The Mirror Ch 01 6

Hi everyone, a clueless idiot here, submitting his first story! I've only ever read stories thus far, so here's to hoping this goes well!

Being in the mind control category, this story obviously is fictional. It is set in a fantasy version of our modern world. Not too much is different, except some people have superpowers.

Our protagonist's personal moral code, while not wholly nonexistent, is relatively weak. This means that some characters may be forced, either through blackmail, coercion, or mind control, to engage in some very degrading/unpleasant acts throughout this and future chapters. If this isn't your cup of tea, you should go look for other stories that are more to your liking.

All characters involved in NSFW acts in this story are over the age of 18. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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10 years ago, a plague swept across my world, leaving several hundred million bodies in its wake. The planet's population has yet to recover.

Yet what seemed to be a curse could also be seen as a blessing. Those that came closest to death but survived were not only able to recover fully but also gained paranormal abilities as an aftereffect. Accounting for powers that are too weak or specialized to have been noticed/activated, statisticians estimate that about one percent of the population had abilities unexplainable by science.

One in a hundred may seem few to some, but with 7 billion people on the planet, this quickly adds up to roughly the same number of people the plague killed. For this, we named the plague Janus, after the two-faced Roman god, one face bad, one face good.

When I was a 10-year-old boy, I became one of these people. Janusians, we are called.

With so many Janusians across the globe, many quickly began to use their powers for their own needs and desires. Quite predictably, those who were more altruistic became heroes, while those with more greed became villains.

As our new reality passed into this new age of superheroes and supervillains, a new need arose - the need for super-identities. Or, as I call them - nicknames. They are childish, in my opinion, reminiscent of the names given to each other by schoolchildren.

Due to intense media cataloging (likely backed by governments), problems arose when multiple Janusians tried to take the same title. With so many Janusians using super-identities, the good names were quickly taken, almost like usernames in a popular video game or social media. Some with similar powers even fought each other for titles that they believed were rightfully theirs.

Of all the names, one-word names were the rarest and thus most prestigious. There were only so many nouns. With English being the most common language globally, we had heroes or villains named as just about every non-derogatory noun in the language. These were often the most powerful or famous Janusians.

I didn't choose a nickname for myself, but the media named me "Mirror." This name was much more widely known than my real name. Everyone who knew the latter was wise to not expose the association between the two. My nickname and international fame are a testament to my capabilities.

Despite my power, though, I never ended up joining either the villains or the heroes. I'm too selfish to be a hero, but I also have enough morals to not want to use my power for evil. My laziness and lack of thrill-seeking tendencies also factor into my decision against becoming either.

Over the last decade, though, I have inevitably encountered other Janusians. I mostly left them alone, but altercations happen, and those that ended up fighting me made very sure that I was known as a figure not to be meddled with.

They didn't even dare unveil what I looked like. My identity was nearly a perfect secret.

So it was with absolute cluelessness as to who I am that a teenage girl came up to me today and dragged me out of my morning routine of going to Starbucks for a cup of coffee. Well, dragged wasn't the right word - she more or less ordered me to step into her car and hand over my wallet.

I had long since trained my reflexes to react instantly to any danger in my vicinity, but her intents weren't directly harmful, and her powers were so suggestive that it hardly disturbed me, deep in my daydreaming. My girlfriend of nearly a year had just broken up with me the night before, so I was still in a trance-like state, where everything seemed both surreal and inconsequential to me at the same time. I hardly paid attention.

*click*

The sound of her engaging the child safety rear door locks in the car finally woke me. With a start, I realized that I was in an unfamiliar vehicle and not inside of Starbucks.

A soft but cold voice spoke from the front: "Finally realized, didn't you. Took you long enough."

I frowned a little but wasn't too worried. "Who are you?" I asked.

She seemed to take my lack of concern as a lack of understanding of the situation. "I'm a mind controller." She said matter-of-factly. "Now, hand over your wallet and tell me the PIN for your bank and credit cards. If the amount of money in them satisfies me, you will still be alive this time tomorrow, just with no ability to inform anyone of what happened."

A mind controller? This ought to be interesting. I'd come across a sort of mind-reader before, but his power is a bit impractical to use, whereas her power seemed to be much more capable.

My lack of response to her demands finally raised her concern. She looked back, and I gave her a little smirk. Shock finally crossed her face as I put the full force of my power in effect against her. She instantly lost all control she held over me.

"Pull over, turn off the ignition, and keep your mouth shut," I ordered. Instantly, she turned on the right turn signal. Shortly after, we were parked on the side of a road.

"Disengage the locks and climb into the passenger seat."

She wordlessly obeyed. There was an expression of sheer terror on her face now. It was good that I told her to climb into the passenger seat without exiting the car, or else her facial expressions would have raised suspicions out on the street.

I got into the driver's seat. This was a fancy car, but I should be able to drive it without much issue.

Without looking over, I gave another command. "Tell me about your power. How to use it, the limitations, everything. Don't get loud or raise any suspicions around us."

With a trembling voice, she obeyed.

"My powers are mind control combined with mind-reading. I can order people to do things by putting an intent of ordering behind what I say. I can also give subconscious commands suggestions by basically focusing my mind to bend someone's will to my own, but it tires me out faster than spoken commands. I can also give complex or long-term instructions, but tire me out even more.

"I can also physiologically control a person's body by either giving commands or mental suggestions. I can also take direct control, but if I do that, I temporarily lose control over my own body and senses, so I don't do that often.

"In terms of mind reading, I can sense and feel everything someone else senses and feels, and detect their emotions. If I'm looking into their eyes, I can also catch specific thoughts or information, but I usually get that by ordering people to tell me because if they aren't actively thinking about it, I can't 'read' it.

"My only limitations are that a person must be close enough to hear me for spoken commands or if I can see them if I use mental suggestions. If I get too tired, though, I would lose willpower, and any further orders may not be as effective until I rest."

It all came out in a rush, like a hostage giving her captors all the information she had so as to avoid some terrible fate. In a way, that is what is happening now, though I hadn't threatened her with anything yet.

Apparently, my order for her to speak had broken the prior order for silence. After a pause, she finally built up the courage to ask a question.

"Are you... Mirror?" Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. She didn't want to hear the answer that she already knew. I simply nodded.

She looked at me fearfully, but I could tell - my new power, which I am still getting used to, is letting me know - that she had a sliver of hope that I had learned all that I want to know and would now let her go.

Instead, I gave her one more order. "Lean over and fall asleep." was my last command to her for now.

She immediately slumped in her seat. Her head fell towards me to lean on my arm in the process.

It was only now that I got a good look at her. Seeming to be in her late teens, she was a combination of cute and beautiful, nothing like what her original cold demeanour had made her seem. She had long, silky, golden hair flowing halfway down her back, and she wore a bright blue knee-length dress like a work of art.

I took my left hand and laid it on her forehead. A rush of memories entered my consciousness.

This was the power I had learned from that mind reader several years ago. With a touch of someone's forehead, I can know everything they know. I could have learned about her power this way too, I only ordered her to tell me as a test of this new power.

This is why I was called the Mirror. As far as anyone knew, I could nullify the effects of any power used against me and reverse the effects back to the original wielder, a terrifying ability indeed. To have their own power turned back against them has become the worst nightmare of many Janusians that crossed me.

In reality, I was even more powerful, though I kept this a secret for fear of being perceived as a threat. I actually permanently gain any powers that are used against me. I am free to use these abilities against anyone, not just the original wielder. However, I kept the true extent of my power a secret, lest I make myself seem too dangerous.

The girl was 18, a bit older than I thought before. Her name is Aria Jamieson, one of the most dangerous people on the FBI Janusian wanted-list. So dangerous, in fact, that she was listed as "kill on sight." That was the only hope anyone apart from me had of taking her down.

She was already a brilliant but troubled child before the Janus Plague. Losing both parents to the disease 10 years ago, she turned to a life of crime when the government failed to take care of her. She mostly stuck to robbing banks and stealing cars, made incredibly easy by her power.

She only became violent after one fateful incident two years ago. She entered a store to shop but was recognized by a plainclothes police officer who had previously seen her in security-cam footage. He got one shot off through her thigh before she could react.

In her pain and anger, she had shown her sadistic side and ordered the officer to shoot off both of his testicles before putting a bullet through his own brain. At that moment, she began to revel in her power and fully opened up to her true villainous potential. In a twisted way, hurting others seemed to make her feel better for all the pain she had suffered herself.

From then on, the fates of anyone who severely wronged her grew more and more gruesome. Within a year, she had garnered international attention as the Puppeteer, the one who could bend others to her will.

In the past year, though, they seem to have given up on catching her, as doing so only lost them more and more police officers and agents. She had an almost uncanny ability to detect them, made especially easy by the fact that she kept her mind-reading power a secret.

When left alone, she didn't seem to murder innocents, so the FBI has mostly turned a blind eye to her occasional heists.

It took nearly an hour, but I learned all that I needed. I gave Aria a pinch and twist on her arm, just enough to make her wake up.

Aria let out a little "Ow!" as she opened her eyes. Without the harshness she had purposefully infused when she was giving commands nor the fear when I reversed the situation on her, her voice returned to a natural softness that I could only describe as endearing. Sadism and harshness didn't come to her naturally, they were only born out of pain, anger, or necessity.

Seeing an expression of fear return to her face as she woke up and remember her predicament, I almost felt bad for what I had to do, so I tried to be as nice to her as possible.

"So here's what's going to happen. I'm going to drive us to the police station and turn you in. I'll order you to permanently stop using your power except in legal self-defence so that they have nothing to fear from you, and you will be legally tried and sentenced. If you want, I can let you turn yourself in so that you can get a better plea deal."

That was the solution I had come up with. I don't get involved much with the Janusian community, so direct legal channels were the easiest way I could make this someone else's problem to deal with. I'm definitely too lazy to act as judge, jury, and executioner myself, as a hero would have done.

She started trembling and almost let out a shout before realizing it would be a bad idea to draw attention. "No, no, no! They'd execute me! They wouldn't listen to anything I'd say. They already have a similar policy with hypnotists, and I'm a full-blown mind controller. They are instructed to kill me on sight! Even if they don't shoot me immediately, I'll be put in the very front of death row!"

I sighed. She was probably right. Even though many of her killings could be seen as self-defence from a certain perspective, she likely won't receive any leniency.

The worst part was that having seen her past first-hand through her memories, I must admit that her criminal life wasn't wholly her fault. She was but a child when she was left with nothing but her power, and along the way, external factors had forced her hand. In my opinion, she didn't deserve to be executed. Stripping her power and giving her a prison sentence to rehabilitate her would be much more suitable, but she wouldn't get that.

"Well, what do you propose I do?" I asked.

"I don't know, but I'll do anything, anything but turn myself in, anything that doesn't get me killed." She was hyperventilating now, the fear of death causing beads of sweat to form on her face.

"Calm down, take a few deep breaths. We have time. We can talk this through."

She tried to take a few deep breaths, but it wasn't working. I could feel her heartbeat fluttering like a hummingbird's wings.

I decided to try out using her power instead. Reading out with my mind, I sent a mental command for her body to calm down. At once, her heart rate slowed, and her breathing returned to a steady rhythm.

"Thank you." She said after a pause.

"So tell me, what should I do? Why shouldn't I turn you in right now?" I asked again, maintaining the order for her to stay calm.

"I... I don't know. You have every right and power to turn me in. But please, don't do it. I don't want to die. I'll do anything you want if you would just let me live." She didn't panic again, thankfully.

The last sentence caught my attention. Up until now, I hadn't really considered what I had just gained. This new power was incredible, and I had a beautiful helpless girl in my possession. Even the law wouldn't protect her. The possibilities of what I could do were endless, and the temptation was strong. In a way, she even deserved it.

I let down the shielding of my power a little, just enough so that her mind-reading could see the intention in my eyes. "Anything?" I asked. "Really?"

A new kind of fear arose in her as she realized the implications of what I had just asked, what she had just offered.

"I won't be your slave!" She exclaimed in a panic as she saw the unconcealable desire rise in my eyes. "I meant I'll do certain tasks for you. I have skills you may find useful. I can get you money, get you things that you want, get you into places."

Oh, that's right, she has only heard of the public version of my powers. She has no idea that I became capable of everything she can do from the moment she used her powers on me. Well, no need to tell her that just yet.

"Money and material possessions don't matter much to me. I can obtain them in much more legitimate ways. I also have no need for your special talents. The only way I would want you to serve me is with your body." I said, surveying her body with lustful eyes. "Otherwise, you serve no purpose to me, and I'll have no further obligation than to dump you at the nearest police station."

I paused, giving her time to let her choices sink in. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and it didn't take long for her to realize. Tears almost spilled out of her eyes, but she steeled herself. My earlier mental manipulation allowed her to stay calm.

I spoke again, this time my tone reassuring and confident. "Of course, if you do choose to serve my wishes, I will keep you safe to the best of my ability. There's hardly anyone in the world that can protect you better." It goes without saying, of course, that I wouldn't want harm to come to my human toy, but confirming this out loud gave her a more explicit incentive.

I could see the gears turning in her head. She was weighing the options, considering whether to give in to me or to risk and most likely lose her life by going through the justice system as in my original plan. I looked away, giving her a moment of privacy as she made her decision.

A minute later, Aria let out a sigh. "Fine, I'll let you... I'll let you do anything you want." She said.

I raised my eyebrows. She made the decision faster than I thought.

"Are you sure?" I asked one more time. I wanted her to be sure of her choice, to leave her no excuse for regret later on.

"Yes. I'm sure," Aria said through gritted teeth. "I guess it's poetic justice, 'she who lives by the sword dies by the sword,' karma finally caught up to me. I deserve it."

A pause, and then her voice got quieter. "This wouldn't be the first time I did something I didn't want to do to survive, anyway. If you agree to keep me safe, I'll do your bidding, anything you want."

I smiled and turned on the ignition. Pulling into traffic, I gave Aria a new instruction, but I didn't put the intention of command behind it. I wanted to test if she was genuinely ready or had rushed the decision.

"Very well, if you have accepted this as your punishment, then a complete punishment it shall be. Let us begin: I wish for you to put your hand into your panties and pleasure yourself for me immediately."

Aria braced herself for the inevitable force of a command, one that would overpower her will into doing that which she dreaded, but no such order took hold.

"If you are doing this, then you should be able to follow my words of your own volition. There should be no need for every word of mine to be an order," I explained with a smirk.

Her cheeks flushed in indignation. As if having her serve my desires weren't enough, I was now asking her to do so of her own free will. I could see clearly in her eyes that this was more embarrassing than if I had just ordered her to do it.

She glared daggers at me, but I said nothing.

Despite this, her resolve (or fear of death, I guess) was still firm. After letting out an indignant "Fine!", she flipped up the bottom of your dress to reveal the bright pink panties underneath. Without exposing anything, she stuck her right hand beneath the panties and began to masturbate, while her left hand went to cup one of her breasts.

Turning my head to get a better look, I was about to order her to slip the panties off and reveal herself fully to me before I thought better of it. We were still in traffic, and I had to drive, so I couldn't like anyway, and besides, I wanted the mystery.