A Game of Cat and Mouse [AlluringEnigma x Iron and Wine]

By day, she was Baillie Aericson, the youngest daughter of the Aericson Real Estate Empire and what most would consider to be an “empty-headed blonde”. By night, however, she was Crystal, self-titled defender of the people. Of course, such a dichotomy of life was a fairly new development in Baillie’s life. At the rather young age of 19, she had only really bested a few petty robbers, something that all her bravado and brashness masked fairly decently.

What set her apart from most self-proclaimed vigilantes was her wealth. While most of her “peers” were dressing up in hockey pants as cheap imitations of real superheroes, she had her own outfit and branding. The costume itself was quite spectacular, a black spandex affair that was worn in two pieces. The top half clung to her bust and accentuated their natural size while keeping them in bay during physical exertion, the material itself all black save for the dark blue diamond between her breasts. The costume then cut off just below the bottom of her breasts, allowing her toned midriff to lay bare, before resuming at her waist in the form of tight, black latex booty shorts. In addition to this, a pair of sensible black gym shoes and a flashy dark blue and black mask were worn in tandem with the outfit, adding to the gravitas of her outfit.

Crystal was more than an outfit, though, and while it was more impressive than her ability itself, she was no pushover. She had spent time training in martial arts, and although she was hardly an expert, she could put up a good fight against those more skilled than her, even if it was due to her dogged determination. On this particular night, she was following up on her last bust. She had beaten a low-level drug dealer to a pulp and given him the explicit order of setting up a meeting between her and his source under the pretext of being a business partner. She was quite confident that his fear of her was much more than that of whoever his supplier was.

The particular evening she had chosen was quite cold, and her pale arms had goosebumps all over them, her nipples standing at attention from the cold. She cursed under her breath for their impracticality of such an outfit, even if it was quite dazzling. However, Crystal was not a quitter, she would run herself into a brick wall to accomplish her gals if she had to, and a slight bit of cold was not going to stop her.

Now, Crystal was not a sadistic person, and as a result she had taken to carrying a pair of wooden batons, weapons that would be more than enough to break bones or knock out enemies. With the pair strapped on her back, she strutted along the street, her tight backside swaying in the dark of night as she made her way to the parking lot she had chosen for the rendezvous. It was only a couple of blocks, a short walk for someone in her shape, and when she reached the empty landmark, her hands began to hover towards her weapons. Something was wrong. There was no one her, at least it seemed, at the designated time. In addition, there seemed to be an eerie silence that sent a shiver down her spine. Her hands were now gripping the weapons with a tightness that belied her aura of confidence.

Crystal stood there with a slight bit of panic on her face, her entire being sure that something was very wrong with what was supposed to be her own trap.

Ever since real-life superheroes had grown in popularity, the City had seen more than its fair share. Deluded souls convinced that they were meant to make a difference, convinced that they had some destiny that made them capable of doing what the cops couldn’t do. Wallace Dalmere paid the police for a reason. He paid the media too, but that didn’t stop one of the networks from running an interview series with these so-called “heroes.” Each time he watched it, Mr. Dalmere grew furious under the collar, yet each and every time he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the screen. This was his city, a city that belonged to those with the intelligence and the might to lead it into the new age, not freaks in masks and spandex acting like false gods for viewers to idolize. The face that a third of his drug trafficking had ground to a halt and still not fully recovered due to the first of these “heroes,” a mild-mannered machinist named Nelson Biggs but who went by the pseudonym ‘Balefire.’ A smear campaign had driven Nelson Biggs to extreme lengths that ended with his incarceration in a high-security prison; but even with such a clean destruction of his nemesis, Mr. Dalmere had grown to hate everything that these vigilantes stood for.

He was in the middle of watching the second part of an interview the network hosted with a “superheroine” named Crystal when Tiron was let past his bodyguards. From the corner of his eye, Mr. Dalmere noticed Tiron looked like he’d gone six rounds with someone, well, someone built like Mr. Dalmere. ”There’s ice in the freezer, but, goddamnit, don’t bleed on the upholstrey or the alpaca. Then explain to me why you look like a sack of ground pork.” His eyes didn’t break from the screen, watching the teenager explain her grand philosophy of how it was her mission to stand up for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves. The interview followed more like a celebrity round-table with the interviewer extolling Crystal’s costume and discussion about what that bold choice in her costume meant. ”Can you believe this shit? She dresses like a stripper, picks a stripper name, is articulate as a high schooler, and they air her on the 8 o’clock news. The news I bought off!”

After a moment, Tiron murmured in disbelief, ”Boss, boss, that’s her, that’s her, the one who did this to me.” Tiron pointed at the cute masked face on the screen, his voice muffled but intelligible through a bag of ice. ”She wants to meet you, at the parking lot in front of the old steel mill, tomorrow night. She- she wanted me to pretend she was a business partner.”

Mr. Dalmere was incredulous. ”She beat you? A fucking teenage girl? She doesn’t know who the hell she’s messing with. Tomorrow night? Fine. She’ll get a fucking business proposal then.”

There was an unnerving silence throughout the large parking lot. It hadn’t been used since the steel mill shut down, but there were plenty of rusted cars and buses strewn about. The absence of street lights made everything dark, though the moon and stars, and ambient light from the street provided enough to see by. After several heartbeats, a hulking figure shifted in the darkness, moving around from behind one of the cars. Just as Crystal’s vision was beginning to adjust for the dim light, picking out signs of shapes moving in the gloom, the massive man rapped on the hood of the car, his voice booming, ”Light ‘em up!” A pair of high beams flashed on from behind the massive man, silhouetting him and partially blinding Crystal. Another pair of high beams turned on from her left, further disorienting her. There were dozens of men slipping out of cars or from behind crumbling structures, armed with pistols, rifles, baseball bats, and machetes.

”I would say introductions were in order, but I’m afraid wearing a mask and using a stripper name doesn’t exactly grant you legitimacy as an adult!” The massive man taunted her in his gritty booming voice. He stood nearly 6’5”, built like a heavyweight boxer with massive arms and thighs bulging against his dark slacks. He wore slacks and a blazer, and lacked any hair, but beyond that, the high beams swallowed up any details of his face or identifying features. The men had her surrounded, and any direction of escape there were at least two or three of them, and one had even brought two pit bulls on a chain. Several video cameras floated among the men, with lights and microphones aimed at her. ”I believe you had a message for me, Crystal. That’s funny, because I have a message for you too, a message that I feel is very important for you to understand. Would you like to share first, or shall I?”

As soon as the bright lights beamed down on the solitary hero, she knew she had been betrayed. Scores of thugs and footpads surrounded her, yelling out jeers and insults at the victim they now surrounded and outnumbered. It did not take her long to adjust to the bright lights, but when she did, all she could see of the purported drug dealer was his figure, a massive hulking one at that. Crystal wasn’t wholly sure of their purpose, but she noticed the video cameras floating among the troops as well.

Despite the odds and the ambush that had been sprung, a defiant glare was still set on her face, though only her mouth was really visible with the mask that was so firmly set on her face. She took a few seconds to look around, to survey an area she could escape to, but she was wholly encircled, as if she was the center of some twisted mosh pit. Of course, the whole time the man had been speaking, and his tone, a commanding baritone, rang through her being as she weighed her options.

Deciding that her best bet was to let him talk while she figured out a plan, she replied with a haughty tone. “Floor’s all yours scum” she replied with an edge in her voice. Looking around the room some more, she identified a weaker spot in the encirclement, a few men who had brought bats instead of rifles, and she began to slowly sneak her way over towards that area. With her clubs drawn and at her sides, she was quite certain she could beat about the few guards there and make a mad-dash for some way out. However, as it stood, she was still facing the dark figure, awaiting his sinister message.

It was times like this that Crystal regretted her choice of uniform. The way it clung to her and pinched was not practical for running or fighting, but it always had an alternative goal. The city lacked a superhero, and she knew that half the battle was public image. Baillie wanted to become the look associated with the city. A mere glance at her outfit and people would know exactly who was there, protecting the city. Of course, being the superhero of the city was only achievable if she made it out of this alive, and as it stood, the odds were hardly in her favor.

Crystal had now reached one of the farther edges of the mosh pit, hopefully without anyone noticing, and she stood there as if she had no purpose. The last thing she wanted was for her escape to be complicated, so she sat there and glared, awaiting his sinister message, clubs ready to bash their way through evil henchmen, her entire body anxious at the possibilities. What if she was caught? She steeled her mind, this was no time to second-guess herself, she had a plan and it would work.

Repressing the facial tic that threatened to rise up and consume him at hearing her cavalierly addressing him, insulting him. Not only did this costumed ‘Crystal’ represent everything that was wrong with the City, in his mind, but also she represented the unruliness and degeneracy of modern youth. It raised Mr. Dalmere’s hackles, put his entire state of mind at risk of being perturbed, and once perturbed it was more difficult for him than most people to restore his balance. ”You see, Crystal,” his gritty voice rang out over the public parking lot, ”there are two driving forces in this City, my City. Order and chaos. You think you are fighting for order, for the people, for truth and justice, but you most assuredly are not. The people are chaos. They don’t have a unified voice or a vision. They need to be led. And you?” He sneered indignantly. ”You think you’re going to lead them, save them, with your Halloween costume and stripper name? You think you’re going to make a difference by beating up my men in some dark alley?” Despite his raging arrogance and jarring mannerisms, the large man’s words carried a weight to them.

He adjusted his cufflinks, as if they were having a business casual conference, as if it were common for him to discuss business in abandoned parking lots. Sensing that Crystal was moving around to them, three of the thugs armed with baseball bats tightened their grips and stepped forward with glowering looks on their faces, pointing at her outfit with clear disdain. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she beat the piss out of Tiron, they wouldn’t have taken her the least bit seriously. ”Then there is order, the kind of order only I can bring. This city needs it, craves it like water. And that order is predicated upon one thing.You’re familiar with the Golden Rule? I’m sure they taught that to you in English class. The Golden Rule is simple: he who has the gold makes the rules. That’s my job, my commitment, my mission. To make this city a place of order, to make it what it deserves to be.” What was most frightening about the man was not just his size, but his almost fanatical belief in his own words. ”This rampant vigilantism that you’ve embarked on? This idolatry that you foster, believing you have some kind of mission? Convincing the media that you are going to save this city with your fists and billy clubs? That is chaos, and chaos is something I cannot abide in my city. I will not!” His voice had grown thunderous.

”Well you’ve gotten my attention now. And I’ve decided that, since you decided to send a message with one of my men, that I’d use you to send a message…” Pulling off his coat, he had one of his men helping him out of it, and the man folded the coat carefully like it was the most precious item in the world. High beam emanating from behind him, the massive man cracked his neck, picking up a baseball bat. He moved like a professional fighter, a bit rough around the edges and perhaps a bit stiff, but with a cat-like ferocity that was belied by his mass. ”You saw what she did to Tiron?” he called to the three dozen men lurking in the gloom behind the lights. ”She thinks that anarchy is preferrable to the order that I provide. She thinks that wearing a mask and taking some karate classes gives her the right to flaunt my rules. Are you going to take that? Are you going to be pushed around by a fucking teenage stripper?” There was a chorus of angry gutteral shouts from the thugs, who seemed extremely loyal to the man, either because of his strange charisma or because he paid them obscenely. Leveling the bat at her, he growled, ”Teach this bitch a lesson.”

The three men closest to her readied their bats with eager expressions, making lewd gestures at her, attempting to taunt her into making the first move. Then a bullet rang out, slamming into the ground just five feet from her, sending up a spray of dirt and asphalt against her legs. One of the men behind the boss cleared the chamber of his rifle, then readed the rifle for a second shot, looking through the scope. It was clear the boss had no intention of making this a fair fight. If she tried to flee, she was likely to end up with a bullet in her back. The momentary distraction of the shot echoing in the night was what the three men needed to advance on her suddenly. One went for a tackle on her legs, while the other swung his bat at her upper torso in a clothesline maneuver, and the third hung back looking for an opening. These weren’t common drug-dealers, but hardened thugs who knew how to fight, and fight dirty.

It all went by like a blur for Crystal. One second, the man was droning on and on, his delusions slowly reaching a fever pitch as she eyes her exit. The next, shots had been fired and she was thrust into action. She knew her fate if she surrendered, death or something worse, and now a desperate adrenaline flowed through her. With surprising quickness, she jumped away from the pair of henchmen who had seized the opportunity, one of them landing face-first in asphalt, where she had been. Clubs in hand, she sent both crashing down on the one who had swung at her, the pair of weapons crashing into him with a resounding thud. Taking advantage of the dazed state of her opponent, she beat him across the head with both clubs, the man crumpling to the ground instantly.

As she begun to face the exit once more, a bat smashed into her gut, taking the wind out of her. The third man, who had been waiting for his opportunity, had seen it and sent her tumbling to the ground. With a bit of sluggishness she regained her footing and charged at the man with renewed vigor, her pair of clubs crashing into his side, the sound of ribs cracking quite evident from the blow. Before she could properly dispose of him, the second man, who had missed the tackle, lunged at her, his bat connecting with her legs, sending her careening to the ground again.

Once more Crystal got up, though this time she was immediately met with both of her opponents, bats in hand, with more looming around her. Focusing on the one she had already weakened, she sent another blow at his cracked ribs, this one sending him sprawling to the ground, unlikely to get back up. While she was doing this, however, the other assailant tackled her, sending her flying against the ground. Before she could even get up, a pair of hands had grabbed each of her wrists, and she was dragged to her feet. Like a captured animal, she began to desperately flail and writhe against the rough grips that held in her place. Then, another henchman stood in front of her and sent a hard blow to her gut; followed by another, and another, and another. After a few more successive blows, her struggling had ceased, and she was now limp in their hands, the only sound emanating from the fallen hero were wheezing and gasping breaths.

With about as much care as expected from such villains, she was dragged across the asphalt, her bare legs limp against the ground, scraping against the hard ground. Jeers were sent at her from every which way, with the crowd of henchmen now yelling such obscenities as “Stripper Bitch!” or “Whore!”. When her captors reached the imposing leader, they threw her to the ground, before one of them firmly planted his foot in her back, pressing her stomach and chest into the ground, as she strained to look up at the large figure standing above her. Her whole body ached, and the dirty kicks that were now sent her way from the mob did little to help. As the realization of her defeat set in, a primal fear began to develop in her eyes, a soft glint of helplessness forming in her azure pupils.

The resentment toward her was palpable. Crystal had sent a powerful message to the City’s criminal underworld. Their response was unlike anything she’d prepared for. Despite her many hours of training at the gym, even three of the thugs was too much for her. Her batons clattered helplessly on the old parking lot’s asphalt. Though she’d broken one of the thug’s ribs, he’d still managed to stand with a wince, watching with satisfaction as his comrade laid a series of four blows into Crystal’s little stomach and chest. The wind was knocked out of her. The one who she’d busted the ribs of hissed through his pain, ”Looks like all that fight training and you never learned how to take a punch from a real man!” His voice was soon swallowed by the sea of jeering as Crystal was dragged over to the massive bald criminal in a suit watching her. Figures of the thugs filtered through the headlights, backlit as they crossed the beams of the cars parked around her in a circle like hungry wolves.

As he stared down at her, the criminal whose name she didn’t even know and whose features were still mostly washed out due to the backlighting of the high beams, clenched his jaw. ”Look at you,” he said derisively. ”You really believe you’re have a purpose, don’t you? I can see that fire in your belly. That commitment to…what? Save your city? I’ve seen your type before, thinking that salvation comes at the end of a hockey stick or a billy club, that maybe you can just beat out the filth from this city like beating out an old rug.” Having finished rolling up his sleeves, revealing large tree root-like forearms criss-crossed with tattoows, the criminal leaned squatted down so he was no longer washed out by the headlights, his groin just two feet from her face, bulging against his expensive charcoal grey slacks. His rough hand gripped the underside of Baillie’s chin, finger grazing her throat, ”But you can’t. Whether you try to force your will on the City with your little…batons…” he sneered the word, as if even her choice of weaponry made her unworthy, ”or go through the front door of city hall with a smile on that pretty platinum blonde face. Do you know why? Do you know why you’re doomed to fail?” His voice was so deep, so close to her, it nearly resonated in her chest like bass at a concert.

Mr. Wallace Dalmere squinted his eyes down at her. His face was brooding and angular like the rest of him, only a meatiness to his jaw hinting at his brute strength which was so visible as his frame loomed over Baillie. Even the sensation of his hand on her chin gave the impression he could crush her windpipe single-handedly. ”I’ll tell you why, what you vigilantes can’t understand. It’s because you don’t know what true power is. True power doesn’t stop where the edge of my hand stop, that pressure on your pulse, that physical sensation separating us,” his hand gripped her throat, slowly hauling Baillie’s bruised body to her feet. ”True power resides in the ability to influence hearts and minds, for a man to exert his will upon the world and reshape it in his image. You didn’t understand that in asking for this meeting, but I assure you, Crystal, after tonight all will be made clear.” His words had a deadly ring of finality as he lifted her up so only her toes kept balance on the ground, his one thick hand wrapped around her neck.

Holding out his hand he received a switch blade from one of his men, handling it with surprising dexterity as he opened it and felt the heft of the double-sided blade before slipping it under the front of her black sports bra top, the metal cool against her skin underneath. A chorus of excited jeering went through the ranks of the thugs who’d just watched her get beaten to the ground. ”True power, you see, is a much subtler thing, something hidden in the shadows, sequestered beneath layers of truth.” The blade caught against the fabric and he began pulling it taut against the knife until the sound of it being torn away was painfully audible to her ears. ”Do you want to see our true power, little girl?” Time seemed to slow down and then he sliced downward, opening the the front of her sports bra before letting her feet return to the ground and order two thugs to hold her arms behind her back. Casting her ruined top to the ground, the nameless criminal mastermind took two steps away to study her breasts. A third thug to her left had a cattle prod in hand, his finger twitching along the trigger button. ”Put her on the hood,” he intoned in hateful tone, as if a lord proclaiming her fate. ”I want to watch this little cunt squeal.” Then the thugs were dragging her toward the rusted hood of an old Cadillac, several of them unzipping their jeans or gripping their crotches crudely. Half of them had hand-cuffs, duct tape, or black rope in hand. And the cameras he’d brought were still running.

This was not what fighting crime was supposed to be like. The young vigilante was skilled enough to beat three of this man’s thugs, but she had vastly underestimated the sheer manpower at his disposal, and it had cost her immensely. Now, her head was swimming, her body was aching, and she was at the whim of a man who had likely repeated crimes of the worst variety. And of course, that was to say nothing of his lackeys that now encircled her, jeering and insulting the leggy blonde below them.

While the man who had defeated her monologue and ridiculed her, she took the opportunity to gather her courage and regain her senses. If she was to die, she would do so with a brave face, and if something worse was to occur, she would not give them the pleasure of her tears. For the first time, Baillie seemed to have something go her away. The man, whose name had either not been mentioned or had slipped from her mind, sure thought a lot of himself. By the end of his preaching, she had regained her courage and her face was contorted into a defiant stare, her blue eyes shooting daggers at her captor.

Despite her emotions being settled, things worsened for her quickly, and she was soon quite aware of her fate. As the man approached her and brought the switchblade against her top, she knew that she was not going to leave the encounter with any semblance of innocence. Indeed, just as she expected, her breasts were soon bared to the world, a sight accompanied by lustful jeers and ample gawking, a development that wavered her undying confidence the slightest bit. Of course, before she could react, she was once again grabbed, her struggling stopped by the ominous prod that was held by one of the numerous thugs.

As she was brought to the hood of an old car, she spied the tools that would be employed on her, and sneered. She also managed to spy the cameras that were trained on her, capturing every moment of her fall from grace. Soon, her arms were pinned against the hood, and despite her furious writhing, they were bound opposite each other. With a defiant glare at no one in particular and a burst of desperate of adrenaline, she screamed out “Fuck you, you’ll fucking pay!” and began to kick and writhe against her bonds with a fury, threatening to break free of the rather amateur knots.

However, her attempts were quite quickly subdued by the wicked shock applied by the cattle prod, her spine arching and her lips letting loose a loud scream before Baillie fell limp against the bonds, her struggling subdued for the moment. With relative ease, the fallen vigilante felt her legs parted and splayed across the hood, then tied firmly down to stop any serious attempt of escape.

Crystal, who felt a whole lot like more like Baillie Anderson, was now immobilized and displayed, like a trophy. Her breasts, which were ample for her body type, were on full display for the thugs, and the last vestige of her dignity, the tight shorts of her outfit, were surely the next item on the list of her deflowering. She wondered if her mask would be removed, revealing her identity to her captors, a thought that scared her nearly as much as her imminent fate.

However, as it stood, she was left to glare at her captors as they eagerly awaited the go-ahead. It was clear they respected or feared their employer, and they were quite intent on making sure they had his permission to deflower their newest prize. Crystal could only hopelessly struggle and glare, yelling out a futile retort to his loony preach “True power is not having your way with a defeated foe, but you’ll learn that lesson when they catch you, I imagine” she replied, her tone now dripping elitist supremacy, a tone that would no doubt drive such a proud villain mad.

Despite the intense disadvantage Mr. Dalmere had the young vigilante at, there was something about her audacity that crawled under his skin, a sort of denial and false resilience that irked him more than it should. He could remember when his own father had said “put on a brave face, Wallace.” Never words he wanted to hear after one of his father’s benders. To see this vigilante, this Crystal, putting on a brave face infuriated him, and his inexplicably strong reaction just made the heavyweight criminal more frustrated. Those blue eyes were too full of conviction, would never concede that her way of the mask-and-fist didn’t work, that there was no world in which it could work, at least none that Mr. Dalmere could conceive of. Before coming to the meeting place, he knew he wanted to use her to send a message, but now it was more than just that. He wanted to fucking break her.

There were easily thirty thugs, maybe more, gathered in the abandoned parking lot flooded with headlights and smelling of masculine sweat and idling engines. Red marks were left on her skin from how hard they had to grip her to keep Crystal pinned. The hood of the old car was cold against the bare skin of her back, as it was one of the many rusting cadillacs littering the parking lot. ”Quit struggling, you little cunt, I said…rrrr…quit your fucking struggling!” growled one of the men, a heavyset latino man who secured her left wrist with black rope to the valley where the hood met the windshield and the rearview window. When her other wrist was forced to follow suit, it pushed her ample breasts outward even as the cool night air stiffened the peaks of her nipples. Of course, the thugs interpreted this in a way that would favor them, ”Look Diego, she’s already getting turned on by this, the little slut!” Plenty of hands took advantage of groping her young body at first, but the more violently she struggled, the more it became a simple matter of binding her securely.

In his irritation at Crystal and at his men making a mistake in how they bound her ankles, Mr. Dalmere nearly stepped into the light of the cameras. He caught himself at the last minute, his leather shoe sliding back out of the light so he could receive a black ski mask from one of his men, which he secured over his angular head, leaving only his eyes and cruel lips visible. ”Not like that,” he growled at the trio of thugs attempting to tie her legs down. ”Secure her ankles to her thighs first, then you can secure her knees to the fender and force her wide open.” It took the brutish leader repeating himself for the thugs to get what he meant, and by then another one of them had taken a kick to the face, leaving a dribble of blood down his lip.

With the cattle prod causing her body to go limp for a moment, they had the window they needed. By the time the men finished tying her down, Crystal would feel her knees straining toward contact with the hood, on vulgar display in a position that she would only assume of her own volition if she wanted to give her partner full access to go as deep as he liked. The massive Mr. Dalmere smoothed his rough hands down her hamstrings, double-checking the knots, a topic he knew a great deal more about than the men in his employ. Even her thighs felt small compared to his grasp.

Sneering at the idealistic supremacy in her voice, Mr. Dalmere beckoned the thugs with the largest cameras to come forward. All around her, from her peripheral vision, Crystal would be able to make out hardened men — white, black, latino, chinese, in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s — holding clubs, cattle prods, straps of leather, nipple chains, o-ring gags, spurs, and bottles of lubricant. Even though the deep shadows cut by the headlights didn’t let her see all the details, it was evident several men had unzipped their pants and begun stroking themselves to hardness. ”Is the camera running? Audio?” When the thugs gave him the go ahead, the husky man turned to face the camera, speaking through the black ski mask. ”I received a challenge from a heroine of our city. You know her as Crystal.” One of the cameras zoomed in on Baillie strapped to the hood of the car, with her ankles tethered to her thighs spread wide, her tight booty shorts riding up hard from the struggle she’d just lost.

”I have a message for all these…vigilantes…who think the City belongs to them, who think that they are going to make some difference besides creating chaos,” said Mr. Dalmere with that same conviction which made the veins run cold, the sort of patronizing certainty that poorly concealed the hostility in his voice. Approaching Crystal, he drew the switchblade once more and nodded to the two thugs at either side of the teenager. The men brusquely grasped her black shorts and the panties underneath, pulling them down her legs just a bit, for in her spread position that’s as far as they would go, till the elastic dug into her thighs. ”There’s only one power in this city that matters, one Mastermind,” he growled, slicing once, twice, with precision so that the black fabric was torn away in Mr. Dalmere’s thick hands, leaving her sex utterly exposed for the cameras and thugs alike. Sliding the knife along her belly, his voice was like ice, ”Now you’re going to learn there’s a price for trying to upstage me, girl…” Slowly, he stepped away, each step like a pendulum swing that brought the leering thugs attention to her nudity. Only the mask was left to preserve her identity, if not her decency.

Crystal had to admit the self-titled “Mastermind” had a flair for the dramatic. Perhaps he had been some sort of underachieving actor in the local community theatre. Of course, there remained the fact that the vigilante was in deep water, and his almost corny performance still contained an undercurrent of danger as she witnessed the eager grins on his henchmen. However, if he had hoped to instill terror in the young superheroine, he had failed quite miserably. Quite simply put, it was hard to instill terror in cornered prey.

Crystal had entered the business without any intention of being harmed. However, she had never been the type of person to cling on and pitifully beg for an extended stay on this Earth. If this was her last stand, she would go out with a defiant gleam in her eye. Being a rather perceptive, girl, despite her lack of foresight, she knew that the cameras were there to record her downfall. Crystal also knew that begging, crying, or mewling pathetically would play right into her captor’s hand. This was a message designed to instill fear and hopelessness in potential enemies, and any sign of submissiveness from her would only strengthen that image.

So, the second “Mastermind” began to speak, she used the only tool left to her; speech.

‘I received a challenge from a heroine of our city. You know her as Crystal’ droned the booming voice, and an almost gleeful expression now lit up on the captured heroine’s visage, though it belied her true feelings of dread. “This fucker had to bring an army to beat me. Imagine what just four or five of us could do this scum” she rang out, her tone about as confident as she could muster, the wavering presence of fear still in its composition.

‘I have a message for all these vigilantes who think the city belongs to them, who think that they are going to make some difference besides creating chaos’ he droned on, his tone not truly revealing any reaction to her comments. Despite the lack of an effect, she continued her taunting and rebelling, speaking directly at the camera. “He’s trying to scare you, with this script of his. I know the citizens of this city are better than that, better than those who tremble at cheap melodramatics.”
Crystal was quite aware that her jabs weren’t exactly at the forefront of witty and incisive humor, but in her current state, it was the best she could manage. ‘There’s only one power in this city that matters, one Mastermind’ he added, his thugs now removing her last modicum of modesty as he spoke. “You can tell that to your boyfriend in county jail” she yelled, masking the pain and fear that her exposing had caused.

‘Now you’re going to learn there’s a price for trying to upstage me, girl’ he added ominously, and for once, the words rung true. A slight bout of terror gripped her as his henchmen began to surround her, their cruel grins and wandering eyes only adding to the dread she felt. Crystal knew she was going to beaten and abused, and every moment of it would be documented by the camera, a permanent mark of shame no matter how brave her words were. With her last bit of courage, her gaze deadest on the camera for the last time, she bravely remarked “You can’t kill a belief, no matter how many people you kill and rape”