Valiant Valkyrie in the Zoo - Chapter 2
Persephone Planter learns the Secret of Serpent House
Our Story Thus Far:
Valiant Valkyrie has assembled a large force of her fellow superheroines to protect the Beachport Xeno-Zoo from the evil mutant mastermind Gorilla Groxx. Unfortunately for her it was a trap. All of the strange beasts of the zoo have been warped by sex mutagen and unleashed upon their beautiful would-be protectors. Valiant Valkyrie's sidekick Vestal has already fallen into the clutches of Groxx's ally the sinister Lady Luna, and to the tentacles of her kraken. Now we rejoin Valiant Valkyrie as she continues her search for the ape mastermind himself - seeking to put a stop to his inhuman rampage once and for all.
All characters in this work are over the age of eighteen.
Oblivious to her sidekick's wriggling fate just behind her, Valiant Valkyrie ran on, following the moist ape footprints left by her arch-foe. The aquarium building was adjacent to and contiguous with the Serpent House, and without breaking stride Valiant Valkyrie followed her quarry's trail from the back rooms of one and into the other. Only to skid to a halt, jaw dropping open.
The Serpent House, naturally enough, contained alien or magical ophidiate-equivalents from a wide variety of worlds and dimensions. Many more closely resembled sinuous dragons, often possessing horns or whiskers or in a few cases even wings, though never arms or legs. All possessed at least a crudely human-like intelligence but, like most of the zoo's various inmates, lack of opposable thumbs among other critical evolutionary gaps had prevented any of them from developing complex technological civilizations - for better or for worse.
The House itself had been designed with thin glass walls to either side of the trail and between each cage, to maximize guests' impression of being in a deep serpent-infested jungle. Now, all had been shattered, covering the ground in broken glass and turning the fake alien jungle into a real one. Many-colored alien vines and foliage hung all around her, often decorated with orchid-like flowers, and the atmosphere was oppressively hot and damp. But that's not what made Valiant Valkyrie skid abruptly to a stop. No, that was the Hexetress.
"Goddess!" Valiant Valkyrie gasped. The young mistress of magic had been assigned to patrol the Serpent House. But now, she was its prisoner. A huge alien boa-constrictor, twice the size of a terrestrial Anaconda, had ensnared the pretty witch in its coils by wrapping them twice around her narrow waist. Most of the giant serpent's body was still in the trees, having used only the tip of its giant tail to snatch her up. Demonstrating its great strength it had lifted its prey bodily from the jungle floor, pinning her with her toes a foot up off the ground, her slender body wiggling helplessly amidst leaves and vines and long dappled flowers.
But despite her predicament, the Hexetress seemed to be in good spirits.
"Hello, Miss Valkyrie," she said, her usual Oxfordshire accent somewhat strained by what appeared to be a tight, but carefully-positioned, constriction right below her ribcage. "Good to see you!"
At just twenty-one, Ms. Persephone Planter was already considered one of the most gifted witches of her own, and possibly the last two or three generations. Currently in her third year at her prestigious and secretive magic University, where she was pursuing five degrees at once, she had taken a leave of absence to come do some work-study in Beachport. Rumor was, after a lifetime of overachieving, she was finally starting to suffer a bit of burnout; plus, having helped to defeat at least one dark wizard in her youth, she had ended up getting a bit bored, and come in search of just a little bit of the old excitement by helping to hunt down Lady Luna.
But, as she was technically still a student, her magical Uni did have strict rules in place. As she wiggled in the tree her slender, long-legged body was still clad in a sharp outfit that looked like a cross between wizard robes and a schoolgirl uniform. Up top, she wore a loose black blouse with large voluminous sleeves, with accents of purple and silver, and with her university crest embroidered on her breast. Below she wore a short, pleated black skirt. Lifted up in the air her slender legs hung down for seemingly miles beneath her, but were mostly clad in dark gray stockings that reached almost all the way up their long length, leaving just a few inches of supple upper thigh exposed between her stockings and her skirt. Her long legs terminated at the other end in glossy black patent-leather shoes.
There was one other major area where Persephone differed from most of her new comrades, besides being quite a bit more covered-up. Up top, within her shiny uniform, her bust appeared to be 'only' about a C-cup range; which put her well under the average for superheroines. Though, of course, she only sort of honorarily was one.
But the Beachport environment had still rubbed off on her in certain ways, regardless. For one, when she'd first shown up, her pleated skirts had been of a sensible mid-knee length - perfectly optimized to preserve both her modesty and her mobility. However, hanging out around scantily-clad superheroines all day and competing with them for attention had caused her hemline to suddenly start ascending like an elevator, seemingly creeping up by a full inch a day - as if my magic even. Now her tiny skirt seemed to barely reach a few inches down her thighs.
Second, when she had first gotten here she had just gone by her given name. But from the influence of her new comrades she had quickly ended up adopting her new codename. She seemed at first to regard it as just an amusing joke, before it rapidly became second nature. She had even ended up adding it to her business cards. Because, of course, she had business cards.
"Oh, my Goddess," Valiant Valkyrie cried, as she saw the trapped sorceress. Her booted feet strode fearlessly across the sea of glass to stand before her squirming young ally. "Hang on just a minute, Hexetress! I'll help you!" But for the moment she wasn't sure how, her gloved hands hovering, open and quivering indecisively, to either side of her panty-clad hips - since any move to free the student sorceress might well be responded to by a sudden and potentially fateful constriction.
"N-no need!" the magical college-girl promptly replied, confidently - only a tiny shiver in her voice from the squeezing of her waist.
Despite her coiling confinement, her flushed and straining face turned and gave the Golden Goddess a confident smile, from amidst the spill of her long wavy hair. Though Valkyrie did not know her original hair color, she changed it routinely with magic, and today it was bright blue.
"They may have taken me by surprise, but don't worry -- as always, I came prepared for my mission!" the Hexatress continued. "I brought my signed copy of Serpentian Signs and Conjurations! I have but to invoke the proper spell and these naughty beasts will bow to my will... Then, we'll have them as powerful allies against Groxx!"
Although she was almost universally regarded as one of the most naturally talented and diligent witches in the world, Persephone did have one, somewhat self-inflicted weakness. At one point during her second year, just after adding her fourth planned degree, she had cast a spell intended to expand her mind and allow her to learn even faster than before. It had done so... but in the process had expanded her memory so much as to leave her slightly befuddled as to any one particular spell. As a result, though she knew every detail of every spell and exactly where to find it, she could only actually cast them with the text in front of her. Writing them down on her hand, or even tattooing them, did not work for reasons Valkyrie could not recall. As a result, Persephone was never seen without at least one large book in her hands - which by all accounts meant nobody who had known her since childhood had even noticed a change at all.
