Author's note: I really have no idea where my fascination with super-hero and super-heroine fiction comes from, but there was an itch that needed to be scratched after the Sable series.
#
01: First humiliation
Kimberly grinned and put her hands up, open, fingers curled loosely, and shifted her weight lightly on her feet, poised and ready, her boxing shorts revealing her luscious 18-year-old legs as they plunged down into her boxing shoes, and her sports bra barely containing her firm breasts.
She flickered through some basic boxing foot-work, almost too fast to see, then returned to normal, but highly trained, human speed.
Her friend Megan opposite her, a slightly taller version of teenage womanhood, olive skin to Kimberely's tanned Nordic flesh, grinned back at her and jogged up and down on the balls of her feet. For a second there were three of her, all of the images ghostly, side by side, until they resolved into one solid human again, the one not in the middle but on the left.
"Ready for a pasting, kitty-cat?"
"Ready to hand one out, light-show."
"DISCIPLINE!"
They had both been expecting the bark of their trainer, Tornado, whose jet-black skin floated within his pure-white karate uniform like a ball of muscular energy. Neither of them did more than grin more, not taking their eyes off each other.
"Remember! This is free sparring, to submission! This is not patty-cake, patty-cake! I want to see bruising! And no powers! Any use of powers will be punished! If you can not learn discipline here, I will not pass you and if I do not pass you, you will not get licensed, and you all know what happens to those who are not licensed!"
Both girls swallowed at that, and so did most of the rest of the 14 girls and boys, all aged 18, lined up in two lines in the middle of the dojo. The only exceptions were those whose faces wore the serious, etched concentration of the committed martial artist.
"FIGHT!"
Parahumans can be divided into those who need to concentrate to express their power, and those who need to concentrate to suppress it. Kimberley was the latter, Megan was the former.
So Megan struck first, as Kimberley clamped down on her body's reflexes. But Kimberley had been expecting that, and slid backwards so Megan's leading right-hand straight punch, lashing out in an attempt to finish the fight with a pre-emptive strike, was deflected at the last moment.
Megan followed Kimberley's retreat, trying to press her advantage, as the shorter girl crouched slightly more, bringing her arms in and using her hands in the slipping Chinese style, deflecting rather than blocking, going for a grapple so she could trap Megan's longer arms and retaliate with a strike or joint-lock.
Her friend, knowing her style well, broke sideways, trying to jab her under the ribs with a savagely uplifted knee that Kimberley blocked with dropped elbow after twisting the same way to bleed the strike of power.
Megan's triumphant elbow strike, swinging high and sideways over the blocking arm, found itself blocked at her folded-back wrist as Kimberley slipped inwards, catching the longer-limbed girl off-balance with striking leg only just returning to the floor, carrying her backwards to the floor.
They landed hard, harder bodies absorbing the impact with only an out-rushing of breath, an extra grunt from Megan on the bottom as Kimberley pressed a forearm across her throat.
Megan's long legs wrapped around Kimberley's bare waist, trying to squeeze her into submission as they lay flattened with youthfully firm breasts squashed together, but with one arm pinned and the other flailing desperately for a strike, she was choked out quickly, legs weakening a split-second before Kimberley had to submit herself.
Megan tapped out frantically as greyness began to descend.
Kimberley collapsed to the side, rolling to her feet almost in an instant, Megan taking a little longer as she got oxygen back into her blood.
"Sloppy!" Their trainer barked, behind Kimberley's ear, "both of you! Megan, you were overconfident, sloppy, didn't have a back-up plan, and weren't prepared to fight dirty. Kimberley, you made an opportunity and only won by luck! Fail! Get to it again!"
When they faced off again, there was less grinning.
#
"Do you think he'll ever let up on us?" Megan was trying to dry her ears with a towel, her hair damp and tangled after her shower and the rest of the towel held coyly in front of her naked breasts as she sat on the bench next to her dry clothes.
Kimberley shook her head. "Not likely. He wouldn't be a good instructor if he did. He wants us to improve, and as quickly as possible. It's not like villains or henchmen will let up on us when we get our licenses."
Megan pulled the towel away from her ear, looking at her friend. "I keep forgetting how seriously you take this. You were training before you came to the College, weren't you?"
"Seven years of Wing Chun," Kimberley said as she bent over, one towel tied loosely over her breasts and just covering her muscular bottom, using another one to finish drying her calves, where a livid bruise was rapidly fading. All parahumans have rapid healing abilities, so even Megan's swollen eye was now fully functioning again.
"But I could never get the hang of kicking. Guess I've learnt something, then," Kimberley continued as she straightened up and tied her spare towel around her head to dry her hair before digging her panties out of her bag.
Megan shook her head. All she had known about fighting before the Para Police came knocking on her door and terrified her parents had been how to claw someone's eyes out or kick them in the shins. Now she could kick someone in the head without losing her balance, or use five different types of arm-lock automatically, and several more if she had time to think.
Now, she knew what it felt like to hurt all over and count her bruises and be happy about it. She shook her head again as she quickly dropped her towel and reached for her bra, her panties already on.
Then she stopped abruptly when she couldn't find them.
"Ummm ... Kimmy?"
Kimberley was staring into her bag. She had her panties on, and her bag was empty.
"Fucking pranks!" Kimberley exploded. "When I find the fucking telekinetic who ..."
"ATTENTION!"
Five girls, in various stages of undress, none with more than panties to put on, jumped. Two squealed, three tried to cover themselves with towels and one just froze like a frightened rabbit. One slowly straightened up, her whipcord body bearing small and high conical breasts not with pride but with alert indifference.
Tornado, very real and very male, stalked through the middle of the change-room.
"You all learnt, yesterday, that you will be studying how to withstand humiliation, degradation, and basic behavioural mental conditioning."
Kimberley and Megan, who had dodged that class, swallowed nervously. Of the remaining three girls, two swallowed in shame and came to attention with cheeks flushed scarlet, only the tall Stacey, wiry and alert and always the most serious, already at proper attention.
"You learned that you will have to learn to deal with the most basic kind of humiliation - public forced nudity. You were warned this could happen at any time, including in the middle of a fight.
"You will now be tested.