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LAST TIME ON THE SERIALISED ADVENTURES OF VINE

Vine and the vigilante group the London Underground infiltrated the headquarters of the Stamford subsidiary, Lindisfarne. After a flashback sequence from Vine, the team left the fighters downstairs to head off any heroes called to the scene. Meanwhile, Vine, the mushroom-generating Fungus, the technology-interfacing Mainframe, and the mysterious Mystic are heading up to the CEO's office, to find out what they can about their missing (and most likely either imprisoned or brainwashed) ally, Vanguard.

The metallic clangs stopped echoing through the elevator shaft, and a tiny green sprig poked through the closed doors.

"I see two guys. One of them's like seven foot tall, and the other one looks pretty big, too." Vine whispered to Mainframe.

"They're the miniboss fight before the final boss I guess." Mainframe's voice was shaky as she pressed her body as hard against the metal wall as possible, resting her weight on the surface more than on the magnetic pads on her feet and hands. Her posture made Vine notice her larger-than-expected curves hidden under her baggy sweatpants and hoodie.

"Bernie, you gonna use that fox skull?" That voice came form Fungus, whose thin frame clung onto Vine's back.

"She's called Bernie!?" Vine interrupted.

"You never asked her name?" Mainframe was incredulous.

"I thought 'the Mystic' was cool enough, to be honest."

There was a withering sigh from the woman on Mainframe's back, ornaments dangling from her hair and dress made dull noises as they hit the wall. "My given name is Bernadette, but I prefer my proper title. And the fox skull is a vital focus for my rituals-"

"But the rituals're done now, innit?" Fungus eagerly interjected.

"I have completed my construction of a zumbi of this Mr. Monke, yes-"

"Sweet. Naz, open the door and get ready to rock."

Vine awkwardly shifted her wait to avoid falling off her magnetic perch as the young man on her back reached over the grab the skull. She spat out the long stem she had in her mouth and shook her tongue around until she found the piece of tree bark she'd ripped off one of the cuttings at her belt and had been uncomfortably sitting in her cheek until it was needed.

She needed both hands to climb up the shaft, and it was the only way to keep in contact with a part of a tree.

There had been worse missions.

The weirdly stale taste of bark faded from her tongue as she let her senses diffuse into it and absorb its power. The toughness of a tree it gave her didn't actually make her stronger, only more durable, but it made it pretty easy to pry open the doors to the shaft when pain wasn't an object.

Then she felt the weight shift off her back again.

"Yeet! Eat mould, white boys!" was Fungus' battle cry.

"That is the single worst thing I have ever heard," Mainframe sighed as Vine vaulted over the ledge. Over her head, the fox skull had already dissolved into a cloud of fungal spores and floated (in cloud form) over to the faces of the two guards.

They were both coughing and making even worse noises, doubled over. Distracted, but still big, beefy minibosses.

But distracted men didn't guard their joints. And while the tree-strength didn't make Vine's kicks more powerful, it made her harder.

And a hard metal heel driven into a man's knee will take anyone down.

"Go for the eyes!!" Fungus shouted as he saw the second guard fall to the floor in pain.

"Go for the balls!" Mainframe shouted as she climbed out of the elevator shaft.

Fungus looked to his side in disgust. Mainframe shrugged. Vine kicked one in the head while Bernie- the Mystic scattered some weird blue dust in a circle around the big guy.

"See, we can get a lot accomplished with proper recon and teamwork." Vine checked both ways to see an otherwise-empty corridor.

"I could have simply produced some more zumbis and killed them without any risk." The Mystic grumbled.

Vine sighed. Vigilantism meant she no longer needed to deal with the cognitive dissonance of working to suppress 'supervillains' who often had a valid grievance with society. But it came with a whole new set of moral quandaries. "I mean, notwithstanding that killing people is not ideal-"

"Colonisers. Tools wielded by the hand of American puppet state capital."

"-Notwithstanding that, it would have taken time. We can't leave Kinesis and the boys alone for too long."

A blue flash and a slight smell of ozone ended the argument as Mainframe wrenched her hand away from the keypad beside the door the men were guarding. "Code's 3-5-1-2-3-8. Everyone ready?"

"Yeah, let's go. Remember, Mike," Fungus didn't bother with the codenames, so Naz was quickly losing her patience with keeping up the pretence, "Restrain him if you see any obvious way, if not I'll knock him out and we'll deal with him back home."

"Aight."

Six musical beeps from the keypad later, the team rushed through the doors. Mr. Monke was as normal a CEO as Vine had ever seen (though her perception was warped by the fact most CEOs she had met were mind-controlling supervillains). Just a white man with five-o-clock shadow and a fitted suit, practically blind to the world as he pored over some stupid stock report on one of his four monitors.

The office was ornate in a style rarely seen in the modern world. The walls were finished wood, and normal motivational posters and industry awards were intermingled with medieval weapons in glass display cases, and even a tapestry of what looked like Pictish warriors behind the desk. The desk itself was clearly one of those fashioned-from-a-single-ancient-tree types.

Clearly, so was the chair.

Not because Vine knew anything about furniture, but because Fungus could only turn dead matter into mushrooms, and the entire thing had collapsed under the CEO and ballooned into a mushroom-shaped restraint.

"Nice one. Now, how do we want to do the interrogation?" Vine patted the younger hero on the shoulder.

"Didn't they teach you how to sweat a perp in spook school?"

"I was a superheroine, not an actual government spy. I guess we just start with some basic questions?"

"If I may interject," Mystic's voice, soft as a rose thorn, cut in, "I have a method which would save us time. Seeing as that is the most important factor, apparently."

"Does it involve murder?"

"No... Not this time."

"Go ahead. Fungus, keep an eye on the dude. I'll watch the corridors. Mainframe," Vine blinked. "Oh, you're already interfacing with the laptop. Cool, great."

Vine stepped back, searching through the tiny terrariums on her belt for her dandelion collection. Mystic walked forwards, her sandals making dull, ominous sounds on the wood floor. She placed her zumbi, a wooden likeness of Mr. Monke, on the desk. She reached for one of the many horsehair strings behind her ear, and pulled out a small silver ring. Dangling it from the string, she started to swing it in front of the zumbi's face.

Mr. Monke had barely finished processing the terrorist attack when his reality faded away into a whirlpool of red fabrics.

The woman was here. The woman who had the kind-of-sinister voice and the manly face. Here she was different. She wasn't wearing that weird witchdoctor outfit, but rather a very revealing floral patterned crop top. She seemed a bit taller, and with a bit more lean muscle - no longer dangerously thin, and her curls were let down in alluring waves rather than hung up by savage animal bones.

"What...?"

"You saw the fetish I constructed in your likeness, correct?" Her voice was the same as ever. Deeper than a real woman's should be. Quiet and dark.

He thought back to the moments before everything unravelled. There had been a wooden voodoo doll on his chest. "Yes, the doll-"

"Good. When I create a zumbi, I attract and bind a part of your quiddity, your essential essence, to it. Using that, I have created a conduit between my quiddity and your mind. We now exist in a space I have claimed within your wider thoughts." She gestured around her. They were in a small room, wood-panelled like his office, but more casual. She lounged on a red sofa, her bare feet dangling over a red rug on the red-tinted floor.

Behind him, the room stretched out to a distance he couldn't fathom. A black arch opened into a void of infinite ever-blinking stars, and an impossibly tall staircase led to a place he could only think of as 'elsewhere'.

"Beyond is your stable mind, your memories and your idle thoughts. Up the stairs is your active consciousness, the control room, as it were. This is but a tiny fraction, but it is where we will stay until you give me what I want."

He realised what her lounging posture was. It wasn't like a lion baring its neck to a superior in the pride. It was like a peacock lugging around a heavy tail of feathers just to prove its superiority. But she wasn't superior. "But this is my mind?"

"As I said, I have simply seized this corner. Beyond is the vast expanse of one man's malignant beliefs."

That was all he needed to hear. His thoughts turned to exactly the item he required. A form he had always admired - the peak of medieval efficiency. The wooden haft formed in his hands. It wasn't like a sword, a weapon made by noble fools for the purpose of war. The battleaxe was an adaptation, an agile iteration on an existing innovation - a realignment from a tool for tree-felling to a tool for human-felling.

It was invented and used by his archaic equivalents, fighters who beat out those with established wealth to gain acclaim in the main arena of their time. This woman was some sort of weird usurper, elevated above her rightful station by birth with savage magic powers.

He would take her down like the ancestors did, with axe in hand.

He swung the heavy wooden handle. The sharp metal was on collision course with her neck. She haughtily didn't move.

The axe dissolved into red petals and dust before it touched her skin.

"I bound your spirit to a ritual totem, Mr. Monke. I can hear everything you think. I'm literally in your head. Stop this tiresome nonsense." She waved a hand at nothing the motioned to the cushion beside her.

So her magic allowed her to command elements of his imagination, too. It mattered not, he would simply need to forgo elegance, and hit her with too much force for her to think away.

The submachine gun was an obtuse, disgusting tool. Made simply to optimise the act of killing rather than to emphasise any form of martial art. But as it appeared in his hands, he enjoyed the feeling of intense power over life it gave. It rattled with pure force in his hands as he opened fire on the woman on the sofa.

"Trying the same trick twice is just embarrassing, Mr. Monke." The whisper was a barb in his left ear. He whirled. For a moment, the woman stood there, smirking. Then in a blink she was back on the sofa.

Her meaning was clear. She had thoroughly invaded this space and replaced his authority. It disgusted him, but it had every element of a situation where cutting and running was the correct move.

So he ran. His body was light in this inner space, it felt like his own but it didn't feel fatigue. He climbed the stairs for as long as fifty stories and didn't experience any stab of pain in his muscles. He reached the summit, he yanked open the door.

And inside her saw the red room and the dark woman.

Her expression had all the smug superiority of a peacock. She spread her legs a few inches more, as if she needed to establish more dominance.

Mr Monke sat down next to her with a long sigh. Where hostile measures failed, he would need to use his superior mind to think his way out of the situation.

"I assure you, a superior mind wouldn't be a middle-manager for a supervillain."

He scowled at her. The dagger that he willed into his hand nearer her dissolved in the same second it appeared.

"So obsessed with old weapons and tradition, and yet you're so angry because I'm using a better ancient weapon. The old ways you idolise are brutal, your people came from a small continent of constant war. My people were no strangers to war, of course, but we developed more subtle means to enforce our will."

He tried to scoff at her. Their 'subtle means' had not protected them once his ancestors had forgotten honour and gone out to take over the world.

"You're right, we weren't prepared for the unimaginable horror of what the White Man brought to us. He innovated on old evils, turned slavery from a banal suffering inflicted on other nations to an international, capitalist evil." She smiled at him with no sweetness in her face or voice, "I wonder how that reflects on you, capitalist pig?"

All this time, he realised he hadn't said a word. He tried to open his mouth to emphasise his disgust with being talked down to by a terrorist. He couldn't open it. He tried to lift his hands to attack her - it wouldn't work, but it would do better than this pointless argument - and his muscles had no strength. He wasn't paralyzed, but he was powerless.

"Well of course you can't do anything. This is the space for transition. While your mind is changing, you cannot act. It's how people work, you need to make a decision," she gestured at the whole red room, her domain, "The moment you truly finish changing, or reject the change completely, I will lose my control here. I will disappear before you can hurt me, of course, but I will be gone."

She was talking nonsense, he thought with as much dismissiveness as he could force into his thought-voice. There was no choice to make. There was no change to make, he lived a comfortable life. He had power, but not too much to drive him mad. And besides, any decent man made a point not to negotiate with terrorists.

"We're not terrorists, and this isn't a negotiation." She didn't move, but there was a palpable wave of will that came from her. The room changed, becoming darker, warmer. "I simply wanted to present you your choices directly. You can continue to oppose us, freely choosing to do so..."

He felt a lump in his throat. Not like a sensation, but an actual lump in his throat that made it hard to breathe. He blinked, and saw a tree trunk flying at him. He felt a hard impact against his stomach and doubled over when the wind came out of his lungs. He couldn't breathe back in. It hurt.

"Or, you could choose to help us, of your own free will." She touched his head, pulling it back so he was half-led down like her. He could breathe again, and as warmth and oxygen filled his body he felt everything was limp, soft and relaxed.

Except for one part, which was definitely hard.

In that moment the strange, dark archway transformed into a beautiful vision of heaven and light.

"No. I won't accept this from you." He forced his mouth to move. He forced his body to tense and tighten. He forced the relaxed, beautiful arousal out of his loins. She was in control of what he experiences, but he could still control his own mind.

"You're right. As I said, it's your choice. Your thoughts are your own, but I am still in charge until you make your choice. You need to leave this state of transition to beat me." She touched his leg, and every touch sent a wave of pleasure through him.

He didn't want to leave. Maybe it was the stabs of pure lust that he was doing his best to avoid. Maybe it was just the chance for spirited debate, but he was staying here.

"You want to win the argument, that's why you're still here. It's not enough for you to simply leave, you need to prove to yourself that you're right. It's the same reason you stay in the office for twelve hours a day, even though you all you do is move numbers around on sheets your underlings understand much better."

He couldn't open his mouth again to protest on the intricacies of project management.

"You need something to justify how much money you steal from your employees. And now you need to justify why you'll simply ignore my offer. You call me a terrorist, a savage. But I am just a powerful woman, and I can give you what you want. And, deep down, you're open to being convinced."

It would have been foolish not to be open-minded, he thought. He could make his choice at any time, it wouldn't hurt to hear her out.

She stretched out her legs, letting him see the curve down from her thick thighs to her slender calves. Her perfectly formed waist was emphasised as she arched her back. Her idle hand played with his hair.

He drooled, just a little bit.

He stopped fighting the spreading pleasure.

Her other arm slammed into the sofa beside him. Her legs flanked his. Her body was above him, and she sent little rolls of motion through it, her hips moving closer and closer to his.

"You want to be convinced," she whispered, as her fingers stroked his temple.

He immediately thought that he agreed. He realised too late that her hand on his head might have been giving her control over his thoughts the entire time. Maybe he was never free to choose.

"Does it matter, boy? Don't you feel good?"

It didn't. He did.

He gave up. He made his choice. He felt the room around them expand. Her domain of control grew to encompass his entire mental landscape.

He didn't care, she made him feel good.

He told her everything he knew.

"Hey, Vine, does anything about the Atheling Grid ring a bell from your spook days?" Mainframe asked, her body still surrounded by the electric blue glow of her powers.

"I wasn't a sp- Urgh, whatever. No it doesn't, why?"

"Looks like boss man is going to MI5 headquarters to pitch it?"

"That doesn't sound good, but not our immediate problem. They're probably already after us anyway."

"Yeah, agreed. I'll keep looking."

Mystic coughed politely. "I may have found something."

Vine turned, though she kept one 'eye' focused through the dandelion seeds spread through the corridor. "What? How? The business dude didn't say anything."

"He did, just not in a way any of you can hear. Anyway, I know where Vanguard is, or at least some powerful superheroine they captured recently."

"Safe. Where to, then?" Fungus asked.

"Well, does anyone have any idea how we can get to Brittany?"

---

Spoopy season is an excuse to continue the Vine storyline with a look at the powers of one of her more questionable allies. Also, some malesub, I feel like it's been a while since there was malesub here, and as long as you don't ask me to rp I have no problem with malesubs, really, so should give you some content. As usual for the superheroine stuff, it takes a bit longer to get to the hypno, but reading the self-indulgent part is your tax for getting to the mind control

You may notice this was somewhat inspired by my recent obsession with the Liminal Spaces twitter account. It's cool. Has good vibes.

Anyway, join me on Spoopy Day for the final episode of Spoopy Season! Then we'll go back to the (ir)regularly scheduled deviantart.com/maurislave programming. Hehe, programming.

Proofreading credit to Dormiria , there's something here about him transforming the stories from bad grammar into readable but I can't think of a good pun.

Description

LAST TIME ON THE SERIALISED ADVENTURES OF VINE

Vine and the vigilante group the London Underground infiltrated the headquarters of the Stamford subsidiary, Lindisfarne. After a flashback sequence from Vine, the team left the fighters downstairs to head off any heroes called to the scene. Meanwhile, Vine, the mushroom-generating Fungus, the technology-interfacing Mainframe, and the mysterious Mystic are heading up to the CEO's office, to find out what they can about their missing (and most likely either imprisoned or brainwashed) ally, Vanguard.

The metallic clangs stopped echoing through the elevator shaft, and a tiny green sprig poked through the closed doors.

"I see two guys. One of them's like seven foot tall, and the other one looks pretty big, too." Vine whispered to Mainframe.

"They're the miniboss fight before the final boss I guess." Mainframe's voice was shaky as she pressed her body as hard against the metal wall as possible, resting her weight on the surface more than on the magnetic pads on her feet and hands. Her posture made Vine notice her larger-than-expected curves hidden under her baggy sweatpants and hoodie.

"Bernie, you gonna use that fox skull?" That voice came form Fungus, whose thin frame clung onto Vine's back.

"She's called Bernie!?" Vine interrupted.

"You never asked her name?" Mainframe was incredulous.

"I thought 'the Mystic' was cool enough, to be honest."

There was a withering sigh from the woman on Mainframe's back, ornaments dangling from her hair and dress made dull noises as they hit the wall. "My given name is Bernadette, but I prefer my proper title. And the fox skull is a vital focus for my rituals-"

"But the rituals're done now, innit?" Fungus eagerly interjected.

"I have completed my construction of a zumbi of this Mr. Monke, yes-"

"Sweet. Naz, open the door and get ready to rock."

Vine awkwardly shifted her wait to avoid falling off her magnetic perch as the young man on her back reached over the grab the skull. She spat out the long stem she had in her mouth and shook her tongue around until she found the piece of tree bark she'd ripped off one of the cuttings at her belt and had been uncomfortably sitting in her cheek until it was needed.

She needed both hands to climb up the shaft, and it was the only way to keep in contact with a part of a tree.

There had been worse missions.

The weirdly stale taste of bark faded from her tongue as she let her senses diffuse into it and absorb its power. The toughness of a tree it gave her didn't actually make her stronger, only more durable, but it made it pretty easy to pry open the doors to the shaft when pain wasn't an object.

Then she felt the weight shift off her back again.

"Yeet! Eat mould, white boys!" was Fungus' battle cry.

"That is the single worst thing I have ever heard," Mainframe sighed as Vine vaulted over the ledge. Over her head, the fox skull had already dissolved into a cloud of fungal spores and floated (in cloud form) over to the faces of the two guards.

They were both coughing and making even worse noises, doubled over. Distracted, but still big, beefy minibosses.

But distracted men didn't guard their joints. And while the tree-strength didn't make Vine's kicks more powerful, it made her harder.

And a hard metal heel driven into a man's knee will take anyone down.

"Go for the eyes!!" Fungus shouted as he saw the second guard fall to the floor in pain.

"Go for the balls!" Mainframe shouted as she climbed out of the elevator shaft.

Fungus looked to his side in disgust. Mainframe shrugged. Vine kicked one in the head while Bernie- the Mystic scattered some weird blue dust in a circle around the big guy.

"See, we can get a lot accomplished with proper recon and teamwork." Vine checked both ways to see an otherwise-empty corridor.

"I could have simply produced some more zumbis and killed them without any risk." The Mystic grumbled.

Vine sighed. Vigilantism meant she no longer needed to deal with the cognitive dissonance of working to suppress 'supervillains' who often had a valid grievance with society. But it came with a whole new set of moral quandaries. "I mean, notwithstanding that killing people is not ideal-"

"Colonisers. Tools wielded by the hand of American puppet state capital."

"-Notwithstanding that, it would have taken time. We can't leave Kinesis and the boys alone for too long."

A blue flash and a slight smell of ozone ended the argument as Mainframe wrenched her hand away from the keypad beside the door the men were guarding. "Code's 3-5-1-2-3-8. Everyone ready?"

"Yeah, let's go. Remember, Mike," Fungus didn't bother with the codenames, so Naz was quickly losing her patience with keeping up the pretence, "Restrain him if you see any obvious way, if not I'll knock him out and we'll deal with him back home."

"Aight."

Six musical beeps from the keypad later, the team rushed through the doors. Mr. Monke was as normal a CEO as Vine had ever seen (though her perception was warped by the fact most CEOs she had met were mind-controlling supervillains). Just a white man with five-o-clock shadow and a fitted suit, practically blind to the world as he pored over some stupid stock report on one of his four monitors.

The office was ornate in a style rarely seen in the modern world. The walls were finished wood, and normal motivational posters and industry awards were intermingled with medieval weapons in glass display cases, and even a tapestry of what looked like Pictish warriors behind the desk. The desk itself was clearly one of those fashioned-from-a-single-ancient-tree types.

Clearly, so was the chair.

Not because Vine knew anything about furniture, but because Fungus could only turn dead matter into mushrooms, and the entire thing had collapsed under the CEO and ballooned into a mushroom-shaped restraint.

"Nice one. Now, how do we want to do the interrogation?" Vine patted the younger hero on the shoulder.

"Didn't they teach you how to sweat a perp in spook school?"

"I was a superheroine, not an actual government spy. I guess we just start with some basic questions?"

"If I may interject," Mystic's voice, soft as a rose thorn, cut in, "I have a method which would save us time. Seeing as that is the most important factor, apparently."

"Does it involve murder?"

"No... Not this time."

"Go ahead. Fungus, keep an eye on the dude. I'll watch the corridors. Mainframe," Vine blinked. "Oh, you're already interfacing with the laptop. Cool, great."

Vine stepped back, searching through the tiny terrariums on her belt for her dandelion collection. Mystic walked forwards, her sandals making dull, ominous sounds on the wood floor. She placed her zumbi, a wooden likeness of Mr. Monke, on the desk. She reached for one of the many horsehair strings behind her ear, and pulled out a small silver ring. Dangling it from the string, she started to swing it in front of the zumbi's face.

Mr. Monke had barely finished processing the terrorist attack when his reality faded away into a whirlpool of red fabrics.

The woman was here. The woman who had the kind-of-sinister voice and the manly face. Here she was different. She wasn't wearing that weird witchdoctor outfit, but rather a very revealing floral patterned crop top. She seemed a bit taller, and with a bit more lean muscle - no longer dangerously thin, and her curls were let down in alluring waves rather than hung up by savage animal bones.

"What...?"

"You saw the fetish I constructed in your likeness, correct?" Her voice was the same as ever. Deeper than a real woman's should be. Quiet and dark.

He thought back to the moments before everything unravelled. There had been a wooden voodoo doll on his chest. "Yes, the doll-"

"Good. When I create a zumbi, I attract and bind a part of your quiddity, your essential essence, to it. Using that, I have created a conduit between my quiddity and your mind. We now exist in a space I have claimed within your wider thoughts." She gestured around her. They were in a small room, wood-panelled like his office, but more casual. She lounged on a red sofa, her bare feet dangling over a red rug on the red-tinted floor.

Behind him, the room stretched out to a distance he couldn't fathom. A black arch opened into a void of infinite ever-blinking stars, and an impossibly tall staircase led to a place he could only think of as 'elsewhere'.

"Beyond is your stable mind, your memories and your idle thoughts. Up the stairs is your active consciousness, the control room, as it were. This is but a tiny fraction, but it is where we will stay until you give me what I want."

He realised what her lounging posture was. It wasn't like a lion baring its neck to a superior in the pride. It was like a peacock lugging around a heavy tail of feathers just to prove its superiority. But she wasn't superior. "But this is my mind?"

"As I said, I have simply seized this corner. Beyond is the vast expanse of one man's malignant beliefs."

That was all he needed to hear. His thoughts turned to exactly the item he required. A form he had always admired - the peak of medieval efficiency. The wooden haft formed in his hands. It wasn't like a sword, a weapon made by noble fools for the purpose of war. The battleaxe was an adaptation, an agile iteration on an existing innovation - a realignment from a tool for tree-felling to a tool for human-felling.

It was invented and used by his archaic equivalents, fighters who beat out those with established wealth to gain acclaim in the main arena of their time. This woman was some sort of weird usurper, elevated above her rightful station by birth with savage magic powers.

He would take her down like the ancestors did, with axe in hand.

He swung the heavy wooden handle. The sharp metal was on collision course with her neck. She haughtily didn't move.

The axe dissolved into red petals and dust before it touched her skin.

"I bound your spirit to a ritual totem, Mr. Monke. I can hear everything you think. I'm literally in your head. Stop this tiresome nonsense." She waved a hand at nothing the motioned to the cushion beside her.

So her magic allowed her to command elements of his imagination, too. It mattered not, he would simply need to forgo elegance, and hit her with too much force for her to think away.

The submachine gun was an obtuse, disgusting tool. Made simply to optimise the act of killing rather than to emphasise any form of martial art. But as it appeared in his hands, he enjoyed the feeling of intense power over life it gave. It rattled with pure force in his hands as he opened fire on the woman on the sofa.

"Trying the same trick twice is just embarrassing, Mr. Monke." The whisper was a barb in his left ear. He whirled. For a moment, the woman stood there, smirking. Then in a blink she was back on the sofa.

Her meaning was clear. She had thoroughly invaded this space and replaced his authority. It disgusted him, but it had every element of a situation where cutting and running was the correct move.

So he ran. His body was light in this inner space, it felt like his own but it didn't feel fatigue. He climbed the stairs for as long as fifty stories and didn't experience any stab of pain in his muscles. He reached the summit, he yanked open the door.

And inside her saw the red room and the dark woman.

Her expression had all the smug superiority of a peacock. She spread her legs a few inches more, as if she needed to establish more dominance.

Mr Monke sat down next to her with a long sigh. Where hostile measures failed, he would need to use his superior mind to think his way out of the situation.

"I assure you, a superior mind wouldn't be a middle-manager for a supervillain."

He scowled at her. The dagger that he willed into his hand nearer her dissolved in the same second it appeared.

"So obsessed with old weapons and tradition, and yet you're so angry because I'm using a better ancient weapon. The old ways you idolise are brutal, your people came from a small continent of constant war. My people were no strangers to war, of course, but we developed more subtle means to enforce our will."

He tried to scoff at her. Their 'subtle means' had not protected them once his ancestors had forgotten honour and gone out to take over the world.

"You're right, we weren't prepared for the unimaginable horror of what the White Man brought to us. He innovated on old evils, turned slavery from a banal suffering inflicted on other nations to an international, capitalist evil." She smiled at him with no sweetness in her face or voice, "I wonder how that reflects on you, capitalist pig?"

All this time, he realised he hadn't said a word. He tried to open his mouth to emphasise his disgust with being talked down to by a terrorist. He couldn't open it. He tried to lift his hands to attack her - it wouldn't work, but it would do better than this pointless argument - and his muscles had no strength. He wasn't paralyzed, but he was powerless.

"Well of course you can't do anything. This is the space for transition. While your mind is changing, you cannot act. It's how people work, you need to make a decision," she gestured at the whole red room, her domain, "The moment you truly finish changing, or reject the change completely, I will lose my control here. I will disappear before you can hurt me, of course, but I will be gone."

She was talking nonsense, he thought with as much dismissiveness as he could force into his thought-voice. There was no choice to make. There was no change to make, he lived a comfortable life. He had power, but not too much to drive him mad. And besides, any decent man made a point not to negotiate with terrorists.

"We're not terrorists, and this isn't a negotiation." She didn't move, but there was a palpable wave of will that came from her. The room changed, becoming darker, warmer. "I simply wanted to present you your choices directly. You can continue to oppose us, freely choosing to do so..."

He felt a lump in his throat. Not like a sensation, but an actual lump in his throat that made it hard to breathe. He blinked, and saw a tree trunk flying at him. He felt a hard impact against his stomach and doubled over when the wind came out of his lungs. He couldn't breathe back in. It hurt.

"Or, you could choose to help us, of your own free will." She touched his head, pulling it back so he was half-led down like her. He could breathe again, and as warmth and oxygen filled his body he felt everything was limp, soft and relaxed.

Except for one part, which was definitely hard.

In that moment the strange, dark archway transformed into a beautiful vision of heaven and light.

"No. I won't accept this from you." He forced his mouth to move. He forced his body to tense and tighten. He forced the relaxed, beautiful arousal out of his loins. She was in control of what he experiences, but he could still control his own mind.

"You're right. As I said, it's your choice. Your thoughts are your own, but I am still in charge until you make your choice. You need to leave this state of transition to beat me." She touched his leg, and every touch sent a wave of pleasure through him.

He didn't want to leave. Maybe it was the stabs of pure lust that he was doing his best to avoid. Maybe it was just the chance for spirited debate, but he was staying here.

"You want to win the argument, that's why you're still here. It's not enough for you to simply leave, you need to prove to yourself that you're right. It's the same reason you stay in the office for twelve hours a day, even though you all you do is move numbers around on sheets your underlings understand much better."

He couldn't open his mouth again to protest on the intricacies of project management.

"You need something to justify how much money you steal from your employees. And now you need to justify why you'll simply ignore my offer. You call me a terrorist, a savage. But I am just a powerful woman, and I can give you what you want. And, deep down, you're open to being convinced."

It would have been foolish not to be open-minded, he thought. He could make his choice at any time, it wouldn't hurt to hear her out.

She stretched out her legs, letting him see the curve down from her thick thighs to her slender calves. Her perfectly formed waist was emphasised as she arched her back. Her idle hand played with his hair.

He drooled, just a little bit.

He stopped fighting the spreading pleasure.

Her other arm slammed into the sofa beside him. Her legs flanked his. Her body was above him, and she sent little rolls of motion through it, her hips moving closer and closer to his.

"You want to be convinced," she whispered, as her fingers stroked his temple.

He immediately thought that he agreed. He realised too late that her hand on his head might have been giving her control over his thoughts the entire time. Maybe he was never free to choose.

"Does it matter, boy? Don't you feel good?"

It didn't. He did.

He gave up. He made his choice. He felt the room around them expand. Her domain of control grew to encompass his entire mental landscape.

He didn't care, she made him feel good.

He told her everything he knew.

"Hey, Vine, does anything about the Atheling Grid ring a bell from your spook days?" Mainframe asked, her body still surrounded by the electric blue glow of her powers.

"I wasn't a sp- Urgh, whatever. No it doesn't, why?"

"Looks like boss man is going to MI5 headquarters to pitch it?"

"That doesn't sound good, but not our immediate problem. They're probably already after us anyway."

"Yeah, agreed. I'll keep looking."

Mystic coughed politely. "I may have found something."

Vine turned, though she kept one 'eye' focused through the dandelion seeds spread through the corridor. "What? How? The business dude didn't say anything."

"He did, just not in a way any of you can hear. Anyway, I know where Vanguard is, or at least some powerful superheroine they captured recently."

"Safe. Where to, then?" Fungus asked.

"Well, does anyone have any idea how we can get to Brittany?"

---

Spoopy season is an excuse to continue the Vine storyline with a look at the powers of one of her more questionable allies. Also, some malesub, I feel like it's been a while since there was malesub here, and as long as you don't ask me to rp I have no problem with malesubs, really, so should give you some content. As usual for the superheroine stuff, it takes a bit longer to get to the hypno, but reading the self-indulgent part is your tax for getting to the mind control

You may notice this was somewhat inspired by my recent obsession with the Liminal Spaces twitter account. It's cool. Has good vibes.

Anyway, join me on Spoopy Day for the final episode of Spoopy Season! Then we'll go back to the (ir)regularly scheduled deviantart.com/maurislave programming. Hehe, programming.

Proofreading credit to Dormiria , there's something here about him transforming the stories from bad grammar into readable but I can't think of a good pun.