Vindiatrix and Shield Lass arrived at ParaPatrol headquarters fifteen minutes before the appointed time.

For the first few minutes, it might have been any meeting of fellow heroes, reminiscing about past battles won, problems solved, and friendships made. A faint air of awkwardness hung over the proceedings, mostly on the ParaPatrol side, as everyone waited for someone to nudge them toward getting down to business.

It was Vindiatrix who made that move. “Let’s get started.”

Ethrienne sat down in one of two large plush chairs facing each other in a corner of the room. “Who wants to go first?”

There was a silent exchange of glances between Vindiatrix and Shield Lass that ended with the former taking her place in the other seat.

“Now... just relax and let me in.” The psychic heroine scowled as she realized the Freudian overtones of that statement. She glanced at Shield Lass and caught her smirking.

She turned her attention back toward Vindiatix. “Relax...” she repeated. “Relax...” That ought to be safe and neutral enough.

Crimson Crag, the Palladium Paladin, and Shield Lass stood watch. The Paladin held a switch that would activate a psionic “screamer” to break Ethrienne out of the mind link if he decided it was necessary.

Everything was as safe and controlled as possible. It was time to begin probing for the truth.

“We’re going to revisit your memories of your encounter with Baroness Blackleather.” Ethrienne suppressed a scowl as she regretted that choice of word. “You’ll relive the events as you remember them, and I’ll experience them along with you. Everything will seem just as real as it did when it happened. If the memories are real events, they’ll feel like the same reality you’re experiencing here and now. If the memories are illusions put into your mind to cover up something, they’ll feel like dreams or flights of fancy. I can’t fully explain the difference in words, but it will be obvious one way or the other once it happens.”

Vindiatrix nodded.

“Close your eyes and try to block out everything but the sound of my voice. Now... relax, and think about the moment you met Baroness Blackleather.”

Ethrienne’s mind reached out to contact Vindiatrix’s. The psychic connection formed and strengthened. The chairs the women were sitting in and the room surrounding them faded away, replaced with the entryway of the VaVaVidd Studio building.

The place felt real. The psychic heroine viewed the scene as Vindiatrix remembered it. The mental image was full of details: a coffee ring on a stack of papers, a crumpled candy wrapper next to the wastebasket, a stray pen under a chair. It was unlike anything Ethrienne had ever seen in dreams or fantasies or artificially imprinted memories.

The events continued to play out. Vindiatrix stated her intention to accept the Baroness’s proposition and read the contract offered to her. The paper felt real. The text was clear and legible, not random alphabet soup.

She probed deeper to share every sensory detail as the heroine signed the paper. Surely that had to be an illusion or some kind of mental manipulation. She couldn’t have really agreed to become a porn starlet for Baroness Blackleather!

It seemed that she had. She relived the moment again. She could find no inconsistencies or gaps in the memory.

Ethrienne felt the Baroness’s handshake and her kiss. She then found herself walking down the corridor, getting closer and closer to the stage. Then she felt herself taking the stage, surrounded by cameras and microphones. Everything looked and sounded and felt and even smelled completely real.

Now she—no, Vindiatrix, she reminded herself—was on the stage surrounded by cameras and microphones. Her mental focus wavered for a moment as she realized that if she didn’t find any clues during the mind probe, the only other option was to closely watch the video and see if she could spot anything incompatible with the memories she was reliving.

She didn’t want to do that... did she?

As the scene reached the point where the duo began stripping off their superheroine uniforms, Ethrienne shivered. The sensation of being stripped—not just of clothing, but of inhibitions and respectability—was almost palpable. No, not “almost”... she actually felt fabric sliding up over her head and down off her legs. She watched Shield Lass getting closer and closer to naked and found the sight... interesting.

She was tempted to break off the session before... before matters progressed any further. She was also tempted to forget about searching for clues and simply enjoy the experience. Maybe she did want to watch the video. It would be an easy way to revisit this memory over and over in the privacy of her own bedroom, pleasuring herself....

“What the hell is happening to me?” Maybe she should break it off here. The memories were too real, too intense. They were drawing her in. Scanning particularly intense memories could do that sometimes, but she’d never felt it this strongly.

She was so distracted with deciding whether to push onward that Shield Lass’s kiss caught her off guard. She shivered. She couldn’t tell if it was an echo of Vindiatrix’s earlier experience or a spontaneous physical reaction from her own body.

It had to be Vindiatrix. She wouldn’t be reacting like this. She was straight. She must have let herself dive too deeply into the mindscape. She could pull back a little, just to keep her head clear, see this through to the end, and find something to prove that it was all a trick.

The experience got less intense as the kiss finally ended... and then she felt herself walking forward, getting closer and closer with each step to a pair of reclining couches on rails that Vindiatrix’s memories identified as the “Scissor-Matic”—a bondage rig designed to maneuver two women into lesbian intimacy.

Was there any point in continuing? She’d been captured and tied up on occasion, but she’d never tried kinky bondage sex or gotten intimate with another woman. That meant she wouldn’t really be able to tell if the experience felt real, didn’t it? She’d done all she could, right?

Maybe there was no point in continuing, but for some reason she just couldn’t make herself quit.

Every sensation felt natural, with none of the artificiality found in false memories. The collar tight around her neck, the straps holding her down, the rods keeping her legs spread, the platform moving her body into position... every aspect of the experience had a genuine physicality to it.

She felt a warm touch against her inner thighs, the press of flesh against flesh and the tingle of fizzing lubricant mixture slowly infiltrating her pussy. She gasped—

Everything dissolved into glittering sound and roaring light and freezing scents and aromatic pressure.

“Are you all right?”

Ethrienne opened her eyes, closed them, and opened them again. The second time, she started to actually see something—the face of Crimson Crag looking into hers. She nodded, not so much in answer to the question as to prove to herself that her body would obey her will.

“You were showing signs of physical distress,” the Palladium Paladin explained. “Once I determined that sudden interruption was likely to be safer than continuing the probe, I activated the psionic interference screen to break off contact.”

“Thanks,” she said. She was torn between laughter and sheer dumbfoundedness at the Paladin’s interpretation of her reactions as “physical distress”. It was just so typical of him, she thought. Being able to form that thought was reassuring. It showed that she was back in reality. The continuing quivers between her thighs were just an aftereffect that would fade away.

Vindiatrix was also getting reoriented to the real world, with Shield Lass holding her hand and looking worried.

“Wow. That was intense!” the heroine said as she blinked a few times. “Intense and real,” she added. She’d clearly made up her mind about the results of this investigation.

Ethrienne couldn’t dispute that conclusion. Every moment she’d revisited had looked and sounded and felt like a recollection of a real experience. There were none of the surreal overtones that marked dreams and hallucinations. There was no sign of the subtle errors and missing details that characterized artificial memories. There was no sensation of going through externally directed motions. There was only a series of normal recollections of thoughts and actions.

“That’s the impression I got,” she finally said. “Real.” She didn’t want to believe it, but she couldn’t deny it. None of this made sense. All she could do was state what she’d seen, without trying to understand how it was possible.

“Then the matter is settled.” Everyone turned to face the Palladium Paladin. “If Vindiatrix’s memories are genuine, there is no real reason to suspect that Shield Lass’s memories are not. I do not believe that it is necessary to proceed further.”

“I’m willing to go ahead,” Shield Lass declared.

Ethrienne was torn. Maybe, just maybe, she’d find something on the second try. On the other hand, she was in no shape to repeat the experience now. The sheer power of the experience was beyond anything she’d ever encountered before. She wasn’t sure how long it would take her to recover and refocus.

Worse, even if she did try again, she didn’t really expect the outcome to be any different.

She shook her head.

“We are finished here, then,” the Paladin declared. “Vindiatrix, Shield Lass; please accept my best wishes for the success of your new careers.”

“So, looks like they’re really porn stars now,” Crimson Crag added. He sounded like he, too, wasn’t quite sure what to make of the situation, and was simply going along with the flow until he came up with some better idea.

Vindiatrix grinned. “We’re still the Trusty Twosome when the city needs us. We’re just taking a few sexy walks on the wild side.”

Her face became a bit more serious, though a naughty gleam remained in her eye. “Speaking of which, we have a shooting session later this evening.” She turned to Ethrienne. “You can come along and see for yourself that we have nothing to hide. We’ll show you anything you want to see!” Her tone was a clear invitation to “show” the other heroine things far more personal than the studio grounds and equipment.

“No thanks.” She simply couldn’t deal with that right now. After watching the two of them become porn starlets and sharing the experience in her own mind, watching them perform for real would be too much. She blinked, banishing a sudden mental image of the two heroines standing there stark naked, and clenched her thighs together to ward off another wave of shivers down below.

Vindiatrix shrugged. “The invitation’s open any time you change your mind,” she said as she and her partner headed for the door.

Ethrienne watched them go. For some reason, she had to make a conscious effort to focus her eyes on their backs instead of their backsides.

-----

Warm flesh brushed against her legs... another pair of legs, spread and supported to neatly interlock with hers. The touch slid up between her thighs, becoming firmer and warmer and more insistent. She felt her body rocking into it.

Other thighs slid against hers. She groaned, somehow making no sound, afraid that she’d gotten stuck. Afraid that the touch wouldn’t make it all the way up between her legs. She quivered as it moved closer and closer, slowly but surely. Something was touching her folds down below—

Ethrienne woke up with a gasp. The dream had come back. It was even more vivid than the last few times. As she blinked and finished waking up, she realized another difference: the dream images and sensations had continued beyond the last moment she’d vicariously experienced during the scan. Her own imagination had seamlessly continued from that point.

She noticed that her left hand was inside her panties and yanked it away. Then she raised her hand, staring at it as if she wasn’t quite sure it was part of her body. What the hell was happening to her? She’d done plenty of other mind probes in which she’d dredged up powerful memories, including sexual ones. It had never affected her like this. Why was this time different?

Baroness Blackleather had done something to Vindiatrix and Shield Lass. She couldn’t find it, she couldn’t prove it, it was supposed to be impossible, but it was there. It had to be. Somehow, she’d brainwashed them and planted false memories in their heads that were so intense and realistic that probing them had messed up her head.

It sounded ridiculous, even insane. She knew that. She knew it was true anyway.

Even if she was right, what could she do about it? Another mind probe, even if the heroines would agree to it, probably wouldn’t find anything different than the first one. Worse, it might aggravate whatever it was that was driving her crazy.

Ethrienne sighed and turned on the television. There was no way she was getting back to sleep for a while, and she didn’t want to think about this right now. She needed a distraction....

“...radio host Gus Rimblaw has become the center of controversy again following remarks in which he called Vindiatrix and Shield Lass ‘superwhoreoines, and suggested that other superheroines should do sex shows for money so that they wouldn’t need taxpayer subsidies or corpor—”

She almost threw the remote at the screen before fumbling with it and finding the “off” button. She took a deep breath while the initial impulse to lash out faded away. There was no point being angry at some radio shock jock, she told herself. Those comments were just a more extreme version of what people were saying and thinking. There was no point being angry at them, either.

Ignoring the issue obviously wasn’t going to work, so she tried to make sense of it. How could a couple of respectable heroines like Vindiatrix and Shield Lass degrade themselves like that? Didn’t they care about embarrassing their friends and colleagues? What the hell had come over them?

It had to be brainwashing! No matter how impossible it was, the Baroness had found a way. It was up to her to do something about it because she had no way to convince anybody else.

Suddenly, she knew what she was going to do about it. She hadn’t found the proof she was expecting in Vindiatrix’s and Shield Lass’s minds, but there was another obvious place to look.

She tossed her pajamas and panties aside as she opened the hidden drawer that held her costume. Less than a minute later, Ethrienne was airborne, en route to her target.