Life as a supervillain wasn’t easy in the optimistically-named Future City, which was exactly why the woman widely-known as The Shimmer was determined never to get too proud of being one. She’d made her friend Ramona promise to give her a swift kick in the head if she ever started making big, bold speeches, or sending self-important letters to the press. That never ended well. ‘Supervillain’, in her experience, too often meant someone too caught up in their own bullshit to be able to tell when to get the hell out of dodge. That, she could honestly say, wasn’t one of her many flaws. She just needed one big score, and she was done for good.

Which was why she never thought of herself as The Shimmer, and only as plain old Trinity. ‘Shimmer’ wasn’t a bad name, as names went. A little sparkles-and-fairy-magic for her liking, but much better than ending up christened as Lady Deathcakes or something by a particularly misguided journalist. Trinity’s small-time villain buddies would have never let her hear the end of it. Not that she needed to worry about their opinions for much longer. Trinity was already on her way to that one big score she’d been longing for, making her way through the busy streets of Future City with her head down and a giddy smile on her face. This was it. She was finally going to get rich, and the best part was, she’d be stealing from a corporate asshole in the process. It was going to be great.

It was going to be nothing like the previous dozen or so failed big scores she’d embarked on.

Trinity really believed that. She had to believe it, because she had to get out of this city. Trinity glanced around, taking stock of the neighborhood she was walking through and noticing all the hundreds of shitty ways it had changed. It was called Castron, and it was the place she’d grown up. She’d been born in the local hospital, twenty-three years before. Back then, it had been on the outskirts - poor, yeah, but at a safe distance from the identical, glass-plated, high-rise corporate buildings that dominated the heart of the city. It’d had soul. Now, though, those corporations were just a few blocks away, and inching closer every month.

The rot was already beginning to show. Local stores being bought out. Rents going up. Billboards about new developments plastered everywhere. Gentrification. Trinity hated it.

And unlike some, she wasn’t arrogant enough to believe she could stop it. She just wanted enough money to get out and start a nice, comfy life somewhere completely different. Which was why she was currently on her way to steal a whole lot of money from an obscenely wealthy corporate bitch.

Trinity was just minding her own business, walking along the sidewalk, contemplating that happy prospect, when she felt someone grab her arm roughly and peer in to look at her under her hood.

“Hey, aren’t you that-”

That was all Trinity needed to hear. She sighed once, heavily, and then put her fingertips to the woman’s temple and gave her a taste of her shimmer.

Trinity hated being recognized. At first, even after a couple of high-profile tussles with superheroes, she hadn’t needed to worry about it. She figured she looked pretty ordinary. She was a little short, and a little curvier than most people expected. Sure, she had a sidecut and a septum piercing, but hey, she was far from the only dyke in Future City. Apparently, though, after getting arrested half a dozen times, your mugshot got around. Fortunately, she’d done a way better job at keeping the details of her powers under wrap. It’s not like it made any sense to go around bragging about them, and putting a big ‘WEAKNESS HERE’ target on herself.

Most people didn’t know that one little touch was all she needed.

It usually took a moment, though, and Trinity enjoyed using it to get a good look at today’s lucky, nosy citizen of the day. Frankly, she looked just like almost anybody else. Nice, curly hair. Cute freckles. She was wearing a suit, but it looked a little cheap for her to be a corporate type. Maybe she was on her way to a job interview. Trinity didn’t really care. All she cared about was the woman’s pretty, green eyes, and the way they looked as they started to change color.

As soon as Trinity’s fingertips made contact with the woman’s temple, they started to glow a brilliant, warm purple. It wasn’t just her skin; it emanated from Trinity’s fingers in strange, cloudy streaks, like luminescent fluid spreading through water. Then, the glow started to spread to Trinity’s victim, a bolt of it passing under her skin until it reached her eyes, darting for them like an electric current.

And then her green eyes started to turn a rich, bright purple.

It took a few moments for them to change completely. Little purple lights started appearing in her irises, more of them flickering to life as the seconds passed, until purple overwhelmed green. The purple of Trinity’s shimmer was bright, but it was also flat and uniform, and before long, the poor woman’s eyes were left empty and glassy, devoid of any spark of independent thought, and even the whites of her eyes seemed to reflect an eerie, cloudy glow.

Trinity shivered. It was so hot. It never stopped being hot.

Just as hot was watching her posture slump, and watching a big, dumb, vacant smile spread across her alarmed face. She looked like she didn’t have a care in the world - because she didn’t. All she was thinking was shimmer.

“What’s your name?” Trinity demanded, quickly glancing around to make sure no-one had noticed. It had only taken a couple of seconds, and no-one had. This was Future City. People minded their own business.

Most people, anyway.

“Ellen,” the woman answered, and the big, dumb smile on her face got even bigger and dumber. She looked so pleased she was practically shivering with it. Trinity knew exactly what was going on in her head. With her thoughts utterly smothered by Trinity’s purple, mind-controlling light, being good, being useful was absolute bliss. Trinity shivered a little too. That was another thing that never stopped being hot.

Trinity was pretty sure that, when she used her power on someone, there was a little jolt of feedback that heightened her senses and got her juices flowing. She was also sure that most of the reason she was really turned on was that she was a kinky lesbian who got off on getting into the heads of other women. She wasn’t proud of it, but she wasn’t not-proud of it either. She was a villain, after all.

“Well, hey, Ellen,” Trinity whispered, putting a hand on Ellen’s hip and pulling her in close enough to whisper in her ear. Ellen moaned a little. Being moved around felt very good and very useful. “You’re going to forget all about me, aren’t you? You’re going to forget you ever saw me.”

“Yes!” Ellen whispered back urgently. She was nodding like crazy, and Trinity knew she was completely possessed by that delicious shimmer-eagerness. Trinity loved her power. Ellen really would forget, too. The mind could do incredible things, if it was eager enough.

“Good,” Trinity told her, and Ellen moaned again, almost loud enough to draw attention. The woman was practically melting into Trinity’s arms. She had no defenses. Almost no-one did.

Trinity knew the smart thing would be to set Ellen on her way immediately, so she could get on with her big score. But ‘smart’ had never been her strongest suit. And besides, she had a couple of minutes to kill.

“Listen, Ellen,” Trinity said, thrilled by the way Ellen noticeably perked up her ears. “You’re not going to remember seeing me, but you are going to remember what I look like. You probably saw it on a news site or something. And that’s gonna stick with you real vividly, especially when you dream. You’re gonna be having a lot of dreams about me from now on.”

Ellen nodded quickly. Her eyes were wide and feverish, and filled with iridescent shimmer. Trinity was crackling with pleasure at seeing her words pour into Ellen’s soul, shaping her, remaking her. It was effortless, with most people. They didn’t have any of the training or preparation it took to fight her off. The effects didn’t last forever, of course, but given the right push, they could last a damn long time.

“Dream of me,” Trinity urged, in hushed tones, to her new, hopelessly entranced friend. “Dream about how good this feels, Ellen. And as you do, touch yourself. Think about my lips. My hands. My hands all over you.”

“Yes!” Ellen panted, and Trinity knew she was already thinking about it.

Trinity stepped a little closer to her, putting her arms around her, giving the helpless girl a taste of her new wet dreams. She knew her hand resting possessively on Ellen’s hip would be the perfect forgotten memory, the perfect spark of inspiration. To anyone else, they might have looked like a couple embracing in the street. No-one was close enough to see Ellen’s eyes.

“I’m your fantasy,” Trinity breathed, and Ellen nodded again, neurons and synapses shimmering into place to make it the truth. “Your ideal. The hottest person you’ve ever seen.”

A dozen little changes came over Ellen; subtle shifts to her expression, to her body language. Trinity couldn’t help but notice each and every one of them, her hunger growing. Nothing gave her the same kind of thrill. She loved the way Ellen’s lips parted in faint awe, and the way her eyes started running over Trinity’s body, admiring her. She loved the way her plaything’s legs shifted as she pressed them together shyly - who wouldn’t be shy, in the presence of what they considered such perfection?

Trinity wasn’t sure if the woman she had hypnotized had been into girls or not, but her shimmer didn’t care. And soon, neither would Ellen.

She knew, of course, that getting into someone’s head and twisting their sexuality and fantasies around your fingertips in order to serve your ego wasn’t exactly the nicest thing in the world. Generally, Trinity preferred crimes of the victimless variety. But everyone had a few guilty pleasures, she figured. This was one of hers. She was going to get called evil no matter what. Might as well enjoy one or two of the perks of the job. What was anyone going to say? ‘How could you, supervillain’?

Anyway, it’s not like anyone would notice a few more lesbians on the streets of Future City.

“You’ll dream of me each and every night,” Trinity purred right into Ellen’s ear, each word proving more and more devastating as Ellen’s thoughts and desires bent to Trinity’s will. “And you’ll wake up panting and sweating. Maybe you’ll call my name. Maybe you’ll touch yourself. You’ll want to.”

“Oh fuck,” Ellen whimpered, as those fantasies seared themselves white-hot into her brain. The shimmer was in her eyes, her voice, her mind. It was everywhere.

“God, you’ve got it bad.” A crooked smile spread across Trinity’s face. Sometimes, it really felt like this was the part of her job that made life worth living. “Hornier than you’ve ever been in your life, for a girl you won’t even remember meeting. For, as far as you know, a supervillain you’ve only ever read about online. What does that make you, huh?”

“A… a slut!” Ellen moaned. Trinity laughed. It was always best when her victims’ own minds supplied the answers she was looking for. Trinity wasn’t about to slut-shame anybody, but of Ellen wanted to slut-shame herself, and get off on it in the process, well. That was pretty hot too.

“You sure are.”

“A slut,” Ellen repeated, almost babbling to herself. “A slut for… for supervillains… oh god!”

Trinity raised an eyebrow at the half-horrified, half-captivated note in the poor woman’s voice. Apparently, she really was every bit the upstanding, diligent citizen she looked to be, and the thought of being head-over-heels in lust for a supervillain was really doing a number on her. Trinity’s smile grew more twisted still. She could work with that.

“A slut for supervillains,” Trinity confirmed, and that was all it took for that to become gospel truth for Ellen. “You love them, don’t you, Ellen? The glamour. The danger. The wickedness. It really does it for you. It really gets you going. Always has, in fact.”

That last suggestion really sent Ellen reeling. She just froze up for a second, and teetered on her heels whilst her mind caught up with what Trinity was telling it. She looked like she was short-circuiting - and in a way, she was. Trinity’s shimmer was giving her new memories, and it wasn’t subtle. Her mind-control scorched a path through Ellen’s recollection of her life, littering it with traces of a devastating kink for super-powered villains and criminals. Anything that proved an obstacle was cast aside like mere detritus - crushes on superheroes, perhaps, or feelings of stern, sincere disapproval. Whatever remained was warped and undercut without mercy. Perhaps she’d still remember nodding earnestly as her parents lectured her on the dangers of villains as a teenage girl, only now, she’d also remember blushing in shame and hypocrisy, and rubbing her legs together underneath the dinner table.

Ellen had always had a thing for supervillains. In that moment, she knew it more surely than she knew her own name.

And once her mind came to terms with that, she was all the more awestruck by Trinity’s presence.

“Y-you…” she moaned, and almost collapsed.

Trinity had to reach for her to hold her up. She sighed. Maybe she’d overdone it a bit. She’d given the poor girl a lifelong kink for supervillains, and she’d made herself into her perfect fantasy of one. No wonder she was soaking her panties in the street. Trinity could feel Ellen clinging to her feebly, torn between wanting to push Trinity away in righteous horror and wanting Trinity to sweep her away, to kidnap her, to ravage her.

And Trinity wanted to. She really really did. She’d been laying low for a while. It had been weeks since she’d really let loose the way she’d just done with Ellen. Leaving a trail of brainwashed, zonked out fucktoys in your wake wasn’t a wise move, if you wanted to drop off the radar before pulling off a big heist. Letting the heist slip through her fingers just because she couldn’t keep her hands out of Ellen’s pants would have been an even less wise one.

“That’s right, me,” Trinity said wearily. “But don’t worry, you won’t remember. Not outside dreams, anyway. Time to go, babygirl. Make your way home. Take a nap. You’ll enjoy it.”

There was just a hint of a pout in Ellen’s face before it was smothered by the unnatural compulsion of Trinity’s shimmer. Like a puppet on strings, she straightened herself, pulled a complete one-eighty, and started walking back the way she’d come.

Trinity was unspeakably disappointed, but she had bigger things to worry about. Maybe she’d get lucky, she told herself. Maybe there’d be someone cute and stupid at the charity event. Maybe she’d get to have some fun, as well as screw over some rich people. It was all in a day’s work, for a supervillain like her.