"We... we really have to stop meeting like this, Candi." The words came out with slight difficulty; it was hard for Shadowstryke to talk with her mouth watering so much. She swallowed hard, but it didn't do much good--her eyes kept fixating on the bright pink lollipop that Candi Kane kept licking with her long, dexterous tongue, until before she knew it Song Jeong-Hui was wiping away a trickle of drool from the corner of her mouth again. She blinked heavily, trying to refocus her scattered thoughts, but the very air of the repurposed chemical plant was sweet with the caramel scent of cooking sugar, lulling her back to an almost childlike state of contented bliss. Against any other enemy, she would have been done for.
But Candi Kane was never one for fisticuffs. "Oh, I know!" she squeaked, her high voice dripping with the affected lilt of a children's show host or a bad actress doing her impersonation of Glinda the Good Witch. "I do keep trying, I promise, but something always seems to happen to lead me away from the straight and narrow! It really is so very good of you to keep up your efforts to reform me, Miss Song. I can't think what I'd do without you to show up and teach me the error of my wicked ways." Jeong-Hui winced internally. It never stopped disturbing her that the closest thing she had to an arch-nemesis already knew her secret identity, even if Candi had never used that information against her.
Probably. Possibly. Maybe. Shadowstryke had to admit, there were times when her memories of her battles against Candi got a little bit... hazy, as if a tiny bit of the cotton candy fluff that her enemy used got stuck to Jeong-Hui's brain and gummed up her thoughts into a sticky sludge. She always won, she knew that from the arrest records the next day, but sometimes the details of how exactly she tracked down the notorious bank robber and defeated her specially concocted candy traps got kind of fuzzy. Suspiciously fuzzy, if she was totally honest. She should probably mention it to her girlfriends the next time they were all together, see if there was maybe something they could do to test... to test....
Shadowstryke suddenly realized she'd just been standing there, drool dripping down her chin, for almost a full minute. "Um, I, uhhh... I'm afraid it's time for another lesson, Candi. The kind of lesson where you go to prison for six to ten years. With time off for good behavior." Not that Candi would spend much time in jail. She always seemed to have something up her sleeve in case of capture, from acid-filled jawbreakers to razor-sharp rock candy to an animated marshmallow golem in one particularly memorable case. It seemed like Jeong-Hui couldn't go three months without having to track her down to her latest lair and sub--subdue--subdued--sub, sub, sub--
"Oh, my behavior is always good, Miss Song!" Candi burbled, breaking into Shadowstryke's looping, muddled train of thought. "I'm a very sweet person, aren't I?" She gave the lollipop another long, sensuous lick, flicking her tongue up and down the sugary surface until Jeong-Hui found herself shivering in sympathetic pleasure. She nodded vacantly, even going so far as to try to take another step closer to the seductive woman in the red-and-white striped outfit before realizing once again that her boots were stuck to the floor by an agglomeration of thick taffy. How... how had she forgotten that?
She blinked again, and this time it felt like her eyelids were gummed together by that same sweet, sticky warmth. "I... sweet, yes, you're very... ummmm...." Jeong-Hui fumbled for something witty to say, some clever quip that would show Candi Kane that Shadowstryke was still in control of her wits and the situation. "Sweet," she mumbled at last, her empty brain unable to come up with any words not supplied by the bubbly blonde in front of her. Slowly, groggily, she stepped out of her boots and over the patch of taffy, determined to end the situation before whatever was befuddling her mind got any worse.
Candi gave her lollipop another lick, and Jeong-Hui's volition slowly faded into vacant, captivated fascination. "That's so nice of you to say!" she squealed, clapping the heels of her hands together in excitement. "And I think you're sweet, too! You're just as sweet as candy, pretty girl. As sweet...." She licked again, the tip of her tongue flicking rapidly up and down against the slick sugar. "As candy." Shadowstryke whimpered involuntarily, the motion stirring not exactly memories but the trace impressions left behind even after memory itself failed. She'd been through this before, she realized. She'd been through this before and she... she'd forgotten each and every time.
