Caz decided firmly that she wasn’t going to think about this any further that evening, which of course meant that she spent the evening thinking about nothing else.

The problem was that there were too many variables she didn’t have answers for. Whoever was making these videos and publishing them presumably had an agenda of some sort; even after watching a few of them, Caz was no closer to working out what that agenda might be. Cynicism and the mystery of the author’s identity meant she didn’t trust the agenda to be in her favour.

Plus there was the question of how often you had to watch these things to be affected. Caz was a little troubled by the fact Suprema was affected; Riptide’s opinion on the woman wasn’t exactly an unalloyed positive but there was definitely respect there and she certainly didn’t think of the heroine as weak willed. That being the case, she couldn’t understand why she was even affected.

Was it just repetition, she wondered? If you watched these videos enough times, for long enough, would they wear you down?

…Come to that, how often had they been watched?

She took up her phone and found one of the videos again, then checked its viewer count. It was over three million.

Caz took a little time to try and get her head around that. When the video ended, feeling like she still hadn’t got her head around it, she found an earlier video. That one had been seen five million times. She stared at that number for a long time, trying to make it make sense.

Finally, when the video was over, she opened up the account’s timeline and scrolled like mad until she could find some of the earliest instalments. A couple of hundred thousand views on the original few, the ones which had been and gone from the algorithm before any momentum really got going.

This thing was big, she thought, and felt startled by just how big; that something could feature her and grow to a point where millions saw each instalment before she ever found out it existed seemed crazy.

She tried searching #RiptideSways outside video sites. There was a brief discussion on Reddit, but everyone there seemed convinced she was behind the videos. That didn’t get her any further than she’d started out.

There were so many unknown variables, and she didn’t know how to even begin figuring most of them out.

She’d worked with a villain or two who had the technology you’d probably need to find out more about this, but Caz wasn’t a fool, just a practical woman, and she could definitely see some inherent problems in telling those villains about the existence of active video hypnosis with a userbase if they didn’t already know about it.

What she needed, she thought ruefully, was probably a hero who had that kind of understanding, but there weren’t any she could go to who’d help her without asking questions and most of them would probably try and arrest her.

She wasn’t sure whether not having destroyed the car factory would have helped her with that, or if actually destroying it would have done better for her. CEOs like that guy all seemed like they were one wild decision and a powersuit away from going full Vulcan; there was no way heroes liked them.

In spite of her concerns she slept well that night. Caz had always had a knack for putting things she couldn’t affect out of her mind, so long as she promised herself that as soon as she could affect them she’d fix them.

The following morning, during her morning jog through the park, she realised that she actually had the tools in hand to answer several of her most burning questions.

Consequently, that lunchtime she hit the armoured truck outside Columbia Bank.

*

Renee didn’t think of crimefighting as something only for superpowered people. She’d worked alongside enough cops to respect some and have serious reservations about others - by contrast, she’d so far only met one firefighter who gave her a bad vibe - and thought there were definitely jobs suited to good cops.

A lot of supers tended to think in binary terms, where mad science or magic or superpowers immediately meant that anyone without powers shouldn’t be getting involved at all. She didn’t agree with that - cops had taken down Sergeant Sin more than once, and anyone who thought that Oriole wasn’t going to be able to take down someone like Psi-Clone just because she was purely human clearly hadn’t been paying attention to their ongoing rivalry.

All the same, there were definitely breaks in the continuum, points where you needed certain levels of power to be better than a massive underdog.

As Suprema, Renee had been given occasion to think about questions like this a lot. This time, she was thinking about it while chasing Riptide through the air at supersonic speeds while Riptide dangled an armoured van from one hand. In situations like this, your average cop should probably sit back and not interfere.

There wasn’t even any point in shouting at Riptide; the sound would be left behind them both. On the other hand, the villainess had made several abrupt turns already, so it wasn’t like she didn’t know she was being pursued. If Suprema could avoid being shaken much longer, Riptide would have to fight it out, and that would be a chance to secure the armoured van and its contents before they could be stolen.

Although, she thought, it had been a while since Riptide turned…

They were headed out of the city, both now travelling at more or less their full speed to the west. There wasn’t much difference in their top speeds, but unless they were going through the sea, Suprema had a slight edge over Riptide. For whatever reason, immersion in salt water seemed to power the other woman up. Maybe that was the plan; hit the Pacific and hope Renee couldn’t track her by wake.

That definitely wasn’t the plan, though; about two minutes later, just past Obstruction Point, Riptide slowed and dipped, making landfall just by the small town where 113 intersects 101, in a small clearing created by the local lumber business.

The staff scattered in all directions, breaking into a run and heading for the treeline, as the armoured van rolled two or three times and fetched up against four trees which, together, brought it to a halt.

Suprema landed a short distance behind her, cautious now - a sudden stop like that, surely, was a sign of a plan - and took a couple of steps forward. “I don’t think this needs to be a fight,” she called out. “Do you?”

Riptide was still standing with her back to her. Over her shoulder, the villainess called out “Wait thirty seconds.”

Suprema folded her arms and looked around. Her heightened senses picked out one lumberjack who’d loitered behind. She waved a hand, gesturing him to go further. “That’s her giving you a chance to get away,” she called. “I’ll minimise whatever happens here.”

The man left in a hurry. Suprema heard Riptide chuckle. She took another couple of steps forwards. “That’s far enough,” the villainess called.

“Because you’re coming quietly this time?” Suprema kept her voice light. The other woman was pretending that the lake encounter never happened, it seemed like; Renee was fine with that. She wouldn’t be the first one to bring it up.

“I’m not, but you can take the van back when we’re done,” Riptide said.

“I - wait, what?”

“I’m sure they’re assholes,” Riptide said, “they’re a bank. But stealing money doesn’t hurt them, it hurts anyone working with them. If I go after them, believe me, it’s the executives who’ll be upset.”

Suprema sighed. “Some of that’s good. Some of it… you know, there are ways to do things that don’t need crimes. Especially for people with our kind of power. It wasn’t you attacking their testing facility that took Landholtz out of fighter jets and into space exploration. It was me pushing them.”

“But even then, you needed me to save them from,” Riptide said. Renee didn’t answer that, mostly because the same thing frustrated her a lot.

“So if this isn’t about the bank van, what’s going on?”

“I needed somewhere we could talk privately.”

Suprema stared at her, mouth open, for a while before she spoke again. “I’m going to need you to unpack that for me,” she admitted.

Riptide did nothing of the sort. Instead she began, "Why do you, of all people, even watch RiptideSways?"

Her heart shifted inside her. “So your plan for them doesn’t involve me, huh?” Not, she thought, that a villainess like Riptide would hesitate to make use of her now she knew she had the chance. Without really thinking about it, she slid to her knees.

“Any plan isn’t mine.” She heard Riptide sigh. “I only found out they existed because you kept repeating that slogan at the factory."

“Mantra,” Renee corrected her absently. She straightened her back, thrusting her chest out, resting the backs of her hands on her thighs. Then what Riptide had said finally percolated through. “Wait, no, say that again? When we last fought, you were acting like…” She trailed off. It was one thing to just assume a supervillain’s denials might not be correct, given everything else they got up to, but some of their last encounter didn’t make complete sense if you assumed Riptide was behind the plan all along.

Riptide still stood facing away from Suprema, affording Renee a perfect view of that glorious ass. A few months ago, she might have felt guilty about staring at her nemesis’ rear end and thinking about it as lasciviously as she would. Now, though… well, she’d watched so many videos where Riptide seemed to be telling her herself that it was okay to stare. (She wanted you to stare.) “No, seriously,” Riptide said. “Why do you watch it?”

“The algorithm keeps showing it to me,” Renee answered defensively.

“Sure, but an algorithm shows you the kind of thing you’re already watching.”

Renee bowed her head before answering, although she didn’t bow it far enough that she couldn’t still stare at Riptide’s ass. It was a compulsion, she told herself, then realised that actually it probably was.

The villainess wasn’t even swaying and she felt like she was barely thinking just from staring. Her answer came out in a mumble.

“What?” Riptide demanded.

“There was a link,” Suprema muttered, deeply embarrassed, “in an RPF I read on AO3.”

There were a few moments of silence. She tried to imagine what the villainess was thinking.

“I don’t wanna know,” Riptide muttered. “I don’t wanna know. I don’t wanna know.” With each repetition, her voice got a notch louder. Renee wasn’t sure she realised. “Fuck it,” Riptide continued, and then, her voice abruptly saccharine. “What happens in this, exactly?”

When you heard someone ask a question in that tone, there was no right answer.

“Right,” she began. “So… you remember that whole thing last year with the Riot Squad? You were trying to steal that prototype, they held the board hostage for money? The media were all just ‘Riptide and Suprema have been in the same building for five hours’ or whatever?”

“That… is not exactly how I remember it,” the villainess sad. “Was one of the channels trying to make some point or something?”

Which was an admission of sorts, Renee thought, that Riptide knew about the speculation about the pair of them. “Look, this is getting off the point, okay? Someone did a fix-fic about you and me.”

“A fix-fic.” The darkness simmering in her voice was a warning, but Suprema had been staring at her ass for long enough now that thinking about what a warning meant was long gone.

“Like, someone thinking we shouldn’t be enemies,” she pressed on. “A lot of people think you make some good points. They don’t like you being seen as a villain. They want you to stop” being caught, “breaking the law.”

“And you wound up reading this thing how exactly?”

“Sometimes I think it’d be nice if I had fewer villains I had to keep track of, okay?”

“So your escapism from this job is reading fanfiction where, presumably, we’re dating or something?”

Hard to tell if there was more than sarcasm in that tone of voice. But, also, “I knew you read it!”

“I haven’t read anything,” Riptide retorted hotly. “That just sounded like the most likely scenario, given this whole weird conversation.”

Renee shook her head. “Look, this is way off the point,” she said defensively. “Are you seriously telling me you’re not behind those videos?”

“I already told you I’m not!” the villainess exclaimed hotly. “And you still haven’t explained why you’d be reading someone’s idea of what it’d be like if your pussy turned me good.”

Renee was silent for a long while as she processed the images that outburst had filled her head with. Eventually, plucking up her courage in a very different way to usual, she said “You know, you could just order me to tell you."

“What in the hell are you-”

Riptide’s rant cut off just a few words in when she finally turned around and saw Suprema still kneeling, back straight, hands resting up on her thighs, staring directly at her. Thinking about it, Renee could understand that it might be a little startling.

“What,” the villainess started again, her words so carefully clipped they might have been independent sentences, “Are. You. Doing.”

“I’m kneeling,” she said simply. The villainess’ expression was more bewildered than anything else, so she added “In submission.” To her, that seemed to explain everything, but it didn’t look like Riptide found it as clear, and that somehow just seemed unfair. “Oh, come on,” she said. “You didn’t ask what AO3 or RPF are. That idea can’t be new to you!”

There was a way Riptide’s jaw would ‘jump’, sometimes, a jerky tic, tightening and relaxing and tightening again. She’d seen it before, but only in pitched combat. She was watching it now, just for a moment, before Riptide got herself back under control. “Huh,” she said. “I just gave myself away, did I?”

“Little bit.”

Riptide rolled her eyes. She took a couple of paces closer, hands on hips. “You can’t even see my ass right now.”

“No.”

“So why are you acting all hypnotised?”

She shrugged. “Think of it like… I’ve had my pre-drink on. I’m not drunk but I’m buzzed, and I’m enjoying it. And maybe I’m fully in control and maybe I’m not. But I can let it ride.”

“But…” Words clearly failed her. In the end she waved a hand at Suprema’s kneeling form. “Why all this?” she demanded.

Renee had a dozen or more answers that all added up to part of one bigger answer, but that wasn’t easy to express. She decided, on balance, to settle for the simple answer. “This is going to sound wild,” she said. “But I trust you.”

“You do understand we’re on opposite sides, right?”

“I think sometimes we’re closer than you - you know what? This is a distraction.” Renee took in a deep breath. “Obviously if you tell me to smash up a factory or dangle a CEO out of a window - or knock over a bank van, apparently,” she added sourly.

“That was just to make sure I got your attention!”

“Well, it worked,” she said placidly. “Look. We’re on opposite sides. But I still trust you. If Macabre had been making those videos-”

“I didn’t-”

“If Macabre had been making those videos I wouldn’t be doing this. This is different.”

She composed her face as placidly as she could and waited.

“This is such a bad idea,” Riptide muttered. Renee wasn’t sure if someone without superhearing would have heard - honestly, not acting on the evidence of her supersenses was often the hardest part of maintaining a secret identity - so she stayed quiet. “What are you hoping to get out of this?” Riptide asked in the end. “Because I really don’t think your fix-fic dreams are a possibility.”

“I’m not here to decide what I get out of this,” she said softly. “Sway, and I will obey. And then you decide.”

“I feel like I’ve been propositioned in the middle of a fight.”

“We’re not fighting.” Her eyes were firmly below the level of Riptide’s now, and partly that was still the hope that she would soon be falling into that hypnotic sway, but it was also just how difficult it would have been to meet the villainess’ expression and see rejection if that was coming.

“Oh, fuck it,” the other woman said decisively. She turned her back on Suprema, raising her arms up above her head, and started to shimmy, rolling her hips as she did, rocking her ass from side to side at a steady beat. “This is what you want?”

Renee intended to say You tell me, but her eyes were on that ass and the steadily rising emptiness of her own head got in the way. She thought she got the first syllable out, though, or maybe it would come across only as a cute mewl.

This was the first time she’d felt like she could fully let go to a villain’s mind control. It felt freeing, to bind herself to obey this woman.

“Oh my god,” Riptide said. Even in the blissful floating, the other woman’s voice was instantly present and clear in her head. Clearer, certainly, than her own thoughts. “This is actually working on you, isn’t it?” There was amusement in there, and surprise, and thankfully there seemed to be no horror, no contempt. Renee felt herself relaxing still further.

“Yess,” Renee answered, the word coming out less as syllable, more as exhalation. She made another sound, that might have been a moan or might have been an attempt at a word starting with m.

“Riptide Sways,” the villainess prompted, and the amusement in her voice had turned teasing.

“Her crowd obeys,” Suprema answered softly. “Riptide Sways. Her crowd obeys. Riptide Sways. Her crowd obeys.” The words tumbled out of her, a torrent that had been undammed, as she continued to stare (it was okay to stare; she wanted you to stare). Saliva wetted her briefly-dry lips.

Somewhere around the fourth repetition, she stopped thinking completely.

*

“Come closer,” Caz said, conscious that her lips were suddenly dry. She had engineered this; not deliberately. Not with this intent - certainly not; far from it - but she had created a confrontation over these hypnotic videos. She had pushed a series of the other woman’s buttons, not knowing what the outcome would be and not really caring so long as she could learn something from them.

She wouldn’t claim total responsibility - certainly Suprema had contributed to all this - and she hadn’t predicted it. But this was not the first time this woman had been at least half hypnotised in her presence, and she’d let it happen again.

It was hardly the first time Caz had acted on impulse, but certainly she could have stopped at several different points along the way to think.

If she’d done that, would she have a kneeling heroine starting to crawl toward her on hands and knees, staring at her ass?

Now that this was more than an idle daydream, what did she really think about it? She’d run away rather than pursue this once. How much did she want this, and how much did she believe that Suprema wanted this under it all?

She had this sense that both of them were walking on tightropes, unsure of where this was going and uncertain of the path to get them there. The metaphor broke down when you remembered they could fly, but that was still how it felt.

A glance over her shoulder told her that Suprema had crawled up until her nose was almost touching. Her eyes still stared at Caz’s ass intently. So close up, it almost seemed like reverence, her eyes wide to drink more in.

Caz stopped shaking her ass, curious to see if that would provoke any change. Suprema blinked, but didn’t stop staring.

So Caz slapped her own ass, once, fast and hard, from the side. Set herself jiggling for just a moment.

There was no way to think of the noise the other woman made other than as a moan.

That settled it, she thought. “Kiss it,” she said. Suprema didn’t hesitate. She leaned forward on her knees, lips slightly parted, and her eyelids fluttered closed as her lips made contact. Contact remained for the length of several heartbeats before she leaned back on her haunches, her eyes fluttering back open. The word running irresistibly through Caz’s mind was soft. After their nearly-encounter in the plunge pool, it shouldn’t have surprised her, but it felt like a strangely profound impact.

She already knew Suprema was attractive; more, already knew she was attracted to her. But suddenly things were more intense than that.

She spun on one heel, registering the dizzy blinking of the heroine’s eyes as she tracked Riptide’s ass out of sight, until she was facing the kneeling woman. Then she reached down one-handed, her thumb coming to rest gently on one side of Suprema’s neck, her fingers on the other. She pinched slightly - alright, a little more than slightly, but she’d seen this woman with a street lamp bent around her throat by Death Man; she knew there was a little wiggle room - and lifted her hand, and Suprema rose up with it, unfolding from her kneeling stance easily.

They’d done this before, once, although Ol’ Green Eyes had been possessing Riptide at the time, and gripping substantially more tightly. Suprema had struggled, too, where here she simply waited, eyes glassy, glossy lips parted in a smile…

That smile clinched it.

Caz flicked her wrist, propelling Suprema upward, just a handful of inches; she was on her way down before she would have moved to start flying. Instead, Riptide took a half step forward, throwing her arms out and around the other woman, who she pulled into a kiss. Their lips opened hungrily and immediately, and even deep in trance, the heroine was an eager participant.

Riptide let her hands roam over the other woman, groping, coaxing, exploring in ways she’d never done before. Suprema yielded to her in everything, even as the kiss continued. There was, this time, none of the guilt she’d felt in the plunge pool. She was as sure as she could be, under the circumstances, that Suprema wanted to be hypnotically ravished as much as she wanted to ravish her. She broke the kiss only reluctantly.

Caz looked around their surroundings and shook her head. “This won’t do,” she said, and she thought she said it too softly to be heard, but of course Suprema’s super-hearing kicked in (and suddenly Caz worried that she might have said something else, first, that could have been a problem.

“No, Mistress,” she answered, breathy and eager. And perhaps that was why Caz felt it was fair play to say “So take me home.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Suprema answered. Without a further word she scooped Riptide’s legs out from under her and lifted into the air, holding her with an arm under her shoulders and another under her knees.

Caz had been thinking that Suprema would fly home and let her follow, but that hadn’t been how her orders had been interpreted. Once she’d had a moment to consider, she grinned to herself.

She could definitely work with this, she thought.

“Why are you calling me Mistress?” she asked.

“I can stop if you wish, Mistress.”

“I didn’t say that. I asked why you’re doing it.”

“I have been a mindfucked heroine often enough to understand the conventions, Mistress. Does my behaviour please you?”

Caz nearly choked. “Don’t I seem pleased?”

“My thoughts are sticky, hot, gooey treacle in this state, Mistress. I do not trust them. I trust your word, your decisions.”

That sent a shiver down her spine. “You chose that wording to turn me on, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Mistress,” she answered, and a moment later they were inside a room, having entered through a skylight. The room was roomy and bright; the bed was slept in and not yet remade, and there was enough clutter on the dresser for it to feel lived in, but it was almost empty. “Was I successful?”

“Yes,” Caz replied absently. She was looking around the room. Empty but lived in… “You moved here recently, huh?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Not finished unpacking?”

“No, Mistress.”

“Well. Doesn’t matter.” She grinned. “Strip for me a second time, then.” There was a silence at the end of that command, one that felt strangely awkward, and only once she was feeling that awkwardness did she understand what was missing; a nickname of some kind. She’d have to try one out.

“Yes, Mistress.”

She’d seen the same unveiling not long before, except that everything was different now, and not just because the two of them weren’t soaked from the waterfall.

God, this woman was beautiful.

“Stand up straight, then turn around. Let me see you.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

The fluid grace of her movement made her body even more desirable, somehow, and Caz wasn’t sure how that worked but it almost seemed unfair. Looking at the expression in the other woman’s eyes, something softened inside her. This woman deserved some of what she wanted.

“Now you can undress me, sugar,” she said. That wasn’t quite right, but saying something was better.

“Yes, Mistress.” This undressing wasn’t brisk, as Suprema had been when revealing herself. It was slow, and tender, and it lingered over many things. Caz couldn’t help but watch where the heroine’s eyes went.

“Finish up kneeling behind me,” she stipulated, not quite on a whim.

“Of course, Mistress. As you wish.” There was an odd mix of dreaminess and almost a businesslike eagerness to please in her tone. Caz didn’t understand it but she knew she liked it.

Once she was naked, and Suprema was on her knees behind her, Caz raised her arms above her head and began once again to sway, and once, looking over her shoulder, she saw that all emotion had melted away from the heroine’s slack features, she reached back and closed her fingers loosely in Suprema’s hair, and she walked forward toward the bed; and the hypnotised heroine crawled submissively after her.