Winnifred Scott, known as Metro Woman, was endowed with superhuman strength, invulnerability, the power of flight, X-ray vision, super hearing, super speed, and the ability to project laser beams from her eyes. With all that, she was not considered to have any need of stealth, strategy or even much in the way of information about her opponents.
But she had never before faced an opponent who experimented on people, and who had set up explosive charges throughout his lair so that the whole place could be destroyed, experimental subjects included, at a moment's notice. Professor Mayhem, as the villain styled himself, almost certainly had the explosives set up on some kind of dead man switch, so they'd go off when she apprehended him. She needed to get those people out of there first, without him knowing. To figure out how to do that, she turned to Richard Rocci, her crimefighting partner.
The tabloid press had, more or less inevitably, misread their relationship as romantic, but the interest Richard had initially had in her had disappeared the first time he'd touched her and felt how solid her flesh was. This was her usual experience with human men. Her physical interest in him was mild, certainly not strong enough to act on and risk losing what she really valued in their partnership: his sharp mind and wide-ranging knowledge. He had been an investigative reporter for years before he became an on-camera newscaster. Getting information was his gift.
Richard hacked into Professor Mayhem's system and inserted a virus he had customized for this rescue, based on one he had originally developed to extract incriminating data from corporate computer systems. The modified virus infected the biomonitoring system attached to each of the captives. Instead of feeding the professor live data, the infected systems recorded half an hour's worth and fed him that same half hour's worth over and over. The captives, unconscious in a row of hospital beds on a lower story of the professor's lair, could now be removed; the virus would ensure that he would not be notified.
She returned to his lair, which was built underground in a natural cave outside the city. Studying the place again, she couldn't help reflecting on how derivative it looked, style-wise. Specifically, derivative of Megamind's style. The unconscious experimental subjects were tended by robots clearly modeled on brainbots, but the professor hadn't figured out the antigravity technology, so these bots moved on rails mounted in the ceiling. His partly completed projects appeared to include a ray gun, a giant war bot, and even a mechanical body like Minion's. One thing he hadn't copied was the holographic projectors that hid the entrances to Megamind's lair. There were several natural tunnels, part of the pre-existing cave system, leading away from the professor's lair. Light from it was spilling into them. To her, hovering in the night sky and looking through layers of soil and stone, it was as if he'd illuminated them for her convenience.
After a little airborne investigation, she chose the tunnel with the widest entrance, allowing her to fly the victims out in a close to horizontal position instead of putting them over her shoulder. Then she got to work. She flew in, then hovered at the first bedside while she detached the wires and tubes from the drugged captive, a muscular young man. Once he was free, she picked him up in her arms and flew him directly to the local clinic. She did the same with the second, third, fourth and fifth captives. The last one looked like something extra was being done to her, something rather stomach-turning. Metro Woman decided that this one needed to go all the way to University Hospital.
Once that last victim was saved, she returned to the lair, intending to simply break through the ceiling to make the arrest. Before she started, she took one last look through the place to make sure he was alone in there, and discovered that he wasn't. Through the same tunnel she'd used, a little figure with an oversized blue head was walking in. He'd left off his cape and most of his leather, and was dressed in tight, unadorned black, but there was no mistaking him. She flew into the tunnel, up behind him, and touched his shoulder.
He turned abruptly, pulling the de-gun. As his eyes came to her face, she mouthed, What Are You Doing Here?
He's Got Minion, the blue alien mouthed back, holstering the weapon.
She looked upward, toward the workshop where she'd seen the mechanical body partly disassembled on a table. She saw now that it was, in fact, Minion's latest body. She also saw that the glass of the dome was shattered and Minion himself was nowhere to be seen. Her eyes searched the story where the workshop was, then the story above that, where Mayhem sat in his command center, working at a keyboard, then the one below it, which was on the same level they were. No fish. There was one more story below that, on the floor of the cavern. In that floor was a deep pool of water and in that pool she saw the faint bioluminescent glow of Minion's crests. He was held in a net that stretched out of the water and attached itself to machines on either side of the pool. He appeared to be awake and unharmed. He's probably been there all along. I just missed him because I was only looking for human captives.
She took off one glove and began to draw with her finger on the wall. What she drew was a cross-section of the relevant portions of the lair, with herself and Megamind in the tunnel, showing him the location of the stairs going down and the distance to Minion in the pool. Then she turned to the floor and drew an overhead view of the lower level, with more precise locations for the pool and the staircase as well as the obstacles he'd have to get around, and the explosive charges set up in two of the corners.
She looked at him. He was grinning. Thank You, he mouthed, and turned away. She was about to ask him if he had any way to carry Minion, but then she saw that he had a pouch on his belt and, in it, one of those folding three-gallon water bags that are used by campers. She waited, watching him dash across to the stairs, down, and around to the pool. As he lifted Minion out of the net, she heard a loud beep from above, and noticed movement. Up in the command center, the professor had turned around in his chair and was staring at a screen with alarm on his face. Minion didn't have any electrodes on him, so I assumed he wasn't being monitored, but the electrodes must have been in the fiber of the net. And this is a different kind of monitor; Richard's virus didn't infect it. Using her super speed, she flew up into the command center, coming to float alongside Mayhem. As she returned to normal speed, she seized his wrists.
"Ragnarok!" he shouted, and all the explosives went off. She tried to shield him, but the blast was coming from too many directions at once. By the time the rubble settled, he was dead. "Ragnarok" must have been the trigger. He intended all along to commit suicide rather than be taken alive. Completely buried, she turned her face downward. Now that no more harm could befall the professor, her first concern was whether Megamind and Minion had gotten out alive.
She saw them down there, alive but trapped. The little pool, now buried, had been one end of an underwater tunnel. They had swum through that tunnel and come up in a little cavern, barely big enough to park a car in, about ten feet away. Megamind had found the one place in it that was shallow enough so he could stand with his head above water. Minion's crests provided the only light.
She rose. Rescuing people trapped by a cave-in was not a simple matter of forcing her way down to them. If she destabilized the overlying layers, they could be crushed. She emerged into the air and was surprised to see flashing red and blue lights. Somebody must have reported the explosion. These were the local emergency responders. She settled to the ground.
"Metro Woman!" The man shouting was the captain of the local fire station. She had worked with him before. "What happened here?"
She explained about the professor's lair being here, about his rigging it with explosives and triggering them when she tried to arrest him. When the captain asked about survivors, she told him about the six captives she'd rescued. She didn't say a word about the two aliens still trapped down there. She realized that she had no intention of taking Megamind back to prison, not when he had come here just to rescue Minion. The captain asked about the professor's body. It occurred to her that, if she didn't produce it, they'd bring in a backhoe, and the weight of the machine might fatally destabilize the rubble. The body was only about five feet down, so she reached into the rubble and pulled it out. Flashbulbs went off. The press were here already? She realized she had to leave now or she'd still be there answering questions when the sun came up.
"If you'll excuse me, Captain, I have other duties," she said, and leaped away into the night. From a tree a quarter mile away, she watched the police put yellow hazard tape on stakes around the blast area. When it was finally deserted, she returned and studied the situation.
Megamind and Minion were still alive. Megamind was clearly tiring, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, trying to rest one side of his body at a time. His gloves were stuck in his belt; one blue hand was touching the side of Minion's face. They were looking into each other's eyes. She'd seen this before, when loved ones were trapped together, expecting to die. No, she couldn't take him back to prison tonight. Some other day, when he was in the midst of one of his evil schemes.
Megamind was without his protective leather. Minion would be in the plastic water bag. The rubble would be full of metal and glass fragments with lots of sharp edges. Better to go down through the limestone. There were some areas of heat where the stone had been cracked and slabs had been slid from their centuries-old places by the force of the explosion. She worked out a route that would allow her to avoid the obvious unstable points, went to its top end, and started forcing her way down.
When she emerged through the top of the little cavern, she suddenly felt the grit she was covered with.
"Winn?" Megamind's face was full of wonder.
"Blue," she responded.
"I told you, sir. I told you she'd save us."
"Excuse me for a second," she said. "I want to get clean." She went completely under the water, shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair before she surfaced, face to face with him. He still looked amazed "Do you have the bag?" she asked.
"Never got the chance to get it out," he replied, doing so. He unfolded it and held it open. Minion swam in. Megamind sealed the top. It had handles like a tote bag.
"I'm going to have to carry you differently," she said. "It's a really narrow tunnel. Put your arms around my neck and your legs around my waist. I'll take Minion." She took the bag by its handles. He put his elbows on her shoulders and wrapped his legs around her, as instructed. Their faces were inches apart. "Closer. Put your jaw on my shoulder. You need to present the smallest profile possible." As he complied, she pressed her free hand against his back. A small profile, she though, will not be difficult for this one. She raised Minion above their heads and rose gently from the water. The tunnel she'd made was narrow and tight, as little disruptive of the underground pressures as she could make it. Sometimes she had to put her hand on his head to protect it from being scraped against the stone. Then they were in the open air.
"Where's your lair these days?" she asked, and he whispered an address. They could have relaxed, then, into a less intimate position, but neither of them moved to do so. It was being wet, she told herself. Where their bodies weren't pressed together, the night breeze was evaporating the water off their skin, raising goose bumps. I'm liking this a little too much, she thought. Then she realized that she was feeling a bit more of him against her belly than she had when she picked him up. So is he.
They landed on the roof of the lair. He still didn't unwind himself from her, and she made no move to push him off.
"Excuse me," said Minion, "but the water in this bag is getting pretty stale." Her shoulders slumped with disappointment as the blue alien slipped away from her.
"Care to come in?" he asked, still standing too close.
"Sure," she said. He took Minion and led the way to the little shed that enclosed the top of the stairs. She noticed for the first time that he was in stocking feet. Must have kicked off his boots during the swim.
There were two Minion-bodies of different designs sitting on the floor with their domes open. Megamind opened the bag, picked the fish up in his hands, and set him in the nearer of the two before closing the dome. He pushed some buttons, then stood back as the dome filled with water. Minion popped up, suddenly visible, at the same time that the body stood on its feet.
"That's more like it!" said the delighted fish, turning a little circle in his dome. "Thank you, sir. And thank you, Ms. Scott, for getting us out of there, and for telling the boss where to find me, and for all the times you could have hauled me in and didn't. Thank you. We owe you big time." The fish cyborg stepped closer to her as he spoke. "And if you hurt him, I'll find out your weakness and I'll get you." With that, Minion lumbered off in the direction of the kitchen, his body remarkably silent for such a big piece of machinery.
"Don't mind him," said Megamind as he took off his belt and holster, with the de-gun still in place, and hung them on a hook on the wall, like anyone being careful with a dangerous weapon. "He just gets overprotective sometimes."
"Not that far over," she said. "I've never killed anyone on purpose, but I killed a man by accident. Trying to lose my virginity. I was sixteen. My parents covered it up."
"If you're trying to scare me off, it's not going to work."
"I'm not trying to scare you off. I'm trying to warn you." But she wasn't looking at him, the way a person delivering a warning normally would. She was looking at the floor where Minion had been standing. It's that conscience thing she's got because she's good, he thought. If I don't say something to blunt its force, she'll decide to go home and mope all night and this opportunity will be lost. After a moment, the words came to him. He conveniently ignored the fact that Minion had first said most of them to him on a long-ago evening when he had been inclined to mope all night, and the implication that there might be one of those conscience things in him.
"Winn, you had no elders of your own species to teach you the risks that came with your powers. You had to grope and guess and sometimes you went too far. It's like when Minion first learned to use his suit. I hadn't thought far enough ahead to set it up someplace out of the way. I just poured him into it, right in the workshop where I'd built it, and he staggered and bashed and pretty much destroyed the place. I was lucky to stay out of his way myself, and he would never have willingly hurt me. We are each the last of a very dangerous kind. Either we learn what we can do by trial and error or we never do anything." He stepped close, put his hand up and touched her cheek. Like an ancient Greek statue of Aphrodite that has come alive without ceasing to be marble. "So would you like to do something?"
Her eyelids went to half mast as he spoke that last sentence. When he touched her, she pushed her face against his hand while a little smile appeared on her lips. "What kind of something do you have in mind?" He arched himself a little higher, a little closer to her face.
"Oh, I have a few ideas." His tone of confidence concealed something else entirely. God, she's tall. What am I supposed to do if she doesn't understand that I'm trying to kiss her? Scale her like a tree? Fortunately she either understood or had the same idea on her own. She picked him up by his ribs.
Her lips seemed to be hard as glass, yet at the same time tender and responsive. Her tongue was a genuinely unearthly experience. After a few minutes he was out of breath and he wasn't sure whether it was the way she kissed or the way she was holding him.
"Through that door behind you," he panted. "There's a spot that's both more private and more comfortable."
###
"Why do you have such a decrepit old couch? It looks like you got it out of a dumpster."
"Beyond basic function, the first consideration in evil lair furniture is expendability. Anything may be destroyed at any time. This lair is compromised and will be abandoned shortly. The couch will be left behind, so if you should at any time feel the urge to destroy something, this inconsequential object is available to you." He turned to face her. "But before we use it, I suggest that we get out of these wet clothes." They weren't really wet anymore, just a bit clammy, but it was as good an excuse as any. He took her gloved hands by the fingers. She pulled her hands away so that he was left holding the empty gloves. She immediately put her hands behind him, reaching for the zipper of his shirt. He laid her gloves on the back of the couch. Once the zipper was down, she took the wrists of his shirt and he pulled himself out of it. She simply dropped the shirt on the floor. As he reached up for the catch at the back of her neck, she started caressing his shoulders and chest. Her costume had a halter top. When he unfastened the neck, the whole upper half came down.
Oh my. Maybe it wasn't so important to be at eye level. Human breasts this big would need support or they would sag, but hers ignored gravity. And such lovely coloring, too, like fine rose porcelain, which, he promptly discovered, was also what they felt like. He circled the nipples with his thumbs and watched, fascinated, as they tightened with arousal. At the same time, she lowered her head so that her hair came forward to surround their faces. Her lips came to rest against the top of his head. He was a little too paranoid to be entirely comfortable with the curtain of hair cutting off his vision, but pulling it back would involve taking his hands away from her breasts, and they were both enjoying themselves too much for that.
When her hands went to the waist of his pants, though, he stopped.
"Winn, you have peeked, right? At my anatomy."
"Only to check for injuries." He didn't speak, but he gave her a look of teasing skepticism. "Seriously, I stopped torturing myself like that years ago."
"Don't like to see it if you can't have it. I'll remember that about you. But you do know..."
"About these?" She pulled his pants down, freeing the tentacles. "Yeah." She touched him there and they twined themselves around her fingers. He drew in a deep breath at the sensation. I'd better finish getting this costume off her while I've still got the presence of mind to do it. He slipped his fingers in behind her belt buckle and popped it open. The belt turned out to be attached at the back to the rest of the costume, which was essentially a bathing suit. Probably less tough that her skin, but superheroism can hardly be done in the buff, now can it? He slid it down over her inhumanly smooth, firm hips, then past the tops of the boots, which he liked very much and saw no reason to remove. Her lower body looked human, like the rest of her. There was no pubic hair. She moved away from him then, with tiny ballerina steps that somehow caused her costume to fall the rest of the way off all by itself. She sat on the couch, her bare, elegant ass resting on the worn upholstery. Then she reached for him and he stepped close. She pulled his pants and socks down. The movement brought the side of her head against his blue thighs. He put a hand over his tentacles to protect them from her hair, knowing from experience that long hair could get tangled around them and then pull painfully tight. Her hair would probably sever something. It was a relief when he stepped back, out of the clothes, and she sat up.
He straddled her booted thighs, facing her, and moved forward until his weight rested on his knees on either side of her hips. She spread her legs and at the same time rolled her hips forward to give him maximum access. Her inner labia were bright pink. When his tentacles touched them, he found that they were radiating heat. He slid half of his equipment up along those warm ridges of superhuman flesh, and the creases where her thighs joined her torso. There was no visible clitoris, but after a little exploration he found a slight bulge. While the rest of his tentacles went down along her crotch (they couldn't enter her and, knowing her crushing strength, he wouldn't have wanted them to, but the exterior flesh was plenty responsive) the upper set worked that bulge. Judging from her reaction, this was the hot spot. She squirmed and moaned and rolled her hips and the more pressure he applied, the better she seemed to like it. When he was working her as hard as he was comfortable doing, he put his hands on her breasts again. She arched her back and her moans turned to squeals.
He was able to keep her at the squealing stage long enough that the tips of his tentacles were starting to ooze fluid in preparation for orgasm. He wanted to hold back until she climaxed, but suddenly she gasped "We have to stop," and pushed him off.
"I have a better idea," he said in a calm voice that was belied by the tentacles writhing out of control, groping for their missing stimulation. "Lie face down." She did. "Bend this knee up under yourself." He touched the knee nearest him. She complied.
"What are we doing?" she asked.
"Do you know what a praying mantis is?"
"They're large insects. I've seen them in the woods sometimes."
"They're predators. The female is much larger and stronger than the male and he looks to her like prey."
"Prey, huh?" She smiled a little.
"Mmm-hmm. In fact, if he approaches her from the front or the side, her hunting instincts will take over." He strolled down to the end of the couch where her feet were. "She'll grab him and eat him. But she doesn't have an instinct to grab behind herself." He climbed up over the arm of the couch. " The only way for the male to survive the mating act is to press himself along her back." He suited his actions to his words, putting his hips against her ass. The tentacles swarmed back to their previous places. She started moaning and moving her hips again. He slid his hands under her body to touch her nipples. In a few minutes they were back to the stage where they'd left off, but this time there was no reason to stop.
Her last squeal went over into a ragged scream. She rose a few inches off the couch, carrying him with her. He managed to detach himself and fall away just as she curled into a tight fetal position, her hips still working. He sat on the arm of the couch. Looks like I did it. His elation was tempered by the straining in his groin, the result of getting nearly to orgasm but not quite there twice in a matter of minutes. His tentacles were straining toward her. He suspected that if they could extend themselves like the arms on Minion's newest suit (the one that had been blown to bits in Professor Mayhem's lair) they would reach out and pluck her from the air.
She settled back onto the couch, panting, then relaxing. Her smile told him that he had, in fact, done it. She looked at him.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"Fine, aside from being about to explode." He gestured at his overactive crotch. She beckoned, sitting up. He went and stood between her knees.
"Tell me how to do this," she said.
"At this point, nearly anything you - " She touched him and his tentacles wrapped around her fingers. She massaged gently, pulling a little here, squeezing a little there, then reaching in to touch the flesh where they all joined. "Oooh, yes, Winn, that's, aah, you, oh, oooh -" And then he was there, gasping out his pleasure, and his juice was running down her wrist. He had one hand on her shoulder, supporting himself, though he didn't remember putting it there. His chest heaved. After a moment, she pulled him down onto her lap. He leaned his blue head against her shoulder and relaxed against her.
"Going to tell Richard about this?" he asked when he'd got his breath back.
"Richard is not my boyfriend. How many times do we have to say it?"
"You do spend a lot of time in his company, and you reliably show up to save him whenever I kidnap him."
"I depend on Richard for a lot of things, just not... this kind of thing."
"Is he immune to your charms, then?"
"He's human. Human men get freaked out at a woman who's more firm and muscular than they are. And probably taller." She sighed. "It would have been so much better if I'd been born male. Men are expected to be tall and firm and muscular. It's an advantage."
"If you'd been born male, your ejaculation would be one of the most dangerous weapons on the planet."
"Aargh! You evil villain!" She sprang to her feet, dumping him on the floor. "Now I'm going to have that image stuck in my head for hours!" She stalked over to her costume while he lay on the floor laughing at her reaction. "This night doesn't change a thing," she asserted as she stepped into it.
"Wouldn't dream of changing a thing," he replied, sitting up against the couch. "I perpetrate evil schemes. You show up to thwart them. It's nature's way." She glared at him. He reclined, naked, grinning, basking in her outrage. She snatched her gloves off the back of the couch.
"I'll find my own way out." When she opened the door, she flew through it, upward toward the roof entrance. After a few seconds, he heard it slam.
If she'd been really angry, she'd have just burst through the ceiling. He collected his clothes. Minion hated it when he left wet things to get mildewed. I don't think there's any hurry about moving the evil lair tonight. We can both use some sleep.