts rising and falling quickly. Why did disagreeing with Ocelot take such effort?

"I think you need someone to make it clear exactly what it's gonna feel like when the world betrays you, Pippi." She ran her hand down Sophie's gorgeous body, feeling her gently curving hips, down to her waist. She then slipped her hand underneath Sophie's tight, gold dress.
"Wh-what are you...doing?" Sophie gasped, crimsoning.
"Showing you what it's like when the world strips you of everything." Sophie felt something click. "Just a warning: I tend not to be very subtle with my metaphors." She suddenly swiped her hand up, from Sophie's waist up to her bosom. The redhead wasn't sure what had happened, until Ocelot reached down, and peeled her dress away.

"What?!" Sophie looked down at her exposed body in shock. Ocelot had cut her dress in two with a hidden blade, leaving the supple superheroine almost completely naked. She was in nothing but her frilly, white underwear, her short boots, and her mask. "Ah..!" she gasped, looking up at the woman who'd stripped her. "I'm...I'm naked..." She was made all too aware again of just how pitifully helpless she was in Ocelot's grasp. "What's she gonna do to me?" she thought. There was, she realised, a tinge of genuine curiosity to this question.

"Jesus..." Ocelot said to herself, drinking in the sight of the gorgeous maiden's body: her supple, slender legs; her feminine hips; her pert breasts and her creamy, soft skin. "Man, did I ever pick the right metaphor..." She knelt down by Sophie's ankles, and ran her hands slowly up her paralysed captive's calves, her fingers gently massaging her as she went.

"Unnhhh....ooohhh..." Sophie moaned, beads of sweat appearing on her forehead and neck. "Ooh...I'm...so sensitive..." She would have shaken her head if she could have moved. "Why...do I keep thinking like that? She's kidnapped me...paralysed me and torn off my clothes...so why... ooohh!" She gasped out loud when Ocelot's fingers reached her thighs. She felt something throbbing inside her as Ocelot's thinly covered fingers teased over her skin, running over her hips and stomach. "Mmmmm..." she sighed, limp and defenceless in her captor's grip.

When Ocelot's fingers eventually reached Sophie's soft, bare shoulders, she took hold of her captive more tightly. She lifted her up, her paralysis not making this particularly easy, but eventually Sophie was on her feet, her helpless form slumped against Ocelot's body. The thief's wandering hands travelled down Sophie's back, down over her rear, and back down to the backs of her thighs.
"Aahhh...unnhhh..." Sophie whimpered as she was stroked, her powers making her so sensitive that she was almost restrained more by that than by the drug that had paralysed her.

"C'mon, Pippi," Ocelot said, "let me take you for a ride." She took her captive by the waist, and lifted her beautiful, half-naked body up and over her shoulder, where she fell unresisting, her body obediently limp.
"Ahh..." Sophie mewed, the sensuous heroine once again finding herself slung over her a captor's shoulder, her long legs and her firm behind squeezed and stroked.

"Whoa there," Ocelot said, turning her eyes to the right. "That is just staring me right in the face, huh?" She was referring to Sophie's round, tight backside. She ran her hands over it, squeezing and massaging Sophie's yielding flesh, her skin soft, yet firm at the same time. "Sorry, Pippi, but there's really only one thing to do with an ass this good."

"Ah!" Sophie mewed, as she felt Ocelot's hand smack hard against her rump. The sting reverberated throughout her whole body, a sharp, yet somehow rather satisfying sensation. "D-don't do that!" Sophie protested.
"Listen honey," Ocelot said, slowly running her hand up and down Sophie's bare legs. "I know you think you're Little Miss Badass, but right now I want you to think about your position. Those long, smooth gams are draped over my body...your cute little ass is wiggling right in my face, and oh yeah - you're paralysed, Pippi." She spanked her again, eliciting a loud, high-pitched gasp from her redheaded captive. "You are completely. Fucking. Helpless." If Sophie had had the power to struggle, she would have gone passive and still at that moment.

Ocelot carried Sophie into another room, continually feeling her legs and her ass, leaving the sensitive damsel blushing and mewing - and gasping whenever Ocelot decided she would take advantage of her position and smack her on the rear again.
"Aaahh!" Sophie half squealed, half sighed, as she felt a fifth consecutive spanking. "She's right...I'm so helpless...what the hell did she do to me?"

Sophie felt herself slipping down Ocelot's body, as the blonde thief set her down, holding her up on her feet.
"Unnhh..." the helpless maiden mewed. If Ocelot decided to let go, the paralysed girl would fall in a crumpled heap at her feet. But Ocelot held her tightly. She whistled, and after a moment, something flew in. It was another drone, different from the ones Sophie had seen. It flew like an Egg Shen, but was spherical. It hovered near Sophie's creamy-white body, before opening up with a loud *thunk*. It now took on the shape of two hemispheres, connected by a thin metal bar with deep grooves.

"Go," Ocelot said, and something slipped out of one of the grooves. The drone flew close to Sophie, and stuck whatever it was against her. It then proceeded to orbit the limp redhead, and she began to feel what was happening. Her head dropped to her chest, and she saw that clear, plastic wrap was being pressed against her body.
"Wh..." She was about to ask - but at this point, why ask more questions? "She's just...trying to humiliate me..." Her awareness of that did no good: it was working.

As the drone went round, Sophie felt herself being bound. After two rotations, Sophie could already feel her arms pressed against her sides by the strong, though thin, plastic. The drone spun around her paralysed form two, three, for times, until her arms were immovably bound, her perky breasts squeezed by the plastic.

Sophie watched powerlessly as her body was trussed up again, feeling the tight wrappings against her forearms, then her wrists, then over her hands, pressing them tightly against her feminine hips. She felt hot, the plastic restraining her making every sensation on her skin all the more sharply focussed by her powerful senses.

As the plastic wrap reached her legs, Sophie felt herself being turned around by her sneaky captor. She was being spun, turned around and around so that the drone could wrap her ever more tightly. Sophie's round behind was covered, then her soft, creamy thighs, previously limp - now locked tightly against each other, the redhead forced to feel her own smooth skin against itself.
"Mmmmhhh...uunhhh..." Sophie mewed, as she became ever more tightly wrapped up. "She's...cocooning me..." Sophie thought, feeling ever more subdued. "I'm...like a butterfly in her web..."

Her calves were next, covered with two tight layers of shrink-wrap, holding them together easily. Now bound in tight plastic from beneath her shoulders to her slim ankles, the paralysed damsel was almost completely mummified, only her bare shoulders, her neck and her head still uncovered.
"There we go, Pippi," Ocelot said. "Now you look like a real captive."
"I look so pathetic!" Sophie lamented, seeing herself so strictly bound - but the clear, thin wrap also left every inch of her completely on show. She was wrapped up - but not covered up in the slightest. Ocelot wanted her captive - but still wanted her charms to be visible, and with her dress cut off, standing in nothing but her heeled boots, her frilly panties and her strapless bra - and her mask of course - her charms were extremely visible.

Before Sophie could think of anything else, she felt a sharp pinprick in her thigh.
"N...no..." Sophie whispered. She looked down and, right enough, saw a syringe sticking into her. But as Ocelot withdrew it, she realised that it wasn't making her weaker - she'd expected that Ocelot would knocking her out.

It was making her stronger. Rather, Sophie began to feel like she could move again. Her lovely legs regained their vigour, first twitching slightly, then as her muscles engaged again, Sophie realised that she had the strength to stand. Her arms lost their heavy powerlessness, and her breathing became less languorous, as Sophie regained the ability to control it manually.
"I can move!" Sophie thought.

Except she couldn't. It was only now, as her body regained it's strength, that Sophie realised how little she had. She began to move - only to find her body limited to nothing but helpless, bound wriggles. Her long legs twitched, unable even to be slightly moved apart. Her arms wiggled, as her hands were forced to stroke Sophie's own hips. She couldn't get free - and was exactly as helpless as before.
"Ahaha!" Ocelot laughed, pulling Sophie against her, now not only able to feel the redhead's gorgeous body, but her powerless struggles as well.

"Wh...why are you doing this to me?" Sophie said quietly, flushed with both embarrassment and the heat of her bound body. She wriggled her bare shoulders, intensely aware of how helpless she was.
"To teach you, Pippi," Ocelot said. "This is just a tenth of how it's gonna feel when the world betrays you. A hundredth, even." She held Sophie even closer, rubbing her thigh against the redhead's tightly bound legs.

Sophie felt vibrations in the air as the drone moved behind her, but she was paying much more attention to the strokes and fondles her cocooned body was receiving, her super-senses enhancing every one to levels of sensual intensity that she had never felt before, not in this way. She felt virginal, like a blushing schoolgirl, whimpering and sighing at the slightest touch, girlishly sensitive and feminine.
"I can't escape..." she thought, and she didn't just mean from her physical captivity. Ocelot had ensnared something inside of her, and Sophie couldn't get free of it.

"I -" Sophie began to say - but stopped herself. She didn't know what she was about to say. Her breathing quickened for some reason, and she opened her mouth again - but was stopped this time. "MMPHH!!" The drone behind her had pressed one last piece of wrap over her - this one much less wide, but wide enough to seal Sophie's lips, covering her mouth from just above her chin to just under her nose. The drone spun once around her head, securing the transparent gag in place. "Mmmm-mmmmnnnmphhhh! Mmm - mph?"

Sophie's loud protests were turned into girlish mews when Ocelot placed one finger on her mouth. Sophie's lips were still perfectly visible through the gag. If Ocelot looked closely enough, she could even see them vibrate against the plastic when Sophie gave a muffled protest or whimper. She began slowly stroking her captive's lips, caressing the blushing maiden softly.
"Ssshhh..." she whimpered. "No need to say anything. Just be a good little damsel, okay?" She pulled her in closer, Sophie again feeling Ocelot's bosom pushing against her own. The catlike thief seized Sophie's behind, pulling their hips closer, and squeezing the helpless heroine's ass.

"Mmmphhh..." Sophie moaned, staring into Ocelot's eyes, her face a picture of sensual distress. She felt her body fondled and caressed, mewing and sighing as she was touched so intimately. "What's going on? She hasn't just captured me...it's different! She's...she's completely dominating me!"

As if in affirmation of Sophie's realisation, Ocelot pushed her back. She fell, landing not on the floor but on a bed. Ocelot lifted her legs, turning her so that she was lying on it completely, leaving her thrashing and writhing on the bed.
"Mmmphhh! MMMPHH!!" Out of Ocelot's hands, Sophie gained a little more vigour in her struggles. Her nearly-naked body writhed, but this amounted to little more than ineffectual wriggles and twitches. Sophie's soft, warm shoulders did most of the worthwhile struggling, but drawing attention to her bare shoulders only served to make her seem more feminine and weak, like a heroine in a Harlequin romance writhing in a tight corset - certainly her bonds felt tight enough to make it seem an apt comparison.

"Mmmpphh!" Sophie threw her neck from one side to the other, her wavy hair a red, swishing halo around her in her powerless struggles. Ocelot could have watched her for hours...but she couldn't resist getting a bit more hands on. She leapt on her cocooned captive, and began rubbing her breasts, kissing her naked, white shoulders and her ever-redder cheeks.
"Gmmmphhh...mmmphhh..." the redhead mewed, her writhing and mewing becoming decidedly more kittenish as Ocelot had her way with her. "I'm - so - sensitive!" Sophie thought, each mental word accompanying a loud, muffled gasp.

"This is what's gonna keep happening, Pippi," Ocelot said, taking her lips away but continuing to stroke her captive. "If you don't wise up. As long as you keep thinking you're some kind of hero, you're gonna keep getting captured and touched like this. I'm just letting you know now."
"Mmmphhh...mmmphhh..." Sophie whimpered. "Anyone else...I'd be telling them where to stick it... . Why? Why do I feel like she has to be right?"

Ocelot leaned in very close. She took Sophie by the shoulders, and lifted her up, so their faces were only inches apart.
"I want this burned into your memory," Ocelot said. "Every time you go out to fight, I want you to remember this, remember that it could just as easily end the same way." She snapped her head forward, and Sophie was astonished to feel her tearing away her gag - with her teeth.
"Why...are you -" Sophie began, as Ocelot spat the plastic to the side. But her sly grin made it rather clear. "D-don't! I can't - MMPHH!"

Sophie was muffled again, not by tape or cloth - but by Ocelot's lips.
"MMMPHHH!! Mmmmmphhh...mmm..." the damsel sighed, as she felt her warm, wet mouth stroked and pressed tenderly against by her criminal captor.
"Mmmm..." Ocelot sighed, as she ran her tongue along Sophie's lower lip, prompting the damsel to open her mouth a little. Their lips pressed tighter, and the thief's tongue slipped inside Sophie's mouth. "Wow, she's soft..." Ocelot thought.
"Oooohh..." Sophie thought. "I...I...can't think...I -" She was overwhelmed with sensual pleasure. This was the first time she'd been kissed while she had her powers active, and the sensuality was like an explosion of forbidden pleasure throbbing through her entire body. "Mmh - mmhhh..." she moaned gently, her cheeks redder than her hair. "What's...happening...to me?" she thought. She was beginning to feel weak and light headed. "Are...her lips drugged?!" But no - she'd have detected that. "Her...her kiss...just her kiss...it's like...being chloroformed!"

She could feel it. She could feel her body growing weaker, her wiggling legs becoming still, her naked shoulders ceasing their writhing. She felt her emerald eyes fluttering gently as she whimpered in her tight, plastic-wrap cocoon.
"Mmmphhh...mmmmhhh..." she mewed, her body still pulsing from the pleasure of the kiss. "She's - she's...completely...defeated me..." Sophie thought.

It felt to Sophie like any time Ocelot had hands on her she became utterly powerless. Even now - she was knocking her out with a kiss. She eventually became still and passive in her captor's arms, her slender body a helpless, whimpering plaything for the slinky thief. With a shiver, and a sigh, her body gave out. Her eyes fell shut, and she swooned, the pleasure of Ocelot's kiss just as powerful a concoction as chloroform. Ocelot felt her going limp, and finally broke the kiss.

She saw that Sophie had fainted, her gorgeous body completely subdued. The skilled, formidable superheroine Enhancegirl had been reduced to a simpering, fragile captive by the thief.
"Wow!" Ocelot said. "I mean, I know I'm good..." She laid Sophie down, and continued to massage her bosom, unable to keep her hands off the redhead's slender, sexy body. "I literally just kissed you into helplessness, Pippi," Ocelot said. She leaned down, and took up the task of fondling and caressing her beautiful damsel in distress once again. "You...are destined to be mine."

[SGWriter]

Why do I sense this is the beginning of a beautiful...peril-ship?

Awesome work DB!

[DrDominator9]

Why do I sense this is the beginning of a beautiful...peril-ship?

Awesome work DB!

I second that!!

[flirty_but_nice]

I have to admit, I am kind of find myself cheering for Ocelot succeeding in convincing Enhance Girl of the merit of working with her / embracing the dark side!

[Damselbinder]

Why do I sense this is the beginning of a beautiful...peril-ship?

Awesome work DB!

I second that!!

Thanks a lot guys! I'm really pleased the response has been so positive. I'm currently working on chapter 7, so expect more Enhance-goodness soon!

[Blx]

Ridiculously good story.

For anyone reading, also follow him on deviantart at damselbinder.deviantart.com/ !