Iron Maiden: Captured! Jenny Jones was still getting used to life as the crime fighting Iron Maiden when she heard the news: her former employee, collaborator, and fiance, Edward Furlong was circulating rumors that he intended to sell the secrets of the Iron Maiden cybernetic suit to the highest bidder! Jenny was both angered and dismayed. How could Edward betray her like this? More importantly, Jenny was certain that she had managed to confiscate all of the Iron Maiden data from him. Did he have another set secreted somewhere? If he did, Jenny couldn’t let him release it. Not only would it destroy Iron Maiden’s career, but her own career as CEO of James industries would be in jeopardy as well. How could her company stay afloat if all of the company’s secrets were sold to a competitor? Jenny knew she only had one course of action. She had to break into Edward’s place and find out just what he had and recover it from him. And she would have to do it as Iron Maiden! While Edward did not advertise his current whereabouts, Jenny had little trouble discovering where he was. At nightfall, Jenny donned the Iron Maiden suit and flew over to his house. Using the suit’s sensors, Jenny discovered electronic activity very similar to those her own suit used in a large building built to the side of the house. Jenny flew to a window and quietly let herself in. The room was dark, so she switched on her night vision and surveyed the room. She was surprised to find not a suit, but many remote manipulator arms. Then the room’s lights came on and Jenny was temporarily blinded by the extra light. Jenny screamed and fired one of her suit’s blasters blindly at where she remembered one of the arms were. Then she felt herself being forcefully grabbed by the wrists and ankles and pinned to the wall. Jenny concentrated on freeing herself. The robotic arms were strong, but she felt she had a chance to over power them. “My, my, such a display.” Said an unseen voice. Jenny knew it must be Edward. “Really, is this anyway for old friends to behave? Most guests would have knocked.” Jenny remained silent. She felt close to freeing her left arm. Edward continued to speak. “Well, since you’re here, allow me to take your hat.” Jenny’s blood ran cold. “He doesn’t mean to…” she thought to herself. But her gradually returning vision revealed to manipulator arms going to her helmet. “Oh no!” She thought. “He does!!” As the arms meticulously removed the suit’s helmet, Jenny lost control of all of the other suit’s functions. She looked around desperately, but she was alone in the room. Her helmet was deposited in a chute on the far wall. Then more manipulator arms descended on the armored heroine, helplessly pinned against the wall. Jenny could only watch as first one armored gauntlet and then the other was removed. Her boots were removed as well and all of the parts were deposited in the chute where the helmet disappeared. Edward continued to chatter in that smug tone of his. “I’m so glad you got my invitation to come, Jenny. I wasn’t sure if you would, and then I wouldn’t have anything to sell to my clients. Fortunately for me, you came through in flying colors.” As Edward spoke, the manipulator arms removed her suit’s breast plate, belt, and girdle. All Jenny had left was the flexible undersuit that allowed her own body’s muscles to be in contact with and to be amplified by the Iron Maiden cybersuit. Jenny felt devastated. She had walked right into a trap and now she was helpless as her creation and her future was being stripped from her. Jenny’s eyes grew wide as the arms moved to her waist and pulled the top half of her suit away from her skin. As the garment was pulled off her torso, Jenny shivered, partially from the chill air, but mostly from fear and humiliation. The manipulator arms went to her waist again and Jenny shook her head frantically, calling out, “No Edward, please! Don’t take it all away from me!” “Why shouldn’t I?” Edward taunted her from his unseen control room. You took it all from me! Don’t you remember?” Jenny fought back the tears. “You left me no choice, Edward! You were going to steal it and sell it, leaving me broke and ruined!” “Hey,” Edward retorted, “You could have shared it as my wife.” “More like your slave,” Jenny spat out. “Ah, no one respects the value of a good old fashioned marriage anymore.” Edward said with a sigh. Then the arms continued their actions and the remainder of the suit was pulled from her trunk, leaving the former super heroine and CEO of one of the region’s most powerful companies naked and helpless. Jenny held her breath as a single manipulator came forward to touch her belly, just above her pubic hair, and slowly traced a path up her torso and lifted a breast. The coldness of the metal arm made her nipples stand up. Jenny was so frightened she felt she was going to hyperventilate. Then Edward spoke. “Sorry I don’t have time to play, dear, but my clients are most anxious to get their hands on this suit of ours.” Jenny’s breath came out in a whoosh as the arm retracted and her breast settled back into place on her chest. Then the rest of the arms released her and Jenny fell in a heap on the floor. “But I’ll be back,” Edward continued “and then we can have some real fun!” Jenny’s blood ran cold. She knew enough about Edward that he’d never let her leave this place alive. She had to find some way out of here. But how? She had nothing, not even clothes to cover her nakedness. How could she hope to fight him without anything at all? She looked around the room again. Most of the manipulator arms had retracted to the ceiling, but one still hung down limply. Jenny slowly realized that this was the arm she managed to damage with her blaster before she was captured. Jenny stood up and went to get a closer look at it. The blast not only knocked out the arm, but had loosened several of its connections. Forgetting her despair of moments before, Jenny started to climb on the arm. She winced as her skin came in contact with the cold metal. After a bit of work, Jenny made it to the top and began to work on the electronic components in the arm. “It’s a good thing Edward based all of this on technology he stole from me” Jenny mused to herself. Jenny continued to work feverishly into the night. *** Much later, Edward sat in his richly appointed office, grinning. He had just sold the Iron Maiden cybersuit for a handsome sum of money and the suit’s inventor was his helpless captive. “What should I do with her first?” He mused out loud. Several entertaining possibilities entered his twisted mind. “Maybe,” he told himself, “I’ll pick her up again and put her back on the wall before I go in there to entertain her personally,” he said with a chuckle. Edward turned on the equipment, but found that he was getting errors from most of the arms. He looked at the video of the room, but saw nothing. He cursed himself for not placing the camera in a better location. Edward got up to investigate things in person. But when he reached the office door, he found it was being pushed open by one of his own manipulator arms. “Im-Impossible!” he stammered, backing up. All of the manipulator arms had been cobbled together into some sort of strange, walking robot, with Jenny James riding on its back. With Jenny at the controls, the robot struck quickly, lifting Edward by the neck and pinning him against the paneled wall. “I really must commend you for the quality of your materials, Edward” Jenny said coolly. “It was some work getting control of the first arm, but once I did, it proved to be a valuable tool in disassembling the others and building this machine. It’s a shame there wasn’t anything I could wear in there. Oh well,” Jenny continued, “I guess turnabout is fair play.” The arms sprang up and quickly removed the expensive suit from Edward’s body. Jenny toyed with leaving him his shorts, but decided they’d feel better on her than the trousers would and took the boxers as well. Jenny calmly dressed herself in the borrowed shirt and shorts and decided that Edward would be less trouble if he was unconscious. She used the robot arms to rap his head on the wall a couple of times until it sagged forward. Jenny left him in the robot’s grip as she climbed off the machine and began to search the office. She found her suit was already packaged and ready for delivery. She decided to take off her borrowed clothes and put the Iron Maiden suit back on. Then she grinned and took the shirt and boxers and placed them in the package and sealed it back up. Jenny realized that she couldn’t turn Edward over to the police without revealing who Iron Maiden was, a secret she was not yet ready to reveal to the world. She knew Edward couldn’t step forward without revealing his own nefarious practices. But what Jenny could do was see that this package was delivered. When Edward’s mysterious clients discovered what they had paid so generously for, it was beyond a doubt that he would get what was coming to him. “And that will have to do for now,” Jenny told herself, flying back home.