Extract from Jane’s Guide to Costumed Heroes, 2002 Revision

QUICKSTEP, REAL NAME UNCERTAIN (SAMANTHA KING?)

Gender: Female

Age: Uncertain (Samantha King is 31)

Height: 5’ 6”

Hair: Blonde

Race: Caucasian

Confirmed Abilities: Superhuman speed, computer expert

Unconfirmed Abilities: Techno-empathy (may have actually been reconstructing alien technology at super-speed)

Group Affiliation: The Symphony

Year of First Activity: 1996

Locations: East Coast

Known Nemeses: General Walters

Unlike the other members of the Symphony, we have no record of Quickstep operating under another name beforehand. While blonde speedsters are not unknown, all ‘heroic’ speedster types matching her description and operating in the years before her are accounted for during her Symphony years.

A persistent, officially denied and never disproved rumour is that Quickstep is Samantha King, one of the three researchers unaccounted for after the initial sentient boot-up of AI terrorist Macrovac. Reports at the time were that each researcher served as a ‘Macrovac component’ in some way, but their bodies have never been found.

Macrovac’s initial disruption of the North Carolina Research Triangle was escalating toward a potential metacrisis when Emerald and La Bandera were joined by an unknown speedster and the trio were able to shut the AI down, Emerald fighting off his ‘peripherals’ while Bandera and the speedster assembled a device to unleash a targeted EMP affecting only systems occupied by Macrovac.

In the following weeks, the Symphony announced itself to the world, naming the speedster as Quickstep, rebranding Emerald and La Bandera, and adding Foxtrot to their ranks. From this time on, Quickstep adopted her full-body white costume. It’s believed this outfit stays spotless for the same reason no clear footage exists of her face; she is constantly vibrating enough to blur surveillance and shed most dust, dirt, and detritus.

In 1998, the Symphony uncovered a major plot to subvert the United States Army and launch a coup led by General Walters. This was eventually prevented by the Symphony, aided by the Task Force in the final showdown. Following details are unclear but it’s known that the team was betrayed by new member Slide.

It later transpired that Slide had been sent into action by General Walters to infiltrate and bring down the team.

Like the rest of the team, Quickstep was last seen helping other heroes in the defence of Fort Bragg against the Millennium Bug during his return in late 2001. Her status since is unknown.

For more detail on the Symphony’s activities, consult their group entry in this book.

*

2006

It was hard to be away from the Doctor. Even with the service of a helplessly obedient slave’s tongue, Candace’s thoughts were never far from the man who had reshaped her, who owned her, who she worked tirelessly to brighten the life of.

Still, she would admit that new acquisition Gigi was proving a fine, fine compensation.

“Alright,” she said finally, once she had her breath recovered. “That’s enough, Gigi. We need to plan.”

Lulu took the hint, too. She tapped Missy on the shoulder and pointed through to the next room. “Back in your box,” she said, grinning to herself. “I’ll be through to tuck you in shortly.”

Candace nodded approval. Technically she should be giving Lulu orders for these things, but honestly, between the Doctor’s work and her own, Lulu was well-trained now. Plus, seeing Lulu starting to take on her own sarcasm and imitate Candace made her feel that she was doing her work as a supervisor right.

Lulu rose and picked up the discarded helmet. She turned it over in her hand, looking at the damaged transmitter. “I imagine our Master will want this examined,” she said. “Should I start working on-”

This time the suite door didn’t open smoothly. No passkey. No careful, almost silent entry. Instead it flew open, a crashing sound that left Candace jumping.

There was a white blur. Then there was no blur - and no Lulu.

Candace stared at the space where Lulu had been, then at Missy’s retreating back as she headed for her storage box.

Finally her eyes met Gigi’s. The blissful joy of being compelled to embrace her new service was gone. In its place was a determined, steely gaze.

Before she came to her senses and remembered what was happening, for the first time, Candace actually got a sense of the capability of the woman who had now been rendered a slave at her command. The potential.

The Doctor was going to love having this new slave in his life. If this new slave could get the Doctor’s women back home to kneel at his feet.

*

From Lulu’s perspective there had been a loud bang, then movement… and then a strange chemical scent in a dizzying blur of motion.

And then she passed out.

*

“That was Quickstep,” Gigi said. “They sent someone else after you when I failed.”

Candace was shocked immediately back to reality. “What do you mean? I’m still here.”

“But she was standing up, and holding the helmet. And…” Gigi flushed. “When you’re wearing one of those, you just follow instructions. I was told to kill you, but my handler would have had me kill again when he realised someone else was in here.

“And she didn’t do either of those things.”

“No,” Gigi said. She blinked, looked uncomfortable, tried again. “No, ma’am.” She pulled another face. “I’m not sure what to call you.”

“We’ll work on it,” Candace said. “I’m assuming whatever your handler saw made them change their mind.”

Gigi nodded.

“Right. We need to get out of here. Then we need to plan.”

“Yes… Doctor?”

Candace bit her lip thoughtfully. She felt like she no longer had the right to that title. There was only one true Doctor, and he owned her. But for the time being… maybe?

It wasn’t as if Doctor Bimbeau wouldn’t be able to recondition her in his preferred image anyway.

“Yes?”

“If they’ve changed their mind, they probably think you’re valuable. I think… I think they assumed you were the way we are in the helmets. But if you obey happily without a handler, and you can be sent off to do things far from our Master… then my old owners will want your secrets.” Gigi hesitated after that, looking surprised; how quickly she’d adapted to the idea of a new Master, how soon she’d abandoned owners… and how surprised she should be that either one was a factor at all.

Candace frowned. That… endangered her connection to the Doctor. It might even endanger the Doctor in time.

“We still need to get away from where they think we are,” she said. “Once that’s done, we can figure out what we’re doing. But they might send… what did you call her?”

“Quickstep, Doctor.”

“Right. If they send her again and we’re not gone, we’re in trouble. We need to be out of here and our tech needs to be out of here.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

*

There was a sting at her neck, which resolved into the sharp prick of a needle, and Lulu’s consciousness returned.

She was seated upright, back against a high chair. Her hands rested someway onto a table - it gave out just before her elbows. Her head was being held, a handful of hair steadying her ahead of the injection.

Whoever these people were, they clearly knew she’d been drugged and they knew she’d be waking up. There was no point trying to hide it. Lulu opened her eyes.

The room she found herself in was so stereotypically a criminal interview room that it was almost certainly the real thing. But somehow, despite a bright light overhead, there was only a narrow circle of light; beyond that, the edges of the room were shadowy to the point of being indistinct. They weren’t even true black; they had a deep blue, maybe even a royal purple tinge to them, feeling so much like a visual illusion she wrote them off as a hallucinogenic aftereffect of whatever they’d knocked her out with.

Her hands were cuffed, the link a bar passing under another bar set into the table. She tested her feet experimentally and found that her ankles wouldn’t move; they were strapped in place somehow. She wasn’t sure how. The soft brown of her skin seemed to stand out against the white of the table more than she’d expect. Something was off about the light.

Across the table from her, highlighted against the shadow, was a tall man, clean-shaven, hair gone to silver, lean body ramrod-straight in his chair. The shirt, jacket, and tie screamed military man, but there were no badges of rank, no medal bars, no identifying marks.

Lulu was mildly disappointed. She’d have been much more confident if he’d made that kind of mistake.

“Thank you, Corporal,” he said, talking to the person behind her. “Dismissed.”

Her hair was released, and she was conscious of soft footsteps, but the darkness of the room’s edge never wavered.

Lulu looked back at her interrogator steadily. He returned her stare, his stony face giving nothing away.

“Let’s be clear here,” he said. “We’re going to get whatever information we believe you have out of you. That’s happening, one way or another. And we’re going to hold you until we can verify it independently.

“I am prepared to be a reasonable man, Doctor Kraft,” he continued. “That is, provided you’re both permitted to be, and willing to be. But whatever rumours you’ve heard about the United States military and enhanced interrogation methods might be a clue, but are, nonetheless, incomplete.

“Which is it to be?”

Lulu didn’t answer for a few seconds. She was still mulling over how best to play this hand to give her supervisor the best chance to figure out an advantage.

“I’m flattered,” she said eventually, “that you’re willing to set aside assumptions.” She opened her hands, but being cuffed to the table as she was, couldn’t do much more of a gesture of open respect. “But as progressive as he might be, and as much as I’m sure you see the appeal of these,” she glanced down at her chest, arched her back, and winked, “Angus Kraft married white. And besides, I’m literally wearing a fetish outfit. You think I’m dressed up as a maid to show I’m in charge?”

Well, she thought, he reacted to me flaunting my girls. So maybe there’s a way out of this.

He sat unmoving for what felt like an eternity after she corrected him on her identity. More than long enough that she started to wonder if she’d made a mistake somehow. It was easy with someone so stony-faced to imagine that silent and still might be furious.

“So,” he said in the end, “who the hell are you?”

“Lulu.”

“Lulu… what?”

“Just Lulu.” She shrugged, as best she could. “Master erased my past. I don’t need a surname. I gather my name wasn’t Lulu before. But, well…” Another shrug. “Why would I care about that?”

The old soldier turned his head slightly, seeming to study a part of the shadows around the walls. Lulu, watching his face, frowned. It looked like he was listening to something.

“You mean they hid your past from you,” he said.

Lulu shook her head wordlessly, smiling slightly. “Is the problem just that your helmets suck?” she asked. She was pretty confident if she could get this guy to put her in one there’d be no risk of her accidentally letting anything important slip.

His jaw tightened and his mouth pursed. Lulu realised, now she saw him angry, just how mistaken she’d been to think he might be angry before.

Maybe that meant she was on the right track. “You didn’t mean to get me,” she said. “I mean, that’s clear, right? Your girl, whoever you sent, she’s not so smart. None of your girls are, are they? Not if they don’t get constant updates. But when they do you have to keep resetting them.”

He glared at her, but his glance kept flicking to the darkness. Lulu wondered why for a moment, then grinned.

“One of them’s listening,” she said. “Isn’t she? So pretty soon she’ll know that we got her friend Epsilon to slip her programming. Epsilon who used to be Foxtrot. Part of some superteam, some superteam who really hated the Army. And you don’t think they’ve left their pasts behind.” She shifted position, as best she could, sitting up straighter, ready to make her point.

“That’s enough,” he said firmly, but Lulu wasn’t listening.

“Oh, one’s definitely listening, and whoever she used to be, that layer you built on top is probably getting shaky. How sure are you-”

“That’s enough!”

“-that she’s not already starting to crack your programming? Who even designed your crappy little helmets? Can they cope with stress? Or are they-”

“That’s enough, dammit. Shut her down, Gamma.”

Lulu’s mouth was open sneeringly wide as she talked, but suddenly there was no sound coming from her throat. Purple-tinted darkness began abruptly to swirl around her head, tendrils of coloured smoke emerging from nowhere as her open mouth choked on something suddenly thrust inside it, thick, long, warm, throbbing with mystic power.

Gamma - presumably one of Epsilon’s teammates - was doing something. As sudden as it was and as unexplained it had to be magic, but it was also - no question in Lulu’s mind - a cock in her mouth, thicker and firmer than the Doctor’s, thrusting deeper, pulsating with magical energy.

Everywhere her lips, her teeth, her tongue, her tonsils, her throat were touched by it, her body throbbed with sudden, overriding pleasure. Her eyes went wide and she desperately tried to suck in breath, drawing that strange violet smoke into her lungs, more and more of her tingling with fiery bliss as she inhaled.

The deep, blue shadows of the room seemed suddenly less like an aftereffect of her drugging and more like some kind of concealment spell. Scared now, fighting the bliss, fighting the feeling she was being overwhelmed, fighting to breathe, Lulu strained against her bonds. The bar between her cuffs crashed against the bar that kept them by the table. Whatever had her ankles pinned gave not at all.

And through it all, the cock was in her mouth. Now it was starting to move, never leaving entirely but sliding out slowly then filling her again with quick, sudden, forceful thrusts. Her head rocked back slightly with each thrust. A gurgling sound began bubbling up from her throat.

/It’s much better if you go with it./ The words were suddenly there in her head. They didn’t sound like her; they didn’t sound like anyone or anything. They were just there as if she’d thought them.

More of the shadows in the room were detaching from the walls and drifting toward her. She could dimly make out a figure within them; a body almost the equal of her own curves in purple, the head hidden by one of those control helmets.

/You may call me Gamma./

Mysticism was beyond Lulu. Since the moment her new life started she’d been surrounded by science. This made no sense, and it scared her. Someone was in her head. The woman in the room had conjured this spell and was fucking her way into her head.

Every thrust seemed to jolt through Lulu, not just physically but mentally; she was disorienting rapidly, more and more confused by everything going on around her. Her thoughts, usually so concrete and ordered, were becoming sloppy, fluid, splashy affairs without much substance.

Lulu tried to shake her head free, but she couldn’t. She tried to bite down, but she couldn’t.

/It’s much better if you go with it./

Inwardly, Lulu snarled. Gamma’s calm… not voice, the words didn’t have a tone, they didn’t fit the magical spell forcing itself into her mouth nor the curvaceous sorceress compelled to summon it… but at any rate, her mental presence wasn’t going to persuade her of anything.

And yet the tingle of joy in her throat, rippling up into her brain, was still there, and as much as Lulu knew it was a betrayal of her true Master, the man who rightfully had indoctrinated her, it was still a clash.

She inhaled more of the mystical fog. Her eyes were watering now, and Lulu hoped it was her imagination that something more than water seemed to be escaping her with each tear. Everything in her head seemed to be sopping wet now, flooding her, her thoughts seeming sticky.

/What you are feeling is a Gift of the Grimoire. It will ensorcel you. For a time you will be the slave of the person I designate. If you go with it, you will be a willing slave. If you fight, you will be trapped, helpless to stop yourself. I urge you to go with it. The alternative is… terrible./ There was something new to this message. As Gamma explained the consequences of Lulu’s choice, the words went from absent of all connection to a voice in Lulu’s head, tense, emotionally charged, the pleading of a desperate woman.

Lulu’s wide-open eyes somehow managed to harden in her fury with the figure in purple making this happen.

She summoned up her strength and, with a sudden effort, wrenched her head to the side. The magical cock emerged from her lips with a sudden loud pop, and she clamped her mouth shut, determined not to allow it back in.

As her lips closed against each other the bliss they’d been feeling multiplied and she found her mouth tingling with delight. Reflexively, she swallowed, and as the warmth filled her throat her eyes rolled back. A moan escaped her mouth before she could close it again.

The magical construct thrust, but didn’t get there in time; however, a smear of fluid leaked from it onto her lips, and Lulu’s eyelids fluttered, losing awareness for a moment as the pleasure overwhelmed her.

/Some of my magic is in you now. I hear your thoughts. I am trying to help you, Lulu./ There was a personality to the words now. A forceful, confident woman, who seemed scared nonetheless. Scared… for Lulu?

It had to be a trick. It had to be jealousy of seeing a slave with a worthy Master. It had to be. Thinking anything more complicated and nuanced than that was impossible while her brain was this sodden in lust and magic.

/I admit I’m jealous. But this is no trick./

Lulu’s lips tightened into a satisfied smile. She had better than this woman. It was hard to hang onto that, or anything, with the purple fog in her mind. But she had to.

Didn’t she?

/I don’t want you to feel how I do. Please./

The cock was still hanging in the air, right in front of Lulu, just waiting. The man in the room just waited impatiently, his eyes on Lulu’s chest. This was a foregone conclusion to him.

She scowled at them both.

/Oh to hell with this. I’m making this decision for you./

Lulu’s eyes darted back up to Gamma in concern. She saw the enthralled heroine make a complicated series of gestures with her hands then ‘push’ them toward her, and suddenly she felt as if a phantom hand had slammed into her gut.

Her mouth opened wide as her breath gave out in a whoosh, gasping for air to fill her lungs. Instead, her mouth was filled in a much more substantial way, her open jaws suddenly flooded with the mystic cock once again.

Why did this woman even have this spell?

/You’d be amazed what I learned when I held the Grimoire. Now please, Lulu, let yourself give in./

She looked directly up at the helmeted woman and shook her head. There was something like a tsk in her head, and the purple fog still lingering in her head - Gamma’s magic - latched onto her pleasure centres. Lulu went from horny, needy, and eager to so overwhelmed with desire that her situation suddenly meant almost nothing.

Her jaw relaxed. Her mouth opened wider. And as the cock hammered away inside her head, she started to move with it, enjoying the rhythm. Her need to stay in control was being swamped by her wants and drives.

/You’ll be much happier if you wake back up willing,/ Gamma promised. Lulu didn’t want to, but it was getting harder and harder to hold back on that. She could hear the bar of her cuffs crack against the table with every thrust of the cock in her mouth, her whole body caught up in how helpless she was now, her head jerking up and down on the enchantment.

The spell grew closer to completion. Lulu felt the cock seem to swell, forcing her mouth and her mind further open. Her tongue was actively working on it now, teasing it, encouraging the spell to take further hold.

“When does this finish, Gamma?” the man asked, his tone trying for bored but too taut to get away with that; he was clearly enjoying himself far too much, watching her chest bounce with every impact.

/Soon, General,/ Gamma answered. This wasn’t like the entreaties Lulu had been experiencing. There was no emotion to the words, and with that, none of the personality or even identity that accompanied them. This was back to the words that just appeared in her head, no indicator of what was happening or what might be thought. /When she is filled, her free will will be gone. There will be a complete lack of any motivating factor. Any control. Control may be taken by anointment./

Anointment?

Lulu didn’t have much time to think about it as the cock in her mouth kept on thrusting, filling her mouth entirely. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she lost awareness of everything but the spell she was desperately trying to swallow whole, and then, suddenly, her mouth was full of the magical fluid washing through her.

She felt her free will engulfed by a sticky tidal wave that seemed to roll through her and push her her capacity to decide and act out of her, dripping out of her ears to be lost.

Her eyes opened, unfocused, and her brown irises were now a dull, glassy purple. Her body fell completely still. A gooey pool of purple dripped from the corner of her mouth into her waiting cleavage.

The General stood up and made his way around her, unbuckling his belt. Her eyes didn’t follow him; he moved out of her field of vision, then back in, bracing his hip against her cuffed arm to get as close to her body as he could, hand clasped around an erect penis already leaking precum.

He was eager to pump himself, and not holding back. Soon his own ribbon of glistening white cum splashed across her tits, and Lulu was anointed. Control had been taken.

/Welcome, Sister. I hope you will find your time with us more enjoyable than I do./

Her dull purple eyes began to shine with a vivid violet light. Lulu waited for her owner and controller to speak.

*

Candace drummed her thumb impatiently against the van’s steering wheel. Missy was stowed away in the back, in her box, but the priority now had to be getting out of sight. Gigi’s old team turned out to have a lot of power behind it, and it was important that they not be caught unawares.

That was going to mean helping Gigi to account for her speedster friend, and it was going to mean rescuing Lulu from whatever captivity and experiments they might be subjecting her to. But they had to have a place of safety.

There was a loud click from just to the side of the road up ahead, and Candace looked up to see the gate swing open slowly after being released. Relieved, she eased the van back into motion and drove in through the gates and behind the property’s high walls.

As the motor closed the gates behind her, she opened the van door, grabbed the briefcase Tiara and hurried into the side door as Gigi opened it.

The trained infiltrator and martial artist had reconnoitred the house, subdued the inhabitants, and strapped them to kitchen chairs before opening the gate to let Candace in.

It was time to figure out who their hosts were and ensure none of them would be whistleblowers. Candace rewarded Gigi with a lingering kiss, closed the door behind her, and set the briefcase down on the kitchen counter.

Bringing Missy into safety could wait. Right now, she needed to find out whose house they’d arbitrarily decided to use as their headquarters and make sure the inhabitants were happy to be used that way.

“So,” she said as she opened the briefcase, “let’s introduce ourselves, and you can try to persuade me that you deserve to worship my Master…”