Somnophile’s a relative newcomer, ‘relative’ being the operative word. Active since 2010, he has quite a few stories under his belt, and a couple of super hero stories. But what he lacks in quantity he makes up for with quality. Capes and Crepes was a unique spin on things, that really showcased his style and talent, but it was Free Hugs For Sale that really sold me. Hehehe. It’s always the seemingly innocent ones, the ones that you never suspect... ah well. Here we have his next foray into the genre, a story about a little River City fun! His submission: Time and Again.
Time and Again
by Somnophile
June 18th, Tuesday, 9:30 am
Most supervillains weren’t particularly good at their jobs. They got their powers, and then they either thought that was enough to carry them through their life or they got hung up on the emotional sides of things. They’d become an arch-nemesis, more obsessed with ruining the life of the superheroes who were only doing their job.
Worst of all was when they’d make the same mistakes, over and over. On some level, they expected failure. It made them predictable and weak.
Not Miss Machina though. She might have had a bit of the meta spark, a limited form of technopathy that let her remotely control her robot creations, interfacing with them faster than anyone with a mouse and keyboard, but it was her intelligence that made her a threat. And it was her intelligence that told her where to strike next.
The first part of it was that she knew where not to strike.
Crescent, River, Midas, Metropolis, New York...all of those cities were absolutely lousy with superheroes and villains. It was such chaos she didn’t understand how a normal citizen could tolerate it. And sure, some of the villains could go toe to toe with the most powerful heroes, even come out on top.
But according to Miss Machina’s analysis of crime reports over the past ten years, only five percent of villains had more than an 80% success rate. Only a handful were competent enough to consistently get away with their crimes. Going to jail and waiting to be broken out in a heist was just an accepted fact of life for them.
Not Miss Machina though. She was going to flip the script. Why hang around a town crawling with righteous superheroes who trained every day just to punch your face in?
Why do that when you could instead go to Milwaukee and be the big fish in the small pond?
Picking the target had been step one. Step two was assembling her team.
After her last...adventure...Machina had been teamed up against her will with the heroine Fluidia and the villain Voltaire. Siphon had been there as well, but she’d never really been a team player.
Voltaire had been easy to recruit. The villain could respect intelligence and teamwork, and was comfortable being a lackey, as long as it meant she got rich and got to zap people.
Samantha Breeson, aka Fluidia, had been a bit of a surprise. Before being mind controlled into a villain, she’d been a retired heroine. When asked why she was switching sides, she answered: “After what happened, the heroes left me with you. They didn’t care about what I’d been through, didn’t care that I was in danger. It was just so...partisan? Good guys versus bad guys. Even before that, I never felt like I belonged, just thinking about hurting people all day, even if they are villains.”
“I’m tired of it. I just want to look after myself for a while.”
Machina was no psychologist, but it seemed clear to her that Fluidia was just looking for some structure and security in her life. Her elevator pitch of “What if we could be villains that didn’t really hurt anybody, never got caught, and mostly just enjoyed having lots of money?” had easily won her over.
Their first heist started on Tuesday morning at the National Bank. Voltaire went in first, and she was flashy about it, “Morning! I’d like to open a new account!”
As soon as she entered the building, she took off into the air and rained thunder and lightning down. It was loud and it was flashy, but all of her strikes were aimed at chairs or walls, the floor, and especially the security cameras...per Machina’s instructions, she was purposely avoiding hitting any of the civilians. They were doing a good enough job on their own running for their lives.
To their credit, the security didn’t run. They drew their guns and gave Voltaire a five-second warning to lie down on the ground and surrender, then opened fire.
That was the reason Voltaire was flying inside the bank building. Machina had given her a new belt that allowed her limitless energy generation to power an electromagnetic shield that made all those dangerous bullets bend away from her, missing ever so slightly. Had she been on the ground, there was the chance they could deflect to hit a bystander, and that would cause more problems than it was worth.
For the security, they earned some of her gentlest blasts, enough to knock them off their feet and make their hair stand on end, bodies smoking slightly.
The men with guns taken care of, it was Fluidia’s turn to step up. She’d been there all along, blending in with the other bank customers, and now she headed to the vault.
Two-feet of solid steel melted away faster than ice cream on a hot summer day, and she was in the vault. Training with Machina had given her greater control over her powers. She was able to sense the nature of matter within her range, and as she walked past the safety deposit boxes, she was able to draw out all of the gold jewelry and valuables, mixing it up into a big floating blob, “Nnngh...why does gold have to be so dense?”
In the test runs carried out back at the hideout, Fluidia was able to comfortably carry 40kg of any liquid she melted long enough to get back to safety. That much in gold had a total value of more than 1.5 million dollars. It was a wonder she hadn’t turned to crime before now.
But even then, she was the distraction.
Machina was the one going after the real payday. While everyone would be freaking out over the lightning witch and the safe melter, Machina made her way to the bank’s computer system, plugging in a special USB drive that decrypted and uploaded all the bank information.
Every account was hacked, all of that money at her fingertips. Tens of millions of dollars. And it was insured, which made it all the easier for Fluidia to go along with the plan.
In all, they were in and out of the bank in under three minutes, piling into Machina’s getaway vehicle, a menacing looking black van that went down a narrow alley and came out looking like a beat-up old white RV. They kept driving the whole day, leaving the state entirely and settling down at a small national park.
“Is it just me, or was that too easy?” Voltaire asked as she popped open her fourth bottle of beer, then leaned back in the on the picnic table.
“I know what you mean. It kind of feels like the other shoe is about to drop.” Fluidia was at the campfire, tending to a hearty stew. That she had some competency in cooking was an unexpected bonus for Machina.
“Trust me, we’ll be fine. Voltaire has been a wanted criminal for years now and she’s managed to stay out of jail even without keeping the lowest profile. I know a meta that can easily change your face for just ten thousand dollars, and from there the only way you’ll be caught is if you start melting city blocks for fun,” Machina said as she pecked away at her laptop, going through the data, setting things up to be sold on black market channels.
When all was said and done, each of them would walk away with two million dollars each. It was Fluidia’s first and only heist. From there, she retired from using her powers altogether, instead pursuing her passion of indie game design. Ten years later, she was married with two children. Most days she was perfectly content with the path her life had taken, but now and then she’d see the news and wonder about just what might have been.
In Voltaire’s case, she ended up giving most of her share back to Machina in exchange for more upgrades, until she was sporting a mechanical power suit. Using herself as a living battery, she was able to handle force shields, laser blasters, hypnotic flash bursts, supersonic thrusters, and anything else that Machina could think up. The mad scientist admitted it was her greatest, most ambitious work to date.
Voltaire used it to kick the ass of nearly every superhero in River City, in what was for years known as one of the greatest meta battles of all time. She lost in the end, but from that point on she was considered one of the heavy hitters.
Lastly, Miss Machina used her money and the fame from Voltaire’s tech demo to grow her business as the provider of villain meta augmentation tech. Then she sold more of that same meta augmentation technology to the good guys. And just for good measure, her new alter ego millionaire (and then billionaire) philanthropist Margaret Ingalls sold strikingly similar technology that made its way into computers, smartphones, and even the new Augmented Reality glasses.
In short, they all lived happily ever after.
June 19th, Wednesday, 7:45 am
Unfortunately for the trio, there was a reason Milwaukee had no villains.
Mr. Conners.
Mr. Conners wasn’t an official superhero. He didn’t have a costume; he didn’t go out on patrols, and there wasn’t a villain alive who could pick him out of a lineup.
But that was because he liked things peaceful. He didn’t want crime lords, mad scientists, alien immigrants, ancient gods, and goddesses, or any of that other weird stuff infecting his city like it had so many others.
So when he opened up his morning newspaper over breakfast and saw just what had gone down yesterday, saw that his local bank hadn’t just been robbed, but that the vault safe had been melted into slag and would cost thousands to replace, he knew he had a job to do.
When he arrived at the bank, there was plenty of police tape and men in uniform keeping people away from the scene of the crime. That was fine. Such a thing was never an obstacle for Mr. Conners.
He had the incredible power of slowing down time. What’s more, he could even slow things back far enough that he would start going in reverse, traveling back through time. There were just a few downsides. First, using his power that way would erase his past self and actions, preventing time loops and paradoxes. Great for undoing mistakes, but it also meant that he could only ever be in one place at a given time, and going back too far would change things completely.
Second, he was unable to speed up time, meaning that after he was finished going backward, that became his new “present”.
Finally, going back in time would also send his body back in time. He was unable to travel further into the past than his own birth, though hadn’t thought of revisiting his teenage years in a long time.
Mr. Conners entered the bank, then activated his power, and time froze completely. People were staying perfectly still and the ambient noises of the city shut off. With everything stopped, he made his way into the bank and started to rewind, looking at the safe door to know when to stop.
After a minute of watching time speed backward in fast motion, he saw the puddle of steel splash back into the vault’s frame and repair itself, and he hit pause again.
“Well now, this is fun.” He approached Fluidia, circled around her, admired her body. She was dressed rather conservatively in a long dark forest green turtleneck sweater and jeans that did their best not to flatter the amazing body she had underneath.
He reached out and squeezed her large, full chest, “All natural. Gotta love metas. They have the best figures.”
He looked at the flying superheroine frozen in the air, decided he’d have to wait before giving her a close inspection.
“All right, let’s keep going.”
Time started moving again but in reverse. He was careful to avoid Voltaire’s lightning blasts, not standing between her and any scorched marks upon the building, but there was nothing he could do to dampen the loud thundering booms from each one except cover his ears. Thankfully, it didn’t last long, and he followed the backward-walking women as they left the building and headed towards a black van in the parking lot.
“Oh hello. You weren’t in the paper at all. Clever girl.” He said mostly to himself as he saw Miss Machina walking in front.
He got into the vehicle with them and they began driving through the city in reverse. With time flowing backward, none of them could become aware of his presence, not unless they could remember the things they were about to experience.
Nothing he did would affect them while time was running backward either. That was part of how his power worked: no matter what he did, it was erased after going even another second backward in time. If he wanted to stop these would-be bank robbers, he’d have to start going forward again.
June 18th, Tuesday, 8:30 am
“Are we ready?” Miss Machina said as she climbed into the driver’s seat of her transforming van.
Voltaire hopped into the passenger’s side seat, cracked her knuckles. “Yeah, yeah. Fly up, spark up, take care of the goons with the guns. Never had a job this easy.”
Fluidia was in the back, already buckled up, hugging her stomach. “Y-yeah. I’m ready. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this…”
Machina let out a sigh. “Relax. You’re going to do fine. All you need to do is walk in, get the gold, walk out. We’ll handle everything else. And if things do go south, you can bail. We’re not going to make you get tagged a real supervillain.”
Fluidia took in a deep, calming breath, let it out, “...I’m ready.”
“Thatta girl. Now let’s go. We’re all about to become very, very rich.” Machina turned the key into the ignition...or rather, she tried too. Even though just a minute ago she’d already put the keys in, they were missing. “Where the hell did the keys go?”
“Over here. Didn’t want you girls taking off just yet, had a few things to say first.”
Machina whipped her head to the back of the fan. Behind Fluidia, there was a middle-aged man dressed in red silk robes grinning back at her. In the split-second she took to turn around, Voltaire was already unleashing a powerful blast of lightning.
But even before she fired, the man was already gone.
“Out of the van!” Machina roared as she opened the door and rolled out. She had expected no kind of ambush—how could anyone find them after they’d spent weeks off the grid?—and she didn’t have her exosuit prepped, but she was far from defenseless.
In her right hand, she was already wearing her Trance-Glove, a new invention that could put anyone she touched into a hypnotic trance. She hadn’t mentioned that to her two comrades, keeping it on hand in case of any sudden but inevitable betrayals that were so common among villainous teams.
That was only if he got close enough to slap though, and a teleporter like him looked slippery. That was fine though. Her primary mode of defense was a bit more reliable.
Seeing Voltaire and Fluidia running towards her, she reached out with her metahuman power. She pulled on radio waves like puppet strings, keyed into the frequency of the van’s receiver. Hydraulics started pumping and metal twisted. The entire vehicle folded up on itself and shifted, compressing, transforming into a twelve-foot tall black metal robot balanced with two wheels on each leg.
“Where’d he go? Who the hell was that guy?” Voltaire said as she flanked Machina on her right.
“I don’t know. It makes no sense. There’s absolutely no vigilante or hero records for Milwaukee. Whoever this guy is—” Machina tried to respond, but a hand grabbed her wrist and she found herself yanked towards Voltaire, the ambusher’s other hand wrapped firmly over her mouth so she couldn’t speak.
Her charged up Trance-Glove hit Voltaire’s shoulder, and with a practiced calm, he told her, “Go to sleep.”
Voltaire’s body turned to jelly and she fell to her knees, then went face first into the soft grass, her round butt still pointing up into the air.
And then he was gone again.
Miss Machina’s power allowed her to manipulate radio waves. In terms of raw power, it wasn’t all that much. Her strongest blast could cook a marshmallow over the course of five minutes.
But those radio waves could be at precise frequencies, complex enough to control robots that would have been falling flat on their face without that level of precision.
It also let her silently communicate with her team over the earpieces she was wearing.
“Wake up! Get up! You’re no longer in a trance!” She transmitted over to Voltaire’s limp body, but it was no good. She’d already been keyed to that man’s voice.
That still left Fluidia though.
“Stay back and watch my six.” Her mouth was closed but Fluidia’s earpiece was buzzing, “Our enemy can teleport, but it doesn’t look like he can do much else. I’ve got the lasers from Vanbot trained on your back. You watch mine, and the instant he appears, you need to knock him out.”
Fluidia nodded. She might be soft when it came to crime, but she was still a former heroine, and even Machina could admit that heroes were built of sturdier stuff than 90% of villains.
Machina took in a deep breath, relaxed. They could do this. They hadn’t done all this preparation and work just to be foiled by a flasher in his bathrobe!
June 18th, Tuesday, 9:00 am
From the perspective of Machina—had she been conscious—only two minutes had passed.
For Mr. Connors, it had taken the better part of an hour. Disabling the robot had been the hardest part. He had to give the mad scientist credit; she was a gifted engineer who knew how to build redundancies into her machines. If he hadn’t had a great opportunity to take out Voltaire first, it might have been impossible and he’d have had to rewind back before the start. But after that, it had been ten minutes of trying and resetting the timeline until he managed to trick Machina into activating the glove on herself before Fluidia could restrain him. From there, it was a cakewalk stunning her and Fluidia.
Now, he had all three of them lined up inside the surprisingly spacious transforming RV. All of them were posing like dolls, staring mindlessly forward while their arms were limp at their sides as they soaked in all the post-hypnotic commands they were to follow upon waking up.
“Everyone understand their orders?” Mr. Connors asked.
“Yeah, okay.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Affirmative.”
He looked at Fluidia. Referring to him as Master hadn’t been one of the commands he’d given the trio. But then, with these costumed types, it seemed that brainwashing and d/s themes followed them around constantly. He certainly didn’t mind.
“Excellent. Then on the count of three, wake up. One, two...and three.”
The sharp-witted Machina was the first to recover, “Oh hell! No one is that lucky. What did you do?”
“I’d explain, but you’re all three programmed to forget all about me as soon as I leave the vehicle, so why bother?”
“Well, this isn’t over,” Machina said as she went down to her knees. All four occupants inside the RV were naked, and she knew from experience that this wasn’t the time for resisting and scheming.
She put her hands on the floor, then leaned down far enough that she could lick his exposed balls. She couldn’t help but feel a little pleased with herself as his flaccid cock began to rise up as she continued, “At least you’ve had a shower recently.”
“Woah, nice cock.” Voltaire settled down beside Machina, stroking his growing cock with her fingertips before easily swallowing the whole thing, letting it plunge down her throat.
Mr. Connor’s toes curled up as he felt the tight vacuum, along with a strange but definitely not unpleasant tingling sensation running up his shaft, almost like there was a subtle vibration, “Ohh...didn’t think you’d used your power like that.”
Voltaire grinned, started pumping his cock between her thumb and forefinger as she answered, “Like it? Figured it out with an old boyfriend of mine. I used to give him some zaps too if she got too close, but don’t mind swallowing as many loads of yours as you need me too, boss.”
He put his hand on top of her head and let her get back to work, “Good to know. You’re doing an excellent job so far.”
“Shucks.” From the light blush she was now wearing, he judged that the petty supervillain wasn’t very used to getting compliments from those with authority over her. It was unexpectedly cute.
Last to join in was Fluidia. Rather than get on her knees, she sat shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Connors, leaving herself exposed and vulnerable. She easily had the curviest body of the three, with large, full breasts that flowed out of his hands as he squeezed them. She was wonderfully responsive too, squirming and moaning at his touch, “Awfully sensitive here, aren’t you?”
“It was...ahhh...a supervillain. Made my breasts...nnn...bigger, more sensitive, Master.” She confessed, her arms behind her back as he toyed with her.
He kissed her, taking his time tasting her, exploring her mouth with his tongue, “Why do you call me Master?”
Her blush wasn’t nearly as subtle as Voltaire’s. “You hypnotized us. You’re using us as your sex slaves. Do you not want me to, Mah...um...sir?”
He chuckled, “Oh, on the contrary. I like the sound of it very much. Just surprised that you seem almost pre-disposed to being a sex slave.”
“Well...it’s not exactly my first time, Master.”
“Girls, stay back for now. Fluidia, straddle me, keep my cock right at your tight entrance.”
The three moved to obey. Machina seemed a bit relieved, rubbing her jaw; she wasn’t used to giving oral service, especially to a man. Voltaire seemed a little disappointed.
With Fluidia’s large breasts thrust right into his face, Mr. Connors bit down sharp enough to make the former superheroine cry out, “Be honest. Do you like it?”
“Yessss…” Fluidia answered. He could tell from the wetness between her thighs just how honest she was, “It’s so much...easier. Just listening to others. Not being responsible. Being taken care of. And...the lack of control, the lack of agency...feels so good.”
He put his hands on her hips, pushed her down onto his cock, and she naturally began to rock in his lap, sliding up and down his shaft, her soft breasts a pleasant sight as they kept bouncing.
“Hmm...a change of plans then.” Mr. Connors decided.
June 18th, Tuesday, 11:00 am
“Are we there yet…?” Voltaire was going out of her mind with boredom. She hated long road trips.
“Does it look like we’re there yet? We’re not getting to Toledo for another four hours so you can stop asking.” Machina said as she rubbed the bridge of her nose.
“That’s so dang far away though…” Voltaire whined, “We’re right outside Milwaukee. Why don’t we just find a bank to rob there?”
Machina paused. Why didn’t they do that?
Of course.
“There’s probably a reason no supervillains touch that place. I’d rather stay away from unknown unknowns. Toledo only has a flying brick named Epic protecting it, and he’s flashy and slow. If we hit a bank while he’s making a public appearance, we can be long gone before he’s anywhere near us.”
Machina nodded. That made sense.
“I guess…” Voltaire kicked her legs up from the bench seat, propped them up on the table, “Just hope there are some cute guys in Toledo. Got a craving for some reason.”
June 19th, Wednesday, 7:45 am
Mr. Connors opened his newspaper and had a look through the headlines. Things were boring. No rogue butterfly effects this time. The top story was about a new proposed soda tax.
Excellent. That was just the way he liked it.
“Good news, Mr. Connors?” Fluidia said from her knees as she noticed the pleased smile on his face as he looked through the paper. After preparing his breakfast, she had crawled under the table, pulled her heavy breasts out of her maid uniform top, then started squeezing them around his cock.
It had been a while since he’d had a sex slave. Such things tended to draw attention, and even the most perfect girl could grow stale after just a few decades. He didn’t know how long he’d keep the girl, but for now, he was very much enjoying her service.
“Same old, same old.” He said as he sat the paper down. He scratched the top of Fluidia’s head, “And please. My father was Mr. Connors. Call me Master. Or Rhett.”
Fluidia only needed to think about it for a half second.
“Yes, Master.”