NOVEL WEB Bondage – Five
The toast popped up; Claire set down the jug of juice from the fridge to take care of that, slathering it with jam the way her mistress liked it. She added it to the plate that already held breakfast sausages, and slid fried eggs from the pan onto the plate as well, then filled a glass with juice.
Technically, it was evening, but their lives were so completely inverted that this was when their day started. Her mistress liked a proper, filling breakfast, after they’d slept off the exhaustion of a night out in the RV—especially when they had complications.
She hung her apron on its hook, picked up the tray, and started towards the bedroom.
She was halfway there when her collar vibrated, a gentle buzz, just enough to let her know she was being summoned. She kept her pace the same, nonetheless. It wouldn’t do to spill anything.
On a morning when they hadn’t been out, she tried her best to coax her mistress into the bedroom, but it didn’t always work, and sometimes Eureka came to the bedroom long enough to have fun but, once Claire was asleep, drifted back to her lab for just a little more work or to explore an idea she’d just had. Those evenings meant finding her mistress passed out in her lab—on the battered couch, if she was lucky, or sprawled forward over her workbench if she wasn’t.
That didn’t happen after a night out, though. She’d left her mistress asleep in bed, while she’d gotten up, gotten properly dressed, and started breakfast. She’d eaten her own meal while cooking, careful not to mess herself up. She’d chosen the kind of outfit Mistress currently fancied. Her whims and tastes changed irregularly, but currently involved a white satin corset with pink lace, a very short flared pink skirt without panties because they were awkward with her tail, white thigh-high stockings with pink and blue hearts in the lace at the top, and strappy pink high-heeled shoes. She might have preferred different colours, personally, but it pleased Mistress and that outweighed her own feelings on something so trivial—besides, it did look adorable with her ears and tail, she had to admit. The bracers that had buttons to control the drones, turn her force field on and off, and execute similar combat-useful tricks had, as always, been swapped as soon as they got home for her much narrower magnetic wrist-cuffs, and those, she never had any desire to complain about.
“Mistress? Breakfast.” She pushed the bedroom door open with her hip, and turned once she was inside.
Her mistress looked so unspeakably sweet, still wrapped in blankets, since she tended to move a lot in the night, her tri-coloured hair tousled and falling everywhere including across a sleepily-blinking eye.
On the other hand, she did have the bracelet on that had the remote control for Claire’s collar and cuffs and another, very personal, invention or three, created exclusively for use on her minion.
Beside her, black-and-white Binary had definitively stolen Claire’s pillow, sprawled full-length along it.
“Mm. There you are,” Eureka mumbled, and yawned. “Kiss, you. Now.”
Experience let Claire translate that as a command. She set the tray carefully on the dresser and closed the distance to the bed, leaning down into reach. Eureka used the ring on her collar to pull her down just a little farther so she could reach for a long and loving kiss without having to move too much.
“’Morning, gorgeous.”
“Good morning, Mistress.” Even with the timing all back-to-front, they tended to stick with more default phrasing. “Anything special in mind today?”
“The usual.” Another yawn. “We helped another fourteen people be outside who they are inside. To help even just all the trans folks who need it will take us, oh, several thousand years? And you’re right, it could have some other amazing medical applications. I just have to fix those little bugs and make sure that the nerve mapping works properly. And find a way to ensure that it can never be used without consent. And find a way to distribute it more widely.”
Claire had heard it before. By now, she was sure that was her mistress’ way of setting up the appropriate programs in her brain that she would need for the day, because the list was different on nights they went out with the RV, different on nights they needed to steal something, and sometimes nonexistent when her mistress was declaring a day off.
“Yes, Mistress. Anything special for supper?”
Eureka grinned. “You. Nah. Your call.”
“I’ll think of something. Would you like your breakfast now? While it still tastes good?”
“Mm, yes.” Eureka wriggled herself upright and adjusted a pillow behind her, while Claire fetched the tray. “You ate, right?”
“While I was cooking.”
“Good. You were tossing a lot of illusions around last night. Distortion masking, hiding the RV to and from, and everything with those three asshole so-called heroes... you must’ve drained yourself.”
“Not so much, Mistress.” With the tray settled securely on Eureka’s lap, Claire stretched out across the foot of the bed, posing artfully to give her mistress something appealing to look at while eating. “I’m still getting stronger. I was less tired after all that than I would have been even six months ago. Funny how constant low-level practice helped me build up a lot of stamina, and highly-motivated bursts these days are increasing my strength, and improvising is improving my control and range. Even making birds and mice and all for the cats to chase helps.” That never felt like any effort at all. She was always too busy laughing at their antics. The cats never seemed to care whether there was any substance there to catch in the end; like cats endlessly pursuing that devilish red laser dot, they seemed to just enjoy throwing themselves into the chase itself.
Eureka laughed, and fed Binary a bite of sausage. “I so lucked out. Awesome sexy submissive minion with the same goals and some of the same interests, and heading fast towards being a crazy-powerful illusionist.”
“That, Mistress, is your just desserts for being kind without expecting anything in return. You’re stuck with me.”
“Oh, boy, that’ll be hard to take.”
“I’ll take care of everything else tonight, Mistress, so you can keep working without any distractions.”
“Thanks, sweetie. I have no idea what I used to do without you.”
“Ate a lot of cheap ramen and fell asleep in your lab more nights than in your bed, probably.”
“Were you spying on me? I might have to punish you for that later.”
“Anything you like, M...” She stopped. The alarm for the proximity sensors didn’t have a speaker in the bedroom, but it was audible nonetheless. “I’ll go check, Mistress. It isn’t the breach alarm, I can probably handle it, at least long enough for you to finish eating and get dressed.” She wriggled off the bed carefully, adjusting her clothes as she straightened. She wasn’t exactly dressed for combat, but then, people saw her in whatever she chose for them to see.
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
Claire strode quickly to the lab, which also had the central computer terminal. A few swift keystrokes silenced the alarm, though lights continued to flash red—Claire wasn’t the only one who had watched too much sci fi TV. A few more brought up the cameras to the tunnels outside. Underground living could be a bit damp, but it had the undeniable advantage of being hard for people to spot. Eureka had tracked down the abandoned lair of a supervillain who had died a few years before and whose hideout had never been found by the League, and took it over for herself. In theory, if her genius mistress could do it, others could, but it wouldn’t be easy.
The camera showed a young man of maybe twenty-five, dark hair short and undercut at the back, clean-shaven, in blue jeans and a battered black leather bike jacket over a grey t-shirt with a yellow lightning bolt on it.
To her surprise, he was holding a small paper flag on a stick. That was the trans flag, stripes of pink and blue and white, but the flag didn’t usually say HELP ME? across it in bold black capitals.
That was, to say the least, enough to get her attention.
She considered that for a moment.
Well, they needed information.
She settled herself in the comfortable, high-backed chair, where she could see the screen. She knew her own appearance well, and could replicate it without much trouble. The tricky bit was to first create an image of herself in the tunnel, and then shift her awareness into it. She couldn’t keep it up for long; Eureka said she’d only found records of a few illusionists ever mastering it at all. It would keep her mistress and their lair and the cats and the great scheme all safer if she didn’t have to open any doors.
“Hello. Can I help you?”
The young man spun around, looked her over, and grinned. “Wow. Now there’s a look.”
Drat. She’d forgotten to switch to her Hologram outfit.
She decided to brazen it out rather than hastily changing. “If you call unexpectedly, people might not be dressed for company. Before I tell my mistress that we’re in danger and we need to do something about you, I suggest you tell me who you are and what you’re doing here.”
“If you ask the League, they’ll say my name is Spark.” He said the name with deep contempt. “Seriously? Yeah, I do electricity. But grabbing ahold of a live transformer is a sweet buzz, and then I can manipulate it however I want. Really? Spark? Apparently Jolt, which is my real name, doesn’t read as sufficiently feminine, according to their market people. Mustn’t confuse the masses.” He took a deep breath. “I’m out. I am not putting that fucking costume back on. Those things are designed to give men enough eye candy that they won’t think to feel threatened by a woman with powers, I swear they are. I just...” The bravado faded, and he looked down. “I just can’t do it anymore. If you can’t help, I guess I’m going villain on my own. But, um... I’ll keep an ear out for the next time you’re doing one of your private clinic nights, and I hope you won’t blacklist me for being ex-League.”
Claire listened quietly until he wound down.
“How did you find us?”
“Your boss uses a lot of juice, ya’know? And it’s being stolen from all over. Solar panel here, bit of municipal power there, not enough from any one place to be tracked easily. Once I started looking for it, I felt it. This big pulsing ball of electricity, underground where nothing should be. Don’t start panicking. I seriously doubt anyone else is going to get through the masking she’s got wrapped around it. Hardware’s just going to skim right over it. Brains beat hardware on some things.”
Claire pondered that.
“I can’t let you in. That’s up to my mistress. But I’ll give her your message. She’s going to need to be sure that you aren’t a League spy. They’re not very happy with us right now.”
“There are rumours going around that you two beat Yeoman and a couple others last night. Sweet. He’s a bigot, but he keeps trying to grab my ass. I almost fried him when he suggested that he could teach me how to be more at home in my body as a woman.” Jolt all but spat those last words, as though they tasted bad. “I’m seriously done. But whatever she needs me to do to prove it...” He swallowed hard, and she saw his fists clench, but he kept his head high and met her gaze steadily. “Whatever it takes, I’ll do it.”
“I’ll talk to her.” Actually, when she allowed her awareness to slip back to her body for a couple of heartbeats, she discovered that Eureka had caught up and was watching and listening via the cameras.
It was probably a good thing they had the truth music. It was unlikely that anyone could lie in the presence of that, even if they knew it existed as such.
“I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Believe me, I sympathize more than I can tell you right now. Just stay right here until I come back.”
“Ask him,” Eureka said, “whether he likes cats. And whether he’s grounded enough to be safe near my tech or if I’m going to have to insist on an all-rubber dress code.”
