A Mind to Coerce

Dianna slept on the couch that night. It seemed fair; she was the newcomer and, special abilities over others or no, the other beds in the house were already taken. Dianna was a naturally kind, curious individual - she always had been ever since she was a child. The world was a beautiful place, and was full of bright, colourful people to meet, and Dianna had always dreamt to herself that she'd go out and meet them all, and be something important, something meaningful to them when she was grown up. Had, dreamt of it - until

it

started happening.

Dianna turned and twitched in her sleep. Her leg hurt, and that added a discomfort to her already discorded visions. Inside her dreaming mind, Dianna was twelve again. Young and free and full of spunk, the playful Dianna was yet burdened by the world, still free of the turmoil she would soon encounter, the turmoil all growing youngsters encountered when they passed through puberty -

and

the turmoil a young girl with an inexplicable, unbelievable gift of power over others.

Dianna skipped lightly past her mother for the sixteenth time just in that isle and Rue nearly clapped her across the ear as she watched the shock of orange hair bounce and sway away from her. Sooner or later she's going to trip someone else up, and that'll be the end of it, she thought to herself.

Sooner or later you're going to trip someone up, young girl, and then that'll be the end of it!'

Rue called after the young female form as it bounded away past the cereals.

'Am not!'

the frustrating little thing replied, and Rue pursed her lips together and shrugged the frustration down with a mother's smile that she would make sure the child never saw, as she turned to collect the shopping she needed from this isle. She considered the prospect of clapping that ear again as the girl skipped past, crashing into her cart as she did so and giggling as she moved away back in the other direction once more. You're lucky I love you, she muttered to herself, or else you wouldn't be skipping about my feet...

The groceries continued on mostly undisturbed as the two females circulated the store together, one finding necessary household items, the other skipping, playing with her toys and generally enjoying her care-free existence. As they came to the register and Rue greeted the young man at the counter and started to pass him things to scan, Dianna couldn't help but dash through the gates at the end of the lane and out the front of the store where she could run around some new space. She did as much and Rue wondered to herself if she might have been a little too withheld on the cuffing earlier as she stood, hands on slender hips, watching the child.

'Are you going to give me a hand, or will I lift this heavy bag into the trolley all on my own?' she asked in mock sarcasm, knowing her daughter would rush back to help as she always did. One day there would be a day that she wouldn't help her mother like this, but for today that wasn't the case, and Rue was thankful for that. Despite the disturbance the singing, skipping little ball of energy was, Rue admired her high-spirited nature and careless grasp on fun for whatever it was worth at the time, and often wished to herself that more people were still like the child.

Jumping up onto the edge of the beam the wheels of the cart were attached to and helping lower the bag in, Dianna smiled broadly at her work and at the attendant before, oblivious to where she put her hands, she wrung her mother's body to squeeze between the desk and the cart. As her mum paid for the shopping, no one noticed Dianna's outstretched finger as she reached for the stack of plastic bars that sat ever-ready by the conveyor, waiting to be placed between two lots of shopping to separate them. The credit card beeped on the machine, and Dianna gazed at the plastic tube as she poked at it. Just before her finger came close enough to touch it, the plastic bar shifted ever so slightly sideways, jolting a fraction each time Dianna prodded her digit closer as if a magnet were inside the edge of the bar, shunted seemingly by one inside her finger. She watched with intense fascination as her finger seemingly magically moved the item on the bench.

Then they were moving, and Dianna, her feet already on the trolley's wheels so she could reach the desk felt her legs moving out from under her. Perhaps it was the magical moment she was buried in, or the sensation of the motion, or perhaps just a result of a little girl's pent up energies, but Dianna suddenly didn't want to leave. She did the only thing she could think of to let her emotions out, and screamed.

Gasping and reaching for her daughter Rue quickly tried to pull the misbehaving little girl away, quickly discovering her hands were clenched to the side of the conveyor and she was stoutly refusing to move. As her mother gripped her again, whispering in a furious voice in her ear, she screamed again, stamping her feet. The whole store had stopped now, frozen in place as a hundred eyes turned to lock onto Dianna's rotten behaviour but she didn't care, her mum grabbed at her again and she kicked out, catching the woman in the shin and causing her to step back, swearing. The front guard was aware now and coming in her direction, as was her mother once more, a furious look on her face as she pointed, her mouth moving as she shouted a disciplinary phrase of some sort at Dianna that the girl couldn't hear. She turned and faced the woman that was her own mother and as she came to take her again, Dianna let her last inhibitions go and, as tears streamed down her cheeks, screamed right in her face, her fists going white by her sides as she gripped nothing in them for all she was worth.

Gripping the wheel, Dianna saw what was coming too late. It had been a near miss to begin with, the truck had been on the wrong side of the road and Dianna, her eyes full of tears, her breathing rasping and her heart pounding from the argument she had just run away from not ten minutes ago, had reacted too slow to avoid it. She swerved and only luck divined that the bulbar of the heavy carrier missed the front edge of the car, instead smashing the rear wheel with phenomenal force and spinning her on her ass for a full four-hundred-and-fifty degree turn, nearly ending up facing the way she had been coming, two full turns later. Dianna had already been on edge, and now as she looked out through panic-stricken, bloodshot eyes, she saw her own death rushing to meet her. Going at speed down the main road and hidden from view of the accident behind the tail of the truck until the truck had hit her and slowed jerking to a stop, the second car was going to brake to a stop about fifty metres after it hit Dianna's perfectly angled corner of the car waiting to meet it head on. Screaming and throwing her hands up in some meagre, desperate, animalistic defence, the driver hit her and the two cars went screaming backwards, Dianna's already ruined, wheel-less rear corner dragging and catching on the road as she was shunted backwards.

The car that hit her blew its airbags, as it well should have, and the impact of the driver's head against his steering wheel was cut short, saving his life. Dianna, however, had no airbags in her run-down old 80's road machine and was facing the wrong way for it to help anyway. To her own horror, she felt her neck snapping painfully as the impact shunted the car under her, sliding her backwards towards the rough ditch in the centre of the highway road. The truck's front wheel was already hanging unsupported in it, so close had his stop been. It was immediately clear that Dianna's travel wouldn't stop her on the edge of the ditch like the truck, however. The force of the impact pushed her into the dirt valley, and Dianna just had time to see through her own rear-view mirror as her car dipped, tilted, and slid back six feet, coming to a crunching stop on a steep angle, half the car underneath the level of the road, the other half up above it.

Dianna looked frantically about her. Her seatbelt, the godsend, was holding her to her chair, and although her neck pained her, she was alive. Trying desperately through hyperventilated breathing and still infuriatingly wet eyes, she had just managed to loosen the belt in the desperate hopes of wriggling out of the car when she felt it. A wrenching, shifting sound filled her ears with the sound of rending metal, and Dianna felt the car lurch under her, sickeningly. She couldn't see it, but the idiot in the car that had shunted her back was actually trying to reverse his vehicle back to free her, possibly so that he could help her get out - where she was now, suspended up in the air above the road, she would almost certainly hurt herself trying to escape. The truck driver, himself out of his cab and running over to the crash site, screamed at the driver, but he was almost as emotional and adrenaline-fuelled as Dianna and he barely heard the call over the sound of his own heart in his ears. When he finally noticed it, and turned, wide-eyed and horrified to look at the driver outside, it was too late. The deed was done.

Dianna felt the rust-bucket she called a car jolt again and her heart decided to take that vacation it had always wanted down to visit her feet. With a gut-wrenching sensation that sickened her, Dianna's whole world became crystal clear for a split second as she saw her future. Her seatbelt undone and the support of the other car under her own now gone, there was only one way for her angled metal can to go, and Dianna was going to go with it whether she wanted to or not. She watched in utter terror, silenced by her own fate, as, through her passenger window, the uneven ground of the ditch rushed towards her. The side of the car hit the ground as gravity claimed it once more and rolled slightly, flattening out the now inverted weight balance of the car, the upturned shape of the vehicle in the low dip concealing the redheaded woman inside from view and no doubt all but crushing her.

The two men stood in horror, staring at the scene before them. In a panic, the driver of the car turned to the truck driver, who simply stared at the picture, open mouthed. The driver who'd hit Dianna second began to sob.

'Quickly,'

the truckie said hoarsely to the man.

'We can't help her now. We have to get you to a hospital.'

Too distressed to argue and shock starting to close its grip around him, the distressed driver didn't have the thought to argue, and as one of the cars who'd stopped opened its door to offer help, he allowed the truck driver to guide him in, following himself a moment later as the driver agreed to rush them to hospital.

No one believed the unfortunate driver of the car could have survived. The way the car had tilted sideways and rolled to rest in the ditch could easily have crushed her, and most probably had. It was an old, crappy car already - the roof could well have collapsed in like a tin can.

But that didn't stop the second car that had pulled up from dispatching its driver. Tall, thin, slim, and sensually curved, Augustine Ruviera stepped out of the car and bolted for the wreck. Having tilted and then rolled to lie flat, the car had actually levelled itself quite nicely with the rest of the roadway and as Ruviera crouched down in front of the shattered driver's window she instantly saw the still form of the woman inside. Kicking the worst of the glass away from the window Ruviera pushed herself in. It was small and the girl had come to rest on the roof of the car, her butt up against the passenger seat's headrest, her arms slack, outstretched. She had presumably tried to grab the wheel or the driver's seat, the impact with the ground wresting her grip free, but it might just have been enough to save her life. Grabbing her and pulling her free of the car by her limp arms, Ruviera strained, doing her best to keep the girl clear from the worst of the glass and metal. After several moments of straining and pulling, trying her best not to run the girl's limp body against any bared glass shards, she had her out, and, taking in the thick gash on her leg and torn shirt, Ruviera guessed she might still have a good chance. Hoisting her up with the strength her own adrenaline gave her, Ruviera had her back to the car as quickly as she could, tucking her in on the back seat before slinging herself into the car and bursting off the mark.

A second before she did, however, Ruviera paused. Quickly grabbing her lighter from the glove box she ran full pelt back across the road, the sound of sirens in the distance now growing loud as the emergency response crews scrambled to get to the scene. Kicking the cover open on the fuel inlet on Dianna's beat up old car, Ruviera was pleased to see it was positioned well enough that a stream of petrol poured out and started to pool on the roadway and splash into the dirt. Ripping a hair tie from her own long hair, Ruviera wrapped it around the trigger on the lighter, then spun the wheel. It caught, and she set it down a little way from the fuel stream, where it would be out of the way for a moment, but where the fuel would eventually run. Wrapped in the tie, the trigger couldn't release, and Ruviera put it sideways so that the flame licked the asphalt.

Ruviera was back in the car a moment later and skidding off the mark, blasting around the corner of the road at the speed limit and then some, passing two fire trucks as they followed an ambulance on the way to the crash site.

She wouldn't hear it, but the explosion of Dianna's fuel tank ripped the back of her car apart some thirty seconds after that, shunting the car about in its resting spot and setting the interior alight as the explosion tore the soft insides aside. Before the emergency crews could contain the blaze, the once somewhat clean fabric and plastics of Dianna's car were charred and black, and burned away, as was the body of Dianna itself. It would be on the news that night, the reporters talking about the tragedy and interviewing the driver who'd hit Dianna from the hospital, and police detention respectively in the case of the truck driver. Both were suitably distraught. Having found no identifiable corpse, no next of kin was found, and due to the flipped, exploded form of the car, no clear identification was made in time for the news that evening. It would be old information by the next night.

Ruviera wouldn't see any of it - she preferred silence and stillness as she tendered her hypnotic spell over new stock.

As her new captor drove her away from her old life, Dianna dreamt in a painful, unconscious daze, her brain repeating the last few moments of her life over and over again as it struggled to deal with the shock it had been plunged into. Screams, tears, beating heart. Flashing sensations of her hands white on the wheel, her own breath wrenched from her lugs as the truck rammed her car, the heart-plunging sight of the car careering towards her, knowing she couldn't move, knowing she was doomed to die here and now - screaming, screaming her last breath as the impact closed in and her doom took her, screaming as the world turned black and she fell from the seat into a bottomless abyss...

@ @

Dianna shot awake, and she wasn't certain, but she thought she might have screamed. She was sweating hard and the blankets Carla had given her were either gone from her body or missing the important areas. She was cold, yet her heart raced at a breakneck pace, and to cap it off, she had rolled onto her leg and it was stinging badly. With a groan and a grimace, she slowly rolled herself off the leg, gritting her teeth as she felt the still raw wound shifting under the bandages. It had bled again and the bandages were dark with her blood, but it wasn't critical. It did, however, leave her feeing weak and drained, and the memory of the dreams still echoing about her mind didn't help her feeling of unease and discomfort.

Dianna looked up as Carla appeared in the doorway, Taira behind her. Dressed lightly in the oversized shirts that Ruviera had picked to stock their wardrobe with in the event of any un-controlled visitors, the girls' bodies were covered, although whether that was Ruviera's wish or Dianna's she couldn't know. It could just have been how the girls had reacted when they'd seen someone in the house that wasn't evidently enslaved - Dianna didn't yet know what was normal around the place, despite the fact that she had shared a partial presence within Ruviera's mind earlier on that evening.

'Are you okay?' Taira asked, and Dianna nodded weakly. The action hurt, and Dianna realised she was full of aches and stiffnesses beyond just the leg. The crash, she now remembered, had not been good for her, to say the least. Unsure of what to do, Taira watched as Carla stepped carefully in. Slightly more confident than the meek, shy Taira, Carla was a more natural leader, and Taira let her now take the lead in the situation that presented itself.

'How's the leg?' Carla asked, stepping up to the woman's side. She turned it slightly and saw the swathe of red underneath the material. Oblivious to the connective sensation her soft touch was giving Dianna as she watched her silently, Carla gently unwrapped and pulled away the bandages, taking a look at the scene underneath. Far from being disturbed by it, Carla looked closely; checking to make sure it wasn't overly watery or dirty. 'I think its okay, you just hurt it by rolling on it. I'll wrap it up with some clean bandages.' She said matter-of-factly to Dianna, as if she was simply helping out a friend. She made to leave, when suddenly, following some momentary instinct, she turned and locked eyes with the girl that had been watching her the whole time. She didn't notice that her hand hadn't yet lifted from the skin of Dianna's thigh.

A strange wash of tranquil sensations seemed to wave and roll over Carla as she looked at the girl lying on the couch, and although Carla couldn't put her finger, or more accurately, her thoughts on it, it seeped into every portion of her and soothed her, relaxing everything it touched. It seemed to come from everywhere, and, slowly, Carla realised it was most evident in her fingertips, the ones on the hand that still rested those fingertips lightly on Dianna's thigh. Shivering slightly with the tender, intimately personal feeling of warmth and safety as it soothed her, Carla lifted her hand from the leg and the sensation washed away as quickly as it had come, leaving her only with a cool, mellow memory of the relaxing warmth at her core. She didn't break eye contact with the girl right away, staring into those dimly visible hazel orbs a few moments longer before she turned to fetch more bandages.

Strange...

Dianna thought to herself as she watched the edge of the girl's bare bum underneath the man-sized shirt, the little blonde girl following as the taller Carla left.

Very strange...

@ @

Come morning, Dianna had had a chance to rest more easily. Wrapped in fresh bandages and padded up with cushions on her side so that she didn't roll as easily onto her leg, she slept mostly soundly. Having tended to her, Carla and Taira had gone back to their own beds, at first uncertain to leave the woman's side until she had ordered them out. Much of their slave programming still existed in their brains - in fact, all of it did, Dianna had done nothing to revert other than to overpower it with her own ability - and, convoluted to include a

second

powerful giver of magical sensations into their list of respected Mistresses, they obeyed her almost as willingly as they did Ruviera.