Author's note:
This is version 3. I edited it once for inconsistencies, continuity errors and embarrassing editing mistakes, and then I finished designing the world and realised it shouldn't end where it did and I had a proper ending and...
So, this is version 3.
Original note:
Here we go again. Part 7 of a one-part serial.
Questions answered, questions asked, and fan-service for everyone who wanted Sable to take charge and give subs everywhere something to fantasise about.
This really is a series in rigidly ordered parts, not a series of loosely connected stories set in the same universe. If you haven't read the rest, you will have no idea what is going on.
Now, let the action commence.
#
"FUCK IT!"
Outside the laboratory door Catherine took a deep breath, smoothed down clothes that never wrinkled, and braced herself. It was her turn.
The door slid open with the smooth, low purr built in to announce it was working.
The Engineer was standing against a high desk, leaning on his elbows with his head in his hands.
After the first time one of them had tried to tiptoe up to him, she made sure her heels clicked on the floor.
"MRI," he said as she got closer. "CT scans. Functional MRI. PET. None of it shows any fucking difference, and I don't know if any of it is different to normal humans anyway!
"FUCK IT!"
He straightened up abruptly and hurled a pen straight through a monitor and its metal frame and out the other side, embedding it in the wall.
"Collecting scientists doesn't work because they live by this world's rules, so they don't know there is any difference between humans and... them.
"I can build a machine that finds Supers, but it doesn't work on you two. I can't build a machine that finds humans, it just DOESN'T. FUCKING. WORK!"
He stood very upright and very still, breathing heavily with his hands clenched into fists by his sides as the broken bits of monitor finished tickling to the bench and the ground.
She took a deep breath and opened her mouth.
His hand shot up, one finger extended in the universally recognised "shush" gesture.
"I'm going to let some steam off," he said in a very controlled voice, turned sharply, and marched out the door. The last thing she heard before the door closed behind him was a very polite "Could you please clean that up?"
#
Arnaud made coffee by instinct, avoided finding out the dangers of playing with boiling water while naked, found china cups and a silver tray, and carried it all back through to the bedroom.
He stepped inside the door and instantly froze, blind and unable to move as black bands appeared over his eyes and around his calves, thighs, and chest and upper arms.
He was lifted off the ground and the tray lifted out of his hands before his arms were forced to his sides and bound there.
He instinctively reached out to the link between him and Sable and instead of a clean line through to her mind he found a muddy, vague sense of direction ending in a flaming wall of anger.
"Try and get into my mind again," she said with the dispassionate, even tones of absolute certainty, "and I will rip your balls off."
He felt a band encircle his scrotum at the base and slowly tighten, stretching it and forcing his testicles together. She didn't stop until he gasped in pain.
"Do you understand me?"
"You did not want me to? You asked me what my powers were..."
He screamed as the band around his scrotum clenched.
"You did not get permission to use them. You're new in this city, you're new in this world, so I'll tell you this very clearly. You can choose to be good or evil but if you choose evil I will hunt you down like a dog."
"I believe I am a Villain," he said tentatively, but she cut him off with a force he almost felt as physical.
"FUCK THAT. You are a HUMAN now, do you hear me? That means you make your own fucking decisions.
"I was bought into this world as a Hero. I thought what we did was pretty fucking stupid, and the way we went about it even more so.
"Then I came here and suddenly because I wear black I'm a Villain. Well, fuck that. I am what I make me. I look after myself and I choose to look after people who get in the way of selfish, fucked-in-the-head Villains or who get caught in the crossfire when Heroes with simplistic fucking value systems fire at will.
"And you are NOT going to just accept some fucking label put on you by fate because the mere fact of being human means you make your own fucking fate, do you fucking understand me?"
"This word 'fucking'..." he began.
"Is multiply useful," she said brusquely. "It began as another verb for sex, now it can be whatever you want it to be, mostly emphasis. Don't dodge the fucking question."
"I think I understand you," he said slowly.
"Good. Because I am telling you: I decide to be a Hero now. You live in this city, you make a life here, and by any gods anybody here believes in, if you fuck with the people of this city I will fuck you up because I am appointing myself defender of anyone who can't look after themselves, I don't care how fucking unofficial I am about it.
"Because I don't care about their status: whether they're old humans, or brand new, or just making up the scenery. While they look human they deserve all the rights of humans, you got that?"
There was silence, for not quite too long. "I understand you," he said. "How am I to tell what is right and what is wrong?"
"What did you get while raping my fucking mind?" she snapped at him.
He was silent again. "Emotions," he finally said. "Something... empathy?"
"Good. You keep that. You throw away the rest but you keep that. You feel what you do to people and you remember that."
He almost nodded, but her bands still kept him locked rigidly in position. "Okay."
She stared at him, drawing the silence out until he wondered what he had missed, what he was supposed to say. "Can I trust you?" She finally asked. "Can I trust you to behave yourself and stay the fuck out of my head?"
"I promise I will not do that again, now I know what I am doing," he said with sincerity in his voice.
She stared at him, drawing the silence out past the point of discomfort once more. "Good. And believe me, if you try you may even succeed but I will go down fighting, and if you ever let me go again I will see to it I destroy you as completely as a Super can be destroyed."
He didn't need to wonder about the emotion the tone of her voice induced in him then. He knew immediately it was fear.
#
"Good afternoon!"
The Engineer's only reply was a strangled moan of exhaustion and pain.
His latest guest was a Heroine called Mercura, who dressed in a miniskirt and low-cut latex blouse, cape, face-mask, gloves to over her elbows, and boots to mid-calf. She could project blasts of energy from the space in front of her belly.
She needed to curl forwards and use her hands to summon the ball of energy, so the Engineer had shackled her wrists and ankles to the corners of the room, face-up, and lifted her off the ground by a belt around her waist, arching her backwards.
Lying down, she would have been merely helpless. But by stretching her in a backwards arch around a thin belt cutting into her back, he kept her in a constant state of tension and pain.
She may have been able to endure it if he hadn't already conducted a full interrogation, but even a Super can reach exhaustion with an hour of continuous arousal followed by half an hour of orgasms while being forced to answer questions.
But not even a tall, fit, big-breasted Heroine in the throws of continuous orgasm had been able to distract the Engineer from his frustrations after she was unable, even in a state of complete delirium, to give him any insights into the nature of the reality of the world they were in.
He hadn't even fucked her himself.
He fully intended to change that.
As he walked in the door she was side-on to him. He stopped a moment to admire the graceful, strained arch of her torso and limbs and the way he had kept her breasts out of the way by pulling her nipples up, using the rings he had inserted out of habit, pulling them at an exactly calculated angle perpendicular to her chest.
For purposes of symmetry, he had done the same thing to her clit, the thin lines from either end of her body now nicely balanced, the slight stretch on her clitoris sufficient to reduce her to mindless flesh but not cause any unnecessary pain.
She was still sweating and still delirious, body shivering as the piercings kept her at a level of arousal that should not, physiologically, have been possible even for a Heroine for so long.
He strolled slowly around her, relishing the view from all angles as he stepped over the chain holding her right wrist and moved in front of her. For the sake of convenience, he had strung her up so her head and hips were at approximately hip height, and then bought in a chair so he could interrogate her face to upside-down face.
He sat in that chair and regarded her.
The proud, defiant and noble face of the Heroine was now drawn, red, sweat-covered, slack-jawed and with unfocused, staring eyes. He had tied her hair to the floor to keep her head in one spot and it was pulling her forehead taut.
He waved in front of her vacant gaze. "Anybody home?"
Not even her pupils reacted.
With a sigh he took the remote out of his pocket and relaxed the tension on the three lines to her piercings.
