(The Whateley Universe belongs to the canon cabal of the Crystal Hall.)
(This is the origin story of a second generation poesie I came up with back at the beginning of 2013. Chronologically, this takes place the year after the Kimba canon as it currently stands, and while this is only fanfiction, I've tried to keep it as canon-complaint as I could, and I admit it would be awesome if this character did make it into canon in some form...)
A Rousing Origin
"A superhero can only do what people generally agree is good for superheroes to do.
If you stray too far off the beaten path in search of how best to use your superpowers to actually help, you could easily end up doing things that look, at first glance, somewhat to incredibly evil.
And if people are going to turn against you once you start actually making a difference, you might as well just be a supervillain to begin with.
They look like they're having more fun anyway."
These were words of wisdom that she'd believed in, before it all began. She still did, truthfully, even if it turned out that, like many pieces of wisdom, this one was a lot more complicated and full of hazards in practical application than it sounded at first blush.
Wednesday, April 25th 2007
Berkeley, California
Endel Residence
The screeching of his ten-dollar alarm clock dragged Cameron up out of a dead sleep for the third time in thirty minutes. Rather than reaching for the snooze button again, he let it screech at him as he tried to summon the willpower to move and get out of bed. He really didn't want to. He wanted to turn the alarm off entirely and go back to sleep, but he was already verging on being late for school. Again.
Once he was sure he wouldn't just fall asleep again as soon as the noise stopped, Cameron shut the alarm off and dragged himself into the bathroom to shower, bumping against the doorframe as his balance wavered. It was like this every morning. It didn't seem to matter when he went to bed, or how long he slept for, or what he'd done the previous day. Falling alseep always took forever, and waking up always felt like crawling out of a grave.
There were times when he worried about that, but everybody hated getting up early, didn't they?
Cameron's hand missed the lightswitch a couple of times, then he winced as the painfully bright lights and obscenely loud fan came on. There his naked self was in the mirror. Fifteen years old. Five and a half feet tall. Just enough muscle tone to hide his ribs, and just enough fat to hide his muscle tone. Pale skin with a faint reddish-olive cast and acne everywhere. Dark wavy hair with six inches of bedhead sticking up in absurd directions.
Cameron went through his morning hygiene on automatic, barely opening his eyes for more than a second at a time. He had his own bathroom, small as it was. He and his dad and his younger sister lived in a small refurbished condo a mile or so south of Berkeley University, and Cameron got the entire ground floor to himself; since they were on a hill, the front door and garage were on the upper floor. He had his own front door with a wooden staircase leading up to the street, but he couldn't remember the last time he'd used it.
When he was finished in the bathroom and getting dressed - black khakis and t-shirt - he was starting to feel a little more alive. He ran a comb through his chaotic head of dark hair as he checked himself in his mirrored closet doors.
Cameron blinked. That was new. His eyes were a dark brown that was almost black, but that wasn't what he was seeing in the mirror. Cameron's reflection had very vibrant, very amber eyes.
Seriously, what?
That was about as far as Cameron's exhaustion-beleaguered mind got before his self-examination was interrupted by unnecessarily loud knocking.
"You out yet, bud?" Dad called. "It's seven-thirty."
Cameron shook himself, grabbed his backpack, and called back, "I'm out! I'm ready."
Cameron spent the short drive to school in the passenger seat of Dad's white pickup truck trying to force himself into a state that at least resembled wakefulness. It seemed to be working better than it usually did, today. He was already regaining some of the carefully cultivated situational awareness that was nearly mandatory for survival in high school if you were a shy geeky guy like Cameron was.
By the time Dad dropped him off, it was starting to get weird. He felt more awake and alert than he had since spending all easter break sleeping in. On his way to his first class he hurdled six attempts to trip him, dodged four attempts to body-block him, and he still had some inexplicable sense that there was more alertness to be had.
Cameron found his seat in first-period Biology and could barely sit still. He deliberately stopped trying to make himself more awake. That was weird too. He felt a little less wired now, but there was also a weirdly solid sense of making himself more awake that Cameron distinctly stopped doing.
Seriously, what?
Cameron breezed through Biology and Pre-Calculus and even managed to pay attention in History, even though he spent most of that time wondering just how he'd managed to simply will his exhaustion away.
As he sat down to eat his lunch - a greyish hamburger that tasted like cardboard and a tiny carton of unrefrigerated pulpy orange juice - his ears snatched a fragment of conversation out of the din.
"...how mutants are supposed to have, like, weird anime eye colors? Well..."
Forehead, meet formica. Duh! Double duh!
A few guys and girls sitting nearby looked over when Cameron's head hit the lunch table with a bang. Cameron ignored the snickering. It wasn't the first time Cameron had fallen asleep while eating and smacked the table with his head.
His eyes changed overnight, and then he found himself with an ability he didn't have before. That sure sounded like he was a mutant, even if super-staying-awake was like the lamest superpower ever.
It wasn't entirely useless, though. He hadn't felt this good in months. Cameron wondered what his limits were. Could he stay awake all night and not be sleepy the next day? Could he stay awake for a week? A month? There were a lot of inconveniences that went away when you didn't need to sleep, now that he thought about it.
The sounds of moving clothes, footsteps, and the tone of the snickering, warned Cameron of someone lurking up behind him. Cameron concentrated on the sounds and senses. It was easier than it usually was, since he wasn't battling sleep deprivation. He made sure his muscles were relaxed and nothing in his body language gave him away, but his heart was accelerating and he was poised on a hair trigger.
Rustling sleeve, shadow in the corner of his eye, a tingle at the top of his spine. Oh yeah. Some jerktard was trying to stick something down his shirt. Cameron's hand shot up and snapped closed around a bony wrist with an audible smack. Cameron felt something bounce off his shoulder and splat on the floor by his foot.
"Ooooh!" the jerk's friends hooted.
Cameron looked down at the open pudding cup that had fallen to the floor. The jerk tried to snatch his hand back but Cameron was holding on hard. Cameron slowly sat up and turned around to look at the guy. He recognized the grinning jerk, but couldn't remember his name.
"What?" the jerk chirped innocently.
Cameron wondered if this guy actually thought Cameron was gullible enough to doubt his guilt when Cameron had literally caught the jerkwad in the act. Cameron left his face blank and just squeezed harder as he stared in challenge.
"Dude is wack," some bystander commented.
The jerk continued to grin in what he probably thought was a disarming way, but it was just getting on Cameron's nerves. Cameron saw the shift when the guy moved. The jerk's off hand snapped out in a quick jab.
Cameron head-butted the fist.
"Yaeeh!" the jerk yelped, snatching his hand back.
Cameron surged off the bench as soon as the jerk's attention turned to his injured hand. He twisted the jerk's other arm in towards the jerk's chest and used the leverage to shove the guy off balance. The jerk went sprawling on the linoleum.
Cameron calmly used a paper napkin to wipe a small dollop of pudding off his shoulder, slung his backpack on, and took his tray to the trash.
His forehead really hurt.
Cameron saw one the teachers on lunch duty confronting the jerk. He regonized the middle-aged hispanic woman, but didn't know her name either. The jerk pointed across the cafeteria at Cameron.
"...psycho attacked me!" the jerk was saying.
The teacher looked at Cameron and then rolled her eyes at the jerk, and Cameron heard her exclaim, "Yeah right!"
Several of the jerk's friends looked like they were about to back him up, but thought better of it when they saw that the adult among them wasn't buying it. Huh. Maybe Cameron had more of a reputation than he thought, if a teacher was willing to dismiss accusations of Cameron starting a fight out of hand.
When he got home that afternoon, Cameron had his usual just-got-home-from-school meal and headed down to his room. He marked his calendar, made his bed, and committed himself to finding out just how long he could stay awake now. He was reluctant to say anything about his suspicions to his dad yet. Cameron wanted to be sure he was right about being a mutant before he brought it up.
Cameron dug his homework out of his backpack and got to work on it. It was still mostly boring and tedious, but being wide awake and rested-feeling made the work trivially easy.
Two hours later he'd finished all his assignments and was puttering around on the GEO Forums. Cameron liked to follow the community's fan art where he could. He clicked a relevant-looking thread and was presented with an image of a buxom battlemage barely clad in burnt tatters, escaping from a fiery cavern and facing a fork in the path. One way led through an ominous flesh-colored chamber of slime and squirming tentacles. The other portal led through a light crystalline chamber of sparkling beauty and unyielding razor-sharp edges.
While smirking in wry appreciation at the subtext in the choice the artist was depicting, Cameron also noticed something else. He was unspeakably horny. The sudden awareness of his need for release was like a punch to the gut. The scantily clad image on his screen certainly wasn't any more sexually provocative than a thousand other pieces of fan art he'd admired, but that was when he'd been suffering something like the symptoms of acute sleep deprivation.
Cameron hurriedly loosened his pants to make room for his swelling erection.
In retrospect, he probably should have anticipated this. It wasn't like his hormones were completely quiet even when he was a sleepwalking zombie. Now that he had a superpower that made him completely rested and alert, there was nothing suppressing those drives anymore.
Cameron reflected that it was a really good thing that he had as much privacy as he did. He clicked open a new tab and went browsing for porn.
The next day at school, Cameron made another startling discovery.
It was his usual habit to skip breakfast on school days, and last night he'd gotten wrapped up in GEO, which was a lot more fun when he was both alert and free of distractions. Gaming for seven hours actually did burn more calories than sleeping, so he was even hungrier that usual as he stared at the revolting offerings of the school cafeteria.
Why did he have to be so hungry when there was nothing available that actually resembled food? With a sigh, Cameron focused on his hunger and tried to push it away. And it worked.
Cameron was actually a bit startled. He wasn't hungry at all anymore. He stepped out of line and concentrated again, trying to figure out if he'd actually banished his hunger with his powers or if he'd just managed to put himself off by thinking about how gross the available food actually was.
While continuing to think about the school food's inedibility, Cameron concentrated on his absent feeling of hunger and kind of pulled.
Eaugh! Suddenly he was ravenous enough to eat anything. Oh holy hell he was even contemplating cannibalizing his schoolmates. Bad idea! Bad idea!
Cameron frantically tried to push his hunger away, and thanks to his momentary panic it took a few tries, but he was probably only standing there salivating like a beast for about twenty seconds. He decided to skip lunch and hide in the library.
As disturbing as it had been, he'd confirmed it. Cameron's powers worked on more than just sleepiness. This opened up all kinds of possibilities.
Friday, May 11th 2007
Berkeley, California
Endel Residence
Cameron once more got home from school, dropped his backpack in his room, and came back upstairs in search of lunch. The kitchen, dining room, and living room with his dad's entertainment center was basically just one large room. Dad worked at home most of the time. He was a programmer for AT&T. But since it was friday he was on the couch watching That 70's Show instead of in his office. Dreya, his spastic little sister, was cooking something at the stove.
Cameron searched the cupboards for something to snack on while deciding what to have. Dreya's pan sizzled loudly.
No had one noticed Cameron's sudden lift in demeanor or his new energy. Which was convenient, but also kind of disheartening. None of his classmates were his friends, he didn't know any of the neighbors, and he didn't actually spend that much time with his dad or his sister, but he was still a little bummed that not even his family had seemed to notice his sudden shift from stressed on the edge of suicidal to serenely upbeat.
It had been three weeks since his eyes changed, and Cameron hadn't slept so much as a minute. He'd learned that his power wasn't passive. If he stopped concentrating on his state of wakefulness for more than a few hours, he'd start getting sleepy at what felt like a normal rate, but it only took a few minutes of concentration to go from yawns and dizzy-spells to bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
That idiom was kind of disturbingly literal when he thought about it. Brighter eyes were the first sign of mutation, and for some mutants bushy tails were a real possibility.
He had also experimented with the other aspects of his power that he'd discovered. Just to see what would happen, Cameron completely eliminated his hunger and thirst for three days. When he'd started showing signs of dehydration sickness, he'd stopped doing that real quick, though. At least he knew now that he couldn't stop eating the way he'd stopped sleeping.
Cameron's power seemed to work on any function of his body. He still blushed a little when he thought about how his power worked on sexual arousal. He'd discovered that he could go all the way to orgasm and then some without even touching himself, in under a minute, or hold himself in any intermediate state. That, he really had to be careful with, even if he figured having that kind of superhuman control would make him really good at sex. If a shy, acne-faced geek like him could ever get a girl to like him, that is. Cameron wasn't too optimistic about that.
That was the discovery that lead to the terminology he'd started using for what he could do. He could focus on a biological process and either make it stronger, which he called rousing, or make it abate, which he called numbing. The word 'rousing' primarily meant waking up, which was the very first thing he used his power for, and it was similar in both sound and meaning to 'arousing' which made for a rather appropriate pun, Cameron thought.
Munching on a Keebler cookie, Cameron went over and dropped onto their couch next to his dad. Cameron finished the cookie and reached over to hit the mute button on the remote.
"So," Cameron said. "I'm a mutant."
Dad blinked, hand freezing halfway to the remote. "You're a mutant?"
"I'm a mutant," Cameron repeated with a nod.
Dad gave him a baffled look. "When did this happen?"
"Oh my god," Dreya interrupted. "This explains so much. No wonder you're such a cold loner weirdo!"
Cameron gave his sister a flat look. "Being a mutant doesn't have anything to do with that, thank you. And what do you mean cold loner weirdo? I am not!"
"You know what I mean," Dreya said, rolling her eyes and leaning down over the back of the couch. "Wow, your eyes are all sparkly and gold."
"My eyes have been amber for three weeks," Cameron insisted, "which is how long I've been a mutant. Now go stir your vegetables."
Dreya rolled her eyes and gave him her number two Grunt of Teenage Exasperation.
"Are you sure, bud?" Dad asked. "It's said that the eye change is a nearly universal sign of meta-gene activation, but you ought to have developed some kind of paranormal ability by now, if it's really been three weeks."
Cameron nodded. "I'm sure I haven't slept at all since my eyes changed, and I've never felt more rested."
"Well, that does sound..." Dad frowned thoughtfully. "Huh."
"I can also make myself not hungry," Cameron added, "but it doesn't keep me from needing food. Speaking of which..." Cameron got up and headed for the fridge.
As Cameron grabbed the fixings for a sandwich, Dreya grabbed the pepper out of his hand and seasoned her stir-fry, and his dad came and sat down at the island. Cameron gave his sister a glare and proceeded to make his lunch.
"So, you haven't slept for three weeks," Dad repeated.
"Right," Cameron confirmed.
Dreya spun around. "Ohmygawd, you're turning into a vampire! Are you gonna get sparkly, too?"
Cameron rolled his eyes as his sister reached out and started poking him in the arm. "What are you doing?"
"Checking to see if you're hard like rock!" Dreya announced like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Cameron slapped her hands away. "I am not turning into a vampire! Cut that out."
"Pffft. Meanbutt," Dreya pouted.
Cameron turned resolutely away and focused on Dad. "Yes. I haven't slept in three weeks."
Dad leaned forward on his elbows. "Well, I only really know what's been written for Spectrum on pattern theory, but that seems like it could be a number of things. Is it passive? Can you sleep if you want to?"
"I haven't tried, but yeah I think so," Cameron said. "I have to concentrate on it every few hours to keep my wakefulness as... wakeful as possible, and if I wanted to I'm pretty sure I could kind of push in the opposite direction and knock myself out."
"Does, er, going in one direction take the same kind of effort as going in the other?" he asked.
Cameron nodded. "As far as I can tell, yeah."
"Hmm, at first I was thinking you might have an obscure Energizing trait or maybe an unusual Exemplar mental bonus, but that actually sounds more like a Psionic ability," Dad mused.
"So you're saying I've got, like, biokinesis?" Cameron asked.
"Don't hold me to it," Dad said. "I'm only guessing. But if I'm right, it's likely that you can affect bodies other than your own."
Cameron frowned. "I really should have thought to try that myself."
"You've always been good at... knowing yourself, regulating yourself," Dad said. "It follows that you'd naturally treat this biokinetic ability as an extension of that."
Cameron peered thoughtfully over the counter at his dad. He focused on rousing wakefulness, but this time he tried to exert his will across space in Dad's body, instead of in himself. There was definitely a sort of mild stretching strain that Cameron was mostly sure he wasn't imagining. Then, suddenly, with a psychic snap the strain vanished and Cameron's will smashed into his dad's biochemistry.
Dad blinked a few times, and said, "Whoa. I feel like I just had a pound of caffeine shot straight into my veins."
"So it worked?" Cameron asked, grinning.
"What worked?" Dreya interrupted again.
Dad nodded. "It definitely worked. But bud, please be careful with this. I can think of several dangerous ways you could use your powers just off the top of my head, that would be obviously unnatural. We don't get as much mutant-hate around here as in some cities, but it could still cause you a lot of trouble if you were found out. And the best way to stay hidden is to make sure they never start looking for the mutant in their midst in the first place."
"What worked?!" Dreya repeated vehemently, knocking a box of crackers and a couple paper plates to the tile.
"My sleep ray," Cameron replied flippantly, glancing significantly at the mess on the floor. "Smooth."
"You're so mean," Dreya whined.
Cameron knelt down to pick up the spilled plates and crackers. "Oh? Then why am I helping you pick this stuff up?"
Dreya gave Cameron her number three Exasperated Teenager Grunt including the flailing arms. The flailing arms that wacked the handle of her frying pan on the way down and flipped the whole thing off the stove.
Cameron had a split second where his heart jumped into his throat and he started to jerk out of the way like a startled cat, before a pan full of boiling oil and sizzling vegetables crashed down on his arm, shoulder and back.
Cameron froze in shock while Dad jumped up and grabbed the sprayer from the sink, and then the pain hit him like an avalanche. Cameron screeched as he leaped to his feet and collided with the corner of the island, falling on his good side against the cupboards. The burning agony grew and grew and then Cameron's whole body just sort of lurched away from the pain.
The pain was gone, and it was suddenly quiet. Cameron realized he'd been screaming, and had now stopped. His dad had been spraying him with cold water from the sink, and that had stopped too.
Cameron's first thought was that he'd somehow managed to create an anesthetic effect with his powers, but he could still feel the hard tile under him, the water dripping off him. His shirt felt weirdly tight on his chest as he tried to catch his breath and his underwear felt impossibly gravity-defyingly loose in the crotch. But the places where he'd been burned felt perfectly okay.
Dreya was looking at him, horrified, and Dad was looking at him, utterly baffled. Cameron looked down at... herself. Yep, those were boobs straining inside her shirt. The narrowing between her ribs and her hips was more pronounced and curved more smoothly. Her underwear felt loose because there was nothing dangling there between her thighs.
Cameron looked up, mouth hanging open. "Wha... I'm a girl! Dad! Dreya's stir-fry turned me into a girl! What the fuck!" Cameron sprang to her feet, barely noticing how effortless the movement was.
"It's not my fault!" Dreya insisted.
"It was your dinner!" Cameron squeaked. "Where did you get those vegetables? Moperville?"
"From the produce aisle just like always!" Dreya yelled. "I didn't do anything!"
"You knocked a pan off the stove and onto me! You did that!" Cameron shot back.
"ALRIGHT!" Dad barked loudly. "Dreya, clean up your spill, Cameron - "
"But!"
"Andreya Lauren Endel!" Dad roared. "Clean up after yourself. Now! And be glad you brother isn't on the way to the emergency room!"
"Fine!" And she got to it.
Cameron was staring down at herself again. Yep, still herself. "What. The. Fuck."
"Bud? Are you okay?" Dad checked as he put the sprayer back.
Cameron spread her hands helplessly. "Uh, I think so, but... Hello? Girl? Why am I a girl?"
"Don't look at me," Dad sighed. "I could make guesses, but... I could call my doctor and ask if he can refer us to someone with paranormal qualifications, who might be able to figure out what's going on."
Cameron grimaced. She hated hospitals and the modern medical culture of just throwing drugs at every little problem to see what stuck, while just kind of pretending the side effects weren't worse than the initial problem, as long as pills got sold. Still, that didn't exactly apply to her situation.
"Okay," Cameron grumbled. "But make sure they know I am emphatically refusing anything they might possibly call treatment. For anything."
Cameron went to finish making her sandwich.
Around the house, Cameron was in the habit of wearing loose cotton exercise shorts and plain t-shirts, so while they didn't fit quite the same on her new body, they were still just as wearable. Later, after reassuring her dad that she was still a sane healthy Cameron, and facepalming at her sister's contrived self-serving apology, Cameron retreated to her floor.
She locked the door with a sigh, and steeled herself to look in the mirror. Cameron faced her reflection in her closet doors, and was struck breathless.
"Holy crap," Cameron whispered, stepping forward to get a closer look.
Big, warm amber eyes, in a cute feminine face of perfect smooth peachy skin with wide cheekbones. Lips pouty, soft and moist and definately not chapped. Nearly black hair that waved and spiked in an artful splay, with a small lock of lusterous emerald green in her bangs. It was a gorgeous girl that Cameron saw in the mirror, and at the same time, absolutely herself. Idealized and female, but recognizably Cameron.
Suddenly needing to see the rest of what she looked like, Cameron yanked her shirt off and threw it aside, then shoved her shorts and briefs down and kicked them off. She stood there and stared at herself, hands hanging away from her body.
Peachy skin as far as the eye could see, without a pimple or blemish in sight. A fit figure on a frame that was a tad wide, but balanced well between sleek and curvy. No body hair. Yesterday his face and chest and back had been covered with pimples and coarse body hair that had been starting to grow in everywhere except the sides of his torso and his lower back. Now it was nothing but smooth skin, even down by the puffy lips and peeking folds of her very female crotch.
Cameron had only a vague sense of the scale for breast size, but the shapely globes on her chest protruded further than the width of her hand when she was standing straight, coming to a gentle point at the pink bud of her nipples.
"I look like a Final Fantasy fan artist Rule Sixty-Threed me," Cameron mused with a slightly manic giggle.
Cameron had no idea what she wanted to do about this. There was an almost giddy feeling that bubbled up in her chest at the perfect complexion and clean lines of her new shape. There was the sense-memory of the shape of her male body clinging to her, highlighting the differences and making her femaleness feel alien every time she moved. Despite that alienness it still felt good to be the shape she was now.
Cameron ran her hands over her new smooth skin and instantly became addicted to the feeling. She didn't avoid her breasts or her new vagina, but she didn't focus on them either as she explored her soft surface tactily.
Why wasn't she freaking out? Instant Girl: Just Add Burning Oil seemed like the sort of weirdness that ought to merit at least a little panic, so why did she feel like giggling in delight? Had some part of her wanted to be a girl? Cameron liked her new shape, that much was true and trying to deny it didn't even occur to her, but she didn't want to lose the old one forever.
"I've seen people talking about feeling like a woman trapped in a man's body," Cameron murmured to herself, but she couldn't remember ever feeling like a girl when she was a boy. "I don't think I ever really felt like a boy in a boy's body either, though. I just happened to look like a boy. And now... I really don't feel like a boy in a girl's body. I still just feel like me, who happens to be a girl at the moment. That's me in the mirror. It's a hot girl, but it's also me. I can't look at the hot girl and not see me."
Maybe it was as simple as that. "If I had suddenly become all," she gestured at the reflection of her perfect smooth skin and lean musculature, "but stayed a boy, would I be feeling the same way?"
"Yes...?" Cameron pondered. "I think I'd feel the same about suddenly being hot and sexy, but... imagining it... I don't want it. Okay, I would have wanted it, a lot, but now that I'm a hot girl, the idea of being a hot guy isn't better."
Cameron paused with her hands cupping her breasts, and took a moment to caress herself and enjoy how much more responsive her nipples were now. It sounded strange that the first breasts Cameron had ever touched were her own, but it would be stupid to feel weird about touching herself for that convoluted a reason. The flesh was softer than she'd expected, and the hardening of her nipples felt like a pair of tiny erections growing out of her chest, which was totally novel.
She dropped a hand and cupped her labia, questing between her folds with a finger. Cameron knew what to look for, but she had no idea what it ought to feel like. She trembled, more than a little flushed, when her pressing finger suddenly found a sensitive slippery heat and slipped through the opening. That was a new sensation, and not just in the didn't-have-those-nerves-before way.
"Oh damn, I didn't think it'd feel that warm and slippery," Cameron noted.
Trailing her wetted finger up through her folds, Cameron found her clit, and that sensation was familiar enough that the familiarity just made it stranger. Cameron stumbled, and realized she'd been standing on tiptoes with her hips thrust forward. She backed up and sat down on her bed.
"I know what I'm doing tonight," Cameron muttered. "This could be permanent, or I might turn back into a boy at any minute for all I know. I don't care how it... There's no way I'm not going to..."
Cameron decided not to rouse anything yet. She wanted to know what pleasuring herself as a girl was like without psionic aid, first. But the thought reminded her that she now knew her biokinesis worked on other people over distance, and that included her orgasm-at-will ability. She had an orgasm ray. No! Orgasm eye-beams!
Cameron rolled backwards on her bed and hugged her thighs as she cackled madly into her knees.
Saturday, May 12th 2007
Berkely, California
Bancroft Way
The morning sun shone down on the chilly patio tables outside a small coffee shop. At one of these tables, in a shaded corner against the brick of the building, a seemingly ordinary pair of pretty college girls sat and mulled over a pair of steaming white mugs. One was regal, with long shiny black hair and a calm confidence. The other was a petite curly blonde with her hands clasped nervously.
They were soon joined by a handsome young man in a maroon windbreaker. He sat down next to the regal one and kissed her in greeting. "It's ready," he said.
Patricia Kelly - occasionally known as Wandless, a Whateley graduate and self-styled battle mage and psionic adept - smiled wickedly at her lover and partner. Lars Verren - also known as Bloodwrought, a skilled enchanter with a knack for creative curses - pulled a heavy pendant from a pocket and set it on the table.
"It's range is about four feet," Lars explained, "and there's enough essence innate in the working for it to do maybe eight-hundred checks, just point the talisman and watch for the gem to glow. Green means you've got a virgin. Blue means you don't. Red means you're pointing it at a child."
"Excellent. Now we can be sure," Patricia purred. "There's no way the Grand Hall will keep ignoring us after we pull off this lost ritual. We'll show them that we have lore and power that they don't, and they'll have to allow us to open a chapter here, and allow us into the keeping of their secrets. A moment while I call our hired muscle."
"We're doing this now?" squeaked a wide-eyed Jill Hayes, a low-power coercive telepath who only recently chose the name Daydream. "Right now?"
Sharing a look, Lars and Patricia both leaned over the little round table and reached across, each caressing a side of Jill's face. The blonde girl blushed and looked between them like they were her whole world.
"If you're committed," Patricia said gently.
"We're depending on you for this, Jill," Lars murmured.
"Can we depend on you," Patricia asked, "to do your part?"
"Are you committed," Lars asked, "to us?"
Jill trembled and shut her eyes, then looked at them and nodded. Patricia smiled and pulled out her phone, whlie Lars sensuously brushed Jill's lips with a fingertip.
"Slamjam, it's Wandless," Patricia spoke into her phone. "It's the job we talked about. We're moving now. ... Yes, those terms are still valid. ... Good. I'm texting you an address and a passcode. Go there. In the alley you'll find a grey van with electronic doorlocks. Use the passcode. In the van's glovebox you'll find an envelope with instructions. Cut open the bottom of the envelop. Do not open the flap, that is very important. Got it? ... Good. Ta."
"Slamjam?" Jill wondered.
"A mercenary thug," Lars explained. "He's your basic Exemplar Five, but with no other powers. He's punctual and he follows orders well, and he doesn't get squeamish."
"Your part in the plan is simple, Jill," Patricia said. "While Lars and I head back to the house to finish preparing the ritual, you will take the talisman and walk around town. Slamjam will follow you at a distance in the van, while you collect our sacrifices. We need three virgin boys and four virgin girls, all at least fifteen years old."
"When you find one, just do your Imperio thing," Lars said, "and make them get in the van."
Jill grinned weakly. "Do you have to call it that?"
"Yes," Lars said. "Maybe I'll reconsider, when you come up with a name of your own for it."
Jill nodded sheepishly and stood up. Lars handed her the talisman.
Patricia watched her with a fond smile as she strode away. "So eager to obey. Come on, Lars. We have work to do."
Cameron was waiting when Dad came out of his room and shambled over to the coffee-maker. She was dressed in an old pair of dark grey cargo pants and a t-shirt. She plucked uncomfortably at the straining fabric around her chest and underarms, her empty backpack dangling from her other hand. "Hey, Dad?"
He blinked at her, looking confused for a moment. "Oh. Right. What is it, bud?"
"I need to go get some new clothes," Cameron said, focusing some wakefulness on him. "I can still wear most of my old clothes, but everything I'd normally wear in public fits all weird and uncomfortable now."
"Want me to drive you?" Dad asked.
Cameron shook her head. "It'll probably take me all day, figuring things out. Girl things."
"Okay. I do have calls to make," Dad said. "Maybe you should take Dreya with you. For the girl things."
"Yeah, that'll go so well," Cameron snarked.
"Cameron, she does try," Dad sighed.
"She won't be up for hours anyway," Cameron diverted, "and I want to get going while it's still early and not so crowded."
"Alright," Dad conceded. "Make sure you have your cellphone, and you can use the credit card for clothes."
"Oh, Kewl. Thanks," Cameron said.
"Clothes do count as a basic necessity up to a point," Dad pointed out. "I trust you not to go overboard."
Cameron nodded and waved as she headed out the door, swinging her backpack on. She walked with a spring in her step, feeling light on her feet. She hadn't bothered to explicitly check yet, but Cameron was pretty sure she was significantly stronger than she'd been before her sudden inexplicable girlification. She was definitely more limber.
Last night, after she spent a few hours exploring her new body, and learned how to pee sitting down, Cameron tried on most of her clothes and found that nothing fit right. Her underwear was way too loose except at the waistband, unless she pulled the briefs nearly up to her ribs, which looked ridiculous. Her smaller and darker-colored t-shirts looked okay, even if they showed off her boobs enough that she'd probably get stared at, but the real problem was they felt really awkward stretching tightly in some places and bunching up in others. Though a bit tighter, her pants still mostly fit, but the khakis and jeans chafed at her thighs when she moved in them. Surprisingly, her sneakers still fit just fine.
Figuring that new underwear was the first priority, Cameron had realized that trying to buy bras when she looked like she ought to already know all about her sizes and stuff would be beyond awkward. Either she would have to spend all day figuring it out herself, which would look weird, ask for help like a twelve-year-old which would be suspicious, or just buy everything that even looked like it might fit and end up throwing most of them away, which would be weird and wasteful.
So she had done some research.
First, she'd learned that she could check her cup size by measuring from rib to rib over her nipple. Ten inches put her at D, which was a surprise. She'd thought the D sizes were for like Sekirei-size boobs, not her generous but fairly normal-looking ones.
However, it turned out that the whole thing about 'proper support' was a complete myth. She'd gone on to read about breast anatomy mostly out of idle curiosity, and learned that the length and structure of the Cooper's Ligaments was determined genetically with separate encoded lengths for pre-lactation and post-lactation, and only began to fail when health decay or compressive atrophy interfered with elastin replenishment. Which meant that, depending on your genetics, 'proper support' would either have no effect at all, or actually accelerate sagging.
Cameron smiled wryly as she walked down the street. She still intended to get a few bras if only for forms sake, but...
She'd spent an embarrassingly long time admiring herself in the mirror last night. As a boy, Cameron had been more than a little self-conscious about his body, but the body she had now was, well, idealized. Pretty, symmetrical except for the emerald forelock, well proportioned with shapely muscles and sexy curves, and no unsightly features anywhere. There was nothing of her girl body to be modest about.
Cameron glanced down at her chest. Her nipples were clearly outlined through the black cotton. She didn't think it was too noticeable unless someone was already looking at her chest, but there wasn't a whole lot left to the imagination if anyone did look closely. And that was okay with her.
"Huh," Cameron said out loud. I wonder if I've had a few exhibitionist urges lurking around the back of my brain, that are coming out now that I've got a body that isn't a hairy, pimply, aesthetic nightmare.
Cameron ignored a crosswalk and cut across a side street onto Telegraph Avenue, heading towards the university. Her sense of modesty really was geared more towards sparing other people an unpleasant experience than it was towards shielding the sight of her body from those who'd want to see it. It had always been that way, now that she thought about it, but maybe that was just because boy Cameron had never actually met anyone who wanted to see more of his body. Cameron shrugged to herself.
It was still early and the air still had that brisk ocean chill to it, the sun coming in low and warm from over the hills. The streets weren't too busy. Cameron did nothing but simply walk around for a while, reminding herself where certain stores were that she had only noted in passing. That took over an hour all by itself, but it also confirmed something else. She'd been striding around for long enough that it was obvious that her body's fitness wasn't just for show.
Her memory was better too. Cameron had no trouble remembering every single store she'd noted and what she'd seen in the windows of each one.
Cameron started with underwear, heading into the first store on her mental list. She browsed uncertainly through some of the various options, but once she had a better idea of sizes she ended up sticking with simple. Unadorned black cotton panties in bulk. She could always come back for the less utilitarian options later, if she wanted.
It made her think about why she might want "adventurous" underwear, though.
She'd gone from exploring her girl body to thinking about equipping it. She hadn't really thought about living as a girl, yet. It wasn't like she could just go to school on monday as the same Cameron Endel that went last week. At the very least, half her teachers would notice a strange girl sitting in Cameron Endel's assigned seat. But she didn't have any friends or other obligations that would miss her boy self. She still wanted a girlfriend, and wouldn't hesitate to call herself a lesbian now, but that brought a different set of social challenges than what he'd been facing as a boy, the most daunting one to Cameron's mind being figuring out which girls were gynephiles and which were homophobes without making a fool of herself. Probably, the only time anyone would be seeing her underwear would be accidental glances in the locker room.
Strangely, Cameron wasn't too fussed one way or the other at the idea of changing for gym with the other girls. She didn't have a body she was self-conscious about anymore, and it wasn't like there was much titillation factor when she'd seen as much porn as she had.
Then there was the issue of her new body likely attracting boys' interest. Out of everything, Cameron was the least sure how she felt about that. She was fairly sure she didn't have any particular desires towards boys, but the idea of some of the people with desires towards her being boys wasn't actually off-putting. How did that work out?
Cameron shook herself out of her thoughts and moved over to the bras, but ran into a problem when she started looking at the labels. She'd figured out her cup size, but she'd completely forgotten to check her band size. "Well crud."
Fortunately, while Cameron stood there wondering how to figure out which bras would fit and debating the merits of just giving up and not getting any bras at all, a sales clerk spotted her and came to ask if she was finding everything alright. The clerk was a skinny girl who looked a few years older than Cameron.
"Um, I just realized I don't know my band size?" Cameron questioned.
"Oh," the girl said. "Well, we have a dressing room in the back. Why don't you take a few different sizes and try them until you find one that feels right?"
Cameron followed the suggestion. Once she knew her size she picked out three different bras in black to match the panties. Since, thanks to her research, she was planning to go braless whenever she could get away with it, she figured three would be enough.
At the next few stores, Cameron got a t-shirt and a tank-top or two at each while looking for pants she liked. One store had a nice selection of sports bras, which she bought five of. At another store she found some vests that appealed to her, which she thought would be handy if she wanted her lack of a bra to be less obvious when it was too warm to wear a jacket. She wound up buying several pairs of these black canvas pants that were marbled with grey to look like denim. Cameron had never favored jeans, but these only looked like jeans and she really liked the way they fit, so she bought five pairs, along with a couple of girl's khakis. She considered several colors, but somehow always ended up back in the nice neutrality of black. It just contrasted with her skin better, and avoided the issue of what went with what.
On her way to the register, Cameron spotted a mannequin wearing something she would never have imagined wanting to wear, but it was just kewl and she did want it. It was a short skirt, the black fabric pleated with a shiny emerald green geometric pattern sewn along the hem, and it actually hung a little below the waist from a pair of wide marbled green straps that made a shallow 'V' from the front and back of the loose waistband, riding above the hips. It was awesome and it matched that one bit of her hair that had turned green and there was a stack of them on a shelf under the mannequin.
It was mid-morning when Cameron headed back out onto the street, backpack weighed down with her purchases. She had one more stop to make, but this one wasn't for clothes. It was an entirely different kind of store she was heading for now, and she wasn't entirely sure she could make herself actually go in. Fortunately, she had a long walk to psyche herself up.
Cameron liked sex, and not just in the sense of wanting to have it. She found the whole subject of sexuality interesting, and worth geeking out about, not that she'd admit that casually. She was into a lot more than just porn when it came to that interest. Cameron had read about anatomy, sociosexual studies, sex life advice, you name it and a lot of erotic fiction.
Cameron thought that simple fear of the unknown went a long way to explain the foothold a lot of the cultural stigmas and urban myths about losing one's virginity had, especially for straight girls. Cameron had made a point of avoiding that, and it payed off in an unexpected way by keeping her from freaking out when she suddenly found herself female.
It also meant that Cameron had enjoyed seeing vaginas being penetrated by phalli countless times in a myriad variety of ways, and turning into a girl hadn't changed how she felt about that one bit. So, now that she was a girl, she wanted a dildo. That was just a given. She wanted to get the most out of her new anatomy, and her fingers were a poor substitute for something designed to penetrate her.
Ideally, she would have simply ordered something online, but unfortunately her dad had a habit of opening her packages for her. If he opened a box and found sex toys, well, it wouldn't be a disaster or anything, but it would be as embarrassing as all hell. So now she was making the long trek down to where she'd found an 'adult superstore' on Google Maps.
Cameron was maybe a third of the way there when she felt somebody tap her on the shoulder. She looked back to see who wanted what. It was a nervous blonde woman. Cameron met her eyes... and just zoned out completely.
It was like being lost in thought, except she wasn't thinking about anything in particular.
The next thing Cameron knew, she was leaning down between the front seats of a van while a disturbingly good-looking man in a baseball cap held a wet cloth to her face. Cameron lashed out on reflex, but the man was solid muscle and she was having trouble seeing straight. She didn't even manage to turn around and run before everything went black.
Cameron came to with a groan. This was the first time in three weeks that she'd been unconscious, so the first thing she did was a reflexive rousing of her wakefulness. She snapped to full alertness and found herself with her back to a cement wall with her arms chained over her head. She stood, taking her weight off her wrists, and checked herself over. Her backpack and clothes were gone. Someone had stripped her and dressed her in gown of diaphanous white layers.
She was in what looked like a cramped but well-lit basement, and she wasn't alone. There were three unconscious teenage boys in shiny white draw-string pants hanging from the adjacent wall to Cameron's left, and three unconscious teenage girls hanging from the wall next to her in white gowns like Cameron's. The adonic man from the van was directly in front of her, leaning against the side of a wooden staircase with his arms folded, watching them impassively.
Cameron realized she'd been kidnapped, and probably not by someone who wanted something as benign as ransom if the skimpy matching costumes were any clue. This was a direct, intentional threat to Cameron's person. A feeling of cold malevolence creeped through Cameron's veins like soothing ice, leaving behind an eerie calm.
First priority, information about the threat.
Cameron arranged her facial features into an expression of dawning horror, putting a fearful lilt into her voice as she looked around frantically and tugged on the manacles that held her arms over her head. "What's going on? Where is this? Who are you?"
Her frantic looking around wasn't just for effect. She used it to conceal the targeting of her fellow hostages in her biokinesis. A burst of numbing ensured they remained unconscious.
The man regarded her for a long moment while Cameron studied him through her act. Action-hero good looks and build, black boots and worn cargo pants in army green, heavy belt, hunting knife in a sheath at his hip, ring of keys opposite the knife, tactical vest over a bare torso, another knife. There was a considering expression on his face, but then it faded and he ignored her questions.
Cameron glanced fearfully between the other hostages, then hung forward as far as her restraints would allow with a pleading expression on her face. "Please. What do you want with me?"
His eyes dipped into Cameron's cleavage, but otherwise he ignored her. Cameron noticed, and decided to change tactics. She split her focus between the man's libido and her own adrenaline production, rousing both steadily. At the same time, she dropped the act completely, fear and pleading vanishing in an instant.
That got a reaction. The man jerked from his slouch and grabbed the hilt of his knife. Cameron ignored that, giving him a dead stare as she deliberately and obviously braced her back against the wall and pulled on the restraints as hard as she could. The metal bit painfully into her wrists but the bolts and chains actually creaked.
She let off on her own adrenaline and the man's libido to focus on the other hostages and rouse them just enough to wake up, then she resumed her rousing on the man.
"Let me go," Cameron said in an utterly calm tone, her face expressionless despite her growing flush from the strain.
"I do that, I don't get paid," the man responded, finally speaking.
"Let me go anyway," Cameron said in the same tone, sweat beading on her brow and body as her chest heaved in deep, measured breaths.
"Why should I?" he shot back.
The other hostages were stirring. There was a visible bulge in the man's pants as he watched Cameron strain. The man was starting to look at her with something like hunger. The ultimate goal of what Cameron was doing was to get information on her situation out of the man, but no one had ever looked at Cameron that way before. Underneath her cold rationality, Cameron liked it. She really liked it.
"Whu?" "Hey, where?" "What the fuck is this?" "What's going on?" "Ohgodohgod."
The others were awake. The blonde girl next to Cameron was already in tears as the rest made various demands. The man turned and drove his fist into the opposite wall. Concrete chips exploded across the room with a deafening crack. The man pulled his fist from a gaping hole in solid concrete to complete silence. Even Cameron paused in her steady strain against her restraints.
"I am Slamjam," the man announced. "You are now the property of the Grand Hall of Sinister Wisdom. I am going to guard you. You are going to behave. Are we clear?"
Magical supervillains. They'd been taken by magical supervillains. "Like shit. What do they want with us?"
Slamjam rounded on Cameron. "Am I gonna need to get rough with you?"
Cameron just gave Slamjam a challenging glare and intensified her rousing. He was already tenting his pants, but Cameron was aiming at a narrower target. She wasn't just trying to make him hard, and making him cream his pants would be counter-productive. Instead, she was concentrating specifically on the feeling of having gone way to long without getting off. Cameron didn't understand the exact biochemical processes she was manipulating, but as long as she had experienced it herself that didn't seem to matter.
It was getting to him. Slamjam lunged forward. Cameron forced herself to not flinch. If he was going to hit her there was no effective way to block so it would look better if she didn't try. The backhand blow crashed into her face, knocking her to the side.
"Hey! Leave her alone!" the middle boy shouted while the others gasped or whimpered.
Cameron blinked once, drinking in the pain as fuel for her cold malevolence. The whole side of her face throbbed as she calmly straightened herself up and gave him a dead stare.
"I am not impressed with your creativity," Cameron droned.
With a growl, Slamjam closed a hand around her neck, but he didn't strangle her. He leaned threateningly into her personal space and yanked down the front of her gown, exposing her breasts. The other hostages made noises of exclamation and dismay. Slamjam roughly groped Cameron's sizable handful of flesh and the girl next to her started sobbing again, whimpering something that sounded like a prayer.
"Get away from her you perv!" the boy on the left yelled.
Cameron didn't react at all. It hurt, but much less than her face, and at the same time it also felt good. That didn't matter, though. Only solving the threat mattered.
"Stop provoking him!" the hispanic-looking girl on Cameron's other side pleaded. "You don't want to do this, man. Think about the line you're about to cross."
The middle boy was making a racket tugging on his shackles and the blonde girl had her eyes shut as she whispered prayers. Slamjam and Cameron ignored them, locked in a battle of wills.
Slamjam released Cameron's neck and reached down for the hem of her gown. He slid his hand up her thigh. When his firm fingers prodded Cameron's labia and she still didn't visibly react, Slamjam suddenly pulled away with a growl.
"What? Worried you'll be interrupted?" Cameron challenged.
Slamjam glanced at the ceiling and grunted, as though dismissing that idea. Cameron took that to mean no, it would be a while until whoever was in charge came for them. Good to know. Slamjam's hand snapped out and gripped her neck again. He squeezed hard, cutting off her air as he leaned in and licked the bruise he'd given her.
"You're damn lucky the bosses need virgins," Slamjam growled, "because I am this close to just wrecking you, little girl."
He released her, and gasping for air covered her sudden disbelief. Virgin sacrifices. They were virgin sacrifices. Cameron was going to be a virgin sacrifice. She snapped. Her stoic calm and cold rationality were blown away by a simple overwhelming feeling of, Oh hell no.
Cameron looked up with death in her eyes. She narrowed her focus to Slamjam's heartbeat, and numbed with all her might. The adonic mercenary froze, clutching his chest with an expression of wide-eyed surprise and fear. A moment later he hit the floor, dead.
Cameron took a moment to marvel that that had actually worked. The other hostages were all watching, open-mouthed.
"What did you do?" the hispanic girl demanded.
"I killed him," Cameron replied as she reached for Slamjam's keyring with her foot.
"How?" the furthest girl, a petite curly brunette, boggled.
"Stopped his heart," Cameron explained, as her toes passed right through the keyring, dissolving it. "Oh fuck. The keys were fake."
"Mutant," the boy on the right breathed in realization. "You're a mutant."
"Yes," Cameron said, glancing up at her shackles and rousing her adrenaline.
The blonde girl squeaked and tried to edge away from Cameron. "Gene filth. My lord Jesus guard my soul from this taint on creation."
"Oh shut up," the boy on the left snapped at the blonde girl.
Cameron's heart was pounding as her adrenaline spiked. It is a little-known quirk of muscle composition that normally two thirds of the cells are dormant, only operating in times of immense stress. As Cameron's power forced her adrenaline to rise to critical levels, her body reached that threshold, momentarily tripling the force her muscles were capable of exerting. With strength three times that of an olympic athlete and a scream of effort, Cameron wrenched down on her shackles and tore them from their chains.
Falling to her knees in pain, Cameron clutched at her throbbing arms and gasped for breath. She crawled onto Slamjam's body and started searching for the real keys. Her breasts were still hanging out of her gown but that was so not important right now.
"Hey, mutant girl," the boy on the right said. "What's your name? Mine's Brian."
Cameron looked up at Brian, who was a scrawny but cute pale dark-haired boy. "Ca - " No, no real names where the Humanity First fangirl could hear. "Rouse. Call me Rouse."
Because, really, what else would she call herself?
"I'm Annabelle," the petite curly brunette announced. "What about the rest of you?"
"John," said the middle boy, who had the aryan look.
The hispanic girl was Katie, the gangly black boy on the left was Alan, and the blonde bigot finally admitted to being, "Marien."
"Ruuuah!" Cameron grunted in frustration. "He doesn't have the keys!"
Cameron stood and leaped lightly up the stairwell, but the door at the top was solid steel and there was no knob or anything on this side. Cameron sagged against the metal, wracking her brains for alternatives.
"So what the hell is the Grand Hall of Sinister Wisdom, anyway?" came Alan's voice from below. "That is what the dead dude said when we woke up, right?"
"You haven't heard of them?" Annabelle replied. "They're like a supervillain group for dark mages, from like New York."
"Oh my lord in heaven," Marien gasped, and started mumbling prayers again.
"Would you please stop that?" Annabelle complained.
"Did you guys hear what the dead guy said to Rouse?" Katie asked. "It was something about needing us to be virgins! Why would they care about that?"
Cameron's eye twitched.
"Oh fuck no," Brian groaned. "They're dark mages. Why do you think? We're human sacrifices!"
Cameron's whole body twitched. The others made various exclamations of dismay.
"Oh man! I don't want to die a virgin!" Alan whined.
"No shit!" Cameron yelled, spinning and leaping to the bottom of the stairwell. The others stared at her as she yanked her gown up and off, fighting with the layers of floaty fabric before she got it over her head and threw it to the side, leaving her gorgeous body bare. "I for one am not going to die a virgin, and I am damn well not about to die because I'm a virgin."
"Eeep!" Marien squeaked.
Cameron focused on all six of them and roused their arousal. The girls gasped and the guys suddenly all had a major tenting going on. Everyone but Marien shared looks and blushed, while the blonde girl trembled with a panicky wide-eyed expression.
"Damn, seriously?" Alan said, sounding impressed. "That's above and beyond."
"I don't want my virginity any more than you want yours," Cameron told him, "especially not now that it's why I'm in mortal danger."
"Oh man, you're really gonna...?" Katie trailed off.
"No! Don't listen to her!" Marien screeched. "She is an abomination with unholy powers sent to lead us astray! We must not allow her to defile out purity and virtue with her sinful lusts!"
"You have a better idea?" Brian snapped.
"No, Marien has a point even if she's not making it very well," John said. "I don't want to die, but I don't want to break my oath of celibacy while chained up in a hostage situation, to a mutant slu - mutant's sloppy seconds, either. I don't want to get out of this only to have to live with that."
Cameron twitched. She wasn't offended that he'd almost called her a slut. That was worth, at most, an eye-roll, considering why they were there in the first place. She was completely exasperated by his attitude, though. Marien's behavior could be excused by fear and a sheltered upbringing, but John actually sounded calm and thoughtful.
"Oh come on!" Annabelle exclaimed. "Saving yourself for whatever is so a moot point right now."
"Thank you," Cameron and Brian both said at the same time.
Cameron started towards Annabelle, then stopped to consider. This was most likely about ancient magical definitions of virginity, which might mean that only heterosexual intercourse would count. That sucked, because she still would have rather given her virginity to a girl, but this was about more than what she wanted.
If that was the case, she needed to get one of the boys free for the sake of the other girls, but she didn't know how long it would be before her arms would be recovered enough for another adrenaline spike. They still hurt a lot. So, maybe she needed to do all six of them anyway, just in case it counted. Cameron worried that she was rationalizing instead of being rational, then she worried that she might not have time to worry about rationalizing, then she shook it off and focused on Annabelle, intensifying her rousing.
"Alright, you first," Cameron said to the petite girl as Annabelle shivered and started breathing heavy. "You ever thought about sex with a girl?"
"No! Well, um, maybe once or twice," Annabelle mumbled as Cameron lifted the petite girl's gown, bunching it around her arms and behind her head. "God why am I so turned on right now?"
Cameron just smiled reassuringly, pressed her against the wall with her body, and kissed her. The warm skin and squishy flesh of their bare fronts pressed together felt shockingly good as their tongues met. Cameron hadn't ever actually experienced anything like that either, and it felt better than she'd imagined it would. It took her a few moments to get the hang of it, but when she did she lost herself for a while in raw sensation.
"Dayyam," Alan whispered.
There was a small part of Cameron that leaped with joy. It was her first kiss! This was a momentous occasion! The rest of her determined that part to be inappropriate and counter-productive, and stomped it down.
Shifting a bit to one side and slouching, Cameron pressed her slick vulva into Annabelle's thigh and reached down. Cameron's fingers slid through Annabelle's sweltering folds, exploring a tactile feast, as Annabelle lifted her thigh for Cameron to grind on.
"I vote John goes last," Brian said, "if he's gonna be all down on Rouse for being awesome."
Cameron's palm was flat against Annabelle's slippery labia as Cameron's two middle fingers thrust into her, encountering little resistance. Annabelle had probably broken her own hymen at some point. Cameron approved.
"Hey, I've got nothing against her," John said. "I'd just rather thwart our captors without sacrificing my virtue in the process. Telling my pastor about this is already going to be bad enough."
"Dude, they're probably going to kill us, or worse," Katie said. "You won't be around to brag about keeping your oath if we don't get out of this."
Annabelle moaned, jerking her hips forward onto Cameron's fingers. Cameron turned her gentle rousing on herself, which suddenly made the friction against Annabelle's thigh enough to catapult her to the edge of orgasm. Then, with all four fingers penetrating Annabelle, Cameron roused the other girl strongly, slamming a deep kiss down on her open mouth to muffle Annabelle's prolonged scream of pleasure. Annabelle's thrashing pushed Cameron that last little bit over the edge, just as she planned.
"I repeat, Dayyyyam," Alan said when Annabelle had been bucking and gasping for nearly a whole minute.
"And you're just okay with letting some mutant deviant do," John jerked his head at where Annabelle had sagged against Cameron, "that to you?"
"If it means not getting sacrificed to some evil magic thing, hell yes," Katie said. "Fuck, look at Annabelle. I'd want somma that even if my life didn't depend on it."
"Seriously, what is with you?" Brian asked. "You got a problem with mutants? Or are you just a homophobe?"
"The devout simply cannot condone sexual relations outside of marriage between a man and a woman," John said. "And a sinner with power is worse than the sinning itself."
Cameron looked over with a glare from where she had Annabelle's head on her shoulder. "There is no such thing as Sin. If that thing you worship can collect souls that defy His philosophy and inflict an eternity of torture on them out of petty spite, that doesn't make Him right. Or anything other than powerful."
"Of course not," John scoffed. "He is right and good because he is God, the source of morality. God is right and good by definition!"
"If that's how you define the word 'God' then the word certainly doesn't apply to that thing you worship," Cameron said evenly. "Goodness is a complex ranking algorithm that evolved in human-pattern minds, not some intrinsic property of existence. There are only values, consequences, and how the latter reflects over variations in the former among beings of unequal power."
"Guys, come on, this is so not the time," Katie said.
John was busy sputtering. "You arrogant heathen! You actually think you know better than God?"
"There is no 'knowing better' because there is no metric of morality written into the fabric of the universe that He can see and I can't. Values can only exist inside minds, and I think my values are incompatible with His," Cameron corrected over the sounds of Annabelle getting her breath back. "His values combined with His supposed power make him a threat and an enemy, not just to me but to every being my values are compatible with, including you. But you don't care about that. You're emotionally invested in the fictitious cosmic significance of your arbitrary morality. You'd rather we all die horribly than risk changing your mind."
John got even more indignant, but Cameron just hit him with a powerful rousing, sending him into orgasm before he got two words out. "Hey now...aauuuhhhh! Aauuh! Aauuh! Aauuh!"
"Dude," Alan said uncertainly as the wet spot spread across the front of John's shiny white pants.
"That has got be the most awesome superpower ever," Brian said, blushing.
"You're way too into this, you know that?" Katie said to Brian with a grimace.
Cameron stroked Annabelle's hair until the petite girl lifted her head. Cameron slid her hands to Annabelle's hips, thumbs moving in a gentle caress. Annabelle looked at her, more than a little boggled.
"Wow," Annabelle whispered.
"Do you still feel like a virgin?" Cameron asked seriously.
Annabelle shook her head. "No. Definitely no. I mean... wow."
"See?" John managed. "She enforces her blasphemy with her powers."
Cameron unbunched Annabelle's gown and pulled it over her curly head and down into place, ignoring John. She did smile a bit at Annabelle's compliment, but only for a moment. Yes, she had blown Annabelle's mind, but Cameron's biokinesis did kind of give her the mother of all unfair advantages when it came to sex.
Moving over to Marien, she found the blonde girl staring straight ahead like she'd gone catatonic. Cameron felt only exasperation and a vague sorrow for Marien, but was nursing a cold anger at whoever had raised her. Cameron reached for the hem of Marien's gown.
Marien shrieked when Cameron touched her, pressing herself back against the wall and bending to the side to avoid Cameron's hands.
"Don't touch her," John ordered, suddenly angry. "Marien is obviously an innocent and virtuous girl, even if she is hysterical right now. Are you going to force yourself on her? You've gone far enough. Do you really want to add rape to your sins?"
"No," Cameron said calmly, "but this isn't about what I want. It isn't even just about saving us." Cameron pointed at the ceiling. "It's about fucking up their plans."
Cameron turned back to Marien and roused her, hard. As Marien gasped and a deep flush spread down her neck, Cameron fondled Marien's breast through the wispy layers of white fabric. Marien's mouth opened in surprise, and Cameron quickly pulled Marien's gown up to her elbows above her head. Cameron brought her hands back to Marien's bare breasts, thumbing Marien's nipples as Cameron roused her over the edge.
"Ohhhhhhhh!" Marien whimpered as she trembled through an orgasm. Not a very strong one, but that was intentional since Cameron guessed Marien had never had one before.
Cameron dropped one hand and firmly cupped the blonde girl's vulva in her palm, slipping her middle two fingers to Marien's entrance. Cameron rubbed in slow circles as she relaxed her power, allowing Marien to come down from that first orgasm. Cameron's circling fingers slipped through Marien's folds and pushed in until they met her hymen. Then, Cameron roused at full power, almost immediately sending Marien careening into an overwhelming multi-orgasm at just the same moment Cameron shoved her fingers up through Marien's barrier.
Marien was far too stunned by the pleasure to notice the pain.
Cameron wiped her bloody fingers on the inside of Marien's gown as the moaning and shaking girl sagged in her restraints. Cameron brought Marien's gown back down into place. Once the blonde girl calmed down, she didn't say anything or even look at anyone. She just stood there looking stunned, or possibly grief-stricken, it was hard to tell.
John sighed angrily.
"Dayyyyam."
"You said that already," Brian snarked.
"So, me now?" Katie asked nervously.
Cameron swung her arms, then flexed, testing how they felt. "Maybe. I think my arms are rested enough that I could get one of the boys free, if you'd rather do it that way."
Katie looked over at the boys and blushed. "Um..."
Brian gulped, John glared at the floor, and Alan gave her a lecherous grin.
"I'm pretty sure I could use my power to make it good even if I'm not participating," Cameron informed her, thoughtfully.
Katie looked tempted, but, "I'm not on birth control."
Cameron nodded and lifted Katie's gown. Katie shyed away a little, reflexively clenching her legs together. Cameron put her hand flat on Katie's tense belly, gently stroking Katie's skin as Cameron focused a rousing on both of their arousals. Katie blushed heavily, but widened her stance and thrust her hips forward when Cameron moved in and pressed her thigh between Katie's. Katie looked up at Cameron's face and Cameron kissed her, squishing their breasts together. Cameron could almost feel the heavy thudding of Katie's heart in her skin.
Cameron finished with Katie much as she had with Annabelle. She turned to face the boys.
"Hey, are you just going in order?" Alan asked with an eager grin. "That mean you're gonna do me now?"
Cameron stared at him, and watched the grin slide off Alan's face as she kept staring at him. Yes, that was what she intended to do, but now that she was directly facing sex with a boy there were parts of her that leaped out of her subconscious and held her paralyzed.
Cameron closed her eyes and took a deep breath, mentally reviewing everything relevant about the situation, and about herself. Attraction was irrelevant, and her powers made it inconsequential. Her identity was unthreatened. She wanted to want to do this. The physical risks were minimal. She knew she hadn't been a girl long enough to be fertile yet.
The problem seemed to be embarrassment. She'd only been a girl for a day and she was about to have sex with boys. If anyone found out they'd call Cameron gay for sure! If the boys found out they'd be disgusted and freaked out that they'd been tricked into fucking a boy! That was the feeling that was stopping her.
But it wasn't valid. Cameron was attracted to whoever she was attracted to regardless of what she did or who called her what. Cameron wasn't a boy or a girl inside the girl's body, and it didn't matter what body she'd been born with or what body she'd had yesterday, she was herself and that person wasn't a boy or a girl beyond the body she was in, and right now she was in a girl body. It wasn't valid, and more importantly, it was making it more likely that they'd all be killed in some dark ritual. This feeling was a threat and must be excised from her mind like a cancerous tumor.
Cameron opened her eyes and looked at Alan, John, and Brian. Alan was affecting an aloof look despite the major tenting in his pants. John looked pissed off. Brian's expression was complicated, but the naked desire was easy enough to see. Cameron's heart stuttered. She'd enjoyed it when Slamjam had looked at her like that, and he'd been a hostile enemy. From a peer and ally, it was comparable to being smiled at for the first time in her life. It took her breath away.
As Cameron moved towards Brian, she caught Alan's sullen frown and realized that Alan had probably just been playing it cool while she collected herself. Oh well, she'd get to him.
Brian swallowed visibly as Cameron undid the drawstring on his shiny white pants and dropped them, revealing his erection. Cameron began a careful rousing on Brian's arousal, his hardness, with a slight numbing on his orgasm response. Focusing simultaneously on two different body functions that were so closely linked took a delicate touch, but Cameron had spent a few nights practicing the technique last week.
Cameron's first thought was to turn around and bend over. That would be the easiest way with Brian chained to the wall. But she wanted to see his face. She wanted to look into that hunger and exult. Despite their twinging soreness, Cameron thought her arms were still strong enough to support her weight.
Stepping forward, Cameron reached up and grasped Brian's chain where it met his cuffs, her naked from pressing against his as she tested her grip. With a firm rousing on herself, Cameron was wet enough that she felt like she could take a fist. Brian jumped slightly as droplets of Cameron's arousal fell on his erection.
Cameron reached between them and aimed him as she curled her hips forward. He slid into her, and she took a moment to experience how different it felt from her own fingers. Then she reached up for the chain and hung by her arms as she walked up the wall on either side of Brian's torso.
Brian gave her a few experimental thrusts as soon as she was in position and Cameron shuddered in pleasure. Under the effects of Cameron's rousing and his own desire, Brian couldn't help but start thrusting in earnest, Cameron bouncing a few inches away from his body as he picked up speed.
With the subtle numbing on Brian's orgasm response, he could thrust with abandon and not immediately go off like the virgin he was, and he did. Cameron felt an orgasm creeping up on her without any help from her power, and she let it happen. Her head fell back with a gasp and her muscles locked up as she forced herself not to pull away from the white-hot pleasure of Brian pounding into her through her climax.
Cameron lost control of her power as she rode it out, and by the time she realized she had, Brian was already ejaculating inside her.
Brian sagged under her and nuzzled her breasts. Cameron could have roused him back to readiness easily, but her hands and arms were aching and she was starting to worry about how much time they had left. She lifted off of him with a wet plop and dropped to her feet.
"Thank you," Brian breathed softly.
Cameron gave him a small smile and nodded as she pulled his pants up and retied them. John was hard again without any help from Cameron, but he looked even more pissed off than before, so Cameron went to Alan and started untying his pants.
Alan winced at the opaque runnels of fluid on Cameron's thighs. "Aw, man, I don't wanna get little white boy's jizz all over me. That is just gay."
Cameron raised an eyebrow at him as she let his pants fall from his half-erectness. "Do you see a bathroom? A sink? Towels?"
"Ah, no," Alan said.
"Seriously, this basement is crap," Katie muttered. "What, are they discount budget villains?"
Brian snerked.
Cameron met Alan's eyes as she roused him erect. "Your desires lay where they lay. Nothing I do will affect that. Now fuck me before we all die."
Alan laughed. "Right. Yeah."
Cameron turned around and bent over, curving her spine nearly ninety degrees to keep her balance as she leaned back into Alan. He was tall enough that his erection brushed her spine until he took up the slack in his chains and slouched. Once she got him inside her, she focused the same dual rousing and numbing on him and reached back to his hips to steady herself as he went at it with enthusiasm.
When she finished with Alan, he had a big goofy grin on his face and her legs were a little wobbly. Cameron had to rouse herself pretty strongly before she was ready for more.
John set his jaw and ignored her when she untied his pants. He didn't look at her when she roused him fully erect. When she turned to position herself as she had with Alan, John growled petulantly, "I do not consent to this. The sin of my tainting is yours."
Cameron sighed and impaled herself on him, her butt settling against his hips. He refused to move at first, even when Cameron wiggled her hips and felt him slide around inside her, so Cameron decided to test the limits of her fine control. She hit him with a much stronger dual rousing and numbing. Trembles quaked his rigid body. Concentrating carefully, Cameron slowly eased off the numbing of his orgasm response until she felt him spasm inside her, then held steady. She rocked her hips and slightly increased the numbing when she felt his penis jump again.
John shuddered as his hips gave a single involuntary thrust that would have pushed him over the edge if Cameron hadn't minutely increased the numbing effect in anticipation, letting through only a single orgasmic spasm. Cameron eased off again. Another involuntary thrust, another almost-orgasm. John let out a sound like a wounded animal and started thrusting on his own.
It took too much concentration to keep John in that state as he sped up to spare any for herself, but John was going at her with enough fervor that she felt another orgasm building in her anyway. When she climaxed it was almost painfully intense. She couldn't hold onto her power and didn't try as she choked off a scream. John exploded inside her as soon as her power stopped affecting him.
John's legs folded out from under him and Cameron fell off of him and onto her hands and knees. John was limp and panting as he hung from his arms, and Cameron was shaking. Slowly, she stood up and took a moment to let her heart-rate fall. She smiled to herself, feeling powerful as she pulled John's pants up and retied them. She'd played the urges of John's body until his will was overcome. That was no small accomplishment. That made her power dangerous.
Well, considering what she'd done to Slamjam, that was already true, but still. It was a far cry from her first impression of her own mutant power.
"So," Brian said, "what now?"
Cameron went over to Slamjam's body and started dragging it, until he was sitting up against the side of the staircase. Having a sudden thought, she scooped as much of the fluids from her thighs as she could and wiped it on the inside of his vest.
"I guess we wait for them to come get us?" Annabelle said.
"Then what?" Katie asked. "Make a break for it?"
"Like that would work," Brian said. "They'd just have that blonde lady put the whammy on us again. Duh."
"Right, right. I forgot about her, okay?" Katie defended.
"Man, the bad guys are gonna be pissed when they find their guard dead," Alan said.
Cameron went and picked up her own gown from where she'd discarded it and shook it out. "I can revive our guard and make it look like he just fell asleep. He's been down long enough that he'll have lost his short-term memories."
"Oh. And we just pretend nothing happened?" Alan asked.
"Wait! The fake key!" Brian pointed out. "It'll still be gone. They'll know something's not right."
"Maybe not," Cameron said. "If the fake keys were anything like an alarm, they would have checked on us long before now."
"That's true," Annabelle said. "So what were they then? Just false hope? Somebody's idea of a joke?"
"Possibly," Cameron said as she pulled her gown on, "but we shouldn't speculate. We should stick to what we know."
"That isn't much," Katie said.
Cameron swept the floor for broken chainlinks, kicking them under the staircase. "We know we were abducted by villainous mages. We know they have mutant muscle, and at least one woman with mind control. We know they need virgins. We don't all fit any one type, so we can infer that virginity was the only quality they were looking for. We know they dressed us in a specific way, so we can infer they're going to present us to something that wants virgins and doesn't care what else we are."
"So, human sacrifice," Katie said. "How does that help? We already figured that."
"Wait," Brian said. "She's right about them dressing us up. They wouldn't have done that if they were just going to stab us on an alter or something."
"Unless they're performing for an audience," Cameron said darkly.
"Right. Crap," Brian said.
Cameron went back to her space on the wall between Marien and Katie, and focused on Slamjam. It was hard. It felt kind of like her power was slipping off of him or through him, but she kept trying until she managed to rouse his heart into beating again and he began to stir. As soon as he moved, she numbed his wakefulness.
"I think you're right, though," Cameron said to Brian. "Our best chance is probably to bet on being unharmed when they start doing whatever they're going to do, and try to make our escape when it backfires on them. Anyone disagree?"
Cameron reached up for her broken chain and hooked the broken links through the intact ones. It wasn't perfect, but it would pass at a glance.
No one spoke up with a better plan. They settled in to wait.
They didn't have a clock, but it felt like about half an hour later when the heavy steel door clunked open.
A figure in a black hooded cloak glided down the staircase as though weightless. Under the cloak was a statuesque bronze-skinned woman in what looked like motorcycle leathers. Her midnight blue eyes scanned the hostages before landing on Slamjam and narrowing in anger. Cameron gave Slamjam's wakefulness a rousing nudge.
"Slamjam!" the woman barked, startling him awake. "I am near to disbelieving that I find you asleep at your post. Clearly, the rumors of your competence have been greatly exaggerated." She sniffed, and wrinkled her nose. "And you smell like dirty sheets."
Slamjam quickly struggled to his feet, scowling. "I've never fallen asleep on the job before. I assure you this was a fluke, Lady Wandless."
The knives on Slamjam's hip and chest suddenly spun themselves out of their sheaths and poised to scissor through his eyes. He recoiled, but two strands of what looked like barbed wire shot from under the woman's cloak like striking snakes and snared Slamjam around the neck and arms.
The woman, who was apparently called Wandless, smiled. "We are on a timetable, so you'll forgive me for dispensing with the haggling and cutting to the chase. Your agreed-upon fee is no longer acceptable. You will accept twenty percent, or I will throw you out and spend a few weeks completely destroying your reputation."
"Twen - hurk! Twenty percent will be fine, ma'am," Slamjam managed to get out.
The barbed wire vanished once more under the woman's cloak and Slamjam caught his knives as they fell out of the air. Wandless faced Cameron and the others, holding a hand up. She snapped her fingers and produced a glob of blazing black fire from her fingers.
"Did you know," she addressed the hostages, "it is really quite remarkable how badly one's skin can be burned without endangering survival. Internal organs are remarkably well protected from that sort of damage. I need you alive, but I don't need you unharmed. So please, feel free to flee. I could use the target practice. Otkljucati."
She's bluffing, Cameron thought as that last word warbled strangely in her mind and her cuffs opened themselves. Either we're wrong about why they dressed us up, or she's bluffing. How can I tell which?
"Now, you will follow me," Wandless ordered, gliding up the stairs.
Slamjam smacked Brian with the flat of his knife. "You heard her. Move."
John discreetly took Marien's hand and led her up the stairs first. Cameron followed Annabelle, emerging into a wide carpeted hallway with ordinary white walls. She looked around, and caught the gaze of the blonde woman from the street.
Cameron zoned out.
"ROUSE!"
The terrified scream of desperation snapped Cameron from her induced stupor. The first thing she noticed was the blonde woman spinning around, eyes wide with panic. This time Cameron didn't hesitate. She focused on the woman's heartbeat, and numbed with brutal force.
Cameron looked around wildly as the blonde woman crumpled. There was a rushing sound like wind and a bright pulsing green glow from a pattern of thick lines on the hardwood floor of what looked like an upscale suburban dining hall without furnature. Seven circles, connected by lines that formed a triangle inside a square, with an eighth circle that was twice the size of the rest in the center of the triangle. The boys made the points of the triangle, and the girls made the points of the square. They punched and kicked and slammed their shoulders against invisible barriers defined by the circles. The center circle contained a pool of bubbling darkness that hurt to look at.
"Fuck! Daydream's down!" Slamjam shouted from off to the side.
Something that hinted at grasping claws and squirming razor spines was creeping like living shadow along the lines of power that led to the boys' circles. It was dizzying and Cameron felt her sanity straining to track the thing. John had his eyes closed and was chanting a prayer, Alan was attacking the barrier that contained him like a madman, and Brian was shaking as he stared desperately at Cameron.
"No! How?" Wandless screeched from where she was levitating ten feet above the eldritch pool, black cloak flaring.
Cameron took the opportunity to hit Slamjam with another literal Death Glare. As the large man's heart stopped for the second time, Cameron felt an invisible force yank her head around, forcing her to look up at Wandless. Big mistake. Cameron focused another Death Glare on the woman, but before it could have much effect, the invisible force shoved her down. Cameron fought the woman's telekinetic grasp, and was surprised when it actually gave a bit, causing Wandless to wince in pain and sink a foot lower, but it was enough to make Cameron lose her own biokinetic hold.
Across the eldritch pool on the other side of the glowing pattern, a man stood haloed in green light in a hooded black cloak like the woman's. He pointed at Cameron. "It's her! The girl's got powers!"
"Yes dear, I noticed, thank y - "
A blood-curdling scream in triplicate cut through everything. Cameron watched in horror as the writhing shadow reached the boys' circles and dozens of deep cuts just appeared on their bodies. They collapsed in their circles, blood pouring from skin as they frantically tried to hold the wounds closed with their hands. Blood poured into the shadow, and shadow screamed in rage with a sound that made sparks go off in Cameron's visual field.
"Impossible! That's a rejection!" the man yelled. "Oh shit! We're sabotaged!"
"Lars! Forget the essence taps!" Wandless shouted. "Put everything into the containment!"
Cameron swore internally. Her great plan wasn't looking so great anymore. The boys would be dead in moments, and the razor shadow thing didn't look like it was going to just go away. If anything it was reaching towards Cameron and the other girls faster than it had gone for the boys.
Cameron slammed a shoulder into the barrier of her own circle in frustration. And fell right through without hitting anything. Her circle didn't have a barrier! Cameron leaped to her feet and ran around the outside of the pattern.
A flurry of knives sank into the floor in front of Cameron, making her flinch back. An invisible force tripped her and she fell flat on her back. Cameron looked in the direction the attack had come from, dazed, and saw strands of barbed wire shooting towards her from Wandless. Cameron yanked her feet up on sheer reflex and rolled backwards into a crouch, but the wire whipped sideways and caught her anyway.
"Eeaaagk!" Cameron screamed, as the razor sharp barbs bit into her shin and arms and neck, slicing into muscle and tendon as they yanked her back into the magic pattern. Lightning danced down the wires, adding to the damage with convulsions and burns. And, just as Cameron had when her sister had dumped a pan of boiling oil on her, she reacted.
The barbed wire was shredded as Cameron's flesh expelled it at lethal speeds. Shrapnel pelted the walls and impaled Marien through the chest where she was trapped in the nearest circle. Cameron flipped up to... his? Yes, his feet. He was a boy again, with the diaphanous white gown hanging off him awkwardly.
His distraction let Wandless land a telekinetically-driven knife in his shoulder, and again as the pain and awareness of the injury hit him, he reacted. The knife shot from Cameron's once more female shoulder like a bullet. It missed Wandless but it did put a big hole in the wall behind her.
"Yes!" Lars shouted. "We're okay! I'm breaking the pattern now."
Cameron noticed for the first time that the razor shadow thing had receded and the black pool had vanished. The man Lars did something and suddenly the pulsing green glow was gone, leaving the room lit only by ordinary sconces on the walls.
Not wasting time, Cameron focused a Death Glare on him. Wandless screamed in outrage as Lars toppled. Now free to move around the room, Wandless came down on Cameron with a fist full of dark fire. Cameron only barely managed to get out of the way, but as she scrambled to avoid the blow, Wandless used telekinesis to trip her again.
Other than Cameron, only Annabelle and Katie were still on their feet. In a display of remarkable bravery, they rushed Wandless, only to fall through her, scattering an illusion. The real Wandless appeared behind the two girls, her face a mask of fury. Katie was impaled on three strands of barbed wire and tossed aside to bleed out on the floor. Annabelle was hit with a glimmering shimmer that twisted through the air from Wandless' hand and ripped into her torso in an explosion of blood and gore that spattered Cameron and Wandless both. Annabelle was scattered in several bloody pieces around the room.
But their brutal executions gave Cameron enough time to focus a Death Glare. As Annabell's severed legs fell to the floor, so did Wandless.
Cameron stood in the suddenly silent room, covered in Annabelle's blood and guts. Her gown clung wetly to her front. With shaking hands, Cameron slowly pulled it off, using the clean parts to wipe down her face. For a minute or two, that was all she let herself think about. Wipe the blood off before it dries.
Dropping the soiled gown, she looked around at the carnage. For a moment she thought about letting herself just stand there naked and cry for a while, but then Katie gurgled.
Cameron ran to her side and knelt down, helpless anguish knotting in her chest as Katie looked at her. Wait. Cameron had healed herself from grievous injury three times now. She remembered what it felt like to do it, to sort of shift away from the injuries. It wasn't anything like her biokinesis, but it was there.
Cameron pulled the fabric of Katie's gown out of the way and pressed her hand to the ragged bloody holes in Katie's chest. Cameron focused on that feeling searching for it with her will... and felt her own body snap into form. Male form.
He looked down at himself, noting that it wasn't his old male body either. It was an idealized male version of himself. Cameron focused again, and this time he got it right away. He healed, and snapped into female form.
"Okay. Okay," Cameron breathed. "I've got this."
She mentally grasped and pushed and healed. Katie's body rippled, and her injuries were gone. Even the blood was mostly gone. Katie gasped, suddenly able to breath again.
"Holy crap that worked," Cameron said.
"I'm... okay?" Katie asked in wonder as she rubbed her perfectly healthy torso.
Cameron suddenly looked up. "Crap. The others!"
Rushing over to Marien, Cameron touched her and healed her. It was almost easy that time. Cameron quickly moved on to the boys and knelt down to heal Brian. She was kneeling in a pool of blood as she put her hands on Brian's chest and Healed.
Cameron got two surprises when Brian's body rippled into an intact form. First, a lot of the blood she was kneeling in was sucked back into Brian's body somehow. And second, Brian was now a girl.
"Oh fuck, oops," Cameron said, quickly shifting and healing Brain a second time. "Okay, note to self, be the same gender as whoever you're healing unless you want to gender bend them."
Cameron made sure Brian was breathing, then went to heal John and Alan, each with a quick touch as he rushed by them and towards where he'd spotted Annabelle's head. Cameron shifted and scooped up the head carefully, and was about to heal her when a yelp drew her attention.
"Oh my god," Katie whimpered from where she stood over Alan with the others.
Alan was still on the floor, looking uninjured but dangerously emaciated. His hands flopped feebly as he stared up at the others, and then he stopped moving entirely. Cameron felt a frisson of horror crawl down her spine. What did she do wrong? Mass. It was mass. Alan had the largest pool of blood and the worst injuries of the boys. There wasn't enough matter left to restore him.
"Damn it!" Cameron hissed, drawing the others' attention to her naked self. She held up Annabelle's head. "It gets worse."
Marien screamed and tried to hide in John's chest. Brian turned away and puked.
"Help me gather up as much of Annabelle's remains as you can find," Cameron ordered. "If there's enough left I think I can still save her, but if there isn't enough she'll end up like Alan."
They all stared at her.
"Now!" Cameron yelled. "Before her brain decays! Move!"
Amazingly, they moved. Even John. While they collected the bigger pieces, Cameron tried to gather up as much of the bits of guts and stuff that had scattered everywhere. It was difficult and extremely gross, but a life was at stake and Cameron had a very high squick threshold.
It wasn't enough. They gathered as many pieces of Annabelle's body as they could, and Cameron healed her. The pieces rippled into a whole, but it wasn't enough. Annabelle was even more emaciated than Alan, and didn't even wake up before her heart stopped again, despite Cameron rousing her heartbeat.
Cameron sagged in defeat.
"So, uh, what do we do now?" Brian asked.
Katie walked over to the thick curtains covering a window and threw them wide, letting in the dim orange glow of sunset. "It's that late?"
"Let's find our stuff, and call the police," John suggested.
"Or our parents," Brian said.
"You guys remember a van?" Cameron asked.
"I do," Katie said after a moment. "Yeah, and that guy Slamjam was driving."
Cameron nodded, standing up. "Let's look for it. They might have just left our stuff where we dropped it."
John blushed. "Would you cover yourself?"
Cameron just gave him a look. "Kinda have to find our clothes first."
John just grunted and headed off through the house, Marien trailing after him.
"Well, if they're going that way, let's go look this way," Katie said, heading down the other hallway.
Cameron and Brian followed her into what turned out to be the kitchen. They found the garage easily, and sure enough the van was inside, next to a pile of clothes and shoes.
"Score," Katie said, digging through the pile.
Brian opened the door to the house and called for John and Marien. Cameron opened the side of the van and found her backpack, so at least her day's shopping wasn't lost.
Not wanting to shift while the others were in any condition to notice, Cameron wrote off the clothes she'd been wearing and decided to break out her new girl clothes. The panties were weird, being all snug and form-fitting, but at the same time it was nice to not have things sticking out and flopping around down there. She grabbed a pair of the marbled black and grey faux-jeans and a black t-shirt and put those on.
"Hey, um," Brian began, leaning up against the van, dressed in bluejeans and a maroon t-shirt. "That was amazing back there. I mean, I was delirious from blood loss, but I still saw you totally save us."
Cameron glanced aside as she went to dig her shoes, wallet, and cellphone out of the pile of clothes. Katie was pulling on a pair of jeans.
"Most of us," Brian corrected with a wince. "And you damn near saved all of us. Thank you. You were awesome. Um, I don't mean to be presumptuous or anything like that, but I was wondering if I could, um, you know, know your real name?"
Cameron studied him for a moment, deciphering his expression, then smiled sheepishly. "It's Cameron."
Brian grinned brightly. "Cameron. Nice to meet you, Cameron."
"Can you stick to calling me Rouse, though?" Cameron asked as Katie finished tying her shoes.
"Ah, yeah, of course," Brian said quickly. "Sorry."
"Just being cautious," Cameron told him as she retrieved her wallet and phone from her old cargo pants.
"Right," Brian nodded, giving her a hopeful, vulnerable look. "So, um, do you think maybe we could, you know, stay in touch?"
Cameron sighed. That made it pretty obvious that Brian was having feelings towards her. The thing was, she didn't want to disappoint him. She kinda liked him. Cameron just didn't find boys attractive, and right now that seemed like a bad thing. A deficiency.
"You want to have sex again, right?" Cameron cut to the heart of the matter as gently as she could.
Brian still flinched and wrung his hands. "Ah, well, yeah, but it's not just that! I really do think it would be awesome to know you and stuff. But... you're probably, you know, out of my league."
Cameron took hold of his shoulders. "It's not that. It's just, I am a lesbian. But if it makes you feel better, I'm kinda wishing I was bi."
"Oh," Brian sighed.
That was when John and Marien came in and gathered up their clothes. There were tear tracks on Marien's face but she looked the calmest Cameron had seen her yet.
Cameron really didn't want to leave it like that with Brian, but what could she do? Actually, there were a lot of answers to that. She had her biokinesis, which let her bypass the necessity of attraction entirely. If she wanted, she could make herself horny enough to fuck just about anything, and she had genuinely enjoyed it when Brian had looked at her with lust. Her newly discovered shifting-slash-healing power would almost certainly make pregnancy impossible. Cameron grabbed Brian's arm and pulled him around the van, out of earshot.
"Tell you what," Cameron said, pulling out her phone and clearing the - several dozen, yikes - missed calls. "Give me your address, and if I can, I'll come visit you some night."
Brian's eyes went wide. "Really? I, uh, mean, some night, you said? To, like, have..."
"At least once," Cameron promised. "If you still want to, after we talk about some things."
Brian looked doubtful, probably thinking that there was no way he wouldn't want to have sex with her again, then he nodded and gave Cameron his address and number too while he was at it, but Cameron turned that down.
"I don't want any record of me on your phone," Cameron explained.
"Oh, right, okay," Brian agreed.
Cameron shrugged to resettle her backpack. "I'm going to duck out before the cops get here. I don't want anyone officialish seeing me either. Try to convince the others not to tell that they were saved by a mutant, if you can."
Brian nodded seriously, then got a hesitant look on his face as he stepped forward and hugged her. Cameron squeezed him to her with a smile. They were nearly the same height. Cameron pulled away and slipped out the side door into the house's back yard.
It was spacious, stone paths, grass, and tall brick walls. Cameron buckled the seldom-used waist strap on her backpack and did a few experimental bounces. The backpack was secure, but even with the tight shirt her boobs were bouncing all over the place. Cameron pulled the backpack off and opened it. She dug out one of the sports bras and quickly changed, stuffing the t-shirt back in with her other stuff.
With her backpack back on, including the waist strap, Cameron roused herself just a small dash of adrenaline. She sprinted across the yard and vaulted up the brick wall that bounded the yard. Standing atop it, it was easy to get her bearings. They were up in the hills. She could see the lights of the University campus through the trees to the south.
Cameron oriented herself, and ran like an olympic track star.
When Cameron made it home, she went in through the front door. Knowing Dad, he'd be pissed if she acted like she'd just forgotten to check in.
"Cam!" Dad exclaimed as Cameron kicked the door shut, flushed and sweaty. "Where were you? I've been trying to call you for hours!"
Cameron sighed. "Whatever you were imagining, what actually happened is probably worse. I'm okay, though."
"Worse?" Dad repeated, suddenly very concerned. "Cameron, what happened?"
"Well," Cameron said brightly, "I discovered a new power."
Dad gave her a flat stare.
"Um," Cameron hedged. "There may have been kidnapping. And supervillains. And black magic. And an attempted virgin sacrifice. I swear, I go my whole life without anything unexpected happening, and then I turn into a girl and suddenly my life's a comic book. What the hell, right?"
"Supervillains? Virgin sacrifice?" Dad repeated at a pitch she'd never heard him hit before. He shook it off. "You got away? You're okay?"
"Yeah," Cameron said, brushing passed her dad, dropping her backpack and collapsing on the couch. "It turns out I can do a literal Death Glare. My biokinesis works on heartrates, and I'm strong enough to numb one into stopping."
"You killed a bunch of - "
"They were trying to feed me to an eldritch abomination!" Cameron defended.
Dad was silent for a moment. "So, this Death Glare is the new power you discovered?"
Cameron shook her head. "No. I'll show you, but I need to change clothes first. Oh! That reminds me, did you make that appointment with your doctor or wherever, yet?"
"I called him," Dad said, perching on a barstool by the island counter. "I told him that you'd had a radical transformation, but he didn't wait for me to go into details. He gave me the number of a place called the Arkham Research Consortium in San Francisco. He said they're the people to go to to diagnose and understand mutant phenomena."
Cameron got to her feet. "Did you call them yet?"
"No, not yet."
"Good," Cameron said. "Not much point anymore, and it's not like I still need - one second, I'll be right back."
Cameron grabbed her backpack and ran down to her room. She quickly stripped out of her new clothes and put on an around-the-house t-shirt and pair of shorts. She skipped underwear, so she could shift both ways with a minimum of discomfort. Maybe she should invest in some boxers.
Cameron came back upstairs. Her dad was waiting expectantly.
"Like I said, I discovered a new power," Cameron said. "I figured out what happened when Dreya burned me. I can shapeshift by healing. Or heal by shapeshifting, but I think its the first one." Cameron shifted to demonstrate. "What do you think? Do I look enough like me to pass for the old Cameron?"
While his dad gaped, and then studied him, Cameron noticed that he felt conspicuously clean. Cameron had worked up a sweat running home, and was feeling a bit sticky when she changed, but that had gone away when he shifted. His healing power had actually reabsorbed his sweat. Come to think of it, he hadn't peed all day either, and he still didn't have to. Just how far did his healing go?
"You know, I think you could pass as your old self," Dad said. "But I think we should keep you out of school for a week, though, so your, uh 'growth spurt' doesn't alarm anyone with its suddenness."
Cameron nodded. "Well, I'm not going to complain about missing school. I just got an idea, though. I want to see something."
Cameron touched his dad's arm, and healed. Dad's body rippled. He didn't look much different, except he'd gone from mid-fifties to mid-twenties in age. Whoa.
"Whoa," Dad said, blinking. "What was that?"
Cameron just pointed towards the mirror in the front bathroom as the implications sank in. He could reverse old age. He could make anyone young and healthy with a simple touch.
"Holy shit!" Dad shouted from the bathroom.
"Yeah, that about sums it up," Cameron replied softly.
He thought he'd been at the low end of the power scale. He wasn't super strong or fast. He couldn't fly or shoot energy bolts or read minds. He could just make people's bodies do stuff that they might do anyway, only moreso. But this, this wasn't some minor power that he made useful with creativity. Healing on this scale was unarguably Great Power in the Comes With Great Responsibility sense.
Cameron plodded back to the couch. His boy parts felt weird flopping around in his shorts, so he shifted again as he sat down. So, she had mind-bogglingly powerful Healing. The question, then, was how she would use it, and on who.
Patricia awoke to grogginess and a splitting headache. Her hand fumbled habitually for the protection amulet under her jacket. It was a gift from Lars, the fruit of a year's labors, the ultimate backup plan. It crumbled to sand in Patricia's hand, which could only mean one thing. She had nearly died, and the amulet expended its power to resurrect her.
"Lars?" she called, trying to summon the strength to get up off her back.
It was silent. Patricia groaned in dismay as she remembered her last moments. The girl. The girl with the lock of startlingly green hair and suspicious attractiveness. A mutant. She should have seen it. She should have employed her meager skill in telepathy the second she suspected, instead of merely ordering Jill to manage the girl. The other sacrifices had been shouting for her. What was it? Rose? No, that wasn't right...
"Lars? Jill?" Patricia called out again as she managed to roll onto her side.
She was horribly weak. She had little energy and less essence. She was still in the working room, with the burnt-out magical pattern of connected circles in the hardwood. Patricia's head spun as she sat up. That girl, Rose... no, it was Rouse, and that sounded like a codename. Rouse had snapped out of Jill's control, and Jill's power had been the only thing holding the girl in her circle, since she hadn't stepped into it of her own free will. Not that it mattered in the end. The entity had rejected their offerings.
There were bodies. Two weirdly emaciated bodies, and that was Slamjam, also looking rather dead. And over the other way...
Jill, motionless and dead, and next to her, "Lars! Oh gods no."
Patricia lurched towards him, crawling over one of the bodies and collapsing over Lars' horribly still, cold chest. Patricia let the tears fall. She didn't have the strength to do anything else. What had that Rouse girl done? It seemed like some sort of subtle but lethal Psi effect, but Patricia couldn't be sure. The girl had just looked at them, and they'd fallen dead.
Patricia clutched at the empty place where her amulet had hung for the better part of her and Lars' partnership, and let the grief overtake her. Why couldn't he have kept it for himself?
"We promised, love," Patricia sobbed miserably. "We win together, and we lose together. You don't die to keep me alive! We go together! Always!"
The silence that answered her was tainted by the faint sound of approaching sirens. And she was too weak to fight. Too weak to destroy the evidence and cover her trail. She could only flee, and hope to hide until her strength returned and her essence replenished itself.
Patricia stroked Lars' cold cheek, tears falling from her cheeks. "I'm sorry, love. I can't follow you just yet. I know you'd want me to go out in a blaze of glory. I'm not going to care about glory, but I promise you this: There will be vengeance."
