"Dangerous and Sweet"

"We... we really have to stop meeting like this, Candi." The words came out with slight difficulty; it was hard for Shadowstryke to talk with her mouth watering so much. She swallowed hard, but it didn't do much good--her eyes kept fixating on the bright pink lollipop that Candi Kane kept licking with her long, dexterous tongue, until before she knew it Song Jeong-Hui was wiping away a trickle of drool from the corner of her mouth again. She blinked heavily, trying to refocus her scattered thoughts, but the very air of the repurposed chemical plant was sweet with the caramel scent of cooking sugar, lulling her back to an almost childlike state of contented bliss. Against any other enemy, she would have been done for.

But Candi Kane was never one for fisticuffs. "Oh, I know!" she squeaked, her high voice dripping with the affected lilt of a children's show host or a bad actress doing her impersonation of Glinda the Good Witch. "I do keep trying, I promise, but something always seems to happen to lead me away from the straight and narrow! It really is so very good of you to keep up your efforts to reform me, Miss Song. I can't think what I'd do without you to show up and teach me the error of my wicked ways." Jeong-Hui winced internally. It never stopped disturbing her that the closest thing she had to an arch-nemesis already knew her secret identity, even if Candi had never used that information against her.

Probably. Possibly. Maybe. Shadowstryke had to admit, there were times when her memories of her battles against Candi got a little bit... hazy, as if a tiny bit of the cotton candy fluff that her enemy used got stuck to Jeong-Hui's brain and gummed up her thoughts into a sticky sludge. She always won, she knew that from the arrest records the next day, but sometimes the details of how exactly she tracked down the notorious bank robber and defeated her specially concocted candy traps got kind of fuzzy. Suspiciously fuzzy, if she was totally honest. She should probably mention it to her girlfriends the next time they were all together, see if there was maybe something they could do to test... to test....

Shadowstryke suddenly realized she'd just been standing there, drool dripping down her chin, for almost a full minute. "Um, I, uhhh... I'm afraid it's time for another lesson, Candi. The kind of lesson where you go to prison for six to ten years. With time off for good behavior." Not that Candi would spend much time in jail. She always seemed to have something up her sleeve in case of capture, from acid-filled jawbreakers to razor-sharp rock candy to an animated marshmallow golem in one particularly memorable case. It seemed like Jeong-Hui couldn't go three months without having to track her down to her latest lair and sub--subdue--subdued--sub, sub, sub--

"Oh, my behavior is always good, Miss Song!" Candi burbled, breaking into Shadowstryke's looping, muddled train of thought. "I'm a very sweet person, aren't I?" She gave the lollipop another long, sensuous lick, flicking her tongue up and down the sugary surface until Jeong-Hui found herself shivering in sympathetic pleasure. She nodded vacantly, even going so far as to try to take another step closer to the seductive woman in the red-and-white striped outfit before realizing once again that her boots were stuck to the floor by an agglomeration of thick taffy. How... how had she forgotten that?

She blinked again, and this time it felt like her eyelids were gummed together by that same sweet, sticky warmth. "I... sweet, yes, you're very... ummmm...." Jeong-Hui fumbled for something witty to say, some clever quip that would show Candi Kane that Shadowstryke was still in control of her wits and the situation. "Sweet," she mumbled at last, her empty brain unable to come up with any words not supplied by the bubbly blonde in front of her. Slowly, groggily, she stepped out of her boots and over the patch of taffy, determined to end the situation before whatever was befuddling her mind got any worse.

Candi gave her lollipop another lick, and Jeong-Hui's volition slowly faded into vacant, captivated fascination. "That's so nice of you to say!" she squealed, clapping the heels of her hands together in excitement. "And I think you're sweet, too! You're just as sweet as candy, pretty girl. As sweet...." She licked again, the tip of her tongue flicking rapidly up and down against the slick sugar. "As candy." Shadowstryke whimpered involuntarily, the motion stirring not exactly memories but the trace impressions left behind even after memory itself failed. She'd been through this before, she realized. She'd been through this before and she... she'd forgotten each and every time.

This was a trap. This was a trap and she'd fallen for it, just like always. Jeong-Hui sighed, the realization only deepening her sense of helplessness.

She took another step forward, and fell crashing through a pane of opaque sugar glass into a deep well of sticky syrup. It clung to her tactical armor, weighing her down, and she understood intuitively that the only way to escape was to divest herself of the dangerously heavy padding. She slapped at the emergency quick-release latches, shedding the kevlar outfit with a haste born of long hours drilling with WildRose. And more than a few times when she just really needed to get naked for WildRose in a hurry, but for some reason Shadowstryke didn't want to let herself think about that right now.

She hauled herself up and out of the slick, sticky goo, clad only in the dark gray body stocking she wore under her armor. "I. You. You won't, won't get... a, away. With this."  Shadowstryke tried her best to project strength and confidence in her tones, even though she didn't really feel it at all; somehow she hoped if she could only convince the villainess that she wasn't slipping away into sweet, lust-filled oblivion, then she might be able to convince herself as well. It seemed like a faint, futile hope--she was swaying like a punch-drunk boxer, and the taste of tart raspberry syrup clung to her tongue and made her mouth water uncontrollably with desire. But it was all she had.

Her defiance only amused Candi Kane, though. "Oh, of course I won't, silly girl!" she giggled, lounging back onto a giant marshmallow with her legs akimbo. "Not with a diligent, devoted hero like you on the case. I'm sure that by the time this night is over, you'll doubtless have defeated me despite all my... sinister wiles...." Her fingers tugged at a concealed flap, peeling away a section of her costume to expose her soft pink labia. Shadowstryke's mouth watered even harder at the sight. "And taken me right back to jail where I belong for all my naughty crimes."

Shadowstryke tried to take another step forward, but she found that the sticky syrup had hardened on contact with the air. And it had seeped into every last fiber of her body stocking. "It's so lucky for Samson City that they have such a dedicated protector, isn't it? I'm sure if one of those other heroes came up against me, they'd wind up with their minds fluffed into cotton candy and their bodies all bound up in sticky toffee and their wills subjugated to mine. But you're not one of those other heroes, are you, Miss Song? You're not... oh, who's that other silly girl, mm? The clever one who hides behind all those computer screens?"

Shadowstryke strained as hard as she could, flexing every single muscle until the thick shell of hard candy surrounding her body cracked and crazed. "I, I don't... I don't know who you're talking about," she muttered, tensing again and again until the layer of sugar shattered. It took all but a few shreds of her costume with it, but she didn't care. She had to finish this quickly before Candi made her say something she--and the woman she loved--would regret.

Candi's bright blue eyes hardened a little, but her expression remained as bright and bubbly and full of innocent cheer. "Oh, you don't?" she asked, giving her lollipop another lick as she began to tease her pussy with her fingers. A tiny grunt of arousal escaped Shadowstryke's lips. "I thought the two of you knew one another. Smarte or Snarke or something. A very clever girl with all sorts of useful information... and I'm sure she could be very sweet too, if she only had the chance. And what do sweet girls do?" There was an expectant tone to the question. Jeong-Hui found that she couldn't stop herself from answering.

"Sweet girls make more sweet girls," she murmured meekly. She took a hesitant step forward, but the strength went out of her muscles and she collapsed onto her hands and knees. The sweet, tart taste of syrup was everywhere now, cloying her thoughts into a sticky, gooey mess that she couldn't possibly untangle. She crawled forward, determined to reach her opponent. Candi never fought back. Jeong-Hui wouldn't even need a single punch to end this if she could only get to her.

The villainess clapped her hands again, and Shadowstryke felt her whole body shudder in ecstasy as the other woman's approval washed over her. "That's just what a sweet girl like you should say!" she cooed, beckoning Shadowstryke forward and spreading her legs a little wider. "So why don't you tell me all about those other girls you know. The ones who are so, so very sweet, just like you. Even if they don't know it yet." There was nothing but innocent curiosity on her smiling face, but Jeong-Hui could see the hunger behind those cheerful blue eyes. Even if she couldn't resist it.

She racked her brains, trying despite her feeble, fading awareness of the magnitude of her betrayal to come up with something, anything to tell Candi about the other heroes she knew... but there was nothing. She couldn't find a single name inside her blissfully blank head that wasn't a codename, couldn't uncover a single mental image that didn't wear a mask. "I... I'm sorry, ma'am," Jeong-Hui heard herself whimper, her voice contrite and pleading and utterly subjugated to the supervillain's will. "I w-want to tell you, I really do. But I... I don't know. I really don't know."

Candi's bright bubbly smile crooked into a rueful grin. "You really don't, do you?" she murmured, as much to herself as to the glassy-eyed and quivering woman kneeling at her feet. "Such a versatile gift you have. Moreso even than you know, it appears. Search your mind all you like, but the things you don't want found are hidden even from you." She sighed, her hands flexing into fists in momentary frustration. The mere presence of her anger felt like a physical blow to Jeong-Hui's puppyish mind.

"Oh, well," she chirruped, dismissing her feelings back beyond the veil of apparent cheer. "There'll be another chance, won't there, sweetie pie? The next time I escape from jail, you'll be right back on my trail, ready to track me down... and that programming of yours will be a little more deeply sunk into your candyfloss brain, eroding whatever unconscious resistance is keeping all your secrets safe and sound. We'll dance this little dance again. And your surrender will taste oh so much more delicious when it finally comes." Candi beckoned Jeong-Hui forward, resting her hand against the back of the submissive pet's sugar-coated hair and guiding her in to lick.

"And your friends don't suspect a thing. Not when you win every time. Not when I'm always the one in... ohhh, that's nice... in jail, while you go back to your happy little hero life and beat all the bad guys. You're doing so well, my darling girl. You're pleasing me s-so well. K-keep going, yesss, just like that...." Candi's words dissolved into moans for a little while. And Jeong-Hui had never heard anything so sweet.

THE END