Natalia had suggested accompanying Anja that evening, but Anja said she’d be fine just by herself, and that they needed to cover more ground. Natalia had to concede the latter, but the former she wasn’t so sure about. Who knows what might happened, and none of them were invincible by any stretch.
One of Anja’s issues was that she had a bad habit of trying to go it alone and distancing herself from other people, even her own family. It was one thing when it came to normal life stuff, but now that they were fighting for their lives, that was another thing entirely. Matt’s death had broken Anja, and though she was on the mend, Anja’s need to keep herself from being responsible for something happening to someone else she cared about had a good chance of potentially getting her killed.
Natalia wished she had the nerve to better vocalise what she thought about her sisters’ issues. But she didn’t want to make things awkward between her and them like she did with her parents. If she said the wrong thing, who knows what might happen? Especially with Anja, whose mental state was still far from perfectly healthy. And Estella seemed a bit too recklessly eager about fighting the forces of evil. Natalia wanted to help them course-correct, but she wasn’t sure how. She cared about them deeply, and if something happened to them, well, she didn’t know what she’d do.
Not much she could do, really, but focus on her own patrol. She was downtown, close to the beaches. Tharen couldn’t accompany her for fairly obvious reasons, but he was using his exoskeleton to travel across rooftops, which was absolutely fine by him - he was very much a marksman, and it wasn’t something he idly boasted of, either, as he had demonstrated while training her on her aim. So having the high ground suited him more than just fine.
Natalia was keeping a sharp eye out. Not a lot of people were walking along the streets at this time of night. Part of this was detecting supernatural signatures and keeping them away from civilians, and hopefully, Natalia could use herself as bait for either the Emperor’s minions or the witch.
As it happened, the nice thing about having cybernetics is that one could initiate certain functions with just a thought. Natalia muttered under her breath, “haven’t spied anything out of the ordinary so far. Any luck, Captain?”
“Negative, everything looks fairly quiet so far. I’ll keep looking. Just stay on your guard.” Tharen would’ve heard what she said in a more normal voice, courtesy of NIA modifying said voice input. Natalia could even merely think what she wanted to communicate, but she found it more natural to speak it instead.
Street lights hung over Natalia as she passed through the beams of light. What was she worried about? Tharen had full view of the area around her, and if someone tried to ambush her they’d get shot immediately. And worst comes to worst, her sisters would come running. She could hold her own until then.
An Asian man in a cheap white suit was lazily walking by her. At first glance she wouldn’t have paid him much in the way of thought, but as he passed her, something at the back of her mind was telling her something was off.
She spun around, spying the man’s hand glowing. That was a red flag if she ever saw one.
With nobody else in sight, her blade rifle appeared in her hand, pointed at the man’s spine, already charging. “Stop right there, and stop whatever you’re doing.”
The man stopped, looking over his shoulder, with a grin that sent a shiver down her spine. “A bit late for that, Natalia-chan.”
She knew that voice. How could she possibly forget it? Her grip on the rifle tightened, the blade igniting. “Hanzo.”
A blaster shot rung through the air, impacting something invisible only feet away from the two of them. Now Natalia knew what he meant - he had cast a barrier to stop Tharen from shooting him. She heard Tharen swear over the comms channel.
Hanzo glanced towards the direction the shot came from. “Your alien friend was a bit too slow on the draw, it seems. Too bad for him, I’m not interested in letting a third wheel get in our way.”
That kind of talk immediately caused Natalia to pull the trigger, her rifle letting loose a concentrated bolt of charged energy that struck him right in the back. “Oh, no, no no no no I am not going to entertain your bullshit, you creep. You surprised me the first time, I’m not falling for it a second time. And since you’ve gone and trapped yourself in here with me, I’m going to take you apart.”
Hanzo snarled in pain as he stumbled forward, his suit ruined and his back smoking, but he seemed otherwise unharmed, turning around as his entire form shifted, becoming an anthropomorphic fox once more. Instead of being angry, however, he was grinning, and that sent shivers down her spine. “Oh, you want to play rough, do you? That’s fine by me. But I’m not the type to get rough in the middle of the street. Let’s take this to a more appropriate venue.”
“What the hell are you-”
Natalia then saw the ground below them glow.
❖
Tharen’s eyes widened as both Natalia and Hanzo immediately disappeared in a flash of light. “Oh, son of a bitch, he had a teleport spell handy.” He immediately focused on communicating with Gartho. “Hanzo just teleported out with Natalia, where are they?!”
“Other side of town! Good news is, that will have drained a substantial amount of Energeia from his reserves, at least. Bad news is, I don’t have an exact location. Something’s scrambling the signals over in that area,” said Gartho over the comms. “On top of that, the two Arcane Knights and their companions are dealing with multiple witches, and Anja is occupied by the Namorrodor.”
Red flags spiked in Tharen’s mind as he immediately got moving, bounding across rooftops. The fact that was happening simultaneously was too perfect to be a coincidence. “Damnation, he planned all of this. Now what?”
“I need to go help Anja fend off an entire pack. The others should be just fine. Find Natalia, and keep Hanzo busy until we get there!”
“Great, so it’s just gonna be me backing her up? How swell,” said Tharen with a groan. This was an unexpected worst case scenario. How far ahead did Hanzo plan this? Apparently these ‘kitsune’ were more tricky than he realised.
A female voice cut in on the communicator. “That won’t be necessary, Captain, I’m on approach and ready to assist.”
That voice was enough for Tharen to grin widely. Looks like things were looking up after all. “High time you got here. Let’s go bail her out.”
❖
Natalia was briefly disoriented as the flash of light subsided. She barely noticed the shackles suddenly latching onto her wrists and ankles and pulling them to the sides. Instead of feeling cold to the touch, they were warm. A quick glance told her they were yellow, energy-based constructs that were anchored to the floor and had completely frozen, locking her limbs in place.
A quick scan of her surroundings indicated a fairly plain and incomplete room, likely under construction. It was a fairly large and spacious room with a high ceiling, probably on the ground floor of a house under construction. Magical lights placed around the room warded off the dark, and a glimmer around the windows indicated they were enchanted to hide anything unusual inside.
“I can’t hail anyone. He’s set up some kind of field to suppress communications,” NIA said. She was on her own for now, then, which was not good.
Hanzo’s grin was wide and predatory, as he casually wrested the blade rifle from Natalia’s hand and tossed it aside with one hand, groping her breast with the other. He laid on the supernatural charisma rather thick. “There we go, we’ve got plenty of time. Your friends will have to look all over this area to find us, and by the time they figure out where we were, we’ll be long gone, with you as my adoring pet.”
Natalia had known what to expect now, and was mentally prepared for it, but the magical influence still hit her hard, her heart thumping as artificial love and lust swelled inside her. She was trying not to think about the fact that a part of her was somehow enjoying this in a perverse way.
And then he had to twist the knife, looking down at her crotch with a smirk, sniffing audibly. “Oh, Natalia-chan, is this turning you on? Perhaps breaking you will be easier than I thought.”
“Buy time. Keep him talking,” NIA advised.
“I-I may be a sub, but I’m not some weak-willed slave,” Natalia stammered, trying to maintain her focus. “You surprised me when I was exhausted. This time-”
Hanzo interrupted her with a laugh, groping her with both hands. “Oh, please, you think I’m just going to sit here and wait for you to beg me to make you mine? If you’ve been hanging around your Arcane Knight of a sister for long enough, then perhaps you might be aware of the ‘Change’ and ‘Mind’ runes?”
Oh. Oh fuck. Natalia’s eyes widened as she “You’re going to try and brainwash me.”
“You could say that. The problem with magical mind control is that it’s temporary, however. To make brainwashing permanent, you need to dedicate more time and much more Energeia,” Hanzo sighed, as he ceased molesting her, and took a couple of steps back, his hands beginning to glow. “That’s why I needed to buy some time, you see. I think a combination of direct mental changing and hypnosis should suffice.” He grinned, “you really should just make it easier on yourself and come with me willingly, or just don’t resist, either’s fine with me. I know there’s a part of you that finds the idea of being my love slave very appealing.”
Natalia shivered. He wasn’t wrong. It was a potent sexual fantasy come true. She already had experienced dreams of what might’ve happened back on the beach, had her sisters not intervened. God, what was wrong with her? Still, as tempting as it was, she had more than enough self-control to cast the temptation aside.
She gave him a glare. “As much as I want to deny it… Yeah, there is. But I value my free will and freedom more than that. So politely, go fuck yourself.”
He seemed disappointed, but he shrugged. “Not like you have much choice either way, I suppose, but that’s disappointing. Enough of this chit-chat, we can do plenty more once the process is complete.”
“We have anti-magic grenades that should free us and temporarily disrupt his runes, but he might intercept it before it goes off. We need to distract him.”
Natalia had a devious idea. She grinned back at him, “gotta say, you thought this through pretty well. But you made one small error.”
Hanzo raised an eyebrow. “And what would that be?”
“Not picking a room with a lower ceiling.”
Then she summoned the Light Utility Vehicle.
Specifically, she summoned it right above Hanzo’s head.
“WHAT THE FU-” Hanzo couldn’t complete his outburst before the vehicle landed right on top of him. Normally Natalia would wince at the rather sickening crunch, but it felt rather cathartic after what he was about to try to do to her. The anti-magic grenade popped out, already armed, and it burst, destroying the chains and allowing Natalia to ‘transform’, her battle suit swapping with her clothes and forming over her body in a flash of light. She summoned her mace shotgun, and gripped it with both hands.
Hanzo howled furiously as his tails tossed the LUV off of him and he stumbled back onto his feet. “You ungrateful bit-” His insult was swiftly interrupted when Natalia clocked him in the head as hard as she could with the mace.
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Blood went flying as Natalia swung again, backing him up against the overturned vehicle as she charged up the weapon. She didn’t want to give him a chance to retaliate, smashing it against his head repeatedly.
Hanzo caught her hand after the sixth blow, but she pointed it at his torso, and fired. The resulting burst knocked her back, the weapon flying out of her hands, but she managed to roll back onto her feet just as the fox yokai leaped at her, his torso smoking and his garments ruined, looking more feral than ever.
Time to put her martial arts knowledge to good use. Natalia side-stepped the lunge, delivering a fierce kick to his gut, followed by a back fist to the head, and a spinning back kick that send him flying towards a wall.
“Looks like he’s not used to fighting a ‘mortal’ on equal terms,” NIA said. “Hopefully he’ll keep underestimating you.”
The fox crashed into the wall and tumbled, but he landed on his feet, launching a bolt of energy at her from his hands. Natalia dodged to the side, snatching up the blade rifle and started firing back, ducking and leaping over incoming projectiles, using her feet-mounted jet boosters to redirect her momentum, even running along a wall as she made her approach.
He stopped casting spells, which meant he was likely changing runes. Good. She rushed him, slashing rapidly with the rifle’s blade, forcing him to block with his arms, which were resistant but still were starting to spill blood as well. All she had to do was keep this up.
“Enough of this,” Hanzo said coldly as he suddenly parried the blade with an energy-based blade of his own before punching her in the head. She stumbled back, but her personal shield and the helmet itself protected her from injury. But he came at her with more strikes, putting her on the defensive, and what was worse, he was better at using his weapon than she was hers, forcing her to recall it and rush in for a gut punch.
“Your style seems familiar. Who taught you how to fight?” Hanzo asked, chuckling as he blocked a few follow-up punches, and thus began a swift and brutal back and forth of martial arts. He seemed more experienced, but fortunately, Natalia was no slouch compared to him, her suit and cybernetics giving her enough of an edge to keep up with him. “Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure you’ll be happy to tell me everything once I’m done with you.”
Natalia took a few steps back, settling into a proper stance, “you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Last I checked, you’re not the one who’s winning this fight.”
“Yes, well. About that. I’ll admit, you’re doing very well, but I don’t need to beat you martially…”
He rushed her, delivering a sudden barrage of punches with inhuman speed. Natalia kept up a defensive stance, blocking most of them, and her personal shield holding up against the rest. She managed to get a few counter-blows in, mainly kicks.
And then her shield went down. And a hand slipped through her defences, grabbing her helmet. What on Earth was he trying to-
Suddenly, her mind went blank. It was as if all of her current thought processes had been erased from her mind.
Everything was a blur as she tried to recall what exactly was happening and what she was doing here.
It only took about thirty seconds. But when she fully recovered, she found herself bound in chains again. And her helmet’s eye lenses had been ripped out. She was wondering why until her eyes focused on a rippling, rainbow orb in front of her. And she found herself unable to look away.
The world suddenly melted away, replaced by the ripples on the orb’s surface, like a multi-coloured pool of water, thick black lines between the ripples. It was an utterly mesmerising sight, and her thoughts began to slowly melt away.
“Change back to your normal clothes,” Hanzo commanded from behind her.
Natalia did so without a second thought, and the moment her helmet disappeared, she could feel the fox’s fingers massaging her temples, filling her head with his Energeia. Not that she could properly comprehend that was what was happening to her. NIA’s panicked warnings were completely out of mind for her, and slowly began to fade into the background, as the ripples became her very world.
“Good girl,” Hanzo chuckled, as he continued to rub her temples. “Doesn’t it feel so good to obey?”
Natalia nodded with a dumb smile, her mind immersed in thoughts of complete obedience and loyalty, all surrounding that handsome fox. No worries, no responsibilities, just doing as she was told. And it felt so good. “Yes…”
“You want to feel this wonderful all the time. You want to obey without question.”
“I… I want to obey.”
He proceeded to repeat this several times - not that she was keeping count. Each time a desire for submission became more and more ingrained in her psyche.
“You want to be a slave.”
She couldn’t deny it any longer. The very idea of surrendering her agency to someone else was… Incredibly appealing, in more ways than one. The image of herself prostrating herself in front of her yet-unknown master was clear in her mind, and it excited her greatly. “Y-Yes…”
“I am your master. Swear total allegiance to me, Natalia, and take your place by my side.”
Everything was clear now. What she needed to do next was not remotely in doubt. “Yes, Master Hanzo. I am your-”
Suddenly, a light struck the rippling orb, exploding in a cacophony of light and sound, completely shattering Natalia’s world and causing her to shut her eyes in pain, her ears ringing as she barely heard a pained howling from behind her, the disruption playing merry hell on her formerly entranced mind as she fell to her knees.
When she was able to open her eyes again, she turned around, to see her master (she thought? Maybe? Her mind was so scrambled right now) wrestling with a mess of hair from a dark-skinned girl as he hurled desperate spells at another female - a Miama. A bolt of energy slammed into his back, likely from Tharen’s rifle. Part of her wanted to intervene and help him-
“Natalia, stay where you are. You’ve been brainwashed. Your own mind betrays you,” NIA said. “Trust me when I say that he is not your ally or your master.”
Oh. Oh God. Mast-no, Hanzo, did say he’d do that, didn’t he? It was hard not to think of him as ‘Master’ right now. How much of her thoughts were her own and what were stuff he implanted into her head?
Hanzo snarled as he deflected an incoming projectile, “how did you find us?!”
“A mixture of magic and technology. You didn’t conceal your location as well as you thought,” spoke the Miaman female as she used her magic to rip up the floor, causing pipes under it to coil around the fox yokai, constraining him further. “This girl here was rather helpful in tracking you down.”
“Figured something was up when I saw all the spiritual disruption going on at once, and I tracked down the source,” said the girl, her hair continuing to coil around him. Natalia had never seen her before, but her description identified her as Arika. “Cheeky of you to manipulate the witches and the beasts to do your dirty work, but that stops here, pal!”
At this point other people were rushing in, some she recognised, some she didn’t. Estella and Anja in particular looked like they were going to rip Hanzo to shreds. Also, Anja was strangely jacked??
Also, Anja proceeded to basically just punch Hanzo through a wall (breaking the binds on him in the process) and pursued him, with Estella following.
“They’ll handle it,” Phi’Scia said as she helped her up. “Come on, let’s get you out of here before the government agents arrive.”
❖
Anja did not waste time chasing down Hanzo as he tried to recover from getting punched right out into the street, snarling as he stood up, “stop getting in my way, you-”
She didn’t let him finish. Instead, she proceeded to beat the ever-loving shit out of him for about fifteen seconds with a flurry of punches, using Prometheus to constrain him and keep him in place. She grabbed his throat, bringing her other hand back as she bore sharp claws, “I’m going to draw and quarter you, you bastard.”
“Please don’t, I’d much rather we captured him alive.” At this point Agent Yang and his team of mages arrived on the scene, hands glowing as they prepared for anything the fox might pull. “Hanzo, you’re under arrest for illegal entry into the country, as well as violent and sexual assault. Don’t resist arrest, otherwise-“
“NO!” Hanzo suddenly exploded with Energeia, knocking both Anja and the mages back. “Not like this! Damn you all, I’ll make all of you pay!”
Estella rushed past, stabbing him with her sword. His eyes widened, and then disappeared in a flash of light.
Anja wanted to scream with rage. He got away again. The only reason she didn’t basically explode at that point was Estella coming over to put a hand on her shoulder.
“Well, I suppose he’s going to be out of commission for at least a week,” Yang sighed. “He’s going to need that time to heal himself - he would’ve burned a lot of Energeia from the teleport alone.”
That was of little comfort to Anja, who wanted to find him and rip him to shreds. She said, with barely constrained rage, “you… Think you can locate him?”
“I can’t make promises, but we’ll try. If we can corner him while he’s still healing, well… We can trap him.”
Good enough. Anja turned around, and went back to the ship. She wanted to make sure Nat was okay. Also she wanted to go into the simulator and rip things to shreds.
❖
Natalia sat up on her bed as the magical glow around her head subsided. Her mind felt a lot clearer now that the worst of the brainwashing had been cleared out. “Thanks. My head’s still a bit of a mess, but I guess now I’m no longer a potential liability.”
“You’re welcome, Natalia,” Phi’Scia said with a warm smile, sitting beside the bed. “I wish I could do more right now, but completely undoing the brainwashing is going to take some time.”
Natalia hugged herself, thinking back to what happened. It scared the hell out of her. “I still have this need for someone to submit to and obey right now - to be someone else’s slave. If Hanzo gets near me again…”
Phi’Scia sighed, but she put a hand on Natalia’s shoulder. “It’s okay, we’re all going to help you get through this. Perhaps if you need a ‘master’ to serve, how about choosing someone on your own terms? That way you won’t feel compelled to serve Hanzo.”
It made a lot of sense to her, though the potential candidates were… Few. She blushed, “I guess Tharen is the only person in the know who’d make sense to play that part, in that case…”
Phi’Scia blinked, looking rather confused. “I mean, that’s fine, but why not, say, me? I’m your superior as well.”
“Yeah but the master/slave relationship is also sexual. I’ve had sex with Tharen, and I think he’d be fine helping me out in that regard. And… I… Uh… Igetoffonit.”
If the discussion weren’t so awkward and serious, the fact that Phi’Scia’s face was now very much a prominent shade of red would be absolutely hilarious. “OH. Uh… I see. That’s… Fair enough… How about we shelve this discussion for later? This has been a harrowing night for you, so. Maybe you should get some rest.”
Natalia had to concede that was probably a good idea. “Maybe, but sleep can wait for the moment. I need to go see my sisters and my friends, just so they know I’m relatively okay now.”
“I suppose you might as well. Florrie and your sisters have been waiting outside the door with baited breath for the entire time we’ve been here,” Phi’Scia chuckled.
Just to drive the point home, Natalia’s bedroom door swung open, and Florrie tackled her into a hug. “NAAAAAAAATTTTT! I was so worried!”
Natalia hugged her back, taking a deep breath. “It’s okay, Florrie. I’m… Relatively okay now.”
“Good thing Phi and Arika got there when they did, because… Yeah, I’m still gonna fuck that damn fox up,” Anja said. She looked a lot calmer (and no longer unusually muscular), but the very topic of Hanzo really set her off, it seemed. Not that Natalia could blame her.
“Aurelius says he’s contacted people he knows in Thaumian Japan, they might know something about him,” Estella nodded. “We’ll fix you up and kick Hanzo’s ass once we track him down. So don’t worry about a thing, sis. He’ll be out of action for like a week after getting his shit kicked in, so we’ve got time.”
Natalia had… Mixed feelings about this. As much as she appreciated her sisters looking out for her? She didn’t want to be locked away and coddled, either. “I think the best way to do that would be for me to act as bait.” Her sisters looked like they were about to object, so she continued, “I know, but I’m going to be more prepared next time. I held my own pretty well by myself. This time he surprised me with some kind of weird spell that wiped my thought processes for a bit, that won’t work twice.”
“Must have been a ‘Cancel Mind’ spell - it temporarily wipes conscious thoughts and disrupts short-term memory,” said Phi’Scia. “I think we can integrate some protections against that into your helmet. And yes, she certainly did hold her own for a while - Hanzo was already rather bloody and bruised when I arrived.”
“Well, next time, don’t fight him alone. Strength in numbers and all that,” Anja said.
Estella looked at her with a smirk, “except you got lured into a trap by yourself as well, genius. So you should stop patrolling by yourself too.”
Anja grumbled something under her breath that Natalia couldn’t hear.
“Right! Next time, I think I might be able to rig something up that could help! I’ve got some ideas with the stuff the Librarians sent down,” Florrie grinned. “So I’m gonna help you cold-cock that damn fox next time he shows up!”
Natalia giggled. That was such a silly term for ‘knock out’. “Yeah. We’ll do it together. Then, we’ll make him regret ever coming near our town.”