Shield Lass checked the door for booby traps. Nothing. If this was Baroness Blackleather’s emergency escape route, that made sense—there’d be no time to disarm traps in the middle of a headlong rush to get away. She was still a bit nervous, though.

“This is too easy,” she thought as she stepped through the doorway into the lair proper.

Four of the Baroness’s Leathergal henchwomen were sitting at a table at the far end of the room, playing cards and apparently oblivious to her arrival. Shield Lass grinned. Four to one were pretty good odds for her, especially when she had the element of surprise.

She tossed a smoke bomb and leaped into the fray right behind it, hoping to take out the minions and move on before reinforcements could show up. Her infrared lenses activated. The four figures were the “color” of normal body temperature, but something was wrong....

Her first punch connected just as she realized her mistake. The infrared images were too uniform, lacking the usual shading that should have distinguished torso from extremities and bare skin from clothing.

A jolt of electricity flew up her right arm from the booby-trapped dummy. As she jumped back and tried to shake some life back into her numbed limb, she smelled ozone... and something else. Reflexively, she reached for the air filter on her utility belt. “How many traps and alarms did I just set off?”

The door she’d entered through was now closed and refused to reopen even when she gave it a full-power kick. She heard approaching bootsteps and turned to see four Leathergals entering through the only other door.

With only one working arm and the element of surprise on the enemy’s side, those weren’t good odds at all.

“Mayday!” That was supposed to trigger her voice-activated emergency signal to warn Vindiatrix that she’d run into trouble she couldn’t handle. There was no reply; apparently the commlink was being jammed.

She managed to take down three of the henchwomen before reinforcements arrived and she was overwhelmed.

-----

Unaware of her partner’s peril, Vindiatrix made her way through the ventilation shafts. She avoided the lair’s defenders but was delayed as she repeatedly found it necessary to backtrack through the labyrinth or silently remove a grille. Finally, her scanner indicated that the stolen plasmotronic battery was in the room directly below. Surprisingly, the room contained only two people.

“This is too easy,” she thought as she made her entrance through the ceiling.

She found herself face to face with Baroness Blackleather herself. “I’m so glad you could drop in!” she quipped. She seemed completely unconcerned about the situation as she casually waved to direct the heroine’s attention to her left.

The other person in the room was Shield Lass... who lay spread-eagled on a conveyor belt. Just below her feet, the halves of the belt began to gradually diverge. In the gap between, about two yards beyond the split, stood a vertical circular saw.

Vindiatrix’s worry was mingled with annoyance—“Damn it, Jenny, did you get overconfident and go charging in again?” She kept both emotions off her face when she turned back toward her foe. “Isn’t that a bit melodramatic, even for you?” she sneered, doing her best to project an air of disdainful self-assurance.

“I prefer the term ‘traditional’.” The villainess shrugged. “In any case, if you want to keep your girlfriend in one piece, all you have to do is surrender.”

“No!” Shield Lass cried.

Vindiatrix looked around, evaluating the situation, looking for some alternative other than surrender. She tensed, preparing for action. It should be easy to take down the Baroness and shut down the deathtrap. Too easy. She’d ignored that warning suspicion once and wasn’t about to make that mistake again.

She examined the room carefully while keeping the Baroness and the door to the room in her field of vision. She could find nothing suspicious about the floor, or the ceiling... but the midpoint of each wall had a line of small holes extending from top to bottom.

“I thought you were too smart to leap before you looked,” the villainess said in a mock-congratulatory tone. The Baroness touched something on her belt, and a dense pattern of laser beams criss-crossed the middle of the room, creating a lethal barrier between heroine and sidekick. At the same time, the saw whirred to life and the belt gave a lurch as it began to move. “Now, about that surrender... you have one minute.”

Vindiatrix considered her options. She could defeat her foe and disable the laser grid, but it might take longer than a minute, especially if the Baroness had reinforcements waiting to enter the fray.

“You win... for now.” Shield Lass opened her mouth to protest again but closed it again at a glance from her mentor.

“I win... forever,” the Baroness declared as the deathtrap mechanisms slowed to a halt. A door opened, and four Leathergals entered the room. A tall slim redhead directed two of her companions to hold the surrendered heroine’s arms and the other to place the large box she carried onto a table.

“Don’t try any tricks,” the villainess warned the heroine. “I’ve locked down the shutdown switch. If you make me activate the saw again, you’ll have to find yourself a new girlfriend.”

Vindiatrix refused to react to the gibe. In fact, Jenny was gay, and in the closet to avoid the jokes and rumors that always circulated about superheroes and their sidekicks. She supported that decision; privately, she suspected that she would have done the same thing in her position.

She put those thoughts aside as the Leathergals guided her to a spot directly beneath a heavy chandelier. One of them took thick leather bands out of the box; the others fastened them tightly around the heroine’s wrists and ankles. “Raise your hands over your head,” the redhead ordered. She complied, and one henchwoman boosted another into position to tie her wristbands to the arms of the chandelier. Meanwhile, the fourth Leathergal fastened an eighteen-inch rod between her ankles, forcing her to stand with her legs spread.

After they finished, the villainess stood in front her captive, looking her up and down. “I can see that you’re testing your bonds. Go ahead, don’t worry about trying to hide it.”

The heroine paused for a long moment, as if she were ignoring the comment, then suddenly threw her full weight and strength into one all-out yank. Maybe her captor was being overconfident; if so, this might be the ideal moment to catch her off guard. That hope was quickly dashed; her arms were bound as tightly as ever. There was even less she could do about the bar between her feet; she had no way to get leverage against it.

“That chandelier looks like wrought iron, but it’s actually titanium steel triple-mounted to a main ceiling support. It’s strong, and beautiful... like you.”

Vindiatrix squelched an impulse to roll her eyes at the Baroness’s narcissism. Of course she liked the looks of a woman who shared her jet-black hair, chiseled features, and athletic build. The villainess had once attempted to impersonate the heroine with a fake costume, needing only a new hairstyle, contact lenses, and a bit of makeup to pass as long as she avoided close scrutiny and kept her mouth shut... the last being the most difficult part for her.

“You really ought to consider a more flattering outfit, however.”

“Like black leather?” Vindiatrix snorted. This time, she did roll her eyes.

Her captor’s hand went to the riding crop at her waist, gripping its handle but stopping short of raising it. She growled, “You’ll soon be wearing whatever I want you to wear...” She leered as she concluded, “...or not wear.”

“Not getting any affection from the Leathergals lately?” Vindiatrix shot back. A few weeks ago, she’d learned that the Baroness was hiring henchwomen without regard to sexual orientation. Apparently requiring the Leathergals to serve as both a criminal gang and a lesbian harem had proved too limiting.

The Baroness laughed at the gibe, surprising the heroine. “I get whatever I want from them... including the ones who used to be straight. And now I’m going to get whatever I want from you.”

She reached into the box and lifted out a helmet with LEDs and switches on its surface and a battery pack mounted on top.

“Mind control? Really?” Despite the seriousness of the situation, the heroine almost laughed in her captor’s face. She’d been subjected to various forms of villainous mind control before. The effect invariably broke down in a few hours, or the first time she was commanded to do something really objectionable.

The Baroness grinned.

Vindiatrix started to get worried. She’d fought the Baroness enough times to read her reactions. Her bluff had been called, and she had neither shown annoyance nor made a quip to cover her discomfiture. That suggested that she wasn’t bluffing after all. Did she have some new breakthrough that bypassed the known limitations of mind control? If so, that would explain why she no longer limited herself to lesbian hirelings... she could have any woman she wanted.

Apparently the Baroness wanted her. She shuddered.

A flurry of motion out the corner of her eye caught Vindiatrix’s attention. The Leathergals were placing a similar helmet onto Shield Lass, despite her desperate attempts to maneuver her head out of the way. They secured the device into place with two straps, one inside the heroine’s mouth and another tight around her chin, effectively gagging her as well as preventing her from shaking off the headgear.

“The Climax Remodulator is not some crude attempt to stamp outside thoughts onto the brain,” the Baroness explained.

“And now she’s going to shove my insults right back down my throat by telling me exactly what she intends to do,” Vindiatrix thought. “At least I accomplished that much.”

She had a sick feeling that her “accomplishment” wasn’t going to do her any good, however.

“Instead, it utilizes a powerful impulse generated within the brain... the power of sexual climax. The device channels that impulse to reshape the subject’s pleasure triggers while breaking down any conflicting inhibitions.”

The Baroness then raised the helmet over her captive’s head. She attempted to avoid it, as Shield Lass had, with no more success. The device was soon firmly secured in place with the same arrangement of mouth and chin straps.

Grinning naughtily, the Baroness removed Vindiatrix’s belt and tossed it aside, then tugged down the heroine’s tights and panties. She fished a scissors out of the box and cut the garments in two from front to back, leaving her captive’s ass and pussy exposed and accessible.

Shield Lass stared at her. Vindiatrix wanted to hide or cover herself, knowing full well that it was an irrational reaction. Their partnership had always been perfectly professional. Even if she’d been gay herself, that kind of intimacy between mentor and pupil was not appropriate. They both knew that.

Being exposed like this was just making her paranoid, Vindiatrix told herself. Her sidekick was tough and brave, but she was also a nineteen-year-old girl who needed her mentor’s support when things got difficult. She returned the gaze and tried to look confident.

As she watched helplessly, the tall redheaded Leathergal pulled down Shield Lass’s tights and sliced them apart. Finally, the henchwoman pushed the saw stand aside and knelt in the spot where it had stood, perfectly situating herself to get a good look at the blonde fuzz between the young heroine’s thighs.

Baroness Blackleather unzipped her catsuit and peeled it off, then removed the bra and panties she wore beneath it. She reached into the box and took out a long thin black rod and a tube of gel.

On the other side of the room, the conveyor belt began moving again, sliding Shield Lass toward the kneeling Leathergal.

The Baroness took a position behind Vindiatrix. The heroine heard a murmur of pleasure and tried to banish the mental image of her captor inserting the double dildo into herself. Finally, she felt the other woman’s body at her back, and something hard poking at her rear end. Hands reached around, one cupping her left breast and the other sliding down toward her crotch.

Vindiatrix glanced at her partner. Shield Lass’s legs were spread apart; the patch of auburn fuzz between her legs approached the redhead’s waiting mouth.

“My fingering technique will melt you into a puddle of goo before you know it,” the Baroness whispered into Vindiatrix’s ear. “Your partner is about to encounter the most incredibly talented tongue I’ve ever known, and I’ve known quite a few.” A fingertip began exploring her slit as the dildo pressed against her asshole. “In a few minutes, you’ll both be helplessly lost in sexual rapture... and from that moment onward your greatest pleasure will be to serve me!”