The Perils of Enhancegirl Halloween Special: A Vampire's Kiss
Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2016 6:35 pm
"I think she's okay now," Kirsten said. She was talking with her mother - an amiable but insistent woman. "They only had her for, like, a few hours." She was referring to the kidnapping of her friend, Sophie. A rather pushy parent, her mother liked to think that all of Kirsten's old friends were her friends too, and she'd been shocked to hear about what happened.
"Hey, you know Sophie, right?" the half-Filipina said. "Nothing fazes her." She herself knew this not to be true. She was still deeply concerned about the young redhead. That new girlfriend of hers was bad news - but Kirsten didn't really know what to do. Certainly she didn't want to get her mother involved.
"Listen, mom, I need to go. Uh...I think Sophie's trying to call me." She hung up quickly, before she could register her mother's objections. "Geez..." She bumped into someone as she put her phone away. "Oh, sorry!" she said. She turned around - and found a strange pair of -
"Sophie, would you hurry up?" Kirsten was started back into alertness by the sound of Talia, shouting at her room mate. The half-Filipina shook her head. Every time she let her mind drift off at the moment, she came back to that night, and every time it would cut off at the same instant. But it hardly mattered. Nor did her strange feeling of constant tiredness.
For it was Hallowe'en, and if a pretty young Art History major like Kirsten couldn't have fun with some friends on October 31st, then there was something very wrong indeed. She and Sophie had invited two others to their little pre-going-out get together: Talia, a master's student in computing, and Ella, a freshman like Sophie. She didn't know Talia well, but she liked Ella a lot, even if she was a little shy.
Ella was sitting quietly on their couch, sipping a light beer, a reddening in her pale cheeks showing that she was not used to it. The tall brunette was dressed in a red cape, tight corset top, and short skirt, with translucent black stockings covering her long, crossed legs. It was a rather half-hearted attempt at a vampire costume, with some little fangs already abandoned on a coffee table. She kept trying to pull her skirt to cover more of her thighs, but it wasn't working. She had that kind of delicacy that very slim, very tall women sometimes have, like at any moment she might crumble to her knees.
Talia was, if anything, the very opposite of that. She was mixed race, her soft, light-brown skin a warm contrast with Ella's pale complexion. She had very light, almost red hair, that bounced in curvy waves on her head. There was a kind of effortless sexuality about her, a sumptuousness in her slenderness, an enthralling bounce in her breasts, and a constant tease in her sparkling brown eyes and coy smile.
She herself was dressed in a long sleeved blue-black leotard, with a long, blue cape and blue high heels. Her supple legs were left entirely bare, and she had placed a small, red diamond on her forehead. She was dressed as Lady Corvid, one of the original members of the East Coast Ensemble, New York's first state-sponsored superhero team. She even had a pair of boots which would have matched better, but...she just preferred high-heels.
"Sophie, honey," she said, "we're all waiting for our favourite redhead..."
Sophie hated Hallowe'en. She had hated trick-or-treating as a child, found ghost stories dull, and turned her nose up at the commercialism of the modern rituals. But friends were friends, and she hadn't seen Talia in ages. The only problem was, she had no outfit. She'd put it off and put it off and put it off, and in the end, the 31st had come and she was without. If she didn't have anything, it'd be a forfeit, and that meant putting on a sheet with eye holes.
"Not this year," Sophie said, recalling the embarrassment of the previous Hallowe'en. "No thank you..." She thought for a moment - then realised that she did have something. During her final battle with Ocelot, the thief who'd almost succeeded in completely seducing her, Sophie had acquired a costume to disguise herself as...herself. Or rather, to disguise herself as her alter-ego, Enhancegirl, one of Seacouver's up-and-coming stars of the so-called 'cape scene'.
So she plucked the gold dress, mask, gloves and boots from the back of her closet. It was strange having to do this: it felt so fake. But that was, after all, rather the idea. Putting the costume on, she again recalled those pivotal hours very, very closely, when she'd broken out of the dark waters that Ocelot had almost drowned her in. She still felt a pang of guilt that she'd allowed it to go as far as it had, but she'd since dipped into much warmer, sweeter water...
Sophie posed in front of her mirror, and was about to present herself to the others, when she realised that in her full costume it would be perfectly possible that one of them might put two and two together, and figure out that she wasn't just dressed as Enhancegirl. So she made some adjustments: she removed her mask entirely, and slipped on a pair of silver pumps instead of her heeled boots.
"There," she said, looking again. "Close enough." Somehow with her outfit altered she looked a little more...girlish, somehow. She frowned, but beggars couldn't be choosers.
"Oh, wow," Talia said, as the golden-clad heroine emerged. "Sophie, you look..."
"Oh!" Ella piped up, clapping her hands together. "Sophie, um, are you meant to be, ah, Enhancegirl?" Sophie grinned. It was nice to be recognised.
"If you're meant to be Enhancegirl," Kirsten said, "you messed up the costume. Doesn't she have, like, a mask?"
"Oh," Sophie said, feigning ignorance. "Does she?" Kirsten sat down in a chair, crossing her legs. She was wearing fishnet stockings and a short, black, shoulder-less dress, with a pointed hat topping her witch's costume. She had an unusual attractiveness to her, with a Filipino father and an Alaskan mother of Norwegian descent, with a skin tone almost exactly between Sophie's and Talia's in pallor, a little taller than either of them. She was finely proportioned, too, with plump breasts and slinky hips, complimenting her slender, athletic figure.
"Oh, that's right," Talia said, "you two were there when Stellar was kidnapped! Enhancegirl got taken down by Cybelle, didn't she?"
Sophie hardly needed reminding. Her defeat at Cybelle's hands had been not just a humiliation, but a very public one at that.
"Uh, didn't she, y'know, totally wreck Cybelle afterwards?" Sophie suggested, trying to sound disinterested.
"No, that was Valora," Ella said. Sophie's eye twitched. Valora had indeed come to her rescue that day, but not against Cybelle. Yet she'd still got the credit for beating her. "I wonder what happened to Enhancegirl that night. Some paramedics took her, but no-one knows what happened to her after that." Ella was something of a superheroine fangirl. She liked to be in the know about new heroines, whether certain heroines had teamed up with others, and theorised about which ones could or couldn't defeat the villains du jour. Just before coming over, she'd been in an online debate about whether or not Valora was as strong as Titania, trying to make the others understand that Titania was durable not strong, otherwise that truck Hell Man had thrown at her would never have knocked her so far.
"Okay, okay," Talia said. "Enough superhero talk." She smiled. "So, Sophie...are you going to tell us about your new lady?" Sophie almost snorted her drink through her nose.
"How the hell did you find out about that?" She narrowed her eyes at Kirsten. "I told you not to tell anyone yet!"
"Oh, so it is true!" Ella said. "That's lovely, Sophie." She smiled sweetly. "How long have you been seeing each other?"
"Like...two weeks?" Sophie said. She couldn't believe it had been so little time. The two heroines hadn't really set ground rules: they'd just been enjoying each other too much to think of practicalities yet.
"What's her name?"
"Mariko," Sophie said. The name had a delightful assonance to it as she said it. "We've been friends for about a year, but I only just realised I -" She stopped herself. She hadn't yet talked about it with anyone but Kirsten, and she found herself coming over surprisingly bashful.
"Realised you what?" Talia said, grinning.
"I..." Sophie paused. "Wait a minute, what the fuck do I have to be shy about?" She leaned back, and smiled. "I realised that I'm in love with her." She couldn't quite keep a feminine blush from her cheeks.
The reaction from Sophie's friends was...less than entirely restrained. Talia outright screamed; Ella gasped and covered her hands with her mouth; even Kirsten gave a little cry - she'd known that the redhead had a new girlfriend, but she hadn't known that Sophie was actually in love with her.
"Oh, honey, that's awesome," Talia said, and laughed. "I had no idea you were such a romantic!" Before Sophie could reply, Talia added: "Is she hot?"
"Hey," Sophie said, "I'm not here to get grilled about my awesome, beautiful girlfriend who's waaaay hotter than anyone Talia could get in her wildest dreams -"
"Hey!"
"-I'm here to watch some horror flicks and get drunk off my ass." The redhead breathed a sigh of what she realised was relief. She'd almost been concerned that, if brought into the light, what she had with Mariko would suddenly have turned out to be a dream. But it was reality, and nothing could change that. "So let's get the hell on with it!"
"So, what are we watching?" Kirsten said. She had an oddly distracted tone to her voice, as though she were thinking about something else all the time that Sophie had been talking.
"Can we please not watch anything by John Carpenter this time?" Sophie pleaded, too breathless in the aftermath of her confession to notice. "I can only take so much synth." Talia laughed.
"How about Coppola's Dracula?" the lovely master's student suggested.
"Oh, that's even worse!" Sophie retorted instantly. She sat down next to Talia. "Keanu Reeves doing a British accent? 'Oh! Count Drahculah! I'm tohtully, like, English, dude! There is no talent!'"
Eventually, though, the tide turned against Sophie, and the movie was stuck on. About twenty minutes in, between Sophie's jeers, Ella clutched her arms against her chest.
"When did it get so cold?" she said.
"Yeah, it's definitely a little chilly." She moved closer to Kirsten, teasingly rubbing her smooth calf against the Filipina's stocking clad legs. "Feel like warming me up?" Kirsten hit her on the arm.
"I'm not one of your nerdy lab partners!" she said. "Go get one of them to warm you up!"
Slightly irritated by Talia's flirtation, Kirsten hopped up to her feet. "I'm grabbing some more drinks," she said. Then: "What did you say?" The others looked at each other quizzically.
"Um, no-one said anything, Kirsten," Ella said.
"Uh, right," she replied. "Must have been my imagination." She went into the kitchen.
"That was weird," Sophie muttered.
"Yeah, maybe it was a ghooooooooost!" Talia laughed.
As Kirsten grabbed beers from the fridge, she felt very strange indeed. She had heard someone calling her name, very clearly. But the voice hadn't belonged to any of her friends.
"Kirsten..." She snapped round. The voice again, but there was nobody there. "Remember..." Kirsten's eyes widened. A cold wind seemed to surround her body. There was something like dread in her, but she couldn't tell why.
"What?" Kirsten started. She wasn't in the kitchen anymore. She was sitting back in front of the movie, with a cold glass in her hand.
"He said that he wants Keanu to stay for a month," Sophie said, thinking Kirsten was reacting to the movie. "I know, it's dumb. Who would agree to that? 'Oh, sure Count Drahculah, who is totally not obviously evil and has totally not threatened me with a sword, I'll totally stay in your scary castle for a month!'" Kirsten was too confused to listen. One minute she'd been in the kitchen, the next here, with no period in between. Yet she must have done what she intended, because the girls all had beers. She herself, though, was drinking sparkling water. Why? She'd wanted a beer too, hadn't she? And what was that in her hand...?
Sophie looked at Kirsten. There was something very off about her. She too had felt the chill in the kitchen, but then it had vanished. Now Kirsten was looking very confused. What was going on?
"Oooh..." Ella moaned, putting a hand on her temple. "I feel kinda...woozy..."
"Oh come on," Talia said, "there's no way even you would be drunk after two...two...ooh..." Talia's eyelids fluttered. "Hey...this stuff is pretty strong..."
"Not that I think bragging about being able to hold your liquor is anything other than utterly lame," Sophie said, "but I seem to be doing a much better job than you." She tapped her fingernails against the glass from which she drank. It was a favourite brand - local brew of course - and her fetching it had been what made her late in the first place. The others were just drinking whatever they'd had in the house.
"Kirsten," Ella said in a fading voice. "I really don't feel so...so...uuunhhh..." With a sigh, the corset clad damsel slumped over onto her side. "I...I...ooohh..." she mewed, her eyes fluttering.
"This..." Talia was swaying from side to side. Her arms dropped, and her beer fell out of her hand, spilling what little remained of its contents onto the floor. "Something's...wrong..." She tried to get up, but the caramel-skinned young woman immediately fell forward onto her knees.
Sophie leapt into action, jumping forward and catching Talia before she collapsed entirely.
"Hey, Talia, what's going on?" Sophie said. She held Talia by her arms, the engineer's bouncy, curly hair resting on Sophie's shoulder. She opened her large, moist, brown eyes, looking sleepily up at the red-haired woman holding her.
"Not...not drunk..." she whimpered quietly. "Help...help me..."
"Hey Talia, what's -" but before Sophie could even finish, she felt Talia going completely limp in her arms. She sighed, and her eyes closed, slowly but inexorably. The supple mounds of her breasts rose and fell gently, her head fell back, exposing her light-brown neck. She looked lovely in her sudden slumber - but Sophie wasn't paying attention to that.
"Talia? Talia!" She shook her lightly, but all that happened was that the young graduate's head flopped onto Sophie's shoulder. "What the fuck?" Sophie looked up at Ella, and she too was fast asleep, her long legs crossed, but the right gradually sliding from atop the left. To say that Sophie was suspicious would be a stark understatement. She flexed her fingers and arms, checking that she herself was not affected by whatever had taken hold of her friends. Wondering why this was the case, she noticed that both Ella and Talia had been drinking the same beer, while she'd been drinking something else.
"Hey, Kirsten?" she said. "Were you drinking the same crap as -?" It was both a small boon and a great piece of ill luck that Sophie did not happen to have her powers at that moment. It was ill luck because she'd never have let Kirsten get so close if she'd had her heightened awareness. It was a boon because she'd already have started weakening before her friend clamped the drugged cloth over her mouth.
"MMMPHHH!!" Sophie cried out, as she breathed in the all-too-familiar, sickly-sweet smell of chloroform. "WHHMMPGHPPHHH?!" Sophie was still on her knees and Kirsten wasn't letting her get back up. "What's happening?! What the hell is going on?!" She could already feel it. A soft, warm weakness starting as a tingling feeling in her fingers and toes, and spreading through her slender limbs. "What's she doing? Wh...why is she drugging me?!" She looked up at the other two, sleeping soundly: they too, clearly had been drugged - and Sophie's best friend was the culprit. But why?
"Mmmphhh! MMPHH!!" she cried out, summoning all the alertness that she could. She lifted both her arms, trying to pull Kirsten away, but she was growing more and more feeble all the time. She could feel her arms getting heavy, a blanket of drowziness settling over her. Her pale breasts were rising and falling more and more slowly, and more deeply. The cloth was thick and soft, and felt rather nice against her lips. She felt her grip on Kirsten's arm beginning to loosen, felt her eyes begin to flutter.
She couldn't deny that there was a certain pleasure in the sensation of being chloroformed. Feeling herself become so soft and vulnerable, feeling the weakness spreading like warm honey through her body, the tingling as her muscles relaxed, and she drifted off in her captor's arms...
"No!" Sophie was not going to allow herself to be tamed so easily. Reviving her will to fight, she lifted her arms, grabbed onto the cloth itself, and twisted her shoulders, putting Kirsten off balance. When she tried to change her grip, Sophie took advantage, and wriggled out of her grasp, diving forward out of the reach of the drugged cloth.
"Uhhh!" she gasped, breathing air once again. She shook her head, trying to restore herself. She made to stand up, but as she did, her long, bare legs trembled, and gave way. "Ooh..." She'd spent too long under the cloth, and she fell flat on her front. "Shit..." she mumbled. "Have to...get...up...!" She tried to shake away the hazy sleepiness that had taken hold of her, but it wasn't working.
She started desperately crawling away, pulling herself along with her arms - but she just couldn't go fast enough. She felt a hand on her shoulder, felt herself being turned onto her back. She gasped, but not because she'd been caught.
"K...Kirsten!" The half-filipina had a terribly hopeless, distressed look on her face. If Sophie had to describe it, it was just as she might have looked if she'd been hit with a tranquiliser dart, and was just realising that its effects were taking hold of her.
There were an infinity of possibilities. Mesmeredith might somehow have restored her powers. The Sin Eater might have taken control of Kirsten. Some other telepath, or nanite injection, or anything - in Sophie's world, anything was plausible: to be a sceptic about anything was the height of foolishness. The only possibility that was out of the question was that Kirsten was in her right mind.
For that reason, Sophie didn't know what to do - and her mental cloudedness wasn't helping matters either.
"Kirsten...you...have to get a hold of yourself..." Her rather feeble attempt at shaking Kirsten out of whatever it was that was making her behave like this did produce a momentary reaction from Sophie's friend - but it was only momentary. She looked down at Sophie with that same, mournful expression, and the soft cloth descended once again. "No, Kirsten, you - mmh! Nnnnmmphhh..."
If Sophie hadn't already been weakened, the fight would have ended in her favour in about ten seconds - even without her powers she was a capable martial artist...but she was weakened. When the cloth came down over her mouth and nose a second time, she didn't stand a chance of resisting it.
"Mmmhhh...nnnnhhh..." Sophie mewed, batting her arms at Kirsten's, now too groggy even to think about whether what she was doing would actually help. She threw her head from side to side, her wavy, red hair swishing about her, falling into a burnished orange crown as she gradually lost the strength even to move her head. Her long, uncovered legs slid haphazardly about on the ground as she writhed ever more powerlessly beneath her friend. "Nhhh...Khhhrrhsthhhnnhh..." She managed to wrap her fingers around one of her room-mate's arms, but they almost instantly slid off again, as her arm fell back. Both were now too heavy to lift, one falling back, the other resting passively on Sophie's stomach. The fingers of her right hand began to curl as Sophie went ever closer to total unconsciousness.
Sophie's silky thighs rubbed against each other as her struggles faded into slow, languorous wriggles. The whimpers coming from her mouth, now wet with chloroform, were getting quieter and quieter. As her sparkling, green eyes became dull and listless, only then did Sophie realise think about herself. Something had happened to Kirsten...now what would happen to Sophie?
Her final thoughts, as her lovely eyes fluttered closed, and her long, pale legs ceased their writhing, was not for Kirsten, Talia, or Ella; not a plaintive plea for her lover to rescue her, or anything like that. It was simply a rather distressed acknowledgement of the fact that, when she awoke, she would in all likelihood be tied up.
"Mmmmhhhh..." she sighed, as she fainted, her head turning to the side as her neck muscles relaxed. Her body surrendered, and Sophie tumbled into drugged sleep.
For a moment, all was quiet. Three lovely young students lay drugged into helpless slumber by the apparent treachery of their friend, making only the very softest of whimpers as they slept. The traitor herself stood completely still, staring down at the women she'd knocked out.
Kirsten had no particular emotion as she looked at the three. All that went through her mind was a kind of wordless acknowledgement of what remained to be done - a telepath like Insyte would have found her mind the same as if she were in a dreamless sleep. She returned to her kitchen, and took from a drawer a thick roll of strong, black duct tape, freshly bought. She returned to the others. Kirsten, unlike her red-haired friend, was not of a particularly...adventurous frame of mind, romantically speaking. She had never tied someone up before - and yet she knew exactly what to do.
She started with Ella. The tall girl was surprisingly light, and Kirsten easily lifted her into a sitting position. She let the brunette flop forward, pulling her cape out of the way, before crossing her arms behind her back. She quickly tore tape from the roll, and wrapped three circuits around the freshman's wrists, binding her arms behind her back.
She pulled Ella back into a sitting position, before turning her attention to her legs. In her translucent stockings, Ella's long limbs looked particularly smooth, and had Kirsten been of a more lustful frame of mind, she would certainly have lingered on them. As it was, she simply pushed Ella's ankles together, and wrapped two layers of tape around them, tying them together. The tape clung easily to her stockings, keeping her long legs trapped. Lastly, Kirsten reached up, and pressed a strip of tape over the brunette's lips, from cheek to cheek, gagging the slim young woman. She didn't offer so much as a whimper in resistance.
Talia was next. When Kirsten had attacked Sophie, the curly-haired beauty she'd been holding had tumbled onto the ground, and was lying in a tangle of her own limbs. Kirsten wasn't very strong, but she nevertheless managed to haul Talia up onto the same couch as Ella. She did the same as before, pushing Talia over so that her soft breasts were resting on her thighs. She took her arms, and as before, bound her wrists quickly, an aggressive tearing sound accompanying Talia's helpless capture.
"Uhhh..." the lovely young woman mewed quietly in her sleep. She wasn't actually coming round, but Kirsten wasn't taking the risk. She forced Talia's elbows together, and wrapped them in tape as well, making sure there was no way the caramel skinned maiden could use her arms. Then, she hoisted Talia back into a sitting position, and pressed tape just under her bosom, before winding it round, affixing her captive's arms to her back. As she was tied up, Talia was shifted this way and that, and her head swayed from side to side, sometimes falling forward, sometimes dropping onto one of her shoulders. Still, her face maintained an expression of complete passivity as she was taped up, chloroform having rendered the feisty, licentious girl just as tame as Ella.
Talia didn't feel as Kirsten took hold of her warm, bare thighs, forcing them against each other, before lifting them slightly to wind tape underneath them - then round, and round, ever more tightly cinching her smooth limbs together. Her smooth, shapely calves were next to be inextricably pressed together, as Kirsten taped her slim ankles together.
The young, curvy damsel was now silent, but Kirsten still felt the need to make certain she would stay that way. She pressed a strip of tape over her lips, and then two more, the last two forming an 'x' that sealed her voice. This done, she let go of Talia, who fell softly against Ella's shoulder, the two sleeping captives seeming to seek comfort in each other.
This only left Sophie.
"Uh!" Kirsten gasped, just before she began the process of capturing her as well. "How...how did I get here?" Her body shook - again, it was as if time had just...skipped forward. She saw her friend lying limp and defeated on the floor, and she almost screamed.
"What's happening?!" For a moment she was afraid that whoever had captured her friends might do the same to her in short order, but when she felt the roll of tape in her own hand, a horror fell over her. "I...I did this?!"
"Of course you did..." Kirsten heard a slow, lulling voice in her ear. At the same time, a sharp chill permeated her body.
"Who...who's there?" Kirsten said. Yet even as she asked this, the athletic student felt a strange somnolence permeating her body and mind.
"You know who it is...my sweet puppet..."
Kirsten felt hands on her back, holding her gently. She looked over her shoulder, but she couldn't see anyone. "Unhh..." she mewed, as the cold, but somehow comforting hands - hands which she knew were not there - began running up and down her back. She could suddenly feel her heartbeat very acutely, particularly in her neck.
"Take them...take them for me, my beautiful puppet...it would please me so very much..."
"Y...yes..." Kirsten's eyes closed. When they opened again, they were blank, and dull. She looked down at Sophie, and no longer saw her friend. She simply saw the next task in her list.
She turned the sleeping redhead over, her arms flopping loosely to her sides, her legs inadvertently crossing. Kirsten crossed her arms behind her, before encircling Sophie's forearms in tape, completely covering her soft skin from her wrists to her elbows. She made sure that the pale damsel wouldn't be able to squirm free, before wrapping three or four circuits just below Sophie's ribs, trapping her arms in place.
"Nnh..." Sophie whimpered softly, as she was turned over. Her soft, red hair fell against her bare shoulders, the black tape binding her upper body a stark contrast with her creamy skin. Even in her bondage - perhaps because of it - she looked lovely. Kirsten straightened out her old friend's legs, left entirely bare by her short dress. With her flat shoes and high hemline, not only was every inch of her warm thighs and shapely calves exposed, but she had an almost girlish charm to her, her body looking nubile and supple.
Whether Kirsten noticed this or not could not be determined, but she certainly had her hands on Sophie's naked legs in very short order. She pressed them firmly together, before trapping them with tape, wrapping at least ten circuits around Sophie's calves, completely covering them from her ankles right to the bottom of her knees.
"Unnhh..." Sophie mewed, shifting her bare shoulders a little in her sleep.
"Sophie?" Kirsten started, startled reaching out in concern for her friend. But by the time her hand reached her, she was no longer anything but her captor. Making sure that the redhead was fully subdued, she took again the damp cloth she'd use to capture her in the first place, and pressed it over Sophie's mouth and nose.
For a moment, nothing happened. But after a few moments, Sophie's gorgeous, taped-up body began shifting slowly.
"Mmmmhhh...nnnmmmhhh..." the maiden whimpered softly, as she was forced into an even deeper, darker slumber. Her body undulated in useless resistance, before going completely still. She hadn't been able to fight in any significant way, and now she was bound, just as she'd feared: despite her powers, and her experience as a fighter, she hadn't really been any more difficult to capture than Ella or Talia - a damsel in distress, just like the others. And, as if to mark her as such, Kirsten lifted Sophie's head, and - brushing her wavy, red hair out of the way - wrapped tape over her mouth, and around the back of her head. A second, then a third circuit of the sticky plastic ensured that even if she'd been screaming for rescue, Sophie would be thoroughly muzzled.
"No!" Kirsten shrieked. Returning to her senses, she saw that Sophie was now bound as well, a damp cloth lying next to her, and that roll of tape weighing significantly less now than it had before. "I don't understand! What the fuck is going on?!" She was about to run to get her phone, dial 911, but something stopped her. She felt cold.
"My dear...my love...why do you continue to play false?" Every word hit Kirsten like a gong three inches from her ear, yet also made her whole body tingle with an almost pleasant chill. She was afraid, yet strangely relaxed at the same time. "Was it hard, my sweet girl? I'm so very sorry...why don't you rest now?"
"R...rest?"
Kirsten looked down. She'd left the drugged cloth next to Sophie, still moist with the chloroform she'd soaked it with. She picked it up. Kirsten didn't...think, exactly, but she knew what it was that she needed to do. Sitting with an almost prim neatness next to Ella and Talia, she placed the wet cloth on the arm next to her. She then drew her legs up, and quickly encircled her own ankles in tape, binding her legs, before placing her feet back on the floor.
It was a little awkward binding her own wrists, even in front of her.. Kirsten had to take hold of the roll with her teeth, after sticking some tape to her left wrist. She had to wind the tape round her very slowly to avoid dropping it, while also making a sort of rolling motion with her arms. It took four or five minutes until Kirsten was satisfied that she was sufficiently bound. Lastly, she pressed a small rectangle of tape over her own lips, calmly sealing her own voice.
That being done, she reached over with her bound hands, taking the cloth in her fingers, before pressing it over her own mouth and nose.
"Mmmhh...mmmhhhphhh..." she sighed, quite contentedly. She could feel her vision growing hazier, her body growing softer and more pliable. Her toned, fishnet-clad legs rubbed against each other, but she wasn't resisting. She was allowing herself to be drawn ever deeper into drugged slumber. Her shoulders sagged, her hands trembled. Partly because she could no longer hold onto the cloth, and partly out of weakness, Kirsten flopped back against the couch, letting the cloth lie over her mouth, allowing her hands to flop onto her lap.
She sat there for about a minute and a half, growing more and more numb, her slender legs eventually becoming totally still, her head drooping. The cloth slipped off, falling onto the couch. But even without the continual dose of the narcotising drug, Kirsten was now firmly under its control. Her eyes felt heavy, and she was making no attempt at fighting in any case. She was sitting very close to Talia, and the lovely young woman's sensual warmth was so very inviting. Kirsten shuffled a little closer with the last of her strength, letting her head come to rest on Talia's shoulder. A moment later, she was soundly asleep.
There they lay, undisturbed for quite some time, the four lovely, taped-up young women. Only the very softest, quietest moans from behind their gagged lips could be heard. The three on the couch rested limply against each other, while the drugged superheroine lay defeated at their feet. Yet despite her repose, there was parity of helplessness between them. Even Kirsten was just as much a captive as the others now.
It was only once all four of them were completely unconscious that the lights began to dim. It was so gradual that only Enhancegirl herself would have noticed it at first, but after a while it was almost too dark to see. There was a shriek of wind at the windows, rattling them fiercely. They seemed almost as if they would burst, as a slow coldness crept into the dark room, as if set free by the dying of the light. But when the windows did open, it was not with a crash or shattering of glass. They slowly, deliberately, allowed the night air within.
Something else entered as well. It was...not quite formless, yet not quite with shape. Something akin to a walking heat shimmer entered the cozy dorm room. It glided through the room until it came upon the four sleeping maidens. A sound came from it - if it was a voice, then it was a very distorted one. It seemed to settle over the four, as the last of the lights completely died.
"Mmmhhh...?" Ella whimpered. Just as it went pitch black, her catlike eyes happened to open slightly: she was taller than the others, and had drunk the least beer, so proportionately she'd received a much smaller dose of the drug than Talia had. "Whhmph?" She was not awake long enough even to register that she was bound. She was only awake enough to see a pair of burning orange eyes, and a smile which was just a little too...sharp to be human. "Mmmhh!"
Whether it was that the drug claimed her after all, whether it was that she fainted from shock, or whether it was something else entirely could not with certainty be determined - but a few seconds after her eyes opened, they fell shut once again. A few seconds after that, the room was plunged into absolute darkness. When the lights eventually switched back on, the room was completely empty...
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Mmmhhh...! Nnnnnmmmphhh!" When Sophie awoke, she was met with a chorus of gagged whimpers - indeed, that was what had stirred her awake in the first place.
"Mmmhh...?" the redhead moaned weakly. Her vision was swimming, her body felt heavy, and she was very confused. The events were mixing in her head. "Kirsten was looking at me...desperate...then I got captured...uhh..." She shook her head, trying to get her mind clear. She felt that she was sitting - she could remember that she'd been on the floor when she was drugged, so she knew that she'd been moved. She looked to her right, and saw Talia and Ella, bound in silver tape, writhing and moaning, their eyes wet with fear and helplessness as they saw themselves and their friends captives.
"No, not captured," Sophie thought, as her vision became clearer. "We've been kidnapped!" Indeed, they were no longer in the same place. Sophie looked around, and found herself in a...well, the word 'room' did not quite seem to cover it. It was a huge, lush chamber, like something straight out of a medieval painting. There were faded paintings on the wall, with thick golden frames. The room was lit, if Sophie's eyes were not mistaken - and they rarely were - by gaslight. It was dim at best, and Sophie could barely see. She tried to move - and found that she was bound hand and foot in sticky duct tape. "Oh, I do love being right, don't I..."
"Smm-phhh!" Talia was the first to notice that Sophie was awake. "Smm-phhh whhhdhhff hhphhnhhghh?" The caramel skinned damsel looked terribly frightened. Her mascara was a little smudged with tears, her cheeks were flush with the vain effort of her struggles against her bonds. Sophie certainly had more experience with this sort of situation, but she had no words of comfort to offer - and not just because she was gagged.
It was an extremely alarming situation, besides the simple fact of Sophie and her friends' capture. It didn't seem likely that Sophie and her friends had been targeted by chance. Sophie felt a twinge of guilt at the possibility that her double life had led the others into danger - though of course, in this town, anything was possible.
What was most perplexing, and most worrying, was that it had been Kirsten who had actually subdued them. The art history student was conspicuous by her absence. Only Talia, Sophie and Ella - who was practically trembling with fear - were there.
"Mmhhggmph!" Sophie called out, trying to get Talia's attention. She turned her back to her friend, and shook her taped-up arms. "Chn yhh rhhphh mhh hhrrmff?" she said, trying to communicate despite her sticky impediment.
"Hh thhng shh..." Talia replied. She tried to focus on doing something practical - it would stop her being so afraid at any rate. She turned as well, and tried to get her hands to Sophie's. The redhead was tied in such a way that her hands were virtually useless.
As Talia fumbled at the tape keeping Sophie restrained, she considered for a moment having Talia just remove her gag instead, then turning her powers on. She didn't dismiss this immediately, but she did in the end dismiss it. Her secret was not more important than her friends' safety, but there was no guarantee that, with her powers, she'd be able to free herself. Besides, it was still possible that her captors didn't know about Enhancegirl: if they found out, that could cause more problems than her powers would solve.
Ella watched as her two friends struggled to free each other, and noted with some dismay that she was much more lightly restrained than they, yet she felt utterly powerless, while they fought to escape.
"Is...is this what it's like to be tied up?" she thought, her cheeks reddening slightly. Fairly frequent were the nights where Ella had imagined what it might feel like to be someone's captive. She'd read interviews with superheroines who'd talked about being captured. She remembered the report of a heroine named Falcona, who'd been describing how she'd first met her husband, the hero Caduceus, after he'd rescued her from the clutches of the No Law Gang: "It was awful - they'd bundled me up from head to toe in ropes, and all I could do was lie there and writhe around. I felt so embarrassed, all wrapped up like that..but I must confess, when Caduceus turned up all bloodied and battered to save me - well, I felt a little like a princess." Ella had been in company when she'd first read that; she'd had to excuse herself.
Yet now, Ella was having a taste of that experience herself, of being a captive. While she was hardly bundled up from head to toe, she still felt the acute shame and embarrassment of her helplessness. Her heart pounded from the fear, the humiliation of being stolen away against her will...yet she wondered if it was only fear making her heart thump.
As for Talia and Sophie, they were not making a great deal of headway. Talia's fingers were nimble, what with her being an engineer, but they were also shaky, and working blind. She just couldn't find where the tape's end was, and it was too thick to just tear. In fact, her struggles were in vain. The end of the tape, which she could have pulled on to begin unwinding it, was stuck between Sophie's arms and her back, and was therefore inaccessible. But before that became obvious, something else stopped them.
A large, ornately decorated door began to creak. The very sound of it reverberated through the three captives, and made them stop what they were doing. A chill began to creep into the air, and even a hint of fog.
"What's...what's going on?" Talia thought. "I feel...weird..."
"Something's...something feels really wrong," Sophie thought. "I feel...like my heart's getting colder." Sophie had seen quite enough strangeness for her next thought not to be an irrational leap of logic: "The person who caught us...they're not a normal human." Under other circumstances, she might have made a wisecrack about the frequency of her perils at the hands of superpowered maniacs - but something was chilling the humour out of her.
The door opened fully, and a beautiful young woman entered in a long, dark grey dress, done in an almost Regency style: silky, feminine, low cut and shoulder-baring, but in a fashion that suggested an almost royal elegance. The young woman herself was lovely, her light brown hair done up in a very fetching manner, her face impeccably made up, her lightly tanned skin looking smooth, caressable even. Her brown eyes were half-closed, and she moved strangely, almost robotically.
"Krrffthhnn!"
Indeed, this was Kirsten - and it was quite clear, instantly, that she was no mastermind.
"It's...it's like she's been brainwashed!" Even to Talia and Ella - though it was Talia who actually vocalised the thought - it seemed the only explanation for the bizarre behaviour of their sweet, reliable friend. In fact, both of them immediately thought of Hypnotra, the woman who'd taken control of the Indigo Titan. The only reason that Sophie didn't think of her is because, unlike Talia and Ella, she knew that Hypnotra's powers had been destroyed.
"Krrffthhnn?" Sophie called out. "Can she even hear us?" If she could, she wasn't reacting. She didn't seem to be doing anything at all. She was just standing there. She turned her head to the door, and the others' eyes followed her.
Before she entered, the captives knew she was coming. It was not that the room got colder, more that the chill that was there already seemed to wind itself around them. Each maiden felt a particular coldness around their throats. For this reason, they were not startled exactly when the tall, slender, impossibly pale woman entered - but their fear certainly grew.
There was a sharp, confident tap each time her heeled boots thumped against the wooden floor. Other than that, a strange silence seemed to emanate from her, choking sound, and dulling the low light. She was dressed very, very strangely, in a sort of ruffled, red and mauve ensemble that was an oddly appropriate counterpart to Kirsten's outfit - the Lord to her Lady, perhaps. Her hair, dyed a deliberately artificial white as if to mimic a Georgian wig, was done in a long ponytail. White hair, deathly white skin - it all made her eyes burn all the more terribly, bright amber, like molten metal. She smiled at them, a long, slow smile.
They saw them. They all saw them, but none of them were willing to believe.
"Are...are those?"
"Fangs?"
"No...no, no, no, there's weird and then there's just bullshit!" Sophie gaped. "She's...but...there's no such thing!" She gaped. "I don't give a fuck what day of the year it is, there's no such thing!"
"Oh, Kirsten, my sweet..." the woman said. She spoke strangely, pronouncing Kirsten's name 'Keer-sten'. "They're so very lovely..." She approached the three bound maidens, putting her hands to her mouth. "Oh my word!" She spoke with a disturbing level of passion. She came closer, seeming to glide rather than walk, a light cloak of fog surrounding her.
"Such treasures..." She leaned in, and stroked Ella's cheek with her index finger.
"Mmmph! Mmmphh!" Ella mewed, her eyes going wide as saucers. "Sh...she's touching me!" She expected the woman's touch to be as icy as the fog surrounding her...but it wasn't. It was warm. Ella blushed, and turned away.
"So demure...as tall and supple as a sycamore..." She stroked Ella again, this time with the back of her hand. Ella felt a strange doziness begin to take hold of her, all the stranger because it vanished the instant the woman took her hand away.
"And this one," the woman said, resting her hands on Talia's bare, light-brown thighs. "Such easy sensuality...so inviting...so soft..."
"Mmmgghhmphh!" Talia complained. "Don't you talk to me like that you - you...you..." She too felt that strange warmth spreading from her silky legs up throughout her body. She shook her head in wordless protest - more like a plea, really - for her captor not to feel her up, but when she met those burning eyes, she just couldn't look away. "So...so bright...so pretty..." She shook her head. "What? What the hell was that? What just happened to me?" Her captor smiled with an almost girlish cheekiness, and winked, before taking her hands off Talia's legs. As she did, the odd feeling went away - but Talia felt as if she'd somehow become weaker.
When the woman reached Sophie, the redhead had prepared herself in advance. She would not be petulant, or 'feisty', or childishly defiant. She would look her captor in the face, and she would not be cowed, even if she was physically helpless.
"I've faced weirder than you," she thought. "I've faced worse than you. I'm not going to be intimidated by some pasty freak with a hard on for historical re-enactment!"
And indeed, Sophie was not intimidated. But her captor did not seem to be trying to intimidate her. She knelt down in front of her, their eyes almost exactly level.
"Such a rare beauty...so slender...so nubile..." She reached out for Sophie's pale legs, but the redhead kicked out. Her captor caught her by the calves, however, and didn't even seem to register Sophie's attempted attack. "Such long, smooth legs..." She ran her hand over Sophie's taped up calves, up to her creamy thighs. "Oh? I feel...these thighs have been caressed many times in the last few days." She leaned closer, and sniffed, a long, slow inhale.
"Let me see..." She moved higher up Sophie's body, smelling her carefully, with a disturbing intimacy. "Yes...a lover...I smell her all over you." She smiled. "I'm so happy that this century has more or less escaped that ludicrous homosexuality hang-up...only the human race would choose to deny itself so much...pleasure." She looked Sophie in the eye. "I smell pleasure all over you, young lover."
Sophie had not been prepared for this. "Is...is she bullshitting or...can she actually tell?" She felt very exposed all of a sudden, and not just because of her skimpy outfit. Indeed, she had spent the last few days wrapped in Mariko's arms whenever she'd had an instant to spare. It was nothing that she was ashamed of...but it was private. It undercut her attempt at strength, so that when her captor turned her head aside and smelt her slender neck, she not only failed to be defiant - she outright whimpered.
"So...unhhh..." the woman moaned. "Gods above, you're...mmm..." Her hands gently, almost tenderly stroked Sophie's bare, white shoulders and the upper part of her chest. Sophie assumed that her hand would reach down towards her bosom, but she seemed much more interested in her shoulders and her throat. "So beautiful...so delicious...oh!" She drew back, and to Sophie's astonishment, she saw tears streaming down her face. "Oh, providence has been truly kind to me this day!" She clutched her hands to her heart. "Such beauty...such pristine femininity..." She looked towards Kirsten. "Thank you, my wonderful puppet," she said, beckoning her over.
As Kirsten came closer, the woman swept her into her arms, and kissed her with an earnest passion. Were it not for the fact that Kirsten herself had that strange look in her eye, of helpless desperation, it would have looked like a perfectly genuine kiss.
"I can't read her," Sophie thought. "Is she deranged, or is this some kind of act to freak us out?"
"I know I ask much of you, my sweet puppet," she said. "But you must know how...difficult it is for one like me to move about in the world. Had you not come into my life..." She stroked Kirsten's face. "I love you, Kirsten."
"What the hell is wrong with her?" Talia thought. "Is...is this real? This has got to be a nightmare...even real supervillains aren't this messed up in the head..." Their captor turned, and Kirsten turned with her. By sheer chance, she happened to look right at Talia. "Oh, baby," Talia thought, "what's she done to you?" Kirsten saw Talia's look of pity, and it stirred something inside her.
"I...I..." she murmured, as her eyes regained their customary brightness. "He - HELP MEEE!!" she screamed. "Please, please help me! She controls me...drai - MMPHH!!"
With mantis-like speed, their captor's hand snapped over Kirsten's mouth.
"Nmmmphhh! NNMMMPHH!!" Kirsten whimpered, and her body twitched, as though it was trying and failing to move. Her moans were met by the moans of her friends, and they began writhing desperately, agonised at seeing Kirsten in such anguish.
"Lllhhdd hhrr ghhh, yhhh fhhkk!!" Sophie growled.
"Quiet!" the woman hissed, baring her fangs. "This won't do, this won't do at all..." She pulled Kirsten in close, forcefully this time. "My sweet...my puppet..." She put her hand around Kirsten's neck, and for a moment the others were afraid she'd throttle her, but her grip was quite soft. "Shhhhh...shhhhhh...be still...be still..."
"No! No...nnn...no..." Her eyes fell shut. The moment they did, she was back under her master's spell.
"Nnnnmmphhh...nnnmmphhh..." Ella mewed. There was nothing remotely enticing about this. Her cheeks were wet with tears as she saw Kirsten brought back under the woman's control. Talia too was distraught, though she had just a little more self-control. Only Sophie realised the good in what they'd just seen.
"Her control...she's nowhere near as powerful as Mesmeredith. Either it can be shaken off, or she has to recharge it." She was suddenly filled with pride for her friend. "She's fighting...she's still fighting. Who knows how long it's been...but she isn't giving up." She regretted that it was only in desperate times that one saw people's true resilience, but she was glad to have seen Kirsten's. "I'll save you, okay? I'm not going to let you be this freak's...plaything!"
"Oh, how uncouth...I do apologise, my beautiful young guests," the woman said. "This really isn't observing the proper forms, is it? I -" She froze, a look of horror coming over her. "Oh my! I - I haven't introduced myself!" She stood to attention, before offering a low bow.
"I am Erin Kastellas, of the seventy-seventh generation. I bid you welcome to my home, honoured guests."
The three stared blankly at Erin. If she'd been trying to impress them, it hadn't worked - but it had calmed them down by sheer mystification at their captor's continued oddness. Now that they were less worked up, Erin looked right at them, her burnished orange eyes open strangely wide.
"My dear ones," she said, her voice taking on a slow, deliberate ponderousness. "Forgive me for bringing you here so...forcefully...but I'm in such desperate need of company, you see." She smiled at them, again showing those fangs, fangs which suggested so much that simply could not be. "You must be so tired..."
And the three found that, as soon as she said this, they did begin to feel tired. Their angry or frightened whimpers became softer, more subdued.
"So tired...wouldn't it be good to rest...just for a little while?"
"She's right..." Ella thought. "So tired...I...can just rest..."
"Nmmph!" Sophie growled, startling the others, and breaking the reveries. "Come on, is it that hard to figure out what she's doing? Oh, man, I know this is their first rodeo, but when someone starts talking to you about how 'tired you must be' they're trying to -"
Sophie's thought was interrupted, when she realised that Erin was looking straight at her.
"My creamy-skinned young lover..." she said, her orange eyes burning into Sophie's. "So fierce...a flame as bright as the red of your hair..."
"Mmmphh! Nnngrrhhmphh!" Sophie complained, trying to break the stare, but finding herself incapable of so doing.
"It must be so tiring...so exhausting...don't you want to be quenched sometimes?"
"Mmmhh...nnhhh..." the redhead whimpered, but she realised with dismay that she was falling under Erin's spell. "Have...to...fight!"
"So fierce...but so soft...mmm...just like a slinky little cat on a summer's day...hhmmm..." She was speaking with a very deliberate rhythm, and Sophie found herself caught in it, like ocean waves lapping against her. "So warm, and sleepy...wouldn't you like to curl up somewhere...drop...right...off..."
"Mmmhhh..." Sophie mewed. "Drop...right off...no! God damn it I can't...can't...can't let...this...oohh..." She found those eyes again, which seemed to swirl in an infinite spiral, forcing her will to dissipate.
"I'm sure your lover would look after you, wouldn't she? You could put your head in her lap...rest it against her thighs as she strokes your hair..."
"Mmmhhhhhh..." the redhead sighed, beginning to sway like a leaf, but never breaking Erin's gaze. "So...sleepy...but I had to...do something...didn't I?"
Erin walked closer, and knelt down just in front of Sophie, continuing to stare.
"Imagine...imagine yourself...swooning. Your legs buckle, fall out from under you. You become hot... your eyelids flutter...the whole world seems to be sinking away. You fall...and she catches you..."
"Mhh..." Sophie was now imagining this very distinctly. Imagining herself growing weak, sleepy and limp, imagining Mariko's slender, arms catching her by her shoulders. "Mmmm...I'd...I'd be so vulnerable..."
"She'd lift you up into her arms, protecting you, holding you...oh, she's holding you just like a bride! 'It's alright,' she whispers. 'Just sleep, my love...I'll protect you...just sleep.'"
"Is...is that okay, Mariko?" Sophie thought, imagining hands on her thighs, imagining her head resting against her beautiful girlfriend, who held her so tenderly, so lovingly. "I...I like it when you...take care of me, sweetie...I'll just...ooohhhhh...I'll just sleep..." With these last thoughts, Sophie slumped to the side, completely unconscious.
"Shhphhh!" Talia gasped. She shuffled against her, trying to shake her awake, but it wasn't working. "Mph?" Startled by a cold shiver that ran up her spine, she turned around - and found herself caught by a pair of bright, amber eyes.
"Mmmhhh..." Next to Talia, the tall, delicate freshman was also being quickly entranced. "So pretty...so bright..." she thought - though the word 'thought' was perhaps giving Ella a little too much credit. Her thinly covered legs shifted against each other, but only slightly. Talia was struggling a little more forcefully, but she was slowly sinking into the same level of passivity as Ella.
"Such sweet young ladies," Erin said. "Such softness...such tender, maidenly affection between you...so warm..." Indeed, the damsels, as they writhed slowly next to each other, could feel an inviting warmth from the other. It was not a lustful warmth - not exactly, anyway. As their bare shoulders inadvertently stroked, they felt a great wave of comfort, like a light, but soothing blanket being laid over them. "There we are...feeling so calm, now...so tired..." Erina drew out the last word almost like a yawn.
"N...no...getting...getting so...sleepy..." Talia felt her eyelids drooping. She tried to look away, but she couldn't. She felt Sophie fall even more closely against her, the redhead entirely defeated. Talia had no idea that Sophie Scott was also the heroine Enhancegirl, but somehow she felt that, with Sophie having been subdued, they were all defenceless.
Ella, for her part, just stared into her captor's eyes. She had given up the notion of resistance almost from the moment she'd realised she was bound, and she allowed herself to sink into the slumber into which she'd been invited. The tall, willowy maiden could feel her thoughts slowing, her body getting still. She didn't try to stop it: she was already helpless - why bother fighting?
"Fall back, my loves," Erin said, quivering with pleasure as she watched the two damsels fall under her spell. "It's so easy..."
"So...so easy..." the two repeated in their minds.
"Your eyelids...getting so heavy...it's just impossible to keep them open..."
"So heavy..." they thought. They were no longer just shifting around involuntarily, they were actively settling against each other, Talia resting her head on Ella's shoulder.
"That's right...you're both so comfortable...so soft..."
"Soft..." the two maidens thought, feeling each other's skin, their legs now touching as well. It was perilously relaxing, and they had no way of escaping the sensation.
Erin knew that she had the pair on the very edge of unconsciousness. Smiling to herself with acute satisfaction, she thought just how lucky she was to have such fine young ladies in her company. But there were...formalities to observe before she could enjoy them fully.
"Now, my dear ones," she said, never once having blinked since she'd started addressing them, "you'v earned your rest, I think." Whatever sounds there had been in the room, other than her voice, they vanished as she said the final world which sealed their fates:
"Sleeeeeeep..."
"Mph..."
"Mhhhh..." With a mew, and a sigh, Talia and Ella were subsumed in Erin's hypnotic gaze, and surrendered their consciousness, dropping into slumber like dew from a leaf. All three were now fast asleep. Erin observed them for a little while, watched the slow, somnolent undulations of their breasts as they breathed, the way their hair brushed against each other's shoulders. Struck by the beauty of the tableaux she'd created, she almost regretted breaking it. Almost.
Coming right up to her captives with two long strides, she took Talia and Ella by the backs of their necks, and lifted them up to their feet. This was done confidently, but not roughly, and took more strength than it looked like Erin possessed. She ran her hand down their backs, allowing their heads to flop forward. When her hands reached their legs, she gingerly stroked the tops of their thighs, before seizing them by their waists, and throwing them both over her shoulders.
The two captives flopped helplessly where they were placed, their contrasting figures - one willowy, one curvy - equally passive and limp over Erin's body. She gripped them tightly, keeping them securely in her grasp, though the thought of harming even one square centimetre of their skin was abhorrent to their captor. She began carrying the two limp maidens away, the door of the chamber swinging open as she approached it.
"Kirsten, my sweet? Bring the other, would you?" She didn't need an answer to know that Kirsten would obey.
The gorgeous Filipina did as she was commanded, moving over to Sophie and, taking her by her shoulders, lifting the slinky redhead up to her feet.
"Mghmphh..." Sophie whimpered softly, her head falling back, exposing her delicate throat. Kirsten kept one arm on the green-eyed damsel's torso, while another slid down to the backs of her legs. A skilled tennis player, Kirsten did not have a remotely muscular figure, but she was quite strong, and she was taller than her friend. For this reason, it was not overly difficult to lift Sophie straight up into her arms.
For a moment, Sophie dangled there, her legs completely exposed as her dress slid down, her head falling limply back. She looked so delicate and fragile, an abducted, hypnotised young beauty, entirely powerless before her bizarre captor's machinations. Yet she did not fear as she was carried away - her kidnapper had not wanted her to. As Kirsten, the poor girl just as much a captive as the other three, carried her away, Sophie was dreaming of something quite different, prompted both by what Kirsten was doing, and by how she'd been hypnotised:
She imagined herself scooped up into Mariko's arms, carried easily, feeling feminine and cared for as she was taken wherever her lover desired. In the real world, she blushed, as in her dream she noticed that she was dressed in a long, white dress...
"Mmmphhh..." she sighed, sweetly. Yet her romantic, even saccharine fantasy merely kept her tame and subdued, as she was stolen away into the same darkness that had claimed the others. Erin was not finished with her yet...
"Hey, you know Sophie, right?" the half-Filipina said. "Nothing fazes her." She herself knew this not to be true. She was still deeply concerned about the young redhead. That new girlfriend of hers was bad news - but Kirsten didn't really know what to do. Certainly she didn't want to get her mother involved.
"Listen, mom, I need to go. Uh...I think Sophie's trying to call me." She hung up quickly, before she could register her mother's objections. "Geez..." She bumped into someone as she put her phone away. "Oh, sorry!" she said. She turned around - and found a strange pair of -
"Sophie, would you hurry up?" Kirsten was started back into alertness by the sound of Talia, shouting at her room mate. The half-Filipina shook her head. Every time she let her mind drift off at the moment, she came back to that night, and every time it would cut off at the same instant. But it hardly mattered. Nor did her strange feeling of constant tiredness.
For it was Hallowe'en, and if a pretty young Art History major like Kirsten couldn't have fun with some friends on October 31st, then there was something very wrong indeed. She and Sophie had invited two others to their little pre-going-out get together: Talia, a master's student in computing, and Ella, a freshman like Sophie. She didn't know Talia well, but she liked Ella a lot, even if she was a little shy.
Ella was sitting quietly on their couch, sipping a light beer, a reddening in her pale cheeks showing that she was not used to it. The tall brunette was dressed in a red cape, tight corset top, and short skirt, with translucent black stockings covering her long, crossed legs. It was a rather half-hearted attempt at a vampire costume, with some little fangs already abandoned on a coffee table. She kept trying to pull her skirt to cover more of her thighs, but it wasn't working. She had that kind of delicacy that very slim, very tall women sometimes have, like at any moment she might crumble to her knees.
Talia was, if anything, the very opposite of that. She was mixed race, her soft, light-brown skin a warm contrast with Ella's pale complexion. She had very light, almost red hair, that bounced in curvy waves on her head. There was a kind of effortless sexuality about her, a sumptuousness in her slenderness, an enthralling bounce in her breasts, and a constant tease in her sparkling brown eyes and coy smile.
She herself was dressed in a long sleeved blue-black leotard, with a long, blue cape and blue high heels. Her supple legs were left entirely bare, and she had placed a small, red diamond on her forehead. She was dressed as Lady Corvid, one of the original members of the East Coast Ensemble, New York's first state-sponsored superhero team. She even had a pair of boots which would have matched better, but...she just preferred high-heels.
"Sophie, honey," she said, "we're all waiting for our favourite redhead..."
Sophie hated Hallowe'en. She had hated trick-or-treating as a child, found ghost stories dull, and turned her nose up at the commercialism of the modern rituals. But friends were friends, and she hadn't seen Talia in ages. The only problem was, she had no outfit. She'd put it off and put it off and put it off, and in the end, the 31st had come and she was without. If she didn't have anything, it'd be a forfeit, and that meant putting on a sheet with eye holes.
"Not this year," Sophie said, recalling the embarrassment of the previous Hallowe'en. "No thank you..." She thought for a moment - then realised that she did have something. During her final battle with Ocelot, the thief who'd almost succeeded in completely seducing her, Sophie had acquired a costume to disguise herself as...herself. Or rather, to disguise herself as her alter-ego, Enhancegirl, one of Seacouver's up-and-coming stars of the so-called 'cape scene'.
So she plucked the gold dress, mask, gloves and boots from the back of her closet. It was strange having to do this: it felt so fake. But that was, after all, rather the idea. Putting the costume on, she again recalled those pivotal hours very, very closely, when she'd broken out of the dark waters that Ocelot had almost drowned her in. She still felt a pang of guilt that she'd allowed it to go as far as it had, but she'd since dipped into much warmer, sweeter water...
Sophie posed in front of her mirror, and was about to present herself to the others, when she realised that in her full costume it would be perfectly possible that one of them might put two and two together, and figure out that she wasn't just dressed as Enhancegirl. So she made some adjustments: she removed her mask entirely, and slipped on a pair of silver pumps instead of her heeled boots.
"There," she said, looking again. "Close enough." Somehow with her outfit altered she looked a little more...girlish, somehow. She frowned, but beggars couldn't be choosers.
"Oh, wow," Talia said, as the golden-clad heroine emerged. "Sophie, you look..."
"Oh!" Ella piped up, clapping her hands together. "Sophie, um, are you meant to be, ah, Enhancegirl?" Sophie grinned. It was nice to be recognised.
"If you're meant to be Enhancegirl," Kirsten said, "you messed up the costume. Doesn't she have, like, a mask?"
"Oh," Sophie said, feigning ignorance. "Does she?" Kirsten sat down in a chair, crossing her legs. She was wearing fishnet stockings and a short, black, shoulder-less dress, with a pointed hat topping her witch's costume. She had an unusual attractiveness to her, with a Filipino father and an Alaskan mother of Norwegian descent, with a skin tone almost exactly between Sophie's and Talia's in pallor, a little taller than either of them. She was finely proportioned, too, with plump breasts and slinky hips, complimenting her slender, athletic figure.
"Oh, that's right," Talia said, "you two were there when Stellar was kidnapped! Enhancegirl got taken down by Cybelle, didn't she?"
Sophie hardly needed reminding. Her defeat at Cybelle's hands had been not just a humiliation, but a very public one at that.
"Uh, didn't she, y'know, totally wreck Cybelle afterwards?" Sophie suggested, trying to sound disinterested.
"No, that was Valora," Ella said. Sophie's eye twitched. Valora had indeed come to her rescue that day, but not against Cybelle. Yet she'd still got the credit for beating her. "I wonder what happened to Enhancegirl that night. Some paramedics took her, but no-one knows what happened to her after that." Ella was something of a superheroine fangirl. She liked to be in the know about new heroines, whether certain heroines had teamed up with others, and theorised about which ones could or couldn't defeat the villains du jour. Just before coming over, she'd been in an online debate about whether or not Valora was as strong as Titania, trying to make the others understand that Titania was durable not strong, otherwise that truck Hell Man had thrown at her would never have knocked her so far.
"Okay, okay," Talia said. "Enough superhero talk." She smiled. "So, Sophie...are you going to tell us about your new lady?" Sophie almost snorted her drink through her nose.
"How the hell did you find out about that?" She narrowed her eyes at Kirsten. "I told you not to tell anyone yet!"
"Oh, so it is true!" Ella said. "That's lovely, Sophie." She smiled sweetly. "How long have you been seeing each other?"
"Like...two weeks?" Sophie said. She couldn't believe it had been so little time. The two heroines hadn't really set ground rules: they'd just been enjoying each other too much to think of practicalities yet.
"What's her name?"
"Mariko," Sophie said. The name had a delightful assonance to it as she said it. "We've been friends for about a year, but I only just realised I -" She stopped herself. She hadn't yet talked about it with anyone but Kirsten, and she found herself coming over surprisingly bashful.
"Realised you what?" Talia said, grinning.
"I..." Sophie paused. "Wait a minute, what the fuck do I have to be shy about?" She leaned back, and smiled. "I realised that I'm in love with her." She couldn't quite keep a feminine blush from her cheeks.
The reaction from Sophie's friends was...less than entirely restrained. Talia outright screamed; Ella gasped and covered her hands with her mouth; even Kirsten gave a little cry - she'd known that the redhead had a new girlfriend, but she hadn't known that Sophie was actually in love with her.
"Oh, honey, that's awesome," Talia said, and laughed. "I had no idea you were such a romantic!" Before Sophie could reply, Talia added: "Is she hot?"
"Hey," Sophie said, "I'm not here to get grilled about my awesome, beautiful girlfriend who's waaaay hotter than anyone Talia could get in her wildest dreams -"
"Hey!"
"-I'm here to watch some horror flicks and get drunk off my ass." The redhead breathed a sigh of what she realised was relief. She'd almost been concerned that, if brought into the light, what she had with Mariko would suddenly have turned out to be a dream. But it was reality, and nothing could change that. "So let's get the hell on with it!"
"So, what are we watching?" Kirsten said. She had an oddly distracted tone to her voice, as though she were thinking about something else all the time that Sophie had been talking.
"Can we please not watch anything by John Carpenter this time?" Sophie pleaded, too breathless in the aftermath of her confession to notice. "I can only take so much synth." Talia laughed.
"How about Coppola's Dracula?" the lovely master's student suggested.
"Oh, that's even worse!" Sophie retorted instantly. She sat down next to Talia. "Keanu Reeves doing a British accent? 'Oh! Count Drahculah! I'm tohtully, like, English, dude! There is no talent!'"
Eventually, though, the tide turned against Sophie, and the movie was stuck on. About twenty minutes in, between Sophie's jeers, Ella clutched her arms against her chest.
"When did it get so cold?" she said.
"Yeah, it's definitely a little chilly." She moved closer to Kirsten, teasingly rubbing her smooth calf against the Filipina's stocking clad legs. "Feel like warming me up?" Kirsten hit her on the arm.
"I'm not one of your nerdy lab partners!" she said. "Go get one of them to warm you up!"
Slightly irritated by Talia's flirtation, Kirsten hopped up to her feet. "I'm grabbing some more drinks," she said. Then: "What did you say?" The others looked at each other quizzically.
"Um, no-one said anything, Kirsten," Ella said.
"Uh, right," she replied. "Must have been my imagination." She went into the kitchen.
"That was weird," Sophie muttered.
"Yeah, maybe it was a ghooooooooost!" Talia laughed.
As Kirsten grabbed beers from the fridge, she felt very strange indeed. She had heard someone calling her name, very clearly. But the voice hadn't belonged to any of her friends.
"Kirsten..." She snapped round. The voice again, but there was nobody there. "Remember..." Kirsten's eyes widened. A cold wind seemed to surround her body. There was something like dread in her, but she couldn't tell why.
"What?" Kirsten started. She wasn't in the kitchen anymore. She was sitting back in front of the movie, with a cold glass in her hand.
"He said that he wants Keanu to stay for a month," Sophie said, thinking Kirsten was reacting to the movie. "I know, it's dumb. Who would agree to that? 'Oh, sure Count Drahculah, who is totally not obviously evil and has totally not threatened me with a sword, I'll totally stay in your scary castle for a month!'" Kirsten was too confused to listen. One minute she'd been in the kitchen, the next here, with no period in between. Yet she must have done what she intended, because the girls all had beers. She herself, though, was drinking sparkling water. Why? She'd wanted a beer too, hadn't she? And what was that in her hand...?
Sophie looked at Kirsten. There was something very off about her. She too had felt the chill in the kitchen, but then it had vanished. Now Kirsten was looking very confused. What was going on?
"Oooh..." Ella moaned, putting a hand on her temple. "I feel kinda...woozy..."
"Oh come on," Talia said, "there's no way even you would be drunk after two...two...ooh..." Talia's eyelids fluttered. "Hey...this stuff is pretty strong..."
"Not that I think bragging about being able to hold your liquor is anything other than utterly lame," Sophie said, "but I seem to be doing a much better job than you." She tapped her fingernails against the glass from which she drank. It was a favourite brand - local brew of course - and her fetching it had been what made her late in the first place. The others were just drinking whatever they'd had in the house.
"Kirsten," Ella said in a fading voice. "I really don't feel so...so...uuunhhh..." With a sigh, the corset clad damsel slumped over onto her side. "I...I...ooohh..." she mewed, her eyes fluttering.
"This..." Talia was swaying from side to side. Her arms dropped, and her beer fell out of her hand, spilling what little remained of its contents onto the floor. "Something's...wrong..." She tried to get up, but the caramel-skinned young woman immediately fell forward onto her knees.
Sophie leapt into action, jumping forward and catching Talia before she collapsed entirely.
"Hey, Talia, what's going on?" Sophie said. She held Talia by her arms, the engineer's bouncy, curly hair resting on Sophie's shoulder. She opened her large, moist, brown eyes, looking sleepily up at the red-haired woman holding her.
"Not...not drunk..." she whimpered quietly. "Help...help me..."
"Hey Talia, what's -" but before Sophie could even finish, she felt Talia going completely limp in her arms. She sighed, and her eyes closed, slowly but inexorably. The supple mounds of her breasts rose and fell gently, her head fell back, exposing her light-brown neck. She looked lovely in her sudden slumber - but Sophie wasn't paying attention to that.
"Talia? Talia!" She shook her lightly, but all that happened was that the young graduate's head flopped onto Sophie's shoulder. "What the fuck?" Sophie looked up at Ella, and she too was fast asleep, her long legs crossed, but the right gradually sliding from atop the left. To say that Sophie was suspicious would be a stark understatement. She flexed her fingers and arms, checking that she herself was not affected by whatever had taken hold of her friends. Wondering why this was the case, she noticed that both Ella and Talia had been drinking the same beer, while she'd been drinking something else.
"Hey, Kirsten?" she said. "Were you drinking the same crap as -?" It was both a small boon and a great piece of ill luck that Sophie did not happen to have her powers at that moment. It was ill luck because she'd never have let Kirsten get so close if she'd had her heightened awareness. It was a boon because she'd already have started weakening before her friend clamped the drugged cloth over her mouth.
"MMMPHHH!!" Sophie cried out, as she breathed in the all-too-familiar, sickly-sweet smell of chloroform. "WHHMMPGHPPHHH?!" Sophie was still on her knees and Kirsten wasn't letting her get back up. "What's happening?! What the hell is going on?!" She could already feel it. A soft, warm weakness starting as a tingling feeling in her fingers and toes, and spreading through her slender limbs. "What's she doing? Wh...why is she drugging me?!" She looked up at the other two, sleeping soundly: they too, clearly had been drugged - and Sophie's best friend was the culprit. But why?
"Mmmphhh! MMPHH!!" she cried out, summoning all the alertness that she could. She lifted both her arms, trying to pull Kirsten away, but she was growing more and more feeble all the time. She could feel her arms getting heavy, a blanket of drowziness settling over her. Her pale breasts were rising and falling more and more slowly, and more deeply. The cloth was thick and soft, and felt rather nice against her lips. She felt her grip on Kirsten's arm beginning to loosen, felt her eyes begin to flutter.
She couldn't deny that there was a certain pleasure in the sensation of being chloroformed. Feeling herself become so soft and vulnerable, feeling the weakness spreading like warm honey through her body, the tingling as her muscles relaxed, and she drifted off in her captor's arms...
"No!" Sophie was not going to allow herself to be tamed so easily. Reviving her will to fight, she lifted her arms, grabbed onto the cloth itself, and twisted her shoulders, putting Kirsten off balance. When she tried to change her grip, Sophie took advantage, and wriggled out of her grasp, diving forward out of the reach of the drugged cloth.
"Uhhh!" she gasped, breathing air once again. She shook her head, trying to restore herself. She made to stand up, but as she did, her long, bare legs trembled, and gave way. "Ooh..." She'd spent too long under the cloth, and she fell flat on her front. "Shit..." she mumbled. "Have to...get...up...!" She tried to shake away the hazy sleepiness that had taken hold of her, but it wasn't working.
She started desperately crawling away, pulling herself along with her arms - but she just couldn't go fast enough. She felt a hand on her shoulder, felt herself being turned onto her back. She gasped, but not because she'd been caught.
"K...Kirsten!" The half-filipina had a terribly hopeless, distressed look on her face. If Sophie had to describe it, it was just as she might have looked if she'd been hit with a tranquiliser dart, and was just realising that its effects were taking hold of her.
There were an infinity of possibilities. Mesmeredith might somehow have restored her powers. The Sin Eater might have taken control of Kirsten. Some other telepath, or nanite injection, or anything - in Sophie's world, anything was plausible: to be a sceptic about anything was the height of foolishness. The only possibility that was out of the question was that Kirsten was in her right mind.
For that reason, Sophie didn't know what to do - and her mental cloudedness wasn't helping matters either.
"Kirsten...you...have to get a hold of yourself..." Her rather feeble attempt at shaking Kirsten out of whatever it was that was making her behave like this did produce a momentary reaction from Sophie's friend - but it was only momentary. She looked down at Sophie with that same, mournful expression, and the soft cloth descended once again. "No, Kirsten, you - mmh! Nnnnmmphhh..."
If Sophie hadn't already been weakened, the fight would have ended in her favour in about ten seconds - even without her powers she was a capable martial artist...but she was weakened. When the cloth came down over her mouth and nose a second time, she didn't stand a chance of resisting it.
"Mmmhhh...nnnnhhh..." Sophie mewed, batting her arms at Kirsten's, now too groggy even to think about whether what she was doing would actually help. She threw her head from side to side, her wavy, red hair swishing about her, falling into a burnished orange crown as she gradually lost the strength even to move her head. Her long, uncovered legs slid haphazardly about on the ground as she writhed ever more powerlessly beneath her friend. "Nhhh...Khhhrrhsthhhnnhh..." She managed to wrap her fingers around one of her room-mate's arms, but they almost instantly slid off again, as her arm fell back. Both were now too heavy to lift, one falling back, the other resting passively on Sophie's stomach. The fingers of her right hand began to curl as Sophie went ever closer to total unconsciousness.
Sophie's silky thighs rubbed against each other as her struggles faded into slow, languorous wriggles. The whimpers coming from her mouth, now wet with chloroform, were getting quieter and quieter. As her sparkling, green eyes became dull and listless, only then did Sophie realise think about herself. Something had happened to Kirsten...now what would happen to Sophie?
Her final thoughts, as her lovely eyes fluttered closed, and her long, pale legs ceased their writhing, was not for Kirsten, Talia, or Ella; not a plaintive plea for her lover to rescue her, or anything like that. It was simply a rather distressed acknowledgement of the fact that, when she awoke, she would in all likelihood be tied up.
"Mmmmhhhh..." she sighed, as she fainted, her head turning to the side as her neck muscles relaxed. Her body surrendered, and Sophie tumbled into drugged sleep.
For a moment, all was quiet. Three lovely young students lay drugged into helpless slumber by the apparent treachery of their friend, making only the very softest of whimpers as they slept. The traitor herself stood completely still, staring down at the women she'd knocked out.
Kirsten had no particular emotion as she looked at the three. All that went through her mind was a kind of wordless acknowledgement of what remained to be done - a telepath like Insyte would have found her mind the same as if she were in a dreamless sleep. She returned to her kitchen, and took from a drawer a thick roll of strong, black duct tape, freshly bought. She returned to the others. Kirsten, unlike her red-haired friend, was not of a particularly...adventurous frame of mind, romantically speaking. She had never tied someone up before - and yet she knew exactly what to do.
She started with Ella. The tall girl was surprisingly light, and Kirsten easily lifted her into a sitting position. She let the brunette flop forward, pulling her cape out of the way, before crossing her arms behind her back. She quickly tore tape from the roll, and wrapped three circuits around the freshman's wrists, binding her arms behind her back.
She pulled Ella back into a sitting position, before turning her attention to her legs. In her translucent stockings, Ella's long limbs looked particularly smooth, and had Kirsten been of a more lustful frame of mind, she would certainly have lingered on them. As it was, she simply pushed Ella's ankles together, and wrapped two layers of tape around them, tying them together. The tape clung easily to her stockings, keeping her long legs trapped. Lastly, Kirsten reached up, and pressed a strip of tape over the brunette's lips, from cheek to cheek, gagging the slim young woman. She didn't offer so much as a whimper in resistance.
Talia was next. When Kirsten had attacked Sophie, the curly-haired beauty she'd been holding had tumbled onto the ground, and was lying in a tangle of her own limbs. Kirsten wasn't very strong, but she nevertheless managed to haul Talia up onto the same couch as Ella. She did the same as before, pushing Talia over so that her soft breasts were resting on her thighs. She took her arms, and as before, bound her wrists quickly, an aggressive tearing sound accompanying Talia's helpless capture.
"Uhhh..." the lovely young woman mewed quietly in her sleep. She wasn't actually coming round, but Kirsten wasn't taking the risk. She forced Talia's elbows together, and wrapped them in tape as well, making sure there was no way the caramel skinned maiden could use her arms. Then, she hoisted Talia back into a sitting position, and pressed tape just under her bosom, before winding it round, affixing her captive's arms to her back. As she was tied up, Talia was shifted this way and that, and her head swayed from side to side, sometimes falling forward, sometimes dropping onto one of her shoulders. Still, her face maintained an expression of complete passivity as she was taped up, chloroform having rendered the feisty, licentious girl just as tame as Ella.
Talia didn't feel as Kirsten took hold of her warm, bare thighs, forcing them against each other, before lifting them slightly to wind tape underneath them - then round, and round, ever more tightly cinching her smooth limbs together. Her smooth, shapely calves were next to be inextricably pressed together, as Kirsten taped her slim ankles together.
The young, curvy damsel was now silent, but Kirsten still felt the need to make certain she would stay that way. She pressed a strip of tape over her lips, and then two more, the last two forming an 'x' that sealed her voice. This done, she let go of Talia, who fell softly against Ella's shoulder, the two sleeping captives seeming to seek comfort in each other.
This only left Sophie.
"Uh!" Kirsten gasped, just before she began the process of capturing her as well. "How...how did I get here?" Her body shook - again, it was as if time had just...skipped forward. She saw her friend lying limp and defeated on the floor, and she almost screamed.
"What's happening?!" For a moment she was afraid that whoever had captured her friends might do the same to her in short order, but when she felt the roll of tape in her own hand, a horror fell over her. "I...I did this?!"
"Of course you did..." Kirsten heard a slow, lulling voice in her ear. At the same time, a sharp chill permeated her body.
"Who...who's there?" Kirsten said. Yet even as she asked this, the athletic student felt a strange somnolence permeating her body and mind.
"You know who it is...my sweet puppet..."
Kirsten felt hands on her back, holding her gently. She looked over her shoulder, but she couldn't see anyone. "Unhh..." she mewed, as the cold, but somehow comforting hands - hands which she knew were not there - began running up and down her back. She could suddenly feel her heartbeat very acutely, particularly in her neck.
"Take them...take them for me, my beautiful puppet...it would please me so very much..."
"Y...yes..." Kirsten's eyes closed. When they opened again, they were blank, and dull. She looked down at Sophie, and no longer saw her friend. She simply saw the next task in her list.
She turned the sleeping redhead over, her arms flopping loosely to her sides, her legs inadvertently crossing. Kirsten crossed her arms behind her, before encircling Sophie's forearms in tape, completely covering her soft skin from her wrists to her elbows. She made sure that the pale damsel wouldn't be able to squirm free, before wrapping three or four circuits just below Sophie's ribs, trapping her arms in place.
"Nnh..." Sophie whimpered softly, as she was turned over. Her soft, red hair fell against her bare shoulders, the black tape binding her upper body a stark contrast with her creamy skin. Even in her bondage - perhaps because of it - she looked lovely. Kirsten straightened out her old friend's legs, left entirely bare by her short dress. With her flat shoes and high hemline, not only was every inch of her warm thighs and shapely calves exposed, but she had an almost girlish charm to her, her body looking nubile and supple.
Whether Kirsten noticed this or not could not be determined, but she certainly had her hands on Sophie's naked legs in very short order. She pressed them firmly together, before trapping them with tape, wrapping at least ten circuits around Sophie's calves, completely covering them from her ankles right to the bottom of her knees.
"Unnhh..." Sophie mewed, shifting her bare shoulders a little in her sleep.
"Sophie?" Kirsten started, startled reaching out in concern for her friend. But by the time her hand reached her, she was no longer anything but her captor. Making sure that the redhead was fully subdued, she took again the damp cloth she'd use to capture her in the first place, and pressed it over Sophie's mouth and nose.
For a moment, nothing happened. But after a few moments, Sophie's gorgeous, taped-up body began shifting slowly.
"Mmmmhhh...nnnmmmhhh..." the maiden whimpered softly, as she was forced into an even deeper, darker slumber. Her body undulated in useless resistance, before going completely still. She hadn't been able to fight in any significant way, and now she was bound, just as she'd feared: despite her powers, and her experience as a fighter, she hadn't really been any more difficult to capture than Ella or Talia - a damsel in distress, just like the others. And, as if to mark her as such, Kirsten lifted Sophie's head, and - brushing her wavy, red hair out of the way - wrapped tape over her mouth, and around the back of her head. A second, then a third circuit of the sticky plastic ensured that even if she'd been screaming for rescue, Sophie would be thoroughly muzzled.
"No!" Kirsten shrieked. Returning to her senses, she saw that Sophie was now bound as well, a damp cloth lying next to her, and that roll of tape weighing significantly less now than it had before. "I don't understand! What the fuck is going on?!" She was about to run to get her phone, dial 911, but something stopped her. She felt cold.
"My dear...my love...why do you continue to play false?" Every word hit Kirsten like a gong three inches from her ear, yet also made her whole body tingle with an almost pleasant chill. She was afraid, yet strangely relaxed at the same time. "Was it hard, my sweet girl? I'm so very sorry...why don't you rest now?"
"R...rest?"
Kirsten looked down. She'd left the drugged cloth next to Sophie, still moist with the chloroform she'd soaked it with. She picked it up. Kirsten didn't...think, exactly, but she knew what it was that she needed to do. Sitting with an almost prim neatness next to Ella and Talia, she placed the wet cloth on the arm next to her. She then drew her legs up, and quickly encircled her own ankles in tape, binding her legs, before placing her feet back on the floor.
It was a little awkward binding her own wrists, even in front of her.. Kirsten had to take hold of the roll with her teeth, after sticking some tape to her left wrist. She had to wind the tape round her very slowly to avoid dropping it, while also making a sort of rolling motion with her arms. It took four or five minutes until Kirsten was satisfied that she was sufficiently bound. Lastly, she pressed a small rectangle of tape over her own lips, calmly sealing her own voice.
That being done, she reached over with her bound hands, taking the cloth in her fingers, before pressing it over her own mouth and nose.
"Mmmhh...mmmhhhphhh..." she sighed, quite contentedly. She could feel her vision growing hazier, her body growing softer and more pliable. Her toned, fishnet-clad legs rubbed against each other, but she wasn't resisting. She was allowing herself to be drawn ever deeper into drugged slumber. Her shoulders sagged, her hands trembled. Partly because she could no longer hold onto the cloth, and partly out of weakness, Kirsten flopped back against the couch, letting the cloth lie over her mouth, allowing her hands to flop onto her lap.
She sat there for about a minute and a half, growing more and more numb, her slender legs eventually becoming totally still, her head drooping. The cloth slipped off, falling onto the couch. But even without the continual dose of the narcotising drug, Kirsten was now firmly under its control. Her eyes felt heavy, and she was making no attempt at fighting in any case. She was sitting very close to Talia, and the lovely young woman's sensual warmth was so very inviting. Kirsten shuffled a little closer with the last of her strength, letting her head come to rest on Talia's shoulder. A moment later, she was soundly asleep.
There they lay, undisturbed for quite some time, the four lovely, taped-up young women. Only the very softest, quietest moans from behind their gagged lips could be heard. The three on the couch rested limply against each other, while the drugged superheroine lay defeated at their feet. Yet despite her repose, there was parity of helplessness between them. Even Kirsten was just as much a captive as the others now.
It was only once all four of them were completely unconscious that the lights began to dim. It was so gradual that only Enhancegirl herself would have noticed it at first, but after a while it was almost too dark to see. There was a shriek of wind at the windows, rattling them fiercely. They seemed almost as if they would burst, as a slow coldness crept into the dark room, as if set free by the dying of the light. But when the windows did open, it was not with a crash or shattering of glass. They slowly, deliberately, allowed the night air within.
Something else entered as well. It was...not quite formless, yet not quite with shape. Something akin to a walking heat shimmer entered the cozy dorm room. It glided through the room until it came upon the four sleeping maidens. A sound came from it - if it was a voice, then it was a very distorted one. It seemed to settle over the four, as the last of the lights completely died.
"Mmmhhh...?" Ella whimpered. Just as it went pitch black, her catlike eyes happened to open slightly: she was taller than the others, and had drunk the least beer, so proportionately she'd received a much smaller dose of the drug than Talia had. "Whhmph?" She was not awake long enough even to register that she was bound. She was only awake enough to see a pair of burning orange eyes, and a smile which was just a little too...sharp to be human. "Mmmhh!"
Whether it was that the drug claimed her after all, whether it was that she fainted from shock, or whether it was something else entirely could not with certainty be determined - but a few seconds after her eyes opened, they fell shut once again. A few seconds after that, the room was plunged into absolute darkness. When the lights eventually switched back on, the room was completely empty...
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Mmmhhh...! Nnnnnmmmphhh!" When Sophie awoke, she was met with a chorus of gagged whimpers - indeed, that was what had stirred her awake in the first place.
"Mmmhh...?" the redhead moaned weakly. Her vision was swimming, her body felt heavy, and she was very confused. The events were mixing in her head. "Kirsten was looking at me...desperate...then I got captured...uhh..." She shook her head, trying to get her mind clear. She felt that she was sitting - she could remember that she'd been on the floor when she was drugged, so she knew that she'd been moved. She looked to her right, and saw Talia and Ella, bound in silver tape, writhing and moaning, their eyes wet with fear and helplessness as they saw themselves and their friends captives.
"No, not captured," Sophie thought, as her vision became clearer. "We've been kidnapped!" Indeed, they were no longer in the same place. Sophie looked around, and found herself in a...well, the word 'room' did not quite seem to cover it. It was a huge, lush chamber, like something straight out of a medieval painting. There were faded paintings on the wall, with thick golden frames. The room was lit, if Sophie's eyes were not mistaken - and they rarely were - by gaslight. It was dim at best, and Sophie could barely see. She tried to move - and found that she was bound hand and foot in sticky duct tape. "Oh, I do love being right, don't I..."
"Smm-phhh!" Talia was the first to notice that Sophie was awake. "Smm-phhh whhhdhhff hhphhnhhghh?" The caramel skinned damsel looked terribly frightened. Her mascara was a little smudged with tears, her cheeks were flush with the vain effort of her struggles against her bonds. Sophie certainly had more experience with this sort of situation, but she had no words of comfort to offer - and not just because she was gagged.
It was an extremely alarming situation, besides the simple fact of Sophie and her friends' capture. It didn't seem likely that Sophie and her friends had been targeted by chance. Sophie felt a twinge of guilt at the possibility that her double life had led the others into danger - though of course, in this town, anything was possible.
What was most perplexing, and most worrying, was that it had been Kirsten who had actually subdued them. The art history student was conspicuous by her absence. Only Talia, Sophie and Ella - who was practically trembling with fear - were there.
"Mmhhggmph!" Sophie called out, trying to get Talia's attention. She turned her back to her friend, and shook her taped-up arms. "Chn yhh rhhphh mhh hhrrmff?" she said, trying to communicate despite her sticky impediment.
"Hh thhng shh..." Talia replied. She tried to focus on doing something practical - it would stop her being so afraid at any rate. She turned as well, and tried to get her hands to Sophie's. The redhead was tied in such a way that her hands were virtually useless.
As Talia fumbled at the tape keeping Sophie restrained, she considered for a moment having Talia just remove her gag instead, then turning her powers on. She didn't dismiss this immediately, but she did in the end dismiss it. Her secret was not more important than her friends' safety, but there was no guarantee that, with her powers, she'd be able to free herself. Besides, it was still possible that her captors didn't know about Enhancegirl: if they found out, that could cause more problems than her powers would solve.
Ella watched as her two friends struggled to free each other, and noted with some dismay that she was much more lightly restrained than they, yet she felt utterly powerless, while they fought to escape.
"Is...is this what it's like to be tied up?" she thought, her cheeks reddening slightly. Fairly frequent were the nights where Ella had imagined what it might feel like to be someone's captive. She'd read interviews with superheroines who'd talked about being captured. She remembered the report of a heroine named Falcona, who'd been describing how she'd first met her husband, the hero Caduceus, after he'd rescued her from the clutches of the No Law Gang: "It was awful - they'd bundled me up from head to toe in ropes, and all I could do was lie there and writhe around. I felt so embarrassed, all wrapped up like that..but I must confess, when Caduceus turned up all bloodied and battered to save me - well, I felt a little like a princess." Ella had been in company when she'd first read that; she'd had to excuse herself.
Yet now, Ella was having a taste of that experience herself, of being a captive. While she was hardly bundled up from head to toe, she still felt the acute shame and embarrassment of her helplessness. Her heart pounded from the fear, the humiliation of being stolen away against her will...yet she wondered if it was only fear making her heart thump.
As for Talia and Sophie, they were not making a great deal of headway. Talia's fingers were nimble, what with her being an engineer, but they were also shaky, and working blind. She just couldn't find where the tape's end was, and it was too thick to just tear. In fact, her struggles were in vain. The end of the tape, which she could have pulled on to begin unwinding it, was stuck between Sophie's arms and her back, and was therefore inaccessible. But before that became obvious, something else stopped them.
A large, ornately decorated door began to creak. The very sound of it reverberated through the three captives, and made them stop what they were doing. A chill began to creep into the air, and even a hint of fog.
"What's...what's going on?" Talia thought. "I feel...weird..."
"Something's...something feels really wrong," Sophie thought. "I feel...like my heart's getting colder." Sophie had seen quite enough strangeness for her next thought not to be an irrational leap of logic: "The person who caught us...they're not a normal human." Under other circumstances, she might have made a wisecrack about the frequency of her perils at the hands of superpowered maniacs - but something was chilling the humour out of her.
The door opened fully, and a beautiful young woman entered in a long, dark grey dress, done in an almost Regency style: silky, feminine, low cut and shoulder-baring, but in a fashion that suggested an almost royal elegance. The young woman herself was lovely, her light brown hair done up in a very fetching manner, her face impeccably made up, her lightly tanned skin looking smooth, caressable even. Her brown eyes were half-closed, and she moved strangely, almost robotically.
"Krrffthhnn!"
Indeed, this was Kirsten - and it was quite clear, instantly, that she was no mastermind.
"It's...it's like she's been brainwashed!" Even to Talia and Ella - though it was Talia who actually vocalised the thought - it seemed the only explanation for the bizarre behaviour of their sweet, reliable friend. In fact, both of them immediately thought of Hypnotra, the woman who'd taken control of the Indigo Titan. The only reason that Sophie didn't think of her is because, unlike Talia and Ella, she knew that Hypnotra's powers had been destroyed.
"Krrffthhnn?" Sophie called out. "Can she even hear us?" If she could, she wasn't reacting. She didn't seem to be doing anything at all. She was just standing there. She turned her head to the door, and the others' eyes followed her.
Before she entered, the captives knew she was coming. It was not that the room got colder, more that the chill that was there already seemed to wind itself around them. Each maiden felt a particular coldness around their throats. For this reason, they were not startled exactly when the tall, slender, impossibly pale woman entered - but their fear certainly grew.
There was a sharp, confident tap each time her heeled boots thumped against the wooden floor. Other than that, a strange silence seemed to emanate from her, choking sound, and dulling the low light. She was dressed very, very strangely, in a sort of ruffled, red and mauve ensemble that was an oddly appropriate counterpart to Kirsten's outfit - the Lord to her Lady, perhaps. Her hair, dyed a deliberately artificial white as if to mimic a Georgian wig, was done in a long ponytail. White hair, deathly white skin - it all made her eyes burn all the more terribly, bright amber, like molten metal. She smiled at them, a long, slow smile.
They saw them. They all saw them, but none of them were willing to believe.
"Are...are those?"
"Fangs?"
"No...no, no, no, there's weird and then there's just bullshit!" Sophie gaped. "She's...but...there's no such thing!" She gaped. "I don't give a fuck what day of the year it is, there's no such thing!"
"Oh, Kirsten, my sweet..." the woman said. She spoke strangely, pronouncing Kirsten's name 'Keer-sten'. "They're so very lovely..." She approached the three bound maidens, putting her hands to her mouth. "Oh my word!" She spoke with a disturbing level of passion. She came closer, seeming to glide rather than walk, a light cloak of fog surrounding her.
"Such treasures..." She leaned in, and stroked Ella's cheek with her index finger.
"Mmmph! Mmmphh!" Ella mewed, her eyes going wide as saucers. "Sh...she's touching me!" She expected the woman's touch to be as icy as the fog surrounding her...but it wasn't. It was warm. Ella blushed, and turned away.
"So demure...as tall and supple as a sycamore..." She stroked Ella again, this time with the back of her hand. Ella felt a strange doziness begin to take hold of her, all the stranger because it vanished the instant the woman took her hand away.
"And this one," the woman said, resting her hands on Talia's bare, light-brown thighs. "Such easy sensuality...so inviting...so soft..."
"Mmmgghhmphh!" Talia complained. "Don't you talk to me like that you - you...you..." She too felt that strange warmth spreading from her silky legs up throughout her body. She shook her head in wordless protest - more like a plea, really - for her captor not to feel her up, but when she met those burning eyes, she just couldn't look away. "So...so bright...so pretty..." She shook her head. "What? What the hell was that? What just happened to me?" Her captor smiled with an almost girlish cheekiness, and winked, before taking her hands off Talia's legs. As she did, the odd feeling went away - but Talia felt as if she'd somehow become weaker.
When the woman reached Sophie, the redhead had prepared herself in advance. She would not be petulant, or 'feisty', or childishly defiant. She would look her captor in the face, and she would not be cowed, even if she was physically helpless.
"I've faced weirder than you," she thought. "I've faced worse than you. I'm not going to be intimidated by some pasty freak with a hard on for historical re-enactment!"
And indeed, Sophie was not intimidated. But her captor did not seem to be trying to intimidate her. She knelt down in front of her, their eyes almost exactly level.
"Such a rare beauty...so slender...so nubile..." She reached out for Sophie's pale legs, but the redhead kicked out. Her captor caught her by the calves, however, and didn't even seem to register Sophie's attempted attack. "Such long, smooth legs..." She ran her hand over Sophie's taped up calves, up to her creamy thighs. "Oh? I feel...these thighs have been caressed many times in the last few days." She leaned closer, and sniffed, a long, slow inhale.
"Let me see..." She moved higher up Sophie's body, smelling her carefully, with a disturbing intimacy. "Yes...a lover...I smell her all over you." She smiled. "I'm so happy that this century has more or less escaped that ludicrous homosexuality hang-up...only the human race would choose to deny itself so much...pleasure." She looked Sophie in the eye. "I smell pleasure all over you, young lover."
Sophie had not been prepared for this. "Is...is she bullshitting or...can she actually tell?" She felt very exposed all of a sudden, and not just because of her skimpy outfit. Indeed, she had spent the last few days wrapped in Mariko's arms whenever she'd had an instant to spare. It was nothing that she was ashamed of...but it was private. It undercut her attempt at strength, so that when her captor turned her head aside and smelt her slender neck, she not only failed to be defiant - she outright whimpered.
"So...unhhh..." the woman moaned. "Gods above, you're...mmm..." Her hands gently, almost tenderly stroked Sophie's bare, white shoulders and the upper part of her chest. Sophie assumed that her hand would reach down towards her bosom, but she seemed much more interested in her shoulders and her throat. "So beautiful...so delicious...oh!" She drew back, and to Sophie's astonishment, she saw tears streaming down her face. "Oh, providence has been truly kind to me this day!" She clutched her hands to her heart. "Such beauty...such pristine femininity..." She looked towards Kirsten. "Thank you, my wonderful puppet," she said, beckoning her over.
As Kirsten came closer, the woman swept her into her arms, and kissed her with an earnest passion. Were it not for the fact that Kirsten herself had that strange look in her eye, of helpless desperation, it would have looked like a perfectly genuine kiss.
"I can't read her," Sophie thought. "Is she deranged, or is this some kind of act to freak us out?"
"I know I ask much of you, my sweet puppet," she said. "But you must know how...difficult it is for one like me to move about in the world. Had you not come into my life..." She stroked Kirsten's face. "I love you, Kirsten."
"What the hell is wrong with her?" Talia thought. "Is...is this real? This has got to be a nightmare...even real supervillains aren't this messed up in the head..." Their captor turned, and Kirsten turned with her. By sheer chance, she happened to look right at Talia. "Oh, baby," Talia thought, "what's she done to you?" Kirsten saw Talia's look of pity, and it stirred something inside her.
"I...I..." she murmured, as her eyes regained their customary brightness. "He - HELP MEEE!!" she screamed. "Please, please help me! She controls me...drai - MMPHH!!"
With mantis-like speed, their captor's hand snapped over Kirsten's mouth.
"Nmmmphhh! NNMMMPHH!!" Kirsten whimpered, and her body twitched, as though it was trying and failing to move. Her moans were met by the moans of her friends, and they began writhing desperately, agonised at seeing Kirsten in such anguish.
"Lllhhdd hhrr ghhh, yhhh fhhkk!!" Sophie growled.
"Quiet!" the woman hissed, baring her fangs. "This won't do, this won't do at all..." She pulled Kirsten in close, forcefully this time. "My sweet...my puppet..." She put her hand around Kirsten's neck, and for a moment the others were afraid she'd throttle her, but her grip was quite soft. "Shhhhh...shhhhhh...be still...be still..."
"No! No...nnn...no..." Her eyes fell shut. The moment they did, she was back under her master's spell.
"Nnnnmmphhh...nnnmmphhh..." Ella mewed. There was nothing remotely enticing about this. Her cheeks were wet with tears as she saw Kirsten brought back under the woman's control. Talia too was distraught, though she had just a little more self-control. Only Sophie realised the good in what they'd just seen.
"Her control...she's nowhere near as powerful as Mesmeredith. Either it can be shaken off, or she has to recharge it." She was suddenly filled with pride for her friend. "She's fighting...she's still fighting. Who knows how long it's been...but she isn't giving up." She regretted that it was only in desperate times that one saw people's true resilience, but she was glad to have seen Kirsten's. "I'll save you, okay? I'm not going to let you be this freak's...plaything!"
"Oh, how uncouth...I do apologise, my beautiful young guests," the woman said. "This really isn't observing the proper forms, is it? I -" She froze, a look of horror coming over her. "Oh my! I - I haven't introduced myself!" She stood to attention, before offering a low bow.
"I am Erin Kastellas, of the seventy-seventh generation. I bid you welcome to my home, honoured guests."
The three stared blankly at Erin. If she'd been trying to impress them, it hadn't worked - but it had calmed them down by sheer mystification at their captor's continued oddness. Now that they were less worked up, Erin looked right at them, her burnished orange eyes open strangely wide.
"My dear ones," she said, her voice taking on a slow, deliberate ponderousness. "Forgive me for bringing you here so...forcefully...but I'm in such desperate need of company, you see." She smiled at them, again showing those fangs, fangs which suggested so much that simply could not be. "You must be so tired..."
And the three found that, as soon as she said this, they did begin to feel tired. Their angry or frightened whimpers became softer, more subdued.
"So tired...wouldn't it be good to rest...just for a little while?"
"She's right..." Ella thought. "So tired...I...can just rest..."
"Nmmph!" Sophie growled, startling the others, and breaking the reveries. "Come on, is it that hard to figure out what she's doing? Oh, man, I know this is their first rodeo, but when someone starts talking to you about how 'tired you must be' they're trying to -"
Sophie's thought was interrupted, when she realised that Erin was looking straight at her.
"My creamy-skinned young lover..." she said, her orange eyes burning into Sophie's. "So fierce...a flame as bright as the red of your hair..."
"Mmmphh! Nnngrrhhmphh!" Sophie complained, trying to break the stare, but finding herself incapable of so doing.
"It must be so tiring...so exhausting...don't you want to be quenched sometimes?"
"Mmmhh...nnhhh..." the redhead whimpered, but she realised with dismay that she was falling under Erin's spell. "Have...to...fight!"
"So fierce...but so soft...mmm...just like a slinky little cat on a summer's day...hhmmm..." She was speaking with a very deliberate rhythm, and Sophie found herself caught in it, like ocean waves lapping against her. "So warm, and sleepy...wouldn't you like to curl up somewhere...drop...right...off..."
"Mmmhhh..." Sophie mewed. "Drop...right off...no! God damn it I can't...can't...can't let...this...oohh..." She found those eyes again, which seemed to swirl in an infinite spiral, forcing her will to dissipate.
"I'm sure your lover would look after you, wouldn't she? You could put your head in her lap...rest it against her thighs as she strokes your hair..."
"Mmmhhhhhh..." the redhead sighed, beginning to sway like a leaf, but never breaking Erin's gaze. "So...sleepy...but I had to...do something...didn't I?"
Erin walked closer, and knelt down just in front of Sophie, continuing to stare.
"Imagine...imagine yourself...swooning. Your legs buckle, fall out from under you. You become hot... your eyelids flutter...the whole world seems to be sinking away. You fall...and she catches you..."
"Mhh..." Sophie was now imagining this very distinctly. Imagining herself growing weak, sleepy and limp, imagining Mariko's slender, arms catching her by her shoulders. "Mmmm...I'd...I'd be so vulnerable..."
"She'd lift you up into her arms, protecting you, holding you...oh, she's holding you just like a bride! 'It's alright,' she whispers. 'Just sleep, my love...I'll protect you...just sleep.'"
"Is...is that okay, Mariko?" Sophie thought, imagining hands on her thighs, imagining her head resting against her beautiful girlfriend, who held her so tenderly, so lovingly. "I...I like it when you...take care of me, sweetie...I'll just...ooohhhhh...I'll just sleep..." With these last thoughts, Sophie slumped to the side, completely unconscious.
"Shhphhh!" Talia gasped. She shuffled against her, trying to shake her awake, but it wasn't working. "Mph?" Startled by a cold shiver that ran up her spine, she turned around - and found herself caught by a pair of bright, amber eyes.
"Mmmhhh..." Next to Talia, the tall, delicate freshman was also being quickly entranced. "So pretty...so bright..." she thought - though the word 'thought' was perhaps giving Ella a little too much credit. Her thinly covered legs shifted against each other, but only slightly. Talia was struggling a little more forcefully, but she was slowly sinking into the same level of passivity as Ella.
"Such sweet young ladies," Erin said. "Such softness...such tender, maidenly affection between you...so warm..." Indeed, the damsels, as they writhed slowly next to each other, could feel an inviting warmth from the other. It was not a lustful warmth - not exactly, anyway. As their bare shoulders inadvertently stroked, they felt a great wave of comfort, like a light, but soothing blanket being laid over them. "There we are...feeling so calm, now...so tired..." Erina drew out the last word almost like a yawn.
"N...no...getting...getting so...sleepy..." Talia felt her eyelids drooping. She tried to look away, but she couldn't. She felt Sophie fall even more closely against her, the redhead entirely defeated. Talia had no idea that Sophie Scott was also the heroine Enhancegirl, but somehow she felt that, with Sophie having been subdued, they were all defenceless.
Ella, for her part, just stared into her captor's eyes. She had given up the notion of resistance almost from the moment she'd realised she was bound, and she allowed herself to sink into the slumber into which she'd been invited. The tall, willowy maiden could feel her thoughts slowing, her body getting still. She didn't try to stop it: she was already helpless - why bother fighting?
"Fall back, my loves," Erin said, quivering with pleasure as she watched the two damsels fall under her spell. "It's so easy..."
"So...so easy..." the two repeated in their minds.
"Your eyelids...getting so heavy...it's just impossible to keep them open..."
"So heavy..." they thought. They were no longer just shifting around involuntarily, they were actively settling against each other, Talia resting her head on Ella's shoulder.
"That's right...you're both so comfortable...so soft..."
"Soft..." the two maidens thought, feeling each other's skin, their legs now touching as well. It was perilously relaxing, and they had no way of escaping the sensation.
Erin knew that she had the pair on the very edge of unconsciousness. Smiling to herself with acute satisfaction, she thought just how lucky she was to have such fine young ladies in her company. But there were...formalities to observe before she could enjoy them fully.
"Now, my dear ones," she said, never once having blinked since she'd started addressing them, "you'v earned your rest, I think." Whatever sounds there had been in the room, other than her voice, they vanished as she said the final world which sealed their fates:
"Sleeeeeeep..."
"Mph..."
"Mhhhh..." With a mew, and a sigh, Talia and Ella were subsumed in Erin's hypnotic gaze, and surrendered their consciousness, dropping into slumber like dew from a leaf. All three were now fast asleep. Erin observed them for a little while, watched the slow, somnolent undulations of their breasts as they breathed, the way their hair brushed against each other's shoulders. Struck by the beauty of the tableaux she'd created, she almost regretted breaking it. Almost.
Coming right up to her captives with two long strides, she took Talia and Ella by the backs of their necks, and lifted them up to their feet. This was done confidently, but not roughly, and took more strength than it looked like Erin possessed. She ran her hand down their backs, allowing their heads to flop forward. When her hands reached their legs, she gingerly stroked the tops of their thighs, before seizing them by their waists, and throwing them both over her shoulders.
The two captives flopped helplessly where they were placed, their contrasting figures - one willowy, one curvy - equally passive and limp over Erin's body. She gripped them tightly, keeping them securely in her grasp, though the thought of harming even one square centimetre of their skin was abhorrent to their captor. She began carrying the two limp maidens away, the door of the chamber swinging open as she approached it.
"Kirsten, my sweet? Bring the other, would you?" She didn't need an answer to know that Kirsten would obey.
The gorgeous Filipina did as she was commanded, moving over to Sophie and, taking her by her shoulders, lifting the slinky redhead up to her feet.
"Mghmphh..." Sophie whimpered softly, her head falling back, exposing her delicate throat. Kirsten kept one arm on the green-eyed damsel's torso, while another slid down to the backs of her legs. A skilled tennis player, Kirsten did not have a remotely muscular figure, but she was quite strong, and she was taller than her friend. For this reason, it was not overly difficult to lift Sophie straight up into her arms.
For a moment, Sophie dangled there, her legs completely exposed as her dress slid down, her head falling limply back. She looked so delicate and fragile, an abducted, hypnotised young beauty, entirely powerless before her bizarre captor's machinations. Yet she did not fear as she was carried away - her kidnapper had not wanted her to. As Kirsten, the poor girl just as much a captive as the other three, carried her away, Sophie was dreaming of something quite different, prompted both by what Kirsten was doing, and by how she'd been hypnotised:
She imagined herself scooped up into Mariko's arms, carried easily, feeling feminine and cared for as she was taken wherever her lover desired. In the real world, she blushed, as in her dream she noticed that she was dressed in a long, white dress...
"Mmmphhh..." she sighed, sweetly. Yet her romantic, even saccharine fantasy merely kept her tame and subdued, as she was stolen away into the same darkness that had claimed the others. Erin was not finished with her yet...