fisheskeyboard

[fisheskeyboard]

It’s You

A teenage superhero tries to protect her retired mother when the past catches up with her.

CW: sexual abuse mention, fire

Flicker stopped at the base of the building, panting, scanning for a route. Without someone to boost her she’d have to find her own way up- her friends were all in exams for classes she hadn’t taken and had no idea any of this was happening. So for now, Flicker was on her own.

Her eyes darted from balcony to balcony, but the fire had destabilized the lower floors and things were looking precarious. She spotted two groups of people clustered on balconies near the roof and took a deep breath. Time to earn my nickname.

While she blinked from balcony to balcony to crumbling fire escape, stretching her teleportation range as far as she could and using the moments she hung in the somewhere else that bridged time and space for her to reassess her crumbling route, she cursed the kind of landlord that bought a building in the poorest part of town, filled it with desperate people, and left it to rot. This place had probably been a death trap before it had caught on fire, but the people on the balconies couldn’t afford to live anywhere else.

She pulled the passenger stabilizer belt from where it clipped to her own. When she got to the balcony she didn’t stop to talk- she just snapped the belt around a woman’s waist and pulled her into the blink.

The two manifested briefly on top of a silent crane, then Flicker was unhooking her frightened cargo on the roof of another apartment building nearby. “I’m bringing the kids!” she shouted as the woman got her bearings. “Keep them safe!”

Back and forth and back and forth while scared people screamed in her ear and her stabilizers whirred and strained to keep Flicker -and everyone else- in one piece as she tore the world to get them to safety. The fire department had gotten to the other group by the time Flicker had finished the first, so she took a deep breath, held it, and headed for the elevator shaft.

Blink - empty - blink - empty - blink - breathe! -  Blink - empty - blink - empty - blink - breathe! - Blink - empty - blink - empty - blink - breathe! - Blink - empty - blink - empty - blink - breathe! - Blink - empty - blink - empty - blink - no one. Good. She headed back outside to clear the smoke from her lungs, then moved from window to window, peering into each one as she clung precariously to the sill. If she had been any bigger than five-foot-nothing Flicker wouldn’t have been able to pull this off, but thankfully she was the tiniest person she knew.

She found an old man - dead? passed out from smoke? she hoped the latter - lying in one of the beds on the fifth floor and had him to the ambulances in four blinks.

When she finished her ‘rounds’ and the only people she could see in the building were conscious and dressed for fighting fires, Flicker materialized next to the fireman barking into a walkie-talkie by the trucks. “Anyone... left?” she panted.

He shook his head tersely. “Don’t think so. Go to the ambulances, Flicker. Get checked out. Don’t want you fainting from smoke.” She was drawn to situations like this like a moth- the fire department pretty much all knew her by this point. 

“I’m- OK. Just a bit dry.”

“There’s water in the back of the truck.” The walkie-talkie was silent for a moment and he looked at her. “I’d tell you to stop if I had any right to. Thanks, Flicker.” She blinked into the truck and snagged one of the plastic water bottles. Most of it was already down her throat as she hopped out of the back door-

Then she heard the boom and the shouting and was running back towards the building. Dammit! Gabe had made her a gas mask why did she never have it when she needed it?

She saw a woman taking off a scarf on the edge of the parking lot. Blink- flash- “thanks-I’ll-give-it-back-I-promise!” - And she was nipping past the smoldering walls. 

There were a pair of firefighters, one floored by debris and one digging them out. It was pieces of a furnace. The furnace had exploded because of course it had, this was probably the first heat to come from it in forever.

She crouched near the floor, covering her mouth and nose with the scarf, watching as the firefighter cleared the last pieces of hot metal from their fallen co-worker. As soon as the one on the floor was clear Flicker dove in, snapped the passenger belt around the fallen firefighter’s waist, and blinked for the doors.

She left the hurt one with the ambulances and the healthy one with the fire truck, and was blinking for the edge of the parking lot for one last look when she felt a pair of arms clamp like steel cables around her waist.

In the long moment in between Flicker whirled on who had grabbed her, clamping the passenger belt around their waist before their body could be torn in two trying to follow her.

“You ass!” Now on the edge of the parking lot, she got an actual look at her passenger. “Do you want to get spli-” the words died in her throat. On the edge of the parking lot, with the burning building behind them, the grey-haired man with the gleaming tower shield and the teenage girl with ash stains on her face stared at each other.

The hero known as Steelheart, the oldest active superhuman in the city, unlocked the passenger belt from his waist and passed it back to her. “The fire department can handle things from here. I need to talk to you.”

“What do you want?” She knew him, of course she knew him, everyone knew him, she’d even seen him in person once or twice. Her voice shook, and her eyes were trained on his face as she clipped the belt back onto hers.

“The Mosquito.”

“I- I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She’d always been a terrible liar, but maybe he’d think the tremors were adrenaline.

“Don’t lie to me, Flicker. You have the exact same energy signature when you teleport. You use the same techniques. You have the same range and limits. Either you inherited your power from her or she trained you. Who is she?”

In a moment that betrayed her lie more than she knew, Flicker drew a breath to speak- and blinked out of his sight.

-

“Damn it!” Steelheart shouted, alone in the parking lot, instantly young and green for a moment, cursing the Mosquito as she vanished again. He reached for the earpiece he wore. “She scarpered.”

“The tracker you left on that belt is working wonders,” the dry voice in his ear responded. “Loading her location now.”

He glanced at the small screen implanted on the inside of his shield. A GPS map showed a blinking dot in a shop across the street.

-

Flicker’s heart was racing as she pulled her phone from her belt and hammered open an app Marca’s sister had programmed just for them. She tapped frantically on the ‘scry me’ button, their quickest possible emergency alarm. Was Felix done the exam? Could he See her to send help? Or was his phone blinking away in the pile of backpacks by the door?

“Flicker!” she heard through the open window. “Come out! I’m not going to hurt you.”

Shitshitshit. No one except her own would even think to hide her from Steelheart, not when he’d been protecting the city for longer than she’d been alive. When she heard his footsteps on the stairs she leaped into the in between.

-

Steelheart watched the dot flash from building to building. When he was young, he’d thought the Mosquito had no range limits, the way she’d been able to slip through his fingers every time. Watching Flicker was an education in how- hiding spot to hiding spot, barely materializing long enough for the tracker to update her location. If he’d not had the map he’d never have been able to find her.

He raced down the street in pursuit.

-

Flicker - for lack of a better term - flickered aimlessly around the city, panicking. Who would hide her? How was he following her? Could she lose him?

She stopped in the washroom of a public park near her house to catch her breath, pressing her back to the stall wall and gasping for air. She pulled out her phone- nothing from Felix. He must still be in the exam.

-

“She’s faster than you, old man. Want me to head her off?”

“No! We’re not ganging up on her. I’m not here to terrify the poor girl.”

“Well you’re doing a fine job. Look how not-terrified she is, cowering in a public bathroom.”

“Got a better idea?”

“She doesn’t know you know where she is. She’s not found the tracker yet. Use stealth. If you have to follow a teenage girl to catch a superhuman gone rogue, at least follow her effectively.”

-

Flicker peeked out the washroom door. No sign. Had she managed to lose him? She had to warn her mom. She pulled out her phone.

Chased halfway across city by SH looking for u. We might need to

He pulled her phone out of her hand and clamped his other hand on her wrist. “So she is your mother.”

Tears sprang to Flicker’s eyes and her breath came ragged. “Leave us alone!”

His face was twisted up with sorrow and regret. “Flicker, you weren’t there. You don’t know what the Mosquito put this city through.”

“I know exactly what happened! You think my own mother didn’t tell me who she’d been? They were abusers and murderers and rapists and you protected them! The Mosquito was the only one who put their victims first!”

“Are you sure you want to do this here?” Steelheart asked the sobbing girl. “Where anyone can hear her secret? Take me to her. Just me. No team,” he dropped his earpiece in the grass. “No shield,” he shrugged the strap off of his arm and let it fall. “Just me. I want to fix this.”

She shook her tiny wrist out of his hand, but he grabbed her again even as she dove into the in between.

Flicker had decided once that she would never splinch someone, no matter the consequences. But she also couldn’t alter her destination now or she’d be lost in the in between. So though her heart was breaking, she clamped the passenger belt around his waist again and betrayed her own mother.

-

Nei, once the Mosquito, got her bearings as quickly as her daughter did. It came with the territory. Steelheart let go of her daughter when he saw her, sitting at her kitchen table, as grey as he was, with the daggers that had made a whole city tremble mounted on the wall. But Nei spoke first.

“How. Dare. You.” She said softly, clenching her jaw with rage. “You call yourself a hero and then follow a teenage girl home like a jilted creep.”

“It’s you,” he breathed.

“I’m sorry Mom,” her daughter Lizzie whispered. “I panicked. I couldn’t lose him.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” It had always been a possibility, especially when Lizzie had inherited her power.

“We all thought you’d died when you went inactive,” Steelheart said. “Hunted someone as ruthless and dangerous as you instead of policemen and politicians and gotten killed for it. But then Flicker came on the scene, just like you in every way, except how she used it... I had to know. We had to know. Because if you were still active, anyone who turned up in a ditch with holes in them could be yours. Anyone could be your next target. You could go after Aurora again.”

“And he’d deserve it,” spat Nei. “Six months for what he did to those girls?”

“People change, Mosquito. As you’d know if you let them have a chance to.”

“And who’s going to give their victims a chance?”

Over a decade and he still didn’t have an answer to that one. He looked at Lizzie instead, and said, “Well, this clears one thing up, at least. From your choice of victims we’d always assumed you were transgender.”

Nei clasped her hands in front of her. “Oh, Mosquito, I’m not a creep at all! I just follow girls home and speculate about the genitalia of murder suspects with my friends!” she glared flatly. “I am, by the way. Transgender. There are options for girls like me, when we want to have children.” He went crimson under his cap- while he was thrown off and not looking at her hands, she reached, slowly, for the clasp of the suppressor that hung around her neck. “Flicker, darling, go crash with Scry or Werewolf for a few days, okay? Adam and I have some old business to sort out.”

But Lizzie blinked behind her instead, and shut the clasp. “Don’t, mom. Please. You haven’t had a seizure in months. I don’t wanna have to take you to the hospital again.”

“Seizures?” Steelheart’s eyes went wide.

Nei felt hideously vulnerable, now that he knew. But she spoke before he could demand answers from Lizzie. “Our powers aren’t stable. Without help like Flicker found, we leave pieces of ourselves in between. After you kept me from Aurora, I found that out the hard way. You know. People change.”

“So that was how it ended? You couldn’t? People lay awake at night picturing your daggers in their stomach and you just... retired? For your health?”

“And haunted their every waking step. Everyone needs a bogeyman, Steel. There was a reason I was so theatrical about it. Because let me fucking tell you, people like Aurora don’t change if they think they can get away with staying the same.”

His distant eyes and the creases on his brow said she was right. “That doesn’t change the fact that you’re a serial killer.”

“Fine. I’m a killer. And so is every single person I ever targeted. I know how you feel about vigilantism - ironically - but locking me up and just *trusting* them when they say they’ve changed is shit and you know it. I’m just the easier target.”

“Mosquito, you don’t-” he stepped forward, but Flicker blinked between them. She held out her arms, shielding her mother.

“It’s over,” she said. “It’s been over for more than ten years. Please. My mom did what she could to help people, and now it’s done. And you can’t say the memory of Mosquito doesn’t help protect people you aren’t watching. You know why she’s stopped, and you know she can’t start again. You said you weren’t going to hurt me- please don’t take my mom away to rid the city of a threat that doesn’t exist anymore.”

Maybe someone else would have done differently. Maybe he would have done differently if she hadn’t still had ash from the burning building on her cheeks, streaked with her tears. But once he saw how they were the same, he couldn’t shut his eyes.

He walked out the door.

[fisheskeyboard]

Portraiture

Nina’s girlfriend wants her to come over and get her picture taken. Extremely NSFW.

Ba-dap ding!

Before she’d started dating Rhiannon, Nina had never imagined three tiny, cheerful notes from her cell phone could do so much to her insides. But just like Rhi had said - or threatened - it would, that custom text tone towards that space Rhi had hollowed out in her life where all her deepest fantasies were real and her Mistress had her mind and body laid out like the pieces of a board game, to play with and rearrange.

She tapped ‘power’ on her phone.

You busy tonight?

                                                                                   What did you have in mind? 

She shouldn’t get so excited, Rhi might just want to go to a movie, or for Nina to test her on her lines, or-

Ba-dap ding!

I was thinking a pretty dress, a little bondage, some teasing, some very filthy pictures, maybe some humiliation if Chase and I are feeling messy.

So, are you busy?

                                                                                  Nothing I can’t reschedule.

Good girl. Reschedule the morning, too, if you can. You might need a lie in after I’m done with you.

                                                                         Anything I need to bring, ma’am?

A change of panties, your pajamas, and everything you’ll need to doll yourself the fuck up. I want your showiest date-night makeup. Got it?

                                                                                                        Yes, ma’am.

Nina had to put down her tablet pen and put her head in her hands for a few minutes, breathing deeply as she fought to get her body back under her own control. Thank god it was only a half hour until she left work. Thank Goddess, anyway. Rhi knew when Nina left work. Seemed like today, she’d decided to be merciful.

Nina went home, had a snack, and packed her bag for Rhi’s in a haze of anticipation and clenched thighs. A dark makeup palette, like Rhi had asked for, and a matching lipstick: the kind of thing Nina (queen of the I’m-not-wearing-makeup makeup) only wore once or twice a year. She changed her t-shirt and jeans for a skirt Rhi liked to flip up at the back.

Turns out she needn’t have bothered with the skirt. Chase answered the door to Rhi’s apartment, looking eaten alive with curiosity and more than a little nervous himself - Rhi didn’t tend to tell him what she had in mind - and pointed Nina straight to a bathroom. A hair dryer and curler were laid out on the counter, and hung over the back of the door was a long, midnight-blue gown with a flowing skirt and plunging neckline. The stitching was a different colour at the hem and waist- Rhi’d probably gotten Chase to alter it to Nina’s size. She loved costumes, and Chase could have been a tailor if he hadn’t been a programmer.

“Rhi’s setting up in the bedroom,” Chase told her.

“Business as usual,” Nina giggled. “Girl loves her entrances.” And so did both of them. The anticipation - and being summoned to her when she was ready - did lovely things below the belt. Didn’t help that Rhiannon’s setups were meticulous and no matter how horny they all were she would not start a scene before she was satisfied.

He grinned back. “She says get pretty, then sit here and wait. She wanted me to say she trusts she doesn’t need to lock the door.”

“What, for me?” Nina gave him big, innocent eyes. “Never. I’m a good girl who stays where she’s put.”

“See you later, then, Nina who stays where she’s put,” Chase said, shutting the door behind her. She heard his bare feet pad along the hallway, and she set her bag down by the bathroom door and looked at the shower. Maybe one of those first.

It was almost two hours before Chase came back for her. She’d managed to only masturbate once in the shower to the thought of what Rhi had planned for her tonight. She’d found matching underthings on the hanger with the dress- silk and lace, with an inconspicuous little button on the inside of the panties that pressed against her butt cheeks. She’d curled her hair. She’d done her eyes, changed her mind, and done them again smokier. She’d obsessed over lipstick colours. She’d paced the bathroom chewing her lip and wondering and had to re-apply the lipstick.

Chase smelled like food- had he and Rhi been eating dinner, leaving Nina alone with the butterflies in her stomach? Rude. He’d brought her a pair of heels she looked at dubiously, but put on. Rhi knew she wasn’t the steadiest in heels, but maybe that was part of tonight’s fun. He’d changed- looser jeans, and there was a bulge at his waist that didn’t look happy to see her. Rhi’d been known to lock him up when she wanted him peripheral to a scene, so maybe that was it. Maybe Chase didn’t get to have a cock tonight.

The look in his eyes suggested Rhi’d told him something like that. “I always said you’d clean up nice,” he teased, but his heart wasn’t in it. The butterflies in her stomach were lurking in his voice too.

She followed him to Rhi’s bedroom. The lights were low, and the first thing she saw was a tall plastic bar stool set up in front of Rhi’s bed. There was a hole cut in the middle of it, and something oblong was poking out the top. Rhiannon was there, methodically spreading lubricant onto it. She looked Nina over thoroughly, with a smug twist to her mouth. Nina stood in front of her, goosebumps rising on her arms as she let herself be examined. Then Rhi beckoned.

“Sit,” Rhiannon said abruptly, her voice husky. She pointed at the dildo peeking through the top of the stool.

“Yes, ma’am,” Nina said softly, gathering up the full skirts of the gown and approaching the stool.

Flash.

Nina’s head whipped towards the wall. Set up on a tripod near a corner of the dark room was a camera- pointed straight at the stool.

Now Rhiannon’s villain-grin was curling around her face. “Didn’t notice? Every sixty seconds, that camera is going to take a picture. Hop on, little princess.” Rhi crouched behind the stool, undid the little button in Nina’s panties, and guided her onto the dildo. She turned something beneath the stool and Nina felt the dildo rise slowly, pushing up into her ass.

Flash! The camera caught her as she gasped.

“I’m going to love looking at these later,” Rhiannon commented, voice all innocence, face anything but. Nina noticed as she blinked the camera’s flash out of her eyes that Rhi and Chase - who lingered by the wall - were both wearing black. They would fade into the dark room. “Now hold those skirts up a little longer,” Rhi instructed, still fiddling with something at Nina’s feet.

Silk ties slid around Nina’s ankles, binding her to her delicate perch on the stool. Then something twisted at her wrists - the full skirts were in the way - and when Rhi let go of her Nina felt something drawing her hands inexorably down, as though the skirts were impossibly heavy but she couldn’t let go.

Flash! The camera caught her testing her bonds.

Rhiannon stood behind the stool and lifted Nina’s chin with two fingers so she looked straight at the tripod. “Smile for the camera, my captivating captive.”

Nina did her best to obey. Each flash blinded her in the dark room, startled her so her ass clenched around the dildo inside it and making her flinch. The next flash always came a moment before her eyes were fully adjusted to the dark- confused and disoriented, she smiled shakily at the light.

She heard movement. “Go,” she heard Rhiannon murmur, somewhere to her left. “Crawl. Start at the tips of her toes and ravish every inch of her with your mouth. If she moans prettily enough maybe I’ll move the camera and let you fuck her while it goes.”

As she blinked the flash out of her eyes she saw Chase crawling towards her on his hands and knees. He crouched before the folds and ripples of midnight blue silk and Nina felt him gently removing one of her shoes. Flash!

“Good boy,” came Rhiannon’s voice, this time from by the camera. As her eyes cleared again Nina saw Rhi sitting down in an armchair, the front of her jeans undone, watching them lazily. Then the camera blinded Nina again, and caught the first of her giggles as Chase, in the folds of her skirt, began to kiss her toes.

It went on and on. Flash. Flash. Nina moaned and cooed and sighed and yelped as Chase’s lips, teeth and tongue made their way with painstaking thoroughness up her leg and thigh.

Rhiannon’s voice sounded. She’d moved again, while Nina was blinded and distracted, and was standing behind her again. “Doesn’t it smell wonderful down there?” she cooed to Chase, who was nibbling Nina’s inner thigh. “Aren’t you just dying for a taste?”

Between Nina’s legs, Chase obeyed the implicit command. Suddenly, Rhiannon’s hand was on her jaw again, holding her head level as she shuddered under Chase’s mouth. Nina gave up trying to let her eyes adjust to the dark between each flash and just closed them as she moaned.

Chase’s hand went underneath the stool- Nina felt the dildo spearing her tilt backwards and she leaned helplessly with it. Chase, with more room now between her legs, sent his tongue probing deeper. Rhi’s fingers held Nina’s head pitilessly level for the camera as it captured her first orgasm of the evening.

“Chase,” Rhi cooed softly as Nina panted. “You’re in the way.”

He got the hint before Rhi kicked him, and crawled away. Nina caught her breath as Rhi’s hands roved over the silk bodice, her skin, the folds of the skirt. “What a good girl you are, Nina, sitting so well for the picture. So pretty in your ecstacy. Moan for the camera now, darling.”

Thoughtlessly, Nina obeyed.

Something cold touched the skin between her breasts, then jerked away- when she heard cloth tearing Nina’s eyes flew open only to be blinded by another flash. As she blinked it away Nina saw that Rhi had slit bodice and bra open with a little knife, and was tearing them further until both hung loosely from her shoulders and left her exposed.

Rhi played with Nina’s nipples, coaxing them to rigid points, tugging and pulling until they might have been torn from her chest like the bodice of the dress. She clamped shreds of blue silk to them and let them dangle as she reached down to finger Nina through the skirt until there was a dark patch on the silk, All the while, the camera flashed.

Rhi had put a pedal under the stool, as it turned out, that raised and lowered the dildo. She fucked Nina casually and relentlessly as the camera kept flashing, abandoning Nina’s clit to place two damp fingers beneath her chin and hold her head up again, cooing, “Give them your best side.” Nina had no idea how long Rhi toyed with her and stroked her and fucked her ass and took her picture. She just moaned and shuddered and obediently let Rhi pose her.

Finally Rhiannon spoke again. “Chase is watching, Nina,” she murmured. “I’ve told him he’s not to beg and he’s being so good, but he’s hard as a rock and still tasting you on his lips. Do you want me to unlock him and let him fuck you?”

Nina nodded her head, but Rhi’s grip on her chin became iron. “Beg for the camera.”

“Yes yess yesss,” Nina gushed, tripping over her words. “Please ma’am please please let him fuck me oh, please, please ma’am-”

“Enough.”  Rhiannon slapped her without warning, and Nina fell silent. A moment later Rhi jammed the hem of the skirt between her teeth. “Hold that.”

Nina obeyed, holding up the skirts with her teeth as Rhi reached down. She grabbed the front of the silk and lace panties Chase had been nuzzling aside with his nose and yanked- all at once, the fabric broke at the thighs and Nina’s panties were draped over the stool. Her shaking legs, the soaking cloth, her sticky and throbbing clit were all bared for the camera flash.

After a few pictures, Chase was brought back to lean Nina back against something behind her and fuck her as she held her skirt in her mouth and moaned around it. The flash of the camera was closer, now- Rhiannon was holding it. Chase pounded her, hungry and desperate: Nina came and came but he never did.

Eventually Rhiannon grew bored of that, and sent Chase away again. She took the knife to the dress and left the skirts hanging in shreds off of Nina’s bound, shivering body. The camera flashed without pity as Rhi got the tube of the same lipstick now smeared on Nina’s cheeks and chin and wrote TAKEN in lipstick across her breasts.

“Chase,” Rhi said. “My phone. I want this part on video. Open your eyes, Nina.”

Nina stared, slack-jawed, at the camera. Chase was standing next to it, filming her on Rhi’s phone.

“Say you’re mine,” Rhi cooed into her ear.

“I’m yours,” Nina moaned.

“Tell me how much you love this.”

“I- I love this. I love this so much.”

“Thank me.”

“Thank you, mistress.”

“For what?”

“For binding me and - fucking me and t-turning me into a mess and f-f-filming it all.”

“Say you’re mine to flaunt.”

“I- I’m yours. To flaunt.”

“Turn off the phone, Chase. Come here.”

Nina was unbound, freed from the dildo and the shredded dress and maneuvered onto her knees by Rhi’s hand on her head. When she found Chase’s cock at her lips, she obediently took it in her mouth and brought him to the finish he’d been craving. She was applied to Rhiannon’s labia and licked mindlessly until Rhi pushed her away- in a daze,Nina lay on the floor and masturbated for the camera as Rhi and Chase fucked behind her. After one more mewling orgasm, the camera  was turned off and Rhi wrapped her shivering body in a blanket.

“You’ve been so good tonight,” she whispered, stroking Nina’s hair as Chase gently lifted her into his arms.”Time for a rest, I think. And maybe a bath.”

Nina nodded, eyes fluttering already.

“Good thing you’re staying over,” Rhi said cheerfully. “We still have to decide which ones to keep!”