Please don’t, it hurts, it hurts, please-

You bet it fucking hurts. Try to run now, bitch.

I-I-I can’t, oh my God, my legs, I can’t move my legs. Please, you have to take the collar off, it’s-

Shut the fuck up and keep sucking, superslut. Yeah, fucking take it. All the way down to the balls, that’s right. Show me what those lips can do.

[unintelligible noises]

I’ll let you breathe when you’ve goddamn earned it. Go on, more tongue. Get it all nice and wet, baby, cause I’m going to try out your ass next.

[unintelligible noises] 

Fuck, that’s good. Really tightened up there. You like the idea of anal, don’t you? Ha ha. I should’ve bought one of these collars weeks ago. Hey, don’t fucking pass out on me, bitch. Fucking useless cunt - hey, wake up. Wake the fuck up.

Oh- oh God - please - please don’t -

Yeah, that’s right. Scream all you want. I like it better with the screaming.

Please, I’ll do whatever, whatever you want. I promise. Just, the collar, my legs, please, sir, my legs, I can’t feel my- 

That’s hilarious actually. You really can’t move, huh? Can’t even crawl away? Jesus, you’re pathetic. Gonna make this a whole lot easier for me.

No, please, you don’t understand, it’s, I need, I need my powers, please don’t do this, stop, get away, get away from me, don’t touch me, not there, please, please PLEASE - FUCK - GOD - HELP - PLEASE - STOP PLEASE FUCK OH PLEASE -

Holy fuck, that’s one tight fucking hole. You never let the boyfriend stick it up there? Am I popping your backdoor cherry right now? [Laughter] Hold on, I gotta get this on camera. Say hi, superslut.

I CAN’T- NO, PLEASE, PLEASE, DON’T, I DON’T-

What’s your tag again? @Velocigallllll? Let’s get some views up in this bitch.

W-Wha…? No no no no no please, you can’t, you can’t, please don’t do this, I’m serious, I’ll do anything, I swear, it’s not NOT THE MASK, DON’T TOUCH THE MASK PLEASE PLEASE-

-

Any hope of keeping power suppression collars out of the public eye goes up in flames, along with Velocigal’s anonymity. In one video upload, the whole world sees more of her now than it ever has before - her unmasked face, along with everything else. 

That’s enough for people to find her civilian identity in a manner of minutes - Valerie Quinn, a world-class sprinter training for her Olympic debut before a tragic car accident left her a helpless paraplegic, crippled from the waist down. No amount of physical therapy could get her to walk again, not with the lower half of her spine crushed to a pulp. Confined to a wheelchair, wracked with chronic pain, she did the only thing she could: volunteer for experimental medical trials. 

Beyond all odds, the serum they gave her worked. It healed her spine, her legs - and then some. Within weeks she had become the fastest woman alive. Within the month she was battling Regenesis - the mutated superhuman version of the doctor who had given her the serum in the first place. He’d taken his chance to gain superpowers himself, only for the serum to overtake him, turning him into a bestial monster of a man. When Velocigal defeated him, she hadn’t just saved the city. She’d saved herself. She showed herself that she wasn’t helpless anymore. That in spite of everything she had suffered, she could be a hero too.

Four years later, a collar has taken all that away from her. It’s unclear how long it’ll take for her to walk again - or if she ever will. The serum was one of a kind, the secrets vanished along with Regenesis’ sanity. How the collar interacts with something like that is a complete mystery. We never could replicate the serum. Even now, we still don’t understand how the collars work. How they interact with superpowers, vanquishing them so utterly. At this point, all we know is that these goddamn things have taken another heroine from us. 

And I have no idea what to do about it.

-

The lecture hall isn’t one of the grander ones on the Centropolis University campus. It fits a hundred students, maybe, crammed in together shoulder to shoulder in those tiny desks with the horrid flip-up desks that’s barely wide enough to fit a pencil. Today, there’s hardly fifty students scattered throughout the seats. Some take notes, a few are napping, most are scrolling on their phones. 

Welcome to the twenty-first century, I suppose.

“As you can see,” I continue, clicking to the next slide. “The isomorphic nature of dynamically charged protons has a varying effect on fermion superposition - which enables us to determine the effect of an electro-magnetic discharge on entangled particles.” I gesture with the laser pointer at the diagram up on the projector screen. “Note the valence of the orbiting neutrinos. We’ll get to that next class.”

There’s maybe a dozen students actually paying attention. Four of them have the makings of proper scientists, if they can survive grad school. Two are bright enough that I can see Nobel prizes in their future. Five of them are trying their best not to fail my class. There’s a few students every year who seem to think that Advanced Nuclear Theory in Material Sciences sounds like easy credits. I don’t understand why. 

And then there’s one student who’s not quite like the others. Leonara Larson doesn’t look like my usual student. She’s not gangly, or acne-scarred, or habitually greasy. She’s pretty, more than pretty if I’m being honest with myself, with wide doe-like eyes and honey-blonde hair and full lips, and a figure that’s blessed both by genetics and certainly a fair amount of time at the gym. She’s often late, often tired, but one of the most dedicated learners I’ve ever taught.

She’s also the superheroine Psyrena, but I don’t think she knows that I know that.

I remember what it was like to be young and reckless. Going out every night, with a heart full of rage and good intentions, beating up criminals until your knuckles are black and blue and dawn is creeping up over the horizon. It’s cathartic, to be sure, but havoc on your sleep schedule. Makes it tough to be a functional human being the next day. It’s all about striking a balance. 

Tough lesson to learn. 

The bell rings, the clock chimes, and I shut the projector down. “And that’ll be all for today. For next class, read sections 13A to 14B, and make sure to at least try the practice problems. If you can’t calculate the quantum charge of deionized tachyons in under an hour, you’re going to have problems on the midterm. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Most of my students stir, starting to pack their laptops and notebooks into their bags, shuffling towards the exit. I single one out. “Ms. Larson, do you have a moment?”

She comes up to me nervous, wide-eyed. She’s a fairly tall girl, nearly as tall as me - 5’7” in Converse if I had to guess. But she keeps her posture low, slouched, like she’s afraid of attracting attention. “Dr. Moore, I promise I wasn’t sleeping this time, I swear-”

“I know,” I say, trying not to smile. “It’s not about that.”

Leonara looks confused and relieved at the same time. “Oh. Is it - is it the homework? I thought I got it all in, did I miss-”

“It’s not about the homework either,” I interrupt, before she can start spiralling. “I wanted to talk to you about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Let’s call it a special assignment. Do you know the building on 1622 Athens Avenue?”

Her brow creases as she thinks about it, before her eyes widen. “That’s… that’s the Hero Corps building.”

“That’s right. You’re expected there at 8 PM tonight. Does that time work for you?” 

“Y-yes, but I, um, I really don’t know why I’d be invited to the Hero Corps Hall, right?”

“Ms. Larson.” I do smile at her then. “You’re a good physicist, but you’re a terrible liar. The assignment is important, so try not to be late.”

She stares at me open-mouthed. “Yes - of course. I mean, I’ll do my best. Should I, uh-”

“In costume,” I clarify. 

Then she blushes. “How…”

“I’m the leading expert in cutting edge materials science in the city,” I remind her. “Do you seriously think I’ve never worked with caped crusaders before?” I make it a rule to not to reveal my identity unless absolutely necessary. Being one of the foremost scientists in my field makes for a fairly believable cover story, I’ve found. Leonara swallows it without a second thought. I suppose the idea of her physics professor living a double life as a superheroine is perhaps a step too far.

“8 PM?” she asks, to confirm.

“8 PM. Don’t be late.”

-

Project Nullium had been a desperate gambit. A Hail Mary, if you will. The Corps had come up against a league of supervillains with a grudge - after a grueling campaign, it’d become clear we were outnumbered, and if not outmatched, then certainly outgunned. We needed a way to cut the heads off the snake. I don’t quite remember whose idea it was to research power dampening technology, but the theory had been solid. Everyone had liked the idea. A nonlethal, humane method to resolve the crisis.

Except nullium had been a dead end. We’d tried a dozen different methods of power suppression, down to the subatomic level. But we never quite got there. The technology had been too unstable, too unreliable for the field. And the cost had been exorbitant. We’d shut the project down after months of no results. 

That was the official story, anyways.

Obviously, we’d grasped the implications of such a technology immediately. Before we’d even started the project. We’d be developing the key to our own defeat, should this technology be replicated by the criminal element. It was resolved early on that, no matter what the research resulted in, that the project be labeled a failure. The idea was to discourage anyone else with the potential means to research the technology themselves - if the Hero Corps couldn’t do it, surely such a device must be impossible to create. There was no point in pursuing the possibility.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the device wasn’t so impossible after all.

It was one hell of a bitch to make, of course. We’d had to carefully tune ten different layers of technology, magic, interdimensional fuckery, and everything in-between. But we’d done it. We’d created an alloy that could suppress any type of super power that we could test, regardless of origin. 

It wasn’t perfect. A simple pair of handcuffs required an immense amount of the stuff to be used. And we couldn’t get suppression down to 100% - subjects were still able to exhibit very minor uses of their powers. But it was damn near close enough. We managed to defeat the villains, conclude the crisis, seal away the project, and bury the technology, never to be used again.

But what if someone out there hadn’t just replicated the technology, but perfected it?

A chime from the door console alerted me to my visitor. I turned around, resplendent in my gold-red powersuit, domino mask firmly set over my features. Every piece painstakingly designed, printed, woven into a composite material that’s practically toughest stuff known to man - a bullet train could run over the stuff and it wouldn’t tear. “Psyrena,” I say. “Thank you for coming.”

In comparison, her suit is decidedly homemade. Not bad by any means. Armored in the right places, reasonably symmetrical. But there’s certainly issues with the stitching, and there’s better boots she could’ve picked. She still carries herself with the same nervous energy, but her posture is better. Straighter, more confident. Leonara isn’t afraid of being a hero. 

“Thanks for inviting me, Materielle,” she says, trying her best not to gush. “CanI just say? It’s such an honor to meet you. I- I know we’re not really supposed to have favorites, or anything, you guys are all so cool, but you’re one of my heroes. I used to read about you all the time. And this place is amazing. I’ve wanted to visit for like, for ever.”

“You could’ve,” I say mildly. “We’re always accepting applicants.”

“Sure, I just- you know.” She traces one foot along the floor. “I haven’t done a whole lot, yet. So far, I mean.”

I’ve looked at her file. She’s kept to her neighborhood, but there’s plenty of crime around a college campus. She’s been busy over the past few months. She’s got more than enough experience under her belt to apply for formal Hero Corps membership.

Even still, I don’t want to come off as overbearing. She’s an adult, and she can make her own choices. And this wasn’t why I called her here.

“I hear you have fairly strong psychic abilities,” I tell her. “Tier 3 or higher. Is that right?”

“Well,” she says, nervously. “I’ve never been formally tested, but, you know, I-”

“It’s a yes or no question.”

“Tier 2,” blurts out Psyrena. “From… what I’ve read.”

A T2 psychic is nothing to sneeze at. They’re one of the more subtler powersets, but no less dangerous than any others. She could reach into my brain and liquify it into a pile of grey goo, if she wanted. And if I hadn’t learned my lesson years ago, from fighting the Tyrant. It had been a close call - maybe the closest of my career - and I still think about him, from time to time, as a cautionary lesson. The watchmen must always be watchful. 

“Impressive,” I say, and Psyrena blushes. “How did you get your powers?”

“I… I’m not sure,” she admits. “I think I was born with them, maybe? My mother, she was part of some MK Ultra experiments, back in the day, and-”

“Makes sense. And you can control your powers?” 

Psyrena is a nervous girl, by nature. But there’s no doubt in her as she nods. She’s confident in her abilities, at least. And eager to prove it.

“Then I have a job for you.”

“Anything,” she says instantly.

“I need you to look at this.” And I show her a collar. 

Psyrena pales immediately. She’s seen the news. “Is that…?”

“It is,” I confirm. “But you’re safe here. Do you trust me?”

She nods, because of course she trusts me. 

“Then take a breath, and look at it. Use your powers.”

Psyrena inhales, exhales. “Is there anything you’re looking for in particular.”

There is. But I want her to keep an open mind. I don’t want to influence her. “Just if there’s anything interesting.”

Psyrena nods, her blonde hair bobbing. She breathes in deeply, steeling herself, before her eyes mist over with white. I can feel static charge building up in the air as she opens her mind. Her power washes over me like an intangible current, and I can feel myself calming, becoming soothed, as she spends a long minute turning the device over in its plastic bag, examining every facet of the collar, before finally shaking her head. Her eyes return to normal.

“Nothing,” she says.

“Nothing at all?” I prompt her.

“Nothing.” But she looks troubled.

“What’s the issue?”

She’s still looking at the item, confused. “Because there should be something. Every object has… memories, to it. A history, from people interacting with things. Like that coffee cup, over there. I can’t read it, exactly, but I can get a sense of it. You’ve been drinking from it since this afternoon, you’ve refilled it… three times. You had a sense of anxiety each time, and a lot of frustration. Right?”

“Right,” I say slowly. 

Psyrena looks a little bashful. “Sorry. It’s, um, part of the power. It’s hard, sometimes, to keep it all in. To not… read everybody, all the time.”

Psychic sensitivity is a double-edged sword, as far as abilities go. From what I’ve heard, it’s like trying to live your life with a radio in your ear, always on, 24/7. Sounds like a real bitch to me. 

“But there’s nothing attached to the collar,” she explains. “It’s like a blank slate, or something. I’m trying, but my powers keep slipping off it. I can’t get a read on it. It’s like no one’s ever interacted with it at all.”

There's only one metal I know of that flat-out blocks psychic ability.

“Can you try again?” I ask. 

Psyrena nods wordlessly, and her eyes film over again. The static builds again - harder, faster this time. Her lips tighten as she concentrates, focusing on the device. “There’s something, maybe,” she says behind gritted teeth. “I can’t make it out, but-”

“Do it,” I tell her.

Wisps of smoke, or cloudy vapor, begin to drift from her skin as she redoubles her efforts, jaw clenching. Focusing her will on this damn ring of metal. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I swear I can hear it groaning. Creaking against the psychological strain, until-

The collar snaps in half. The metal twists violently against itself until the thing rips itself in two, and Psyrena staggers back, clutching her head. I catch her before she hits the ground - she’s trembling like a leaf.

“What is it? What did you see?”

But she just shakes her head, swallowing. “There’s… nothing. I couldn’t get anything out of it. I don’t understand. What… what is that thing?”

I scrutinize her closely - she seems shaken, but overall healthy. Her cheeks are flushed from the exertion, perspiration beading along her face. I’ll need to send her to the nurses for a full checkup, but she seems herself, at the very least.

“Are you sure?” I ask. “You didn’t see anything?”

“Nothing,” she confirms. But her eyes are still locked on those two wrecked halves of the collar. “Nothing at all.”

“Okay. Can you stand?”

“Yes, I-I think so. I’m sorry I couldn’t… couldn’t help more.” There is, maybe, something odd about her. The way she twists away slightly from my hands. Standing slightly angled, away from me. Muscles tensed. 

But maybe I’m reading too much into it. Looking for anything to interpret. I genuinely can’t tell.

“That’s alright,” I tell her. “It was worth a try.”

Psyrena shudders. “If there’s anything else-”

“Get yourself checked up. Full evaluation, physical and mental. You’re free to go after that.”

She turns to leave, gladly. I don’t blame her. 

“Psyrena.”

The girl stops and looks at me.

“Fill out the application,” I tell her. “You’ll make a damn fine hero.”

She blushes as she nods, walking away with her back a little straighter.

Leaving me alone in the room with a thoroughly destroyed collar and a whole lot of questions.

Foremost among them, being:

Where the hell is all this nullium coming from?

-

It’s just past midnight when I come home to find Reina relaxing on the couch with a glass of wine in hand, watching some abhorrent reality show on a 300-inch television. She’s still in her business clothes, though they’re rumpled and enticingly unbuttoned. She blinks slow and cat-like as I lean over her, kissing her lips, her cheek, her neck, tasting her, inhaling her - 

What is that?

I know Reina. I know her perfumes, her scents, her sweat. There’s something else there here tonight. 

It’s like a sixth sense tingling, the one you develop after long hours in the night, on shift and alert for anything amiss. You learn to hone your senses. Register anything out of the ordinary.

I don’t know what it is. I can’t tell, exactly. But I know it’s not a scent. It’s a person. All I know is that someone else has been here, on her, before me. 

“What is it?” says Reina. She knows me. She knows me well enough to know that I’ve noticed something.

I think about Presley, the pretty brunette head of finance of Hall Industries. I think about that time I caught Reina and her necking, in her office during that one holiday party. How Reina promised it didn’t mean anything, she was just drunk, it would never happen again.

Reina’s looking up at me, confused, wondering. "Maddie? Is something...?" If she’s acting, she’s doing a damn fine job of it. If she isn’t…

I look back at her, wondering too.

“Nothing,” I say, finally. “Just a long day at work.”

I don’t know what else to say. I’m too tired to fight and too scared of losing her to ask. A knot of emotions is churning in my gut but I don’t let it rule me. 

“How’s the case going?” she asks quietly.

“It’s bad,” I tell her frankly. “I still can’t find out where the nullium is coming from, or how they perfected it. I don’t have anything.”

Reina frowns at that. “The collars are made of nullium? It’s verified then?” 

“All the tests say so,” I confirm. “Pure nullium, far more effective than anything we’ve made.”

“But I thought…” She trails off, having lost her train of thought. “I don’t know what I thought. But it doesn’t seem possible. We buried that project, for good.”

“Someone must have dug deep then.” I sigh. “How was your day? Acquisition still ongoing?”

“Negotiations are ongoing. But… I’ll say that things are looking up.”

“Oh really? No more holdups?”

“Greased all the right wheels, finally. I think it’ll be smooth sailing from here on out.”

I don’t know all the details about the acquisition - I try not to be too much of a busybody in that sphere of Reina’s world, and business deals bore me immensely. What I do know is that this would be a gamechanger for her - effectively doubling the size of Hall Industries and turning her company into a major player on the world stage. She’s been working towards this deal for months.

“So…” She leans back, flashing me a sultry grin. Plucking away one of her last remaining buttons. “Wanna celebrate?”

I want to. And I should, probably.

Who was she with tonight?

“Tomorrow, maybe?” I say. “I’m going to head down to the lab to… run a few more tests on the nullium.”

She hides her disappointment almost instantly, affecting boredom instead of vulnerability. “Of course. Go save the world, darling. I’ll be in bed waiting for you.”

I hope so. 

-

I finish the mass-batch of testing - rerunning all the intact collars I have under the same specialized array of automated examinations. The monitor beeps at me, all confirming the same thing. Pure, unalloyed nullium, just like every test before. Just like what Psyrena had confirmed for me earlier today. 

This metal should be impossible to get. Impossible to make, obtain, buy. We’d made exactly one prototype, and destroyed it after the crisis was resolved. All the files had been erased, hard drives melted into slag. There should be no trace of our previous discovery left.

Yet here the collars sit, staring at me.

I don’t know what gets into me, drives me into ripping my suit off, grabbing the nearest collar, yanking it open and fitting it around my neck before snapping it shut. I hate the noise it makes when it locks. I hate how wet it makes me, instantly. I hate the tiniest little mewl I make when I feel it tightening against my larynx. 

None of it compares to how much I hate the sickening rush that comes with trying, straining, exerting with all my might-

-only for absolutely nothing to happen.

My powers slam into the functional equivalent of a brick wall. Over and over. It doesn’t feel like anything, there’s no feedback or response from trying. No pain or discomfort. Which is even worse, in its own horrifyingly arousing way. It’s as if my power hardly ever existed. As though it had only ever existed inside the confines of my own head - as though my superpowers were a delusion I’d had, once, in a series of implausible dreams, and now I’ve woken up and found myself returned to my normal state: powerless.

It’s so, seductively easy to slip into that false memory. To gaslight myself with the sensation I feel in this moment. I can’t help but wonder, as I strain against the collar and fingerfuck myself silly to depraved, euphoric heights, if maybe I never had any powers to begin with.

Just a dumb little girl playing make-believe in her costume. 

In this moment, I’m entirely aware that there’s something very, very wrong with me. I know that I’m using this as an escape, from the compounding guilt of heroine after heroine getting defeated by these fucking things, the whirling questions in my head with what’s going on with Reina, the scream in the back of my mind that’s shrieking at me to stop doing this to myself, why am I doing this, why am I so goddamn hooked on getting collared?

I dive deeper into the sensation, and it all goes away.

Because there’s nothing I can do about any of it.

I’m powerless.

Completely, utterly, powerless.

It’s like when my college boyfriend used to rape me on the regular, before I received my powers. I didn’t know I wasn’t straight at the time, and I was just so scared to ever say no to him, and the few times I did he never listened anyway. And I just let him. I thought that was just part of being a good girlfriend. Being a woman in a man’s world. I never called the cops or anything, because he was my boyfriend. You can’t be raped by your own boyfriend, right? That hardly made sense. He was bigger than I was, stronger, more confident. I’d accepted, internalized, my own powerlessness. Exactly the same thing I was doing now.

It’s shortly after my fourth orgasm that my phone lights up - my work phone, not my civilian phone. I grab for it even with three fingers buried inside myself, blinking blearily. I’ve wrung my body out of all the happy chemicals at this point, after God knows how many hours, but it still feels so good, somehow. Too good. I don’t understand it, but I can’t help it. I keep touching myself, panting in my seat as my thumb mashes against my clit, and unlock my phone.

Psyrena: I have to tell you something.

Psyrena: About the collar.

Psyrena: There was something I saw. I didn’t know how to tell you. I don’t even know what it means. But I think you should know.

Psyrena: I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. I can explain, I promise.

Psyrena: Can we meet?

I fucking knew it. I should’ve trusted my own intuition. I knew there had been something. I should’ve pressed her on the spot. I shouldn’t have let the opportunity go.

My fingers leave a smear of girlcum across the screen as I type out my reply.

Materielle: Hero Corps Hall in an hour. Don’t talk to anyone else.

I could get to the Hall from here in thirty minutes, flying. But I needed to clean myself up first - a quick shower and a fresh suit.

And I need to cum, one more time. Just one more time.