Author's Note:
Time for a change.
This is a series, and a lot of the rules are already established, so please read the first three first. This will probably still stand on its merits, but will be less confusing.
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Selena stood stock still, only her eyes moving as she frantically scanned the room searching for any clues, opportunities, risks, threats - the whole College spiel.
College. Her mouth twisted at the sudden bitter taste in it, and she clenched her fists and her resolve.
"Step forwards," the resonant, velvety, completely directionless voice repeated.
Forcing herself to overcome every natural and inculcated instinct to run away, she took a step, then another, finding it easier to keep walking until the voice said "Stop!"
This time the voice had an origin, but it was swooping and spinning around her, moving impossibly fast and, as far as she could tell as her eyes darted about trying to find it, with no visible origin.
"Why have you come here?"
She swallowed, cleared her throat then had to swallow again. "Is this the Villains League?" She asked, trying to put challenge in her voice. "I want to join."
There was silence for a second, before the voice returned with an amused tone to it. "Do you now? And why would you think such a thing exists?"
She squared her shoulders. This could go badly, but she didn't think she had any alternative. "Because I'm a second-year student at the College," she said with almost no tremor to her voice. "I left because ... because the fucking do-gooder hypocrites refuse to acknowledge the superiority of parahumans!" She finished on a genuinely angry outburst.
The voice was silent for another moment, before saying "A College student? That would make you our enemy, wouldn't it?"
"Former," she spat out. "I want revenge on them!"
"Nonetheless," the voice said, with a musing tone to it, "they do have very potent ways of implanting suggestions, and they do apparently train people very well."
"Test me, then," she grated out. "Fucking test me! You must have ways of doing it, I know I'm not the first student to escape the College!"
"Oh, this one is clever," the voice said, suddenly right in her ear, so close her body thought it could sense breath. She kept herself staring rigidly straight ahead, knowing full well that if she turned her head to look, there would be nothing there.
"You're right, you're not the first. But some of your predecessors are no longer with us or anyone else. Strip."
She froze for a second, before silently laughing bitterly at herself. These are the Villains, why would they be less obsessed with sex? But in case she hadn't heard correctly ...
"You want me to undress?"
"Must I repeat myself? Were you not paying attention?" The voice sounded cold, now.
She swallowed, gone nearly as cold as the voice. "All of my clothes?" She asked, carefully.
"All of them. And jewellery, and anything else on, in or about your person."
She deliberately ignored the "in or about" bit and bent down, untying the complicated laces on her walking boots first, then pulling them off, then her socks, then undoing her belt and pushing her jeans down legs she knew could turn heads fast enough to cause whiplash.
Her thick jumper was next, revealing the tight shirt she wore for strategic, rather than comfortable, reasons.
The voice gave an audibly demeaning whistle as the shape of her torso was revealed. She did not flinch, blush or respond at all. She was used to this. They had trained her well, after all.
The shirt revealed her bra, as comfortable and supportive as her panties.
"Such practical underwear," the voice said, putting a sarcastic, derogatory spin on the adjective. She ignored it.
With her bra off, she pushed her panties down her legs. She had developed late but vigorously and knew her breasts were very nearly a fetishist's delight, too large to be perky but still young enough to be firm. She had also stopped shaving as soon as she had left the College, and was secretly hoping the owner of the voice would be shocked.
"Now," the voice said in her ear again. "Are you sure you still want to go through with this?"
"I am a parahuman," she said flatly. "That makes me superior to humans. Villains seem to be the only ones who understand that. I belong with you. I am fucking one of you, cock-sucker."
There was silence for another few seconds as she sweated on the result of her calculated insolence. The floor was cold and the air nearly as cold, making goosebumps spring out all over her body, her nipples ache and her legs nearly start to shiver, but she clamped down on her muscles and refused to let them move at all.
"Well," the voice breathed right in her other ear, which did not make her flinch. "We shall have to see about that. And insults, just so you know, are paid in full. Now, enter if you really think you have what it takes."
Her gut clenched almost before her brain fully understood what her eyes were telling her. The space in front of her had warped, splitting, not revealing black or other colours or even fully hiding what was behind it, but twisting light in a way that made her want to vomit. She forced her eyes to stay open, took a deep breath to settle her stomach, and took one very controlled step forwards.
Her body accelerated forwards and backwards at the same time, her mind shot up and her ears recoiled from a sulfurous stench as her nose gave her crystal-clear vision of the room she had just left.
It lasted either half a second, or half an hour.
She retched, dry-heaving, desperately settling her stomach, running through the previously hated College mantras to control, settle and focus herself.
Then she opened her eyes as she started paying attention to her limbs again, and froze.
She recognised the overtly feminine figure standing in front of her in a catsuit covered with elaborate, aggressive, sharp-edged designs. She did not recognise the seemingly male figure swathed in eye-confusing layers of grey to her left, or the ripplingly muscled man in dungeon-domme leather to her right.
So the fact she was, still naked, restrained in a stretched cross shape by what seemed to be silk wrapped around her limbs, her torso and even her breasts, binding them tightly and pushing them up and forwards, would be because of ...
"Mistress Web," she said, in the most even voice she could conjure. "I've admired you for a while now."
"Is that so? Admired?"
The Villain's eyes were so wide and bright they almost shone, and the smile on her black-painted lips made Selena flash back to her mind-control challenges, making her swallow convulsively.