The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

61 Days in River City

CHAPTER 13

They stood there staring at them. Shield Maiden/Vicky and Pinnacle/Sonia automatically moved away from each other, the better to see each other. Shield Maiden/Vicky kicked herself for putting her sword and shield down where she couldn’t reach them now.

Pinnacle was visibly raging. “That man you attacked was live streaming. What you did’s all over the web. You’re not going to like what I do to you. You’ll never impersonate me again.” Divine looked on carefully as Pinnacle took a step towards Pinnacle/Sonia.

Pinnacle/Sonia’s attention was partly on Shield Maiden/Vicky’s fingers. Over the past year they had developed a simple finger code between them for situations just like this, a movement of fingers most people would just ignore. Shield Maiden/Vicky had already probed their adversaries immediate intentions and confirmed the obvious, Sonia would stand the better chance against Divine. Hence the finger code message—‘follow my lead’.

Shield Maiden/Vicky burst forward at Pinnacle who was taken aback because she was concentrating on her fake. She retreated from the onslaught, defending herself with counters. Shield Maiden/Vicky’s punches amazed and worried by the sheer power behind them. She was a lot stronger than she looked.

Pinnacle/Sonia advanced towards Divine, who smiled at her.

This was a large space but still a room and she had already released her pheromones and her soft smooth persuasive voice started as soon as she took a step forward. Pinnacle/Sonia heard the voice and slowed, staring at Divine, who continued, her voice sometimes drowned out by the crashing noises from the other two, but otherwise letting her enchantments sooth and take control.

Shield Maiden/Vicky’s approach was not typical. She normally pulled her punches until she got the essence of her opponent, keeping her strength for the exact moment later, usually as a delightful surprise. Not this time though. This time she had a weapon but so did Pinnacle.

At close quarters, staring eye to eye at each other, Pinnacle unleashed her Power Stare from extreme close range. She stopped it just in time as she detected what she thought of as a mirror deep in Shield Maiden/Vicky’s mind. She had learnt this from previous embarrassing experience. This one could turn her Stare back on herself, but that defence had failed.

Pinnacle was ecstatic at this. She had thought about those two events Betsy had put her through over and over and devised a counter.. Now her practise was justified. She put her efforts into punching this woman into next week. She knew her uniform would reduce the extreme effect of her opponent’s blows.

But Shield Maiden/Vicky didn’t like being punched and was fast enough to avoid the potential fight enders.

Unknown to Pinnacle, Shield Maiden/Vicky was having troubles of her own. The ace up her sleeve, her ring injector, had failed. She had triggered it as soon as they were at close quarters aiming for one of the artful and sexy cutouts but Pinnacle had trained to be hyper aware of those vulnerable spots and had deflected the disguised attempt, forcing Shield Maiden/Vicky’s ring to her uniform. It just snapped on the bullet proof ersatz cloth without Pinnacle even knowing what had happened.

Shield Maiden/Vicky was forced back onto a straight fight where she gave as good as she got. Both fighters were experienced and, so far, all the knockout blows were either deflected or had little effect because of their defences.

But, Shield Maiden/Vicky had another trick up her sleeve and at the appropriate moment she just disappeared. Pinnacle immediately lashed out at where she was but where she was now was not where she was then. Pinnacle received an invisible kick deep in her guts which felled her, despite her uniform, and on her way down she received a fist to her exposed chin which knocked her out cold.

Meanwhile Divine was closing in on the newly immobile Pinnacle/Sonia when a now visible Shield Maiden/Vicky kicked her in the back of her left knee. Pinnacle/Sonia immediately kicked her in her stomach as she fell which rendered her curled up on the floor retching.

Pinnacle/Sonia looked at her severely panting and bent over double partner and knew it was now up to her. A glance at Pinnacle determined Divine would be the one to recover first but there was nothing here to restrain them as they hadn’t anticipated this battle. She leapt for SureShot’s clothes and removed a lace from his shoe then tied it round Venus’ left thumb and quickly connected that, behind her back, to her other thumb. Removing Venus’ heels, she tied the end to her big toe after she bent the other leg so the ankle was trapped behind her knee. Divine was quickly hogtied in an extremely painful and viscous hogtie using a minimal length of shoelace.

Shield Maiden/Vicky was finally able to help by grabbing SureShot’s boxers, complete with skid marks, and stuffing them in Divine’s mouth, keeping it there with a torn off length of his shirt.

“We have to stop that voice,” she said. “It’s vicious. I could feel it even as I was fighting. God knows what she can do if she gets a chance. Those pheromones don’t help either.”

Pinnacle/Sonia grinned. “Good job I’m immune then and get your nose filters in, just in case.” Shield Maiden/Vicky grinned in response as they proceeded to hogtie Pinnacle in the same way.

They looked at each other trying to evaluate what had just happened.

Shield Maiden/Vicky grabbed a bar and started eating. Going invisible, even for such a short time, took it out of her and she needed replenishing, She probed her captives’ minds and determined Divine was now shamming. They had to find SureShot quickly and prevent Divine from learning anything important.

“They must be working for SureShot,” she told Pinnacle/Sonia, who picked it up immediately.

“But we never made that connection. They were clean, that’s why we dealt with them gently.”

‘Gently?’ thought Divine, trying to focus, despite the severe pain she was experiencing, and remembering the smell and sound under that tarpaulin and two bullets slamming into her back and smashing uncontrollable into a solid brick wall.

“We made a mistake. Let’s hope it doesn’t affect anything or they’ll really pay.” Shield Maiden/Sonia’s voice was very emphatic. “Now, where’s SureShot? Do you have any idea?”

“He must be in one of the other buildings.”

“But he can’t shoot from either of them.”

“We’ll have to assume he can.”

“Okay. Which one?”

Shield maiden/Vicky shook her head and spread her arms.

Pinnacle/Sonia made the obvious decision. “You take East Building and I’ll take West. They raced off, leaving the heroes in their painful and embarrassing positions.

Police cars arrived thanks to that live stream.

They arrived at the building just as Pinnacle/Sonia made the discovery of an open window on the West building through the camera views she accessed on her phone now she had a signal. “He must be there, room eight nine three,” she said as the police arrived.

She turned to them. “The two impostors are tied up in the basement. But SureShot’s in West Building.” She saw them eyeing Shield Maiden/Vicky.

“That’s Divine in disguise. That’s how we caught them.”

Vicky projected acceptance of the explanation as well as the image of large boobs onto the Shield Maiden image in their minds. This was an easy manipulation.

It’s always easier when the victim wanted the manipulation. She had to punch harder with the policewomen in the group. Fortunately there weren’t a lot of them.

‘Lesbians infest this city but none in the police? That’s discrimination,’ she thought angrily to herself as they raced off towards West Building followed by a group of police.

There was no time to devise any sort of plan before they were outside the door. Pinnacle/Sonia lost no time in kicking it in and diving into the apartment.

They were too late. Inside they found the body of the once kind old lady who lived there. Pinnacle/Sonia groaned in frustration and turned to a policeman. “Check what’s happened to Mrs. Hanson.”

The policeman obliged and quickly informed them that many shots had been fired in quick succession. The windows to her apartment were destroyed as well as the room itself but Mrs. Hanson was unharmed, although she was in shock.

Pinnacle/Sonia nodded, thanked him and raced off with Shield Maiden/Vicky before their deception was uncovered.

* * *

This shop was different. Shadowland tended to produce shops and grocers and supermarkets from the available buildings, consequently they were small. This one was an exception. It was large. It sold just about everything from groceries to white goods. Everything was dirt cheap to compensate for it being in Shadowland. They had to be, Shadowlanders couldn’t afford much.

The shop was large and the store room at the back was even larger. That store room was full of large goods which were incredibly difficult to transport there, never mind deliver. All goods had to be transported through a maze of small alleys no delivery truck could negotiate. Consequently goods were offloaded on Soth Street and manhandled all the way to the shop which was doing a brisk trade at this time of night when they struck. A group of men and women in masks raced in brandishing weapons of all kinds.

“Freeze,” one of them cried as he shot a great hole in the ceiling, just to show he wasn’t joking. Staff and customers dived for cover and stayed there.

“Anybody who moves gets shot,” screamed the leader. Some of the gang proceeded through the door at the rear to the storeroom where they intimidated the staff there to also take cover. Nobody called the cops. Nobody even thought of calling the cops. This was Shadowland.

After a few minutes their plan was obvious. The store room staff had been organised into a human conveyor belt and the goods were being transported as quickly as possible to the large lorry parked in Soth Street. The temporary transporters looked at the prostitutes there and saw no help, so they trundled back under guard to transport more of their livelihood away.

Meanwhile, the main store had also been efficiently organised. Staff and customers had been arranged into labour gangs and were offloading the shelves of specified goods and placing them into trolleys before transporting them under guard through the alley complex to the lorry in Soth Street. Only two people had been shot as examples and they were lying on the shop floor waiting for medical aid.

The leader, standing on the counter surveying everything in the store, heard it first. A series of crashes and smashes and cut off cries which came closer and closer. He nodded to the two guards on the main entrance and they made themselves ready to repel whoever was coming.

The doors burst open so hard the two guards were thrown back unconscious and a large blond man entered and looked round. The leader shot his shotgun at him. It hit the shield.

The others started shooting but Viking was too fast and avoided most of the shots. His shield took care of the rest of the bullets.

Viking closed in on a group of them, somehow with an axe in his hand now, and made short work of them. The rest of the gang were seriously panicking and the leader jumped down and made a dash for the entrance. He didn’t make it. He never knew how, but he was picked up and thrown into a set of shelves. He tumbled to the floor with broken ribs. He picked up the rest of his injuries from the tins falling onto his face.

The action was fierce and quick. Suddenly there was no more fighting. Viking looked around as the staff and customers slowly rose and emerged from wherever they were hiding. Viking walked to the booze and picked up a couple of bottles of cheap whiskey. That was strange because there were still bottles of expensive whisky there undamaged. Viking’s preference was clear.

“Thank you so much, sir.” It was the manager who had approached Viking. “Please accept those bottles gratis.”

Viking gave him a good ignoring and looked around.

His gaze stopped at a pretty woman who was just rising from her hiding place. Viking finished off his bottle, strode over to her and grabbed her arm. He then led her towards the rear door. She resisted but that was futile. He was far too strong. She fell over and he ended up dragging her along the floor. The manager and some staff tried to intervene but were treated the same way as he treated the robbers. Viking had to drop his other bottle to deal with them and it was obvious he resented that. He left them where they lay. Nobody else tried to interfere. In fact, most of the remaining staff and customers decided to leave early. They’d had a hard day.

* * *

Pinnacle/Sonia and Shield Maiden/Vicky were searching the back streets around Soth Street. The CCTV they had set up in various strategic areas had shown him in this locale a while ago but he seemed to have disappeared.

Suddenly, without warning, a man was in front of them. Pinnacle/Sonia immediately prepared to defend herself and sprayed the air around her, while recognising him off the TV. He was the doctor who was trying to cure those mind control victims.

Shield Maiden/Vicky laughed, ran up and hugged him. Sonia was taken aback.

After the hug, Chenggong looked at Sonia and said, “Hi Sonia. Love your cossie, what’s left of it.”

She recognised the accent and stared.

“You can’t be…”

He nodded. “Didn’t have time to change from China. This sort of disguise doesn’t come off easy.”

Sonia’s new emerging personality forced a smile from her and, for the first time since her teens she just let the emotions emerge without any sort of internal analysis.

“Why didn’t you let us know?”

“There’s too many mind readers and psychics here. I thought it better this way. And you’ll need backup when you got caught.”

“If.” Vicky was insistent on that if.

“You always get caught. You know that.”

“How many times have I rescued you?”

Chenggong laughed. “All right. There’s more important things to do right now. What happened with SureShot? I know he shot up Mrs Hanson’s apartment. That’s why I’m here.”

“We don’t know. He didn’t kill her. It’s obviously some sort of message.”

“Any ideas?”

Sonia answered, “Yes. Vicky intercepted another bank transfer of a million dollars to that weird account. We assume SureShot’s mission was cancelled. But I can’t figure out why the contract would have been cancelled. Or why he did the shooting if that’s the case.”

Chenggong answered immediately. “I bet it was cancelled because they were lent on. We’ll never prove it though.”

Vicky chimed in. “Maybe SureShot’s rep was at stake? If people knew of his target and he didn’t hit, then it would take a dive. Perhaps this was a message to say he could’ve taken her out any time he wanted. That would ensure his future earnings.”

Betsy nodded. “Sounds good. So, are you searching for SureShot now? I am.”

“Yes,” Vicky answered looking round. “The cameras had him in this area soon after the shooting, but looks like we’re too late. You?”

“I’ve not seen him anywhere. And I’ve seen nobody who looked like him either.. As far as I’m concerned, he’s far away by now.”

“Yeah,” said Vicky. “Sonia?”

“I’m not sure. Something’s happening. I can feel it.”

Vicky was amazed. Feelings were definitely not part of Sonia’s repertoire. Chenggong looked on.

“What’re you feeling, Sonia?”

“I can’t explain it. Something’s wrong here. Or different. I don’t know if it’s because of SureShot or not but something’s off.”

Both Chenggong and Vicky took time to think back and reflect on the past hour or so. After a while Vicky said, “You know, I think you’re right. The background susurrus has changed. I’ve been so concentrated on SureShot I missed it. Now I come to think of it, I’d look at Sheik’s Harem.”

“Yes,” answered Sonia.

“Who names these places?” asked Chenggong. He got a look from both of them.

“Okay, for the record I agree, a perv named these places. And I agree with your feelings. Like Vicky, I was so focused on SureShot I missed other things. And don’t tell anyone else I said that.”

They walked to Sheik’s Harem slowly, filling Chenggong in on their finger code, which was the one he already had with Vicky from previous meetings. They undertook a few simple tests with each other to verify it’s effectiveness.

“What were you spraying before?” he asked.

Sonia showed him Faeryfaye’s VMace.

“Wow. How’d you get that?”

They told him the story adding that they’d never had any problems with a vampire here.

“Wish you’d’ve told me. I’ve been dodging three supers for the past few weeks and one of them was a vampire. I could’ve used that. How long did it take her to get it to you?”

“A few days.”

“What? Faeryfaye acted on a request like that with a viable product in only a few days? What did you threaten her with?” Chenggong desperately wanted to know this. That sort of information would be really valuable. It could make all the difference in his life.

“We just told her everything we knew after she asked all those questions. She did say this would probably work as she didn’t have enough information for a full analysis.”

“She’s changed. Normally I’d expect no response from her for something like this, but a thorough and practical answer a couple of years later that’ll be added to the book. A response in a few days is unheard of. I guess her experiences last year has given her an added appreciation of field work. She’ll change that VMace recipe in a couple of years for something better. She won’t give up on it, but, for now, this’ll do nicely. If Faeryfaye produced it, it’ll work. And don’t tell her I said that.”

“What were you doing to those victims?” asked Vicky.

“Trying to cure them.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Once the authorities heard what I was proposing they asked for secrecy, so I gave out a bullshit method for public consumption. The real method included adding additional connections in their brains.

“LSD?”

“Yes, and others. I also added some additional pushing manually as well, but they don’t know that. It’s not perfect but it’s a lot better than what they’re using right now. There’s still far too many who’re permanently altered, their original personalities are just gone. I left the full method with the doctors to work on as I’m not going back now.”

“And you devised this regime?” Vicky was sceptical.

“No. Faeryfaye did.”

That was better. Vicky could believe that. But she was still angry. “Now what’s this about keeping Divine alive?”

Chenggong shrugged. “It came from on high. Apparently she’s wanted for a project in a year’s time or thereabouts.”

“What project?”

“No idea. And I don’t want to know either. If I know they’ll definitely include me and I don’t ever want to return to this place. It’s weird.”

“What were you doing dodging three supers?”

“Something’s off,” said Sonia, “but I can’t explain it.”

Both Vicky and Chenggong forgot that question and expanded their minds, feeling for the local zeitgeist, relying on Sonia as a lookout while they were distracted. They looked at each other once their minds returned.

“Sonia’s right. Something’s going to happen here and soon. It’s affecting the zeitgeist and anyone should be able to detect it if they know this place.”

Chenggong nodded agreement and they all went carefully deeper into the active area. Both Chenggong and Vicky were now chewing slowly on a bar as they scanned the area on a permanent basis. Turning down another alley they stopped.

‘Round the next corner,’ Vicky said silently, using the finger language to finger Chenggong and Sonia.

Both Chenggong and Sonia fingered agreement. Silently and carefully they approached the corner with guns drawn. Then, by previous training, previous to the Vicky and Sonia saga, Chenggong crouched and dived forward. A fraction of a second later Vicky rounded it wondering why Chenggong hadn’t fired to distract fire away from her. Sonia kept herself back as a reserve.

Chenggong and Vicky stared at Rectum who had her finger to her lips. She made a come hither gesture which they obeyed after indicating to Sonia to follow them. They were guided to the rear of the people there.

They waited, but not for long. The action happened only a few minutes later. Rectum, they saw, was watching the rooftop of a building opposite. Suddenly there was a wave of an arm and the action started. A loud clang was heard nearby, followed by another clang a bit closer, then another then another until the building opposite spat out a large metal sheet over the alley between them.

Four gasmasked soldiers rushed out and fired continuously down the new tunnel giving cover for Rectum who sauntered out behind them. She mooned the tunnel and let out a mighty fart.. At the same time a couple of soldiers rolled out a powerful fan which blew the noxious gasses down the new tunnel towards whoever was there.

Noises were heard, retching and groans mostly. Soon a large group of men were dragged into view by Heroin, their arms fastened behind their backs. The men with Rectum and Heroin took them away while they were still pliant. Rectum looked at the three interlopers.

“Waddya trying to do? You nearly fucked up the whole op.”

“Yeah,” agreed Heroin.

“We won’t fuck up your operations if we knew they were happening,” answered Vicky sharply. “We’re looking for SureShot. We think he’s here somewhere.”

“Who’s he?”

“Chenggong. We both vouch for him.”

Heroin stared aggressively at him before continuing, “SureShot’s a bad dude to tangle with. Make sure you get him good and proper or he’ll kill you.”

“Vicky continued, “We know. What was all this about?”

“Mistress Jenna got word some of the low life wanted a piece of her action and were going to get it tonight. We helped her stop that.”

Rectum looked at them, “Don’t look at us like that. You’re the ones who got us our apartment here, remember? We’re protecting our home and our base. This place is really good for us. We can stay as long as we like and nobody can find us here. Mistress Jenna guarantees that and we help out now and then. And no, she hasn’t taken us, so you can stop wondering.”

Vicky’s surface probe indicated she was telling the truth. Or the truth as she knew it. Vicky wondered though. She didn’t have the time to probe deeply.

By the time all this was said they were back out into the tunnel alley. The smell was now faint. They looked down to see what had been done. The whole alley was now roofed over and there was some sort of blockage at the other end.

“You did the blockage and the covering and Rectum did the rest?” observed Chenggong.

“Yeah. She works better in an enclosed environment.”

“Look,” said Rectum. We’ve got work to do and you’re looking for SureShot. We’d better get on with it.”

“You haven’t seen him?”

“No. We wouldn’t be here if we had. With luck we’d be able to run away. We’re not goin’ after the likes of him without a lot of planning and backup.”

“Vicky smiled at that implication. “Then we won’t stop you finishing off.”

With that she walked away with her two comrades in tow.