Penny squinted her sensitive blue eyes, attempting to adjust to the bright fluorescent light nearly blinding her. Her head was pounding, and from what little she could see of herself, her body had been strapped to the chair she was on, feet stuck to a metal panel by a humongous glob of gum. She tried to move her hands, but they too were stuck together. There was a small weight on the front of her head. She wasn't sure what it was, but it was wet... and possibly made of plastic.
Her neck was sore... her head was probably stuck hanging down for a while. Was she unconscious? How long for? How... how did she even get here?
Penny carefully searched her brain for any memories to help her: today had started just like any other. Dr. Claw came up with some harebrained scheme that he would send his nephew, her nemesis Talon, to flesh out. What that plan was today... Penny didn't know. Apparently Talon didn't know either; Claw had stopped filling him in on the details of plans because he was getting tired of his second-in-command always questioning him.
Still, that didn't stop them from their usual sparring. At the age of fifteen when this arrangement began, they would barely make a mark on each other. Now at eighteen, Penny gained a few inches in height, and of course never stopped polishing her fighting skills... but unfortunately, so did Talon. Usually she was able to outsmart him and get the upper hand, but this time around he managed to knock her unconscious.
Somehow Penny had the feeling there was something else that happened, something she should be worried about, but... she couldn't remember what that was.
Penny looked up again when a squeak caught her attention. One of the guards to her tiny glass cell opened a little window just in front of her face.
A slender, tanned teenager clad in purple and black approached the other side of the wall. "Well, well, well. Look who's awake! And just in time for me to gloat, too."
"You gonna dance or something?" Penny deadpanned.
"I can if you want me to."
There was a small awkward silence.
"... Sure."
"Because I didn't get to say this to you while you were conscious..." just as she thought, he was now doing a victory dance. "HA! I WON! YOU LOST! I WON! YOU LOST! HEY, HOW'S DEFEAT TASTE, HUH? HOW DOES, DEFEAT, TASTE?!"
Penny rolled her eyes. I wouldn't get too comfy in the glow of victory if I were you, Talon, she thought. I will find a way out of this...
"Hm..." Talon leaned forward, studying her. "... you're quieter than usual. What're you planning?" he asked, straightening up again. "Oh, you know what? Don't tell me; surprise me. I've spent time preparing for anything you could try to pull should we ever come to this... I just want to see what you're going to try first."
"Oh, really? 'Anything', huh?"
The only response she got in turn was a smug smirk.
"... And what is it you're planning to do if I don't do anything?"
"If you don't do anything?" he took a second to think about it. "I mean, I could just leave you in that chair, but... you've been strapped to that thing for hours. I'd be surprised if you didn't have to go to the bathroom or something."
Penny gave a defeated sigh. She was never going to be able to escape if she were stuck in this chair. Besides, her whole body was sore from being in the same position for so long... it'd be nice if she were allowed to get up and at least stretch her legs. "What's it going to take for you to let me out?"
"Easy: just admit defeat... surrender to MAD... oh! And also say that I'm the smartest, funniest and most handsome guy in the whole world."
"In your dreams."
Talon shrugged. "Suit yourself," he said, casually turning to leave.
"Talon!"
Still he continued towards the door. "See ya!"
"You're not just going to leave me here!"
He didn't even turn to look at her. "Oh yeah? Watch me."
He was almost to the door. How long was he going to take? Would he come back? The cell was small, and hot, and damn it Penny hated tight spaces! He fucking knew she hated those! "TALON, WAIT!"
Stopping just before the entryway, he looked right into her eyes. They both knew he had her right where he wanted her.
"I... I admit defeat," Penny grumbled.
"Oh, I'm sorry, what was that? I can't quite here you from ALL the way over here!"
"I, I admit defeat," Penny repeated, her voice in a more normal range.
"I'm sorry, dear, one more time?"
"I ADMIT DEFEAT," Penny raised her voice so Talon and all the guards in the room could hear her.
"Ah, that's better. But isn't there something else you're forgetting to say?"
"I... surrender to MAD."
"Still can't quite hear you..."
"I SURRENDER TO MAD."
"And...?" he grinned.
Penny growled. "Do I have to?"
"You want out, don't you?"
Oh for god's sake. "And... you're the smartest, f-funniest, and mo-" she stopped, feeling in her throat making her gag. "Most handsome guy... in the whole world. Satisfied?"
"Now that wasn't so hard, now was it?" he asked, approaching the cell again. "You can open the door now," he said to his guard, who did as he was ordered.
"What're you doing?" Penny asked when Talon started reaching his hand out.
"If I could just see that pretty head of yours for a second..."
Penny winced. There was some kind of tape to her head, medical tape maybe? In his hand was the weight that was on her head, a small, white object.
"Yeah, that ice pack's totally melted by now."
Penny bit the inside of her lip as he brushed her bangs back from the affected spot.
"And the bruising isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be."
Opening his MAD-ex, he scrolled the map, and in green, seemed to be drawing what looked to be a trail.
"Now what're you doing?" Penny asked.
"Unless you want to be obliterated by the various booby traps I set up throughout the building, you're gonna wanna let me carve out a path to one of the few safe rooms this lair has."
"And which room would that be?"
Talon smirked, closing the MAD-ex. "My room."
Of fucking course it was.
Talon didn't let her out of the chair right away. They both knew the second he did, she would have attacked him and made a run for it. That's why he ensured that the chair she was on had wheels, so he could drag her through the narrow, dimly-lit hallways of the MAD lair, and she wouldn't try to pull anything while his back was turned.
They happened to be the only ones in the elevator. Talon pressed the button to the second-highest floor.
"So, your room, huh?" Penny asked as the doors closed behind them.
Talon chuckled. "It's not entirely what you're thinking, Pen. My room is one of the only places in this place that A, you can walk around freely without worrying about some random death trap springing up out of nowhere, and B, where the other underlings won't give me shit about not killing you when I had the chance. Like 'oh, if she's your nemesis why don't you just kill her?' Well, where's the fun in that? Sure it's more efficient, but, jeez. Anyhoo, this doesn't have much to do with what you agreed to earlier."
"What do you mean 'what I agreed to earlier'?" she asked, her tone full of suspicion.
"You... don't remember what happened?"
"I came over to beat you, but then you knocked me out, I'm your prisoner, and, here we are."
"But you don't remember anything else?"
"No. Why?"
Well, shit. This could be more awkward than he thought. "Um... no reason. Don't worry about it."
The next place Penny found herself in was a large, dark room. Or, it was dark until Talon turned the lights on (and to her slight frustration, locked the door as well). Her captor didn't say anything else, but she heard him walk away, leaving her where she was.
From what little she could see of her surroundings, there was what she thought was a bathroom door to her left, and a couple of workout machines to her right.
"So, are we here? Are you going to let me out now?"
No response, though she thought she heard some shuffling from a closet somewhere.
"Talon?"
She heard his voice from across the room: "sorry to treat you coldly, but-"
Penny yelped as a sudden freezing, wet sensation hit the back of her hands.
"Talon what the fu-"
Her sentence had been cut off when the gum slipped off of her hands. Penny sucked in her breath as she returned her sore arms to the front of her body.
"Pretty cool, right?"
Penny wasn't sure why Talon kept on with his usual puns, she stopped responding to them months ago. "What is that? Some kind of ice ray?"
"I'd call it a freeze ray, but yeah. You have no idea how many times I've had to use this thing to get gum out of places." He came around the front of her and shot her feet, which she was soon able to move herself (though her shoes were stuck to the chair).
Realizing she could take the strap off of the seat herself, she couldn't get unfastened faster. In her scramble to try and use her freedom to get to the door, she fell to the floor, her limbs still trying to wake up.
"If you think you can get the door, don't. It's programmed to respond to my handprint only. I'd also like to remind you that there's probably a couple hundred traps out there that could potentially kill you... but I think we both know you're smart enough not to trigger those, right?"
Penny could hear something like a ringtone going off.
"Oh, hold on, I gotta take this. While you're here, feel free to look around. Whatever happens, you're going to be spending the night here."
Pressing a button his wristwatch, Talon activated a soundproof bubble around him.
"Yo."
"We've got an estimated ninety percent of HQ's agents wrapped up," the voice on the other end was Peter. Peter was among the more recent hires of MAD. He was just ambitious enough to rise up in the ranks, but not so much so that Talon would ever have to worry about him killing him in his sleep. That was why he'd taken him as his own right-hand man.
Talon watched Penny scrape herself off the floor and try to balance herself. "I'm guessing the remaining ten percent are stragglers?"
"Afraid so. We're doing our best to get those too."
One of the things Talon liked about his room was that it was yet another way to flaunt his wealth to the broke HQ agent, and he didn't have to say a word while doing so as the blonde looked around in disbelief. "What's the status on Inspector Tin-Can?"
"Part of the ten percent."
"Really?" his fist clenched in anxiety when he noticed Penny looking down out the window, as if debating to jump in escape. Thankfully, because she valued her life too much, she decided the fall was too risky. "How'd that happen?"
"I don't know, I think someone else was handling him. I mean, there's that dog that's always with him but I can't say for sure."
Talon watched Penny disappear into the closet of his room, probably looking for rocket boots or something. Of course, she wouldn't find anything in there except clothes; all of his inventions (sans the freeze ray, which he regularly used to get gum off of his clothes) were kept in his workshop down the hall, safely out of her reach, and also only accessible by his handprint. "That explains it, I guess."
"Should I tell Dr. Claw?"
"What're you, nuts?! Of course you don't tell him that! Unless you have a death wish or something!"
Penny walked out of the closet, and into the bathroom. Sure, there was an air vent in there, but for even as petite as Penny was, she could probably only fit her arm in there at best.
"Talon?"
"What?"
"I asked 'what do I do next'?"
"I don't know, keep looking? There's only so many places they can hide. We'll find 'em."
"Where are you, anyway? Shouldn't you be helping with this?"
"Let's just say I have a guest in my room, and it'd be rude to leave her all alone."
"'Guest in your room', what do you me... oh." Talon could hear a frustrated sigh. "Look, man, I don't begrudge you having a love or sex life or whatever, but this is an important, huge turning point for MAD, probably the biggest one ever. As the heir to MAD, shouldn't you be here?"
"Actually, said guest could play just as big of a part in dismantling everything we've worked for if I don't keep an eye on her."
"Oh? And who is she?"
"Gadget's niece."
"Gadget has a niece?"
"And she works for HQ. You know that pigtailed blonde I'm always fighting with?"
"That's his niece? They don't even look remotely related!"
"Gadget's a cyborg, dummy. Of course they're probably not going to look exactly the same."
"... I guess it's not really any of my business, but doesn't that count as sleeping with the enemy?"
"I don't actually know if anything like that is going to happen. While we were fighting, we ended up making a bet - if I beat her in this fight and MAD wins, she'd have to sleep with me."
"Wait, seriously?"
"Yeah, and then somehow I knocked her out a couple minutes later. I don't even know how I did it, I think I hit her just right. I wasn't actually expecting to win... and I don't think she was either. When she hit her head, she must've forgotten that we made the bet in the first place, so I don't think..."
TAP TAP TAP.
Talon looked up from the wristwatch to find an irate Penny on the other side... holding up a box of condoms. He couldn't hear what she was saying, but from what he could read off her lips, it was something along the lines of "excuse me, but what the fuck is this?"
"... I gotta go. How about you call me - not Claw - back in the morning with a status update?"
"Roger."
Talon ended the call and put the bubble down. "I can explain."
"Good. You have ten seconds."
In a state of panic, the words tumbled out of Talon's mouth before he really had a chance to think: "uh, they were, those were always there."
"Oh, really?" Penny raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, I mean, there's other girls. It's not like we're even dating-"
"Then how come these are unopened? Do you mean to tell me that you're having unprotected sex with random women?"
"No, I... ran out?"
"Weren't you just complaining a few times ago that you have no time for literally anything else outside of MAD? How your uncle is basically a slave driver? Especially now that he's been starting multiple plan pileups in a day? Where, then, would you have time for random hookups?"
The trouble with lying to a highly-trained agent was that they could sniff out a fib faster than a German Shepherd could sniff out hidden drugs in a car. "... Okay, fine, so I don't really have a sex life."
"What're these for, then? You thought you could kidnap me and have your way with me?"
"No, not, exactly."
"Then why are these here?!"
"... We made that bet earlier, remember?"
"What bet?"
"That bet, the-the one where if I beat you, you'd uh, end up sleeping with me."
"Wha-" the look on Penny's face went from vexation to sheer horror. "Oh shit. That... that was our bet, wasn't it?"
"But you don't have to do anything you don't want to, really!" Talon added quickly. "I..." he sighed. "At first I thought it'd be kinda funny if I held you to your word, but then I found out you didn't remember that, and I guess... given you're in a vulnerable state being MAD's prisoner and everything, it's a dick move in hindsight. Even for me."
Penny wandered over to the black leather couch in the middle of the room and sat down on it.
"You know, to be totally honest, you weren't supposed to find those. I thought I hid those."
Talon watched her study the box. He'd always thought Penny was insanely hot, but there was a part of him that was hoping she'd back out. Why? As much as he hated to admit it... if she were to agree this, this would be his first time with a girl. (Not that he ever did it with guys; contrary to some rumors, he did not swing that way).
It wasn't that he was some kind of prude, and he knew too well he could easily get any girl he wanted. But being in the family business has been a MASSIVE cock-blocker; he didn't have time to pursue anyone else outside of his missions because he was always too busy fighting Penny and trying to keep her from interfering with his plans. (Sometimes, he wasn't sure why he bothered, she always did until now.)
Come to think of it, Penny's situation was basically identical to his. At least if she did, and he wasn't great at it, it wasn't like she'd have other guys to compare it to, right?
"... Okay."
"... 'Okay' what?"
"Let's do it."
Talon blinked. "Wait, really?"
"Yeah. You won the bet fair and square, so I guess I may as well just get this over-with."
An uncomfortable silence sat in the hot air of the room.
"So... do I come over there, or...?" he asked.
"I was thinking the bed, but, whatever you want."
"Yeah, that works."
They went from their respective places in the room to the king-sized bed on the other side of the room, and took their spots next to each other.
Penny thought sometimes the smell of Talon's hair gel could be suffocating, but he wasn't wearing a heavily-scented one today. She could still smell it, she always did, but it wasn't unpleasant.
"You sure you're okay with this? It's not too late to back out."
"If anyone's going to back out, it's you, you big chicken."
"I am not a chicken!"
"Oh yeah? Prove it."
Penny gasped as Talon suddenly grasped the front of her shirt, forcing his lips onto hers. The initial clanking of their teeth was a bit painful, but the longer he held her there, caressing her lips with his, the more she began to relax, the stronger the buzzing feeling was in their lips and cheeks. As much as she didn't want to, the blonde forced herself to pull away long enough to catch her breath.
"... You good?" Talon panted.
Unable to conjure any words, Penny simply nodded. She grabbed a hold of his slender shoulders and went back in, just carefully enough so they didn't crash into each other. She had no idea how much she needed this until she actually started doing it. Once she was able to regain a little more control, Penny threw her arms around Talon's neck and pulled herself into his lap. Deepening their kiss, the tips of their tongues sliding together... it just felt natural.
Chills ran up Penny's spine as Talon grabbed the bottom of her shirt. Was this really happening right now? She was about to have sex with the guy who was supposed to be her arch-nemesis. Maybe she was a little too eager to oblige in helping him get it over her head. Pale gray bras probably aren't the sexiest in the world, but it was what she happened to be wearing at the moment.
Not that Talon cared: he was too busy trying to unfasten it, albeit, not with much luck. "How do girls get into these things?"
"I just fasten mine ahead of time and slide it on like a shirt."
"Can you turn around for a second, then? It's not cooperating."
Penny stood to her feet, her knees a bit weak from the adrenaline. Now he was more successful in unhooking the bra... but something else happened to catch his attention.
"Woah... you didn't tell me you got a tattoo."
"Wha- I don't have a tattoo."
"Yeah you do, right here, on the back of your neck," he said, lightly tapping its location.
"But... I don't remember getting a tattoo. What is it of?"
"It's a serial number or something: '#12041983'."
"Did you put that on me?"
"No, cuz if I put that on you just now, it would've had to have been bandaged, and it takes a couple of weeks to heal."
Penny rubbed the back of her neck where he said it was. It didn't feel like there was anything there. "Huh. Weird." Now that her bra was unfastened, she slipped it off of her shoulders and threw it in the general direction of where her shirt lay on the floor. "I'll have to figure that out later."
Blame it on male instinct perhaps, but Talon's eyes went straight for Penny's tiny, bare breasts. He looked her back in the eyes just as quickly. "May I-"
Penny reach for his hands herself and brought them to the small, sensitive mounds. The warmth of his fingers felt good against her cold chest. She could feel her underwear getting wet. Would that end up getting on her jeans? Whatever, that didn't matter right now.
"Your turn," she whispered lustfully, reaching for the zipper of his hoodie.
"You're cute when you're horny, you know that?" Talon asked, voice as low as hers as she began to remove his purple-striped hoodie that somehow kept fitting him all these years, revealing a plain white t-shirt underneath.
It took an incredible amount of self-control not to literally rip it from his body. Just as she might've guessed, his chest and torso were rock hard... but there was, even for someone of his occupation, an unnatural amount of scars and bruises covering it too. Looking at his arms, they looked just as similar.
Talon noticed her shift from lust to worry. He lifted the bottom of her chin so she was looking at his eyes instead. "My eyes are up here, ya perv," he joked.
"Where did you even get all of those?"
"Don't act so surprised. You know what we do. So I've got scars, you got a tat, who cares?"
Before she could speak any words of protest, he started slowly kissing down her neck, starting from the bottom of her jaw, one hand still on her breast. It took a few seconds, but it seemed to be enough to distract her from the concern over it. Truthfully, she wasn't the cause of (most of) these injuries: Claw liked to find different ways to torture him whenever he failed, his favorite method being throwing him into the shark tank he kept beneath the floor. But she didn't need to know about that; he didn't want to be thinking about that right now anyway.
She started reaching for his belt, fumbling to unfasten it. Soon enough it was added to the growing pile of clothes on the floor.
Holding her firmly by the ass, Talon picked her up and threw her onto the soft mattress below, head landing on one of the many pillows that decorated it. She seemed shocked at first, but it only lasted for a second as she bit her lip in excitement when he crawled above her and started unbuttoning her pants. She was secretly grateful she had decided to shave recently. Soon her socks and little pink panties were to follow.
"Is this okay?" Talon started rubbing his hand up and down her womanhood, being sure to get that moisture against her clit. (He had to actually look up ahead of time what a clitoris and g-spot were first, and where they were located. His knowledge about sex came mainly from research on the internet, but just because he was inexperienced didn't mean he wasn't going to show up unprepared and with no idea with what he was doing.)
Penny groaning softly, her eyes rolling back into her head was enough to give him the answer he needed.
Talon looked up, suddenly remembering the bottle of lube he had grabbed on the way out of the pharmacy where he got the condoms. "Hang on-" he stopped playing with her for a moment to grab the bottle off of the night stand and rip the flimsy cardboard box open. "This is supposed to help with friction, but I guess we won't even need that much." Applying some of the clear liquid into his hand, he moved it lower then, just over the lower part of her wet, welcoming sex, a silent request for entry.
There really was no going back after this, but they had gone too far to stop now. Penny herself had taken it on her to move her hips and entrap his strong fingers herself. She sucked in her breath at the cold liquid in comparison, but it started to warm up soon enough.
Oh my god she's so tight and hot. That's a good thing, right? So this one guy on the internet said you're supposed to do a 'come here' motion on her upper wall while you're fingering her, and... holy crap, are those ridges? The inside of a vagina has ridges?! Oh, damn. He had expected it just to be smooth, but no, her inner walls were far more textured than he would've imagined. If he wasn't hard already, he definitely was now. He wasn't sure how much he'd be able to feel with the condom on, but if he could even feel those squeezing around him just a little bit... the faster he went, the louder her moans got. It was the most beautiful sound in the world, and he couldn't get enough.
"Ah f-fuck! T-Talon! Your fingers feel even better than mine!" she stuttered between gasps.
"Oh, do they?" He couldn't help but bask in the ego boost she was giving him.
"I-" she pulled her hips from his fingers and sat up. "I want you. All of you."
Talon yelped as she grabbed the hemline of his tight black jeans, which did little to hide the bulge that had formed since they started. Relief flooded him when the restraint of his pants of had been removed. Talon struggled to kick them from his ankles, so he had to reluctantly stand from the bed and remove them himself. He noticed Penny biting her lip as he removed the last covering from his body. He never quite understood how someone could be so dorky and so sexy at the same time, but that didn't mean he was any less into it.
Coming back, he pushed her back down on the pillows, lying on top of her as their faces met again, tongues rolling around.
"Wait-" Penny said, breaking the kiss.
"What?"
"There's a whole box of condoms over there. Shouldn't you put one on?"
"Uh... yeah." He got off of her and reached for the box at the end of the bed. "I was getting to that, I-I didn't forget."
"Uh-huh, sure."
"Pass me the lube, would ya?"
"... Watermelon flavored?"
"What?" he asked, tearing the foil open.
"This lube is watermelon flavored, apparently."
"Huh, interesting. Seriously, give it."
Handing him the bottle, Talon used another pump of lube, this time applying it to himself to make rolling on the condom easier. (He was a bit skeptical of the internet's advice here, but he was actually glad he took it.)
"Now, where were we?" he asked, returning to pin her to the mattress beneath.
Penny groaned at the feeling of Talon's lips and teeth against her neck, enough to give a bit of pleasurable pain, but not so hard that it would've left a mark. It took a moment to position themselves just right, but her legs on either side of his hips, she nearly pulled him in.
"G-give it to me. I'm ready."
Talon nodded. Making sure he was properly aligned with her, he groaned began to slide all of him into her.
The blonde gasped beneath him, her face reddening deeper and her blue eyes wide and grabbing his shoulders.
It concerned him for a moment: did he hurt her? He thought he was going slowly enough to avoid that. "You okay?"
"I... I'm fine it's - I -" she chuckled, "-just didn't expect it to be so big."
At five-and-a-half inches (he'd measured himself once out of sheer boredom), he probably wasn't as big as those guys in the pornos, but it was good to know she wasn't dissatisfied.
"I always knew you were a tight-ass, I didn't think your pussy would be just as much."
The pace they grinded their hips at was slow at first, both giving the other time to get used to the feeling of being/having the other inside. They started to each break a sweat as they gradually sped up, their vocals filling the spacious bedroom. When it wasn't too much to focus on both at the same time, they kissed each other, enjoying the taste of it (though it didn't taste like anything tangible.)
Suddenly, Penny's legs gripped her lover's lower half tighter, and flipped them around so she was the one on top. Usually, Talon loved fighting her, but this time, he couldn't be bothered to move as she was holding his arms to the bed. Besides, he was now enjoying a much better view of her body, which he noticed a blush not just in her face, but her whole body. He didn't even know that was possible.
Gradually their pace had become less steady and more erratic. Penny's moans sounded less like moans and more like a high-pitched whining, accompanied by panting she couldn't quite control. So this was real. This was happening. Her enemy was beneath her, only able to make unintelligible noises, just as she was. Her most forbidden fantasy that she had managed to lock away somewhere in the back of her brain for a good few years was finally coming true. Her vision was blurring and her body felt unbearably hot. God she didn't want this to stop, she didn't want this to ever-
"GAH! TALON!" Penny's body thrashed uncontrollably, her body rocking back and forth with pleasure.
Talon was already having trouble lasting to begin with, but the harder and faster her walls squeezed him, it officially became impossible to hold on any longer, and in the middle of her orgasm he ended up beginning his own. Thankfully she had remembered the condom when he nearly forgot; how other guys were able to pull out in time he wasn't sure.
By the time it was over, they sat there, Penny's hands still pinning Talon's wrists to the bed, gasping and out of breath. It took a bit of effort, but Penny was able to pull herself off of him and collapse on the bed next to him.
The first two minutes or so afterwards, they sat in the post-sex glow, lying next to each other, not touching, but close together, Talon only moving to discard of the used condom in the wastebasket next to his bed. Another three minutes passed, and the weight of all that happened really began to sink in. It wasn't until another five minutes or so passed that they bothered to speak to each other.
"You still awake?" she asked.
"Yeah. You?"
"What do you think, genius?"
Another silence.
"So... that happened," he commented.
"Yeah. It did."
Neither of them had spoken a word to each other that night, each of them drifting off to sleep at their own pace, on their own respective side of the bed.
It wasn't even the break of dawn when they woke up again. Penny fished out her own garments out of the pile that had formed next to the bed, while Talon had the privilege of getting fresh clothing from his own closet.
They say "after the high comes the low", and boy did that low come for Penny. The sex itself was... pretty good, actually. Talon was a more considerate lover than she anticipated. That bed was magic or something; she only slept in it a few hours, but aside from a mild headache, most of her pain from yesterday was gone. But that didn't change the fact that MAD was in control, and HQ and the rest of the world were in serious trouble. The world outside itself might've been burning, and what did she do? She slept with the guy who pulled the trigger on it all.
Talon left the closet, fully-dressed again. "Lemme guess: you're kicking yourself for letting your guard down and doing something really unprofessional that would get you fired if you got caught? If you were still working for HQ?"
Penny pressed her lips together. The thing about being around one person daily, your thought processes tended to link up. You could predict each other, reading each other like a book. That didn't mean she was going to admit he was right, even when he was. He'd already gotten the satisfaction of getting her into bed... somehow. He wasn't going to get any more than that from her.
"I'm still working for HQ."
"Really? Cuz last I checked, there's not really any HQ left."
Penny clenched her fist. "And I guess I have you to thank for that, don't I?" she growled, her voice dangerously low.
"Yes and no. This was a concentrated effort over ti-"
Before he could continue, he found himself holding his hand on Penny's forehead, his body just out of reach of her flailing arms.
"Could you not attack me right now? I'm trying to have a serious discussion here."
The agent took a step back. She was about to jump and kick him, but he grabbed her foot, making her lose balance as she fell to the wood floor.
"Look - your agency's gone," he continued, dropping her foot. "All of your friends and coworkers are prisoners of MAD now, and that sucks, sure. But, just hear me out for a sec - since you're not in much of a position to beat MAD, how about you join it instead?"
Penny sat bolt-upright. "On what planet do you think I'd join forces with you?!"
"Since MAD is in control of the world right now, we're looking for skilled and able-bodied minions to carry out orders and keep the populace from rising up. Most HQ agents, if we can get them to drop their goody-goody ways, are just the kind of people we need to keep this going. To make this work, we're hiring as many people as we can, as fast as we can. You'd have to start out at the bottom of the barrel like everyone else - can't give you special treatment just 'cuz we slept together, sorry - but I've seen you and your abilities: you'd rise up in the ranks in no time. So, what do you think? Are you in?"
Penny was about to refuse and protest some more, but before she opened her mouth to say anything she'd regret, Talon had inadvertently just given her just the idea of how she could turn things around: if she could move up in the MAD hierarchy, she'd use her increasingly higher position - coupled with a healthy dose of seducing the heir to the MAD throne when given the chance - to learn MAD's more intimate secrets, particularly their weaknesses, and exploit them, getting rid of the evil organization for good.
"... You know what? I can't quite imagine going back to being nemeses after what happened last night: maybe it is time to turn over a new leaf."
He helped her off the floor. "Great! I was hoping you'd be on the same page I was. We're gonna have to work on an attire change, but you could start today even."
"I can't wait." ... To see the look on your face when I pull the rug out from under you. Is this what evil planning felt like? A part of her worried that smirk she couldn't get off of her face might've given her away, but she couldn't help it. He might've planned from many angles, sure, but certainly not all of them.
He'd never see it coming.