The Perils of Valora 1: America, F*** Yeah! - Now Complete!

[Damselbinder]

Rodney Burke should never have moved to Portland. Portland, even in 2005, was trendy. It had the world's largest independent bookshop. People with beards bought interesting coffees and talked about wicker, and socialism. It was a place for the young. It was a place for those who were with it. It was a place for the cool, and Rodney Burke was not cool. Rodney Burke had not been 'with it' since about 1981. He was an overweight divorcé with more alimony to pay than he thought he could reasonably afford, and an interest in motoring. He enjoyed American football. He had thin, brown hair. He had a small nose, and a ruddy, pudgy face. He stood out in only one respect: he was a confessor.

That wasn't the job title on his contract, of course, but even in the office that's what they called the people who conducted the interviews with new superheroes in the state of Maine. If you had superpowers and you wanted to make the police's jobs a little easier, then fine, all you had to do was get ticked off by the county sheriff. But if you wanted to get paid, if you wanted to make a living off your vigilantism, then you needed to come and talk to a confessor.

Rodney had hoped that the job, into which he'd been sort of sideways-promoted the previous year, might have brought a bit of glamour into his life. It had certainly made him feel a little more important, but the glamour had faded almost immediately. It was an even more boringly administrative job than before, and the extra pay didn't, in his view, cover the extra time and extra work that the job came with. He'd had some sense, once, that his job meant something, but by that cold day in early March - when he'd lurched in so hungover that he was essentially still drunk - it was just a job.

"Morning Janet," he grumbled, stumbling into his office, trying not to let his secretary see how bloodshot his eyes were.
"Mornin', Rodney," Janet replied. She was an efficient woman, and quite pretty when she made an effort. "You got three appointments today. First one's at 9.40, second one's at -"
"Three? You gotta be fuckin' kidding..." He growled in intense dissatisfaction, plucking some papers from Janet's hand. He glanced briefly at her: having a pretty secretary had stoked the sputtering flames of his ego at first, but her disdain for him - insofar as she had any feelings about him at all - gave him heartburn.

He retreated from Janet's withering lack of gaze, sitting behind his desk, taking his chair's heavy creak as a personal insult. Trying to turn his mind to his work, he moved some papers aside, adding to the desk's chaos with these new three Janet had given him. He was astonished that it was so many in a single day: on the whole, the number of superheroes registering in Maine got lower every month. In a year on the job, Rodney had only had to deal with thirty successful applicants. Money was tight, the work was dangerous, and after everything that had happened during the nineties...well, it wasn't just Rodney who felt like his career had lost its glamour.

So, at 9.37, Rodney trundled off grumpily to the seventh floor, grasping the necessary papers in a sweaty hand. He felt oddly nervous as he got off the elevator, fearing somehow that these interviews, where he actually had to do something, would inevitably prove his downfall. He didn't pass anyone: the seventh floor was kept empty but for confessors and their subjects, and in the Maine office, Rodney Burke was the only confessor there was. The walls were painted white, decorated only with exit signs, fire alarms. It was like a hospital, so much so that Rodney began to imagine the smell of disinfectant. In a way it was good. It made him relieved when he found the Box.

It was the Boxes that had given the confessors their names. They were exactly what they sounded like: featureless black boxes, about two metres high, four metres wide, and a metre and a half deep, with two doors, one on either side. Inside, the two halves were separated by a thin wall, like a confessional in a church: hence 'confessors' for those that made use of them. Rodney took the door on his left, which required a key to unlock. So did the door on the other side, but legally Rodney wasn't allowed to handle its key. So he opened his side, switched on a fluorescent light inside which was uncomfortably bright at the best of times, and sat down in a hard, plastic chair. It was bolted to the floor, "like I'm in a fucking McDonald's," as Rodney had once put it. He put his clipboard on his lap, and waited, sweating under the lights. They seemed accusatory.

He didn't have to wait long. A minute or so later, he heard someone entering the small room - hardly more than a walk-in-closet - that housed the confessional.
Tack-tack-tack-tack. The sound of a woman in heels. Walking quickly, with hard, angry steps. She must have been relatively tall, too, because she covered the distance between the door and the confessional in only nine or ten paces. The door flew open, and slammed shut, and there was a thump as this woman sat down. There was some buzzing from the little speaker to Rodney's left as she turned on her side's microphone.
"Hey, buddy, let's hurry this up."

Why? Why, when he heard her speak, did Rodney get the idea that he was talking to a beautiful woman? Something about her voice: strong, clear and sharp, about half an octave higher than a contralto. It was a confident voice, but young - a twenty year old at the oldest, but sure of itself. Her irritation was not a pretence, not nervousness, but genuine annoyance. He imagined that she'd become used to dealing with pests.
"Uh, yeah, sure," he mumbled. "Okay, so, what name are you registering under?"
"Valora." She said it quickly. This was not a name she spoke with pride. 'It had to be something,' her tone said. 'Let's move on.'
"Okay...'Valora'..." He noted it down, put a 'sp.?' mark beside it.

It was this codename business that necessitated the existence of confessors and confessionaries. If you wanted to be a state-funded superhero, there was a lot of information you had to give up. Your name, your social security number, your bank details - so how was it possible to maintain a secret identity, as most superheroes insisted on doing? You made everything anonymous. Rodney would never know, for instance, that he was talking to a young woman named Valerie Orville, that she'd been born twenty years earlier in Mexico - the town in Maine, not the country - and that she'd wished desperately that she hadn't had to use her powers for money.

"Okay, Valora, you're seeking salary or commission work?" Rodney asked. He hoped she'd say commission. That made the paperwork much less complicated.
"Salary," Valora replied.
"You know salary workers still have quotas, right?"
"...yes, I know." There was real venom in her voice: the policy of financially penalising state heroes for missing quotas had not been popular in what was left of the Maine cape-community. Rodney liked it. "Even supers have to work for a living now," as he put it.

"I, uh, want a part-time contract," Valora said. "That puts me at eight collars a week, right?"
"Right." This was unusual. 'Weekender' superheroes, as less kind commentators called them, tended to take commissions, work as flexibly as possible. Most dedicated supers wanted the full-time money - taking a part-time steady gig seemed to be the worst of both worlds.

Rodney was curious, but too hungover to probe. If he had two more of these interviews to conduct that day, he needed to save his strength. "Uh, okay, your primary power?"
"Enhanced impact and grip strength, uh...deflective resistance to blunt force and puncture damage."
"Hm." Rodney narrowed his eyes. This clearly wasn't Valora's first interview - she was describing her powers in precisely the same way that he'd record on his paperwork, word for word. "What class?" he asked, wondering if he was speaking to a real professional.
"Durability is class six," Valora said. "Strength is class eleven."
"Class...eleven?!" Rodney only realised what she'd said when he'd written it down. "Jesus Christ!" This wasn't some kid with class four laser-eyes and a misplaced messiah complex: this 'Valora' could kill him with a flick of her wrist.

"Hey, if you don't believe me I still have the paperwork from the registry office in Cali." When Rodney didn't immediately respond, there was an irritated groan. "Don't tell me this is gonna be a problem. I have a 'History of Responsible Use' form: I should have the same insurance bill as a class seven."
"Huh? Uh, no, your form is attached to my...uh...form. That shouldn't be an issue. I was just surprised."
"Oh. Yeah, Maine doesn't see too many heavyweights, does it?" She muttered something else, about ponds and big fish, but Rodney didn't quite catch it.

He was going to move on, but something stuck in his mind. The uniqueness of this person on the other side of the partition overwhelmed even his hangover with an uncommon curiosity, and something in the back of his head shouted: "you're never going to be more interested in your stupid, thankless job than you are right now, so use it."
"Wait, you said you were registered in California?"
"...I did, yeah." She didn't sound all too happy that Rodney had noticed that little tidbit.
"I mean, I don't want to tell you your own business, lady, but why the hell would you leave a gig that sweet?" California, even then, had a reputation as being immensely friendly to superheroes. You could get money from the state without seeing a confessor, your expenses were tax-deductible - there weren't even any quotas!

"Is this going on your form?" Valora's tone had gone from impatient to defensive.
"No," Rodney replied.
"Then I'm not talking about my personal life. To you I'm just another box to tick, right? Let's keep it that way."
Rodney could hardly argue with that. He felt disappointed. He wanted to know more about this fascinating aberration, but he couldn't think of a way to make her talk. Just as it was crossing his mind to threaten to refuse her application, she spoke again.
"You have any kids?"
"Excuse me?"
"I know I'm kinda being a hypocrite here, but you'll understand in a sec. Actually, don't answer," she said, just before Rodney had the chance to tell her about his two sons, "just...if any of them are superhuman, or turn out to be superhuman, teach them one thing."
"And, uh, what's that?"

He couldn't see her, of course, but he heard rustling, knew that she was leaning into the microphone. Even before she actually spoke, he shivered.
"California," she said, her voice smoothed by the tranquility of purest, rawest anger, "is bullshit."
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Hi," he'd said to all of them in their turn. He'd smiled at each of them charmingly, invited each of them to sit down, offered each of them a drink, provided whatever they'd asked for. "My name's Lance Van der Boek," he'd said, taking off expensive sunglasses, loosening an expensive tie. "Ma'am," he'd said, "I represent the U.S. Government. I want to talk to you about being a superhero - I want to talk to you about being a superhero for your country."
But superhumans aren't allowed to serve in the armed forces, two of the five had pointed out. One of those two had known him for what he was immediately from the clipped slickness of his tone, and the particular quality of his square, strong shoulders, his lean, handsome, threatening face: he was an ex-soldier.

"Oh, no no, ma'am," Lance had explained. "You're absolutely right. All I'm talking about is taking the state superhero to the next level. A United States superhero - federally backed, federally resourced, and federally funded."
They'd all asked why they'd been chosen.
Lance had not said 'because you're young, you'll be grateful enough for the money that you'll do what you're told, you have no connections in the superhero community yet, and you're all good-looking enough to be supermodels'. He had said: "Because you represent potential. And that's what America is all about - and that's what you'll be. You'll be an inspiration for the entire country - and we need some inspiration real, real bad."

That pitch had been enough for three of the five. Of the remaining two, one asked what the pay was. She was easily comforted. The other asked a harder question: how is a team of rookie superheroes going to inspire the nation?
Lance had rubbed the bridge of his nose, in a long practiced motion. "I'll be real with you," he'd said. "People in this country are scared. Since WWII," he'd said, pronouncing it 'dubya dubya two', "Americans have relied on two powers to protect them: people like you - champions, latter-day knights of the round table - and the United States Military."

He'd stood up. Lowered his eyes.
"But then Martin Sontag happened. Melchior the Grand. The Iron Stars, when they weren't tearing Europe to shreds. Diamondhead. Wave after wave of bad guys who were just...stronger than the good guys. The Supremacist destroys a hundred U.S. battleships in a week. Diamondhead takes on a tank division by himself, and wins without even trying. And all those superheroes! The California Cabal, the Maidens of Maine, the Mind-Legion - all gone. America wasn't used to seeing its heroes fall. America was used to winning."

But they had won. The Dark Days were over, surely.
"Yeah, they are. But they're not. Things aren't back to normal. People don't feel safe. Superhumans seemed magical - now they just seem scary. People are paranoid. When's the next big bad going to crawl out of the woodwork? What if he's stronger than this - this Titan guy? You can help push back against that. You can help people like you. And, you can do the good that only superheroes can do, and you can do it without having to worry about money, or resources."
That, at last, had been enough to break the final wall of scepticism.

Weeks of preparation followed. Some of it, yes, was spent training for battle, for all of them were young, inexperienced - the oldest was only twenty-one - and none of them had been in the game for even a year. But what seemed like a hideous amount of time was spent in costume design, training in public speaking, endless focus grouping on the makeup of the team, on the look of them, their outfits - too sexy, not sexy enough, too gauchely patriotic, not cohesive - everything. There were reshuffles, too: the girl who'd asked about the job's pay was eventually asked to leave,
"She wasn't a team player," Lance had said.

Eventually, there could be no more preparation. They were either ready, or not. The only question was - where to start? Normal criminals, or supervillains? Where? They were based in California, of course, but none of them were local girls. Perhaps Texas, or New York? No. Best to play it safe, at least to start with. See how the friendliest crowd possible would react to the new team, then branch out.

And so it was that five months before Rodney Burke walked hungover into his office in Maine, the Bombshells - a working title, Lance assured them - embarked on their first mission as a team of superheroes.
"It's an easy mission," Lance assured them. "Not that you can't do hard - but it's your first time as a team. Let's not go nuts." Their target was a boat, moored at a pier at the Port of Hueneme. Within, a head of a respectably large organised crime racket: Leatherback. Leatherback wasn't a superhuman as far as anyone knew - the nickname was just a nickname. The boat wasn't a private yacht or anything, but a massive, ageing tanker, destined to be scuttled 'ere the year's end. The police suspected that Leatherback - an arms dealer - sometimes used the tanker to store his wares, so there was even a good chance of catching him with illegal merchandise. Everything had been prepared. These were serious criminals - but not powerhouses. Not well financed or equipped. No match for four respectably strong superhumans. It should all have gone so well.

Except, quite by chance, they were seen. Someone had been on the lookout, and had spotted them as they crept in, just happening to be in the wrong place at the right time. Just one unguessable piece of bad luck...and the Bombshells were doomed.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Um...so...uh, what do we do when actually, y'know, find 'em?" The first recruit of the Bombshells was the first to speak as they moved through the rusted passages of the creaking hulk. She was the youngest, and the shortest - but she was curvy: rounded hips, and soft legs shown off by a very revealing little blue-and-red leotard, with white stars dotting the upper half - no prizes for guessing why this scheme had been chosen for her outfit. The leotard was extremely low cut, revealing a fantastically generous bust. Yet Debra had such a fresh-faced, clear-skinned innocence about her that it was hard not to read the effect as charming and attractive, rather than outright seductive. A golden band adorned her forehead, drawing attention to wide, round brown eyes, complemented by a rather cute nose, and round cheeks that suited her petite, curvy shape. But her powers, while useful, weren't very potent, and the others were worried that they'd have to carry her through the whole mission.
*The others may think of her like their darling little sister, that cute little smile never runs out of energy: it's Maiden-America!*

"We complete the m-mission," another of the four replied, her wavering voice almost completely disguising her New York accent. "That's what Lance needs us to do, right?" Of all of them, she perhaps looked the part of the superhero most. She was the oldest of the four, and had actually done a little superheroing back in Seacouver on her own. Long, warm, coffee-brown legs were bared by a short, lycra red dress, with zig-zags of blue shooting through it, and a blue domino mask over her face, Long, brown hair flowed out behind her in a chestnut ponytail. She flexed a shaking hand, sparks of red energy occasionally visible in it. She was likely the most powerful of the four - and she looked the part. Her limbs had the agile, solid tone of a gymnast to them: she was gorgeous, like all the Bombshells: she certainly wasn't muscly, but she didn't look like a delicate waif either - she only felt like one. She was breathing hard. Maria had thought she was happy when she was told she'd be the Bombshells' leader. But now that she had actual responsibility, now that she had to lead a team...her stomach was in knots. She'd wished she'd been able to speak to Lance, but their comm system - a fancy piece of miniaturisation equipped to the left ear of each girl - had crapped out the second they'd walked onto the ship.
*The experienced field-commander of the Bombshells, a skilled and seasoned fighter and all-around cool customer: it's Freebird!*

The other two were a few metres back, making sure - or trying to make sure - that nobody snuck up on them from behind. As Maria panted with raw nerves, one of these two panted with excitement. A pale-skinned woman, with hair dyed a fluorescent blue, her short skirt flouncing around her slim, bare legs, her feet clad in bulky, steel-capped boots, her smooth, soft stomach exposed by a halternecked tank-top. There was a ring in her left nostril, a wicked grin on her face, and in the chaotic red-and-blue mix of her outfit, she'd spray-painted on her personal emblem: a wolf's head.
"Fuckin' yeah, Charlie, gonna kick some ass, Charlie..." she repeated to herself. She flexed her hand, and it flickered with the same red energy as Maria's. She'd barely used her powers outside of Lance's training programs, and she was desperately eager to test them. The team she wasn't so sure about. She had a feeling that the others wouldn't be able to hack it, that the Bombshells would be a platform for her career. "Cecily, gimme your hand." She didn't wait for her final companion actually to offer her hand, she just grabbed it, and took what she wanted: her power, losing Maria's ability in exchange.
*The ultimate team player: she gets her strength from her comrades-in-justice, and she knows that unity is what makes us great: Lupus!*

"You could just ask next time," Cecily said, trying and failing to make herself sound amused.
Charlie just winked at her. "Oh, baby, I just wanted an excuse to hold your hand."
Cecily bristled, but didn't push it. It wasn't worth it. She simply floated along behind her comrades, anxiously looking over her shoulder, her long, luxurious red hair fluttering behind her in a little thermal upswell caused by her telekinesis. It made the border of her minidress flutter as well. She tugged at it, trying not to expose herself. She had nice legs - in fact, she'd always thought she'd had very nice legs: willowy, slender, and smooth, but she didn't normally wear dresses this short. At least it didn't draw much attention to her breasts - of which Cecily was not so fond - but it stopped just beneath her shoulders, held up by a crested, golden band, like a tiara around her clavicles.

Indeed, of all of the Bombshells, she looked least like a superhero, and most like a model. She had narrow shoulders, slender limbs: if Maria represented a feminine kind of strength, Cecily represented a waifish, feminine vulnerability. Her face had a dignified elegance to it: delicate features, gentle, ocean-blue eyes, soft lips. Her dress was the only one that broke the mold: green, with gold highlights and a gold sash around the waist. Lance hadn't wanted them to seem too similar. It gave a sense of mystery, a sense that the group wasn't too manufactured. Cecily knew this: that's why Lance hadn't given her a codename. She understood what was going on, what the Bombshells really were: they were Soma in miniskirts.
*Mysterious and beautiful: she reaches out with an invisible hand to do what she knows is right: Cecily Rothschild!*

Debra saw the way Lupus talked to Cecily. She didn't like it, and she wanted to say something, but she had a feeling that the middle of a mission was probably the wrong time. She did flash a reassuring smile at Cecily, though. She seemed like a nice girl, if a little...distant. But Debra wanted the team to hold together. She believed what Lance said, every word of it. She loved her country, and the thought that she could help lift its spirits after so many horrible years...it was wonderful. She smiled dreamily as she prowled through the tanker, adoring the idea that she was part of something greater than herself.
"Debra, you idiot, stop daydreaming!"

Maria's sharp rebuke broke Debra's reverie, and just in time, too. She'd almost stumbled right out into the open, as the passage they'd been sneaking through opened onto the tanker's bridge. It was huge, divided into two sections, one for the captain and the other senior crew, and a larger section on a slightly lower level with a large series of monitors and consoles dividing the bottom section into three spaces. The whole bridge was big enough for a hundred people to have standing room in Fortunately for the Bombshells, it was hardly full to capacity. The Bombshells themselves were hidden in a small corridor connecting the bridge to the main deck, only about wide enough for three people to stand next to each other. The back half of the corridor was open to the air - not by design, but because part of the ceiling had rusted away.
"There's like...four guys?" Debra whispered, looking into the covelike bridge. Maria, not trusting Debra's assessment, peered forward into relative gloom.

She saw five men in total, but it was still a surprisingly low number. Three were heavies - two muscular, one just chunky. Both armed. They'd have to be taken out first. Two others were sitting, one leaning back in the worn-out captain's chair. His thick, grey beard, scarred hands and violent laugh - which burst forth occasionally - told Maria that this was Leatherback. Another, sitting where Maria imagined a navigator might have been meant to go, was Leatherback's money man, a fellow named Hugo...something. She couldn't quite remember. Lance's briefing had been very brusque.

"Are we sure this is right?" Debra asked. "I mean, gee - it doesn't seem like much of an organisation."
"Lance said they'd be here," Maria replied, pushing Debra back. "He has to be right."
"Uhhh, what if he's not, though?" Lupus laughed. "I'm gonna -"
"No!" Maria hissed. "I'm the l-leader of this team. We're sticking to the plan. Lupus, you and I will lay down a volley of energy blasts."
"But I switched to Cecily's power."
"Wh - well then switch back!" Maria growled, angrily extending her hand. Lupus rolled her eyes, took her leader's hand, and exchanged powers again. Maria glared at her: she really didn't need any extra stress. "Okay, okay..." She regathered herself. "Cecily," she said, "there's another entrance on the other side of the bridge. Float over there, make sure you grab anyone who tries to run."
"Sure, Maria," Cecily said. She smiled, added: "And good idea, too." Focusing her abilities, she lifted herself a few inches into the air, and slipped silently back the way the Bombshells had come, moving quickly through the ship's passageways to the other side of the bridge.

"What should I do?" Debra asked.
"Stay out of the way," Lupus said, flatly. "What the hell are you gonna do against guys with guns?"
"What the hell, Charlie? I'm part of this team too!"
"What's superhuman stamina going to do if you get shot?" Maria said. "Are you bulletproof?"
"Well...I -"
"Hang back," Lupus said, patting Debra on the shoulder. She genuinely thought she was being nice. "Grab anyone that gets past us." She absolutely did not believe that anyone would get past them. "Okay, boss," she said, grinning the wolflike grin that had inspired her name, "let's do it."

Maria was shaking. She wiped sweat from her brow, but found she'd wiped on just as much as she'd got rid of. She stalked forward, slowly moving from the little gangway in which they hid onto the bridge itself, Lupus using Cecily's power to float right behind her while Cecily waited to snare any runners, and Debra waited even further back than that.
Maria - no, she was Freebird right now - tried to psych herself up. She tried to think of what Lance had told her, that people would be inspired, comforted. She imagined how pleased Lance would be with her if they managed it. She clenched her fist, charged her powers, and prepared heself. She crept further and further forward, Lupus tailing her only a couple of feet behind. "Okay: three...two...one...n - MMPPHHH!!"

A pretty basic stratagem that any soldier or police officer, and certainly any wary superhero, would learn is how to clear a room. You look for anyone lurking in doorways or behind objects, accounting for blindspots before you rushed into an area where you expected threat. Freebird and Lupus hadn't done that. They'd had their eyes completely focused on Leatherback and his associates. They hadn't seen the two men that had been waiting for them. They hadn't seen them, smiling wickedly as they ogled the trim, supple bodies of the two scantily clad heroines: their short skirts, their bare legs - the pure white of Lupus' skin; the warm brown of Freebird's. They'd looked at each other, winked - and pounced.

It happened so fast that Freebird and Lupus genuinely didn't understand what was happening. A hessian bag thrown over each of their heads, blinding them, covering them from their heads to their hips forcing their arms to their sides. Before they could even begin to struggle, cords were pulled tight, securing their arms in place, tightening the sacks against their chests and wrists. Powerful arms wrapped around the bagged heroines too, squeezing against their tight bodies, stifling their struggles before they could even begin.

"Wh...? Nnmm! MMMPHHHHH!!" Lupus screamed, as she realised that she'd been caught, already thrashing furiously. Drawing on Freebird's power, she fired out two scarlet energy beams from her hands, but all they did was cut into the deck. She couldn't raise her hands, couldn't even twist them to point at her enemy. "No! No way! This - this can't be how my first mission goes! I can't lose! This is supposed to be my début! I was...I was...h-huh? I feel...weird..."

"Ummphh...mmmmmhhhphhh...!" Freebird had realised it a little sooner. As her toned, runner's legs shifted and shuffled, as she wriggled and whimpered within her rough, hessian confines, energy beams cutting uselessly into the metal floor beneath her feet, she noticed a smell. Sharp and sweet and cloying, aggressively chemical. It made her feel light headed, dizzy. She could feel her power slipping away from her, could feel her shoulders beginning to sag. "No...no, not this! Not already!"
"No use struggling, girlie," Freebird's attacker said, pulling the smooth-skinned beauty closer. He wrapped one of his arms around her forearms, and feeling through the sack for her breasts, thrusting outwards again and again with each panicked breath, began lustily groping her as well. "Super or not, the inside of this sack is soaked in ether. You'll be out like a light in a few seconds."
"Nhhh...nnnmmphh..." Freebird moaned, already feeling herself being drawn in, and under. Her lovely, shapely legs bent inwards as the mewing maiden went pigeon-toed. It wasn't because of the ether making her sleepy. She was just humiliated that she'd been captured so easily.

"MMhh...mhh-mmhhh..." Lupus whimpered. Her captor pulled her in tighter, heard a satisfying 'whump' as the young woman fell against his chest, sighing softly as the ether overcame her as well. "No...no this...I'm dreaming...I'm dreaming, this...can't be happening..." But it was happening. Freebird's power had been useless to her - or rather, Lupus had been useless with it. In the darkness of the bag over her upper body, the terribly, embarrassingly simple object which had overpowered her and Freebird so easily, she felt herself blushing. "I lost...I lost...it's not fair...this - this isn't what's supposed to - it's their fault...their powers suck...I - it's not...not my fault..."

But try as she might, Lupus could not keep the shame away from her own mind. Bitterly disappointed in herself, and drowning in a dark cloud of anasthesia that sucked greedily at her strength, she felt herself going limp.
"Nmmhh..." she moaned, as her captor grabbed her yielding, pale thighs. Lupus wasn't much taller than Debra, but she was much slimmer. Her captor was powerfully built, and her weight was nothing to him. He threw her over his shoulder, the bagged damsel not quite asleep as a calloused hand seized her pale, soft thighs. He smiled as he heard her whimper, squeezing her yielding flesh as he began carrying her towards his boss.

"Mh...mmmhhh..." Freebird whimpered, muffled by the bag that bound and drugged her feminine, gently curved body. She was essentially paralysed, a scantily clad, helpless ragdoll in her captor's grip. A strong arm wrapped around her waist, and lifted her up, and her deep-brown, warm legs swayed as in a breeze. "Mmmhh...nnhhhmmphhh..." she mewed, feeling light, hot. When her captor saw what his friend had done and decided to follow suit, Freebird could barely feel it. She barely noticed as she was tossed like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder, barely felt as his hand reached under the hem of her tight red dress to squeeze and smack her soft, heart-shaped ass, to squeeze and fondle the naked skin of her lovely thighs. She couldn't struggle anymore. She couldn't even think. She just bemoaned, wordlessly, that Lance had been stupid enough to put her in charge.

Even poor Cecily had been snared. She'd seen Freebird and Lupus getting grabbed, and despite a moment's indecision - forgivable for such a novice - she'd gathered her strength to leap to her comrades' defence. But it was too little far, far too late, and the gangster who had watched her move into position made a move of their own.
Cecily felt someone tap her on the shoulder, and quite instinctively she turned around, found herself face to face with another woman. "Who - hngk!"

The woman had struck Cecily in the stomach. The redhead's soft blue eyes went wide with shock as she realised what had happened to her. For one terrible moment she thought she'd been stabbed, but no. She couldn't feel herself breathing. Her diaphragm felt...numb.
"Wh...what...did...nngk...!" She stumbled back. She tried to raise her arms: she couldn't. She tried to use her powers: all she managed to do was give her attacker a light little push. Her vision was getting dark. Her power, such as it was, slipped through her fingertips like water. "Nhh...nnhh..." Cecily breathed, not even quite able to sigh. It was fast, frighteningly fast, and as she realised that this single, normal woman had defeated her with a single blow, she found there was actually a tear in her eye. Not out of vanity or pride, just a horrible sense of how anticlimactic and dull the world could be. They had failed, and for absolutely nothing even resembling a worthy cause.

"Aunnhhh..." With a moan, Cecily began to fall. Her long, slender legs which she liked so much betrayed her, and she dropped like a stone to her pretty knees. The fiery river of her straight, red-bronze hair flew up, and so did the pleated hem of Cecily's short, green dres. For one humiliating instant, Cecily's entire lower body was exposed, from her hips down, but at least that humiliation hadn't lasted, and she fell penitently down. Kneeling, humbed, the tall redhead looked up with wet, blue eyes at the thug who'd felled her, her vision almost completely faded, her eyelids fluttering as rapid weakness fixed its claws into her tender body. She saw her attacker pick up a large, hessian sack. She saw the cords around it. She knew what was about to happen. "N-nnhh..." she moaned. "D-don't - hmphh!"

The bag went right over her head just like the others', right down to her hips. The cords were tied: binding, drugging, blindfolding and pretty-well gagging the helpless young beauty all at once. She couldn't even struggle. "It's over," she thought. "They...have me..."
"Heh, th-that's what, uh..." The thug had been about to taunt, to make some dirty remark about the fact that Cecily was on her knees, but she stumbled over her words. For as much as Maria and the others had been nervous, so too had this thug. She'd never dared to fight superhumans before - none of Leatherback's outfit ever had. She couldn't believe that Cecily hadn't snapped her neck or ripped her heart out or set her brain on fire or something. By the time the cat let go of her tongue, Cecily had fallen with a sweet moan onto her front. She was unconscious. A few seconds later, gloved hands gripped her creamy, slender thighs, as she flopped obediently over her captor's shoulder.

It was so...reducing, somehow, being captured the way they had been, ambushed and stuffed into sacks. With their upper bodies covered up, it was as though they'd been genericised, somehow. You couldn't see their faces, or even most of their costumes, just their bare legs as their captors carried them over their shoulders. One captive was black and the other two were white, but apart from that, they were indinstinct. They'd been stripped down to 'sexy, captured superheroine': sleepy damsels in short skirts, and nothing more. Nothing else about them mattered.

Watching his men enter, Leatherback finally rose from his chair. His joints creaked. His groan as he forced his old body up was crackled, a fairly small price he'd had to pay for a lifetime of two packs of Marlboros a day. He had a long, greasy ponytail. His face was cracked with the deep lines of age. His scowl was all but perpetual these days, but as he watched his men bring in the bagged Bombshells, his scowl deepened.
"Hey, hey, hey, don't get too fuckin' handsy!" he growled. His crew, who'd been happily pawing and squeezing their captives' lovely bodies, looked at each other in confusion. Leatherback didn't like this at all. "Hey! Don't look at each other! You fucking degenerates..." He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. He was hot, and tired. "It's...it's the same rules with girls as with cocaine," he said, moving with a slight limp towards the men carrying Freebird and Lupus, "you don't get high on your own supply." He gestured vaguely at a spot on the deck. "Dump them there."

His will was done. First Lupus, then Freebird, then finally Cecily were tossed down onto the same spot, their bare legs entwined with each other as they lay passed out and captured on the cold, hard floor. Freebird and Lupus weren't actually quite unconscious, and soft, muffled whimpers still emerged occasionally from the bags that had been thrown over their heads, their supple bodies still shifting around - just a little.
"Echhh," Leatherback hacked, spitting at his captives' feet. "I hate this shit..."
"Wh-what do you mean, boss?" The nervous inquiry came from the man Freebird had semi-identified: Hugo Tenenbaum, Leatherback's money-man. Leatherback was generally a practical sort of man, but he still had his...moods.

"It's...crass," Leatherback hacked. "Capturing superheroes. Pretty superheroes. Stuffing them into sacks, and - echhh, I feel like a pervert. Or a cartoon character. Or a cartoon character getting written by a pervert."
"Well, then why are we -?" Hugo didn't quite catch himself in time, but he was in luck. Leatherback only looked at him with weary disdain, rather than anger.
"Because I need a quick payday!" Leatherback gestured at his captives. "These are the walls, Hugo, and they almost closed on me. On me! No, I'm not going to spend my seventies in a fucking prison cell. So!" He spoke with mock grandness, addressing all his employees. "No honour amongst thieves anymore! Now we're...now we're slave traders!" He shook his head, full of disgust. Grumbling, he added: "There's always some freak willing to buy four leggy superheroines." He stopped. "Four..." His face took on a very different countenance. "Hugo, the tip-off said there were four capes after us."
"That's right, boss."
"Can you count?!"
"Huh? Oh! Oh, shit!"

Debra had wanted so much to be brave. She'd seen Freebird and Lupus getting captured. She'd wanted to rush in, to leap to their defence, but Freebird's words had rung so sharply in her ears. And they had guns - she could see them as she hid. They had guns, but they didn't even need to use them. They'd just - just thrown bags over Maria and Charlie's heads and they were helpless. She heard them scream and moan, until they'd started mewing like kittens and just...given up. She didn't understand. They'd been grabbed and - and touched and - why had it been so easy? Why had they lost so badly? And when Cecily, pretty Cecily who had such gentle eyes and who was so nice to Debra when everyone else treated her like a burden, was carried in as well, limp and defeated...it had not taken cowardice to make Debra run.

She would never have stopped, not until she'd found the help that she sought. As the petite, curvy maiden ran, heeled boots clanking through the bowels of the ship, she went at a full sprint, and now matter how far she ran, she did not slow. She did not tire: she never would. She could literally run for an infinite amount of time. She did not need food, or water - only breath. Infinite were the applications of an inability to be exhausted, dreadfully unjust was the scorn of her allies. But she didn't realise that she was doing the most sensible thing possible, didn't realise that running for help, when she could not really hope to fight all those people, was the best way to help her allies. Her nascent courage, had been stoked by that rarest of things a genuine, unpretentious patriotism; spotted and manipulated so easily by Lance Van der Boek. It arrested her. It filled her with shame. It made her turn back. She was hot with sweat - not being tired didn't mean she couldn't get uncomfortable - and her head was full of images of the sorts of horrible things the hardened criminals might be doing to her gorgeous young teammates.
"How could I have run away?!" she shouted at herself, almost in tears. In fact there were tears, stinging her eyes, blurring her vision. "Why didn't I just try to help them?! Why didn't I - MMPHHH!!"

Was it worse than the way her teammates had been captured, or better? A thick, blue cloth - drugged, of course - forced over her nose and her soft mouth, instead of a drug-soaked bag thrown over her pretty head - which would one choose? She could still see, but she didn't know if that made it better or worse. She struggled - or god knew she tried to. But she was so much shorter, so much weaker than the man in the red jersey, the man with the hard, square face who had her in his grasp.
"Well, look if I didn't just catch me a cute little mouse," he grunted in her ear. He stank of cologne, so much so that Debra could smell it over the ether that assaulted her senses.
"Mmmph! Mmm-MMMPHH! MMMPPPHHHH!!" Adrenaline fought back against ether, and Debra prayed her tireless muscles would give her some burst of strength, but if they did, she didn't notice it. She grabbed her captor's arm, and pulled down on it as hard as she could, with both hands, but it wouldn't budge. "N-no!" Debra silently bewailed. "It's not fair! I'm a superhuman...I'm a superhero! And this...this random guy's way stronger than me...just...just because I'm a woman!"

She'd hoped that her power, her infinite physical endurance, would translate into some kind of immunity to sedatives, but this was a vain hope. If she'd thought about it, she'd have remembered that she'd been anaesthetised at the dentist's before. No, she wasn't getting tired: she couldn't. She was just getting sleepy.
"Nmmhh...nnmmhhh..." Debra whimpered, as a thick, hot cloud began tugging at the corners of her consciousness, pulling her into darkness. She still fought back, tried to pull herself away, but her captor leaned back, pulling her tight against himself, wrapping his free arm around her waist and holding her close, almost pulling her off her feet. "Mmmhh-mmmhhh!" she moaned, feeling her curvy body all too easily overpowered. Her legs rubbed together slowly, a pleasant swish-swish sound coming from her satin tights as they did. "Mmmhh...mmff..." Her body was going numb, her extremities tingling. She couldn't hear anything, just two thumping sounds. One, her own heartbeat, settling to a steady, sleepy rate. And another, faster: her captor's. She could feel his excitement as he subdued her, as he held her curvy body in his arms, as he felt her struggles fail, weaken. Felt her soft, warm body melt into his grip.

"Mhhh..." Debra sighed, as her fingers lost their grip, her arms flopping to her sides, swinging a little as they dropped.
"Fuck me...I haven't been this close to a woman this young...this pretty since I was in college..." Debra's captor pulled her tighter, closer. The buxom brunette's face was now a picture of meek somnolence, her eyes lidded, her moans soft, passive. So when he began to fondle her, she couldn't do anything. She could barely even whimper now, even when his hand slithered upwards, and grabbed a handful of her soft, warm breasts. She sighed, perhaps even attempted a "No" beneath the drugged cloth, but she was powerless, so he abandoned all pretence: he reached down her top, and began groping, massaging her perky bosoms. She was a gorgeous, ripe little peach, and he was plucking her to his heart's content.

"Leatherback wouldn't approve," he whispered into Debra's ear as he fondled her, "but what did he expect? He tells us we're gonna be capturing some superbabes, and what, we're not gonna get handsy? Fuck that. Like I give a shit about his conscience. Like I care if he can sleep at night."
"Th...they...expected us?" That Debra had managed to pluck out this nugget of information was impressive under the circumstances, but there was nothing she could do with it. She was paralysed, and slipping swiftly into slumber, closer with every passing moment. She could just about feel what was being done to her, summoning enough blood to blush faintly as she was groped. That was all the power she had.

"And what's with that costume?" he laughed. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't mind all the free access you're giving me, but you look like something from the fuckin' seventies. You...you do know we're actual criminals, right? Arms dealers, mostly. People who exist in the real world. You seriously come along to our turf expecting to collar us, dressed like that? Lady, you were fuckin' asking for it." He let go of the cloth, let it fall to his feet, before taking her by the shoulders, turning her around to face him.
"Unhh..." Debra's head fell forward onto her chest, her legs limp and pigeon-toed. He grabbed a fistful of her hair, pulled her head up. Whether by chance or by some tangential benefit of her powers, she was actually still conscious, just about.
"I'm sure I'm not gonna be the only guy to rub my hands all over you now that you're a...commodity, but I want you to remember me. I want you to remember my face. No matter who ends up paying for you, I got there first."
"Nhh..." Debra sighed, pulsing with humiliation, wishing that sleep would just hurry up and take her already.
"Can't make the boss wait too long. Still need to cash you in, right? Alley-oop!"

Debra didn't quite understand. 'Alley-oop', surely, meant that he was going to pick her up. Why, then, was she falling? She felt a shudder as her knees hit the floor, heard a soft 'fmpf' as she fell onto her front. She lay there for a few seconds, and found no more hands pawing at her body. No more sneering taunts, no more ether. She wondered why. She couldn't move, not even to lift her head. Vaguely floating around in her mind was something he'd said about Leatherback not liking the idea of his captives being mistreated. Perhaps he'd appeared, and was scolding his subordinate. Perhaps - oh, wouldn't that be lovely! - perhaps one of her comrades had got free. Freebird had come to save her. But no. Freebird still lay in captivity, bagged and drugged. Leatherback had not come to chastise his employee. And sure enough, before long, Debra did feel hands on her shoulders, turning her over onto her back. Then one of those hands reached down and slapped her across the cheek.

No. No, that was a massive exaggeration. It wasn't a slap, but a pat. He wasn't trying to hurt her, he was trying to rouse her.
"C'mon, c'mon," he said. "Don't be dead, girlie. Don't die to low-down nobodies like these."
"Wh...huh?" Debra opened her eyes. Her vision was still blurry, dark...she could barely tell what she was looking at.
"Atta-girl. Come on, let's get you somewhere a little safer."
Arms slid under Debra's body, supporting her satin-clad legs, her shapely torso. She was lifted up like a bride, her head falling back, her legs dangling in the air. Yet she'd been lifted so easily, like - like she was lighter than air. She was carried through a porthole, its hinge long since rusted shut, but forced open with a single kick, revealing what had once been a crewman's cabin. Debra was laid down on a grotty, ancient mattress, feeling as if she were floating. It was darker in this cabin, actually better for Debra's hazy vision. And so, she opened her eyelids, eyelids which felt so very heavy, and realised how wrong she had been. It was not the man who'd drugged her who had roused her and picked her up. Nor could it have been, for he was lying in a crumpled heap with two broken ribs. It wasn't even a man: Debra had just heard what she'd expected to hear in her drugged state. When she saw her, then, when she really saw her...she thought, in her drugged haze, that she was looking at an angel.
"You're still weak," the angel said. She rose, began fading from Debra's view. "Stay here. I'll put these scumbags down like the dogs they are."

Debra had to admit, an angel probably wouldn't have put it quite like that. As her faculties slowly returned to her, she realised what she had seen. What she had actually seen.
"A hero," she thought, her heart fluttering in her lovely chest. "A...real hero!"
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Fuck it," Leatherback growled. "If she gets away she gets away. It's not like the police don't know about us. Three should be enough."
"Lavine is still out looking for her," Hugo replied.
"Then call him and tell him to come back! Jesus Christ, being the boss doesn't mean I have to do every single little piece of thinking, you - c'mere!" He beckoned Hugo over, rolled up a newspaper he'd been reading, and smacked "the little bastard" on the top of his head.
"S-sorry, boss..." Hugo mumbled, and moved away to call Lavine, to find out where the hell he'd got to.

Leatherback gestured to three of his subordinates, and one by one the fallen Bombshells went up to their feet, and then over the shoulder of one of their captors. Still stuffed and bound in the sacks which deprived the damsels of consciousness and dignity, it was still only their exposed legs which identified them; Cecily's - long, willowy and smooth; Freebird's - warm, toned and supple; and Lupus' - pale, soft, and yielding. In Leatherback's sight, their captors didn't dare openly to grope their defenceless victims, but they sure gripped them tight enough.
"Where d'you want them?" the largest of the three loadbearers asked.
"Get 'em on the yacht," Leatherback grumbled. Normally he'd be going away from a trip to the tanker loaded with automatic rifles, or assault shotguns. But he hadn't been able to earn enough money as an arms dealer, and now this was his retirement plan. Stealing well-meaning young women - girls - away from their lives, and selling them. He felt sick. He turned away from his captives, from his employees, and looked out onto the water through the deck's main window. Thinking of Ernest Hemingway, perhaps, he wondered if a life on the sea would have brought him a better end than what seemed likely for him. He saw his yacht. It was moving closer. It was moving closer rather quickly. It was moving closer very quickly, and with a degree more verticality than one might expect.
"Oh, shit!"

The yacht, the six tonne yacht, crashed straight through the window of the tanker's deck, with a terrific crash of glass, and a shrieking groan, the sound of metal shearing apart as the yacht's bow stabbed into the tanker's hull, crumpling it and itself at the same time. The impact was astonishingly violent. Leatherback was hurled to the floor, crying out in pain, his face cut by flying shards of glass. Everyone who was anywhere near the front of the deck was floored as well, so only those carrying the three captives were spared from a rather painful tumble. The surprise, however, was more or less equally shared by those present.

"Wh-what the - what the fuck just happened?!" Hugo screeched, no longer possessed of the presence of mind to report that Lavine was incommunicado. "Is that our yacht? How - what could do that?!"
"A superhuman, obviously!" Leatherback managed to pull himself to his feet, helped by the woman who'd captured Cecily. "Our tip-off must not have been as in the know as they thought." The other possibility, that it was a setup, occurred to him too, but he didn't want his people to panic.
"That strong?" Hugo whimpered.
"You're right. That's impossible. The thing that happened just now absolutely didn't just happen." Unwillingly, Leatherback drew his sidearm. "Everyone, get ready for a fight."
"A fight? Don't make me laugh."

They hadn't seen the hole being torn in the roof, of course. How would they have done? They were all looking at the big, flaming boat that had been thrown at them. They didn't see the hole. They didn't see the woman who'd torn it looking down, taking stock of the positions and armament of the gangsters. They didn't see the woman who'd thrown the yacht at them. And when she did drop through the hole she'd torn, moonlight shining in like a spotlight, they still couldn't believe that they were seeing what they were seeing.

Freebird and the other Bombshells, they were lovely young women, yes, but this...this was different. One of Leatherback's men later put it well - from within a prison cell, alas - when he said "that was some serious Helen of Troy shit." She was...beautiful. Long, wavy, golden-blonde hair framed a gorgeous face: exquisitely blue, deep eyes; flawlessly sculpted cheekbones; ruby-red, pillowy lips; a jawline both dignified and feminine - a face that said "stare all you like, but don't you forget to give respect."

And her body...god, her body! She was spectacularly voluptuous, like a mix between a 21st Century model and a 1950s pin-up girl. Her breasts were achingly generous, thrusting against her simple, blue, spandex leotard with every breath, two heaving, perfectly shaped testaments to her femininity. Her waist tapered inwards in a striking, yet graceful contour, only to taper out again to a pair of curvy, womanly hips, hips you wanted to grab onto and pull close. Her legs, clad only in transparent tights, were long and shapely, obviously belonging to a fit, healthy young woman, but with a pleasing roundness, especially towards the tops of her thighs, which suggested that there was softness in this woman, too.

Her enemies might not have been so awestruck if it hadn't been for her costume: it showed off acres of her smooth, light pink skin. A long-sleeved, spandex leotard covered her upper body, dipping down to show off her sumptuous cleavage. Red gloves adorned her arms, matching the red domino mask over her eyes; blue boots she wore, up to her knees, and had a belt around her waist, with a buckle in the shape of a 'V'.

She saw the way they looked at her. The gawking: she was used to that. The fear...not so much. But she couldn't deny it pleased her to be responded to appropriately.
"I guess we're already in the middle of doing it the hard way," she said. "So we can do it the hard-hard way, or the easy-hard way."
"What do you mean?" Leatherback, pinpricked by glass as he was, was the only one with the courage to speak.
"Easy-hard? You throw down your weapons, and you surrender. Hard-hard...and looking at the number of you, I'll be setting a new record tonight for number of broken bones. You've seen how strong I am. Be smart."
Leatherback laughed. "It's a little late for me to start doing that, Miss...uh...what do I call you? V?"
"Just remember that you asked for this," she said, stretching her back like a lioness waking from a long sleep. "And if you're gonna call me something, call me Valora."

They had seen her throw the yacht, but they still hadn't really understood what that kind of strength meant. Valora moved faster, much faster than one expected. She sprang at the gunman on her immediate right, grabbed his weapon with one hand, and squeezed her fist. It crumpled into useless scrap. As it owner gaped, she backhanded him, sending him flying through the air. He took nearly six seconds to land, and fell with a great cry of pain. The others stared at Valora again, this time with more fear than physical admiration. She made as much use of this as she could, closing on another gunman, and pulling the same trick. This time, however, she merely tapped the gangster on the forehead - knocking him out - and instead threw the wreck of his gun, clobbering Hugo.

By this time, seeing their getaway vehicle wrecked and watching their comrades get taken apart by this superwoman, the gangsters carrying the Bombshells dropped their loads in a heap, and began to run for it. But Valora wasn't having that. She grabbed one of the navigation consoles, tearing it out of its foundations, and hurling it into the path of the runners. By now Leatherback's men had recovered somewhat, and had started shooting, but Valora was too fast to be hit. She closed with the runners, felling them with three quick blows, before turning her attention to the last three gangsters.
"Ow!" Valora realised she'd been hit - a stray bullet had grazed her side, tearing through her costume. It did not, however, break Valora's skin. It would leave a bruise, but only a full force, direct hit from these sorts of weapons would be able to wound her at all seriously. Still, it reminded Valora that, while mighty, she was not indestructible. It also pissed her off.

Gouging out a hunk of metal from the floor, Valora rushed forward at her last enemies, holding the metal in front of her to deflect any bullets. And as the shots bounced off and whizzed past her, Valora realised that she was smiling. She didn't feel particularly bad about that. There was nothing more satisfying than a bit of morally unimpeachable violence.
"Flank her!" Leatherback croaked, trying one last gambit to protect himself. But it was too easily seen through, and not quickly enough executed. Valora simply ripped her shield in two, and as Leatherback made a run for the entrance to the bridge that Cecily had tried to use, she hurled the two halves at his men, knocking one unconscious, and simply hurting the other so badly that he couldn't keep fighting.

Leatherback didn't look over his shoulder. He simply hoped his men could stop this powerhouse, and tried as best he could to escape. His old legs carried him as fast as they could, but that really wasn't very fast. And sure enough, before he had got to anything even vaguely resembling safety, something hit him in the back. Crying out, he fell flat on his front, wheezing. He barely had time to notice that he'd been felled with a stapler Valora had taken from the wreckage of his yacht before he found himself flipped onto his back like a tortoise, looking up at the spectacularly beautiful young woman who had undone him.
"Leatherback..." She didn't smile, exactly, but she looked satisfied. "Didn't think I'd catch you on the first try. I heard you were a dirtbag, but abducting women? That's a new low. What were you gonna do? Sell them? Into slavery?" She shook her head. "It's a shame you're so damned old. You'll die way before you've served your fair sentence."
"Lady," Leatherback replied, too exhausted to defend himself from her scorn, "you're a hell of a fighter. Why are you paired up with these amateurs?"
"I'm not," Valora replied. More to herself than to Leatherback, she muttered: "I don't know what their deal is."

Her powers might not have protected her from the ether, but Debra recovered quickly, belatedly following her saviour to find their foes swiftly vanquished. It was as unbelievably swift a victory against Leatherback and his men as he'd achieved against the Bombshells, only this one brought joy to Maiden-America, not dismay. She rushed to her fallen allies, awkwardly but swiftly loosening the ropes binding those dreadful sacks in place, and pulling them off.
"Oh, gosh!" Debra gasped, finding her comrades unconscious, helpless. She tried to prop them up, to make them as comfortable as possible, but they kept slipping down the wall, and onto their backs again. Desperate to at least get this right, she grabbed Freebird firmly by the shoulders, and pushed her hard against the wall - hard enough to rouse her.

"Wh..." Hazel eyes fluttered open, and Freebird saw with dazed eyes the friendly, sweet face of her youngest teammate.
"Oh, you're okay!" Debra was so excited she hardly knew what to do with herself. Salvation, from the jaws of a fate too terrible to be imagined!
"What...what happened?" Freebird mumbled. She remembered being grabbed. Remembered the bag, the ether. How, then, was she free. "D-Debra...did you save us?"
"Don't be silly: I couldn't have saved you if I'd had a 2-for-1 Freebird coupon!"
"H...huh?"
"I mean, no - it wasn't me. They caught me too, but...she saved us!"
"Who?"
"She's called Valora. She totally kicked Leatherback's ass! Freebird, you have to ask her to -"
"FREEZE!"

Even Valora was caught off guard. They had emerged from nowhere, as if they'd been there all along and had just now decided to become visible. Soldiers, marines from the look of their fatigues, swarmed in - at least thirty of them, all much better armed than any of Leatherback's men had been, bellowing at Valora to put her hands above her head.
"Hey, what the hell's going on here?!" Valora shouted, finding herself completely surrounded, by men with easily enough firepower to bring her down. But the soldiers seemed to share her confusion. They looked at her as if they hadn't expected her, looked at each other. One marine, a more slender fellow than one would have expected, hesitantly stepped forward, beginning to lower the muzzle of his rifle.

"Uh, ma'am?" he said. "Is...are you one of the Bombshells?" He swallowed. He'd just noticed how attractive she was. He'd really noticed.
"If you mean what I think you mean, then no," she said. "I'm Valora. I'm not with, uh, the Bombshells. I just happened to be staking this place out, and I saw them go in, thought they might need a hand. Turns out I was right." She'd been about to ask him his name: she'd noticed him too. But, bursting through the throng of the soldiers, snapping at them to get out of his way, another man emerged.
"It's over, Leatherback!" Lance Van der Boek shouted, stepping out into the front of the soldiers. "Give up now, or -"

He surveyed the scene. Three out of four of the Bombshells lying helplessly on the floor. The tanker's bridge torn to shreds, an entire yacht thrown through its window. Leatherback's men lying groaning or unconscious, strewn about them everywhere. Leatherback himself defeated, arrested - and this woman. This gorgeous blonde who'd saved the day. This gorgeous blonde who'd ruined everything.
"Who the hell are you?" Lance said.
"I'm Valora," Valora replied. She felt like she'd had to identify herself more than she cared to that day.
"You...you did all this?"
"Apart from the bullet holes," she replied. "Yeah."
"You must be...you must be at least a class 8..." Lance signalled to the marines, and they gingerly lowered their rifles. Why they were taking orders from a civilian - who knew? "Why have I never heard of you, Valora?"
"Couldn't tell you," Valora replied. "Maybe because I've only been doing this for a week."
"A - a week?!" Lance felt like he'd just been slapped. Valora, this confident, beautiful powerhouse had even less field experience than Cecily.

And then a thought passed through Lance's mind. "She's inexperienced. She's young - twenty years old at most...hmm..."
"Look, can I go now?" Valora asked. "I beat the bad guy. He's all yours if you want him, whoever you are." Valora was beginning to feel a little nervous. There was something about all this she didn't like.
"Oh, how rude of me!" Lance said. He readjusted himself. "I'm Lance Van der Boek. And Miss...uh, Valora...I want to ask you something."
"What?"
"Do you love your country?"

In the years that followed, when Valerie thought of the worst decisions she'd ever made, she'd didn't know if answering 'yes' to Lance Van der Boek's question was actually the worst decision she'd ever made...but it was always the one she thought of first.

[tallyho]

Fantastic concept at the start and great structure to the story and really well written (the only point I would make on that score is to be consistent. If they are still on the ship stick with the ship terminolgy - there's one part when they are dropped on 'the ground' rather than the deck and because of the location of it in the story I thought it was a scene change and they had been carried off somewhere else) I liked the retrospective angle and a very nice ending . The only low point for me was the take down

Spoiler

I just thought PLANNING to take down 4 heroes with unknown powers by the cunning use of ...er 2 sacks was just really weak - I love plausible plots and everything else hangs together sooo well that whole piece just screams out for its unlikeliness - its so full of holes as plan - to have just 2 guys jump them when they have no idea whether more than 2 will run in, whether the Bombshells will actually scope out the room first before making a move and so spot them , or even if they do run in that they wont notice the heavies out of the corner of their eye and be able to react or dodge them first, that they werent able to just point their hands behind them and blast their attackers etc etc And they do it all with no external comms or links to Lance etc

I know you wanted to show them as inexperienced but I felt that could have been done better .

Great fight at the end though and as I say really good beginning, so nice job overall, just wish the middle had been differently handled

[Damselbinder]

Fantastic concept at the start and great structure to the story and really well written (the only point I would make on that score is to be consistent. If they are still on the ship stick with the ship terminolgy - there's one part when they are dropped on 'the ground' rather than the deck and because of the location of it in the story I thought it was a scene change and they had been carried off somewhere else) I liked the retrospective angle and a very nice ending . The only low point for me was the take down

Spoiler

I just thought PLANNING to take down 4 heroes with unknown powers by the cunning use of ...er 2 sacks was just really weak - I love plausible plots and everything else hangs together sooo well that whole piece just screams out for its unlikeliness - its so full of holes as plan - to have just 2 guys jump them when they have no idea whether more than 2 will run in, whether the Bombshells will actually scope out the room first before making a move and so spot them , or even if they do run in that they wont notice the heavies out of the corner of their eye and be able to react or dodge them first, that they werent able to just point their hands behind them and blast their attackers etc etc And they do it all with no external comms or links to Lance etc

I know you wanted to show them as inexperienced but I felt that could have been done better .

Great fight at the end though and as I say really good beginning, so nice job overall, just wish the middle had been differently handled

I acknowledge that there is much in what you say. I think there was a problem with tone vs. logic. For Valora's story, I wanted a less comic-book-y, more real world feel, so no hi-tech anti-super gadgets and so on and so forth. However, of course, these superhumans are still dangerous. However, your central point - that they don't know what these heroines can do...well, let's just say there may be a shoe still to drop. Nevertheless - I made things too easy for myself. This was very helpful criticism, and I'll try to keep it in mind in the future.

[Damselbinder]

Valerie came out of her interview with Rodney Burke feeling sullied. She wasn't pretentious: she'd never thought that Valora would change the world, or bring joy to the hearts of men, or anything like that. It was just that she had strength, far more strength than most people could ever dream of, and she felt compelled to do something with it. Fight crime. Help people. Whatever. It was supposed to be something she did because it was right.

She wished dearly that that could have been enough. But she needed money, and her other job just didn't bring in enough, lucky as she was to have it.
"Eight collars a week..." Valerie grimaced. It was not as if she thought that this would be difficult. With her power she could easily pluck a few street dealers without too much trouble. But that was the thing. As...distasteful an experience as the Bombshells had been, at least they had in theory been doing something of significance.

But here? In Portland? What was there to do? There was crime, sure, but nothing of world-ending importance. Nothing that needed Valora to fix. All she'd be doing was hauling in people who'd probably be in and out of prison for their whole adult lives, or people who simply hadn't grown up perceiving themselves as having any other choice. She'd never have the time to devote herself to going after more serious or influential criminals. Maybe she'd tackle the odd superhuman psychotic here and there: that was fine - at least there Valora would be shielding the lives of people who'd otherwise be forced to deal with it at much greater risk to themselves. She'd done a bit of that in Cali - but there just weren't that many in Maine. She knew she'd had to leave California - she just wished it hadn't been to this place.

But then, as she left that artless shoe-box of a building on the corner of Federal and Temple, she saw something. Someone was running out of the Post Office, throwing themselves with incredible - though human - speed in the direction of city hall. A duffel bag was clutched in a sinewy hand, and there were shouts of protest from the Post Office as he ran out of it. Valerie heard sirens in the distance, but they were closing. All that would have been enough to spur her into action, sure, but it did not make her pleased. What made her pleased was the bright, orange-and-yellow bodysuit that this man wore. The manic grin on his face. The fire in his eyes - literally! He was that best of worst things: a real-life, bona-fide supervillain.

Immediately, Valerie sprang into action, ducking into a side street. She wasn't being particularly careful though. She was so excited her hands were almost trembling. Quickly she disrobed, before slipping into the leotard she kept in her bag: the same kind that she'd used before joining the Bombshells. It was less bulky, easier to carry with her if she wasn't planning on doing any heroics. It went on quickly - her gloves, her boots - and she was so thrilled that she almost forgot her mask. But once it was on, she leapt - and she felt like she flew.

She sailed above the Maine Registration Office, above Rodney Burke and his grey bureaucracy, taking the straightest possible line as the crow flies from where she'd changed and stashed her streetclothes, to where this supervillain was running. She landed a few metres short of him, smacking into the ground with a terrific impact, the pavement cracking beneath her feet. A few people cried out when they saw her land - but they would learn soon enough that she was not to be feared.

"Hey, scumbag!" Valora shouted, her powerful voice carrying much further than a normal person's would. The scumbag heard, and turned, with a smile on his face.
"Well, I'll be damned," he said. "A hero! And I thought this town wouldn't give me the slightest challenge!"
Valora almost shook with relief. He was articulate, well-spoken - lucid and cognisant, not some poor fellow who'd lost his mind. His bearing, the look of him - this wasn't some desperate thief trying to escape poverty. He had chosen to use his powers for crime. He was a bad guy, pure and simple.

"Fair warning," Valora said, cracking her knuckles, "I can do you some real damage." People were beginning to watch, as the fight built up in intensity.
"Fair warning to you, hero," the thief replied, dropping his loot, "I will do you some real damage!" He crouched, planting one of his hands on the ground like a quarterback. "Fear the power - of Hell-Eye!" Twin beams of searing red burst explosively from his eyes with a shriek. Valora's instinct was to dodge, but she couldn't risk Hell-Eye's powers hitting a building or a car. She planted her feet, and took the hit. She'd known what she was getting into, and her reasoning remained sound, so one could hardly call it a mistake - but it still hurt like hell.

"Rggghhh!!" Valora growled, as the beam pushed her backwards, her feet gouging stone out of the pavement as she struggled to keep her balance. Her arms were crossed in front of her, the pain in them building every second. Finally, the pain let up, and Valora saw that Hell-Eye had run out of juice. She sprang forward, not weaving to the side for fear of exposing others to his power, but just charging straight at him, trusting in her speed. But she wasn't quite fast enough. Whether Hell-Eye had some saved-up store of energy that he could draw from for a while, or whether his reserves simply charged up quickly, enough time had passed, and he made the same quarterback pose, and fired again. Again, Valora was forced to take the brunt of the blow.

"You've got to be pretty damned strong to take two of my blasts!" Hell-Eye shouted. "But you won't be able to get close. I'll wear you down. Whether your limit's three, or five, or twenty, I'll keep going until you fall!"
"Aaagghh!" Valora shouted, as much to summon her courage as in a response to pain. The parts of her leotard covering her arms had long-since melted, and the ray of energy burned against her skin. It was getting close to agony. Finally, the attack let up, but this time Valora did not spring forward. She stood still, panting, steam rising from her exposed skin. It didn't look like she had anything left to give.

"Hey...wait a minute, I remember you!" Hell-Eye said. "Oh yes, that's right! You're from that team, that federal thing...the Flag-Wavers, or the Patriots, or something - gods above, what a joke that was!"
"What does that matter?!" Valora barked. She seemed to struggle to stand.
"I suppose it doesn't - except if you were one of them...then you must be used to failure." He made the same pose, crouching and bracing himself with one hand. He grinned as his eyes began to glow. "Maybe I overestimated your limits. Looks like three's going to be enough for you! I'll - whoooaaa!"

In reality, Valora would have been able to stand up to his attacks for a much longer time yet - she had been feigning her exhaustion. She had noticed the way he braced himself before each shot, noticed too that he was always a few feet further back after he fired each shot. There were superhumans whose powers defied the laws of physics completely, but this didn't appear to be one of them. There was recoil. And so, right before he fired, Valora had smacked her hand hard into the ground, creating a tremor which cracked car windows all the way up the avenue. Hell-Eye's bracing stance was broken, and he lost balance when the blast came out. He was so off-balance, in fact, that the force of the blast smacked the back of his head into the pavement. With a sickening crack, he'd knocked himself completely unconscious.

"Hell yes!" Valora whooped, once she realised how successful her little stratagem had been. She strode over to her fallen opponent, striding with fierce confidence. She saw, on closer inspection, a little trickle of blood from the back of his head - but he was alive, and that was all Valora had principally concerned herself with. A wave of pleasure washed over her, a feeling of purpose restored. Wasn't it worth it? Wasn't it worth the penury and tedium if she got a few moments like this every once in a while? Just a little adulation, a little payback for her hard work? She looked out at the people who'd been watching her, hoping for something that could keep her going other than sheer grit.

There were some who were cheering, sure. But what she'd hoped for and what she got was like comparing the applause at a goal in an international soccer match with the applause at a birdie in a regional golf tourney. But that by itself would have been alright - it was the others. The way people looked at her, at a woman who'd just stopped a dangerous, powerful criminal without anyone else getting hurt, and they looked at her with...something between fear and apathy. They weren't going to celebrate or crown Valora's head with laurels. Many of them had seen far more destructive battles between superhumans in their time; whether it was old-timers being slaughtered in droves by the Supremacist and his ilk, or the brutal antiheroes who'd risen in response, superhumans always meant blood. They began to turn away, to get back to their lives, to ignore the young woman in her tall boots and her leotard and her mask - a garish reminder of a grim time. Even her staggering beauty felt somehow...passé.

Valerie gritted her teeth, tried to remind herself that one did good for its own sake, not for praise, but she still felt the anger swelling. Didn't they have any gratitude? Didn't they realise that she could have died? She was furious, so furious that she almost knocked over the policewoman who'd rushed up to her to find out what had happened. Valerie didn't even see her. She would have left, have distracted herself or consoled herself some other way - except that she remembered at the last minute that this would count as one of her collars for the week.

As she went back to the policewoman, mumbled an apology, and asked for the appropriate paperwork, she felt full of rage - a dangerous thing in a woman of such strength. Perhaps the worst thing, perhaps what burned most in her angry young heart, was feeling that her father had been right all along.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The night of Leatherback's arrest...

"Hey, Dad." Valerie was still by the shore when she called her father. She was sitting on the edge of a pier, a few piers down from where Leatherback's tanker was moored. She'd been facing away from the water, watching the sun come up over the mountains. She'd sort of hoped watching the dawn would feel symbolic. So far she wasn't sure it felt like anything. "How are you feeling today?"
"Oh, you know, Val. It has its ups, it has its downs. Today's a down, but that's the way it goes." His voice was thin. Ulysses Orville had the voice of a man who had been too sad for too long. Every breath was a sigh. Every sentence sounded as if it could end with 'oh, well.' Often they did.

"Dad, um...something happened today," Valerie said. "I...I have a job interview." Lance had not quite told her that she was in, even if he'd heavily implied it. He'd given her the same spiel he'd given the other Bombshells, though - if a somewhat truncated version of it.
"I thought you already had a job," Ulysses replied. "Photographing groceries not glamorous enough for my little girl?"
Valerie laughed a little. Holding her phone against her shoulder, she began folding up her leotard, wincing as she saw that it had actually been ripped pretty badly by the gunfire. She'd have to pay for it to get fixed again, to spend another seven bucks she didn't really have. She stuffed it inside a worn-out, cheap rucksack: it had been stashed by the pier when she'd gone after Leatherback. Along with her leotard she put in her mask, her gloves, her belt. Her boots she wrapped in a plastic shopping bag first: she didn't want to get mud on her costume too.

She realised that she'd been silent for nearly three minutes as she attended to her costume. She thought she must have hung up by mistake, but no - the call was still going.
"Dad, are you still there?"
"Yeah, honey, I'm here."
"Sorry about that, I was...folding laundry." She gave a bemused little laugh. "Didn't...didn't you wonder why I just wasn't talking?"
"Well, I figured you were doing something more important, and I was right, wasn't I?"
"What? No, no, it wasn't more..." Valerie decided to let the matter lie. "Look, like I was saying, I got offered a job today."
"Oh, honey, that's great! Is it that gig at the L.A. Times you were talking about?"
"Huh? No - no, Dad, I told you before that was an internship. They weren't gonna pay me anything. It's not a photography job it's -"
"Oh. Oh. It's a superhero thing."
"Yeah, it's...it's a superhero thing."

Valerie let out a long, slow breath. She stood up, turned away from the sun and looked out over the dark grey waters of Port Hueneme, gently lapping against the pier. In the dim, dawn light, California did not look very glamorous. Even she herself had shed much of her glamour - out of her costume, her heroic warrant, she was still a great beauty, but she was not Valora. A pair of torn jeans, a white vest top - the warrant of normality, if a very lovely version of it. She'd come to this state, this wretched, hot state, this state full of surfer idiots and Hollywood fakes, of fools and charlatans of every stripe, because it was also a place of heroes. Or, to put it a little less dramatically, because it was a good place for a twenty year old college dropout who could rip apart solid steel like damp bread to make a living. She'd come, like Dick Whittington traipsing merrily down the lanes to London, to seek her fortune.

So far, fortune had not been forthcoming. California made things easy for state superheroes, sure, but their state's coffers were not infinite, and Valora had found herself on that most awful weapon in the arsenal of any bureaucracy: a waiting list. And so, like many beautiful women who'd come to the Golden State hoping for swift success, Valerie had been left in a kind of limbo of petty jobs. Her camera, by far the most expensive object she'd ever owned, had been the only thing keeping her from a dole queue: she'd turned a hobby into a job as a freelance photographer, with high-school sporting events and grocery stores being her bread and butter - as well as a part time job as a waitress. She was holding on - but barely.

"I'm going to go for it." She swallowed. "It's not what I imagined myself doing, but it sure beats slumming it on the waiting list."
"Well," her father replied, "you already know how I feel about all...that."
"Yeah. I do." A hint of tension in her voice.
"Look, if it makes you happy, great," Ulysses said. "I just don't think that it will, Val. People...people don't like that sort of thing anymore, do they? Superheroes, I mean."
"Maybe not in Maine. They like us fine in California."
"No, sure, I know, I know. I mean, that's...that's why you moved out there. But maybe you need to think again."
"Dad -"
"I read an article in Time the other day; it was called 'The End of the Superhero'."
"Dad, seriously -"
"I know, I know, they put a controversial title on the article to get people to read it, but it made some good points about -"
"Dad, I'll be making eighty-two thousand dollars a year."
"Eighty...two -?!"

Often it was frustrating in the extreme talking to Ulysses. He had a strange habit of floating above conversations, hearing but not hearing what the other person said, as if he didn't really understand that there was such a thing as context. Whenever Valora had talked about wanting to use her powers professionally - to use them at all - he'd always said the exact same thing, word-for-word, with the exact same inflection, even. But when he heard his college dropout daughter saying that she was, at twenty, going to be earning more than double the highest salary he'd ever earned in his life...then he listened.
"Oh, honey, ignore your stupid old dad. That's life-changing. You should go for it. Valerie, go for it."
Valerie grinned. "I had a feeling you'd see it my way, Dad."

Valerie looked again at her torn costume. It suddenly occurred to her that getting it fixed would be a trivial cost - replacing it would be a trivial cost. Poverty had begun to gnaw at Valerie's bones - the tinned food, the god awful dump she had to live in, the nights out with her friends she had to skip because she just couldn't afford it. From out of nowhere, a lifeline - a golden egg that had just fallen into her lap. How the hell could she not have taken it? How could she not have ignored the feeling in her gut that she was being conned?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It made sense, in a way, that the Bombshells would be based out of L.A. Even the most charitable interpretation of them would have admitted of a very...Hollywood mien. What Valerie hadn't been prepared for was the building that the group had made their home. It was a mansion, a huge, white edifice that ruined utterly the red-bricked, if still eye-wateringly expensive, respectability of the surrounding houses. As she'd approached its door, Valerie had felt like laughing, and for a moment she hadn't understood why - until she realised that the mansion looked exactly like the one used in the opening credits of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It was surreal. As she was escorted to Lance's office, that feeling of surrealism only grew.

"Thanks for showing up," Lance said, enthusiastically shaking Valerie's hand as she entered his office, beckoning her to sit down. He was wearing a white sports jacket over a vest, shades. He had a half-drunk smoothie on his desk. He had an assistant that was a little too pretty, a tan that was a little too orange. He couldn't have come across more like a slimy Hollywood agent if he'd tried.
"Thanks for the invitation," Valerie replied. She was wearing sunglasses too: thick, square and cheap, but actually pretty effective as an 'I'm not in disguise' disguise. Otherwise, she was in a rather fetching pencil skirt and blazer combination; glossy stockings, heels - the same outfit she always wore to job interviews.

"So, how does this work?" Valerie asked, cutting Lance off before he could offer her a drink. "Do I give you my real name?"
"In a word, yes," Lance said. "If you want to work with us, you are gonna have to take off the mask. Or in your case, the shades. Here, look, I'll even do the same myself!" He obviously thought this very amusing, because he permitted himself a loud laugh before revealing his eyes, small and greyish.
Valerie was about to follow suit, but she hesitated. "Are you asking me to go public with my real name?"
"Not unless you want to," Lance replied. "Everything will be processed in the strictest confidence."

Not wholly reassured, Valerie took off her sunglasses. "My name's Valerie Orville. You're in charge of the - the Bombshells, right?"
"Freebird is the Bombshells' leader. I'm more like the...Charlie to their Angels. Which is a little confusing 'cause one of them's actually called -"
"You screwed up really bad."
Lance did not lose his composure, exactly. He managed to smile, lean back in his chair, and tent his fingers. "Miss Orville, if you're not gonna be polite, then maybe I should be having this conversation with a different person. There are a lot of wannabe superheroes in California, you know."
Valerie crossed her legs, folded her arms. She didn't break eye contact with him. "First off, this is a seller's market, Mr Van der Boek, and I know what I'm selling. You struck gold when you found me, and you and I both know it. I know how powerful I am, and I know how good-looking I am, and I know that you need both. You need us to be marketable, right? You are not gonna find someone like me again anytime soon, so cut the crap."

Lance narrowed his eyes. "Anything else on your mind?"
"Yeah, actually. Your entire crew almost got abducted yesterday. They had absolutely no idea what they were doing. I'm not a master tactician or anything, but I can think of a million different ways they could have gone into that tanker, and all of them are better than what you had them doing. Leatherback knew they were coming, too, so obviously someone in your outfit was loose-lipped." She saw a flicker on Lance's face. "Stop me if you think I'm being unreasonable."
"You're not."

Lance stood up, turned towards his opulent bay windows. "You're right, Miss Orville. Last night was a wake-up call in more ways than one..." He faced her. "You're right about another thing too: I'd never find someone quite like you if I looked for a hundred years. So I am absolutely offering you the job, if you want it. But with everything you just said - why do you want it?"
"I won't lie, the money's a big part of it," Valerie said.
"We all need to make a living, that's for sure."
"But it's not just that. You asked me if I loved my country," Valerie replied. "I do. You talked about bringing people's confidence back, about making superheroes something that could inspire people again. That's something I want as well." She thought of what her father had said, of what her father had always said, about Americans falling out of love with her kind. She thought about how even now, in the sixth year of the 21st Century, she'd still always felt like she had to keep her powers hidden. "I think you're going about it the wrong way, but you're doing something good. I want to help."
Lance smiled. It was even better than he'd hoped.

And so, with hands shaken and contracts signed, Lance took his newest 'Angel' to meet the others. As he escorted his beautiful, blonde employee through the mansion, she saw at least a dozen people: make up artists, costume designers, PR people chattering interminably at phones, apparently trying to secure the Bombshells as much publicity as possible. Valerie didn't understand why all this was needed for a team that had barely started and only had four - now five - members. She wondered if Lance had hopes not only of a super-team - but of a franchise of teams.
"You're gonna love the others. They're great girls, Valerie," Lance said. "You're gonna fight right in."
"Are they all full-timers?" Valerie asked. She was a little distracted by man in camos going past them - the third she'd seen. She'd been meaning to ask about that, too, about why marines had shown up to aid the Bombshells in the tanker, not cops. There were still mysteries.
"Charlie and Maria are," Lance replied. "Debra's still in college, but she makes it work. Boy, she hasn't stopped talking about you, Valerie."
"Huh." Valerie had absolutely no idea which one of them Debra was, though she was faintly pleased she'd left an impression. But a nearby door was thrown open, and a young woman marched out.

"Hey!" she said, coming right up to Valerie with almost impressive speed. "Valora, right? Gee, I can't thank you enough for saving our keisters yesterday!"
"I appreciate the gratitude," Valerie replied. "Are you...Debra?"
"Nope, I'm Lupus - but you can call me Charlie," the pale girl said. "And I really am grateful to you. You saved my life. You saved me from getting sold into slavery."
"C'mon, Charlie, why don't we all say hi to our new teammate together, huh?" Lance added, stepping between the two women. His tone was ameliorating, or at least it was trying to be.
"No, no, Lance, I have to show how grateful I am. How can I ever thank you, Valora?" There was a kind of mania in Charlie's sweetness, so much so that Valerie was sure she was being mocked. Charlie was being obnoxiously loud as well. Quite a few of the staff at the Bombshells' HQ had taken notice. A lot of people were looking.
"I don't think that's how it works," Valerie replied.
"Oh no, I have to repay you," Charlie said. "That's what grateful damsels in distress do to their valiant saviours."
"Look, lady, if you've got a problem with me, why don't we - MMPH!"

Before Valerie knew it, Charlie had wrapped her arms around her neck, and kissed her full on the lips, pressing her trim body tightly against Valerie's voluptuous curves. It didn't even last a second, of course, before Valerie had shoved Lupus onto the ground, hurling her back with a mere fraction of her strength.
"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Valerie bellowed. It had taken an immense deal of restraint for her not to respond with greater violence.
"Charlie!" Lance was seized with panic, afraid that a full on fight would break out between the two of them. If word got out of that, then the Bombshells as an entity would be finished before they'd even started. But it was not at Valora that Charlie directed her anger.

"Fuck you, Lance. Fuck you and this whole shit-show team!" There were tears in her eyes. "I quit! D'you hear me? I quit!"
"Hey, Charlie, let's talk about this, huh?" Lance said, trying to get between her and Valerie. "Calm down. I know last night was upsetting, but hey, everyone loves an underdog, right?"
"Upsetting?! Are you kidding me? It was the most humiliating experience of my entire life! They threw me in a bag and drugged me, Lance - they almost sold me! And it's because of you - all of you, and this - this amateur-hour bullshit! Fuck this! Fuck being a superhero, and most of all, fuck you!" She pushed easily past Lance, despite the fact that he was far larger and heavier than she was. A couple of armed men began moving towards her, but Lance called out to them to let her go.
"Once you go out that door, you can't come back in again!" Lance shouted after her. "Think about what you're throwing away!"
Charlie's only response was to flip the bird.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Fortunately, the reintroduction to the other three Bombshells went a little more smoothly. Debra, as Lance had warned, was overjoyed to see that Valerie was joining them. Cecily was friendly, if a little inscrutable. Valerie, on realising that Maria was the leader of the group, had expected the most resistance from her, but if anything, she seemed relieved. Now that Valora had joined them, now that they had a real power on the team, it took a huge amount of pressure off her. As for the sudden, violent departure of Lupus...well, none of them had thought she was very stable. Swapping her out for the titan who'd saved them all? They all considered that a pretty fair trade. Only Cecily really seemed anxious about it.

"It's just as well you joined today, Valora," Lance explained, as he escorted the four of them through yet another section of the cavernous mansion. "You met them yesterday, girls, but - well, you maybe weren't in the best state for a formal introduction." He said this flippantly. Valerie didn't know whether he was trying to make the other three feel better about their horrible experience, or whether he was genuinely unconcerned.

He led them to what had been re-engineered into a meeting room, and they found it occupied. Two men in uniform sat at a large, oval table, talking quietly and seriously to each other. They were both dressed in short sleeved beige camos, with 'U.S. MARINES' emblazoned in thick, black letters above the left hand pockets of their shirts. The older of the two looked exactly like you'd expect of a man wearing such a uniform: big, square-shouldered, square-jawed, with small eyes and an ingrained sternness, with a neatness to him that looked almost psychotic. His uniform said 'DOYLE' on it, and at no point during the entire meeting did he ever look one of the women in the room in the eye.

"Van der Boek," Doyle muttered, gesturing to the chairs on the other side from himself. He spoke with such brutal disdain that Valerie wondered if this Doyle was Lance's boss, but the way Lance bristled seemed to suggest that he was not - he simply acted as though he were.
"Ladies," Lance said, inviting the Bombshells to sit down as well, "this is Captain Doyle, his adjutant Gunnery Sergeant Blane." Doyle might have looked exactly like you'd expect from a marine, but Blane definitely didn't. He was thin, slender even. His hair was a reddish-blond; his eyes had a boyish cunning: they gave the impression of someone who was always observing everything. He had a hint of a smile on his face, but only a hint. It was the expression of someone who was used to being smarter than those around him, but had got good at hiding it. Valerie recognised this younger man: he'd been one of the marines who'd turned up in the tanker the previous night.

"Captain Doyle and his men are going to be working with us," Lance explained. "They'll be backing you up on missions."
Doyle looked vaguely amused. "That's right. We'll pull your asses outta the fire if things go south like they did last night."
There was a little uncomfortable shifting from Maria and the others.
"Hey, Van der Boek," Doyle grunted, "where's the other one? The one with the funky hair colour."
"Oh, uh..." Lance actually took off his sunglasses. "She's...decided to leave the team."
"Wow. Quitting after one mission. What a hero."
"Excuse me," Cecily interrupted in a tone that was almost sharp. "She went through a very frightening...a horrible experience last night. Please don't mock her for deciding she didn't want to risk repeating it."
Valerie found herself smiling. The delicate looking redhead had some steel in her, it seemed.

"Our unit's there to give you peace of mind," Blane chimed in, trying to get things back on track. "This is still your show."
Valerie raised an eyebrow. "So what, most of the time you guys are just sitting around waiting for us to call you in, if we call you in at all?"
"That's the idea."
"Wouldn't that get a little tedious?"
"Well, miss," Blane replied, "hours on end of empty tedium is what being in the armed forces is all about."
Valerie didn't quite laugh, but she smiled broadly. In response, Blane managed to look both embarrassed, and exceptionally pleased with himself at the same time.

"Um, sorry, just -" Debra had actually put up her hand before speaking. She looked around, sure that she was doing something wrong, but nobody stopped her. "Isn't - isn't this illegal?"
Lance turned slowly towards the young woman. He seemed...somewhat displeased. "Sorry, Deb, what, uh...what was that?"
"Like - you guys are marines, right? But I thought there was a law against the proper military - the army and the marines and stuff - doing stuff inside America. Shouldn't we be working with, like, the National Guard?"
"Oh, come on," Maria interjected. She tossed back her ponytail in an apparent attempt to look imperious. "Do you really think they haven't thought of that?"
"Maybe," Valerie said, "but she's right." To Blane, she asked: "How are you getting away with that?"

But Blane's commander spoke over him, more out of frustration at the length of the conversation than from bullishness. "There was an Act of Congress in 1998 that gives dispensation to marines deployed to combat superhuman threats. Ordinary cops couldn't deal with it, and you people weren't doing a very good job dealing with all the shit that was going on then either. Do the math."
In a way, Valerie preferred having Doyle being this openly hostile: it made him easy to know how to deal with. He'd obviously been ordered to take this position, and he resented it. If he hadn't been so rude, Valerie would have sympathised: she could well see how a soldier might see the Bombshells as a piece of total frivolity. No, Doyle was explicable - it was Van der Boek that still made her feel anxious.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

At this point, the rest of the world was a little confused about exactly what was going on. News that America's first federal-level superteam was coming into existence was definitely something that had people chattering. Would this be a new precedent? Was Washington trying to take control of forces that, until now, it had allowed a necessarily free reign to? Rumours circulated about who was going to be a member, for surely this was going to be a best-of-the-best kind of arrangement: the Generator, surely, had been tapped; perhaps Casus Belli or her wife, the third Lady Luck; maybe even rising star Imperion, who seemed to have a bit of a knack for public relations.

Then this...Lance Van der Boek released information to the press that the team would be entirely composed of new blood. The old warriors generally thought this a good thing. Now that the Dark Days were over, it was time for something fresh, an injection of vitality and youth to a culture that had been nearly crippled. The Generator was quoted by someone as saying that he was glad that he hadn't been recruited. So far so good.

And then things started to look a little...odd. Something had happened in Port Hueneme, an arms dealer called Leatherback had been arrested, his organisation dismantled. There were reports that this federal team had been involved, that they'd been responsible. Then counter-reports: there had been no involvement from the federal team. Then counter-counter-reports: the federal team had been involved, but they'd been defeated, then rescued by either a troop of soldiers, or another, more powerful superhero: one who wasn't one of Lance's new kids on the block. It had felt like Van der Boek, or his paymasters, were trying to hush things up, to conceal some disaster. People began looking into the possibility that the new heroes had gone too far, and killed some of their targets or something, but there was no evidence of this. What were they hiding?

Then some wily paparrazzo with a long-lens camera had perched himself outside a certain mansion in L.A., and had taken some snaps of Van der Boek's team practicing. Most news outlets had been rightly wary of publishing them, but a few had surfaced. More frowning: the team had obviously been hand-picked to be as attractive as possible, and from the look of it, they were being dressed as provocatively as possible without being ridiculous. The two that had been clearly photographed were wearing costumes patterned after the American flag. People murmured on the nascent embryo of social media that they weren't superhumans at all - that it was a publicity stunt for a pseudo-reality T.V. show. Then things took a turn for the truly bizarre.

The Bombshells ("Seriously? The Bombshells?") made their debut - at a graduation ceremony at a military academy. It was like a U.S.O. show - each of the Bombshells marched out to the whistling, sex-starved recruits like contestants at a Miss World contest, with exhortations to 'support the troops', cartoonish introductions to each of the girls, and a rambling, cliché ridden speech about the greatness of America from Freebird.

"America has always been a winner! And w-we've got too used to losing. Losing to people who want to tear us apart - to disunite us. But no-one here is a loser. You're Americans: you're winners. You'll show your countrymen - and people oversees - who the real good guys are. We're superheroes - but you're heroes. We lucked into our power - but you earned yours through discipline and training. So maybe we'll be the ones with our names in the papers - but you'll be the ones with your names in the history books!"

To be fair to Freebird, she did the best she could with the material that was given to her, and there was certainly a great deal of applause - but then it would have been a little odd if there hadn't been. The speech was like much that accompanied the Bombshells: confusing, and a little alarming. More alarm was to follow, with the revelation that the Bombshells were attached to a contingent of marines, the more photogenic of which also had a place in the little performance that Lance had arranged. That...that was just weird.

Yet at the time, when the show was over, and the lights came down, and the Bombshells moved backstage, it all seemed to have gone very well. Maria had seen Lance beaming at her the entire time she'd given her speech, and was beyond delighted to have pleased him; Cecily, always a little inscrutable, nevertheless seemed very satisfied; Debra was beaming, a little overwhelmed by having all those handsome young men admiring her, cheering for her. And it wasn't going to stop there, either - she was going to be famous!
"You think we're gonna do more shows like this?" Debra was asking Maria, but Cecily was the one who answered.
"Oh, I should expect so," she said. "I think Lance is getting exactly what he wanted from us." She said this with a kind of lofty significance. Debra was nonplussed.
"Um, well, yeah, I guess he is," she said. "Hey, uh...where's Valerie?"

Valerie had slipped away quietly the second she'd had the chance. She hadn't expected to have reacted the way she did to their debut, to all that cheering, to the bright lights. She couldn't have described her feelings, not at first, other than a bit of honest-to-god stage fright. All she was sure of was that she needed some space. Fortunately, there wasn't much call for the academy's exercise yard at 11.30 at night, and she found the solitude she sought.
"Thugs with machine-guns - no problem. Crowd of teenagers with crew-cuts and now you're jumpy." Valerie laughed softly, looking down at herself. Her outfit was more or less the same now as the one she'd thrown together herself, but the fabric was much more expensive, and they'd insisted on a few white stars across her torso.

"Already shy of the limelight, huh?" A little spark in the gloom: a cigarette. Valerie tensed, but it was no threat: a slender, blonde man stepped forward into the low, electric light cast by the nearby barracks. He had cunning eyes, a hint of a smile on a thin, but characterful mouth.
"Sergeant Blane." Valerie put a hand on her hip. "Didn't figure you for a smoker."
He looked down at his feet, but that hint on his lips had grown into a full smile. "If I were a cool guy, this would be where I'd say 'Oh, I'm full of surprises', but uh...well, you get the picture, ma'am."

Valerie walked a little closer. "What did you think?"
"Ma'am?"
"The show. Our debut. What did you think?"
He shook his head. "I'm just a jarhead now, ma'am." There was a hint of acid in his tone. "My opinion doesn't matter much." He stubbed out his cigarette. "What about you? You think it went well?"
"Depends what you mean by 'well'," Valerie said.

She leaned against the same wall Blane was leaning against, about seven feet away from him. She lifted one of her legs, bent her knee so that one of her feet was pushing against the wall. "I think the audience appreciated a bit of eye candy. It was...kinda trashy, but - I don't know. Maybe it's good for superheroes to seem fun again." She shook her head. "Oh god, it was really bad, wasn't it?"

Blane laughed. His face lit up brightly, and suddenly it was hard to reconcile him with his uniform. "God, I loved that speech. 'You're the future - and we're the future, and together we'll reinspire the present of the future's tomorrow - today!"
"'War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, so vote for me to be your class president!'"
They shared an open laugh. "Ugh, no," Valerie said, settling herself, "I'm being an asshole. Maria was only reading what she was given: I'm not sure I'd have had the balls to deliver that speech."
"Gotta say, I'm a little surprised you're being so cynical, ma'am."
"Why's that?"
"I was watching you during the show," Blane said. "You were smiling - you looked like you were having fun."
"You...were watching me?"

Blane didn't quite blush, but when Valerie made an attempt to meet his eyes, he avoided it. "Well, I - you're changing the subject, ma'am."
"Am I?" She looked away from him. Then, apparently apropos of nothing, she said: "There's this superhero cliché that really pisses me off. Every time a superhero writes an autobiography, or they do a big 'this is your life' with one, they always, always say: 'well, I started feeling more like myself with the mask on than with it off.' So profound, right? So freaking deep." She snorted with derision. "Every time I hear it, they say it like they're the first person ever to think of it, like they're some...sage."
Blane was intrigued by this little diatribe, but a little confused. He lit another cigarette. Valerie failed to notice that his hands were ever so slightly trembling. "...Oh yeah?" he eventually offered.
"Tonight the old cliché didn't piss me off so much," Valerie said. "I know it was ridiculous. I know we were getting paraded around like heifers, but...it felt good to be out in the open. It felt good not to have to hide. That's why I looked like I was having fun. I was. It was weirdly...freeing." She seemed about to say more, but her expression suggested that she was cutting herself off. "Not that my life has been so hard. A lot of superhumans keep their powers secret. I know I'm not unique, yeah? In fact - I know I'm lucky to have got this job."

Blane only now realised something about Valerie which ought to have been obvious: she was young. When they'd spoken at the meeting with Doyle and Van der Boek, she'd seemed utterly unintimidated by his superior, clearly thinking of herself as a total equal to them; indeed, when he'd seen her for the first time, standing proudly victorious, not even batting an eyelid as she stood over the fallen bodies of her enemies, he'd seen her as the picture of confidence itself. And she obviously was a confident person: confident in her abilities, in her value - but she was still young. He was only twenty-six himself, but those six years - he'd found - could make a hell of a difference. In Valerie's case, her youth manifested in a need not to be pretentious, or self-pitying. She wanted to seem like she was down to earth. No - that wasn't fair. She wanted to be down-to-earth, whether she seemed it or not.
"Or I could be totally misreading the girl," he thought. He wanted to ask more, but Valerie got there first.

"You said you're a jarhead 'now'." She sidled a little closer. "You only just started being a marine?"
Blane shifted. He was obviously uncomfortable. "I, uh, I used to be in the Navy. I was on the Harry S. Truman...and, well..."
"Oh, god, Sergeant Blane, I'm so sorry," Valerie said. The sinking of the Harry S. Truman was famous: it had been one of the worst disasters in modern military history. Hundreds of people had been slaughtered, at the height of the Supremacist's latter-day anti-military kick, when it had become clear that he would not establish himself as the ruler of anything, and resorted to petty, mindless carnage as a result. Blane, as he spoke, had the same casual half-smile he had most of the time, but he was breathing very rapidly. It wasn't hard to imagine why.

"It's alright," Blane said, puffing away on his cigarette. "When the dust cleared, there just weren't enough ships left for all the survivors, and the Navy was too broke to pay most of our salaries anyway. A lot of people just got discharged, but...somehow I wound up in a little officer transfer program, and now I'm a marine. So...oo-ra, I guess." He'd been looking down at his feet. He looked up again, at Valerie, saw her looking at him, but then pushed himself off the wall, began moving away. "Ma'am, I'd better be going. Think I've pushed this cig break as long as I can reasonably justify it. Apparently your Mr Van der Boek has something planned for tomorrow and he wants to run it by me."
"Would you stop that?"
"Excuse me?"
"Calling me 'ma'am'." The voluptuous blonde, standing only a few feet away from the young marine, her body's charms so easy to find in her revealing leotard, took off her mask. "My name is Valerie. I want you to call me Valerie."
Blane turned back to her. "Then I guess you'd better call me Oliver."
"Well, Oliver," Valerie said, walking slowly past him, "do me a favour."
"What?"
Valerie didn't respond immediately. She kept going, back towards where the performance had taken place, but then looked over her shoulder at the slender soldier. "Next time we get a chance to talk alone, ask me the hell out."
A few moments later, she was gone, and Blane was wondering if he'd played his cards right, or if he'd blown it already. He shrugged: he would accept the mystery. He was going to light himself another cigarette, but he didn't.

His hands were shaking much too severely now.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Maria had been so happy that last night. She - she! - had given a speech in front of hundreds of people, and they'd cheered for her. All that stuff that Lance had said about how she'd make people happy, that she'd inspire people, that she'd make Americans feel good about themselves again - it felt like it was all coming true. She'd been so flattered when Lance sought her out, even if she had more than a few misgivings about it all. But she was ready to dismiss those misgivings, to dive utterly into being a Bombshell.

But then she'd seen the paper. Her roommates had been giggling at it over their cornflakes. It wasn't even a front page article - it barely warranted a little feature on page twelve. The commentary on the Bombshells' debut was gently mocking: most of the article was just concern about the general idea of a federal superhero team being, evidently, a propaganda tool. They barely talked about the Bombshells themselves at all.

Foolishly, Maria had delved into the press' response to her team's appearance, and the coverage was almost universally negative. Some commentators on the right of the aisle seemed more au fait with them, but even then the Bombshells were patronised beyond any hope of being taken seriously.
"A Much Needed Throwback to a Simpler Time" was the most sympathetic headline Maria could find, but the body of the article not only failed to take them seriously, but was ferociously sexist, 'appreciating' that they were willing to flaunt themselves to entertain 'our boys', with the not-so-subtle implication that that was the appropriate role for women. The writer barely mentioned the fact that the Bombshells were superheroes at all. It merely made the flaunting a little more titillating.

So it was with a fair amount of upset that she arrived at the Bombshells' HQ the day after their debut. For the first time she'd used the arranged, hidden entrance, to avoid what had been seen as inevitable paparazzi interest. It was not as if there were no journalists camped out at the front of the base, but it wasn't exactly swarming either. Later analysis, such as it was, of Lance Van der Boek's PR strategy suggested that the Bombshells' initial appearance had been deliberately crass as a way of stoking controversy, drawing attention. It hadn't appeared to work very well. Maria was convinced that the entire thing had been her fault - but there was another reason, too.

"We were upstaged." Cecily brought comfort, and tea, two little cups floating neatly behind her as she walked Maria into their lounge. She guided her leader onto a chair, and floated a cup into her hand.
"What do you mean?" Maria asked, folding one toned leg over the other. Cecily, in a rather fetching floral print summer-dress, sat opposite her, sipping the fine brew with ladylike elegance.
"Didn't you see the news?" Debra was there too, her legs folded underneath her on a leather sofa. "I guess there's only room for one big superhero story a day."
Maria shook her head. She'd been so eager to read about how the Bombshells had been received that she hadn't actually paid attention to the other headlines. Cecily telekinetically proffered her another copy of the Times, and this time Maria had a better look. "Aw, crap."

Diamondhead, one of the great terrors of the Dark Days, was dead, fallen in battle with Imperion. He'd been the last of the great supervillains of the nineties known still to be active, and many an ambitious hero had sought to be the one finally to bring him down. The two of them had tussled before all across the state, but in this last battle - in Seacouver, of all places - the young powerhouse had seemed to pull out a decisive advantage, and had at last put the murderous bastard down. It was a day for revels - and it had buried the Bombshells' debut.
"Well, that's just great," Maria huffed. "He couldn't have done it on a different day, maybe?"
"Hey, come on ladies, let's have some perspective."

Looking even oilier and more tanned than usual, Lance Van der Boek had appeared at the door.
"I know it's not great that your show didn't have more of an impact," he said, his tone attempting to be soothing, but too fast and slick and brusque quite to have that effect. "But hey - better to be buried by good news than by bad news! I think we're all sleeping a little safer knowing that Diamondhead's dead and gone."

He stepped further inside, raising his hands above his head in a semi-convincing mea culpa.
"Even as far as we did get covered, it wasn't very favourable. People just don't seem to get it - they don't get you." He sat down next to Maria. "And it's my fault really. I was too enthusiastic, too excited about the world getting to meet you all. But they don't see what I've seen, about how special you girls are."
"Of course," Cecily said, quietly put down her tea. "That must be it."
Lance, for an instant, was sure that Cecily was being sarcastic, but she had on her face a look of such patient sweetness that he assumed he had to have been wrong. "Uh, right. My point is, I messed up. I'll admit - I had a bit of a plan going. You guys were gonna grab Leatherback, get famous, and then I'd introduce you at last night's show. But I hushed up the Leatherback thing because I didn't want you guys losing confidence from the press giving you crap about how it went. But then I let you do the show anyway - before anyone but me had reason to take you seriously. It was stupid of me. So I'm sorry: but I know how to fix things."
"How, Lance?" Maria said, turning to him, as reassured as could be by Lance's confidence in his plan.
"Simple: you guys need to do some superheroics." He saw Maria shrink back a little. "Hey, Maria, I know last time didn't go too well -"
"What are you talking about?" Debra interrupted. "We got Valora out of it! Say, where is Valora?"

It was not quite a coincidence that Valerie chose that very moment to appear. She'd been chatting with - who else? - Blane just by the doorway to the lounge, and her ears had pricked up when she'd heard Debra say her name. But it was still an entrance that she'd have to confess she enjoyed making. She saw Cecily's delicately plucked eyebrows shoot up; saw Debra's jaw drop; saw Lance grinning to himself in immense satisfaction. And, behind her, she knew that Blane - that Oliver - was watching.

Much was the same. Her mask was a little larger, covering Valerie's eyebrows now, breaking up the outline of her face a little more effectively. The boots were red now, and far more expensive than Valerie's old ones, and of a far stronger, lighter material, with soles specially designed to grip the ground well. Her gloves, still red, were shorter, but covered her fingers completely. As for her leotard...well it was hard to call it a leotard now at all. Constructed of a strong, space-age fabric, one almost would have wanted to call it a jacket, except it still covered the crotch in the same way as a leotard. It opened now via a zip right down the middle of Valerie's torso. It could go all the way up to the neck, but it was much of the way down, showing off a good deal of Valerie's sumptuous cleavage. She'd arrived that morning with the same worries as Maria, and had been going to have a long talk with Lance about getting people to take them more seriously. But she'd found him already in complete agreement - and he'd even had a present for her.
"You and I both know that this stands and falls with you now," he'd said. "If people take you seriously, they'll take the others seriously. So take that - and make them." Oh yes - Lance had stoked Valerie's pride quite effectively.

And so she stood before her comrades, and she stood above them also. She was power and beauty, poured together in a flawless admixture. She was a beacon of what a modern superhero could be. She was Valora.
"Okay, ladies," she said. "Let's go hunting."

[LuciaFilms]

Really, really love this story. If it were a show, I would absolutely watch it!
I also was deeply tickled over some of the nods to popular tropes in comics. "Money was tight, the work was dangerous, and after everything that had happened during the nineties...well, it wasn't just Rodney who felt like his career had lost its glamour." There is just a great deal of cleverness and solid description work in this writing and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The writing is so good that when it got to the peril aspects (The ether scenes) the level of focus on those aspects almost felt jarring and I had to remind myself of the nature of the genre. I mean that as a compliment, not an insult!

Thanks for posting! Would love to read more as it is posted. Also, Rodney Burke's everyman character feels really solid in his ability to deliver exposition through his worldview. Hope he makes another appearance down the line.

[Damselbinder]

Really, really love this story. If it were a show, I would absolutely watch it!
I also was deeply tickled over some of the nods to popular tropes in comics. "Money was tight, the work was dangerous, and after everything that had happened during the nineties...well, it wasn't just Rodney who felt like his career had lost its glamour." There is just a great deal of cleverness and solid description work in this writing and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The writing is so good that when it got to the peril aspects (The ether scenes) the level of focus on those aspects almost felt jarring and I had to remind myself of the nature of the genre. I mean that as a compliment, not an insult!

Thanks for posting! Would love to read more as it is posted. Also, Rodney Burke's everyman character feels really solid in his ability to deliver exposition through his worldview. Hope he makes another appearance down the line.

I am very grateful for your kind words, LF. Indeed, there are frequent references in the work I've set in this universe to the nineties being a 'dark time' - an in-universe explanation for the Dark Age of Comic Books. I'm really glad you're enjoying, and I hope you'll keep up with it!

[Femina]

Got inspired

[Damselbinder]

Got inspired

Wow, thank you!! You liked the story then?

[Femina]

I did! I always thought the Enhancegirl main cast was a little low tier (Surely on purpose so no 'complaint' exactly) for my tastes and Valora was always my favorite side character. Awesome to see her getting her own story. Can't wait to see her get into some trouble.

[Damselbinder]

I did! I always thought the Enhancegirl main cast was a little low tier (Surely on purpose so no 'complaint' exactly) for my tastes and Valora was always my favorite side character. Awesome to see her getting her own story. Can't wait to see her get into some trouble.

I suppose so. Spectra's pretty high-tier, though. I'd say she's at least as powerful as Valora.

But what am I saying? Thank you again!

[Femina]

I did! I always thought the Enhancegirl main cast was a little low tier (Surely on purpose so no 'complaint' exactly) for my tastes and Valora was always my favorite side character. Awesome to see her getting her own story. Can't wait to see her get into some trouble.

I suppose so. Spectra's pretty high-tier, though. I'd say she's at least as powerful as Valora.

But what am I saying? Thank you again!

YW, you're writing style is great. I like it when we spend plenty of time in the heroine's head both when she's kicking ass and getting her ass kicked. You do a great job of encapsulating that.

[Damselbinder]

It had all started very inauspiciously.

A concerned citizen had noticed smoke coming from the fourth floor window of 18 South Breed Street, Los Angeles, and had telephoned the authorities. The building in question was used for the manufacturing of cheap textile goods on its first floor, staffed almost exclusively by South East Asian migrants, with the rest of the building being mostly vacant. The police had been there before: the looming, musclebound bodyguards that watched the women work had put somebody's wind up, and the LAPD had come to take a look around, worried perhaps that the workers there had been trafficked - but no. At the very least everyone seemed to be there willingly, and the workers had seemed gently amused that someone had thought they might be in need of rescuing. Only the owner had been concerned: she didn't want to get audited.

So, when the call came in, no-one was very concerned, not after the person who'd made the original call had called back to say that the smoke had gone. But it had been under a degree of suspicion before, so dispatch put out a call.
"Unit 14-A, possible Code 8A, please respond."
"14-A, Code 8A, go ahead." There was degree of reluctance in the voice of LAPD Sergeant Shawn Ali. A 'Code 8A' meant a fire. What the hell were they calling him for?
"We have a possible Code 8A at 18 South Breed Street. Seems to be nothing, but just check it out to be sure."
"Understood. Over and out."

"Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh," declared Sergeant Ali, the instant the transmission was complete.
"I'm sensing," his partner declared, "that you're not absolutely happy about this."
"Wow, Magnuson, are you a telepath? You amaze me with your profound insights."
"Don't be sarcastic, Ali," she replied. "Or I'll harrumph at you."
Ali had to stop himself from laughing to maintain his veneer of grouchiness, so he didn't reply. He didn't talk to her at all, in fact, until they'd arrived.

It was an okay neighbourhood, as things went, but people were always a bit nervous of the LAPD. It manifested itself in various ways. A couple of kids in hoodies mumbled some vague obscenities as the two officers got out of their car. A fat man in a shabby suit smiled anxiously at them, and then lowered his eyes and hurried along. A five year old admiring the handsome man and the pretty lady in their dashing, black uniforms smiled at Ali, and he winked and half-smiled back, but his mother scowled at them, and pulled her daughter away from them.
"Take heart," Lillian said, clapping Ali on the back. "At least she didn't try to punch you."

She walked in front of her partner, eyeing the square-ish, brown-ish, falling-apart-ish building in front of them. She tutted, obviously not thinking much of it.
"It's not on fire," she said. "Shame." Lillian Magnuson had always been considered a bit of an oddball by her colleagues, and she'd bounced between a few different partners in her two years on the force. Ali liked her well enough, but even he had to admit she didn't look much like a cop. Yet she seemed very happy in her role. Ali had seen her tackle suspects twice her size with gusto. In fact, all the suspects she tackled were about twice her size: she was barely five feet tall. She was slim, too, and pale, with striking, ice-blue eyes, with small features which gave her a quality that was almost mouselike.

Her black hair was done in a rather fetching bobcut, the edges of which would swish around slightly when she turned her head, which she always did very quickly and suddenly. Her body was very trim, its curves delicate even if she herself was not. Her uniform, of course, hid much of her body's charms, but she wore her trousers tight, and it was clear to all who looked that she had a very cute, firm behind. Ali had caught himself looking once - but only once. His feelings had shifted quickly from attracted to avuncular.

The two of them entered. Anyone could go inside - only the parts which had actually been leased were private. Still, someone from the textiles workshop had come out to meet them.
"Can I help you, officers?" He was prematurely grey, large, though not burly, and spoke in a Laotian accent, softened into unrecognisability by fifteen years living in Los Angeles.
"Morning sir," Ali said. "We got reports of smoke coming out of a fourth floor window in this building. I doubt we'll be here long."
"The - the fourth floor?" the grey-haired man said.
"Yes," Lillian said. "Why?"
"Uh, no reason." He was about to slink off, but he couldn't. The tiny policewoman was staring him straight in the eyes, and he couldn't bring himself to look away, like a dog intimidated by a hamster.
"You're sure about that, sir?" Lillian asked again. Behind her, Ali smiled. He always enjoyed the effect his diminutive partner could have on people.
"Look, I don't know nothing."
"Sir -"
"I don't know nothing!" he barked, before hurrying back into the workshop. The officers exchanged a look. Something was up.

The two moved up a stained, prematurely decrepit stairwell towards the fourth floor. Lillian scuffed her shoe, and actually took a little of the concrete away with her.
"This building can't be fifteen years old, and it's already falling apart," Lillian grumbled. "How do we expect people to value their society if their society doesn't -"
"Save it for the op-ed, Magnuson." Ali hadn't drawn his pistol, but he was feeling tempted to: then again, he didn't want to end up blasting some kid's head off because he happened to be feeling jumpy.

They reached the fourth floor eventually, Magnuson a little ways behind Ali. There was a corridor dividing the floor into two, with a large space, intended for use as an office, on either side. There were two doors to each side, with a further two at the far end of the corridor, near a service elevator shaft - the actual elevator had never been installed.
"I don't smell smoke," Lillian said. "And there's a distinct lack of us-burning-to-death, too."
"I get it, Magnuson," Ali said. "Okay, I'm gonna call it in." He reached towards his radio, but something made him hesitate. It wasn't anything bad: he just saw Lillian looking around with her big, curious eyes, an eccentric innocence that he couldn't help find incredibly charming. She reminded him of a ferret. Without thinking, he reached out, and tousled her hair. She blinked at him in surprise, and then smiled winsomely.

It was during that very moment that two men stumbled out of one of the doors near the stairwell. They'd been cooking meth - or rather, they'd been trying to cook meth. Their recipe was nonsense, so all they'd produced was a bit of smoke - what our concerned citizen had seen - and nothing even vaguely resembling any breed of methamphetamine. Growling with frustration, they stumbled in a bit of a haze out of their would be headquarters - and saw two cops. Ali didn't even see they were there before one of them put a bullet in his back.

Ali didn't realise he'd been shot straightaway. He thought someone had punched him in the back, which was a bit of a weird place to punch someone when you thought about it. He only realised it might be something worse when he discovered that he couldn't turn around. He saw Lillian's face, contorting with horror as she realised what had happened to him, and he saw her rising up into the air. No, wait - he was falling. He slumped forward, shivering on the ground as blood spurted from the wound in his back.

Lillian sprang into action with a bloodthirsty shriek. Her parents wondered sometimes why she'd become a policewoman when she seemed so unlike how one thought of cops. The truth was, there was a part of her that was amenable to violence, a brutal streak, and she'd not-quite-consciously sought a way to express that. Had she been a superhuman, she'd certainly have been a superhero, and doubtless she'd have done it with relish. She managed to get off two shots. One of them hit the man who'd shot her partner, grazing his hand badly and making him drop his gun. The next shot would have pierced his heart and killed him outright. But fate was feeling crueller even than it had seemed. Lillian wasn't a superhuman - but one of her enemies was.

"What?!" Lillian's shot went completely wild, ricocheting harmlessly off one of the walls. She tried to shoot again, but her pistol wouldn't obey her. She feared a jam, that she hadn't cleaned the damned thing properly. But no. She looked up, and saw that one of the two - a husky, tall, white kid in a beanie and loose hoodie - had his hand held out, palm open, and he was groaning with effort. Immediately Lillian thought 'superhuman', but she couldn't quite understand what it was he was doing. Only when she felt her pistol shuddering in her hand, saw the barrel contorting, did she realise that he was doing something to her gun. She couldn't risk firing it again: it might have exploded in her hand. She tossed it aside, away from her enemies just in case it was usable.

"Dude!" the superhuman cried at his friend. "Like, rush her or something!"
The dude in question, a skeletal looking man with bugged-out eyes and a look of real mania in him, seemed to consider it, but just as he worked up his courage, she froze him in his tracks with those fierce eyes of hers.
"Back off!" Lillian bellowed, in as much as her naturally quiet voice could bellow. "Back off and let me call medical aid for my friend," she said, panic rising as she saw Ali lose ever more blood, "and I'll let you run."
"No way," the superhuman growled. "She's seen our faces! Get her!"

They both rushed at her at once. Even the smaller of the two was much, much larger than Lillian, and if they got their hands on her, she wouldn't be able to physically overpower either of them. Instead, she drew her baton, and struck the skeletal man right in his knee joint. He cried out, and stumbled, but he still managed to barge Lillian, almost knocking the small, light policewoman over. She struck back, though, a vicious blow right across his face, almost robbing him of a tooth.

But he wasn't her only enemy, and the superhuman crashed into her in a badly executed football tackle. Still, he managed to slam her against the ground, and Lillian gasped in pain as she hit concrete. She struck again, but she didn't have enough room to swing her baton, and the blow didn't hit that hard. Besides, as she saw when she got a good look at this man's face, he was obviously on something, and it was dulling the pain. She hadn't dealt with the other man well enough either, because he skidded to her side, and as she wrestled with his dumpier partner, he yanked the baton out of her hand, threw it away.

From there, Lillian was completely outmatched. She kicked, and punched, and would have bit if she'd had the chance, but the difference in strength was just too great. One of them grabbed Lillian's slim shoulders, flipped her over onto her front.
"You idiots!" she cried out, in a furious, desperate plea. "Think about what you're doing! You'll be in prison for the rest of your lives!"
But they didn't even seem to hear her. One of them sat on her legs, giggling, while the husky superhuman held her arms down. Her slender, petite body was easily restrained, so Lillian tried just to scream for help.
"HEY!!" she shouted. "HELP! A MAN'S BEEN SHOT! HEL-MMMMPHHHHHH!!"
A large, not all that clean hand clamped down over Lillian's pretty mouth, pressing hard against her lips, stifling her screams. The superhuman's hand squeezed against her, his palm and his fingers squeezing her cheeks, vicelike. "Man," he said, his voice whiny and atonal, "you shouldn't even have been here, man, like - like that's some unconstitutional - y'know - warrants and...I'm just defending myself, you know?"

They were mad. Lillian was sure they were going to kill her. It was so ignominious a way to die, she couldn't believe that it wasn't some hideous, distasteful prank. But she appeared to have got through to them - in a way.
"Brandon, Brandon, she's right. She's right!" The skeletal man's giggling had gone from amused to a kind of rattling moan. "We're fucked, dude, we're gonna go to jail for a million years."
"Hey, you're the one who shot a cop, Dennis!" Brandon hissed back. He'd had to let go of one of Lillian's arms to gag her screams, and was trying to hook both of her arms with one of his. Unsuccessful, he then caught sight of the gun his partner had dropped, and he reached out for it with his magnetic powers - but at that range all he could do was sort of jiggle it about on the ground. He couldn't actually pull it in.

Then, hitting on an idea, he let go of both of Lillian's arms and opened the palm of his free hand. Lilian tried to pull his hand away from her mouth when she realised he'd let go of her, but she didn't keep her arms free for long. Her handcuffs, seemingly of their own accord, leapt out of the pouch in which she kept them, and into Brandon's hand - though his control of his power was so poor he almost hit himself in the face with them. Grinning as he realised that the trim, attractive policewoman was about to become his captive, he opened one of the cuffs, and slapped it on Lillian's wrist.

"NNNMMMPHHH!!" Lillian cried, realising what was happening. Another pair of arms grabbed at her, as Dennis got the picture of what Brandon was doing, and both of his hands seized her free arm, forcing it behind her, and letting Brandon cuff that one too, binding Lillian's arms behind her back. Still keeping one hand firmly over Lillian's mouth, Brandon hauled the slender cop to her feet, pulling her against his body. He stank, as if Lillian needed any more reason to revile him. She wriggled in his grip, but she just wasn't strong enough to escape. The handcuffs were a solid-bar type, keeping her wrists trapped securely together. She was caught. As the adrenaline wore off, as her muscles' screams of exhaustion were finally perceptible, Lillian began to feel fear taking over from desperation and rage. She knew she was very pretty. She knew what two men who were willing to murder a police officer might be willing to do worse things, too.

Mercifully, Brandon's plan was a touch less evil, though perhaps a touch more insane, too.
"Okay, okay - so what we're...what we're gonna do, yeah?" Brandon said, pulling his slinky prisoner tighter against him, giggling as he felt her body wriggling against him. "We're - we're gonna take her hostage!"
"Mmff?!"
"Huh?" Dennis scratched his head. "How's that gonna make things better?"
"She's a cop, Dennis," Brandon hissed. "They, y'know, they can't, like, abandon one of their own, right? Semper fi or whatever. They'll - they'll have to give us a million dollars and - and a helicopter or something!"
Somehow, Dennis was convinced. "Y-yeah! Let's do it!"
"I'm going to die," Lillian thought, as Dennis started fiddling around in his jacket pockets. It seemed impossible that things would end in any other way, even if they didn't intend to kill her. Then she thought again of Ali, lying dead on the ground, and the truth of that, that a man she liked so much had been destroyed, almost drew tears from her. The thought mollified her, if only for a moment, but it was enough to give Brandon the opportunity to take his hand off her mouth.

"Wh - MHPHH! Mff..." Lillian only had her voice for a second, before Dennis pushed a strip of tape over her mouth - thick, black electrical tape. That had been what he'd been fishing for - he'd stolen the roll from a hardware store on his way to cook - and once he first had the experienced the feeling of gagging an attractive young woman, he found he had rather a flair for it. Cackling, he began wrapping the tape around and around her head, pressing the tape tighter against her lips, muffling her cries. With tears welling in her eyes, and the black tape against her pale skin, her irises' blue looked even more striking. Five layers in all were wrapped around her mouth, completely muzzling the slender young lady.

"Damn," Dennis giggled. "You're a real cutie, huh?" He took Lillian by the chin. She jerked away, but he just grabbed her again, forced her to look at him. She maintained a poker face, but anyone smarter than Dennis would have seen through it. She was whimpering with fear, and only the thoroughness of her gag prevented her captors from hearing it. But Dennis didn't care for the subtleties of the psychological battle between captor and captive. He just wanted to feel her up more.

He moved his hands down her body, seizing Lillian's ankles. She kicked at him, but he managed to hook his left arm around her calves, trapping them together. Then more tape around her legs, in four messy circuits, binding Lillian's ankles and calves, trapping her completely.
"Mph...MMMPPHH!!" she protested, throwing her hair from side to side, feeling Dennis pawing at her slender legs, higher, and higher, and higher, until -
"Keep it in your pants, Dennis," Brandon said. He sniffed, scratching his arm with an intensity that suggested something a little more than a normal itch. His hypocrisy became clear an instant later, when he crouched down, seized the gagged maiden by her slim, lithe legs, and threw her over his shoulder.
"Mmpff!" Lillian cried out, shocked by the ease with which she was manipulated. Her legs kicked out, as Brandon wrapped his arm around her thighs. She kicked desperately, her tight body wriggling and writhing in his grip, her calves trying and failing to hit him. Into the mixture of terrible emotions swirling within the captive girl, now a terrible humiliation was swirled in.

"Dude!" Dennis said, "you totally captured her! And your powers and stuff - you're like a real supervillain now, man!" He licked his lips, admiring the way their captive's tight trousers highlighted her curves, oblivious it seemed to the fact that he'd shot a man a few moments earlier. "So how are we going to get the ransom money?"
"I, uh..." Brandon mumbled. He was starting to come down off a high, and suddenly his grand plan didn't seem quite so genius anymore. "Um...maybe we should - uhh..."

Only now did the enormity of what Brandon had done begin to impress itself on him. He had attacked and captured a police officer. His friend had shot another officer, and doubtless both of them would share the blame. And with how tightly he was gripping this woman's thighs and her pert little ass - they'd probably get him for sexual assault, too. Even when Brandon heard the sirens, blaring with vengeful indignation, he didn't quite get it. No, it was only when he realised that Dennis wasn't a murderer that it occurred to him just how fucked he really was.
"Dennis!"
"What?"
"Where's the other cop?!"

The bullet that had lodged itself firmly into Shawn Ali's shoulder-blade had ended his career as a patrol officer. He would never, sadly, be in the condition to work a job with remotely rigorous physical requirements for the rest of his life. But it had not killed him. As Brandon and Dennis were busying themselves attacking and capturing his partner, Ali was dragging himself towards the stairwell. He couldn't reach for his gun. He couldn't speak. But he made his determination: he would not die. Not until Lillian was safe. And so inch by inch, as the drugged-up-cretins who'd shot him busied themselves cuffing and restraining his sweet, eccentric partner, he pulled himself to the stairs. Agonisingly he crawled down, the thump of each step exquisite agony to him. Truth be told, he'd have never made it all the way down - but he didn't have to.

"ຕາຍຮ່າແລ້ວ!" The grey haired Laotian man had heard the gunshot, and had run up to see what had happened. He cursed himself for his cowardice: he'd known that dumpy kid was up to something bad upstairs, but when he'd confronted him, Brandon had ripped out one of his fillings with a wave of his hand. He'd let him be since then, and he'd made sure the others in the workshop had done the same, despite all the funny smells coming from the fourth floor. But he sprang to belated action when he found Ali on the brink of death: if he hadn't found him when he did, Ali would certainly have died.

Alas, it was too late to stop Brandon's meth-fuelled plan from coming to fruition. As Brandon watched more police arrive outside, he yelped with fright, and grabbed poor Lillian by the scruff of her neck, hauling her up to the nearest window.
"MMMPHH!!" the captive policewoman cried, as Brandon bent her over the windowsill, making sure the cops could see her, and could see the gun to her head.
"Nobody do anything stupid!!" he shouted. "I have a hostage, man! And I've got powers!"
"Mmmghh-mmphh!" Lilian mewed, not only frightened, but hot with embarrassment that her colleagues were seeing her like this. Captured and bound with her own handcuffs, all she could do now was play the role of the damsel in distress.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hours passed. The building was surrounded, and the two mindless tweakers were on the point of hysterical fear. Two attempts had been made to speak to them using Lillian's radio, but Denn Dennis was sitting on the floor, clutching his gun, pressing the barrel against his forehead, and muttering despondently to himself. Mercifully, he did at least have the sense to be pointing the muzzle of the pistol at the ceiling. Brandon, for his part, was holding the gun he'd taken from their captive, trying to undo the damage he'd done to it. Oh, he had his own gun anyway: a staggeringly ostentatious knockoff Smith and Wesson. Despite being a one-man argument for repealing the Second Amendment, he actually had a licence for it.

Lillian lay on the cold concrete, prone, her bound hands resting on the small of her back, her legs now barely even shuffling against the tape binding them. Her captors had added to her restraints since first taking her hostage: there was now tape wrapped around her torso, pinning her upper arms, constricting her breasts uncomfortably against her chest. Her thighs too, were bound now, the captive officer hobbled and helpless on the ground, surrounded by the detritus of Brandon and Dennis' risible attempt at cooking meth: beakers, boiling tubes, a couple of plastic flasks - mostly stolen from high-school science labs.

She had no intention of trying to escape on her own. Her panic and impotent rage at being assaulted and bound like she'd been had settled, cooled into a paralysing undercurrent of fear. She knew full well there was nothing she could do. She wished - well first of all she wished that this had simply never happened in the first place, but aside from that she wished to restore her dignity with swift and fierce violence, but she knew that this was impossible. She felt small and frail, and helpless.

Suddenly, Brandon stood up, a look of ecstatic joy on his face. "Dude! I had the best idea ever!"
Even Dennis was sufficiently connected to reality to doubt that Brandon was completely right. "Uhh...what?"
"Dude, you've got to shoot me!"
Dennis and Lillian both began to doubt their sanity. Brandon's insanity seemed no longer up for debate.
"No, I mean it - 'cause like my magnet thing, right? If the cops try to, y'know, swarm us before they give into our demands I bet I can totally block bullets and stuff!" The fear that he was already in command of such an ability was what had kept the SWAT teams out.
"Uhhh...so you want me to shoot you?"
"Yeah man, just - AAHHHH!!"

Dennis had done as Brandon had asked. He had fired and, thankfully, he'd missed. It was thankful because Brandon hadn't even turned on his powers.
"Dude, like - fucking wait for me to tell you when!"
"You said to shoot me, so I shot you!"
"Uh, you didn't even shoot me, Dennis! You missed!"
"Then what the hell are you complaining about?!"

Lillian, watching the two argue, reflected that at another time it would seem funny, even hilarious. But even the possibility that one of them would kill the other, much less Lillian herself, was fearful, and all too real. A sudden rage could snuff her out at any moment. She found it difficult, too, to reconcile her wish to cave both their faces in with the butt of her gun and a deep sympathy for these...degraded human beings. No - sympathy was too strong. She pitied them, merely, even though she believed they'd murdered her partner.
"I can't remember if he's single or not," she thought. She decided that she hoped that he was: the agony a potential lover would suffer outweighed any possible loneliness Ali might have felt during his life. She found tears in her eyes again, and closed them in shame.

Little did she know that the deliverance her prematurely-mourned partner had made possible for her was being plotted three floors below. The textiles workshop had been taken over by the police as soon as the palava had begun in earnest - and then given over to a rather different force.

For it just so happened that, the night before Lillian's capture, a certain Lance Van der Boek had worked out a new strategy. A man of influence, or at least with access to influence, he just so happened to be on the look out for precisely this kind of thing. So when the hostage situation came to the attention of the city's chief of police, the message was passed, by hook and by crook, all the way to the slick-haired ex-soldier's notice. He couldn't resist, and he called in such favours as he could call in. If the day was to be saved, it was going to be by the Bombshells. For his own sake, Lance prayed they were up to it.

"The simplest solution is the best," Valora said, immediately taking command of the situation. The four Bombshells were gathered around a large work surface that was normally used to sew pieces of cheap backpacks together. It wasn't the most obvious choice for a command centre, but it would have to do. "I'll go up to the third level, smash the floor under their feet. In the confusion I grab the hostage, and clobber the two scumbags. Even if they shoot me, they'd have to be carrying some serious merchandise to actually hurt me. It's that...philosophy razor thing."
"Ockham's Razor," Cecily offered.
"Right. Simple is good."

Freebird, decked out in her short, shiny red dress, frowned. She had an idea. She'd looked up blueprints of the building and had been planning her approach since the moment Lance had let the team know about the mission. She'd thought it was a good strategy. She'd been proud of it. She'd been confident in it. And then Valora had opened her mouth, and her confidence had crumbled. Debra, of course, was completely infatuated with Valora's every word. Cecily remained politely neutral.

"L-look," Freebird said. "There's two ways onto that floor. The stairwell, and the elevator shaft - and they can't use the elevator shaft. So they're gonna act like there's one entrance. Only one. I'll make a show of attacking. Draw them out into the hallway. They'll start shooting at me - and that's when you attack, Cecily. You can float up the elevator shaft, and grab them from behind."
"That could easily go south." Valora said, shortly. "These guys are tweakers. There's no reason to think they're gonna be sensible. My way is simplest: we should do that." Assuming that the matter was, now, decided, Valora started moving towards the door.
"Wh-hey!" Freebird stood in her path. "We're not done here! You can't just decide things for yourself. We're part of a team and we need to do this together."
"Look, Maria," Valerie said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I know it's gotta be irritating having a new gal show up one day and shift everything around from how you thought it was. But saving lives is more important than making everyone feel included: even your plan didn't have a place for Debra, did it?"
Maria winced. Valerie went on.
"There are gonna be situations where my skills aren't very helpful, where I'm sure you'll need everyone but me, but this isn't one of them. And right now, a quick, very public win would be good for the Bombshells. You know that."

Maria felt her indignation evaporate. She remembered how she'd felt when she'd realised that Valora was joining with them: relieved. Wasn't this exactly what she'd wanted, for the burden of command to shift over to Valora given how vastly more powerful she was than the others? She wanted to give in. She wanted to let Valora just do as she wished, and she would have - if Cecily hadn't stepped in.
"Forgive me," she said, "but I'm afraid I see quite a few holes in both your plans. Maria." She turned her gentle eyes on her ostensible leader. "There's no reason to suppose that both of them would come out into the hallway to start shooting. One of them might stay back with the hostage. They might not have as good an idea of the building's layout as we think, and run towards the elevator shaft thinking that it is a viable exit. They might just shoot poor Officer Magnuson on the spot."

Valora didn't smile or smirk: she felt no rivalry with Freebird, no enmity. She was just honestly convinced she'd been wrong - and it was a little satisfying to be shown to be right. But she wasn't spared either, and Cecily's lovely eyes turned on her now.
"Couldn't Officer Magnuson be hurt, or even killed, if you collapse the floor underneath her?"
"Not from a fall of that height. She'd be fine."
"What if one of the hostage takers fires their weapon? What if they're holding onto her as she falls? What if the floor doesn't crumble quite right, or you sever some wires and Officer Magnuson is electrocuted? I'm afraid Ockham would have plenty of entities to shave off here too."

For the first time, the Bombshells saw something other than total confidence on Valerie's face. She looked positively nonplussed. Folding her arms, she shrugged.
"Alright, Cecily," she said. "What do you think we should do?"
"Me? I haven't the slightest idea. But," she added, before Valerie started losing her patience, "I think perhaps Debra does."
All eyes turned to Maiden-America. As they'd been not-quite-bickering, she'd been looking over the blueprints of the building, and the wide, tall windows that it was fitted with. "Big enough for..." she mumbled - only belatedly realising that she was being stared at. "Wh-what's everyone lookin' at me for?"
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Dude, dude, did you hear that?" Brandon hopped up to his feet, began pacing around in circles, brandishing his gun. Little bits of metal around him were juddering and shaking: he wasn't doing it deliberately, though. He stuck his head out of the door, and saw someone moving by the stairwell. He fired off a shot vaguely in their direction. "HEY! I said not to try any bullshit! I'm a supervillain, man, I'm not fuckin' around!"
"We want to trade!" It was a young woman's voice, but Brandon didn't really pay attention to how it sounded.
"You - you want what?"
"We want to trade a hostage for Officer Magnuson. You give her to us, and we give you another hostage in return."
Brandon was flabbergasted. "Wh - why? What difference would it make?"
"We -"
"Nah, nah, bro. This is, like, a distraction or something. I'm not talking to any god-damned cops until I hear my god-damned helicopter arriving, with my god-damned three million dollars!" He slunk back inside, waving his gun around like a maniac. "Dude," he said to his partner, "grab the hostage. They're trying something!"

"Mmghhmphh!" Almost too exhausted to keep protesting, Lillian found herself jerked up to her feet, a thin arm - but plenty strong enough to keep Lillian secure - wrapped around her shoulders, pressing her body against her captor's with just a bit too much glee. Just to make himself as repulsive as possible, he licked Lillian's cheek, and she moaned in agonised disgust.
"Dude!" Brandon hissed. "I told you to keep it in your pants!"
"Sorry," Dennis mumbled back, but he still grinned like an idiot.

Brandon poked his head out again. He could still see someone there.
"Yo, back off! I said I'm not talking to you!" he shouted. "I don't wanna trade! We like the hostage we've got just fine!"
"Okay, how about this?" the voice said again. "Not a trade. Just an addition. You get an extra hostage, and all we get is just seeing that Officer Magnuson is alive."
"What, why d'you -"
"Okay, I'm coming out."

If she hadn't looked the way she had, then Brandon might well have fired. But as it happened, even he could recognise a staggeringly beautiful woman when he saw one. As she approached, slowly, her hands above her head, Brandon feasted his eyes with a ravenous hunger. Those voluptuous curves, those long legs, that phenomenal pair of breasts - he couldn't look away. Indeed, it took him much longer to realise than it ought to have done that she was a superhero: the mask and the leotard were something of a giveaway. But it didn't worry him: on the contrary, it fed Brandon's ego quite nicely.

"Aww, yeah!" He grinned. "I'm such a badass, y'all have to send a superhero to deal with me!"
Slowly, the beautiful blonde approached, not making any sudden or unexpected movements. "So, you're the one in charge?" she asked, once she was close enough to speak at a normal volume.
"Yeah, that's right!" Brandon said. "Don't come too close!" He backed away, slowly admitting her entrance to what would have been his lab if he hadn't been such a staggering incompetent. Still, he wasn't so incompetent that he didn't keep a weather eye on this interloper. He didn't want to get tricked.

Dennis noticed this newcomer too. Suddenly the tasty morsel bound and gagged in his grip no longer whetted his appetite. "They're just sendin' us pretty girls now?"
"Shut up, Dennis," Brandon hissed. "Okay, lady. Get down on your knees."
Slowly, the blonde beauty obeyed, lowering herself neatly into the supplicant's pose. "Officer Magnuson," she said. "Lillian: you're gonna be okay. Just hang tight."
"Mmphh..." Lillian mewed. She didn't get it. A superhero? Why had they just given themselves up like this? "Oh...oh hell!" She recognised her. She'd seen her face in the morning's papers: she and Ali had shared quite a chuckle about these 'Bombshells'. And now one of them had been sent to deal with this? Eye candy and hostage negotiation hardly seemed a natural combination. This one did have an air of authority about her, sure, but Lillian hardly felt any safer. Even less so when, at Brandon's bidding, Dennis pressed his gun to Lillian's temple.

"I don't know what powers you got, lady," Brandon said, "but whatever they are, if you try to use 'em, my buddy here's gonna put a hole in the cop's head. And don't say that that'd mean we wouldn't have a hostage, neither!" Brandon again had a face which suggested that he thought himself a genius. "We've got you now."
"You're right," the blonde said. "You do have me." She lowered her eyes. She looked humble. Meek. "I guess you'd...better tie me up or whatever."
"Oh, hell yes," Dennis said. Looking the blonde up and down, and relishing the prospect of getting to truss her up too, he pointed his gun away from Lillian's head. They were both looking directly at the blonde beauty kneeling in front of them. They were both facing away from the window. And that had been the entire point of the ruse.
"Don't do anything dumb," the blonde said. She said it very clearly. She said it so the communicator in her ear would be certain to pick up on it.

It was Debra who'd connected the building's large windows and Cecily's power. As Valerie had distracted the two tweakers, chosen for the role because at least they couldn't hurt her if they got gun-happy, Cecily had been floating up the outside of the building. She couldn't go very quickly, for she wasn't in truth all that powerful, and she bore a burden which only made it more difficult. She'd got to the third floor window, and hovered there, making sure that she couldn't be seen by anyone in the floor above. She waited, and she listened, and when she heard Valerie over her communicator she pushed herself as hard as she could, rising quickly to the nearest fourth floor window.

She saw all four of them: Valerie, kneeling. Brandon pointing a gun in Valerie's direction. Dennis doing the same, with Lillian's bound body pressed up against him. But there was nothing Cecily could do. At that distance, holding herself and her burden up as well, she couldn't use her telekinetic powers on them - enough to tug them lightly, perhaps, but nowhere near enough to prevent one of them from shooting Lillian, or Cecily herself, for that matter. No, she was powerless to attack. Fortunately, the toned, supple young woman that Cecily bore in her arms could. Freebird raised a hand, shakily holding onto Cecily with her other arm, focused, gulped - and fired.

The beam lanced out, thin and scarlet, with such blunt force that it didn't even shatter the pane of glass that it hit, it just punched it out of its fitting. For this reason, Brandon heard the shattering of glass after the beam of energy had already struck Dennis in the back of the head. Had he had time to turn around, he would have seen Dennis's head smacking down onto the thinly carpeted floor, the blow to the back of his head already more than enough to knock him unconscious; his now unheld prisoner yelping in shock as she tumbled a little less violently to the ground.

But he didn't have time to turn around. As soon as Valora saw Freebird's attack she reached up, grabbed Brandon's gun, and crushed it into a shape so useless, it would have taken Brandon a year to undo it with his own powers.
"Wh-what the -?!" Brandon stammered, feebly, looking in horror as Valora rose to her feet, and then gasping in horror when she seized him by the throat.
"Don't act so surprised," Valora said. "You're tussling with the Bombshells, pond-scum."
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It had all ended far quicker, and far better, than the officers who'd been watching events unfold had suspected that it would. Seeing the redhead in the green dress...floating up the side of 18 South Breed Street had caused a fair few of them to look at each other with a degree of concern. But then they'd seen a flash of red light, heard a brief bit of shouting - and then, a couple of minutes later, they'd seen Valora marching the two feckless idiots who started this whole mess out by the scruffs of their necks, swiftly delivering them into police custody. And then, a moment or two later, they'd seen Officer Lillian Magnuson walking out of the front door, supported by a beautiful woman with a long, brown ponytail and a tight, red uniform.

"Lillian!" One of Lillian's colleagues, a fellow class of '03 graduate, ran to her, sheer emotion making up for quite a distant friendship. She threw her arms around Lillian's slim neck, hugging her tightly. "Oh my god, are you okay? Did they hurt you?"
"I'm alright, June," Lillian said. She gingerly took her arm from around Freebird's neck. "Thanks," she murmured. Then to June: "They didn't hurt me, exactly, but they - they tied me up for a few hours so my legs are a little weak. I'm fine." She didn't seem very happy. She didn't even seem particularly relieved to be free.

Cecily and Maiden-America were next out, sweet young Debra almost shaking with delight that her plan - her plan! - had worked so perfectly. Lillian saw her, and was glad that at least someone was happy.
"That's Maiden-America," Freebird said, seeing where Lillian was looking. "She wasn't one of - well, she wasn't upstairs, but the rescue was her idea."
"So I've her to thank, then?" Lillian stepped forward. "Excuse me, er, Maiden America?" For a moment she wondered if Debra was some old acquaintance that she simply hadn't recognised, for the plump-chested brunette hugged her like they were the dearest of friends.
"Oh, geez, I'm sorry!" Debra laughed, pulling herself away. "I'm sorry, I'm just so glad that you're okay, y'know?"
"Er, sure," Lillian replied. "Your friend - er, Freebird? - tells me I ought to be very grateful to you. You've probably saved my life."
"Oh, well don't give me too much credit," Maiden-America laughed. "The others were the ones who actually saved you - and if your partner hadn't managed to get away, who knows what those crazies might'a done, huh?"
"Wait, what? A...Ali's alive?" She began quivering. "I thought...I thought they'd..."
"You didn't know? Well, sure, he's - whoa there!"

For a moment, Lillian went very still, very stiff. Then her slim shoulders drooped, her pretty black hair swished from one side to another as her head flopped from one side to the other. Her legs collapsed underneath her, her striking blue eyes going dull, her eyelids fluttering. Then with less a sigh and more just a quick "oh?" sort of sound, she fainted dead away. Only the quick and tireless arms of Maiden-America prevented her from hitting her head on the pavement, and Debra found herself catching the slender damsel as she fell limp into her hands.
"Uh, hey! Someone help! I think she's hurt!" Slowly lowering Lillian to the ground, Debra patted her cheeks, trying to rouse her, even amateurishly feeling for a pulse in the pale officer's slender neck. Some first responders began hurrying in their direction, but Cecily was unconcerned. She patted Debra on the shoulder.
"She's just fainted," Cecily said. "She'll be fine."
"Poor thing," Debra cooed, brushing Lillian's hair out of her face. She was glad the attractive young officer was safe. She was very glad.

After handing off the not-quite-murderers to the police, Valerie was pretty contented with how everything had gone. Part of her still thought that it would have been best to do things her way, but she could hardly fuss about the results. She was pleased too that the others had a win under their belt. Hopefully the way they were covered in the press would become a fair bit more sympathetic - and of course that would be good for her, too.
"Hope they don't get too confident," she muttered, still acutely aware of the lack of potency of her teammates' powers. They'd managed to handle a couple of drugged up morons, sure - but the idea of them taking on other, more capable superhumans was still a bit ridiculous. "Guess that's what I'm for," she muttered to herself.

"Valerie." It was Maria. "I wanted to thank you."
"Why?" Valerie replied. "You did as much as I did. More, actually: that was a hell of a shot you made."
Maria shrugged. "Not as good as it looked. My energy beams home in a little when I can see my target, so aiming's pretty easy. I - I'm thanking you because you're what stopped Lance's plan from failing before it even began. You're...you're like the star quarterback holding the whole team together."
"You're welcome." Valerie found it hard to allow Maria to endear herself to her. She was a little too eager to please - but she obviously had real courage, and Valerie had never found it difficult to respect people she didn't happen to like. "But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We're as green as they come - me included. This is just the beginning."

She was about to start an earnest conversation with Maria about thinking of ways for Debra to be integrated better into the team, when she noticed something. A group of journalists had appeared - not too many, but enough to ensure that Lillian Magnuson's rescue would be a relatively big news story. Accepting that being photogenic had been part of what had got them their jobs, Maria and Valerie dutifully moved to where the photographers would be able to get good shots of them.

But though a few cameramen greedily snatched some snaps of the beautiful young women, no-one seemed interested in actually speaking to them. For the most part this was fair enough - they were talking to the lieutenant who'd taken charge of the other cops on the scene. But there was something else, too. Somehow, out of nowhere, a couple of Doyle's marines had materialised, and they were the ones who were actually doing the talking. At no point did any of them suggest that it was the marines who had rescued Lillian Magnuson, but something about their ghostlike manifestation, the way they had put themselves front and centre...it made Valerie uncomfortable. She'd hoped the Bombshells' first taste of victory would have tasted a little sweeter than this.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The taste soured even more over the next few days. Lance made sure to direct the Bombshells towards small-scale stuff, but always where some low-level superhuman was involved as well. They'd dealt with a couple of electrokinetics that Valerie had just barrelled through; a woman who could walk through walls that Cecily had dealt with rather cleverly; and even a man who could shapeshift. The shapeshifter was not such a difficult opponent, however: he could only shapeshift into objects that were entirely green.

But without fail, whenever the team's missions were reported, somehow Doyle's marines were always at least presented as being equally involved. The Bombshells were never photographed in the field without a marine somewhere in shot. Oh, they were pictured by themselves often enough in publicity photographs, or in the single vaguely-prime-time television interview that Lance had managed to arrange, but never in the field.

And then there came a change. It was the first relatively high-profile mission the girls had ever received, going after a relatively notorious gang leader named Flashfight, and Valora, for one, had been spoiling for a decent fight after dealing with enemies that, ever more confident of the power she possessed, Valerie was beginning to think were beneath her. Debra had devised another scheme, since they weren't quite sure if Valora's durability would hold up against Flashfight's plasma-based powers.

"So, I think the floaty-Freebird move is gonna be good here too," Debra said. "Cecily if you grab Maria and float over the top of the courtyard, then you can shoot at him from above and maybe knock him out."
"How do we know that he'll come out?" Valerie asked.
"Easy," Debra replied. "We're gonna have Blane's guys smoke him out with, uh, smoke bombs. Right, Sergeant Blane?"
Blane, standing a few feet away from the heroines, smiled and nodded. "He'll come out, alright."
"Then I step in," Valerie said. "Right?"
"Right," Debra said. "But not alone! Freebird and Cecily'll be supporting you from up above." She was nervous. They were all of them nervous, save for Valora. Flashfight had defeated superheroes before - even killed a couple. But they were, they felt, on the cusp of something. Defeating Flashfight, bringing him down would bring them from amateurs to, at the very least, rookie professionals. It would be something worth noting. It was almost time for respectability. Just this mission - and then it was snatched away from them.

"I'm sorry?" Freebird's communicator had gone off: a private channel. None of the others could hear. "Wh...you want us to -? Oh. Okay, Lance." She turned to the others, crestfallen. "Um...Lance is telling us not to e-engage."
"What? Why?" Valerie clenched a fist. She'd been itching for this.
"He...he doesn't want us going in," Freebird said. "It's just going to be Sergeant Blane and his men."
"Why?" Debra said, not angry, just woefully mystified. "You guys can totally do it."
"I guess he doesn't think so." Freebird replied. "It's okay. We'll...just sit this one out."

And so they did - at least at first. The marines pushed their way into the humble little tenement of Flashfight's current girlfriend with stealth and skill, intending to incapacitate the super-criminal while he was asleep. And perhaps all would have gone to plan - if he hadn't woken up needing a piss. Suddenly, what should have been a quick bag and tag had turned into a real firefight. Bellowing with rage, Flashfight threw his power around in vicious blasts of liquid heat, holing himself up in his bathroom preventing the soldiers from getting anywhere near him. Then one blast set part of his tenement on fire, trapping a contingent of Blane's squad - including Blane himself.

"God damn it!" the young soldier hissed, trying to use one of the holes Flashfight had created with his powers in order to get a shot off at him, but he couldn't get a bead on him. "Hey, Martins, circle around and -" Blane cut off his own order when he saw Martins lying on the ground, screaming in pain. His body armour was partly melted, his rifle too. One of Blane's comrades was putting out the fire on his uniform, while another just looked at him in horror. Blane looked too, as he remembered the terror of trying to fight a powerful superhuman.

And then, silence. The heat of the fires Flashfight's powers had already started still burned, but no more was added to them. The plasma blasts had stopped. Blane was cautious of advancing, fearing that it might have been a trap. And then, when the door to Flashfight's bathroom opened - filled as it was with bullet holes - Blane's entire contingent moved in to try to seize the opportunity. But the opportunity had fled.
"Something about fighting fire with fire would be appropriate right now, I guess," Valora said, coming out of the bathroom holding Flashfight by the neck. She shoved him forward, and he crumpled unconscious to the ground. His cranium had a hairline fracture, and Valora had damaged one of his vertebrae - but he'd live. Blane stepped forward, wondering if Valora had somehow gained the power of teleportation, and saw that the answer was somewhat more mundane: she'd simply burst in through the wall on the other side, and clobbered Flashfight while his back was turned.

Of course, Blane was very happy to see her. Doubtless she'd saved at least one of his men's lives, perhaps even his own - and he was always happy to get a look at her in any case. This time, however, he knew that it would make his life a lot harder than it needed to be: Doyle would be furious.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"I don't know what you're complaining about," Valerie said. She sat down angrily in Lance's office, folding her arms and crossing her legs. "I stopped a supervillain. That's what I'm supposed to do. Oliv - Sergeant Blane said that I'd probably saved a couple of them from getting killed."
"I know, I know, Valerie," Lance said. "I know you did what you think was right, but you have to understand - military units have a set way they gotta do things. It's just not right to get in their way.
The counter-argument was so poor Valora all-but ignored it. "I thought the point of Doyle's troops was to give us backup, not the other way around. We had a plan. It probably would have worked. That was meant to be us getting Flashfight. You're the PR guy, you know how good that would have looked for us. Why did you even ask us to step away?"
"So - you deserve an explanation," Lance offered. "Obviously this team, our co-operation with the military, is a bit of an experiment. No super-team's done work like this since the forties. We're still ironing out the kinks."
"Ironing out the kinks?" Valerie scoffed.
"Yeah. Between you and me, Doyle's been kind of antsy. He and his boys were itching to get some action."
Valerie's blue eyes narrowed. "And you just so happened to give them the most serious mission we've ever had? It's getting to the point where they're getting more coverage than we are."
"Look, that's just the way it goes sometimes." He leaned back in his chair, smiling beneath his sunglasses. "We've all got to put aside our egos from time to time."

Valerie felt the beginnings of embarrassment, a feeling that, perhaps she was just being self-absorbed. But she'd never been one to back down, and she held firm to the idea that she was right. "Putting aside your ego is one thing," she said, "but I'm not gonna be a god-damned cheerleader for a squad of marines. It feels like that's what you're turning us into."
"Why?" Lance said. "Why would I have hired you if I wanted to do that?"
"I don't know. Maybe you got more than you bargained for. Maybe Doyle is just putting pressure on you, but if that's what's happening, you need to man up. You need to do your job."

Lance leaned further back in his chair. He took his sunglasses off, and then he looked Valerie dead in the eye.
"Last time we were alone in this room together, Valerie, I asked you why you were taking this job. You remember what you said?"
"Yeah. That I believed in what you were doing - and I do. Hell, I can even see how bigging up the marines might have the sort of effect you were -"
"No, not that. The first thing you said."
Valerie was confused at first - but then she remembered. "I said the money wouldn't hurt."
"You said the money wouldn't hurt."

He stood up, put both his hands on his desk. "I wondered about you, Valerie. Obviously, we had to do some background checks, make sure you were what you said you were. And I find you're a college dropout. Someone like you? I was surprised."
"Wh - that's none of your business!"
"I have to disagree with you there, Valerie," Lance said. "I managed to get your records from UCLA. You dropped out in your sophomore year."
"It happens," Valerie said. "I wasn't doing well. I decided it wasn't for me."
"That's not really true, though, is it?" Lance replied. "I checked. Your grades weren't genius level or anything, but you were doing fine. And then you dropped out."

He smiled, slightly. "Your parents got divorced a few years back, didn't they?"
Valerie suddenly felt very, very cold. "...So?"
"He's a writer, isn't he? Crime novels. I started reading one, out of curiosity, but uh...well, I doubt someone as, uh, forthright as you would mind me saying that it wasn't exactly Shakespeare. Maybe that's why he hasn't had a novel published since 2002. In fact...he's only had three novels published in his whole life. I checked. I'm no expert...but they can't be earning him much. And with your mom leaving him...where's he getting his money?"
Valerie was nearly shaking. She'd crushed the armrest of her chair as she closed a fist around it. "He finds it hard to...he gets sick a lot."
"I have a feeling he's a lot less sick knowing that you've got this job. Knowing that you've got enough for you and him to live comfortably." He sat back down. "I always believe in being diplomatic - right up to the point where it's not effective anymore. You said before you knew what you were selling - well now I know what I'm buying. This - the Bombshells? It's a hell of a lot more important than you or your fucking pride. So from now on, do what you're told. Or you're fired, and you can kiss goodbye to that cushy paycheck, and you can go back to trying to scrape enough together for your poor daddy from your freelance jobs. Am I understood?"
Valerie's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. She felt like she'd been punched - like what it was like for other people when they got punched. She realised that she was shaking, but not with fear. She was shaking with absolute, apoplectic fury. She bore her teeth, and looked Lance in the eye and for a moment, just a moment, Lance thought she might leap across the table and attack him. But whether or not that would turn out to be true was never discovered, for Doyle burst in.

"This, Van der Boek. Fucking finally, we've got something we can use."
"What the -?" Lance growled. "I'm in the middle of something here, Doyle. Can this wait?"
"What? No, this can't fucking wait," Doyle said. He only vaguely noticed Valerie's presence. "Forget that...Flashfight bullshit. This is the real shit right here. We've got a live one. Even better than Diamondhead. No-one's gonna be upstaging us this time."
"What are you talking about?"
"Renning City. Some nightclub owner got kidnapped. Viola...Annalise?"
"Lady Velvet got kidnapped?" Doyle had been to her famous haunt, Club Lumiére. He'd seen her dance. "I mean, that's bad - but what's it got to do with us?"
"She almost got away, see?" Doyle said. "She phoned 911, said she'd restrained her kidnappers. When they got to her location, no-one was there. They figure they managed to overpower her, recapture her."
"So?"
"So she told them who'd put her abductors up to it." He grinned more widely than he ever had in his life. "Sinistrus."
"What?!" Doyle said. "You're shitting me!!"
"You're not worth shitting, Van der Boek. We got ourselves a live one, and what's more - we know where they are!"

Valora stood up. Her anger, her shame, and her brewing feud with Van der Boek could wait. "I know that name. That's the codename for the Supremacist's top assassin, right? We've gotta do something."
"Yeah," Doyle said. "We do." He began leaving. "I'll get the boys ready. If you're bringing the girls, keep them on their leashes." He stormed out. Van der Boek prepared to leave too, but as he passed Valora, he heard her hiss:
"You're a phoney, Van der Boek. Through and through, you're a phoney!"
"Valerie," he said, "it's California. It's Hollywood. What else did you expect?"

[Damselbinder]

(This chapter partly follows on from "The Abduction of Lady Velvet.")


"You know what the worst thing is about soldiers?"
"No, but I have a funny feeling you're about to tell me." General Molyneux leaned back in his chair, put his boots on his desk. He was large, a little fat, but in a way that suggested merely age rather than gluttony. A little fat and a little old, he didn't mind being a desk jockey at this point in his career. What he did mind was smarmy PR men worming their way into getting appointments with him. "Come on, Van der Boek, I don't have all day."
Van der Boek took off his sunglasses, smiled. Molyneux thought he was the sort of person charm didn't work on: that's what made him so easy to charm. "The worst thing about soldiers is that they're people. People have needs."
"Yes, Van der Boek, feeding large numbers of people does cost money. Thank you for the stunning revelation."


Lance laughed. There was a mix of the self-consciously masculine grunt of the infantryman, and the haughty guffaw of the city trader - Lance had been both in his time. "I'm not talking about food and drink. Animals need food and drink. People? People need love. They need friendship and self-worth and recognition. They need comfort and hope and a reason to get up in the morning."
"And they need Jesus too, I expect?" Molyneux huffed. "It really does sound like that's where you're headed with this crap."
"Some of them, sure. That's not my point." He put his sunglasses into his pocket. It was always useful to have a prop when speaking to someone, to give yourself a reason to pause; like a real life paragraph break.


"Morale, General," Van der Boek said. "Ten men with high morale can beat one hundred without it. Next to food and ammunition it's the most important thing an army can give its troops. And I'm telling you right now, General Molyneux, there's not one marine in this barracks with high morale. There's not one pilot, one sailor, one snub-nosed recruit in this entire military with high morale."
Molyneux tapped his pen. "I have another funny feeling. You're about to tell me why, aren't you?"
"Not so, General. You know why. Morale sank deep into the ocean with the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman. It blew up with the 1st Armoured Division. It was crushed in the Supremacist's fist."


Molyneux stood up, sharply. "Alright. You've got one minute. What are you selling?"
"I'm selling morale, General. Give me just a small contingent of your marines, and I'll sell you the knowledge that you're part of the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen, for you to hand out to every man and woman who serves this great country. I'm going to take away their humiliation."
"And how are you gonna do that?"
"The only way anyone can take away humiliation," Van der Boek said. "By humiliating somebody else."


____________________________________________________________________________________________________



A plan was formed quickly. The marines chosen for Colonel Doyle's unit had not been plucked from the corps at random, but because they were skilled in urban pacification, and they knew well enough how Sinistrus' headquarters ought to be approached. She'd co-opted what had once been a research laboratory, with two floors above ground, and three floors below. Thermal imaging had shown that there were only two people above ground - sentries, no doubt. The bad news was that they couldn't see the basement levels, so weren't aware of their enemies' numbers. The good news was that they had an obvious and easy point of entry: the unguarded roof and upper levels.


Had this been any other kind of target that would have been enough, and Doyle would have sent his men in. But of course, this was not any other target. This was Sinistrus, and to go in uninformed would have been suicide.
"Colonel Doyle, Sergeant Blane, gentlemen," Lance said, walking briskly into the space they'd commandeered as their forward command post, "this is Special Agent Jill Butcher, F.B.I.." Lance was in his 'macho-brusque' mode as he entered, but there was a new quality about it: there was genuine, unpretentious urgency to him as well. He found Blane, Doyle, and two other lieutenants waiting for him - along with Freebird and Valora, standing a little off from the soldiers.


Butcher, a plain, square woman in her early forties, muttered under her breath as she stood in front of the assembly. She wore thick glasses, had a downturned mouth, and seemed very displeased to be there.
"I'm not gonna raise your expectations. A lot of what I have to say is half-informed speculation from a case that we thought was stone dead." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "First, some context: Martin Sontag, the Supremacist, took over what had started as a superhuman-separatist movement led by a man named Stipan Tomislav. Rumour has it that Sontag murdered Tomislav; what's not rumour is that after Tomislav's death, Sontag made sure that his organisation turned in a more violent direction. Not everyone in the organisation was happy about this. From what we've been able to find out, Sinistrus was a good friend of Stipan Tomislav, and she was never happy with Sontag's leadership. Some people even say she betrayed him to the Titan, but either way she's not on the side of the angels. She's directly responsible for dozens of murders, indirectly for hundreds more."


"How do we know it's Sinistrus?" Blane asked. "I mean, I know the woman that was kidnapped said it was her, but couldn't she have been wrong?" He was rapping his fingers on the table in front of him, his foot tapping nervously against the floor.
"A coincidence too big to be a coincidence," Butcher replied. "We'd suspected that Sinistrus was a woman called Marie Renard, who was supposed to have died of cancer a couple of years ago."
"So?"
"So Marie Renard used to be the boss of Viola Annalise, the woman who was kidnapped. Viola Annalise who says she was abducted by Sinistrus. Two plus two, ladies and gentlemen."


"What's her power?"
The question turned every head in the room: no-one had really expected Valora to speak. Van der Boek looked at her with particular intensity. 'Speak, by all means,' his look said, 'but don't fuck with anything.' Valerie avoided his gaze, and repeated her question.
"What's Sinistrus' power? What can she do?" At another time, Valerie might have been a little excited about all this, the prospect of going up against a serious opponent, of taking down someone with Sinistrus' fearful reputation, and indeed of cementing her own reputation. But not that night. Not after her conversation with Van der Boek.
Butcher, for her part, looked almost as uncomfortable as Valerie. "We...we don't know," she mumbled. "We do know that she survived a fair few assassination attempts. Our best guess is she's a regenerator."
There was some unsatisfied murmuring from Doyle's men. Doyle himself looked in an even fouler temper than normal. "What about her associates or...troops, or whatever you want to call 'em? What can they do?"


Butcher reached over the table, handed Doyle a dossier. "That's all we've got."
Doyle skimmed through the list. There were a hundred names, but a few were highlighted as being especially likely to have sided with Sinistrus. "'Dragoon': pyrokinetic; 'Trigger': enhanced senses and agility; 'Siphon': takes kinetic energy from objects and puts it in others; 'Sureshot': high-level energy projection..." It was enough to make the toughest nuts in the corps crack, but Doyle wasn't impressed. Putting a powerful weapon in someone's hands didn't make them a warrior. "That's all we need," he grunted. "Blane, you're going in. Blane?" He didn't reply. He didn't even seem to have noticed that Doyle had spoken. "Sergeant!"
"Wh - uh, yes - yes sir!" Blane shot up. "Uh, Murtaugh, get Bravo Team ready for insertion. Sipowicz, start prepping Alpha Team - I'll be going with you."
The two lieutenants barked out the customary affirmations of obedience, and hurried out. Blane did the same, but not before smoothing back his puffy, blond hair, and taking a long, slow breath. He desperately wished for a cigarette. As he left, he caught Valerie's eye, but neither was in a humour to give each other even a flicker of a smile.


The soldiers disappeared. Butcher disappeared. Doyle and Van der Boek disappeared. The room was empty, save for Valerie and Maria.
"They aren't asking us to help," Maria said.
"...Yeah," Valerie replied.
"Well, I guess that makes sense," Maria almost whispered. "I mean, we're not very experienced. It's probably too much for us to handle." Maria was not generally a person who poked her nose into things. If you were in a bad mood, and Maria asked you how you were, and you replied 'I'm fine', she'd take your answer at face value. But though she didn't put much stock in her own judgement, and she was a little too keen to let others make decisions for her, she wasn't stupid: she knew something was wrong.


"Why aren't they calling in other superhumans? Someone like the Generator or Lady Luck or something. Won't Blane's men need help? Maybe not from us, but..."
Valerie knew the answer. Her...discussion with Lance had made it all quite clear. The whole Bombshells initiative was nothing more than a P.R. stunt by the military. Valerie wasn't quite sure of the ins and outs of the scheme, and how she and the others fit into it, but she knew that the capture, or killing, of Sinistrus would be a watershed moment, a stunning P.R. coup - the next best thing to taking down the Supremacist himself. There was no way they were going to let any superheroes steal their thunder.


So why wasn't Valerie saying 'up yours' to the men who had the gall to tell her what she ought or ought not do with her powers? Why wasn't she storming the barricades herself, crushing Sinistrus and her goons herself? Surely she had the strength. She just didn't have the courage. Mortal danger? No problem - a lifetime of being close to indestructible had made her pretty cavalier about physical peril. But what Lance had threatened - a return to poverty, scrimping and saving so that she'd be able to support her sickly father - that she couldn't bring herself to face.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


"South-West rooms, clear -"
"Ammo check -"
"Reconnoitre complete: two targets on ground floor."
"Salamanca, Johnson, prepare to engage."
"Go - "
"Go - "
"Go!"


There was a kind of artistry to the macho-utilitarianism of the language of soldiery, exemplified perhaps no better than by the United States Marine Corps. It was efficient, of course, but tough. Stirred something in the blood. Or at least it did in most of the corpsmen. Gunnery Sergeant Oliver Blane just found it silly most days - he often found his fellow marines a bit silly. He'd been a Navy man to start with, of course, so the corps and its eccentricities were all still new to him. But now their particular dialect, which he gently mocked with his high school friends sometimes, seemed so appropriate. It was frightening.


But Blane pressed on nevertheless. He didn't merely press on - he led the way. He and five of his men were descending the northern stairwell, while another five were taking the south stairwell, two more groups of five a little further behind on either side. The building was shaped oddly - the southern stairwell was much closer to the entrance than the northern one, so Bravo Team would hit their marks long before Blane's Alpha Team did.
"Blane, I'm in position." This was Lt. Murtaugh, who was leading Bravo Team. "Do we engage?"
"Do you have a visual on the two enemy combatants?" Blane replied over his radio.
"Affirmative. What of it?"
"Do they match any of Butcher's profiles?" The sergeant felt sweat pooling on his brow.
"No, sir," Murtaugh replied. "I don't - well, maybe one of 'em. I think he might be... Mike Bartlett."
"What's his power?"
"Uh...geokinetic."


Blane hesitated. Even knowing that they were up against a geokinetic, there were infinite variables. How strong were his powers? Could he affect concrete? Could he create seismic shocks without needing a medium? Did his powers have a magnetic component, as some geokinetics did? He had a sudden terror that Doyle's cavalier attitude, and his strange eagerness to exclude the Bombshells, even the mighty Valora, from the mission would get all of them killed. But it was too late for fearfulness. Too late even for thought. There was time only for naked, brutal action.
"Engage."

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Colonel Doyle was unhappy about many things. He was unhappy about working with superheroes. He was, not that he'd openly admit it to himself, unhappy about working with women. He was also, and this he was quite prepared to admit to himself, extremely unhappy about working with "that slimy jackoff" Van der Boek. He thought the whole Bombshells scheme was a ludicrous farce, and he continued to have a low opinion of the girls themselves. But General Molyneux told him that it was beginning to get results - and even Doyle had enough of a sense of what made good publicity to know that this mission was of utmost importance.


He had set up a command centre in a building opposite Sinistrus' base, though all it was was a couple of radios, and some non-combat personnel keeping an eye out for any communications from their enemy. And Van der Boek, of course.
"Anything?" Doyle grumbled at one of the operators.
"Nothing since Blane radioed to say he was engaging," the operator replied. "It's been six minutes, sir."
"Six minutes to take out two men?" Doyle growled. "What's Blane doing out there, jacking himself off?"
"Isn't it possible he's been getting killed?"


Doyle turned around with a foul-tempered grunt. The suggestion had come from Van der Boek.
"This whole fucking thing was your idea," Doyle said. "Don't start bitching now. A squad of marines can handle a bunch of disorganised terrorists no problem."
"Let's hope so." Van der Boek folded his arms. He'd been caught up in Doyle's excitement when the word had come in about Sinistrus: everything he'd set out to achieve would be accomplished if they were successful. But if they failed, if they were killed - the whole thing would be dashed on the rocks. It was just as he was trying to come up with some way of spinning it if the marines were killed, when Freebird walked in.


"Uh, hey," she said, smiling nervously at Lance. The others were with her. "How's it going? D-did they get Sinistrus yet?"
"Not yet, Maria," Van der Boek replied, switching on his confident calm. "But don't worry. They will." He looked Maria up and down from behind his sunglasses. She was lovely: they all were. He found himself actually slightly relieved that practical considerations made it a bad idea to send his Bombshells in - he didn't want them to be killed. Even Valerie: he found himself liking her a little more now that she'd been brought to heel.


"Sir!" One of the radio operators wheeled round in excitement. "Sergeant Blane's made contact!"
"Is he okay?" Valerie blurted out, pushing herself to the front of the group, forgetting Lance's threats. Doyle glowered at her, but it had no effect: it wasn't him who had her by the throat. But the man who did put his hand on her shoulder, and Valerie went cold.
"Let Colonel Doyle handle it, Valerie," Lance said. "Let the pros handle this one." He hadn't tightened the leash, exactly - he'd just tugged on it a bit.


The operator listened in to Blane's report. "Acknowledged, Sergeant." Then to Doyle: "Colonel, Sergeant Blane says they've secured the ground floor. They're moving to the lower levels now."
"Casualties?"
"Murtaugh and Salamanca are wounded, and - Lieutenant Sipowicz is dead, sir."
"Oh, no!" Debra cried out with as much passion as if she'd known the man intimately, even though she'd never even spoken to him. It was the result of an innocent and gentle heart, rather than an exhibition of histrionics, but it was too much for Doyle.
"Van der Boek, get your floozies out of here!" he bellowed. He muttered something under his breath, and though it was hard to catch, Valerie was pretty sure one of the words he'd said had started with a 'c'.


She felt her anger rising in her throat like vomit. She clenched a fist, her shapely, mighty shoulders quivering as she held back her rage. Doyle's slur had put something in her mind, something about the fact that the Bombshells all being women - she knew it was something important, and something ugly, but she couldn't quite articulate it. She just felt violently furious about it, and she wanted to cave Doyle's face in.
"Hey, Valerie," Maria began, touching the blonde lightly on the shoulder, but Valerie wheeled round on her, shooting a terrifying glare. Maria recoiled in shock, sure for a moment that Valerie was about to strike her. But those crystal blue eyes softened, at least a little, as Valerie caught herself.
"Sorry," the blonde muttered.
Maria was speechless, but Cecily - ever the diplomat - waded in.
"Valerie," she said, her voice measured and soothing, "let's give Doyle and his crew some room."
"...Fine."
The others shuffled out a little awkwardly, but just before Valerie could join them, Lance tapped her on the shoulder.
"In case you're thinking of doing something brave," he said, quietly enough that only Valerie could hear, "make sure you think of daddy first."
"You -!"
"I don't mean to twist the knife," Lance said, "but I cannot have you mess with this one."


When Valerie left, still shaking with a shameful rage, she found only Debra waiting for her.
"I don't understand," she said. "Why aren't they sending us with the marines? Or, you at least."
"We'd - I don't know, we'd get in the way, I guess," Valerie said. She tried to walk past the small brunette, but Debra wasn't having it.
"Valerie, did something happen? You seem upset."
"I'm fine, Deb," Valerie replied.
"Then why aren't you busting in there and kicking Sinistrus' butt?"
"Running in there half-cocked could put Blane's guys in danger. Besides - Sinistrus might be stronger than me for all I know. Her or one of her guys."
"Then isn't that even more of a reason to help them, isn't it? Like, let's be real: you could take all of Doyle's troops, couldn't you?"
"I'm not sure," Valerie said. "Maybe."
"Then you should -"
"I can't, Debra."
"Why?" She looked up at Valerie with the same desperate confusion as someone trying to understand why God hadn't answered a particularly desperate prayer.


"I - I have responsibilities," Valerie eventually muttered in reply, aware of how lame it sounded. "This isn't - this is a job, Debra. I can't just do whatever I feel like."
"I...I get that," Debra replied, and her soft tone suggested that she'd let the matter rest, but before Valerie could move away from her, she spoke again. "What would have happened to us if you'd thought like that before?"
"What?"
"On the tanker. When we first met. What would have happened to me and Maria and Cecily - even Lupus - if you hadn't just busted in and saved us without asking anyone's permission? We'd - we'd be... I mean, the stuff they would have done to us if..."


She trailed off. She still wasn't completely reconciled with her memories of her capture, joyful as her rescue had been: she couldn't talk of it easily. Moreover, the thought of it pulled the rug from under her resolution. "Oh, Jesus - I'm sorry, Valerie. I'm acting like you're the only one who has the responsibility to do anything. Why shouldn't the rest of us -"
"Because you're not as strong as me."


And then Valerie laughed. It was not an ironical laugh, exactly, but there was something bitter in it.
"God," she said, "why the hell am I listening to that jerk?"
"Huh?" Debra didn't understand, though she thought the 'jerk' might be Colonel Doyle.
"I'm not gonna let people die because I need a paycheck," Valerie said. "How the hell did I let it get any more complicated than that?!"
"A paycheck - ?" Debra was sufficiently lost that that she almost missed Valerie's point completely. "Wait, you're going in?"
"You're damned right," Valerie said. "And to hell with the consequences," she thought.


At the time, it certainly felt heroic.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


"Get down!"
The cry did not come quickly enough to save Private Rick Simpson. Fearful of the others in the compound being alerted, Blane's team had rushed down into the subterranean levels as quickly as they could. It was a crowded fit - you were supposed to go to the basement levels using the elevators, elevators which the marines had disabled as soon as they'd entered the building: the stairs were just for emergencies. But their speed had caused the very thing they were trying to prevent. One of Sinistrus' troops, a woman named Trigger with enhanced balance and reaction times, had heard them coming, for her powers gave her just a touch of enhanced hearing as well. So when Private Simpson, an eager eighteen year-old with plenty to prove, rounded the corner, rifle raised, he didn't squeeze his trigger fast enough. His highly trained, razor sharp reflexes were no match for what Trigger had been lucky enough to be born with, and she put a bullet in his skull.


His body fell back, getting in the way of the other marines as they rushed forward, but not enough to save Trigger. Her powers didn't make her any more accurate than an ordinary person, and though she got off two shots, neither of them hit. A hail of gunfire took her down.
"Wh - what the fuck?!" Only belatedly did the other 'enemy combatants' process what was happening. "We're under attack!" one of them shouted, pressing himself against a concrete pillar to protect himself from the marines' gunfire. He thought he had the advantage - he was a high level electrokinetic, and he could manipulate the electricity he could produce, curling it through the air like a snake, hence his nom de crime: 'The Serpent.'


But he hadn't even had the chance to charge his powers before a grenade, rolled with impressive precision by Blane himself, bumped into his big toe. He looked down just as it exploded, blowing his right leg clean off, and killing him with a shard of shrapnel that shredded his carotid artery, a horrifying sight that sent three other superhumans running for relative safety. Blane saw him fall too, but he did not relish the sight.
"Hold this position," he ordered. "We'll, uh, shoot them as they run down that hallway!" The tactic was sound. A narrow corridor, dividing two sets of smaller labs on either side, was the only way that anyone could reach the stairs Blane's squad had used. The stairs down were at the far end of this hall, but the only stairs up - the only way out - was behind them. A couple of his marines threw over a couch, went prone behind it, their rifles poking out over the upholstery. Two others positioned themselves at the walls perpendicular to the narrow hallway, so that either they could lean round and quickly fire down it, or they could shoot in the back anyone who ran past them. It was a good, defensible position, and covered the only exit. Sinistrus' troops would have to walk right into the line of fire.


"Colonel Doyle," Blane radioed in, "we've secured the first basement level. Private Simpson is dead, two hostiles are down, over."
"Any sign of the hostage? Over."
"No, nothing, sir. Over."
"Work on the assumption she's dead. Saving her is a bonus - Sinistrus' head is not."
"Sir -"
"Keep me apprised. Over and out."


"Boy," one of Blane's underlings said, "that Colonel Doyle's a real charmer, huh?" There was no reply. The underling, one Private O'Donoghue, was only on his third combat mission, and he still had the habit, perhaps good perhaps bad, of chatting to relieve his tension. "Reminds me of my old drill sergeant. I...uh..." His drill sergeant had been perfectly ordinary: O'Donoghue didn't really have any stories to tell. It was just the sort of thing that he felt soldiers were expected to say. "Hey, sir, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Private." His hands were trembling - not enough to spoil his aim, but enough to be visible.
"Heh, guess the Navy doesn't get you used to this kind of -" Far too late did O'Donoghue realise how stupid what he'd said had been. Marine or otherwise, Blane had seen more death than any of them - he'd been on the Harry S. Truman. But if he was angry, he didn't show it. He just gave O'Donoghue a wry smile, before ordering him to check that the elevators were indeed inoperable.


The private wasn't stupid enough just to jab one of the buttons - he prised open the panelling, inspected the circuits: it was clear that no-one would be using the elevators any time soon. It was for this reason that O'Donoghue was a little confused when one of the doors opened right in front of him. He saw a man - huge, with rippling muscles, a shaved head, in ostentatiously torn khakis - floating in the air, in the empty elevator shaft.
"Semper fi, mate," he said, before opening his palm. A light gathered in it before, with an ear-splitting, high pitched shriek, it shot out, disintegrating O'Donoghue's upper half.


"Jesus Christ!!" The marines wheeled round, realising that they'd been sorely outmanoeuvred. They fired back, but their enemy raised his hand, and a shimmering barrier of light appeared in front of him, blocking their weapons fire.
"You bunch of fucking fascists!" he bellowed, floating towards them, bathed in a crimson aura. "I told the others - I told them your fucking government would come after us!" He fired again with another high-pitched shriek, plainly disintegrating another marine. "Martin might have been a psychopath, but there's only way to respond to violence - with superior violence!" If any of them had had time to check Butcher's files, they would have seen that this was Sureshot - except the file hadn't mentioned that he could fly.


Nearly in a full on panic, the marines tried to mount a staged retreat, with two of them providing cover fire while the others ran to the hallway, then swapping roles so those providing cover could retreat as well. But as they were retreating, more came up to meet them from the other side, from the stairs leading to the lower level. None were as powerful as Sureshot, and superhumans who'd only gone up against poorly equipped cops blanched at the prospect of going up against well-trained, fully armed marines, but with Sureshot on the other side, each shriek of his powers winking out the life of another brave young man, their confidence grew. A little too far, in some cases, as the desperate marines managed to put a bullet right between the eyes of another of their enemies, but the walls were closing in. One of them cried out for orders, for strategy, but no orders came. Blane was nowhere to be seen, their ranks had been split in two, and their tactics had completely fallen apart. They were finished.


If O'Donoghue had had a story about his drill sergeant, he might have mentioned one of his lectures about superheroes. It wasn't prejudiced in the usual sense, though it was certainly disparaging. It was more like the kind of bullish inter-service rivalry you got between, say, the Marines and the Rangers. Much was made of their lack of professionalism, their lack of discipline. Superheroes were childish. Superheroes were charlatans. Superheroes were feminine. It was as if the entire armed forces had an inter-service rivalry with the very concept of the superhero, and as well they might. Predictions were that there would be so many superhumans within as little as fifty years that they'd all be obsolete. The upshot of all this was that none of the marines in Blane's squad, even those who were terrified by the prospect of imminent death, were hoping for or fantasising about being rescued by some titan in tights. But all of them - every single one of them - forgot everything that had ever been drilled into them, forgot every time they'd mocked the latest 'Couvie starlet, and forgot everything they'd ever said about the Bombshells, when Valora smashed through the ceiling above them.


She landed behind the combatants who'd been cutting off the Marines' retreat. She clobbered the first, putting a dent in his skull with but the slightest effort. A second wheeled round, and breathed raw flame at the beautiful blonde who threatened them. But she used her great strength to leap out of the way, before scooping up a chunk of the floor like it was iced cream, and throwing it right into the fire-breather's face. He reeled, not quite unconscious, but a marine took advantage, and shot him in the back.


"MORRIS!!" the last of them screamed, and wheeled round on the soldiers, desperate for vengeance. They shot at him, but it was useless: he'd coated himself in plates of nigh-impenetrable armour, his hands becoming deadly blades. As he rushed at them, though, a hand caught him by the back of his neck. With whipcord speed, he thrust his bladed hand back, but found that arrested too - grabbed in a red-gloved hand. He turned his head, and his silver eyes met Valora's burning blue, framed in the red of her mask. Her grip was - was beyond powerful! He couldn't move his arm at all! "You traitor!" he hissed. "Working with them against your own kind!" The mighty blonde didn't reply. She just tightened her grip, and his armour crumpled - but he noticed something else. A sliver of red dripping down his arm-blade - and it wasn't his blood. "You're not invincible." He grinned.
"Maybe," Valora replied, "but I'm a hell of a lot more invincible than you."


Before he knew it, the metal-man was hoisted over Valerie's head. With an ursine roar, she hurled him at Sureshot, and he hit the villain's crimson barrier with the force of a cannonball. His barrier held, but there was a kind of feedback that shook him badly, made his arms cramp. As the metal-man flopped unconscious onto the ground, Valora leapt forward to take out her crimson-clad enemy, her strength making her explode forward with shocking speed, leaping clean over the squad of marines. Sureshot couldn't recover quickly enough, and though he fired another of his shrieking energy beams at her - a shriek that Valerie found strangely familiar - he missed. He raised a barrier at the very last moment - for all the good it did him.
"AUUGHH!!" Valora roared, and Sureshot felt the weight of her rage. She shattered his barrier, and then his jaw, in a single blow. She landed before he did, on a knee and a fist. She didn't rise until she saw him crashing into the ground. When she did rise, it was slowly, her breathing calm, and deep. She fixed her eyes on Sureshot's crumpled form until she was sure he was out for the count. Only then did she turn to the men she'd saved.


"Have you taken out Sinistrus?" she asked. The soldiers looked at each other: they weren't sure which of them was meant to answer.
"Uh, no," one of them said. "We're guessing she's on the lowest level. Are the other Bombshells -?"
"No," Valora replied. She looked around at the carnage she'd dropped into, the walls riddled with bullet holes, the shrapnel embedded in concrete, the injured groaning and whimpering, the bodies... "Jesus," she muttered. "How many have you lost?"
"Six," the same marine said. "We'd have lost a hell of a lot more if you hadn't shown up when you did."
"Where's -" Valerie felt a chill take hold of her. "Where's Sergeant Blane?"
The marines looked at each other - evidently they'd struggled to keep track of who was where. "I don't know, ma'am."


With a hiss of frustration, Valora leapt over the rubble and ruin of what had once been a well equipped laboratory, over corpses and not-quite corpses, looking for the charming, handsome young gunnery sergeant. She didn't find him among the dead. She didn't find him among the injured. For a moment she feared that the superhuman she'd faced had just disintegrated him, and that Oliver's parents wouldn't even have a body to bury. But then she heard something, a stifled voice coming from one of the rooms on either side of the narrow hallway. Wary of a potential enemy, Valora slowly opened the door, but she did not find an enemy inside. She found Blane.


"Oliver!" she gasped, her face lighting up. "You're alright!" But as she got closer to him, she realised that something was very, very wrong. He wasn't hurt, not physically. He was tucked into a corner, hugging his knees, shaking uncontrollably. It was not as if he'd just run in to hide from Sureshot - that would have been perfectly reasonable. But he'd thrown aside his weapon. He wasn't even that well hidden. He'd just...collapsed.
"No...no, no, no..." he muttered, his voice choked with sobs. "No, no, no..."
"Oliver, what the hell's the matter with you?" Valerie knelt down beside him, shook his shoulder, but he wouldn't look at her. He just kept muttering 'no, no, no' again, and again and again. "Oliver, come on! Most of your men are still alive: they need you." Still nothing. Valora didn't understand. Even the marines who stood among their comrades bodies, they were shaken, but still standing. How had Oliver suddenly transformed into such a coward? "Sergeant Blane!!"


That last shout managed to rouse him - or at least it got him to look at her. But though his eyes were pointed at her, he still barely seemed to see her. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. After a few moments, he tucked his head against his knees again, shaking almost as violently as if he were having a fit. Valerie didn't know what to do. She just saw Oliver shaking and sobbing, and she was filled with disgust, that any grown man could behave as he did. It carried a sting of memory, and she retreated from it, leaving him to his cowardice.


"Hey!" she said, calling out to the marines as they regrouped and tried to work out what their remaining fighting strength was. "Sergeant Blane's in here, he's - he's in here." A couple of them ran over to her, but she walked past them. She didn't even want to look at Blane again. To the others she said: "What's the plan now?"
One of the lieutenants, sensing a need for leadership, stepped forward and took charge. "Unless Colonel Doyle says otherwise, we're not stopping until Sinistrus is compromised."
"You say she's somewhere downstairs, right?"
"Yeah."
Valora nodded - then lifted her foot, and stamped down, making a hole easily large enough for a person to fit through. Before any of the marines could object, not that any of them were sure that they would, she leapt down through it. She was just disappearing from sight when Blane came out of the little room he'd hidden in. He was barely able to hold himself up - in fact he couldn't, and one of the privates was supporting him. He was struggling to remember where he was, what was happening - terror had him squeezed in its fist. His ears rang - rang with the sound, the high-pitched shriek of Sureshot's powers.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Beneath the carnage, beneath the violence and death and disgust, a woman lay, sleeping. It was not quite right, actually, to say that she was sleeping. She was drugged, a gas mask covering a pretty nose and a soft, warm mouth, pumping anaesthetic into a shapely, delectably proportioned body: long, smooth legs; a long, swanlike neck tapering gently down to a pair of sumptuously sculpted, naked shoulders; silky, not-quite-olive skin; heaving breasts, protected only by a corset, of all things. Dark hair; short, but voluminous; a face of exquisite charm. She was a woman of staggering beauty, and there were certainly superhumans who might have snatched her up just because of that. But Sinistrus was not such a superhuman. She was not a woman of raw, rapacious appetites. She had only arranged for the kidnapping of Viola Annalise, known in some circles as Lady Velvet, because Viola had something that could serve 'the cause'. And if something could serve the cause, then Sinistrus - rightly identified by Agent Butcher as Marie Renard - would have it.


But Marie was no robot. She'd once been Viola's employer, and the two had come close to being much, much more than that. Even as her eyes lingered on Viola's bound body, her mind lingered on what she'd made Viola suffer: the terror and humiliation of capture. She wanted to touch her, but Viola was sealed away inside a glass tube, as her hypnotic pheromones were siphoned off to be used however Marie wished. She wanted to comfort her that her suffering was for a good cause, to let her know that it was for Viola herself, for all like them that Sinistrus toiled - but Viola would not listen. As Marie herself had put it, no self-respecting woman in Viola's situation would.


Indeed, she'd been so lost, both in admiration of Viola's beauty, and in her own guilt, that deep in the bowels of the complex she'd taken charge of, she hadn't noticed the sounds of gunfire until it was much too late. Realising that they'd been discovered, Marie prepared to don the mantle of Sinistrus, to save her brothers and sisters from their enemies - and that was when ceiling fell in on her.
"Auhh!" she cried out, as a chunk of concrete knocked her down. She was sure that SWAT officers would start repelling in at any moment, and just when she was wondering how a bunch of men with guns had got past Sureshot and Thancrus, her true foe dropped like a thunderbolt from above.


"I don't know what the hell you freaks are planning." A strong, confident voice. A woman's voice, proud and clear. "But it stops right now." A woman had leapt through the hole in the ceiling, slamming into the ground. Tall for a woman, her buxom chest displayed with a tight, partly unzipped jacket-leotard combination. She had long, wavy blonde hair, crystal blue eyes, with a red domino mask adorning her beautiful features. Knee-high red boots, with shapely thighs proudly displayed, covered with only a pair of flesh-tone tights. Red gloves, and a red cape, and a look of utmost confidence.


Sinistrus gaped. She trembled, almost, in awe of the radiant confidence this woman possessed. She opened her mouth to speak, but only one word came out.
"Who?"
"The name's Valora, pond scum."
"...who?"


The double inquiry was not meant to be insulting. Sinistrus was just astonished that a woman this impressive, this radiant and obviously powerful, was not known to her. But Valora took it as an insult. Her eyes narrowed in cold fury, and she began striding towards Marie.
"What have they told you?" Sinistrus said, rising to her feet with more than a hint of panic in her voice. "That we're just following in the footsteps of the Supremacist? That...mindless thug is dead and buried, and I couldn't be happier about that! We're not interested in ruling or oppressing anyone! We just want safety for those like us! We want freedom!"
"The kidnapper talking about freedom? That's rich," Valora growled. "A lot of good men are dead because of you. Because they were trying to save the woman you abducted - and your flunkies killed them. That's on your hands. I don't care how good your intentions are!"
"Oppressors always take advantage of the brave to do their bidding," Sinistrus said, backing towards Viola's glass prison. "In a way, the soldiers are victims as - aughh!"


It wasn't so much that what Sinistrus said made Valora more angry. It was just that she wouldn't tolerate attempts to make complex a situation which ought to have been very simple. She lunged forward with that speed that always took her opponents off guard, and seized Sinistrus by the throat, before hurling her with almost as much force as she'd used against the metal-man. With a cry of pain, Sinistrus hit the ground, bouncing twice before she even began to roll. By rights, she ought to have broken a couple of ribs, at least. But though she rose slowly, and with a look of pain on her face, she didn't seem all that much worse for wear. Butcher's suggestion that she was a regenerator was becoming more plausible.


"Don't do this," Sinistrus said. "What we're planning here could change the world for the better. It could transform the lives of countless superhumans, all over the world!"
"Oh, cut the crap!" Valora bellowed. "Superhumans don't have it that bad!" She again started advancing on Sinistrus, if a little wary that she didn't know exactly what the trim, white-haired woman could do. "I hate it when I hear supers whingeing about how hard it is for them. Like we're some oppressed minority! Yeah, no-one gets it worse than us! Except, oh, I don't know, black people, gay people, transsexuals, Jews, the disabled - " She stopped herself. She smiled, feeling suddenly a little ridiculous in her revealing leotard when so many on both sides lay dead. "You got me doing the hero-villain banter thing...but you're really not worth the breath." She lunged again, this time with the intention of knocking Sinistrus unconscious.


She calculated the attack quite well. It was hard enough to stun, even to knock unconscious - but it wasn't going to kill anyone. It was something of a surprise, then, when her punch caved in the side of Sinistrus' skull. It was even more of a surprise when Sinistrus spoke immediately afterwards.
"I don't think you were trying to kill me," Sinistrus said. "But it's not in your power either way."
"Wh-what the hell?" Valora realised that she hadn't actually crushed Sinistrus' skull at all - it had given way, yes, but it no longer even felt like flesh. It was more like...a sort of gooey rubber.
"It was Valora, wasn't it?" Sinistrus said. As she spoke, Valora watched her enemy's skin, her hair, her eyes begin to change - to morph into this same rubbery, black...stuff. "You say you don't care about good intentions - but I do. So let me assure you, Valora - I'll do my best not to kill you." With a bone-chilling squelch, her entire body melted into viscous, black liquid. It began to pool at Valora's feet, and she stepped back in bewildered disgust. But before it even had the chance to settle, the pool surged forward - and seized Valora's body.


"Ugh!" Valora disgust only intensified as the rubbery gloop poured itself over her, beginning to cover her arms and her torso. "What the - hell is this stuff?" It surged over her, attacking the buxom blonde from every side at once. It ran up her arms, squelched over her chest, ran over her hips down her nylon-clad thighs, even trying to force its way up her neck. It was a bizarre sensation. It felt like rubber, which is to say it felt like it ought to have been solid, but it moved like liquid.

"You think this is going to stop me?" Valora growled, the initial shock of Sinistrus' transformation fading. She brought her strength to bear on the stuff, tearing it from her body and hurling it aside in great clumps, so that it almost seemed as if she would free herself completely. But the rubbery substance wouldn't give up either: every piece of it that she threw aside wriggled back, bursting over her again, trying to cover her. Again she grabbed at it, but it seemed to have figured her out, to have changed strategies, for now whenever she grabbed at it, it became like water in her grip, completely fluid, but as it tried to wrap around her, it became thicker - stronger. Valora's great strength was all that was keeping it from just enveloping her completely.

"This is stupid - this is so stupid!" she thought, as the liquid-rubber tried to wrap itself around her. "People have died - they might still being dying - and I'm stuck here fighting a puddle!" She fought viciously, but she just couldn't get rid of the stuff. Her problems only got worse: the 'puddle' pooled its resources, literally, and Valora found the entire mass gathering around her torso, trying to trap her arms, leaving her legs and her throat be for the moment. The whole surging, writhing bulk of liquid rubber stifled Valora's arms, drowning them in a viscous vice, like her own personal tar pit. To Valora's horror, the stratagem proved successful, and she found her arms - her arms - restrained!


"NO!" Valora bellowed. Roaring like a grizzly, she gave weight to her defiance, and with a mighty effort, she tore her arms free of the restraints. It burst impressively aside - and then clamped right back down. "Nrrghhh!!" Valora could hardly believe it. She'd known that she wasn't the most powerful superhuman in the world - nowhere near. Lady Corvus and Imperion had achieved feats of strength far beyond what Valora was capable of. But she'd never actually met one, never even met one who'd met one, who could match her. But now...now as she strained, she found that she couldn't even pull her arms away again. They wriggled beneath the bubbling, latex-like substance holding her, but she couldn't get them free. It - or rather, she, was getting stronger. And with Valora's arms somehow secured, the stuff began spreading down, writhing and wrapping, slithering down over her waist to her long, shapely legs.


"Ugh!" Valora she felt the living latex come again into contact with her womanly thighs. It was disturbingly warm: its surface, its molten slickness all too tangible through Valora's tights as it oozed over her legs. It could not, it seem, immediately force them together, so it settled for simply stretching out around them, so that at first Valora didn't so much feel the living latex pulling against her legs as just its unsettling texture - but as it spread downwards, she could feel it tighten, could feel her thighs being pulled in against each other. "How?!" Valora groaned. "How is this...goop this damned strong?"
"Because you are."


Valora wasn't even sure that she'd heard the voice - not exactly. It seemed to vibrate through her, the latex shivering with every phoneme of Sinistrus' voice.
"This form...this power is the only reason Martin Sontag kept me alive all those years," Sinistrus said. Her voice was gentle, calm. Even soothing. "I wasn't born with this ability, you see. It was given to me in an experiment - I was designed to be an assassin. It doesn't matter how powerful you are: this form absorbs all the strength you use against it."
"Talk all you want; you can't hold me!" Valora strained again, trying to pull her thighs apart in a mighty tug, and she felt the living latex begin to thin, and stretch. But then, just as she felt as if she was going to break it, it redoubled its own efforts, and her thighs snapped together. Sinistrus' talk, Valora realised, wasn't just talk. Every ounce of effort only trapped her further.


The latex spread down over Valora's boots, red covered over with glossy black, pulling at Valora's calves, squeeze by squeeze cajoling them together, until she felt her supple legs forced together into one wriggling limb. As she looked down at herself in raw disbelief, Valora overbalanced - and fell.
"Unnh!" A fall of such minuscule height could do no harm to her, but - brought down - Valora cried out all the same. Lying on her back, she continued to writhe, but she only fed the strength of her prison. Pulsing with the overflowing power she provided to it, Sinistrus' liquid form began stretching upwards, over Valora's torso, and elbows, over her blue leotard, up to her round, buxom breasts.


"Aah!" Valora gasped, as the warm, oozing material touched the bare skin of her exposed cleavage: hot, purposeful, and all too clearly alive. Like she was being fondled by two oil-covered hands, the latex squeezed her bosoms as it slithered over them, hot and disturbingly intimate, stretching between them as well as over them, taking ever more advantage of her voluptuous body. Over her shoulders, her neck, over her chin - and, finally...


"MMMPPPPHHHHHH!!" The warm, gooey latex shot over Valora's full, red lips with sickening relish, forming a swift, tight seal. "MMM! MMHH-MMNNNNNMMPHHH!!" Valora groaned, her lips snapped shut, their lovely shape still visible through the rubbery gag that had formed over them. She couldn't part them, couldn't utter a sound more intelligible than "mm-bbhhnnmmphhh!" She still thrashed, and every time her heel connected with the floor she left anything from a large crack to a small crater, but she couldn't get out of the sheath that bound her curvaceous body. "No," Valora thought, "no way - no way am I losing like this! No way am I losing at all!" But her strength didn't seem to be enough. The rubbery sheath tightened, constricting against her breasts, her hips, her thighs, binding her with such all-encompassing strictness that any observer might have thought she was naked under it. She didn't stop writhing, tossing her long, blonde hair back and forth as she fought, but every second only gave her enemy more strength to use against her.


"As things are right now," Sinistrus said, the sheath wrapping Valora shivering as she spoke, "I could squeeze your windpipe and choke you to death. But I won't. I must, however, get out of here, and I can't have someone as powerful as you interfering."
"Mrrghghmpph! RRHHHMMPHHH!!" Valora growled, trying to ignore the pulsing sensation against her voluptuous breasts and her smooth, shapely thighs. So focused on her indignation was she that she almost didn't notice as the sheath stretched up one more time, and covered over her nose too.


"MMMRGGHHHMMHHPPPHH!! MMPPHHH...Mphh...mmhhhh..." She only noticed the cause after the symptoms. She was beginning to feel light-headed, dazed. Her vision was beginning to darken, her extremities tingling. "Wh-what's she doing? Is she...suffocating me?!"
"I said I'd try not to kill you," Sinistrus said, her voice quivering through every part of Valora that her body covered, "and I meant it. You won't die, I shouldn't think, but you will pass out."
"Mmm-mmphh...nnnnmmhh!" Valora could feel herself weakening. Powerful as her limbs were, they still needed oxygen, and she wasn't getting enough. She could feel it: she was getting strangely warm, the tingling in her extremities spreading throughout her entire body. She kept fighting, of course, but she could feel that fight getting ever more vain.


"No...no way...is this...uhhnnhh..." The tossing of her hair from side to side was reduced to sleepy brushing of her golden locks against the cold floor. Her struggles, which to start with were so furious that one would have risked death by getting too close to her, were reduced to weak, almost sensuous writhing. No: a beautiful, voluptuous blonde wriggling, bound in a scandalously tight, latex sheath, sleepily moaning as her body was squeezed and fondled from all sides - there was nothing almost about it. Sinistrus's intentions had been pure, in a manner of speaking: this was genuinely the only way she'd had available to neutralise Valora. But feeling her young, firm, curvaceous captive in her all-encompassing grip...well, Marie Renard had always had an eye for beautiful women, and perhaps she squeezed her captive's thighs, her plump bosoms a little more tightly than she needed to.


As for Valora herself, darkness was beginning to settle over her. It was not so much humiliating in her mind as incredibly galling, feeling herself wrapped up like a dead pharaoh. As she drifted towards unconsciousness, things in her mind began associating with each other without her even meaning them to. The cocoon wrapping her up; the financial trap that Lance Van der Boek had caught her in on the one hand; her sense of duty on the other. And around her neck, a shackle - a shackle with an iron ball attached to it. It weighed down her career as a photographer, forcing her to take endless shots of dull high-school sports and grocery store produce. It weighed down her youth, making it so much more difficult than it needed to be for her to have a life, to have friends. It weighed down her budding career as Valora, forcing her into the ridiculous Bombshells just to make a quick buck. They entombed her, just as much as Sinistrus' vile sheath, and it was to that that her mind returned, via every other problem in her life. She'd first felt cowardly for not immediately rushing in to fight against Sinistrus and her troops. But now - caught and bound - she wondered if she'd been foolhardy for taking the burden upon her inexperienced shoulders.


Then again, what was strength for, if not for the bearing of burdens?


Sinistrus first felt a quiver. The quiver became a rumble. The rumble became a shaking. The shaking grew in intensity. Even she herself could not quite articulate how her senses worked in this liquid form - but she knew something was not as it ought to have been. Valora was still struggling when by rights she should have been unconscious by now, super strength or no super strength. It didn't matter much in the end: she'd take that strength too, turn it against her captive. Except it was in the word 'captive' that Sinistrus made her great error. She'd been under the impression that she was binding a captive, securing and subduing a victim. But it was not so: she was still in battle with Valora - and the battle was not over.


Whether it was because in her addled state she got a flash of inspiration, or whether she just did the first thing that came into her head even Valerie could not say, once all was settled. She managed to work it out later, at least: Sinistrus had said that she used the strength that was given to her, except the process was obviously not instantaneous, otherwise Valora's struggles would have been totally stifled from the instant Sinistrus attacked. She had all the energy Valora had put in already - but nothing was stopping Valora from simply exceeding that total with one furious burst. Nothing, that is, except her own resolution.


With the animal fury of a mother-bear finding a wolf over its cubs' corpses, Valora roared in testament of her own power, and thrust her arms out with every fibre of her strength. With a vicious snap, the living latex sheath burst apart, and Valora - gasping in her full share of oxygen, leapt from its confines. Sinistrus was stunned, so stunned that her counterattack was too slow to snare her would-be victim again. Instead, as her living-latex body tried to uncongeal itself from the more solid form it had taken to keep Valora bound, Valora raised her hands high, and slammed her fists down with her full strength, the first time she had ever used her full strength on a single opponent. As her hands hit the solid surface beneath her target, there was a sound like a bomb going off. The foundations of the building shook, and a few months later, the damage Valora had done to its structural integrity would be considered so extensive by a municipal inspection that the entire building would be condemned. As of right then and there, Valora's blow was so powerful, that she knocked Sinistrus unconscious - while she was still in her liquid form.


So, when the marines finally managed to work their way through the stragglers that Valora hadn't clobbered on her way down, and came storming into the site of the battle, they could not see Sinistrus at all. They saw her captive though, the beautiful Viola Annalise, freed of her restraints, the soft, swan-necked beauty cradled in the arms of her saviour. Achingly sensual, feminine vulnerability in the arms of thrillingly sexy, feminine strength. It was such a tableau that it was a good ten seconds before one of the marines spoke.
"Where's Sinistrus?" he asked. "D-did you kill her?"
"No idea," Valora said. "But she's down there." With a nod, she indicated a pile of goop near her feet. "I hope one of you guys brought a bucket."

[tallyho]

I would suggest spacing between your dialogue and paragraph/scene changes as it makes it easier to read and much less daunting than big blocks of text.

[Damselbinder]

I would suggest spacing between your dialogue and paragraph/scene changes as it makes it easier to read and much less daunting than big blocks of text.

I think I'll keep it the same for the rest of this story, for consistency's sake, but when I get to Valora 2 I might alter it.

[tallyho]

I wouldnt chose consistency over reader experience. You can just edit these and put lines in lol!

[Damselbinder]

I wouldnt chose consistency over reader experience. You can just edit these and put lines in lol!

Made some adjustments. Hope this makes it a bit more readable.

[Femina]

Daaa-um Valora's a BAMF!

[manuelmen]

honestly I do not finish to understand how it was that Valora defeated Sinistrus, anyway I think it's a bright and entertaining story, congratulations.

[Damselbinder]

honestly I do not finish to understand how it was that Valora defeated Sinistrus, anyway I think it's a bright and entertaining story, congratulations.

Well thanks!

As for Sinistrus, the way her power works is that it absorbs the strength of those who struggle within it, adding it to her own strength. The more you struggle, the stronger her bindings get. However, Valora just brute-forced it by using more strength in one burst than all the energy she'd used fighting it up to that point. It was more than Sinistrus could handle, and Valora escaped. Then Valora just slammed her fists down so hard that Sinistrus was knocked unconscious.

[Femina]

Superman does stuff like this all the time. It's not that odd in superhero stories. Pushing past percieved limits to overcome obstacles is something superheroes have been doing since they were invented.

[Damselbinder]

Valerie came home exhausted. It wasn't her interview with the confessor. It wasn't that her battle with Hell-Eye had been particularly gruelling. It wasn't even that she'd spent four hours taking snaps of wedding cakes for some pissy little start-up catering firm, cakes that the greatest photographer in the world couldn't have made look appetising. It was the home she came to. It was a little hovel on the east side of town, which she'd just about managed to throw a little personality into. She'd put up a few of her better artistic shots on the walls, including one that had won her second place in a high school competition when she was sixteen. She had better ones, but they were too big: her landlord wouldn't allow his tenants to put nails in the walls. She had some of those little double-sided sticky pads you could get from hardware stores, but only her lesser shots were small and light enough for them.


Only one of Valerie's photos had anyone she knew in it - and it was the only one she hadn't taken herself. It was a shot of her and some of her high-school friends enjoying a night's revels. Her then-boyfriend had taken the shot - ironic that he was the only one Valerie wasn't still in contact with. It sat on her dresser, next to an antique teddy bear, too old and fragile to be cuddled. It wasn't even very nice looking, but it had been a gift from Valerie's mother. She couldn't get rid of it.


It all looked a bit kitsch, in the end - but only because Valerie couldn't spread the stuff out. If she'd had even a small flat, she would have been a lot more spartan, but all she had was a room. The rest of the flat, and it wasn't large, had been chopped up into as many rooms as possible, to squeeze out as much rent as possible. The others were nice enough, but they were all older than Valerie, all rather intent on keeping themselves to themselves. The walls were cheaply painted. The kitchen had an unpleasant smell. They had continual problems with ants. It wasn't hell, but it wasn't pleasant.


So Valerie lay on her bed, pulling off her skirt, throwing her blazer on the back of a chair. Arching one of her smooth, shapely legs, she brushed her bare thigh absentmindedly, trying as much as possible not to think of anything at all. When that failed, she tried at least to think of good things.
"You're registered now," she said out loud. "You'll pull in an extra 300 bucks a month, easy. It's all fine. It's fine." That, plus her freelance stuff, plus her regular gig at the Portland Herald Press - she was earning a hell of a lot more than she'd earned back in Cali, and the cost of living was nowhere near as high here either. If it hadn't been for the fact that she was supporting her father as well, she'd have been doing alright for herself. She could have had her own place - a proper apartment. At the very least a better room She could have devoted Valora's time only to causes worthy of her. But she couldn't be angry with her father. Some people...some people just couldn't quite manage by themselves. Besides, he wasn't the one who'd got her into this situation, not really. The blame lay squarely on Valerie's shoulders - on one stupid mistake.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


If one had to describe reality with only three words of English, 'things fall apart' would probably be the closest one could get. Everything tends towards disintegration, disorder, mess. And it was mess that Valerie Orville found herself in on that warm April night, when she vanquished Sinistrus and rescued the lovely Viola Annalise. The building in which the damsel had been imprisoned was ruined. Its foundations were cracked. Its walls were full of bullet holes. Its floors were spattered with blood.


One might have thought that Valora, then, would have been pleased to walk out of that gruesome charnel-house. Certainly, she felt a degree of relief that the day was won, that no more would die there. And of course she was pleased that Viola Annalise, whom she still bore unconscious in her arms, was safe. But now the action was over. The angry thrill of her victory over Sinistrus was already fading, and the dull ache of consequence was tightening knots in her stomach. Sinistrus and her cohorts were drugged, cuffed, hooded, and led off to some of the least pleasant wards that the United States Department of Corrections had to offer. As for Valora, standing around in the middle of a street at night, carrying a scantily clad woman - it was beginning to feel less valiant, and more just plain weird.


"Hey!" she said, capturing the attention of a non-com who'd been in the process of rushing past her. "Where do I - uh, take her?"
"Oh, uh..." He knew what to tell her, but his shock at the death of so many of his comrades, and the strangeness of the beautiful sight in front of him almost paralysed his tongue. He gestured dumbly at the makeshift command centre Doyle had set up on the other side of the street, and mumbled something about an infirmary, before returning to the carnage. He looked back at her, though, very briefly. He saw the mighty, conquering hero with the beautiful damsel in her arms, and he felt small. He imagined that she was haughtily mocking him and his comrades in her own mind, little guessing that she felt almost as he did.


When she entered, it was like the world was divided in half. On one side, Debra, covering her mouth with glee, almost breaking down in tears of relief that Valora was safe, her mission complete. On the other side, Colonel Doyle. He looked - well, not angry exactly. But he was certainly not pleased. Valora looked him dead in the eye, and didn't waver - but he didn't appear to, either.
"Oh my god, Valerie, you did it!" Debra squealed. She made a sort of forwards-and-backwards shuffle of someone whose instinct was to give a hug, but realised at the last moment that it was a bad idea.
Valora gave her a half-smile, but pressed on with more urgent concerns. "Have they set up an infirmary?"
"Yeah," Debra replied. "I'll take you."


The infirmary, which occupied the entire ground floor of the commandeered office block, was not as unpleasant a sight as one might have expected after such a vicious battle. Most of the marines who'd been injured were already perfectly stable, and there wasn't as much gore as Valerie had imagined there would be. It seemed a mercy until she realised the reason: most of Sinistrus' lackeys were so powerful that if they injured you seriously, you weren't going to live at all. Finding a free bed, Valora laid her burden down, and moved back as the medical personnel hooked her up to a cardiac monitor: they would find that her health was as flawless as her skin. Still, they didn't know what she'd been sedated with, and caution was warranted, so Valerie and Debra gave the doctors the space they needed. As they left, Valerie noticed one uninjured man who'd nevertheless been given a 'bed'. Gunnery Sergeant Oliver Blane, staring up at the ceiling, whacked out on a hefty dose of valium. Valerie could scarcely bring herself to look at him.


"Do you know why their uniforms are different?"
"Huh?" Valerie blinked.
"Their uniforms," Debra repeated, beginning to feel that her question had been less than timely. More quietly, she said: "All...the, um, doctor marines wear completely different uniforms from the other ones. I just wondered if you knew why."
"No idea, Debra," Valerie mumbled. She moved swiftly out of the infirmary. She didn't want to be among all the...the bloodied.
"Maybe it's just 'cause they're medics," Debra offered, weakly. "A different...um...pathway, or something."
"It's because they're not marines."


The reply hadn't come from Valerie. It had come from a tall, muscular, tanned blonde with an inscrutable expression, and a pair of expensive sunglasses. A man who looked upon Valerie with a cold fury - but disguised it perfectly.
"All marines are combat personnel," Lance explained. "They borrow medics from the Navy. Heh - a little like their arrangement with you guys, huh?" Before either woman could reply, Lance spoke again. "Valerie," he said. His voice was perfectly calm. "Could I have a word in private?"
"Later, Lance," Valerie said.
"I really think we -"
"Later." Valerie locked eyes with Lance Van der Boek. She tried, as much as she possibly could, to remind Lance with a mere look how much stronger she was than him. Whether or not he got that message, he nodded, and let her pass.


Valerie excused herself from Debra's presence as well. without even thinking about what she was doing, she found a quiet spot - a row of desks, once used by city traders. Finding one of two-dozen chairs, she sat down, and found her lovely, mighty limbs were trembling.
"What the hell?" She was shaking. She hadn't even noticed, but she was shaking all over. Every part of her was shivering, and she wondered if wearing nothing on her legs but satin tights had been a mistake - but she wasn't cold. It felt more like fear. "But what do I have to be scared of now? I won, for God's sake!"


The truth, of course, was that Valerie was a little in shock. Seeing all those dead men. Fighting against enemies who really did have the power to kill her. Being caught by Sinistrus, mummified in living latex, pushed to the edge of defeat - she shuddered at the memory of it, at the feeling of her limbs being restrained and her voice muffled. Only her victory over Sinistrus' trap made the memory bearable. There would be other heroes in the annals of California's storied history that might have felt a trifle ambiguous about such sensations, but not Valerie. The idea of being restrained was nothing but hateful to her, and she hoped very much that she'd never have to experience it again. And yet, that had been the least distressing thing in a terrible, terrible day: Van der Boek's ultimatum; pitched, deadly battle; the deaths of marines and terrorists alike; Oliver Blane collapsing in hysterical terror.


"I thought I might find you here." A light, refined, voice tripped politely into Valerie's ear. Expensive, tasteful heels tapped softly against the carpeted floor as a pair of long, slender legs strode across it. The pleated hem of a short, pastel-blue dress swished about her hips, the whole ensemble putting one rather in mind of an uptown Polyanna. She bore a gentle smile - and a cup of tea.


"Oh, hi Cecily." There might have been a few people that Valerie would have been comforted to see, but Cecily wasn't one of them. She was nice enough, but strangely reserved. Inscrutable, even. Valerie couldn't honestly say that she liked her; but she was obviously a well-intentioned soul.
"I brought you some tea," she said. "I imagine after what happened you could do with a little pick-me-up."
"Why not?" Valerie said, taking it a little gingerly. She'd never liked tea: she'd always thought any American who drank the stuff was being pretentious. But her mother had taught her graciousness, if nothing else, so she took it, thanked Cecily, and drank. She almost spat it out again immediately. "Wh - what did you put in this?" she spluttered.
"Brandy," Cecily replied. "There's nothing better when you've had a shock. Drink."


Perhaps because of the shock, Valerie was in a slightly more compliant mood, and she did as she was told. Cecily watched her guzzle the brew, pleased that her remedy had been so gratefully received. She sat down, folding one leg gracefully over the other, waiting patiently for Valerie to finish.
"Hoo..." Valerie let out a long breath. It seemed to be working: the shaking had stopped almost completely. "Thank you," she said. "How did you know that I'd 'had a shock'?"
"If I'd done and seen what you'd done and seen, I'd certainly be in shock."
"Oh. Sure."


A somewhat awkward silence passed.
"I want to apologise for not helping you," Cecily said. "You must think us all dreadful cowards. Maria wanted to go in, bless her, but Lance wouldn't allow it."
"I don't think you're cowards," Valerie replied. "You'd probably have been killed if you'd gone in."
"Mm," Cecily hummed, a little dreamily. "Yes, Maria and I fall into a bit of an awkward position, don't we? A well trained person with a powerful gun could do a lot more damage than either of us. Debra's not even in our category. In fact," Cecily said, "how much you exceed us is what I'd like to talk to you about."
"Huh?" Valerie bristled. Cecily was frustratingly indirect almost every time they spoke, like she had a secret she was constantly making innuendo about.
"Let me be clearer." She uncrossed her legs, looked Valerie squarely in the eyes. "Valerie, you must leave the Bombshells."
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________


As one floor had been given over to be used as an infirmary, so had the basement floor been given a grimmer function: that of mortuary. There had been ten bags at first, but a few of the marines' bodies had already been moved, out of respect. So it was mostly the corpses of Sinistrus' devotees. Some were fair-weather allies, who'd joined up with Marie Renard when they saw which way the wind was blowing after Martin Sontag's apparent death. One was a friend of Sinistrus' so old and so dear that she'd weep when she'd discover he was among the lost. Some others were neophytes, dedicated to the cause even if they hadn't quite understood it. And then there was one other.


Luther Walsh was yet another neophyte. So new was he to the cause that he had joined up only that very night. He'd scented power, and he'd wanted in. He'd ingratiated himself with Sinistrus' organisation by masterminding Lady Velvet's abduction. He'd even put his formidable telekinesis to use in recapturing her when she got the better of Sinistrus' mercenaries. He'd expected he'd go up in the world...and the the marines had stormed in. Besides - it was difficult to get anywhere in the world from the inside of a body bag.


But not impossible.


"Gyeeeuuhhhhhhh!!" Such was the sound of Luther Walsh, master of ceremonies at Club Lumiére, as he unzipped his body bag from within, and took his first serious breath in a little over two hours. He sat up, shivering ferociously: he'd always been a little claustrophobic, and what he'd done would have tested anyone's resilience. His slick, stylish suit was covered in blood, but very little of it was his own. He'd covered himself in his comrades' blood, and used his powers to slow his heart rate - the marines hadn't been checking that hard, and he'd been mistaken for dead. It was the only way he could think of to avoid the dark hoods and orange jumpsuits that awaited Sinistrus and her cohort.


He crawled out of the bag, too freaked out by his confinement to think of making it easier with his abilities. He scrambled up to his feet, flattened himself against a wall, and breathed the free air.
"It's okay, Luther, it's okay..." he thought. "You'll get yourself out of this." It wouldn't be difficult. 'Luther Walsh' wasn't even his real name. All he had to do was go back to Mississippi, take up his old name again, and they'd never find him. They'd never even look. He was a dead man, after all! And better still, there was no-one guarding the slapdash mortuary. The only problem was where it was. If it had been any other room on any other floor, Luther could have opened a window and floated to freedom. He couldn't levitate himself like Cecily, but he could easily break a fall. "I can't go up to the ground floor," he thought. "Those normie jarheads'll rip me to shreds..."


It was a testament to the insincerity of his commitment to Sinistrus' cause that he was as pleased as he was that he himself was safe. The plan to use Lady Velvet's pheromones to influence world leaders had been dashed to pieces. Sinistrus was arrested. Their best and brightest were either arrested as well, or just dead. Yet he felt just fine. He'd move on, for he had merged into himself the qualities of an albatross and a pilot fish: he was a wandering parasite. He even knew where to start: rumour was that Martin Sontag was not as dead as he'd been thought, that he was gathering new loyalists to himself somewhere in Nevada. He needed to attach himself to the important, to the powerful - whether it be Lady Velvet, Sinistrus, or even the Supremacist. Well - at that very moment what he needed was an exit.


And then - salvation! There was an elevator, right there in front of him. All he had to do was take it up to a higher floor, and then float to safety, evading the prying eyes of anyone who might want to arrest or shoot him. He jabbed the 'going up' button, and there wasn't even a second's hesitation. The lift started moving immediately. Luther grinned, assuring himself that his luck would continue to hold. He still flattened himself against the wall next to the elevator, just in case someone came out, but he was confident the gods were smiling on him. It was much to his chagrin, then, when someone did walk out.


She was slim, athletic, her limbs toned and fit, her long, shapely, coffee-brown legs displayed deliciously by a short, red, lycra dress, chestnut-brown hair done up in a long ponytail. Her name was Maria - or sometimes, as now, Freebird.
"Oh, God," she said. The exhortation was not made in vain - it was the beginning of a prayer. "Why didn't you make me stronger?" She looked at the all the bodies, and there was no distinction in her mind between those of the good and the evil. Each was a tragedy. Each was a tragedy that she wasn't quite powerful enough to prevent.


Cecily had been telling the truth: Freebird had dearly wanted to help Valora battle Sinistrus' forces. She'd obeyed Lance when he'd told her not to fight - and truth be told, he'd been right not to send her in. An experienced hero, or a powerful one, would have made a difference, but Freebird was neither. She knew that, and she didn't feel guilty, exactly - but she felt ashamed of the part of herself that had been glad not to have to fight. She'd come down to pray for souls she knew no others would pray for, and to ensure she never forgot the consequences of weakness.


Luther watched her emerge, stifled a cruel laugh at her earnest prayer. As he ogled her figure, her bare legs, he realised what her unusual costume meant: she was a superhero. He hadn't seen her during the battle, and he hadn't paid enough attention to the news to have heard of the Bombshells, but he knew enough to be cautious. He had a particular trick for dealing with superhumans, but it was risky. He let discretion be the better part of valour and moved softly into the elevator, just as the doors were closing, hoping that his footfalls were quiet enough not to draw attention. His hope was not in vain: Freebird didn't hear him at all. She just happened to turn around anyway.
"Wh - hey!" It only took her a second to realise that Luther didn't belong. She raised her hand, red light swirling into a pulse in the centre of her palm. "Stop right there!"
"Shit!" Luther could have just let the lift doors close, but that woman would have just raised the alarm, thwarted his escape. He couldn't have that.


"Keep your hands where I can - aaahhh!!" Without warning or apparent cause, Freebird's arms slammed against her sides. Gasping, she looked over her shoulder, sure that someone had grabbed her - but no-one was there. But the grip's invisibility made it no less potent: she couldn't move her arms at all, her palms pressed flat against her hips, preventing her from turning her powers on her attacker. "Nngh...nggh!" She strained, but she couldn't even begin to free herself. Looking back with frightened eyes at Luther, she saw his hand outstretched, his narrowed eyes glowing with effort, and she realised what was happening. "He's...he's like Cecily!"


Indeed, Luther was a fair bit stronger than Cecily. He not only restrained Freebird's arms but, lifting her a few inches above the floor, he pressed her bare legs together, her thighs and calves squeezed together, her joints flexing so that it looked like she was kneeling in mid-air. But she wasn't just caught - something was happening to her. A chill ran down her back, slowly, from the top of her neck, all the way down to the bottom of her spine. Her extremities tingled, her smooth legs no longer kicking. She was going very still.
"Wh...what's...h-happening to me?" Freebird mewed. She felt weak, but not in the same way that that drugged sack had made her weak - it was like something was in her brain, turning her off one switch at a time. She actually managed to turn her palm to face Luther, but she when she tried to summon the light of her energy rays, nothing came. "My...unnhh...my powers...! What are you...doing to me?"


Luther smiled. "I'm putting pressure on your cerebellum - just enough to keep you from doing - well from doing anything. Neat trick, huh? I picked up the idea a few years back. It's a mighty fine way of dealing with superhumans, ain't it, sister?"
"Unhh...hhhnnh..." Freebird moaned, feeling herself going completely limp. Her shoulders sagged. Her head flopped to the side. Her toned legs were allowed to dangle freely, swaying back and forth slightly in the air. She knew she had to do something, but she was weak - so weak, in mind, as well as body. She couldn't think of anything. She couldn't do anything. Her toned body, for all its limber, athletic potency, was completely helpless. She was fading, her dark eyes beginning to flutter. Tears welled up in Freebird's eyes, and rolled down her lovely cheeks, in shame at her defeat, at her weakness. The pressure was increasing, like someone grabbing her by the hair and pushing her head underwater. "I can't think...I...can't...I can't..."
"That's right, darling," Luther said, applying just a little more pressure. "You can't."


That was all Freebird could take. "Auuuhhh...nnhhh...hhhhnnh..." she moaned, a long, ratcheting sigh as unconsciousness wrapped around her like a chain. Her eyes rolled back, her irises all but disappearing as her eyelids fluttered. Suspended in the air, her powers stifled, her body completely overpowered, Freebird passed out. She'd been looking for an affirmation of the price of weakness. She'd got it, alright. Slowly, Luther relaxed his grip, but the long-legged girl in red didn't fight back. He held her, suspended in the air, completely unconscious, and totally defenceless in her skimpy little dress. Her head was slightly bowed, her body absolutely limp. In the struggle, her hair-tie had been dislodged, and her long, brown hair was freed, falling about her shoulders in a soft, chestnut waterfall. It only made her look all the more feminine. All the more vulnerable.


Surprised, but not displeased, that he'd knocked out two beautiful women in one day, Luther kept Freebird suspended as he approached her. He couldn't help himself: he reached out with both hands, and gripped Freebird's firm, naked thighs, rubbing and groping her smooth, deep-brown legs. Her skin was warm. Her breasts thrust out against her tight dress with every slow, sleepy breath. Oh, she was a temptingly perky little morsel - he just didn't have time to waste. So he eased her down, and let her trim, gently curvy body flop over his shoulder. Her bare legs came again into his hands, her pert breasts pushing seductively against his back. Her arms swung a little, back and forth, her hair flowing down towards the ground. If that tableaux sounds dignified, the effect was somewhat undercut by Freebird's short, tight dress: held as she was over Luther's shoulder, her heart-shaped behind was almost completely exposed, and Luther gave it a quick, sharp smack. She didn't have the velvety, almost otherworldly softness of Viola Annalise, but she was firm, taut, and tight. It was a shame he was only going to use her for something as prosaic as hostage taking.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


It was so backwards that Valerie almost laughed. She was almost certain that Lance was going to have fired her by the night's end, and now along came Cecily to tell her to quit!
"I see you'll need a little convincing," Cecily said. "Essentially, Valerie, it would be best for all of us."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" The calming effect of the tea was now undone. "Has...has Lance been talking to you?"
"No, he hasn't. I'm sorry, I was trying to be direct," Cecily said. "Valerie...you're under the impression - I suppose Maria and Debra are as well - that the Bombshells are a team of superheroes."
"We're not?" Valerie folded her arms.
"No. When Lance recruited me, he made it quite clear, in his way. I thought..."


For the first time, Valerie saw a negative emotion on Cecily's pretty, inscrutable face. She was upset, or at least anxious.
"I thought at first that it was a scam," Cecily said. "More or less, anyway. That first night, when we were sent in to arrest Leatherback..." She laughed. "It was a bit of a joke. We hadn't the slightest idea what we were doing. Our communications failed. They obviously knew well in advance that we were coming. Colonel Doyle's men were there to reinforce us, but they only sprang into action once you arrived - once you arrived and disturbed the plan. There was only one conclusion to draw: Lance intended for us to lose. He intended for us to be captured."


It was such a horrible idea, such a callous betrayal being suggested, that Valerie couldn't immediately reply. "No way," Valerie said, with a scoff. "Lance is a cold jerk, but he's not...evil. You could have all got killed for all he knew."
"Perhaps," Cecily said. "I think he tried to make that as unlikely as possible, though. He sent us after Leatherback specifically: he's a man who has a reputation as being the least bloodthirsty in a bloody profession. And...he made sure that he only hired attractive girls. I'm sure if our kidnapping had been successful we'd have fetched high prices when they sold us." It was hard to believe that she could talk of such things so plainly, but she seemed sincere.


"But - but what's the point?" Valerie asked. "Just to make the marines look good when they rescued you?"
"Yes," Cecily replied. "It seems insignificant, but it would be the first time a contingent of marines has had anything approaching a famous victory in years. I'm sure Van der Boek hoped that, with enough of a post-hoc publicity push it would reverse a poor trend." She recrossed her legs, brushed a strand of red hair from her face. "But when he hired you, I thought I'd been wrong - that he was merely an incompetent."
"Yeah. It doesn't make sense at all." Valerie wanted to laugh. "I don't wanna toot my own horn, but if you want a team of supers to lose all the time, you don't hire someone like me."
"I thought so too," Cecily replied. "But then we weren't allowed to go after Flashfight: they sent Colonel Doyle's men in instead." She leaned in, looked Valerie in the eyes.


"It's a very clever little subliminal trick," Cecily said. "First, the Bombshells and the Marines are associated with each other, in public perception as well as in reality. Then, we're given small victories. Enough to make us respectable, like rescuing that police officer, but nothing big. Nothing like defeating major supervillains - that's to be left to Colonel Doyle's men. So a seed is planted in people's minds - it's not superheroes who are to be trusted with great deeds. We're for foiling bank robbers and rescuing cats from trees and that sort of thing. It's the military you can really trust." She smiled, slightly. "To stop people like Sinistrus, for instance."
"So why hire me?" Valerie asked. "Why not just have the Bombshells keep losing?"
"Because if all we ever did was lose, people wouldn't compare us to the marines. They'd compare successful superheroes to them instead, and the comparison wouldn't be so flattering. You were here to give us respectability - and, I suppose, to ensure that we win when we should."


Valerie stood up. Cecily's theory fit together too well, and she felt sick. Lance's threats had let her know that he wasn't what he'd seemed, and she'd known that the Bombshells idea was a P.R. stunt - but it was worse than she'd thought. To think that, from the very beginning, it had all been a scam...that Van der Boek had allowed, even arranged for, the Bombshells being captured in their very first outing - it was unconscionable.
"So that's why you need to leave us, Valerie," Cecily said. "You're too powerful. You'll never allow what Lance wanted to happen tonight: the Bombshells won't be able to function. Besides, you can do much more good as a real superhero, and being a Bombshell, where you'll never be allowed to do great things, would be such a waste."
"That's not a reason for me to quit," Valerie replied, turning angrily on Cecily. "It's a reason for all of us to quit! It's a reason for us to tear this stupid plan apart!"
"You misunderstand me, Valerie," Cecily replied, maintaining her even tone. "I told you: I thought from the start that the Bombshells were a ruse. But it's a well-intentioned ruse. Debra and Maria and I will never achieve any real greatness. But in playing the role that Lance wants for us, we'll be doing a kind of good. I dislike the methods, but I agree with the aims."


Valerie didn't know whether she wanted to laugh at Cecily or to slap her. "Are you out of your god-damned mind? You - you want to be part of this scam?"
"I do," Cecily replied.
"Why? If you're right about all this, you're just being used. Don't you have any self-respect?!"
"Self-respect is what this is all about," Cecily replied. She stood up as well now, but not to confront Valerie. Instead, she walked to the windows, peering through them to try to see the ocean. "Did I ever tell you that my father was an admiral?"
Valerie felt she knew what was coming. "He died. Is that was this is about?"
"Oh no, he's very much alive," Cecily laughed. "He just resigned his commission. I don't think it felt quite the same after all the...nastiness. I don't believe most people...I don't think most people in this country quite realise how humiliated the United States was after the troubles. Our presence on the world stage has been seriously affected: there's no longer an American Navy presence in the Sea of Japan, or the Persian Gulf. We just don't have the ships anymore." She clenched a fist. "Every year now there are further cutbacks. The military's been stripped of its pride. I want to help him - I mean, them - " She cut herself off.


It was still hardly believable to Valerie that Cecily would allow herself to be used like this. But she was beginning, just beginning, to understand the general mindset. Humiliation certainly pushed people to drastic measures, and Valerie began to wonder if Lance, scumbag though he was, actually believed in what he was doing. Thinking of him, however, made her realise just how pointless the conversation had been.
"This is all pointless," Valerie said. "I can't quit. After what I did today, Lance is going to fire me anyway."
"Fire you?" Cecily laughed. "Valerie, tonight you defeated Sinistrus. You rescued Colonel Doyle's men from certain doom. He's going to have to work hard to cover that up, as I'm sure he will. If he fires you, what's to stop you from going to the press? If it's money you're worried about, after what you did today, do you really think you won't be able to find work in any team of superheroes in the country? Fire you? Valerie, he wouldn't dare."


How could she have been so stupid? How had she not thought of that? She didn't need to play that scumbag's game anymore! His threats were empty - even if Cecily were wrong about the conspiracy, she was right about that. Valerie didn't need this job at all. She was free!
"Well, Cecily," Valerie said, "I'm taking your advice. You're a smart woman, Cecily - so, I don't know why you're being so dumb. You should quit too. We should all quit."


If Cecily had a clever reply, it never came. For up the stairs and into the unsettlingly empty office space they'd commandeered ran the tireless Maiden-America, in a state of some distress.
"Guys!" she shouted. "Come quick!"
Valerie's face fell. "Oh, what now?"
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


"Get back! I swear to god, I'll snap her neck!!" Luther had backed himself into something of a corner. He had tried to take the elevator up to an unused floor, but he'd been thwarted by the simplest piece of misfortune imaginable. A single, slightly lazy marine had wanted to go upstairs to grab a smoke in peace, and he'd caused Luther's elevator to stop on the ground floor. It had opened, he'd been seen, and though the lazy marine had been tossed aside by Luther's power, that was the only thing about the series of events that followed that had gone right for him.


He'd tried to make a run for it, but there were too many eyes on him. A hail of gunfire had backed him into a corner, and now he held Freebird's limp, unconscious body in front of him as a shield using his powers, surrounded by gunmen. Only one of them wasn't in uniform.
"Put her down!" Lance screeched, aiming his own pistol at Luther. "You cannot possibly think you could get away. Put her down, now!"
"No dice, jarheads," Luther replied. "I put the girl down, I'm dead."
Many of the marines were trying to get in a good shot at him, wondering how the hell he'd managed to sneak inside their lines, but he held Freebird too close and - quite accidentally - he'd picked a spot where there weren't many avenues of attack.


It was this scene that the rest of the Bombshells arrived on. Men shouting, a woman held captive. More chaos.
"Oh, Jesus - Maria!" Valerie rushed straight to the front of things. She didn't have to push past: for her, the marines moved aside willingly. "You dumbass," Valerie hissed. "You're in the middle of doing something really, really stupid!"
"Oh, that ship has sailed," Luther replied. "My stupid decision was getting into bed with Sinistrus!" He laughed, a little bit of hysteria in his voice. "Not literally, you understand. Now? I'm just trying to make the best of a bad situation."


Valerie certainly agreed with his description. But it was not as if she was a total rookie anymore - she'd actually dealt with a hostage situation before.
"Alright, you want a hostage, right?" Valerie said. "Well how about a trade? Give us Freebird back - and you can take me instead."
"Oh hell no, I ain't fallin' for that," Luther said. "I saw what you did to Sinistrus' lackeys - no way my powers can hold you. And no, I won't take any of your other superbuddies! Fuck knows what they might be able to do to me. Nuh-uh. No trade."
"Well how about me, then?"


For a moment, when Valerie had heard a man's voice, she'd thought it was Lance, that the bastard was showing some real courage for once. But it wasn't. It was Blane.
"I'm just a jarhead, pal," he said. He didn't look healthy. He was obviously still under the effects of sedatives, and his hands were still shaky. He looked like he'd wandered in from the wilderness, when in reality he'd only wandered in from the infirmary when he'd heard the ruckus. "I'm serious. No powers. Take me instead of the girl. Then we'll let him out - right, Colonel Doyle?"
"What's he doing?" Valora thought. "Is he trying to...is he trying to make up for what happened before?" She looked at him with confused eyes. He seemed to notice her gaze, but he either wouldn't or couldn't return her gaze. In fact, it seemed that he kept glancing at Cecily.
As for Doyle, he was just about the only man there without a gun. He didn't like Oliver very much - but he knew the kid was clever. So he played along. "Yeah, sure. We'll let you out. Hell, we'll even give you a minute's head start."


Luther looked around. He counted at least twelve powerful rifles pointed at him - and the possibility of Valora clobbering him too.
"Alright," he said. "You asked for it, soldier-boy. Come towards me."
Slowly, Blane obeyed, walking one step at a time towards the desperate criminal. He spread his arms wide, making sure Luther didn't think he was about to try anything. "Easy now. Put the girl down."
"When I've got you, then I'll put the girl down," Luther replied. Even so, he was beginning to lower Freebird a little: it seemed that his wish to make the trade was genuine. Blane moved closer, and closer to him, and he felt an invisible grip begin to tighten around his neck. Freebird was lowered closer and closer to the ground. Blane glanced at Cecily again - only this time, Valerie wasn't the only one who noticed.
"You son of a bitch!"


Suddenly, the pressure around Blane's neck became a vice, and he clutched at his throat, gasping for air.
"You think I wouldn't notice?!" Luther cried out, pulling Freebird closer still. "I saw you looking at the redhead! She was going to - to do something, wasn't she?" He was exactly right. Blane had been trying to get Cecily to help him thwart Luther: letting himself become the hostage, then having Cecily use her telekinesis to weaken Luther's grip. At which point, he'd have wriggled free, and Luther would have been shot. But it had failed.


"Hold your fire!" Lance shouted, as the marines raised their rifles to protect their comrades' life. "You absolutely cannot shoot him while he has a hostage!" It was true: Luther could attack from behind his shield, but they couldn't attack him.
"No!" Valora cried out, seeing Blane choking, paralysed in place, not knowing what to do. Despite her strength, she couldn't think of a way to save Maria without killing Oliver, or to save Oliver without killing Maria. All was chaos again. All was degradation. And then...then all was peace.


It came upon them quickly, but it didn't startle them. It was a warm feeling, like being tickled but without the discomfort. Everything just felt pleasant...and more than that, everything felt clear, and clean, and good. Pleasure wound itself around each one of them there like a snake - but a grass snake, not a python, curling around to embrace, not to crush. Valerie, Doyle, Blane, Luther, Lance - all of them: they all shared an immense sense of...sensual peace, of love in general, and then in the specific. They all turned, and they saw her.


A vision of loveliness, a radiant, dark beauty. Sleepy, catlike eyes. A gorgeous, curvaceous figure. Full, pouting lips that seemed to beg to be kissed. Even Valerie and Cecily, both heterosexual, found themselves irresistibly drawn towards the woman in the corset who strode into their midst.
"There now," she said, each word a soft symphony in every ear. "Let's calm ourselves..." Who could but obey? Blane felt the grip around his neck relax, and then release completely. Poor Maria, denied this wonderful sensation the others received, was lowered softly to the ground. The guns were lowered: who could conscience violence in such a presence.


Even Luther was completely calmed. He felt a sensation he'd felt before, but never this intensely. Never this power behind it, and never directed at him. Never before had he felt the full joy of Lady Velvet's attentions.
"M-Miss Annalise -" he started to say, but a finger on his lips shut him up.
"Luther, Luther, Luther," his former employer tutted. "Why on earth would you do all this?"
He couldn't answer. He couldn't remember why he'd done it.
"I want you to know," Viola Annalise said, as softly as snow, "that I hate that I had to give you even the slightest bit of pleasure."
"Hw -" Was about the extent of his response, before Viola drew back a lovely arm, and with a ferocious yell, punched Luther right in the face.


The spell was broken. As Luther went down, Valerie snapped right out of it, and leapt forward to neutralise Luther - but found him already quite unconscious. She turned to Viola, awestruck that a woman she'd known only as a damsel in distress, that she'd seen only helplessly drugged, had such power in her. "How...how did you do that?"
But Viola didn't answer. The spell was broken, yes, and she no longer looked seductive and mysterious. She looked naked, and terrified.
"Would someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?"
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Unnhhh..." Maria moaned, as she came to. She awoke to find a friendly face - Debra leaning over her.
"Hey, you're awake!" she chirped.
"Yeah...yeah, I'm...w-wait!" She sat up. "There's a - a guy! One of Sinistrus' henchmen! He - he knocked me and out and -"
"It's okay," Debra replied, touching her softly on the arm. "We got him. It's all fine."
"Oh." Maria said. She flopped back down. "Oh, that's alright, then. Where are the others?"
Cecily was with Viola Annalise. The club owner had wrapped herself in a thick coat, drinking up some more brandy-tea as Cecily explained as gently as she could what was going on. As for Valerie, she was looking for Blane.


It was, however, Lance Van der Boek that she found first.
"Exciting night, huh?" he said. "Glad it all turned out okay in the end."
"Not sure I agree with you on that," Valerie said. She thought again about what Cecily had said. Could even Lance be so scheming?
"So, about that chat we need to have -"
"You can't fire me," Valerie said. "If you do, there's nothing stopping me from showing how badly Doyle's men got beaten tonight, how I had to bail them out. And I won't need your money, either. So do not threaten me again, Lance. Do you understand."
"...I guess I do." Behind his sunglasses, it was hard to know if Valerie had just skewered him, or if he'd been perfectly aware of all this himself. At any rate, when she left him, he didn't stop her.


Valerie didn't know where Blane had got to. She didn't even know why she wanted to talk to him so badly. He'd been so cowardly, and then so brave - she wanted to understand. She needed to understand.
"Excuse me," she said, seeing one of the Navy doctors passing in his cool-blue camos, "have you seen, uh, Gunnery Sergeant Blane?"
"Oliver? I think he went outside for a cigarette."
"Oh," Valerie said. "So he's okay, then?"
"Physically? Sure," the doctor replied. He was oldish, with fluffy, greying hair, and small, tired, but benign eyes. "That, whatchamacallit, um...telekinetic didn't hurt him too bad. He probably won't even bruise. But, uh...you saw him before? During the mission?"
"Yeah, I saw him." It was a sight that would haunt her for the rest of her life.


The doctor sighed. "I've been worried that something like that would happen. If you're his friend, you must know he was on the Harry S. Truman."
"Yeah, he told me."
"Well, after an experience like that..." He shrugged. "Post traumatic stress can affect even the best men."
"But that was years ago.."
"True - but the mind doesn't always work simply. Trauma can hide. It can fester - until the right trigger brings it out."
"The right...trigger..." A strange look came over Valerie's face, a mixture of confusion and realisation.
"Miss? Are you okay?" the doctor asked, but she didn't answer. She just turned and walked away from him.


"You idiot," she thought. "You stupid kid. You stupid, arrogant bimbo." It was too obvious. It was far too obvious. Why hadn't she realised before? Why hadn't she connected the dots? Oliver's breakdown hadn't been cowardice - it had been a flashback. There was something that had stuck in her mind, something familiar that she'd seen or heard during the battle with Sinistrus' forces. It was when the doctor had said 'trigger' that she'd finally clicked. It was that superhuman, Sureshot, the one who'd vaporised half a dozen marines. Something about his powers...how they'd sounded. They'd shrieked - an inhuman, high-pitched shriek whenever he used them. Valerie had thought she'd heard it before, and she had, just never in person. She'd heard it on television plenty of times, though. It had been, for thousands of people, an omen of death.


It was the sound that the Supremacist's powers made. How could a man who'd been there for the sinking of the Harry S. Truman fail to associate such a sound with the purest terror? She should have realised it instantly, she should have known there and then! Why hadn't she? Why had her mind blocked her from feeling pity for this man's tragic weakness? How, too, could she have failed to spot Lance Van der Boek's duplicity? Had it really been so easy to succour her with promises of fame and money? Was she so...base? And as she thought all this, her anger began to build. Anger at herself for her ignorance and gullibility. Anger at Debra and Maria for their foolish obedience. Anger at Cecily for her lucid madness. Anger at Lance for using her, threatening her. Anger at Oliver for not being strong, and yet more anger at herself for wanting him to have been.


It was in such a state that Colonel Doyle found her.
"Hey, you," he said, irritated that he had to acknowledge her directly like this.
"What do you want?" Valerie said through gritted teeth.
"My XO. Doyle. You're the one who's sweet on him, right? Well his mission was a shitstorm, and I need a full debrief. He's not in the infirmary. So where is he?"
But Valora didn't answer. Her rage, and what Cecily had revealed to her, mixed into one maelstrom. "He...was a Navy officer, right?"
"What, Blane? Yeah. What of it?"
"Why did you want him?" She turned towards him, looked him right in the eye. "Why did you want an ex-Navy officer for a team like yours? I assume you got to choose your men, Colonel."
"I chose him because up until tonight his service record didn't contain any entries about him pussing out in the middle of a god-damned firefight." He didn't see Valora's face twitch. "Now if you don't know where he is, get the hell out of my way."


She didn't get out of his way. She squared up to him. "It was Van der Boek's idea to have a survivor of the Harry S. Truman on your staff, wasn't it? For how it'd look. For the appearance. For the damned P.R. I bet you didn't even read his service record!"
"Lady, I am not answerable to you. Move."
"I'm not in your chain of command, Colonel. I'm not the one you should be a leader to. I'm not the one you have responsibility to look after. I'm not the one you should have known not to send into battle!" She stepped right up to him, squaring off like a boxer. "I thought the whole point of soldiers was that you're loyal to each other. You're comrades. You take care of each other. You do your duty."
"I'm not going to let a cheerleader in spandex lecture me about duty." Taller than Valerie, he leaned down, his mouth twisted into a snarl. "I know what duty is, you uppity little bitch. I've done things for this country that'd make you faint. I've protected people like you all my life."
"Really?" Valerie smirked. "The way I see it, people like me have been bailing out people like you for years."
Doyle didn't say anything in reply. Instead, he slapped Valerie across the face.


The two of them froze. Doyle had frozen in fear. He was a strong man, and he'd felt his slap bounce harmlessly off Valora's lovely cheek. Her head hadn't even moved. He hadn't understood, not until that moment, exactly what she was. He was like a child who'd just kicked a bear in the snout. As for the bear herself, for a moment she couldn't believe what had just happened. The insult. The ingratitude. The unbelievable ingratitude! It didn't hurt, but it stung, and that sting resonated with every other rage in her angry young heart. She felt cold, the same kind of cold you feel when plunging your hand into scalding water, when your nerves haven't quite processed the kind of pain they're feeling. She could hear her pulse pounding in her ears. She could feel the rush of air as her breathing quickened. Every sinew in her beautiful body tensed. And then, quite simply, she snapped.


"AUUUGHHH!!" Valora roared, grabbing Doyle by the collar, spinning him round, and slamming him into a wall hard enough to crack it. He cried out in pain, but Valora only pushed him harder. She growled with feral rage, holding him two feet in the air. "You're scum!" she bellowed. "You're worthless trash!" Her anger wasn't sated. It was only building, and it was hard to say what might have happened - if a ray of red energy hadn't whizzed past her.
"V-Valerie!" Maria shouted, finding her comrade holding Colonel Doyle up against a wall, shocked into sudden action. "What the hell are you doing?!" She wasn't alone. Debra was there too, looking dumbly at the raging heroine.
"I - I'm..." Valerie looked back at Doyle, saw an animal terror in his eyes, the terror of prey held in a predator's jaws. She let him go, and he flopped to the floor, looking up at her with fear and seething hatred. She stepped back, and he coughed - blood came out. He looked at the blood, then back up at Valerie. Now, slowly, he began to smile. It wasn't just the other Bombshells who'd seen Valora assault him. Other marines, the doctor she'd spoken to before - and Lance Van der Boek. A different coldness took hold of Valerie now, as she realised what it was she'd just done. That advantage over Lance that Cecily had pointed out to her - she'd just shattered it. She'd just assaulted a senior officer of the armed forces - for a superhuman, this was a federal crime.


"You're finished," Doyle said. He was exactly right.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The next morning was as warm as the evening that had preceded it, but grey. Muggy. Almost unbearably humid. It reminded California's denizens that their species was not native to this part of the world. So as Valerie sat in Lance Van der Boek's office, signing form after form, she sweated, beads of salty water trickling down her neck, her bare arms, between her breasts. Van der Boek was sitting across from her, watching the sweat caress her bosom. He didn't even have his sunglasses on. He wasn't even hiding it.
"Is that it?" Valerie said, when she'd finished this latest sheaf. Her voice was quiet.
"Yeah," Lance said. "That's it."


The agreement was a simple one. Doyle would not press charges for aggravated assault - a particularly grievous charge for a superhuman as powerful as Valora - and in exchange, she signed an N.D.A. about anything and everything to do with the Bombshells: her knowledge of the nature of Van der Boek's plan, the events of Sinistrus' arrest - everything. Needless to say, she was also expelled from the group. If she tried to join another California team they'd file charges then as well. She was, effectively, exiled. She might have fought back. She might have tried to call a bluff - but Lance had offered her one provision that was not a threat: an honourable discharge for Gunnery Sergeant Oliver Blane.


"Then I don't want to have to spend another second in your company," Valerie said. Her anger, in its way, was as ferocious as it had been when she'd slammed Doyle against that wall. But the struts had fallen out from under it. She just wanted to leave.
"Fine," Lance said. Though there was a degree of satisfaction in his voice, he could not pretend enthusiasm. He was glad to be rid of an unstable element, but Cecily had been right - without Valora, he was no longer sure if the Bombshells were fit for purpose. Despite his manner, and his method, he believed earnestly in the necessity of what he was doing. It was not a good day for him either.


Valerie rushed out of Lance's office, holding back tears. She felt such a fool, to have thrown it all away in one act of rage. A victory that would have made her career three times over was given to somebody else. Her escape from penury, thwarted. It had all fallen to pieces. In her anger and her shame, the last thing she'd wanted to see was the other Bombshells.
"C'mon," she said, before any of them could start. "Let's not drag this out."
"Valerie," Maria said. "What did Colonel Doyle do? No-one's telling us anything."
"It doesn't matter," Valerie snapped. "I know you mean well, I do - but this is already humiliating enough. I just want to leave." She passed them, and they didn't try to stop her. Valerie almost reached the door without further incident, but Debra couldn't restrain herself.
"Thank you!" she almost shouted. "I - we won't forget what you did for us. We won't forget that you saved us! That's...that's what matters, right?"
Valerie turned back to look at them, the three of them. They seemed so...marooned without her. She almost laughed at them.


"Powers so weak she's never contributed anything physically to a mission, and naive to the point of stupidity! Maiden-America!
A willingness to completely efface herself for what she sees as a good cause, and a disturbing lack of affect! Cecily Fairchild!
A total lack of self-confidence, but a pathological need to put responsibility - which terrifies her - onto her shoulders! Freebird!"
Except there needed to be one more, didn't there?
"Enough power to crack diamonds, and a shortsighted, angry mess who ruined her own life because she got mad at someone! Valora!" Shaking her head, Valerie began to leave - but just before she did, she got her last word in. Last two, in fact - both directed at Cecily.
"Tell them," she said, before walking out - and closing the door on the Bombshells. She hoped dearly that they'd be alright without her. That would have been all she wrote - except as Valerie was going, she just about heard Debra saying 'tell us what?'. Valerie managed a small smile, before ignominy clutched hold of her again. She only hoped that this disastrous chapter of her life was over.


Her phone rang, and her stomach tightened when she saw who it was.
"Hi, Dad," she said.
"Hello, Valerie," Ulysses replied. He left one of his strange silences. "Your mother called me today. She asked me to send her love."
"Oh," Valerie replied. "Thanks."
"No problem." Another pause. "I've done a little writing today."
"Oh? Oh, that's great, dad. You're feeling okay today?"
"Sure, Valerie. I'm feeling okay." She heard him breathing, loudly through his long, thin nose. "How's your job treating you?"
Valerie decided to come straight out with it. "Dad, something happened at work. I...I lost my job."
"Oh. Oh."


The silence that followed was actually a little shorter than some of the others that phonecall had accommodated, but it felt a lot longer to Valerie.
"These things happen," Ulysses said. "Don't beat yourself up, sweetheart."
"Not that easy," Valerie replied. She found that she was close to tears. "What am I...what are we going to do now?"
"We'll figure something out," he replied. "I'm closing in on a book deal - I think this one might be a winner."
Valerie had heard it before. Rarely did even a meeting come of his sureties. "What if it isn't a winner?" Valerie said. "I have no job, dad. I have no money! How are we going to pay for everything? For anything?"
A more thoughtful pause passed. "I could talk to Henry again."
"Henry?" Henry Freeman was her father's only remotely influential or important friend: he was the editor of the Portland Herald Press, a local rag in the eponymous city.
"Before you told me about this superhero gig, I was talking to him anyway. Trying to get you steady photography work for him. He said yes - but then it didn't seem to matter. Why don't I speak to him again?"
"Are you serious?" For a budding photographer in 2005's climate, steady work at a real newspaper was like manna. For the first time since she'd turned on Doyle, Valerie smiled. "Oh my god, dad, thank you! Thank you so much!" How she loved her father in that moment! What gratitude she felt for the lifeline he'd thrown her! Hope! Work! Even the beginnings of an actual career!


The more she thought about it, the better it was. She would leave California, leave the phonies, leave a place overcrowded with heroes, to strike out on her own, away from the Doyles and Van der Boeks of the world. The smallness, un-metropolitan quality of her home state began to appeal to her. For the first time in a while, she felt hope.


So she didn't think, then, that she was going right back to where she started, with no degree, and no chance of a career as a superhero in the best possible place for it. She didn't think about the inanity of the work she'd been doing, as a photographer and as Valora. She didn't think about the way things were for superhumans in her home state. She didn't think that she was going right back to what she'd been trying to get away from in the first place. By the time she did think of those things, by the time she walked into Rodney Burke's confessional, bitter and angry and thoroughly out-of-love with Maine and all in it, it was too late.


The trap had shut.

[CJS]

I’ve only just started digging into this one, but I like the setting (even though I normally go for universes where the heroine is unique, the premise here is pretty cool), and Valora’s personality really shines through. Looks like I’ve got some catching up to do.

[Damselbinder]

I’ve only just started digging into this one, but I like the setting (even though I normally go for universes where the heroine is unique, the premise here is pretty cool), and Valora’s personality really shines through. Looks like I’ve got some catching up to do.

Thank you! I can see what you mean about the appeal of universes where heroines are unique: your Sapphire Angel takes excellent advantage of that. I patterned this world, which Valora shares with my other OC Enhancegirl (whose tale begins about ten years after this story is yet), after mainstream comic universes, with a lot of the nonsense (aliens, robots, etc) brushed out. I do, at least, try not to make it seem like the world is normal but there are superhumans in it: I've made efforts to show how society has been changed, though not beyond all recognition (in the year this story is set, there are about 900,000 superhumans in the entire world - significant, but actually a tiny fraction of the world's population). I aim to use this for storytelling opportunities, as well as to be able to have interesting characters for my heroines to interact with.