Chapter 2: Heart Racing Confrontation

Kayla’s breathing was ragged as she ran back across the bridge. The remaining support beams were all starting to buckle one after the other, and there was no one else for her to rely on. Her forehead, and her bare arms, glistened with sweat. Goggles kept her eyes safe from a stray droplet falling where it wasn’t wanted.

She quickly lost track of how many times she’d darted out onto the bridge, and helped pull those inside to safety. Her strength was above average, but as much of that came from keeping herself in shape as it did from her super powers.

Keeping up her speed was much easier than hauling around so much human weight.

Even as her muscles burned and her legs ached, the Swift Sentinel continued to help evacuate the bridge. Efforts were already underway to evacuate everyone too close to the bridge just in case it caused any more damage as it fell. All that the sentinel needed to focus on was getting those still on the bridge to one side or the other.

So many people…! She could see the visible difference. There were so many cars on the bridge still, moving as the bridge moved, some threatening to join those that already fell into the deep water below. Fewer and fewer actual people were left to safe, but each person was important to save. If my ice cream had been in the freezer… this would be… a lot easier right now…!

It was a silly thing to worry about amidst such a stressful situation and she knew it, but thoughts like that helped her worry less about the chances that someone wouldn’t make it to safety.

Of course she knew that if anyone fell, or if anyone was caught in the bridge’s inevitable collapse, it wouldn’t be her fault. No one knows how the bridge suddenly started breaking apart, and that’s what’s responsible for what’s happening… not me… but…

That won’t make it any easier if I can’t pull this off…!

Each trip back across the bridge the muscles in her legs ached a little more. Her arms grew a little more exhausted with the effort of lifting up another pair of civilians to ferry across the bridge at super speed. Her overall energy level was quickly dropping, and she could feel it like a car’s fuel gauge wiggling just above the line for empty.

Again she reached the other side, set the civilians down, and rushed back into the fray. Was really… Her heart beat fast in her chest. Counting on that… The Swift Sentinel’s arms almost gave out as she lifted up a young mother and her infant child. Ice cream…!

She ran across the bridge, the length feeling almost as though it grew longer the closer she grew to the end.

It’s all in your head… the bridge is the same size it was the last time… but did it… take this long…? Kayla panted, her vision blurring as she dashed between cars, the muscles in her arms twitching. Seems… like it might… actually… be longer…

I’m not slowing down that much… not yet…!

Setting down the mother and child, Kayla ran back onto the bridge only to find that the further and faster she ran, the more that the cars ahead of her moved further away. She could have chalked it up to exhaustion or some strange visual illusion, but when she stopped to catch her breath the distance left between her and the other side shrank.

When she looked behind her, she could watch the bridge extending, only to retract as she looked back the other way. Okay… This… Something very… wrong is going on…!

“A woman as smart as you, and all you can think to call this is something wrong?” When the Swift Sentinel quickly turned to look, her eyes wide behind her goggles, she saw the source. Though no one had been there the moment before, it was obvious that the woman lounging atop a nearby car like it was the top of a piano had been the one speaking.

She had long, curly purple hair, and wore an open, black leather jacket. She wore nothing underneath it, giving a clear look at her heavy, pale breasts underneath, nipples hidden by the sides of her jacket. Squeezing tight around her waist was a pair of leather pants with a pair of impressively tall high-heeled boots. Her expression was one of quiet amusement, her eyes hidden behind the opaque white in the otherwise black mask.

“You’re basically a walking thesaurus… right…?” The leather-clad woman sat upright, smirking as her legs dangled over the side of the car. “Come on. Give me a better word than wrong, even if it’s only your own internal monologue. You’ve gotta have better than that.”

She can read my thoughts… Swift took a few slow steps back from the woman. She sat atop a car near the west side of the bridge, so Swift moved towards the east. There’s no reason to think she did anything to the bridge, but just appearing like this, reading my thoughts… if she wanted to make a more positive impression—

“—Then I could do just about anything else, right?” Her grin stretched wider, as the purple haired woman slowly shook her head and pushed off of the car. “Anything… like…”

“W-wait…!” The Swift Sentinel dashed towards the woman as she saw a hole opening in the bridge beneath her, but somehow, even though the distance was so short, the last of her purple hair fell through the hole. When she arrived where the woman disappeared, the Sentinel only saw perfect, unbroken road.

A soft thud, and then creaking metal echoed out from behind the speedster. “Like this, for example?”

Kayla turned to find that the purple-haired woman was now sitting atop a car on the opposite side of the bridge. Her red eyes pulsed with an ominous glow, pulsing faster as she laughed in a way that sounded familiar and yet unnatural at the same time.

That was just unnecessary! Kayla clutched at her chest, trying to will her quickly beating heart to slow.

“I wanted to do it, so it was very necessary!” Red eyes shone brighter, if only for a brief moment. “Sorry, but I’m the kind of girl who always gets what she wants… and tonight, I want you? Ever heard of…” She paused dramatically, slowly slumping lower before throwing her hands wide, deep purple and red colors bursting around her not unlike the fireworks that set the banners formerly adorning the bridge to a crisp. “Reshaper?”

“…No…?”

The heroine’s voice was uncertain as she leaned back against the same car where Reshaper was lounging before her drop down into the drink that ended in a much more dry result than anyone might have reasonably expected.

Red eyes narrowed, intensely scrutinizing the heroine as her arms crossed in front of her chest.

She’s telling the truth!

Green and black lips curled into a soft, amused smile.

She really doesn’t know who I am when I look like this. That might make things even better… though I don’t think it’ll take too long for her to connect the dots. Kayla is a very intelligent woman. Reshaper tapped a fingertip to her bottom lip before shaking her head. She never did figure out that I’ve been fucking with her since we moved in together so maybe not…

“I’m sorry, Reshaper, but I really don’t have time to deal with you right now! I need to save—”

“No need.” She gestured to one end of the bridge, and then the other. “I got tired of waiting for you to finish up for my grand entrance. Everyone who was on the bridge, or nearby, is wherever they were headed, or would rather be. No one will approach the bridge tonight… until I want them to.”

The Swift Sentinel stared, her mouth falling open as she looked side to side, and sure enough, no one else was there. No one was gathered at either side.

Even the many cars, with the exception of the one behind her and the one beneath Reshaper, were beginning to fade away as though being pulled to some more appropriate place. “I don’t want any interruptions, Sentinel, so that means there aren’t going to be any interruptions… and I always get what I want.”

“Sorry, but if everyone is safe… then I’m going to go…!” Sentinel pushed off of the car behind her, saluting the bizarre, almost topless woman as she turned towards home. “I hope you find someone more willing to entertain you!”

The brief rest was more than enough for Kayla to feel her legs rested for the run home. It wasn’t terribly far, and she didn’t even need to worry about an emergency.

My pizza probably isn’t even done yet…!

Reshaper simply smiled, waving as Kayla ran. She ran fast, definitely faster than any normal person could. Her reaction time allowed her to be faster than most people could responsibly drive, but what she saw didn’t make any sense.

When she stopped, she was walking up to where Reshaper was now leaning back on both of her palms. The strange woman was so pale that the moonlight above made her chest almost glow white.

“Hi again, Sentinel.” She grinned a toothy smile, red eyes shining brighter yet again. “Back so soon? Here I thought you weren’t interested in entertaining me…”

“I… I wasn’t! And I’m not!” The Swift Sentinel scowled, shaking her head as she reached up to adjust her goggles. “I don’t know how you did that, but it doesn’t matter, I won’t do—”

Snap!

Reshaper’s hand fell to her side, the loud crack coinciding with Kayla’s voice silencing. Her lips continued to move as she strained to speak. She even tried to yell, to scream, and her face became red but no sound emerged from her lips. She couldn’t even feel it in her throat.

No matter how hard I try I can’t… I can’t speak…!

“What I want?” Reshaper’s grin deepened. “I get. Each and every time…! For example…” She extended her other hand, beckoning the heroine closer with a single fingertip. “Swift Sentinel…? Come to me… and kneel… right… there.” She gestured down to the road below the car, her red eyes hooding so low only thin slits of red light shined out into the night.

The Swift Sentinel balked. She tried to make some dismissive sound, to deny it, to refuse the invitation, but all of that effort did nothing to stop the heroine from moving forward. She didn’t move quickly, or slowly, merely moving until she was in the proper place.

Once there, she fell down to her knees.

Her cheeks burned a deep, dark red as she kept her goggles pointed down at the road. Fuck…! I tried… to run, to go limp… nothing worked…! I just… moved into place and then—a

“Stop thinking.”

Snap!

Reshaper grinned as she watched the Swift Sentinel slump forward. Her mouth fell open. Behind her goggles, the sentinel’s eyes were half closed.

All of her awareness faded away, and time stopped having any meaning at all.

Snap!

“And start thinking again!”

“Nnnhhaaa…” The Swift Sentinel groaned, fluttering her eyes. “Why… my head feels so… I… you told me to… stop… and then… start…?” Her voice was slow and hazy, sounding not unlike she’d just woken up from a nap. “You… you just said it and then it… it just happened…!”

Her thoughts ran quicker than her legs as the kneeling heroine struggled to find some way—any way—to escape.

Normally, I would try to run up one of the support beams, or maybe along the side of the bridge? But she controls my body, so I can’t possibly run. She can paralyze my mind with a thought, and she can hear my thoughts, so if I came up with something she felt was dangerous she could turn off my mind again, and then… then… if she could clear that thought, or… or… Shuddering inside of her tight spandex costume, the heroine was unable to do little more than think, and quiver. Even if I could ask for help, she… I ran one way and came from the other…

She could send away everyone on the bridge… so… The Swift Sentinel gritted her teeth, her hands clenching to fists atop her thighs. What can I possibly do…?!

Reshaper’s foot reached out, the tip of her heeled boot moving up to lift the heroine’s face to meet her own. So little of it was hidden, but the graduate student hardly had a complete grasp on her faculties. Fear made the heroine’s eyes dart about, looking for something that might help make everything make sense, something that might help set her free.

Maybe I’m aslee—

“You aren’t asleep.” Reshaper smiled, licking her lips. “But I’m being mean, by not letting you speak! I love hearing my own voice, and you love hearing it too… or you will… and I like yours… most of the time, so…”

Snap!

There was no command, no indication that anything changed at all, but that didn’t mean the Swift Sentinel didn’t know that she could speak. What should I say, anyway? You can read my thoughts, Reshaper. You know everything I’ve been thinking… if you’ve already won, why—

“Because this isn’t the game I really want to play, Sentinel.” Reshaper smiled as she reached down, grasping at the heroine’s goggles. The sentinel whimpered, trying to reach up to pull them down as Reshaper first pulled them free, then tossed them casually over the side of the bridge. “The game I want to play is one where I break you down… bit by bit… until you’re exactly what I want you to be.

“You’ve already lost. Once I decided this was going to happen, it was, but…” Reshaper gestured her finger upwards, and without willing it, the Swift Sentinel rose to her feet. Fingers grasped at the heroine’s chin, pulling her closer. “I don’t want to make this too quick. The game is to see how long it takes, with me going gentle, before you become mine.”

As meaningless as it was, the heroine struggled against the impossible forces that held her in place. She tried to break free of the hand that effortlessly held her chin as though they were made of steel.

She doesn’t need to snap her fingers or she wouldn’t just be able to tell me what to do…

Reshaper nodded, the same smug grin still across her face.

She doesn’t need to even say what she wants… it just happens… because she wants it…

Reshaper nodded again.

She’s already won, but I… Hopelessness was already shining out from deep inside of her eyes, but with a deep breath, Kayla’s eyes narrowed. She took a deep breath, and gathered up all of her mental fortitude. I won’t give up without a fight! I won’t let her break me… and maybe she’ll get bored and decide she wants something else before she’s done!

When Reshaper laughed again, the sound so loud it would have been loud even from the other side of the bridge, the Swift Sentinel’s eyes opened wide.

“X-Xenia…?!”

“Mmm…” Reshaper laughed, licking her lips before giving a little nod. “You’re right…! Here…” Xenia pulled Kayla closer, so close that their noses almost touched. Kayla winced, her eyes staying wide, her expression one of horrified betrayal. “Let’s see just how long you can really resist me at all…”

Kayla could feel the fear pumping through her veins, but she forced it down. She forced herself to stay angry and stern, pushing all of her worry and terror deep down inside as her glare deepened more.

Then a scent caught her nose, and she blinked in confusion.

Why… why does she smell like chocolate…?

“Oh Kayla…” Xenia smiled as her eyes changed, becoming green and black spirals that moved so slowly, so sensuously, and held Kayla’s eyes as forcefully as the hand holding her chin. “You poor, poor thing… I’m actually impressed that you managed to figure it out, even with so much working against you… but you can already feel your grip on consciousness fading…”

“I-I… consciousness… my… my grip…?” Kayla whimpered. She wanted to deny it, to struggle harder, to even do something as meaningless as biting her roommate’s hand, but it was difficult enough to keep herself from yawning.

The spirals in Xenia’s eyes continued to move around, and around, and Kayla could feel them pulling her in. She could feel herself falling, and her body grew heavier and heavier with each moment. Even knowing that looking anywhere else would be a better idea, that the slightest bit of resistance might have given her more of a chance to resist, Kayla could do nothing but stare deeply into Xenia’s eyes as she felt herself yawn and then she slowly slumped forward.

Xenia sighed, keeping Kayla upright as her fading consciousness took with it Kayla’s ability to stand on her own. “Don’t worry, Kay…” The purple-haired woman sneered. “This is just to introduce you to the game… we haven’t even set the stage…”

“Won’t… give in…” Kayla groaned, her eyes fluttering one last time before the last of her intellect vanished. Shining brown eyes showed no signs of the woman’s sharp intellect, or any thoughts at all. Though her eyes were still open, it was clear that her mind had completely succumbed to the spirals that held her gaze. “Can’t… let you… win…”

At last, the heroine was limp and mindless, lost in the spirals that she could do nothing to resist.

“Good girl, Kayla.” Xenia smiled. “I don’t want that, either.”