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[[This is the latest installment in Spectrum Season One, and the start of the 'Season Finale'. Catch the previous story here if you missed it! The Sorceress' Slave . This is a continuation of the sub-plot of Maria Levoir that was begun with Chillaxation ]]

The light tropical wind made the tassels at the bottom of the white curtains sway in little arcs over the carpeted floor. Three people stood in the makeshift pavilion on the edge of a market in a Malay district of Singapore. About eight more people were laid down, almost motionless, on the floor. Of the three standing, the man was especially not motionless.

He was huge, at least 6 and a half feet tall, with shoulders as wide as the average grizzly bear. His bare torso was covered in matted curls of black hair, and his olive-coloured arms were just as carpeted. They ended in a pair of massive hands, whose fingers somehow spun with the deftness of an expert weaver over the chain they held. His bearded face contorted in concentration until half a second later he breathed out. His biceps bulged as a wave of motion whipped through his chain, and suddenly the huge anchor at the end of it was flying through the air. It was accompanied by a roar more becoming of a wounded animal than a mercenary whose time off had just been interrupted by a couple of thin women.

One of those women was Maria Levoir - pseudonym Noctus - a tall mediterranean beauty whose dark hair was cut short for combat. Even prepared as she was for combat, she couldn't stop her body from tensing in pure panic as a multi-ton slab of metal came flying towards her at the speed of an amateur tennis player's best serve. Adrenaline at least let her perceive it, but her feet were stuck in place on the tasteful persian carpet.

She did notice, to her surprise, that the anchor was aimed on a trajectory where it wouldn't hit one of the scantily clad dancers sleeping behind her. Maybe it shouldn't be impressive that a man wouldn't recklessly endanger some innocent workers, but it gave the mercenary Kabu a couple of points in Noctus' book.

The anchor's flight slowed down. Thankfully, it wasn't because her final moments were playing in slow motion. It was starting to float down to the floor, in a slightly swaying motion comically similar to a feather. She couldn't help but laugh. She turned to her right to confirm it was the work of the third person in the battle.

Yoobin was wearing the same casual clothes she often used even when she was doing superheroine work. A simple denim jacket over a white blouse and practical tracksuit leggings. Her hair was also always cropped pragmatically short, and fell down at either side of her face to leave her eyes fully exposed. Really, the only notable thing about her appearance was the wooden staff she held in her left hand. The fingers holding it stretched and bent in slightly unnerving ways as she focused her entropy-reduction power. But she clearly still had some presence of mind, as she glanced at her Mistress and threw a quick thumbs up with her right hand.

Through their mental link, Noctus sensed pride emanating from her favourite servant's consciousness. Even a bit of joy at a successfully executed plan. But checking on her second servant found hints of uncertainty, and a definite lack of any emotion which could be called 'confidence'. While it was a bit exasperating, it was entirely in line with the plan, and in herself she felt only an unbending certainty that the plan would work, and that she would win.

She drew out that cold, iron feeling and weaved it through her magic. She took two strides, her head high and her shoulders back and proud. Enough strides to reach the fallen anchor. She reached down with one of her slender, tanned arms and lifted the anchor's chain.

Her skin felt like it was sparkling with power, as the strength drawn from her own certain will flowed through every tendon. She pulled downwards once. Sharply enough the snap the anchor's chain.

Noctus felt a small tinge of pride from Yoobin behind her, but most of her emotional sense was absorbed in the red mist of rage coming from Kabu. He roared an Arabic curse and his huge body started to barrel towards her, his torso bending forward into the charge. She could have sworn she saw some smoke coming from his nostrils.

When he had only a few inches left to cross, his body finally stopped moving, and the huge man was left looking like he was halfway through tripping over something rather than 100kg of muscle about to trample a poor metahuman. Noctus turned to blow a kiss to Yoobin, who could only smirk and send an emotional signal of joy - both her hands were now clasped on her staff which she was rhythmically spinning to keep her focus on draining all the energy Kabu's huge body could produce.

That spell, however, was enough to trigger a twinge of happiness from Hana Itou. Just as planned, Noctus thought. She reached out her power, following the mental cord which connected her to the second enslaved heroine in her party. Drawing on Hana's laughter, she poured magical heat, a somehow excited energy, into her body.

Her servant tore through the white cloth of the pavillion to enter the fray. She moved in skittish motions like a video that was dropping frames - her body couldn't keep up with its new energy, and her face bore a rictus grin which was unnerving despite her angelic features. She didn't wear the kimono of her Flower costume, rather Noctus had taken the liberty of dressing her in black short shorts, a white dress and some nice, somewhat racy, belts to accessorise (this was entirely out of personal preference rather than the practically that drove the main 'combat' members of her party's attire).

Hana's metabolism was working at triple effectiveness right now, which allowed her to reach Kabu quickly enough to get in a few strikes before Yoobin's power finally broke. His huge black-furred arm grabbed at her, but even the trained mercenary couldn't catch hold of a superheroine with one of Noctus' spells powering her up. By the time his swing was done she had entered his guard, punched his bicep three times, and gone for his head just to be blocked by the huge mass of taut muscle which was Kabu's other arm.

He was too strong and simply too big for the waifish girl to knock out or get a chokehold on, but he couldn't land a single hit on her. It made for an amusing bit of theatre to see the tiny asian girl flit around the range of the huge warrior. But that wasn't really the point. While Hana focused on the fight, Noctus used her control over the girl to manipulate her subconscious and activate her metahuman ability.

And her metabolism was producing triple the pheromones, as well.

The dose they'd used to take out his 'employees' was nowhere close to the amount needed to even see an effect on Kabu. But the amount Flower could produce, at tripled speed, in melee range?

That was enough to calm down his emotions, and Noctus could see the red mist around his brain receding. His movements became more considered. He was starting to predict where Hana would dodge to and throw the correct punch - only prevented from hitting her when he suddenly lost acceleration as the exhausted Yoobin took what energy she could out of his swing.

Crucially, though, his battle-honed instincts were working in tandem with conscious thought to understand the battle. Noctus could only smile with a tiny bit of malice as she saw his eyes surveil the field. He was outnumbered and certainly outmatched in terms of supernatural ability. She even saw a weary grimace cross his face when the beaming Flower got in a punch to his forehead - the girl's arms were tiny so it couldn't have hurt much, but it certainly cemented something in his head. He simply could not defeat the array of powers lined up against him.

Internally, he had admitted defeat.

And Noctus could weave that sense of defeat into a quite literal binding. The big man clutched the side of his head in pain as a thousand silver strands of mist emerged from his ear. They wrapped around each other as they descended, become an ethereal rope that circled his body thrice. His bulging limbs were trapped against his body, and his eyes betrayed that he knew that he was not going anywhere.

"Kabu, I've heard a lot about you, but I don't believe we've met." Noctus' voice was professional. There was no point trying to seduce a monster like this.

He grunted in non-response.

"Come now, I have only a few questions for you, then I will let you go. Otherwise I would have had my associate Yoobin here," Yoobin gave the man a two-finger salute, "trap you in a nice prison of ice."

"I know." His speaking voice was gruff, but his accent was actually perfect. A real professional. Perhaps this would be more difficult than she thought. "I've heard what you're doing. Didn't believe you were that strong, but even then, Sorceress is stronger. And I know what she does to traitors."

Noctus couldn't help but flash back to a black puddle of boiling... something on a beach in Phuket. The puddle had once been the minor-league supervillain Hattori. Fear was certainly justified, and that had been a point of complication in Noctus' plan. If he already knew what was going on, it would be a lot harder to forge the bond she needed.

Plus, Kabu was significantly more erudite than she expected, which raised the question of whether mercy really was appropriate. A non-metahuman with such dangerous characteristics, who was even known to fight metahumans, was not the sort of person she really wanted in the world. But that question could wait until her others had been answered.

"And yet, we defeated you without taking a single scratch, did we not?"

Kabu took a glance at Flower, who had retreated to one of the 'walls' with a cheeky grin and an unblemished face. He turned back after confirmation. "... I thought I'd got at least a couple of hits in."

"Not against the power I can bring to bare. You can trust me, Kabu, I can beat the Sorceress, just like I could beat you." Of course, she wasn't relying only on the true conviction she had that hers was a winning team. Hana was also directing what pheromones still hung in the air to give the man a more positive, happy feeling.

Slowly, it started to work. The red heat of anger seething around a blackened core of defeat started to recede. In its place came a colourful new hue, radiating from a long-forgotten part of the mercenary's mind. Hope. The belief that there could be a brighter future. In Kabu's case, a brighter future was one where he wasn't reduced to ichor by a vengeful supervillain and could continue fighting and whoring, but it was still a hopeful future for him. But like his anger, it mingled with his lingering sense of resignation to the strength of Noctus and her small team of brainwashed heroines.

The hope became fully entangled with his defeat. His only hope could come from the woman who defeated him. He could only look forward to a better life through Noctus. So he had to trust her.

Noctus grasped at that trust before he realised his new positivity was causing the rope around him to fray into useless steam. A metaphysical chain, far stronger than that on his ridiculous anchor, stretched from her own iron will to his clouded mind, hooking deep into his soul.

She forced her power into the link. Her body instantly felt lighter, her stomach empty and her muscles aching from exhaustion. But she needed to overwhelm him completely.

The link pulsed under the strain. It felt like it would pull itself apart. But then the metaphysical shaking subsided, and Noctus could feel Kabu's mind. Its defences were shattered, and her power was embedded within, but otherwise it was fully intact. Her corporeal senses showed her Yoobin was now leaning on her staff for support - clearly her favourite servant had tried hard to limit the damage from the burst of mental energy. Noctus was so happy with her.

But she was also exhausted, and needed to get this done with quickly.

"Kabu, you are under my control and you will obey my commands."

She felt his mind brace against any impulse she would send to make him repeat that terrible truth. He was a proud man, and she respected that. She only needed his compliant nod, anyway.

"Tell me what you know about Spectrum. Does the Sorceress have her, and if so where? When did she capture her? And for what purpose?"

Kabu's mind buzzed with pleasure at the command being simple, and it did not seem to go fundamentally against his values to sell out his employers (another point in favour of ending his miserable life, Noctus conceded to herself). "It was a few months ago, the Sorceress hired a lot of us. Far more than was necessary, really, now I think about it. We prepared an ambush for the girl, something that would disrupt her powers. I knocked her out myself. The Sorceress gave us all the rest of our pay then teleported away with the girl. I'm pretty sure she planned to brainwash the target, but I don't know what her plan was." His voice slowly outlined his knowledge in a monotone, but as the happy pheromones continued to float through his brain, his tone started to lighten, and he became actively helpful. "I do know where her base of operations is, I tracked the money she wired me for my own due diligence. It's a corporate building in Hong Kong, it looks like any other skyscraper but it looks like she has a whole magically reinforced compound below it. Dangerous stuff, wouldn't mess with it if I were you."

His mouth stopped moving, and he stayed almost completely still, wrapped up in Noctus' quickly fraying binding spell and smiling a dopey grin. She knew he had nothing more to give her.

She glanced at Yoobin, who was still taking deep breaths to restore herself after the fight. Once she was ready, it would be a simple command to have her freeze the mercenary's heart. Nothing of value would be lost, and perhaps even a few metahumans would be spared a life of servitude thanks to his actions.

But she also glanced at Flower. Now her mind was not following any direct commands, she had reverted to a confused-looking stare, her mind still processing the reality of being another's servant. But her smile was as pure as it always was. It would be such a shame to commit a murder in front of that cherubic face.

Noctus sighed. Besides, Kabu had earned a modicum of respect, even for an unpowered man. And it might even be helpful to have a non-metahuman slab of muscle on her side. She couldn't imagine what situation that would be, but she had to concede it could exist.

Then she felt her stomach turn upside down as she forced the last of her energy into a last push on the big man's mind. Her power over him was compressed, from a blanket swathing his whole consciousness into a concentrated seed of control. She pushed it in a single mental motion, embedding it deep within his mind.

She heard Flower suppress a giggle as the big man's eyes rolled backwards, and his huge body rocked back and forth at least four times before gravity finally pulled the mass of muscle down to sprawl across the carpet. The force had knocked him out, presumably long enough for his dancers to wake up and call an ambulance for his apparent fainting fit.

Noctus was entirely sure that no neurological scan would detect the seed of latent control she had planted. Stardust, one of Asia's more magically inclined protectors and a native of the city, was a risk. But it was low probability that she would be out in the Malay markets, so it was an acceptable lead to leave hanging.

Now what she really, desperately needed was to sleep before the big event.

"Come on girls, we're going home!" Yoobin limped over to her Mistress, clearly lacking the energy to move unassisted. In an adorable contrast, Flower skipped across room, hands down demurely by her hips. At least someone's mind was active enough to be still feeling the pheromones' effects.

"Alright, how do we feel?"

"Safe," Sighed Yoobin.

"Content," Hummed Flower.

"And comfortable." Noctus finished, intoning the words like the end of a solemn incantation. Her power drew on the trio's powerful shared feelings, and in a flash of purple light they were back in Maria's Acquitainian villa.

In 48 hours, it would be time to liberate Asia's greatest superheroine.

----

This was originally just the first section of the next story (and climax) of this arc, but I split it off because A) long, B) gave chance to expand a bit more on the hypno, C) Need a nice picture of Flower because Kang Hyewon (her 'model)' is TOOO CUTE!

So, 'Team Noctus' is important for the Spectrum finale, and so I thought we needed an introductory scene to show what they did, who they were, etc. etc. Plus, it gives us a chance to appreciate some understated malesub for once!

Description

[[This is the latest installment in Spectrum Season One, and the start of the 'Season Finale'. Catch the previous story here if you missed it! The Sorceress' Slave . This is a continuation of the sub-plot of Maria Levoir that was begun with Chillaxation ]]

The light tropical wind made the tassels at the bottom of the white curtains sway in little arcs over the carpeted floor. Three people stood in the makeshift pavilion on the edge of a market in a Malay district of Singapore. About eight more people were laid down, almost motionless, on the floor. Of the three standing, the man was especially not motionless.

He was huge, at least 6 and a half feet tall, with shoulders as wide as the average grizzly bear. His bare torso was covered in matted curls of black hair, and his olive-coloured arms were just as carpeted. They ended in a pair of massive hands, whose fingers somehow spun with the deftness of an expert weaver over the chain they held. His bearded face contorted in concentration until half a second later he breathed out. His biceps bulged as a wave of motion whipped through his chain, and suddenly the huge anchor at the end of it was flying through the air. It was accompanied by a roar more becoming of a wounded animal than a mercenary whose time off had just been interrupted by a couple of thin women.

One of those women was Maria Levoir - pseudonym Noctus - a tall mediterranean beauty whose dark hair was cut short for combat. Even prepared as she was for combat, she couldn't stop her body from tensing in pure panic as a multi-ton slab of metal came flying towards her at the speed of an amateur tennis player's best serve. Adrenaline at least let her perceive it, but her feet were stuck in place on the tasteful persian carpet.

She did notice, to her surprise, that the anchor was aimed on a trajectory where it wouldn't hit one of the scantily clad dancers sleeping behind her. Maybe it shouldn't be impressive that a man wouldn't recklessly endanger some innocent workers, but it gave the mercenary Kabu a couple of points in Noctus' book.

The anchor's flight slowed down. Thankfully, it wasn't because her final moments were playing in slow motion. It was starting to float down to the floor, in a slightly swaying motion comically similar to a feather. She couldn't help but laugh. She turned to her right to confirm it was the work of the third person in the battle.

Yoobin was wearing the same casual clothes she often used even when she was doing superheroine work. A simple denim jacket over a white blouse and practical tracksuit leggings. Her hair was also always cropped pragmatically short, and fell down at either side of her face to leave her eyes fully exposed. Really, the only notable thing about her appearance was the wooden staff she held in her left hand. The fingers holding it stretched and bent in slightly unnerving ways as she focused her entropy-reduction power. But she clearly still had some presence of mind, as she glanced at her Mistress and threw a quick thumbs up with her right hand.

Through their mental link, Noctus sensed pride emanating from her favourite servant's consciousness. Even a bit of joy at a successfully executed plan. But checking on her second servant found hints of uncertainty, and a definite lack of any emotion which could be called 'confidence'. While it was a bit exasperating, it was entirely in line with the plan, and in herself she felt only an unbending certainty that the plan would work, and that she would win.

She drew out that cold, iron feeling and weaved it through her magic. She took two strides, her head high and her shoulders back and proud. Enough strides to reach the fallen anchor. She reached down with one of her slender, tanned arms and lifted the anchor's chain.

Her skin felt like it was sparkling with power, as the strength drawn from her own certain will flowed through every tendon. She pulled downwards once. Sharply enough the snap the anchor's chain.

Noctus felt a small tinge of pride from Yoobin behind her, but most of her emotional sense was absorbed in the red mist of rage coming from Kabu. He roared an Arabic curse and his huge body started to barrel towards her, his torso bending forward into the charge. She could have sworn she saw some smoke coming from his nostrils.

When he had only a few inches left to cross, his body finally stopped moving, and the huge man was left looking like he was halfway through tripping over something rather than 100kg of muscle about to trample a poor metahuman. Noctus turned to blow a kiss to Yoobin, who could only smirk and send an emotional signal of joy - both her hands were now clasped on her staff which she was rhythmically spinning to keep her focus on draining all the energy Kabu's huge body could produce.

That spell, however, was enough to trigger a twinge of happiness from Hana Itou. Just as planned, Noctus thought. She reached out her power, following the mental cord which connected her to the second enslaved heroine in her party. Drawing on Hana's laughter, she poured magical heat, a somehow excited energy, into her body.

Her servant tore through the white cloth of the pavillion to enter the fray. She moved in skittish motions like a video that was dropping frames - her body couldn't keep up with its new energy, and her face bore a rictus grin which was unnerving despite her angelic features. She didn't wear the kimono of her Flower costume, rather Noctus had taken the liberty of dressing her in black short shorts, a white dress and some nice, somewhat racy, belts to accessorise (this was entirely out of personal preference rather than the practically that drove the main 'combat' members of her party's attire).

Hana's metabolism was working at triple effectiveness right now, which allowed her to reach Kabu quickly enough to get in a few strikes before Yoobin's power finally broke. His huge black-furred arm grabbed at her, but even the trained mercenary couldn't catch hold of a superheroine with one of Noctus' spells powering her up. By the time his swing was done she had entered his guard, punched his bicep three times, and gone for his head just to be blocked by the huge mass of taut muscle which was Kabu's other arm.

He was too strong and simply too big for the waifish girl to knock out or get a chokehold on, but he couldn't land a single hit on her. It made for an amusing bit of theatre to see the tiny asian girl flit around the range of the huge warrior. But that wasn't really the point. While Hana focused on the fight, Noctus used her control over the girl to manipulate her subconscious and activate her metahuman ability.

And her metabolism was producing triple the pheromones, as well.

The dose they'd used to take out his 'employees' was nowhere close to the amount needed to even see an effect on Kabu. But the amount Flower could produce, at tripled speed, in melee range?

That was enough to calm down his emotions, and Noctus could see the red mist around his brain receding. His movements became more considered. He was starting to predict where Hana would dodge to and throw the correct punch - only prevented from hitting her when he suddenly lost acceleration as the exhausted Yoobin took what energy she could out of his swing.

Crucially, though, his battle-honed instincts were working in tandem with conscious thought to understand the battle. Noctus could only smile with a tiny bit of malice as she saw his eyes surveil the field. He was outnumbered and certainly outmatched in terms of supernatural ability. She even saw a weary grimace cross his face when the beaming Flower got in a punch to his forehead - the girl's arms were tiny so it couldn't have hurt much, but it certainly cemented something in his head. He simply could not defeat the array of powers lined up against him.

Internally, he had admitted defeat.

And Noctus could weave that sense of defeat into a quite literal binding. The big man clutched the side of his head in pain as a thousand silver strands of mist emerged from his ear. They wrapped around each other as they descended, become an ethereal rope that circled his body thrice. His bulging limbs were trapped against his body, and his eyes betrayed that he knew that he was not going anywhere.

"Kabu, I've heard a lot about you, but I don't believe we've met." Noctus' voice was professional. There was no point trying to seduce a monster like this.

He grunted in non-response.

"Come now, I have only a few questions for you, then I will let you go. Otherwise I would have had my associate Yoobin here," Yoobin gave the man a two-finger salute, "trap you in a nice prison of ice."

"I know." His speaking voice was gruff, but his accent was actually perfect. A real professional. Perhaps this would be more difficult than she thought. "I've heard what you're doing. Didn't believe you were that strong, but even then, Sorceress is stronger. And I know what she does to traitors."

Noctus couldn't help but flash back to a black puddle of boiling... something on a beach in Phuket. The puddle had once been the minor-league supervillain Hattori. Fear was certainly justified, and that had been a point of complication in Noctus' plan. If he already knew what was going on, it would be a lot harder to forge the bond she needed.

Plus, Kabu was significantly more erudite than she expected, which raised the question of whether mercy really was appropriate. A non-metahuman with such dangerous characteristics, who was even known to fight metahumans, was not the sort of person she really wanted in the world. But that question could wait until her others had been answered.

"And yet, we defeated you without taking a single scratch, did we not?"

Kabu took a glance at Flower, who had retreated to one of the 'walls' with a cheeky grin and an unblemished face. He turned back after confirmation. "... I thought I'd got at least a couple of hits in."

"Not against the power I can bring to bare. You can trust me, Kabu, I can beat the Sorceress, just like I could beat you." Of course, she wasn't relying only on the true conviction she had that hers was a winning team. Hana was also directing what pheromones still hung in the air to give the man a more positive, happy feeling.

Slowly, it started to work. The red heat of anger seething around a blackened core of defeat started to recede. In its place came a colourful new hue, radiating from a long-forgotten part of the mercenary's mind. Hope. The belief that there could be a brighter future. In Kabu's case, a brighter future was one where he wasn't reduced to ichor by a vengeful supervillain and could continue fighting and whoring, but it was still a hopeful future for him. But like his anger, it mingled with his lingering sense of resignation to the strength of Noctus and her small team of brainwashed heroines.

The hope became fully entangled with his defeat. His only hope could come from the woman who defeated him. He could only look forward to a better life through Noctus. So he had to trust her.

Noctus grasped at that trust before he realised his new positivity was causing the rope around him to fray into useless steam. A metaphysical chain, far stronger than that on his ridiculous anchor, stretched from her own iron will to his clouded mind, hooking deep into his soul.

She forced her power into the link. Her body instantly felt lighter, her stomach empty and her muscles aching from exhaustion. But she needed to overwhelm him completely.

The link pulsed under the strain. It felt like it would pull itself apart. But then the metaphysical shaking subsided, and Noctus could feel Kabu's mind. Its defences were shattered, and her power was embedded within, but otherwise it was fully intact. Her corporeal senses showed her Yoobin was now leaning on her staff for support - clearly her favourite servant had tried hard to limit the damage from the burst of mental energy. Noctus was so happy with her.

But she was also exhausted, and needed to get this done with quickly.

"Kabu, you are under my control and you will obey my commands."

She felt his mind brace against any impulse she would send to make him repeat that terrible truth. He was a proud man, and she respected that. She only needed his compliant nod, anyway.

"Tell me what you know about Spectrum. Does the Sorceress have her, and if so where? When did she capture her? And for what purpose?"

Kabu's mind buzzed with pleasure at the command being simple, and it did not seem to go fundamentally against his values to sell out his employers (another point in favour of ending his miserable life, Noctus conceded to herself). "It was a few months ago, the Sorceress hired a lot of us. Far more than was necessary, really, now I think about it. We prepared an ambush for the girl, something that would disrupt her powers. I knocked her out myself. The Sorceress gave us all the rest of our pay then teleported away with the girl. I'm pretty sure she planned to brainwash the target, but I don't know what her plan was." His voice slowly outlined his knowledge in a monotone, but as the happy pheromones continued to float through his brain, his tone started to lighten, and he became actively helpful. "I do know where her base of operations is, I tracked the money she wired me for my own due diligence. It's a corporate building in Hong Kong, it looks like any other skyscraper but it looks like she has a whole magically reinforced compound below it. Dangerous stuff, wouldn't mess with it if I were you."

His mouth stopped moving, and he stayed almost completely still, wrapped up in Noctus' quickly fraying binding spell and smiling a dopey grin. She knew he had nothing more to give her.

She glanced at Yoobin, who was still taking deep breaths to restore herself after the fight. Once she was ready, it would be a simple command to have her freeze the mercenary's heart. Nothing of value would be lost, and perhaps even a few metahumans would be spared a life of servitude thanks to his actions.

But she also glanced at Flower. Now her mind was not following any direct commands, she had reverted to a confused-looking stare, her mind still processing the reality of being another's servant. But her smile was as pure as it always was. It would be such a shame to commit a murder in front of that cherubic face.

Noctus sighed. Besides, Kabu had earned a modicum of respect, even for an unpowered man. And it might even be helpful to have a non-metahuman slab of muscle on her side. She couldn't imagine what situation that would be, but she had to concede it could exist.

Then she felt her stomach turn upside down as she forced the last of her energy into a last push on the big man's mind. Her power over him was compressed, from a blanket swathing his whole consciousness into a concentrated seed of control. She pushed it in a single mental motion, embedding it deep within his mind.

She heard Flower suppress a giggle as the big man's eyes rolled backwards, and his huge body rocked back and forth at least four times before gravity finally pulled the mass of muscle down to sprawl across the carpet. The force had knocked him out, presumably long enough for his dancers to wake up and call an ambulance for his apparent fainting fit.

Noctus was entirely sure that no neurological scan would detect the seed of latent control she had planted. Stardust, one of Asia's more magically inclined protectors and a native of the city, was a risk. But it was low probability that she would be out in the Malay markets, so it was an acceptable lead to leave hanging.

Now what she really, desperately needed was to sleep before the big event.

"Come on girls, we're going home!" Yoobin limped over to her Mistress, clearly lacking the energy to move unassisted. In an adorable contrast, Flower skipped across room, hands down demurely by her hips. At least someone's mind was active enough to be still feeling the pheromones' effects.

"Alright, how do we feel?"

"Safe," Sighed Yoobin.

"Content," Hummed Flower.

"And comfortable." Noctus finished, intoning the words like the end of a solemn incantation. Her power drew on the trio's powerful shared feelings, and in a flash of purple light they were back in Maria's Acquitainian villa.

In 48 hours, it would be time to liberate Asia's greatest superheroine.

----

This was originally just the first section of the next story (and climax) of this arc, but I split it off because A) long, B) gave chance to expand a bit more on the hypno, C) Need a nice picture of Flower because Kang Hyewon (her 'model)' is TOOO CUTE!

So, 'Team Noctus' is important for the Spectrum finale, and so I thought we needed an introductory scene to show what they did, who they were, etc. etc. Plus, it gives us a chance to appreciate some understated malesub for once!