"Do you know what it's like to wait for a promise to be fulfilled?" The words swam up at WildRose out of a thick red mist that was all too familiar to the vigilante by now. They echoed inside her head as if her skull had been hollowed out while she slept, reverberating in the silence inside her mind for a long moment before WildRose finally managed to summon up the brainpower to kickstart her sluggish mind into gear. When she did, she instinctively lashed out... but the thick leather restraints binding her wrists prevented her from moving more than a couple of inches. She fluttered her eyes open, wincing as her dilated pupils reacted to the light, to see that she'd been bound hand and foot to a medical examination table in a room she didn't recognize. That was when WildRose began to get the idea that this might be a little more serious than her usual predicaments.

Her only advantage was that the woman who'd captured her had an even deeper obsession with the sound of her own voice than she did with capturing female superheroes. "Do you understand the depths of longing that a soul can achieve when the reward for years of patient effort is always right there in front of you? Tantalizing you with its intoxicating closeness, whispering to you of the joyous ecstasy that you can reach simply by a single act of infidelity? And the journey always seems to be one step longer, the labors stretching out past the point of endurance. I had my moments of doubt, pretty girl. I am devoted, but I am only human." At this rate, WildRose was pretty sure she had time to learn macrame before Sangria got around to drugging her again.

Still, it was more than a little disconcerting that WildRose didn't remember how she'd been drugged in the first place. Sangria wasn't even supposed to know her own name anymore, let alone enough information to make up a batch of her special will-sapping drugs and catch WildRose off-guard with them. After their last close call with the seductive villainess, Professor Psyche had supposedly mindwiped her all the way back to the days when Florinda Montero was a humble chemist without any idea of the possibilities inherent in her research. How had she fought off the abilities of the most gifted telepath in the world?

It was a question WildRose could answer later. Right now, her only chance of getting out of this with her brains intact was to get free of these cuffs. While Sangria continued her rant, WildRose carefully twisted her wrist around inside the restraints to release the concealed lockpick in her glove. "And to be human is to want," Sangria monologued on, seemingly oblivious to the superhero's actions. She was completely caught up in her own triumphs, living the dream of finally explaining herself to a literally captive audience. "I have wanted you for so long, pretty girl. Ever since the day of my discovery, the day when I realized that nothing at all was beyond my grasp. Who wouldn't desire a woman like you, one whose beauty shines like a fire in the night? You stood on the rooftops like a goddess, darling, and all I ever wanted was to cease being beneath you."

It was a pretty good speech, probably one of the better ones WildRose had been forced to sit through, but her mind wasn't really on critiquing it. She had more important things to think about... like the lockpick that had gone missing from the concealed pouch inside her glove. WildRose stared at her wrist in confusion, struggling to remember what she could have done with it. She knew it was there--she'd had to escape from too many restraints and shackles to even think of leaving it behind when she went on missions. And she... she must have been on a mission when Sangria caught up with her, because she was still wearing her costume.

Most of it, at least. WildRose looked down again as her eyes finally finished adjusting to the light, wincing in dismay at the impromptu alterations that left her chest and crotch entirely exposed. That was going to make getting home an adventure once she got out of this, to say nothing of what her partners would say about it.

Her partners... WildRose suddenly went pale, her head whipping from side to side in a desperate attempt to see as much of the room as possible. It hadn't even occurred to her before now that if Sangria had regained her memories, then Sharpe and Shadowstryke were in as much danger as she was. After all, Sangria struck at them last time through Sharpe's secret identity--if she remembered that WildRose was Penelope Powell and Sharpe was Sarra Rabinowitz, then it surely wouldn't take too much effort to determine that Shadowstryke was Song Jeong-Hui. And Sangria wouldn't repeat the mistake she made last time. She'd collect the whole damned set.

Before she could get a good look, though, Sangria stepped in front of WildRose and looked down at her with an expression of amused exasperation on your face. "You are listening, my darling?" she asked, leaning down until the curls of her chestnut brown hair brushed against WildRose's cheek. "I'm not boring you, am I? Only I presumed you'd like a little time to think over your situation, and I figured I may as well give you a few answers to the questions undoubtedly on your befuddled mind." She let out a little chuckle. "After all, I'm in no hurry. Not anymore."

"Why not?" WildRose asked absently, craning her neck around to try to see the room beyond her captor. "Let's face it, based on your track record you've got about five minutes before I get out of this and kick your sorry ass." Her light tone belied the sinking feeling she felt in her stomach when she finally saw Sharpe and Shadowstryke on the far end of the room, almost unrecognizable under the layers of lipstick that covered their bodies like graffiti. Drugged wax in virtually every hue and color spelled out phrases like 'HAPPY GIRL', 'OWNED AND OBEDIENT', 'MINDLESS FUCKTOY', and other obscene descriptions. The two women stood at attention, staring vacantly into space with beatific smiles on their painted faces. They clearly didn't notice WildRose at all.

"Ah yes," Sangria purred, trailing her fingers over WildRose's erect nipples. "My many defeats. The trials of my soul. Time after time, I chased after you, eager to possess that perfect body and that beautiful will. And time after time, I struggled--not with you, darling blossom, not with you at all. No, I struggled with temptation." She sighed, her eyes going distant for a moment as she stared back into the past. "Do you remember the first time we fought?" she asked. "That night in the early spring when I lured you to the park with the promise of freedom for some vapid socialite?"

WildRose pursed her lips, trying to pretend she was lost in thought and not trying to activate the emergency distress beacon tucked into her mouth between her cheek and gum. "Not particularly," she said, her dismissive tone hiding an increasingly panicked frustration. The tiny device was gone. Had Sharpe given its existence away? Had WildRose? The gap in her memory was beginning to worry her more and more. How much had happened while she was lost in helpless bliss, succumbing to the delicious pleasure of Sangria's poisons and letting her mind slip away into drowsy obedience? And why would Sangria ever let her wake again after what happened--

"Oh," WildRose murmured, a wave of sudden understanding sweeping over her. "Right." She blushed, finally realizing that this wasn't an unfamiliar room at all. It was just one she hadn't seen since her first battle with Sangria all those years ago. They were in Florinda Montero's old laboratory, the one where she discovered the final piece of the puzzle that turned her psychoactive chemicals into an irresistible cocktail of will-destroying bliss. A trace element of xenonite, less than one part per million but enough to supercharge every other compound into an overwhelming drug.

"That's right, my little rose," Sangria cooed, her fingers finding WildRose's smooth, shaven pussy and beginning to lightly tease its folds. "The first time we met, I managed to catch you off guard with my lipstick and send you spiraling down into the utter peace and contentment of surrender to my will. But I was young and naive, inexperienced with the drug, and I underestimated the dose I would need to hold you. You woke here, in this room, and freed yourself from your shackles before I could capture you again. And do you remember what you did next?"

WildRose squirmed under Sangria's touch, hoping that it looked genuine and not like an attempt to work open the pouch on her utility belt that contained the tear gas bombs. It wouldn't be much fun to be right in the middle of the gas, but at least it might conceal her efforts to escape. "I, um, I took you to jail," she said, trying to keep the other woman talking. Anything to delay the next dose of drugged lipstick. Anything to hold onto her free will long enough to escape.

"Not exactly, my dear," Sangria said, a chuckle in her voice as her caresses grew more forceful. "You were a young heroine then as well, but you'd already made a few connections with others like yourself. And you knew from observing my other victims that my kisses didn't simply lull you into an enchanted sleep. You worried what I might have done to your mind while you were lost in the wine-dark seas of my control, and so you called upon a secret band of heroes you'd encountered. Professor Psyche and her Utopians."

WildRose froze, her brow furrowing in genuine confusion. "I... I don't remember that," she said, almost as much to herself as to Sangria. She certainly relied on Professor Psyche now; with as many hypnotists and telepaths and brainwashers as she fought, it was important to get her brain disinfected every once in a while just to keep herself from turning into a sleeper agent for the forces of evil. But she hadn't started doing that until... until....

WildRose didn't know, she suddenly realized. She didn't know when she'd started opening her mind up to the most powerful telepath in the world without fear or hesitation. She had absolutely no idea when or why or how.

"That was the day," Sangria said, her eyes shining with triumph at the sight of WildRose's confusion. "That was the day you were promised to me, beautiful girl. You and your pretty girlfriends and all the others. All I needed to do was humble myself every now and again, clash with you or another heroine in some contest of wills or other that left me defeated and remanded to my patron's custody once more. And of course you... and Lady Ronin, and Adventure Girl, and the Living Doll, and Venus Ascendant, and all the beauties whose lips brushed mine... needed to make sure I hadn't done anything wicked to your precious minds. You needed to turn to a telepath to dig deep into that clever little brain of yours, opening yourself up completely to her power so that she could examine every synapse and neuron for my fingerprints. And if she should leave a few marks of her own, well... who could blame her? Certainly not me."

WildRose shook her head wildly in disbelief. "No!" she cried out, feeling an instinctive urge to deny the hurtful lie that Sangria was feeding her. "No, Professor Psyche is a good woman! She's trustworthy! She's reliable! She's one of the most morally upstanding women I know! She'd never do anything to harm me or suborn my independence!" Even as she spoke, WildRose could hear the strange, slightly incongruous patterns in her speech, almost as if another person wrote the script in her mind that she was reading from. She could make the logical connections between her own unusually strident certainty and Sangria's words. She could even recognize that there was nobody Penelope Powell trusted that much, not even her own girlfriend. She just couldn't accept the conclusion of that reasoning.

Sangria watched the whole outburst, her body shivering in bliss as her hungry smile widened. "It was worth it all," she murmured softly, eyes gleaming in excitement. "Every wound, every kick, every punch, every scornful laugh. It was all worth it to see you like this, to relive this moment again and again and again. You have noticed, haven't you, pet? That all your tricks have deserted you, that your allies have failed to save you, that even your vaunted determination has abated in the face of my pleasure until the only actions you can take to rescue yourself are the ones you know deep down are doomed to fail?" Her fingers pushed deeper into WildRose's pussy, finding the tiny nub of tingling flesh and rubbing it hard.

"I, I don't... I, ohhhh...." WildRose's head swam with pleasure as she struggled hard to understand what was happening to her. She couldn't have been betrayed, she couldn't have, but--but it was the only answer. It was the only way that she could have been beaten so thoroughly. Her utility belt was empty, just like the hidden pouch in her gloves. Just like the inside of her cheek. Just like the secret compartment in her boot that contained the spring-loaded blade that even Sharpe didn't know about. The only person who could have defeated every single one of her contingency measures so completely was her. And even now, with the drug wearing off and her thoughts clearing, all she could do was playact defiance while Sangria finger-fucked her dripping pussy.

"My patience has finally been rewarded," Sangria whispered reverently. "The promise has been fulfilled. You belong to me now, my sweet little rosebud. Your malleable mind has finally been made ready to serve our true Mistress, and in these final days before the grand design is unveiled, that mind is my plaything. I can tell you what to think, what to perceive, what to remember, and you have no choice but to obey me. No choice at all."

WildRose shook her head feebly, trying to deny the truth, but her indomitable willpower had deserted her. She slumped in her shackles, giving in to the pleasure of Sangria's touch. "N-no..." she whispered, but the words held no strength anymore. She barely recognized her own voice, it sounded so utterly defeated. She was beaten by pleasure, beaten by drugged and drowsy bliss, beaten before she even started by a mind that had been twisted around by someone she trusted into subjugation to Sangria's inevitable control. "Please," she muttered, desperation finally driving her to beg for more of that perfect, inescapable caress.

Sangria raised her head in triumph, her nipples stiff with arousal under her sheer dress as she increased the force of her thrusts. "That one word. That final, inevitable realization of defeat. God, it's so perfect. Is it any wonder I want to make you do it again?" She chuckled, leaning down until her lips were a mere fraction of an inch away from WildRose's mouth, and the helpless superhero realized with a shock of familiarity that this wasn't the first time this had happened. She'd been broken before, experiencing the same gradual dawning of the totality of Sangria's conquest only to have the memory wiped away so that Sangria could relive it again and again. And it would keep happening until Sangria was bored with her plaything, over and over without end until at last WildRose knelt and admitted that she was happy to obey her new queen. And then what? What part did she have to play in this 'grand design'?

She would never know. Before she could even begin to figure it out, Sangria smiled at her with wine-colored lips and said, "Time to play the game again, pretty toy." She leaned in that final distance and kissed WildRose hard. And the bound, helpless, finally defeated hero moaned in orgasmic pleasure as her mind sank into darkness once more.

THE END