“Are you here alone?” Lancehead asked. Part of Vivian was honestly impressed. She knew she wasn’t unusual among villains in having really bad prioritisation once she felt she had the upper hand in a situation.

She’d have taken the opportunity to gloat. Others might have groped her. Lancehead didn’t even ask how they’d found him first, or what gave them away, or what they were doing. All of those were doubtless to come. But Lancehead had asked himself what question needed to be answered first, and had asked it right at the start.

She was fighting it as best she could. She knew she would have to answer in a moment, but this wasn’t like with Master. There was someone else’s mind at stake here, and as much as she could enjoy letting go for herself, Hooded Hawk deserved better. So Vivian was fighting it, pushing back as hard as she could against the question, even knowing it was a forlorn hope.

The fight abruptly became much harder when, his eyes still on hers, he said “You ssensse already you musst obey.” The words themselves sent a shudder down her spine, a delicious sensation that left her tingling. She hadn’t known until that moment that it was possible to hiss and purr simultaneously.

“No,” she admitted.

“Who elsse?”

“Hooded Hawk.” There was no fighting the second question. Not after he’d pushed her the way he had. Not when the most important point had already been surrendered.

“Ssubdue her and bring her here.”

She nodded, turning immediately and lifting into the air.

Ms Miracle had incredibly sensitive hearing and eyes that could study troop activity three miles away or cellular activity within about a block. Bulwark could see through walls but not, for some reason, iron. Professor Mordecai had a widget that mapped any building he was in through sonar. The powers Vivian had been granted didn’t give her, she thought, any particular sensory advantage, not a measurable one at least.

The part of her that Master had created only accidentally, the part which actually enjoyed submitting to the control of another, was a little disappointed by this, especially when she considered that Hooded Hawk seemed to take after Wingshadow, right down to the motorbike. Wingshadow loved the darkness, and his ability to hide was astonishing for someone without powers.

Hopefully she wasn’t quite as good.

She started moving back out, trying to recreate the route they’d taken in her head, remember all the crossways and junctions. You quickly learned, as a villain, that while heroes invading your base could theoretically be anywhere, in actual fact there were only a few places they’d want to get to, and they all seemed to have a weirdly effective instinct for finding it.

Vivian elected to use speed. In these tight corners, she didn’t want to go supersonic, let alone hit her full speed, but that still gave her a huge advantage on a typical human in a chase. She moved through the base fast, checking all the most obvious places in each room.

When she reached the entrance they’d breached her first thought was, by now Hawk will be confronting Lancehead. If she’s smart, she’ll have done it from ambush. Dismissing the other possibilities as being both far less likely and less important, she headed back at speed.

She had been wrong. As she passed through a server room, midway, a smoke bomb went off in the room. There was nobody else that would be.

At the back of her mind she noted that a smokebomb in a server room would be a nightmare for the Circle’s technicians, always assuming they somehow avoided getting shut down. And then she realised that this must be how Amy thought.

Ms Miracle was able to let herself go almost fully any time she got hit by the effects of a mind controller. Despite having raw power roughly equal to her own, despite having a conscience on a level Mercy was still trying to develop, surrendering to the control of a villain rarely provoked much fight in her - she saved all her resistance for when she was tasked with killing.

Vivian realised that even with her own raw power now harnessed on Lancehead’s side, she had faith that the heroes would prevail. And perhaps that was the reason, when he’d given her that single extra push, that she’d caved so easily. Because she could enjoy it, believing that triumph lay ahead.

Or perhaps that was just something her mind had invented as an easy excuse. A lot of mind control powers subverted the will of their targets. Maybe Lancehead’s power was making her rationalise away giving up the struggle against his power.

Grudgingly, Vivian admitted to herself that she found even that question hot.

She moved into the centre of the smoke, cautious. The Hooded Hawk taking her on in single combat, even from stealth, made no sense. Which in turn meant that either she didn’t know something about the situation or the Hawk did.

Macabre had been too arrogant to assume that she was the one who was wrong. Mercy hadn’t. More had changed when she had been reprogrammed than just a love for submission and a compulsion to play heroine. She was wondering what she didn’t know.

Something hit her in the chest; a big impact, hitting an area about the size of her fist. It didn’t feel like a fist, though, and it stayed in place. Something thrown or deployed through a launcher, she guessed. She looked down at herself, but couldn’t see anything. There was something more than smoke in this bomb.

She hung in the same spot for a moment, mouth open beneath her mask. She heard something off to her side, someone moving quiet, and perhaps the disorientation made her too slow to react because before she could turn, something hit her in the back.

It felt like the first one had, but the moment the second clung to her, both it and the first one started to move. No, not move - to expand, sending out tendrils toward one another.

She reached down to tear the one anchored to her chest free and realised only when her fingers sank into it and wouldn’t re-emerge that this had been a mistake. Whatever this was was as strong as it was sticky, and it was expanding around her waist and up and down her chest, from both front and back.

“Shit!”

It swarmed up her back, capturing and constricting her shoulders, and down her legs. And it began to harden.

Something stopped it expanding further than about halfway up her neck, but it was solidifying around her everywhere below that. Even her free arm was now starting to get trapped into place.

Defiantly she brought that arm around to point out in front of her, turning her wrist and extending her middle finger. This prompted a giggle; the Hawk clearly had a sense of humour, even if it was a weird one.

*

Annie grinned fiercely to herself. The restraint foamer hadn’t been tried before, not in its current form. Harrier had found plans for something similar as a corridor trap in the Vulcan databases, but Castor had missed the potential benefit of the tool to teams or to agile fighters, possibly because the Vulcan warsuit was anything but agile. Annie and Milo had worked together to modify it. By the looks of things, it could be quite an effective equaliser when used right, and the Hooded Hawk could definitely use them.

She wasn’t sure how long this would hold Little Miss Not-A-Robot, but hopefully she wouldn’t need long. She moved, delicate and silent, across the top of the server stacks, until she was properly positioned behind the enthralled heroine.

When she was ready she launched herself down onto her, wrapping her legs and arms around what was now a larger-than-life figure, the hardened foam matching the silhouette of the woman trapped below.

With her grip, she was able to put her head close to her target’s head. Some of the research she’d done into metahuman hypnotic control indicated that many such powers just made the victims generally susceptible; there was a case where the One Woman Army had overcome Mindtwister because her handler realised what had happened and switched from advising her to issuing direct commands.

So she said “You don’t need to investigate Hornet.” Nothing more. Nothing that would give the woman anything to go on if it didn’t take as a suggestion, except that it would burn the Hawk as an ally of the Hornet’s controller. There were other strategies they could try if they had to.

Abruptly, the lifesize figurine she was riding started moving to the side. The acceleration and deceleration of flying superhumans is startling; Annie didn’t have time to dismount before it smashed through a server, causing hundreds, maybe even thousands of tiny nicks on Annie’s combat leathers and on the solidified surface of the foam shell.

Barely above a heartbeat later, while reflex had Annie kicking off from Mercy’s back into a backflip from which she would land gracefully on one foot, one knee, and one hand, Mercy hit the wall.

Its integrity already compromised by the lattice of circuitry cuts, the restraint foam cracked. Then Mercy flexed, and it shattered into seven pieces which fell away from her as she straightened up.

There wasn’t enough smoke left in the room to completely hide the Hawk. Annie shifted position, weighing up the distance to the nearest exit. The problem was, she’d just had a great demonstration of the other woman’s maximum operating speed in these cramped quarters. Outrunning her wasn’t going to help.

And in any case, she’d just noticed something. Her jaw gaped.

“You cracked the wall!” she exclaimed, wide-eyed. And indeed, the wall behind her wasn’t just dented with an impact crater, as she’d seen Milo make when Vulcan hurled him backward; there was a full crack, an inch wide, perhaps two at its widest point, extending into both floor and ceiling. Light from the room on the other side of the wall was leaking through.

Mercy didn’t hear her or at least didn’t respond. She was on her in a blur, whipping around her clamp her arms to her sides, gripping her tightly. Annie felt herself be lifted from the ground; then there was acceleration, both of them blurring through rooms back to where Lancehead was waiting.

Annie took some small measure of satisfaction in the fact the villain looked nervous as they arrived. No doubt he’d heard the impact. Like Annie, he might even be wondering what it meant for the structural stability of the facility.

All the same, when Mercy reappeared in the room, this time holding Annie, Lancehead went from uncertain to smirking confidence in moments.

“Iss sshe alive?” he asked.

“Yes.” Held so close to her, Annie could actually feel the eagerness in the other woman’s body as she answered. The woman was clearly delighted to have a question she could honestly answer, just as she’d been delighted to obey the command.

Annie had definitely got the sequence wrong. Once Mercy got past her, she should have ambushed Lancehead immediately. A smoke bomb, the restraint foamer, and a knockout punch might have done it. Her heroine instincts had been screaming at her to do just that. Unfortunately, Mistress’ command had overridden her instinct; the priority had been the chance to redirect Mercy from Hornet before anything happened. She’d gone for the ambush, hoping to have time to repeat it and possibly an ally alongside her when she did.

“Bring her here,” Lancehead commanded. Wordlessly, Mercy carried Annie closer.

Annie didn’t realise it, but she now found herself feeling about postponing inevitability exactly the way Mercy had done earlier. There was no way for her to escape the grip Mercy had her in, so unless Mercy broke through the power the serpent had over her, Annie was going to end up looking into Lancehead’s eyes, and as stubborn as she was, she knew her will wasn’t unbreakable.

She was brought close and pushed down toward the ground, so that she ended up kneeling within Mercy’s grip. If Annie hadn’t already been confident this was no robot, that would have done it.

Lancehead cupped the chin of her downcast head in one hand. Annie squeezed her eyes shut as she felt her head lifted up to meet his gaze, her one last step of defiance. It was incredibly unlikely the few extra seconds this might buy would change anything, but she felt obligated to try.

Lancehead laughed, an oddly dry sound. “A noble attempt,” he said. “But flawed. You see, you have not studied snakes as well as you should, and your knowledge of what can be done with venoms clearly has holes.”

His fangs grazed her temple, biting into the skin, however gently, level with one eye. She felt something flow into her, imagined a substance injected under her skin. As Lancehead was biting into her skin on the other side of her head, the eye nearest the first bite was beginning to open. The muscles she depended on to keep it tight close were relaxing in spite of her, the snake’s venom in her system forcing a change she could not override. Her other eye, now also effected, began to open in turn.

Holding her head in both hands, he angled it up so that her eyes met his; met those faintly glowing, amber-golden eyes with the strange vertical slits.

Almost immediately they were not strange; they were exotic.

She was warming to them. It made no sense, but sense so rarely mattered in moments like this.

They were not disconcerting. They were captivating.

Annie felt light - not lightheaded, but light. As she had been carrying burden after burden, all unknown to herself, and they had been all lifted at once.

Those eyes were not fearsome. They were enthralling.

Annie felt a strange stillness settle over her, a willing stillness. Her eyes widened, drinking in more of his power. She was smiling, suddenly, and widely.

Those eyes saw with a purpose, and now that purpose was hers.

“Release her,” Lancehead said, and the strong arms which had been holding her suddenly let go. She could have stood, now, from where she had been kneeling. Nothing was stopping her.

But she could only have stood if she had been told to do so. Her own eyes shining, she stared up at the supervillain adoringly and waited to be told what needed to be done.

“Iss there anyone elsse here with either of you?” Lancehead asked, still practical and determined to tie up loose ends.

“No,” Mercy answered, and “No,” Annie confirmed a few moments later.

“Good. Now, who elsse is working on thiss casse?”

Annie found she wasn’t sure how to answer. Really she was working on two separate cases, and the team for each didn’t overlap at all. The way Lancehead’s gaze had affected her, she wanted deeply to give him what he wanted. He took priority even over the chip in the back of her head, at least for now. Would he be happier told about everyone? No, he had said ‘this case’.

With the unintentional duplicity of those under mind control, she answered “Just us and Hornet.”

A few moments later, Mercy said “Us, Ms Miracle, and D.A.N.I.E.L. of the Justice Guard.”

“What the fuck!” Lancehead blurted, his general attitude of confident control immediately shaken. Truth be told, Annie felt much the same. Mostly, small fry ran with other small fry; Mercy working with the Justice Guard in such a matter of fact way was a huge shock.

Lancehead looked worried for the first time. “Ssshaw!” he shouted. A few seconds later, a harried-looking man appeared in the doorway of this chamber. Annie couldn’t remember if Shaw had been on the list of names there by choice or the list of names forcibly extracted.

“Yes, Great One?” he asked.

“Ssend word to my brethren,” Lancehead said. “The ssituassion is too treacherousss. The Jussstiss Guard will ssoon be here. We go to ground.”

Shaw had grown very pale on hearing this news. “Yes, Great One,” he said, before disappearing again.

Lancehead turned back to his two enthralled heroines. “Sstill need a disstracsshun,” he muttered. “You - you’re not a robot at all, are you?”

“No,” Mercy answered. A second and a half later, long enough that Annie could tell there had been an internal struggle, she added, “Great One.”

His lips quirked up around his fangs on either side. A savage little smirk of satisfaction. Annie kind of hated him for it.

Being controlled wasn’t meant to feel like this. It was about feeling helpless, not… well, alright, the word for both headspaces was probably still helpless. But they felt very, very different. With Mistress she felt like anything she was tasked to do would benefit someone. With Lancehead it just felt like an inevitability, and however good it felt to be lost in his eyes, afterward all she had was the compulsion to obedience. As if the found pleasure from him only when she was prey, and once she had been taken, that was gone.

“Doess that headsset come off?”

“Yes, Great One.” Annie felt sympathy for Mercy. It was always harder to resist the second time. And in a situation like this, it had to be embarrassing. She’d let herself get caught; if she’d avoided it, the pair of them would have wrapped this case up by now, and Lancehead would be waiting for his day in court, where his ability to control through eye contact would be the bailiff’s problem, not theirs.

“Sshow me.”

“Yes, Great One.” Mercy moved; she wasn’t properly in Annie’s field of vision, so all she got was the sense of movement. Not that you actually needed more than that to work out what was happening.

“Good. Now, while I make my esscape…” His eyes smouldered into Annie’s for a moment, punishing her regrets with another wave of that blissful desire to serve and obey, then flicked upward, probably doing the same to Mercy, “you two will sstay here. In fact, the two of you are going to be ssexssually ssatissfying one another when your friendss sshow up. And you will not sstop until they forssibly sseparate you.” He was definitely enjoying himself. “You cannot sstop until you are sseparated by your fellow heroess. Your pleassure will sslow them ass much ass possssible. You will sstall them beyond ssatiasshun. Do you undersstand?”

“Yes, Great One,” they chorused. Annie hated that she’d added the honorific, but Mercy had done it twice. It had felt so natural on her tongue that it had slipped out before she could draw it back.

“You will now commensse.”

Annie rose, turning as she did to face Mercy. The head under the helmet was exposed now; long hair, so pale it was almost an ice blonde, with confident green eyes - in which Annie was sure she detected a spark of enjoyment, though that might have been wishful thinking - in an angular face softened and brought from handsome to beautiful by the compassion that rested in every line.

She couldn’t help but think there was something familiar in those features, something she might or might not have been able to place if she was given a glimpse of the woman in some other context. It wouldn’t have been her first question for the woman in front of her anyway. Her hands were already moving to remove her own cowl, some part of her feeling it gave her an upper hand on Mercy that she didn’t want.

Their lips met in a kiss.

*

Vivian slid her arms around the other woman in a gentle embrace, pulling her close for a kiss. She wasn’t experienced with other women. She felt at a loss.

Not that she would ever allow that to affect the way she behaved. She was familiar with her own body and the things it liked; there would be some variance, of course, and it was always slightly disconcerting when you approached something familiar from a wildly different angle, but she had always taken the lead, and she certainly didn’t see why she should stop now.

And the kiss, besides, was delicious; the other woman’s lips were soft, not yielding but welcoming, and the noises she made as Vivian’s tongue flicked out to explore her mouth were both delightful and highly inspiring.

She slipped her arms around the other woman and lifted them both six inches off the ground, going into a slow pirouette, as they kissed. Miracle had recommended it, one night not long ago, as a move for if Vivian started experimenting with dating.

Vivian had shelved that. Master wasn’t monogamous, but he certainly expected devotion from all his thralls, and as his mental control came with a side of thoroughly corrupted thought processes to fit what he was making someone, that was what they all were.

Despite having been through it herself, Miracle had somehow managed to forget. Of course, someone else was playing with her mind nowadays, so maybe - quite possibly in fact - it was just that whatever they were doing was different. Her friend had muttered something about Santa Claus, and Vivian had laughed and said “Fine, then. Don’t tell me.”

Either way, the low-level airborne pirouette was working on Hooded Hawk just as well as Miracle had suggested it would work on any man Vivian reached out to. Which made sense to Vivian.

The kiss broke and they both looked at each other, cuddled close, eyes bright, for just a moment. It could only be a moment, of course; there wasn’t any choice about that given the commands they’d received.

“I’m sorry,” Annie said. Vivian closed one hand around her buttock and the other around a handful of her hair, pulling her back in for a long kiss. The other hand getting involved seemed to be working; she could feel Annie pressing herself against her, moulding herself to her in a way people did when their excitement was starting to get the better of them but they weren’t willing or able to take charge.

When they broke their kiss this time, to the accompaniment of mutual breathy excitement, Vivian said “What for?”

“I should have gone for Lancehead first.”

Vivian shrugged. Her grip on the other woman’s hair shifted and she started moving forward, so she could brace them both against a wall. Her fingertips brushed against something sunk into the Hooded Hawk’s scalp. Hmm, she thought.

Not that she could investigate further. They both had their orders and they would both obey.

With the Hawk’s back braced against the wall she could release her. “How do I get your costume open?” she asked. The Hawk blushed crimson, but reached up to a point where the cowl connected to the main bodysuit. She did something there, Vivian wasn’t sure what, and the suit began to peel away from her shoulder.

Vivian’s eyes widened. “Someone really horny designed your suit,” she said. Her lips caught the other woman in another hungry kiss, and the Hawk wrapped her thighs around Vivian’s hips and buttocks, keeping her close. A moan escaped their kiss, and Vivian wasn’t sure whose it had been.

They broke the kiss again and Vivian took the other woman’s costume in both hands, around the collar. Then she yanked it down firmly, where it stopped at the Hawk’s utility belt. Beneath it was a sports bra in brown and black, stamped with the logo of a local department store. Vivian grinned, her eyes gleaming. She gathered the cloth between Hawk’s breasts between thumb and forefinger and then snapped her fingers.

Superstrength did its job; the fabric tore and flew open. The Hawk gasped, excited and shocked all at once, and then wriggled her arms free of her costume, running her hands up and down the Mercy costume. Vivian read the delight in the Hawk’s eyes to feel soft, yielding flesh beneath it, rather than the rigid automation she clearly still half-expected.

“My husband,” the Hawk said.

“What?”

“My husband. He’s the really horny someone who designed my suit. This version, anyway.”

Vivian nodded, filing the information away. As curious she was, and as useful as further information might have been, she didn’t press. “There’s a really horny someone inside it,” she said instead.

The Hawk’s fingers found her nipple. She pinched lightly and tugged, The fabric of the Mercy bodysuit was a Professor Mordecai design, and among other things that meant it was the next best thing to unbreakable but had incredible material flexibility. She felt everything the Hawk put into it, and was surprised by how excited the noise escaping the back of her throat was.

Although she supposed she shouldn’t be. This was mind control sex; Master wasn’t involved but she was always going to enjoy herself.

“I’m not the only one,” the Hawk teased.

Vivian gave her a mock-stern glower. “We just have to fuck,” she said. “Flirting wasn’t in the instructions.”

“But we can.” Hooded Hawk released her grip on Mercy with her thighs and slid down, running her hands down the Coke bottle dimensions of the powered heroine until she was kneeling, her eye level aligned with Vivian’s crotch as she hung a few inches in the air, her hands on her hips. “And I want to,” she continued, looking up. She leaned forward, planting a kiss on the mound that rose between Mercy’s thighs. And then another, this time stroking its curve beneath her lips with two fingers of one hand.

Vivian bit her lip. This was new. This was sex with someone who didn’t command her where they were willing to take the lead.

What did she think of it?

She reached behind her back and found the toggle switch, then peeled her costume off. “There are better uses you could be putting that mouth to,” she said firmly.

The Hawk’s eyes shone with amusement. While she bent her head to the waiting clit, she took her time about it, making as much a tease of it as she could.

*

It was another two hours before the ceiling suddenly lifted off them, revealing daylight above.

Ms Miracle set the huge block of concrete and asphalt she’d dragged out of its connection to the rest of the ground to one side close by; she wasn’t the kind of heroine to throw heavy things aside except under the most extreme of circumstances.

Annie’s reserves of stamina were all but gone, but she still tried to cling to Mercy as the powerful blonde heroine, one arm around each of their waists, started to pull them apart. They could clinch for a surprising distance; eventually, with a cluck of her tongue and an amused eyeroll, Miracle pried out some rebar and bent it into a U, then used it to pin Mercy to the ground while she lifted the Hawk off her. By this stage both women wore only their boots (and, in Annie’s case, her utility belt).

But the moment they were firmly, definitionally separated, they stopped trying to reconnect. Annie sagged.

“Keep…” Mercy was trying to say something, but her superhuman frame was also short of air after the efforts they had put in. Both women knew already they would feel those aches for days to come. And though they had resulted from the orders of a controller not her Mistress, Annie wasn’t sure she regretted them.

Not until Mercy managed to get her message out.

“Keep hold of her, Miracle,” Mercy said. “She’s involved in a mind control ring.”