"What did you think you'd achieve, hmm? A few centuries of reprieve for an insignificant backwater universe that doesn't even know how to manage its own petty affairs, let alone its place in the scheme of the multiversal cosmos? A pat on the back from the grateful dullards in the Liberty Squad once they remembered you even existed? Please enlighten me, because from where I'm sitting, you sacrificed yourself for nothing. And that's a shame for a woman of your potential."
Azure could feel a subtle, insistent pressure on her mind accompanying each question, not quite a headache but more like that strain just before the headache finally arrived, but she kept pushing it away. A part of her felt obscurely proud of herself; she'd never really thought of herself as much of a psychic powerhouse, but she was discovering that the standards of her long-vanished universe might not be the same as the ones she was frequenting these days because she was doing a pretty damn good job of holding the telepathic intrusion of one of the most powerful mind controllers in existence at bay. A fact that seemed to greatly frustrate Professor Psycho, judging by the snappish tone in the Greek woman's voice.
"We are going to get everything out of you eventually, Azure," she snarled, trying unsuccessfully to hide the petulance in her sultry tones. "I've networked a thousand of the multiverse's most skilled mental adepts into a limitless battery of psychic power, more than enough to wear down your defenses and bend your will to my own. You can spare yourself a vast amount of suffering if you surrender to us willingly and allow yourself to set the terms of your own subjugation. We are harsh but fair, my dear girl, and you may yet find a role for yourself in our universe if you accept a place at my side instead of beneath my boot."
It might have intimidated anyone else into surrendering, but Azure had studied telepathy the same way most children studied cursive handwriting. Networking psychics was a neat trick and it could accomplish a lot, but there was still a hard limit to how much power could flow through a single brain at any given time without simply frying it like an old worn-out fuse. She'd have far more luck operating in tandem with others, but if Azure understood one thing about this terrible and debased version of the reality she was familiar with it was that they weren't big on cooperation. It was a dog-eat-dog world here, and Professor Psycho was used to getting her meals on time.
Which was just about the only advantage Azure had. Even if her tactile telekinesis could break the shackles made of dwarf star metal, and even if she could somehow elude the hundreds of supervillains who ran this world, there simply wasn't a resistance to hook up with to help her find her way back home. The Punishment Details were ruthlessly efficient, ferreting out defiance with telepaths and precognitives and the most advanced surveillance the planet's super-scientists could devise, and all the heroes of this reality were long dead or subverted by Professor Psycho to the new order. Azure was, quite literally, all alone.
But that didn't mean she was going to give this bitch the satisfaction. "Who do you think you're protecting?" Professor Psycho shouted, almost losing enough of her self-control to slap Azure before remembering that direct skin-to-skin contact with a tactile telekinetic would be the worst--and last--mistake she could make. They should have used psychic dampeners, but Azure had a suspicion that wasn't a high priority for research in a world where one of the ruling triumvirate relied on her mental abilities to keep her grip on power.
Instead, she changed tactics. "Look," she wheedled, "we all saw what you did to the Supremacy back in your universe. And she's one of the Triumvirate, a queen of queens and really my only rival here. I can play that idiot Imperil like a fiddle, but Helena's every bit as good at playing the political game as I am. If you were on my side, it would tip the balance of power immeasurably. We could rule together, and I promise... I could make it worth your while." Another telepathic intrusion accompanied the words, this one sneaking in beneath Azure's mental barriers to caress her at the level of pure instinct with raw pleasure. It was harder to defend against an assault like that. The brain simply couldn't recognize it as a threat in the same way as a brute-force attack.
Professor Psycho must have felt it succeed, because suddenly Azure felt arousal pooling in her heavy breasts and slick, needy cunt in a way that nothing short of telepathic manipulation could explain. Not that Azure wasn't as kinky and pansexual as the next person in her long-vanished native reality, but this wasn't exactly the kind of bondage she enjoyed. "What you're experiencing right now, darling... it's only a shade of the ecstasy you could have if only you opened your mind and let me in. I can't say you'd be my equal, that's not how the world works and we both know it, but you'd never be sorry you submitted to me. That much I can promise."
That sounded suspiciously like one of those ambiguous offers that always ended up in the death of the gullible henchperson who believed it, but it was a little harder to make that distinction when Azure's clit throbbed a little bit harder every time Professor Psycho put special emphasis on a key phrase in her speech. Still she kept silent, knowing that the professor was trying to play a game of social dominance and the most powerful thing Azure could say was nothing at all. Opacity was a virtue. A brick wall never wound up saying yes.
"I still don't understand what you're trying to achieve," Professor Psycho said again, this time in a tone of mock sympathy accompanied by wave after wave of saccharine bliss that Azure's mental defenses couldn't shut out no matter how hard she tried. "You know there's no hope of resisting this kind of mental intrusion--billions of years of evolution have made you crave pleasure, even more certainly than they've made you avoid pain. You can resist torture, but can you resist the sweet, subtle insinuation of ecstasy? Not for very much longer, dear. Because deep down you don't want to."
She chuckled. "And even if you could hold out forever... what would be the use? To be another victim of the march of progress, another corpse under the foundations of the Empire? There's no medal waiting for you, no reward for your resistance at the end of all this. The pathetic fools you fought alongside have almost certainly forgotten you, if they ever cared about you at all. You're just another orphan desperately searching for a family to accept you, a foundling looking for a home. Why not let it be here with me? Why not let me heal your scars and fill that void inside you with my control?" The pleasure flashed into a near-orgasmic burst of sensual bliss, then faded just as suddenly as Professor Psycho looked expectantly at her for an answer. Azure felt a sudden craving to speak, simply to feel that pleasure again.
She didn't. Instead, Azure let her body go limp in her shackles, paying close attention to every ache and pain in her body, wrapping herself up in them like a blanket, embracing them like an old friend. She drew herself inward, savoring the bittersweet memories of friends and family who existed nowhere but in her own mind. It was pain, yes, but it was her pain. Hers and hers alone. And nobody could take it from her.
