by Cobalt Jade
Sweet Goddess, no! Please don't let it end like this!
Cinnabar struggled vainly against the confines of her plastic tomb. The vibrator squirmed inside her, stimulating her against her will; with every silent pant she lost precious oxygen. Helplessly orgasming, tears streaming from her eyes, she could only stare bleakly ahead as the conveyer belt carried her to her doom. She couldn't have been rendered any more impotent.
White Rose, come quickly. I need you!
She had no way of knowing if the telepath could even hear her. Her only hope was to send out her silent cry again and again, like a beacon, to give her friend something to home in on. But the continual orgasms muddled her mental summons, turning them to gibberish. How had Plastica known sexual stimulation would quash her telepathic powers? Please, Ishtar, let Allison trace her!
Shadow fell across her vision as the conveyer carried her inside the vacuum chamber. Oh Goddess, no, not this...
The door closed with a heavy thump, sealing itself. Warning lights flashed to red as the air began to be pumped out. After she was frozen a polymer spray would hit the cube from all angles, sealing her corpse inside a sterile vacuum, where she would remain forever as a bauble for the sorceress to gloat over.
No! she thought desperately. It can't end this way, it can't! Not as a trophy for that evil woman's playroom...
The thought of it sent her over the edge. Her insides quaked as another orgasm hit her, shrill pulses of pleasure that annihilated her again and again, the debilitating sensations more like death than an affirmation of pleasure. A golden glow fuzzed the edges of her vision, turning to red, then a swimming fog of black. She blacked out briefly.
She came to, gasping, realizing the severity of her plight. The chamber was very cold. The film of sweat that had been generated by her fear had vanished; all the moisture was being sucked out of her. In another minute her air would be gone completely.
It was then she realized was faced with the hardest choice she ever had to make. She could remain conscious and continue to call Allison, but would lose oxygen as she orgasmed. Or she could put herself into the metabolism-slowing trance the goddess had taught her. Without breathing, she could exist in stasis for several hours. The trance had saved her life before, even though temperatures had fallen to -40 below. It might buy her some time.
But it wouldn't save her. Her heart fell. The temperature in the vacuum chamber would approach absolute zero in minutes. When enough moisture was sucked out of her body, she would die.
What should she do? Should she put her life in the hands of fate? Did she truly trust in the natural goodness of the universe?
She thought for a second that stretched into hours, then made her choice.
She could enter the trance; it would buy her ten more minutes of life. At the rate the chamber was cooling, it might not even be that. She felt her limbs go numb as the temperature reached freezing, then approached zero. Her oxygen was nearly gone. Closing her eyes, she mentally chanted the ancient mantra. If she had chosen correctly, she would wake in safety. If not, she would sleep forever.
#
Nemiah's wings beat with deep, furious strokes through the cool night air. His forelegs were extended, claws curled like scythes. Allison rode his back like a grim avatar carved from ivory and lightning: Cinnabar needed her. Her calls had been growing progressively weaker and more fragmented for the last four minutes, but Allison had traced them to their source: a featureless factory surrounded by chemical tanks, powerlines, railroad tracks.
BONDMADCHEN MANNEQUINS, the largest of the tanks announced. Plastica's hideout.
Nemiah landed lightly on the roof, folding his massive wings. Allison slipped off his back. Cinnabar was inside, but where? The calls hadn't come for two minutes now. If whoever held her had harmed her --
She saw an open door and sprinted lightly inside, Nemiah following. The door led to a series of wide catwalks above the plant. She stepped gingerly onto the metal grate, creeping silently down the suspended corridors. The silent vats below her melded into darkness. In the distance was a brightly lit area, and they both headed toward it.
Together they looked down on the scene below, lost in the shadows at the top of the plant. Almost directly below them was a large vacuum chamber; plumes of white vapor and a flashing display pad indicated it was in use. A broad conveyer led up to its entrance. Allison looked far to her right and saw a metal worktable on which the torn remains of Cinnabar's clothes were scattered. Her gaze went back to the machine. A metal ramp led from the chamber's far end, at the end of which was a unsealed crate carrying a Federal Express sticker addressed to a location in Greece. In a chair before the crate, leaning back with her long legs propped up on the ramp, was a tall, slim woman nude but for a pair of black vinyl boots and gloves. A bag of half-eaten potato chips lay beside her. She was reading a bondage magazine, one hand idly stroking her crotch.
Plastica. It could be no one else.
In an instant Allison knew what had happened. Cinnabar had been captured, and she was inside that fiendish thing, but in whatever state of transformation, she couldn't guess.
She had to stop it!
She slipped onto Nemiah's back, giving him a terse mental order. With a roar he sprang from the catwalk and landed on the top of the chamber, ripping through the layers of metal, composite and plastic with his diamond-hard claws.
Freezing vapor flew from the ruptured pipes, and the chamber itself exploded as it repressurized. Allison quickly threw up a force bubble to protect them from the shards of flying metal. Cinnabar flew past them in the flaming debris, sealed inside a clear cube of plastic. *Grab her, Nemiah!*
Nemiah's wings working desperately to hold his balance. He managed to catch the ring in his jaws and flew up, up, far faster than the growing conflagration, to smash through the skylight and leap into the night air. In a few seconds he was well away, the night air whistling through his feathers. Allison clutched his back, his speed too great to ride as gracefully as she usually did. Had Plastica survived the explosion? More importantly, would Cinnabar survive whatever that bitch had done to her?
*Cinnabar?* she ventured tentatively in mindspeech.
No reply.
Cinnabar's eyes were open, but she looked like she was dead. Allison extended a hand to touch the plastic cube. The surface was very cold; perhaps she was only frozen. In the distance, she saw another factory, one that made bread. It was in full operation this time of night and clouds of warm steam billowed out of its smokestacks.
*Nemiah, fly there,* she said. *Fly back and forth through the steam.*
Nemiah flew into the warm vapor, in and out, warming the plastic gently.
After many tense minutes Allison heard Cinnabar's faint mental call. *White Rose?*
*I'm here. And Nemiah, too.*
*Thanks,* Cinnabar said. *I was getting worried.*
*What happened?* She knew her tone sounded incredulous. *Cinn... why do you look like a plastic keychain ornament?*
Cinnabar gave a weak laugh. Though feeble and forced, it was the best sound Allison had ever heard her make. *Plastica stunned me at the bank machine and took me here, to turn me into a lucite trophy.*
*We'll get you out of there,* Allison said with determination.
*That will be difficult,* Cinnabar said, her mental tone faint and sad. *This... this shell, it's hard as steel, and molded around my body. I can't eat and I can't drink. If I don't get out of it soon, I'll die.*
*We need Shana and her chemical lab,* Allison said.
*Shana is Plastica's prisoner, too,* Cinnabar reminded her. *We need help.*
*Right,* Allison said grimly, knowing they had to send for experts from outside the team. Always a risky business, as it meant exposure. *Don't worry. We'll find a way.*
#
Damn.
Plastica kicked at a piece of twisted metal, sending it skittering across the floor. The vacuum chamber was a hulking, smoking mess. Luckily the factory's sprinkler system had doused it before nearby the plants called in an alarm. Blobs of flame-retardent foam covered the wreckage, courtesy of the back-up firefighting system. When working with volatile chemicals, you could never be too safe. Luckily her laboratory, and her mannequins, had been at the other end of the building and escaped damage.
Still, it was a helluva mess.
Luckily she'd been able to outrun the blast even in her four-inch spiked heels, flinging herself around a corner before the thing exploded. But she had lost Cinnabar.
The bottom fell out of her stomach fell as she remembered Kylasha. Plastica had promised her a trophy, and that trophy had been stolen from her. Kylasha might badmouth her to other criminals, or, god forbid, enact a revenge. Plastica had to get the cube back before Cinnabar died from dehydration and began to decay. Or the other members of her team figured out a way to free her.
Iza and Phanxine peeked timidly around the corner; they'd heard her screaming and made themselves scarce. Now they were back, to see if there was anything they could do. There wasn't. But like the best toadies they would continue to try to curry her favor, in the hopes she might drop them a crumb or two of consideration. "Boss?"
Plastica grunted. "About time you idiots got back."
"Boss, what do want us to do? Do you want us to go down to the Fairfax address and clean it out?"
Plastica considered. Team Paragon could have found out about her mannequin-making operation; after all, they'd known where the factory was. But with their leader helpless, Plastica thought it unlikely they'd be taking any action, at least right now. "Go ahead," she decided. "But be cautious. Keep processing, but call me immediately if you notice anything or anyone suspicious."
They nodded and left, less cocksure than they'd been few days before, when the operation was daring and new. Plastica gave the wreckage one last look, sighed, and went to get cleaned up. She had to put in an appearance at Sexateria as Paula Jean, and she was smudged all over with soot and had a few first-degree burns on her face and arms. Even her hair had been singed, which meant a haircut and dye job until she made herself a new set of follicles. Implanting all the individual hairs took ages.
She tried to look on the bright side. At least Cinnabar was out of the way, which meant that Team Paragon was rudderless. Heartened, she jumped in her lipstick-red Maserati. If Plastica wanted to get her back, she could. After all, she wasn't exactly going anywhere.
#
"We can't just sit here. We have to do something."
All heads turned toward Gina. Her fist slammed the table.
"Look at her!" Gina waved her hand at Cinnabar's silent, entombed form. "If we don't do something now, next time Plastica will do something worse. To any of us, not just poor Cinn!"
Lori glanced guiltily away from the cube. All morning they'd been frantically trying to cut into the plastic, trying acids, carbide-steel saws, sonic drills, all to no effect. The material was indissoluble; not even the diamond-tipped drills had made much of a scratch. And all the while Cinnabar kept staring at them, eyes wide, knowing that she was trapped, and that she was doomed.
Only Allison could communicate telepathically with Cinnabar -- the two sharing a mind-link from years ago -- and through her, Cinnabar told them to put in a call to the West Coast branch of ALOSH. But even their experts were stymied. After working all day the scientists had only managed to break off only the tiniest chips for analysis back at their labs. As for Cinnabar, all they could do was set up a portable stasis field that would keep her alive until a cure could be found. She now shimmered inside a second cube, the stasis generators humming gently to keep her there. Inside, she would neither blink nor breathe nor age. She would stay in there forever if a solution couldn't be found.
It was repeat of what had happened to Photon, only this time the victim was her friend. Lori's worst nightmare had come to life. She felt tears come to her eyes. No! she thought. I won't give up, none of us will! To make things worse, Noelani was missing and hadn't called in.
"This is too strange," Allison said. She didn't have to say there were only three of them now. Cinnabar was out of commission, and so was Shana; that left her as third in command, a position she was uncomfortable with. "Where did you leave her, Lori?"
"She was at Paula Jean's condo," Lori said. "I flew off to warn Cinn, and she stayed behind in case Plastica came back."
"Plastica never went back," Allison said. "That's obvious. Maybe Noelani went chasing someone else."
"Or is with Plastica," Lori said darkly.
"Plastic Fantastic is opening their new agency tomorrow," Gina said. "I'll pose as a model and let myself be captured. Once I'm in the mannequin factory I can look around."
"Too dangerous," Allison said with a heavy shake of her head. "You know what her plasticizing gas can do."
Gina laughed. "I'm Chrystar. Do you really think it will hurt me?"
"All right," Allison said, though Lori could see she felt ambivalent about it. She closed her eyes briefly. Lori thought she was trying to communicate with Cinnabar, but that was impossible through the stasis field. "Go ahead, but be careful. I'm going to make a call."
Lori glanced at the silver business card that waited in front of the phone. FEM-FANTASTIQUE, INC., it said, in red foil script. A team of superheroines on the East Coast. The director of ALOSH had recommended them as they'd had lots of experience in dealing with villains like Plastica. Allison began to tap out the number. "Lori, I want you to go back to the condo, see if you can find any traces of Noelani. She may be on to something , or --"
She didn't have to finish: Or she may have wound up like Cinnabar. "All right," Lori said. It would give her something to do besides worry.
#
This was too good.
Plastica gloated over the plasticized form of Blue Cymbidium. What a pleasant surprise she'd had when she got back to the condo! It was such a simple trick she wondered how any of the bitches had fallen for it, but maybe IQ was inverse to T&A. Which the half-Hawaiian, half-black beauty certainly had, in abundance.
Plastica had fresh plaskin bandages on her face and hands, but for the sake of her art she would suffer a little pain.
She picked up her scissors and cut off Blue Cymbidium's blue-violet leotard. She was the most exotic -- and sensuous -- of the Team, with her coffee-and-cream complexion and slightly slanted sable eyes. She was also the most petite, though her muscles bespoke of extensive martial arts training. Plastica wouldn't want to face her in a fight, but then, she didn't have to. She had other means of dealing with her enemies.
The spangled fabric fell to the floor, exposing luscious, uptilted breasts with dark brown nipples. Happily the superheroine hadn't lost her long, dark hair. Plastica eliminated her pubic bush with a shot of depilatory foam but let the superheroine keep her thigh-high leather boots. She looked so much more kinky that way.
In fact...
Struck by another idea, Plastica began posing her. Her limbs responded with resistance, but the movement was smooth and not stiff. She let Blue Cymbidium keep the kneeling position but straightened her back and tilted her head back slightly. Her face was now upturned as if looking to Plastica for an order. Plastica then bent Blue Cymbidium's arms behind her back and tied her wrists together with a length of rough rope; this was for effect only, as Plastica knew she couldn't move on her own. Then she buckled a slave collar around the superheroine's neck with a leather leash that trailed down between her breasts, to lie on the ground before her in a perfect liquid line.
She stepped back to assess her work. Yes, much better. The superheroine looked the perfect slave, wrists crossed and tied, posture erect yet abject. Now for her face. Plastica pinched the Hawaiian beauty's eyelids closed and added the hint of a pout to her large, luscious lips. She looked like she was swooning in a stew of sexual submission. It tickled Plastica to think the real Blue Cymbidium would be filled with horror if she saw the picture she made.
"You're a work of art, honey," she said. "Better than Michelangelo, better than Rodin."
She donned her respirator hood and work gloves, then turned on the compressor pump. She lifted the nozzle of the airbrush gun and began to spray. The superheroine's smooth brown flesh was soon speckled, then spattered, then coated with bright blue-violet paint that covered her completely. Plastica walked all around her, changing direction and angle to spray her hair, her nipples, the crack of her ass. The paint was a chrysteel derivative; once it was dry the hard, shiny shell would hold the superheroine fast, encasing her forever in a glistening second skin.
Submission in Blue, that's what she'd call it. It went perfectly with Blue Cymbidium's pose and even her name.
Laughing, she set the nozzle down and wheeled the Blue Cymbidium sculpture over to join the Xenon one. She'd always known visual merchandising was the perfect art form.
This story is copyrighted 2002 by Cobalt Jade (Cobaltjade@aol.com). This work
may be freely distributed over electronic media provided no fee is charged for
its use. Charging a fee for this story, or publishing without author credit
or this notice violates my copyright.