At least she knew what had happened to her this time. When Azure woke, her head throbbing with the lingering memory of a pain so profound it obliviated consciousness, she remembered pretty quickly that she wasn't recovering from some alcoholic bender that left her crashed out in a random Belgian's apartment with a property damage bill in the low six figures and no way to pay. She was recovering from an attempt to fling herself out of reality entirely, and unfortunately she discovered to her dismay (and intense agony) that her body was naturally tuned to the vibrations of a universe that no longer existed. And any attempt to travel to a parallel existence inevitably led her back to that cosmic scar, and from there to a random destination.

Which in this case was, in fact, a random Belgian's apartment. But at least it wasn't her fault this time.

Azure felt a weird rush of deja vu when she saw a policeman enter the room, this time in the company of some poor woman who looked entirely nonplussed at the sight of a totally naked woman slumped on top of the shattered remains of her bed. Azure seemed to be able to hold her body together under the cosmic stresses through sheer force of psionically-enhanced will, but both of her previous dimensional trips had ended with her clothing scattered molecule by molecule across the interstitial void between universes, and apparently this reality was as uptight about nudity as all the others she'd encountered. "Um, hi, uhh... English?" she asked hopefully, giving them a sheepish look and reaching for a sheet to cover herself with. "And possibly some advanced teleportation technology?"

She got the former but not the latter. The policeman apologetically asked Azure to follow him along to the station, where the reaction to her tactile telekinesis demonstrated a complete and total lack of awareness of anything like 'superpowers' in this reality. "We have many costumed adventurers, yes, mademoiselle," the chief of police informed her. "But there is nothing like these fantastic abilities of yours. And you say it is all done through the power of your mind?"

"Um, yeah, it's, uh, it's pretty common in my home universe," Azure mumbled, feeling distinctly unnerved by all the positive attention she was getting. Normally she didn't get a lot of awe and amazement from the average citizen, not when there was a whole group of people in cooler costumes with flashier powers gathered around her who were a whole lot better at everything Azure was supposed to be doing, and to see someone look at her with a light of fascinated wonder in their eyes was honestly a little bit weird. She kept wanting to crane her neck around to see if there was someone behind her.

"Well, it is absolutely unique here," the gray-haired woman gushed enthusiastically. "Honestly, the timing could not be more serendipitous--we have something of an emergency, and our normal channels of assistance have proven to be entirely useless. Mademoiselle Azure, may I request the honor of your presence in the offices of the Prime Minister?" A cold shiver ran down Azure's spine. She caught herself wondering what year it was in this reality. Because this was sounding an awful lot like something she'd already been through once before.

Sure enough, when she walked into the Prime Minister's office and said, "Let me guess. The Right Honourable Theresa May, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has vanished from her residence in the middle of the night," the man's eyes lit up in shocked recognition. Feeling cocky, Azure followed it up with, "She appears to have left of her own volition after reading some correspondence that her own secretary doesn't remember, which she burned shortly before departing, and she evaded her own security detail to escape. How am I doing so far?"

The man stammered out, "Um, well, it--it was President Hillary Clinton, and she left in the company of another woman whose description the secretary was unable to provide, but otherwise remarkably accurate. More of your mind powers, Miss Haven?" Azure made a few minor mental adjustments to the scenario she was envisioning. Clearly this was a different universe in some respects, even if it was following along very similar tracks to the adventure that had introduced her to the superheroine known as Eris.

Which meant it wouldn't be quite as simple as going to the same chemical factory where the villainous Sangria had holed up the last time this happened and avoiding the trap Azure remembered all too well. "Not exactly," she murmured, feeling a little less cocky than she had just a few moments ago. "But it would take a long time to explain. If you don't mind, I'm going to consult with an American partner of mine--it's a bit of a trip, even as fast as I fly, and I'd like to get moving right away. Time is of the essence here, as I'm sure you already understand." God, she was almost sounding like a real superhero. At this rate she was going to go find a skin-tight spandex outfit and her very own secret hideout.

She might have to, honestly. Azure didn't have any idea how to get out of this reality, and most of the heavy-hitting super-science geeks didn't exist in this universe. With no magic, either, she might be stuck in Earth-Kids-Table for a long time to come.

After she checked out the chemical supply warehouse--just in case--and found nothing, Azure ramped up the acceleration on her telekinetic flight as hard as she could and sped across the Atlantic Ocean at near-supersonic speeds, heading for the West Coast and San Delfino. She didn't have any idea how Sangria operated in this universe, but she was hoping that the sinister mind controller had the same nemesis she did in Azure's... well, not her home reality, but at the very least her adopted home reality. Which meant zipping over to the underground caverns near San Delfino where Doctor Phobos, his sidekick Deimos, and most importantly their partner Eris kept their base of operations.

Not that Azure could necessarily count on them living in the exact same spot in this universe or anything. Her mistaken assumption about the identity of the kidnap victim proved that. But the Prime Minister said there were other superheroes in this universe, and Doctor Phobos seemed like exactly the kind of street-level 'costumed adventurer' he was talking about. And frankly, Azure was feeling just lost and lonely and scared enough to need a familiar face right now, even if they wouldn't know her and she wouldn't really know them. She wanted to see Eris. She wanted a goddamn hug. That wasn't too weird now, was it?

Azure's heart leapt when she reached a valley some four miles out past the edge of the city, and found the hidden switch in the exact same place it was in her own universe. She gave it a grateful pull, tension unwinding in her chest as a section of cliffside opened up to reveal a narrow passage just wide enough for a person to enter. The joy only increased as she entered the network of tunnels, following the route Eris had shown her that first time the calm, capable vigilante brought Azure to her secret hideout. It might not be her Eris, but it was still an Eris, and that had to count for something. Didn't it?

Azure's uncharacteristically hopeful demeanor lasted all of about five minutes. That was how long it took for her to wend her way through the secret tunnels out into a wide, dimly-lit space containing the secret laboratory she was familiar with... along with a row of cages along the side wall. One of them contained a man she vaguely recognized as Doctor Phobos, another held a second and somewhat younger man Azure knew to be his sidekick Deimos. A third cell was occupied by President Hillary Clinton, and a fourth by none other than Sangria. All four had blissed-out, stupefied expressions on their faces and a look of vacant incomprehension in their eyes.

A woman covered in head to toe black latex, wearing an elaborate breathing apparatus, turned away from a bank of computers and stiffened in momentary shock at the sight of an intruder. "I don't know how you found me," she said, in the unmistakable voice of Tara Tate, better known as the costumed adventurer Eris, "but you won't be telling anyone what you found. I'm afraid my plans are a little too advanced for some would-be do-gooder to ruin them now."

Azure had just enough time to wonder why her friend was wearing a gas mask before the odorless, tasteless intoxicant she was inhaling finally kicked in and she toppled face-first onto the floor.

*    *    *    *    *

She awoke--as much as she did wake, Azure could feel the chemical bliss in her brain dancing on her neurons and making coherent thought a grinding and exhausting chore--to find herself strapped to a table, her limbs pinned in place with heavy metal cuffs. Above her, only a few inches away but completely out of reach of her imprisoned arms, a flat-screen LED monitor pulsed and swirled with mesmerizing patterns that caught and held Azure's befuddled gaze in captivated fascination. She knew Eris was using them to hypnotize her, but for the moment it simply felt easier to stare and relax than it was to try to push herself to think.

"You're an interesting little conundrum, Miss Haven," Eris purred, her latex-coated fingers undoing the bland and boring blouse the Belgian police had lent Azure a few hours ago to pinch and tease the supine woman's nipples. The drugs and hypnosis made the pleasure that much stronger, and Azure let out a tiny gasp of bliss as she arched her back into the sensual touch. "Do you know I literally can't find a single record of your existence on this planet apart from an arrest record registered in Europe? Even that has only a name, a set of fingerprints, and a message remanding you over to the personal authority of the Prime Minister. It's like the world has simply decided you don't exist. That intrigues me."

Her hands continued to explore, and Azure felt a guilty twinge of desperate enjoyment as they drifted down to stroke and caress Azure's pubic mound through her government-issued underwear. The closest she'd come to this kind of intimacy with the real Eris, her Eris, had been a few stolen kisses the other woman used to free her from the control of the Criminal Element; they left Azure wanting more, even if this felt like a perverse and twisted way of getting it. She squirmed and wriggled into Eris's seductive touch, her panting breath no doubt sucking in lungful after lungful of some stupefying chemical or other.

"I've never found anyone this good at hacking into computers before," Eris mused. "Even that stupid bitch Sharpe left a few traces of herself here and there, little hints and riddles I'm going to solve someday. But you... you've got talent. I could use a girl with talent. What do you say, mm? Would you like to give up working for those silly Belgians and help me enslave the President of the United States of America?" Her fingers slid easily beneath the waistband of Azure's panties and dove into her sopping cunt, teasing out redoubled bliss as they found the dazed and supine woman's clit.

Perhaps she did have her powers, even in this reality. That would explain the latex--the last thing Eris would want under these circumstances would be to leave a few antidote-producing skin cells deep inside her drugged slave's pussy.

"I, um... I'm not really much of a hacker," Azure heard herself say, her voice sounding loose and muzzy and cheerfully confessional even as she spread her legs a little wider to give Eris access to her slick cunt. "Just kind of, you know, off the grid most of my life. It's, uhh... it's a long story. Can we fuck now?" The effort of trying to even remember everything that happened to her, from the Paradox King and the destruction of her universe to the Grand Concordance to her arrival in this reality, it all felt too much like work. She just wanted to get lost in the pretty lights and get her itch scratched by the woman she had a crush on. Was that too much to ask?

Apparently it was. "Not just yet," Azure cooed, pushing the monitor's adjustable armature a few inches out of the way so that Azure could see her warm, coaxing eyes behind the lenses of the gas mask. "I need you to tell me everything about you first--your skills, your talents, your abilities, anything that would make you a useful slave and not simply a drone to be discarded. Who are you, Miss Haven? What makes you special to a criminal genius like me?"

Azure ripped the heavy steel cuff clean out of the table and grabbed the monitor, tearing it off of its armature and flinging it into the ceiling so hard it embedded itself six inches to the solid stone. She sat up, pulling the rest of her limbs free with the same minimal effort, and yanked Eris's gas mask off to give her a long, soulful, passionate kiss. "Is that special enough?" she asked when she finally released their embrace, a touch of irritated impatience in her voice.

Azure didn't quite know what kind of response she was expecting to that, but it definitely wasn't the one she got. Eris hastily backpedaled out of Azure's grasp, tearing the latex to shreds in the process, and fumbled uselessly at her breathing apparatus in a desperate attempt to get fresh air into her lungs. When she realized the device was damaged beyond repair, she sprinted over to a glass panel set into the wall and shattered it with her elbow to expose a large red button. Slamming it down caused huge fans to whir into motion, sucking out the gas-laced atmosphere of the cavern and replacing it with clean air from outside.

"Huh," Azure muttered to herself, still feeling distinctly groggy and light-headed. "Guess she's just a latex fetishist after all."

With the gas pumped out, it really only took a few moments to subdue Eris--she'd never even seen someone with actual superpowers before, let alone fought them--and call in the San Delfino police to arrest the President's kidnapper. President Clinton still looked a little bit muzzy by the time the cops got there, but Azure was sure she'd be fine--she'd only been kidnapped a day or two ago, and most of that had been taken up with smuggling the politician back into the United States. This Eris didn't have a high-tech fancified super-stealth jet with its own chemical laboratory, she had to make do.

And it looked like Azure would be making do for a while, too. Admittedly, it was kind of cool to be the most powerful person on the entire planet, and she was kind of enjoying the attention Acting President Sanders was paying to her, but all it really did was throw into sharp relief just how much she genuinely missed her adoptive universe. It was... it was really starting to feel like home, now. And she didn't realize that until she found herself stuck so far away from it. What she wouldn't give to--

"Citizens of Earth-1916422!" Azure heard inside her head, so loud that she felt a few capillaries give way in her nose from the psychic pressure, and suddenly she knew exactly what she wouldn't give to get back to where she belonged. "Today ends the terror you know as self-determination! Today begins the blessed, eternal embrace of our benevolent leadership! No longer will you have to suffer the burdens of deciding your own futures, your own destinies, even your own thoughts!"

All around her, people were collapsing, forced to their knees by a psionic power that radiated all over the planet and gripped their minds in a single inescapable will. Azure recognized it--how could she not, she'd experienced it just a relative few days ago--and even though she didn't understand the timing of it all, she knew there was no way this world could withstand the forces that were about to hit it. They didn't have a Veena. They didn't have a Professor Psyche. They were just some backwater hick reality without magic or super-science or anything that could turn the tide against the Punishment Detail, and the only reason Azure was still standing was because she had a little bit of residual counter-brainwashing left over from her universe's Grand Concordance.

By the time she made it to North Dakota, the portal was gaping wide enough to admit whole columns of soldiers, and the throb in her head made telekinetic flight absolute agony. But Azure was the only person in the world who could possibly stop this, and her only advantage was that they absolutely could not be expecting any superhuman resistance. She flung her body forward as hard as she could, barely able to keep the wind from ripping her skin at these speeds, and slammed into Professor Psycho and the dimensional rift before anyone even knew what was happening. And with another rainbow scream, Azure plunged into the interstitial void.

THE END(?)