Wearing only her costume’s calf-length deep green leather boots and the lighter green facemask, her hair freed from its customary braids to sit like a cloud of curls around her head, Emily walked back into her bedroom where Imago waited, his costume immaculate except that the waistband had been pulled down under his cock and balls and his long dark hair had been freed from its ponytail. She smiled as she saw him stiffen on her approach.

Just a couple of hours earlier, her head had been reeling, bombarded by a sense of unease from deep within her psionic instinct and by a flood of pleasure from him groping her bubble butt of an ass. She was aware that something had happened then, but only in vague terms; she remembered that she had wanted to ask him to stop something he was doing, or at least to pause a little while, but then he had groped her ass for the first time and she hadn’t wanted that anymore.

“It’ll be ready in twenty minutes,” she told him, referring to the frozen pizza they would soon be splitting. She lifted one knee onto the edge of the bed, because it made her feel like she was both standing for herself and kneeling for him at the same time, and that was a fine line that brought her real bliss. “And you’re right. I love my reward.”

With a grin, she wiggled her hips, and she could feel her own asscheeks jiggle. Her rear had attracted looks before but she knew it was going to lead to a lot more attention from now on, but the way it felt had become its own reward - especially when Imago had his hands on it. He spanked it, groped it, fondled it, almost mauled it, and the more she ached from his attentions the more she loved it. She’d never really understood masochists before, but she could see now how it worked.

“I hoped you would,” Imago told her. He had on a knowing smile, and even in two conversations Emily had seen it flash enough to guess that when he wore that smile he was amused by some extra private meaning. She’d always been curious, and this in particular she was dying to understand. But she didn’t feel like she could pry into what he wanted kept secret; it just wasn’t her place. “I’m sure you’re motivated to earn it now.”

“Oh, definitely,” she said, making herself comfortable and enjoying Shane’s eyes across her. “But I don’t entirely understand. It sounds like you want to take over the Phenomenal Five?”

“Not in so many words,” he said. “I actually have cause to be grateful to you as a team. But you must admit you’re all very attractive.”

Emily smiled broadly at the compliment. “We clean up well, for sure,” she said. “I still think Wolf’s a no go for you, though.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Imago said. “I have my own inside line with her.

“I only recently came into my powers,” he continued. “It took me a little while to work out what they are. Especially because they didn’t come on full power to begin with, or at least if they did I couldn’t figure out how to use them that way. I don’t think I could have given you your reward last week, say.” He clucked his tongue. “I’m getting off the point,” he said. “In any case. I have this power, and while I’m new to it, I feel like I should give back. I do that by being Imago. At the same time, a part of me wants to make up for lost time, if you get me?”

Emily nodded. She understood the temptation to use her powers for good. More than once, during an argument with Leon, she’d thought that reading his mind would at least tell her whether their relationship could be permanently fixed or whether she should end it for good. She’d always held herself back, of course; given her loyalty to Imago, it was a little hard to hear that he had different standards, but it just made her think perhaps she should change hers.

Not that getting Leon back in her life was exactly a priority for her anymore. Her eyes, she realised with slight embarrassment, had drifted slowly back to stare at his cock.

“My interest in your team is all on that side,” he continued. “Beautiful women I want to woo and win.” He reached out, taking her nipple between thumb and forefinger, and he tugged as his eyes shone with delight. “Like I’ve won you.”

Emily’s smile widened into a dreamy, sensual beam, which she focused on him. It was only fair, after all, to show him she found him as attractive as he clearly found her. She reached out, taking him by the cock, and started to stroke his shaft gently. “So what do you want from me?” she asked.

“Right now? I just need you to tell me what you know about your team. Don’t worry about Wolf. I think I have her in hand. But anything you think I could use, I want to know. And if you’re very good, I may give you a further reward.” He grinned.

Still lovingly stroking his cock, Emily spent the ten minutes that remained before the pizza was ready telling him everything her teammates had let slip or that had bled through her telepathic net during a mission.

*

Whenever Phantom’s attention was divided, she had the habit of twitching her head from side to side, and her long, dark ponytail would bounce arhythmically as Phantom worked through whatever she was dealing with. As the team waited for Electrum to arrive for the next training session, her attention was very divided - as was, she was sure, Valkyrie’s.

Phantom was torn between staring Wolf’s cheerful smile and elaborate double-stacked bun hairstyle and studying Emerald’s silhouette. Obviously the psychic’s ass hadn’t measurably grown and become perkier in the four days since the last training session, but all the same, she couldn’t shake the impression that it had. Her costume also seemed a little darker than usual, though it was otherwise immaculate.

“Good of you to join us,” Valkyrie was telling Wolf, who gave her a haughty smirk in return. Phantom furrowed her brow. It was fair to say that as an opening gambit, Val’s comment had been pretty aggressive, sure, but if Wolf was going to respond her usual order of business would be to shoot the criticism down bluntly. The smirk seemed more like she was outright dismissing it.

Phantom glanced across to Emerald and their eyes met. She could see uncertainty in her fellow heroine’s face that matched her own.

“I assume,” Val said firmly, “that this means we won’t be having that problem again.”

After a long moment, Wolf turned back to look at her and smiled. “I don’t have a problem to begin with,” she said.

“Guys,” Emerald said uncertainly. “Maybe we should take it easy?”

“Oh, no,” Val said. She took, not a step, but a stride toward the other heroine, while some distance behind her Electrum opened the door and slipped in, adjusting her mask. “No,” Val continued, “I think we should sort this out. You’re acting weird, Wolf. And don’t think I’m the only one who’s noticed.”

“Not this again,” Electrum said, her voice managing the odd trick of adding a plaintive note while still sounding firmly decided. Not for the first time, Phantom wondered if it was all motherhood or if she was or had been a teacher first. “Guys, I deal with petulant whining, self-importance and posturing at home. I come here to be with people who rise above that. I know I’m late, but can we focus?”

There was something about the way she did it that managed to mollify her listeners while still making her point. Wolf gave a short bark of a laugh, but subsided, even reached out a hand toward Valkyrie. “Sorry, Val,” she said. “No hard feelings?”

With their eyes all on her, Valkyrie accepted the handshake. “None, so long as you can all impress me now. Let’s get the sim ready.”

As the team busied themselves with a new task, Phantom caught sight of Electrum’s eyes wandering. The new arrival was also staring almost assessingly at Emerald’s rear end. Phantom nodded to herself, now utterly certain she wasn’t imagining anything.

*

“Honestly I think Phantom’s a hedonist more than anything else. She’s an admitted adrenaline junkie; she has opinions on every major rollercoaster in the continental United States, and from something she said last year I think she’s studying for a pilot’s licence.

“But as much as she loves a thrill, she’s a foodie too. Has opinions on all kinds of different cuisines. We solved a murder once because she recognised one of the ingredients in the victim’s kitchen meant he had to be a frequent traveller to Argentina. I think she just enjoys sensation, you know? That’s definitely why she got into the hero game, I’m sure of it. Honestly if she thought that being a heroine and supervillain simultaneously was enough of a thrill, it’d basically be a test of her code of ethics whether she ever did it.”

*

The loose, flowing summer dresses didn’t feel suitable anymore. Mei could spend up to five minutes in the morning searching through her wardrobe, trying to fathom why it was that someone with her tastes in clothes owned virtually nothing to suit it.

Joggers, leggings, jeans, tees, sports bras, halter tops, and hoodies were all present in abundance; her costume was figure-hugging leathers, which automatically made for a certain specific presentation while doing the heroine thing; there were a handful of skirts she’d owned for years, barely ever worn, a couple of summer dresses, and, tucked away at one end of her wardrobe, a trouser suit in a pure white.

None of it was really suitable. At least her costume made sense as a heroine, but the rest of it… The suit at least carried an impression of wealth and power, but it also suggested a forthright, independent woman, and that just wasn’t the way Mei saw herself. It was as if all the clothing in there had been assembled in a failed goal to change who she was, to turn aside her fundamental nature. Clothes make the woman, as the old saying had it. But nothing had changed, and Mei remained, as she always had been, a decorative and doting woman, one in need of a man to steer her.

Mei was seized by an image of herself as the savage Wolf, her nails honed to claws as they did when she accessed her power and her adrenaline came up, ripping these poor decisions apart.

Perhaps the leggings and sports bras could be retained for her work, the uniform too. Nothing else presented her properly, nothing else suited the woman she truly was. It would be good to dispose of them, but she stopped herself when she realised that honing her nails into claws would mean that her manicure was destroyed.

Instead, she stalked out of the apartment in a skirt, halter top, and a vile mood.

She knew Valkyrie had a personal shopper, but the blonde had refused to make an introduction, simply saying “Something’s wrong with you, and I’m not enabling whatever this shit is.” So she was going to have to rely on her own instincts for shopping, but that was alright; honestly that was going to be fine.

*

Later that month, the Phenomenal Five mobilised to deal with Majestor Zzazrin, Ruler of Dimension Twelve, and the elite squad of hunter-cataphracts he had invaded with. The Five were the first to meet the invasion and they bore the brunt of the attack but, once again, many of Arizona’s other heroes made their way to the city to join in a conflict that lasted almost sixty hours from start to finish.

Valkyrie and Wolf bore the brunt of the heavy fighting, standing side by side against the Majestor for five hours before anyone was there to relieve them. For the time being, their differences were put aside, though it didn’t escape Val’s notice that Wolf’s hair, fair from being worn loose and allowed to tangle under the stress of combat as usual, was still being worn up in the elaborate double-tiered bouffant bun.

Electrum hovered nearby, working with what technology she had to hand. She was joined, as time went by, by other genius heroes, all working to jury-rig a device that would return the invaders to their home dimension.

Elsewhere, Emerald and Phantom had hurried off, following a lead Emerald had turned up. The other three weren’t entirely sure what they were hoping to do, but when a despot from another dimension invades your city, you chase up every opportunity you can.

When they finally returned, Imago came along with them, having evidently encountered them along the way. Perhaps by chance, he was walking toward the main focus of the conflict slightly in front of the two of them, who were flanking him; an observer might have thought he was their leader and they were his backup.

By that stage, in collaboration with Miss Amazing and Doc Spearhead, Electrum had more or less built the device they needed to shunt the Majestor back where he came from, and the fight had drawn in heroes and heroines from much further around.

At the culmination of the fight, Wolf, Suprema, and Ms Miracle launched a fierce assault on the Majestor, staggering him with blow after blow, keeping him reeling, leaving him vulnerable - and distracting him while Valkyrie wound up and hurled a small device packed full of technology and connected to a thick cable directly at him.

It was a modified ‘stickum’, one of the gadgets Miss Amazing always had ready. As the name suggests, these throwing balls were designed to stick to whatever they impacted against. Usually, this triggered the circuitry inside to send out a pulse of electricity tuned to disrupt neural processes - a targeted stun effect. In this case that equipment had been scooped out and replaced with the actuator and targeting lens for the dimensional projection effect.

The moment it stuck fast - which it did almost immediately - Electrum threw the switch and the Majestor was hurled back across to Dimension Twelve.

After a moment to get their bearings again, all assembled heroes burst out into whoops and cheers, the adrenaline surging high.

All, that is, aside from one. Valkyrie wheeled around and glared at the grouping of Emerald, Imago, and Phantom. “Nice to have you back,” she retorted. “Shame your little errand didn’t change anything.”

Phantom remained silent, as she often did in the field. Emerald looked more than a little taken aback. To the surprise of many gathered, Imago raised a hand and joined in the conversation. “That’s a bit unfair, don’t you think?” he asked. “We did find Donna Marlowe. She just didn’t have the anchorstone anymore.”

This utterance, though cryptic to those hearing it not familiar with the Majestor’s initial abduction of Ms Marlowe to be a transdimensional bride, did cause Valkyrie to pause. She shrugged. “You’re right,” she said. “Sorry, team. It’s…”

Ms Miracle put a hand on her shoulder. “We’re all exhausted, Val,” she said. “But it would have been a lot worse without you and your team being right here at the breakthrough point. I think you can afford to let them chase a blind lead this once.” She smiled warmly. Valkyrie nodded again.

The other heroes started to take their leave, which meant cleanup was down to the Phenomenal Five. Electrum idly tucked the discarded stickup circuitry into a pouch of her utility belt, then went back to disassembling as much of the dimensional projector as she could. It didn’t do to leave working tech like this around; back in the sixties huge amounts of trouble had been caused when students or criminals had sneaked one-of-a-kind devices out of disposal and put them back to use.

The others set to work helping civic responders to undo the worst of the damage done by the battle. For a while, Imago was with them, until Valkyrie stalked over. “Thanks for your help,” she said, “but the Five will take it from here.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then slowly turned his eyes to Emerald, who nodded fractionally.

“Well, then,” he said. “I’ll leave it to you. No hard feelings?” He held out his hand and, to get it over with and make him move more than anything else, Val shook it. His eyes shone with amusement before he made his way elsewhere.

“Rude,” Phantom said, almost too quietly for Valkyrie to hear; by the time she spun around to regard her colleague, Phantom’s attention was visibly elsewhere, phasing her hand through rubble to search for anyone who might be trapped.

Valkyrie frowned all the same, sure that Phantom’s ponytail had been several inches shorter before the fight began.

She must, she told herself, just be exhausted. It could confuse you at times. Still she stayed on, helping with the rescue, until the department of public works had brought in the heavy machinery to relieve them. It wouldn’t do, after all, to show weakness.

*

“Electrum? Easily the smartest member of the team, but she’s also the one who’d be most likely to walk away. She’s a single mom, and obviously she’s got to be available for her kid, you know? And for that reason I’m not sure what her hobbies are. She works, fights crime, and raises a kid. That’s three full time jobs.

“I’m sure she has things she’d love to be hobbies, but I’m not sure she has time for them. And I know she doesn’t just take cases with kids more seriously, she gets kinda broody around them. I think the breakup really hurt.

“She doesn’t have any powers, though. It’s all gadgets and smarts. So there are weak spots there, if you’re looking for them.”

*

Mei had been dozing lightly for about two hours when her doorbell sounded, a shrill buzz cutting through the air. With years of experience behind her, she was instantly fully awake, her instincts crying out the alert. When the doorbell went again, she realised what had woken her and got out of bed with a sigh.

She had taken to wearing a lace teddy to sleep - returning to the credo of wearing the clothes for the life you want, but now without the denial of her last attempt pushing her toward what she both wasn’t and shouldn’t be. Passing the mirror, she saw her long legs, her nipples, the small thatch at her crotch, all visible through the ultra-delicate purple lace. For a moment she reached for the bathrobe, but she hesitated and ultimately stopped herself.

Some part of her understood that showing off her body was important, that a prize is meaningful only when it’s on display. She could not have told anyone else when or where she had learned that, could not point to a single example in her earlier life of behaviour rooted in that principle, and yet she believed it as deeply as she believed that two and two added together were four.

So it was that quiet, retiring Mei Chun, whose neighbours barely even registered that she lived in the same apartment building as them, opened her apartment door wearing only a light purple lacy teddy (blushing all the while at her own daring), and came face to face as she did so with Shane.

He grinned broadly. “Well, that’s a wonderful welcome.”

“I, uh.” She swallowed. “Hi.” She leaned up against the doorframe, and the blush went out of her cheeks as she drank in his reaction. If he was pleased, if he liked her showed off like this, then that was all she needed to know, wasn’t it?

He took a step forward, and by doing so he backed her up a pace. He did it again, then again, until he was firmly in her apartment and could close the door behind him, at which point he kicked it shut with his heel. “It’s good to see you again,” he said, and grinned. “All of you, seems like.”

Mei found herself smiling. She had had only two speeds for a long time, shy and Wolf, but around Shane it was easy to find a middle ground, confident but still focused on her sensuality. All this time imitating career women like Val and really she’d just needed to find the right man to please, she thought. Hard to believe she hadn’t understood that from the start. “Like what you see?” she purred.

“Oh, definitely,” he answered her. “It’s just a little bit of a shame that you don’t have a mask to put on.”

Mei blinked in surprise. “What?”

“I know, Mei,” he said. He stepped forward again, and again the woman who had spent the best part of three days fighting the Majestor to a standstill gave ground almost deferentially. “I know you’re Wolf.”

Her eyes widened in shock. She should. She knew, have felt exposed and vulnerable in this moment, her secret out. Yet actually, she felt better than before. She was ensnared, boxed in, and being backed slowly into her bedroom, and it thrilled through her. No longer pretending to be the predator, but instead the prize and the chase all in one. “How?”

“Because I am Imago.”

She stopped moving backward right on the threshold of her bedroom, as soon as she’d had time to process what Shane had said to her. “Wait,” she said. “No - that can’t be right.”

“Why not?”

“Because Imago and Emerald are clearly fucking,” Mei said. “I think Val’s still in denial but the rest of us know what we’re looking at.”

“And does that mean I can’t be Imago?”

“Well -” Mei stopped abruptly. The idea hadn’t occurred to her. She wasn’t sure whether she liked it or not.

Shane reached out suddenly, his hand settling around her throat. His thumb and his fingertips, on either side of the neck, had her in a light hold. If he was indeed Imago - and she had no reason left to doubt him - Imago would lose to Wolf in a test of strength, every time.

And yet somehow, as he took two steps forward to push her back-first down onto her bed, climbing up onto the mattress after her, thrusting first one and then the other of his thighs up onto the sheets and under her own thighs so that her calves braced on his shoulders, her feet either side of her head, not only did she have no strength to resist him but even if she’d wanted to, she could not have made herself use it.

“You’re my prize,” Shane told her. His eyes flashed possessively. It wasn’t the first time he’d called her that, but it always sent a shudder down her spine, part thrill, part arousal. “But Wolf?”

“Yes?” she asked, and though his hold on her neck was light and he put no pressure on her throat her voice was still breathless.

“The thing about prizes is that more often than not? They’re collectibles.” He grinned, his eyes shining with pride. “And you’ll be worth so much more as part of a full set.”

Mei nodded happily. “You deserve a full set,” she told him. She wanted to be valuable. Her body was where her value already resided, that and her skills; she wanted to hone her skills further and load her body down always in clothes and jewellery that showed off the trophy she truly was.

As he released his grip so he could find his belt buckle, Mei squirmed happily against him. Finally, she thought, she was doing what she’d always wanted to have the chance to do.

Then he was in her. Mei cried out in delight. She spread her arms, bracing against the mattress with her shoulderblades and her elbows, and began to fuck back against him with a fierce, passionate eagerness. The urge to prove her value was on her, mixed in with the lust she always felt in Shane’s presence.

She had so many questions about his superheroic career, but it was not her place to ask them, it was her place to be pretty and useful to him, and that would simply have to be enough.

His eyes were gleaming whenever she met his gaze, and she loved it.

*

Valkyrie knew it was irrational to be in a foul mood around Imago, but she couldn’t help it. It wasn’t that he was showing up to help a lot - he kept singling out Emerald, so it was obvious that there was some attraction there, and Val would have had to be more of a hypocrite than she’d ever been comfortable as if she was going to complain about superheroes having fun on the job; while it rarely got mentioned anymore, there had been a span of about three years at the start of her carer where she’d had dalliances with most of the heroes in Arizona and even had a quick fling with Bulwark.

Just another reputation from the past she was always conscious of and always looking to overcome. And really, that was why she saw Imago as such a problem; she didn’t want anyone to look at a man hanging out around the Phenomenal Five and reach the conclusion they needed a male adjunct to be as successful a team as they had been when they were a mixed group.

She was sure they would be again in future, once someone stepped down or retired or moved away - she wouldn’t reject someone qualified just because they were male - but for the time being, she did see the team as a chance to make a statement she knew was important.

Between Emerald’s sudden connection to Imago and… and whatever was going on with Wolf… Val’s instincts were screaming that her team was somehow under attack.

She poured herself a stiff drink, sighed, and closed her eyes, holding the cool glass against her forehead for a long moment before throwing her head back and downing the vodka in one.

At what point, she asked herself, could she reasonably assume that the reason her best friend had become so weird was because she was being mentally manipulated?

*

Electrum liked routines, which was something that didn’t go perfectly with being a parent and that went very badly with being a heroine. She’d had to come clean to her son and her grandparents about her identity a year ago, just because sometimes she had needed them to understand why Geordi might have to go straight to them, and why she might occasionally disappear overnight.

Usually it wasn’t so bad, but the Majestor had created an unusual situation. She hadn’t seen Geordi for three days, and so she’d made it up to him over the weekend, spending all of their time together.

Now he was on the schoolbus, and having walked him to it and seen him on to it, she had stopped off at the 56th Street Deli where she’d bought a giant breakfast sandwich, a bottle of soda, and a big bag of chips. She intended to go home, eat her sandwich, sleep for several hours then polish off the soda and chips and start getting her head ready for real life again.

She had no idea that Phantom had been following her invisibly from the Deli all the way back home, and if she had, while she would certainly have been surprised, it wouldn’t have worried her.

She got worried all the same when she heard the door she’d just locked behind her unlock itself. Whirling on the spot, she saw a figure enter her home through her open, unlocked front door.

Her first reaction, combat-trained as she was, was to go for her hip, where she always had a compact shockstick stashed in case she needed it, but suddenly she was seized from behind by powerful, invisible arms. Shocked by everything that was happening, she looked up at the intruder.

She recognised Emerald, but only barely; her teammate was wearing sheer black tights with a floaty skirt of black crepe combining so that she was, in the most technical sense, covered up, with a grey halter top above it under a black and white plaid shirt she wore open.

A silver chain with a crescent moon hung around her neck, the moon glinting at the apex of her cleavage, and a black and amber choker was around her throat. Her hair had been allowed - or possibly teased - into an Afro, ochre highlights dyed across it, and the lip ring was new, too.

All the same, with that figure and those eyes it was unquestionably Emerald. She just didn’t know why.

She opened her mouth to scream, and Emerald reached out, slipping three of her fingers into Electrum’s mouth, all the way up to the knuckle. It silenced any outcry she might have wanted to make, and as the door clicked closed behind another entrant, she was debating whether to bite down on her friend, given how strange everything happening was.

Emerald stepped smartly to one side, smiling, and up behind her stepped a man who might or might not have been Imago. He reached out to stroke her cheek, his eyes shining with compassion.

With embarrassment, Electrum realised she had someone’s fingers in her mouth and hadn’t even begun to fellate and worship them. She began with gusto, hoping Emerald wouldn’t think the less of her for hesitation.