The evening after the Justice Guard overcame the Fimbulwinter, Ms Miracle had thought she’d take it relatively easy. After all, it was Christmas Eve - when word broke that the Running Dogs had broken into the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, it didn’t seem likely that this would be a tricky crime to foil; fly over the state lines, run them to ground, thwart whatever stunt they were planning, and home in time to celebrate.

She had plans for Christmas, even, something she didn’t always bother to make - usually there was too much risk of supercriminals interrupting, but it had been a good year and most of the likeliest offenders were currently imprisoned, dead, or exiled off-planet, three states that Amy had come to regard as functionally identical in how long they stopped someone showing back up for.

The Running Dogs… well, they didn’t think they were jokes. It was just rare that any heroes who’d been around more than a year or two agreed with them on that. Their powers weren’t unimpressive, but their goals were often absurd, their plans tended to require everything to go their way with no safety margin, and their tactics in a fight usually went to pieces as they didn’t work well together.

Really, there was no sensible reason for them to stay together as a group; it all just seemed to be down to the fact their names worked well together.

It should have been simple. It usually was. She’d heard Maxine Power describe them, once, as “ten minutes if I haven’t had my coffee, tops”, and while Maxine was prone to bragging it wasn’t often that she’d outright lie.

The problem was that the report hadn’t mentioned they had a friendly ally with them. Top Dog, Hound Dog, Sea Dog and Junkyard Dog usually worked just as a quartet, with the craziest ideas coming from Hound Dog.

As Ms Miracle stood, hands on her hips, head tilted slightly forward, feet apart, wanting to lunge forward and punch but entirely unable to make herself, she found herself surprisingly at peace with the fact Professor Pavlov was accompanying the Running Dogs. The small bell he carried was silent, and so she could not move, could only think in limited, constrained ways, because she had heard the first chime.

It wasn’t the first time Amy had encountered Professor Pavlov. She was 99% certain he wasn’t related to the original, but he had the bell; opinion differed on the bell, with most assuming it was enchanted in some way, while others swore it was technology stolen from a dystopian future where humanity was sorted into docile, obedient castes; the future that the Warmaster had come back from, and that its chime activated some kind of psychokinetic circuitry.

As with many heroines, Amy had never considered the source of the gadget to be important, except if you happened to be immune to one or the other. The incident that had empowered Ms Miracle had left her able to shoulderblock tanks and shrug off missiles, and some had theorised she had a particular strain of mental resiliency, too; on the other hand, she’d undergone her share of mind control. It just never seemed to stick on her, which she would admit was overall a positive, even if sometimes she found it frustrating.

After all, it was hardly unpleasant to get to let go and relax every so often, just so long as the things you were compelled to do were things you were prepared to enjoy doing, things you didn’t feel a burning need to resist.

She would certainly rather have defeated the Running Dogs and headed home but, as she waited for an instruction and a second chime of the bell, she found herself stirring somewhat.

It was a good job that relatively few people knew about her fetish, she thought. Only her former nemesis and one or two of her allies had put two and two together.

If word got out in the criminal community that Ms Miracle got off on being controlled, she might as well retire; nobody would plan any stunts that might catch her attention that didn’t have as part of the plan ‘brainwash Ms Miracle’. She was glad that, at least, had yet to happen.

“Ms Miracle,” Professor Pavlov said, “raise your hands above your head.” She heard the whickering amusement of Sea Dog, standing nearby and watching, and then the Professor’s bell chimed.

Breathing deeply, eyes glassy, she raised her hands above her head as instructed.

“Interlock your fingers behind your head.” Again the bell chimed, and again Ms Miracle obeyed, her blonde ponytail caught between two fingers, her elbows out wide, which meant just enough arch to her back that her figure was already straining her leotard-like costume significantly.

“Fucking hell,” Top Dog remarked. “I knew we needed her, Prof, but I didn’t know I wanted her.”

“Top Dog, please,” Professor Pavlov said. “I am engaged in a careful act of conditioning here. Your interruptions do not help.”

“Sorry, Prof.” He actually sounded quite sheepish, but Amy wasn’t even thinking about that. Her showing up had been part of their plan? Or some superhuman showing up had been part of their plan, at least. It might not mean her specifically.

“Ms Miracle,” Professor Pavlov said, coming closer. “Push your elbows further back.” He waited, then rang his bell, and she pushed her elbows further back obediently.

The Professor was one of the more gentlemanly mind controllers she knew, although given his schtick involved pleasure conditioning, ‘gentleman’ was a word used advisedly at best.

“Open your mouth,” he said, and she did so even before the bell rang. In her line of sight, the Professor gave her an approving nod. A thrill of pleasure shuddered through her, not the first since this process had started but the most powerful and the most natural to that point.

With the hand that did not hold the bell, he slipped two fingers into her mouth. She mmmphed around them, unable to help herself. It felt… it felt far too good. Uncomfortably good.

Without giving her an instruction, he rang his bell again. Immediately and obediently, though obedient to what command she didn’t know, her head began pistoning up and down around his fingers, tongue tracing swirls around them, grunting her eager need, her latticed interlocking hands bobbing back and forth behind her vigorously sucking head.

This was how it always was with Professor Pavlov. He’d set up a nudge, possibly a couple of coaxing steps, and then you found yourself desperately, needily, sliding down not so much the slippery slope as a fully lubricated slope into obedient slavery.

He had found the fastening on her costume with his other hand and drew it down slowly. With her elbows flexing back and forth behind her head, she wasn’t just working his cock like it was a piston; her chest now had twin pistons which were slowly thrusting their way, one lunge at a time, into revealing themselves.

She could hear Top Dog whistling appreciatively, and her ass wiggled in approving response. The conditioning was well and truly setting in, well and truly taking hold in her mind and her body. Before long, submission to Pavlov would be a reflex, and the only consolation - no, this was a lie. There was a true consolation and it was the pleasure reward that cemented itself into her nervous system along with the conditioning, but - the consolation that the shrinking still-rational part of Amy’s mind clung to was that the reflex never lingered for long after the conditioning broke, once it finally did, except for the occasional dreams which could recur for weeks.

“Ms Miracle,” Professor Pavlov said, “Your tits are a miracle.” He rang his bell, and her nipples hardened in a heartbeat.

The hand which had opened her leotard slid lower, fingertips against her bare, highly-charged skin, the sensation a crackle of erotic excitement like electricity running down her belly. He pressed the handle of his bell against her crotch, only the hyperadvanced material of her costume between it and her already sopping pussy.

Amy was already quivering with pleasure; with the smooth, long curve of the wooden handgrip stroking through the thin leotard against her pussy lips, she found herself shuddering, and that long, drawn-out full-body shiver of delight made the bell ring.

She was still sucking his fingers, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t now humping his hand and the handle of the bell pressed against her crotch where she could easily grind on it. Her body undulated, her head thrusting forward as her hips rolled backward, her head sliding back as her hips bucked forward, her whole self a graceful, self-conditioning fuckmachine, putty in the hands of Professor Pavlov, the conditioning loop building and building in spite of the watching Running Dogs, her body shuddering more and more, her muffled moans becoming needy, whining wails until she came, her eyes rolling back in her head, and her conditioning completed and for a time she did not think.

*

Ms Miracle’s consciousness returned while she was in midair, flying at near her top speed, just as she said the words “I see them, Professor.” Her voice was higher pitched than usual, perkier; closer to what Mercy had once called Ms Bimbiracle, back when she’d been a much worse person.

What she saw was another fast-moving flying object; a sleigh, burdened with heavy hemp sacks, steered by someone in red, and towed by nine antlered quadrupeds. She wasn’t particularly familiar with Scandinavian wildlife, but she was sure, even so, that the animals were reindeer, and even that she could name all ten beings moving through the air above her.

There was a headset under her ponytail, an earpiece carefully in place and a microphone near her mouth. It wasn’t the only addition that had been made to her costume; while her leotard hadn’t been properly refashioned, she now wore a heavy leather harness about her shoulders, back, and waist, and by the feel of things she was towing something heavy from that harness.

Professor Pavlov had made of her a flying vehicle. She hadn’t been told to glance over her shoulder, so she didn’t, but she was sure in that way that only someone experienced in emerging from hypnotic fugue states could be that what she was towing was airtight, probably relatively comfortable, and capable of seating the Dogs plus the Professor.

“She says she sees him,” she heard the Professor say through the earpiece. More dimly, she heard Top Dog say “Then why can’t we?”

“Now, Top Dog,” the Professor said, his tone chiding, “remember, we had to get a hero or a heroine in order to accomplish this part for exactly that reason.

“I have reason to believe his ethical screening field may be powered by psychokinetic circuitry.”

Which, Amy noted, was the same thing his bell supposedly used. Some kind of High Future technology that worked based on the wishes of the user, or possibly of the target.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Santa as a refugee from the future, using his technology to… what?

She’d been surprised to learn, a few years earlier, that he existed; he and Bulwark had, in Bulwark’s words, ‘had a team-up’ one year, fending off some scheme or other from the Consortium. She’d always assumed him to be fictional, based off that old king or saint or whatever.

“On the other hand,” Pavlov was saying, “it may simply be magic. That’s one reason I’m keen to complete this; even understanding the source of Santa Claus could be useful to my researches.”

Sea Dog was further from the microphone that transmitted to her, but she could still hear him, albeit barely. “I don’t care about your researches. I want the sled.”

“Sleigh,” Pavlov corrected absently.

“Whatever. The - whatever you called it - the wishing machine potential there is huge. I can get me a seeker harpoon gun so I can finally take Siren out.”

“I can get some of them nanobots,” Hound Dog said. “Soup up my powers. And then nobody’s gonna laugh anymore.”

“I want him to give me something like your bell, Prof,” Top Dog said. “Only one which actually lasts, you know?”

Professor Pavlov didn’t answer, but Ms Miracle could still hear him trying to control his annoyance.

“I’m gaining on him, Professor,” she said, and realised she’d been told to report in when that happened. This was the problem when Professor Pavlov was involved; she didn’t know what was her idea and what was his, what would help and what would hinder.

“That’s very good, Ms Miracle,” he answered.

“That’s fuckin’ brilliant,” Top Dog said. “Tell her to grab on and dock.”

There was another pause. Amy found herself thinking Top Dog shouldn’t be so stupid around the Professor, that won’t make him happy, before reminding herself that her job should be to find some way to stop them from…

She could barely bring herself to even think it.

To stop them from hijacking Santa.

“Ms Miracle,” Professor Pavlov said, the irritation clear in his voice, “do as Top Dog says.”

“Yes, Professor,” she said brightly. She could hear the smile on her lips even if she hadn’t been aware of just how deeply she was feeling the pleasure conditioning she couldn’t push back on. It felt so good to have a thing to do for the Professor. The bell wasn’t needed any more; only instruction was needed.

She would do as Top Dog said.

She was at what she always thought of as her top speed; it wasn’t sustainable to push herself any faster. But she didn’t have to push herself for long, and the Professor had given her a thing to do.

She accelerated.

Within moments she was on the sleigh. She seized the high side beside Santa’s perch with two powerful hands, set foot on the sleigh runners, and braced herself.

Moments later, with one hand, she was drawing the craft she’d towed in closer and closer.

“That’s super weird, man,” Top Dog said, just audible through the radio. “You can see she’s grabbed it, you just can’t see what she’s grabbed.”

“Indeed,” Professor Pavlov said, obviously hoping to cut his ally off before the man said anything even stupider.

Top Dog continued. “It’s great watching her go. She should work that ass a little more while she does, that’s all.”

Amy felt the pleasure reward flood her system even before she’d adjusted her grip and stance, her feet now splayed further apart on the runner, her knees bent, her ass thrust out back behind her. Every haul on the line to bring the craft in to dock with the sleigh, she swung her hips out and back to add to the strength she was bringing to bear.

She was, she realised, still doing as Top Dog said and getting pleasure rewards for it. If her face had not already been wearing the vapid, empty smile of the bliss-conditioned slave, she would have smiled anyway.

Professor Pavlov was a reasonably smart man - not, perhaps, the genius he claimed, but he was a capable, competent strategist. He had developed an association with the Running Dogs over some years, on and off, but everyone’s assumption was always that he used them purely as muscle. They’d never been the brightest, with the possible exception of Junkyard Dog.

“Ms Miracle,” Santa Claus said, peering over toward her from within a sleigh that seemed, now she was holding onto it, much larger than it had been from the outside, “you’re being naughty.”

As the tow cable grew slacker and slacker and the craft came closer, she glanced over her shoulder, able to do so now because it was an important part of docking the craft.

She recognised it now; it was an old lander module from one of the Mars missions in the 1990s, one that had been proudly on display at the space museum. A Professor Mordecai design, she was pretty sure; from the second manned Mars mission, after the first one had disturbed the Aeondust.

“Ms Miracle, I need you to stop this,” said Santa.

Amy was surprised that the lander could dock with the sleigh, but as it came close, she saw the side of the sleigh ripple and change, and she pressed the airlock door against it, and the two vehicles melded.

Santa sighed audibly and stepped back away from the edge of the sleigh.

Ms Miracle stood where she was, on the outside of Santa’s sleigh as it careened, undriven, through low earth orbit, and waited. At some point, she was sure, someone would choose to give her orders.

*

It took less than three minutes. “Hey, sweet cheeks!” Top Dog yelled over the intercom, his voice surprisingly frantic. “Get your butt in here and help me!”

She released her grip on the outside of the sleigh and climbed in obediently.

Santa had not been as easy a conquest as the others had perhaps thought, though this may have been because only Sea Dog and Top Dog were present, Hound Dog, Junkyard Dog and the Professor having gone… somewhere? The interior was large, and much was walled off, and she thought there might even be multiple floors to it. She doubted this was futuretech; this sort of thing, in her experience, was magical, no matter what certain British gentlemen adventurers of her acquaintance insisted.

The red topcoat had been removed and the jolly fat man looked, while bulky, neither jolly nor fat; the size of his shoulders alone was startling, and his frame carried a lot of muscle. Seeing someone throw a straight right like Santa’s while the white pompom on the tip of his hat danced from the energy he put into it was a shock; all the same, he was holding his own against both Dogs, if barely.

No wonder Top Dog had chickened out and called her in to help. “How can I help, Mr Dog?” she asked, and the unnatural, conditioned perkiness in her voice that seemed kind of fun when she was chirping obediently to Professor Pavlov sounded awful to her here. If you were going to give up control, it really mattered who took it, she reflected sadly.

“Throw the asshole off the sleigh!” Top Dog yelled. It was, Amy was pleased note distantly, even as her body endeavoured to obey the suggestion she’d been given, exactly the break she was hoping for.

She grabbed Sea Dog by the scruff of the neck and the back of the belt then pivoted on one foot, like a ballet dancer on fast-forward, and pitched him toward the side. Amy had put her thumb on her mental scales just enough to ensure he went flying into the lander, rather than just over the edge.

She turned back to Top Dog, smiling the broad, happy, empty smile of a conditioned doll who knew a job had been well done; after all, the asshole had been thrown off the sleigh. It wasn’t her fault, Amy reflected, if she couldn’t see a way that you could describe Santa as an asshole.

“What are you playin-“ Top Dog stopped midway through the demand. “You’ve broken free!” he exclaimed. He hesitated for a moment, then turned and ran deeper into the oddly huge interior of the sleigh. Ms Miracle didn’t pursue.

Instead, she was too busy obeying his command to have broken free. It was a strange sensation, powered by her conditioning but rejecting her conditioning. Pleasure rewards crackled along every nerve in her skin as she turned to Santa apologetically.

He raised a white-gloved hand. “I’ll ask questions later,” he said. “Right now, we have work to do. Follow me to the elvenforge.”

It was a command, and while he didn’t have authority to give it, she was conditioned to have broken free of her conditioning. This chain of logic was closer to a chain of illogic, but Ms Miracle was happy enough with it to follow Santa deep into the heart of the sleigh.

*

Ms Miracle watched the police working at the station, one at a time, go to the window, peer out at the sleigh and reindeer in their parking lot, and tiptoe away. It seemed to unsettle most of them.

Personally she’d have thought taking a victim statement from Santa Claus would be more likely to make people uncomfortable. It didn’t feel good to her, and she’d been there for the whole thing.

She checked the time. Three a.m. Really she’d wanted to be home in bed and asleep by then, but sometimes it didn’t work like that. She wanted to be sure…

It was hardly the first time that night her internal monologue had sounded absurd to her. She wanted to be sure that Santa got back on his way safely.

She didn’t think she’d ever fully understand what had happened in the skies above America. The Professor had, apparently, been right to want to steal Santa’s sleigh, as it had the power to grant wishes en masse - Santa had been very vague about how this was, which was just how Amy liked it.

How he’d worked out there was an opportunity there, or that he’d need a heroine to be able to detect the craft, he hadn’t said. Amy had called in the basics to D.A.N.I.E.L. already, but she’d warned the A.I. that she wouldn’t be filing proper paperwork until Christmas was in the history books. She still had her date, even if she was going to be exhausted by the time it happened.

Santa emerged at length. “You didn’t have to wait for me, Ms Miracle,” he said, in a voice that always sounded, somehow, like it was chuckling. “No indeed.”

“Well,” she smiled, “you did kind of suggest I might have ended up on the naughty list…”

“Oh!” He threw his head back, roaring with laughter. “Ho, ho ho! Goodness me no. As a matter of fact, I planned to deliver your present next.”

“Oh? But-“

He passed his white-gloved hand over her face, her vision swam, her knees buckled, and she fell forward into his arms.

*

Amy woke up some time after dawn, mostly wrapped in her comforter, face lost in an implausibly tangled mass of blonde hair, one leg flung not just out of the comforter but out of the bed, hanging in the air under her power. That was when she realised she was still in costume, only the tall turquoise boots kicked off on reflex as she fell into bed. One boot had flown through the bedroom’s open doorway and landed twelve feet further along the hallway. The other had thumped off her wall, leaving something between a scuff mark and a dent. She made a mental note that it would need buffing out later.

Amy tried her best to keep her ‘real life’ and her life as Ms Miracle separate, but it wasn’t always that simple. Take her date that Christmas morning, for example; Mark Corino. He’d met her in her civilian identity first, years ago, when she hadn’t yet joined the Justice Guard and was still working a regular job.

She’d saved his life, a few months ago, when the Green Ghoul reanimated in town, and to her surprise, he called Amy afterward.

He’d recognised her.

She wasn’t sure about things but he just wanted to chat and, so far, things were going pretty well. Well enough that he was coming round to the apartment that morning, for a cosy Christmas together.

Amy blurred into action, tidying her costume away and taking a long, slow shower. She wanted to make sure she was completely presentable by the time Mark arrived.

In this goal she was not entirely successful; she was still in the shower when the doorbell rang, at which point she realised she’d definitely overslept.

Dressed in a towelling bathrobe she let him in, kissing him on the cheek, and told him to make himself comfortable while she put some clothes on.

When she came back he was in the living room, standing with his hands in his pockets looking at the Christmas tree in the corner.

“It’s kind of cheap,” she said apologetically. “I didn’t have much time, so I just-“

“No, I like it,” he said, and the smile he gave her as he glanced over his shoulder toward her was honest and genuine; it warmed her heart. “Although this one decoration really stands out. Is it a family keepsake or something?”

Her brow furrowed. “What decoration?” she asked as she went over.

“This fancy looking bell,” Mark said, and flicked it with his finger, and it chimed.

Amy stood, hands on her hips, head tilted slightly forward, feet apart, the Professor’s conditioning chimes stirring again. She smiled, a happy, welcoming smile. “How can I please you, Mark?” she asked.

He turned, and he looked at her slowly, staring, trying to work this out, and there seemed to be, in the air around them, a distant “Ho, ho, ho!”

Mark walked up to her and undid the belt of her towelling robe, parted it, and looked her up and down. Then his expression grew serious. “This isn’t a joke, is it?” he asked her glassy eyes.

“No, Master.”

He looked concerned. “This isn’t permanent, is it?”

“No, Master. But you can ring my bell, if you like.” Was there a knowing hint in that vacant smile?

“Huh.” He grinned. “Dinner can keep a bit. Go… yeah. Go put on your costume.”

“Yes, Master,” she said, and she seemed to hear a bell chime. She obeyed as she was conditioned to do.