CN Flower
wasn't one of Toronto's best known superheroines, but she felt that she made a difference nonetheless. At 23, having only been crime fighting for a year or so, she still felt she had a lot to learn -- but nonetheless, she was out there every night, taking down the bad guys. Once she'd even stopped a bank robbery! That was a personal highlight, for her.
Spiderweb
Tonight, unfortunately, wasn't one of Flower's better nights. She'd been checking out this house, and suddenly everything went blank. She was now clawing her way back into consciousness, not knowing how long she'd been out. She kept her eyes closed, playing possum until she could gauge the situation. Her wrists were bound above her head, so her arms were getting sore; soon she'd need to reassert the strength in her legs and stand, to relieve the ache, but for now she let them dangle limply beneath her, hanging from her restraints, to keep up the ruse.
With only the tiniest of muscle movements, still trying to seem unconscious, she verified that she still had on her cowl, as well as the various weapons and tools secreted about her body. The latter was, frankly, surprising. Any time she'd been captured in the past, the first thing her captors did was remove her paraphernalia. (Usually they snuck in a quick grope while they were at it, the perverts. Did they really expect to find weapons by spending so much time pawing her breasts or rubbing her pussy through her tights? No, they just wanted to assert dominance, and prove she was still a girl in a man's world. Disgusting!)
There was a sore spot at the base of her skull -- probably where she'd been clobbered -- but she was otherwise unhurt. Her arms were sore, of course, and getting worse by the minute, but the fact that her muscles weren't screaming out in pain indicated that she probably hadn't been hanging here too long.
To her chagrin, she'd been taken completely by surprise by the blow to her head. She'd heard vague rumours of some kind of unsavoury activity happening at this house -- maybe drugs, maybe stolen goods, there was no specific crime mentioned -- so her plan was simply to scope the place out and see if anything nefarious was happening. She saw an open window, crept up to peer inside, and then all went black. To have been captured so quickly, the very moment she got on the property, meant that she had completely underestimated what might be happening here.
So now she was hanging from her arms, which were starting to scream out in pain. It was time to stop faking unconsciousness, open her eyes, and stand on her feet to relieve her arm muscles and get some circulation back in her wrists. She did so, and opened her eyes to see that she was in a well-appointed library. She glanced up to see the metal ring in the ceiling, to which the ropes around her wrists were attached, but other than that the library was similar to any other, albeit with a more plush carpet and a nicer desk than one usually saw in a home library. Directly across from her, in a sumptuous red leather chair, sat a man, patiently waiting for her to wake up. Legs crossed, arms resting casually on the arms of the chair, his steel-grey eyes watched Flower as she took in the room. He wasn't dressed in any kind of super villain costume, just a normal, grey suit. There was some kind of a small, silver pin on the lapel, which was the only decoration.
When he stood she could see that he was easily six feet tall, maybe taller. He seemed to be in good shape, but more importantly he radiated self assurance. She knew nothing about him, but could intuit that he was used to getting his way. She was especially mesmerized by his eyes. With years of practise she had no problem meeting the man's gaze, projecting her own air of confidence (whether truly felt or not), but deep inside she wasn't sure if she'd be able to tear her eyes away even if she wanted to.
She kept her poker face even when he came up to her -- right within striking distance! From here, she was able to tell that the pin on his lapel was a tiny spider.
He may have been self confident, but he obviously didn't know how to deal with superheroes. When the moment was right, she'd easily be able to leverage the rope from which she hung, strike the heel of her boot into his face, and free herself from her restraints, all in one swift move. It was exactly the type of thing for which she trained incessantly. Her ray of hope blossomed into joy when he grabbed a knife from the desk. She knew what was going to come next, it was the mistake so many villains made: he planned to unmask her, and find out who "CN Flower" really was. He'd waited for her to wake up because villains always wanted her to feel the shame of being unmasked -- though none had ever successfully done so. This would be her moment to strike: his attention would be diverted to the prize under her cowl, and the many times she'd tried this manoeuvre had all been with a villain in exactly this position: he'd be reaching up toward her face, when he should be worried about protecting himself.
As expected, the steely-eyed man reached up with his knife, and with no conscious thought her well-trained reflexes kicked in. Some lower part of her mind noticed that something was amiss, but there wasn't enough time for her to register the fact that the blade of the knife was pointed down, instead of up toward her cowl; her body was already in motion.
Exactly as she'd planned, she grabbed the rope attached to her wrists and sprang with her coiled legs to leap up. In one graceful motion she flipped back through the air, kicked out at the man with her boot, and cut the ropes around her wrists with a blade she kept there. Her legs got back under her, red hair trailing behind her like an arc of fire, and she landed in a perfect fighter's stance. It was a beautiful move, and beautifully executed -- all the more beautiful since she was topless when she landed, belatedly realizing that the knife hadn't been intended for her mask after all, the man had used it to slice
down,
removing her spandex top, which was now in his hand, instead of her cowl. The heel of her boot had also missed his face, since it hadn't been quite where she'd anticipated it would be. Her motion had actually helped him remove her top, instead of leaving it in tatters on her torso.
The unexpected touch of air to her skin, and the light bounce of her pert breasts as she landed, drove the situation home to her: Aside from her cowl and her gloves, the top half of her body was now open to this man's cool gaze. She had no time to rue the fact that it was summer, which had driven her decision to go without a bra. In fact, the shock of standing half naked in front of this stranger drove all coherent thought from her head. Normally, she'd already be lashing out with her fists and her feet -- pummelling her would-be captor into submission -- but now she just stood there, eyes wide open, trying to process the situation.
Flower was used to following her instincts, and, uncharacteristically, her instincts were now telling her to run. There was no training for this situation! So, in a blur, she was out the library door and running down the hall. At the end of the hall she could see an open window, which became her goal. She didn't know how high up she was, or what was outside the window, but she planned to dive through it and figure out what to do in the air. Again, she would rely on her training.
When she was close enough she dove, arrowing her lithe body through the window's opening as if diving into a tiny swimming pool. Once again her training served her well, and she perfectly executed the move; once again, circumstances thwarted the elegance of her execution, as the window slammed down on her, catching her at the waist and pinning her half through the window.
The force of the window pane slamming down on her midsection in mid dive knocked the wind out of her, and she needed a moment to catch her breath. The physical exertion wasn't so bad, she'd had her breath knocked out before, but on a mental level she was still thrown off by her sudden nudity, and it was slowing down her responses to the rapidly changing situation.
Superheroes did not run around half naked!
