The Femme Defenders in: Six Little Heroines!

By NoComeupance (nocomeupance@gmail.com)

Part 4: Down the Drain

Author's note: This story follows from Enter the Mind Mistress. You can probably pick up on everything you need here, but reading that story will provide a better introduction to the characters. All characters are my original creations. Or, where stolen, they've at least had the serial numbers filed off.

“OOF! EEE-YEE-YEEEP!” Jacky was blinded by the light as she fell into the lair's master control center. She landed quite forcefully on her tender butt and immediately pushed herself upward off the ground with her hands, minimizing contact between her swollen butt cheeks and the hard floor.

“Well, look who finally decided to join us. It's our 'fearless leader,' always prepared for any situation,” Velvet Glove said sardonically.

Jacky struggled to her feet and took a look around. Similar architecture to the rest of the facility, but with messy furniture scattered around, along with numerous pizza boxes and junk food wrappers. Also a not-especially pleasant stale odor. She couldn't help noticing a trophy case along one wall, displaying her costume along with Bronco Buster's and Velvet Glove's, plus assorted superhero-related collectibles and knick-knacks. She noted that her cape was included with the rest of her outfit; apparently her captor had snagged it out of the trap door.

A close examination of her immediate surroundings left Jacky disheartened. Some sort of extremely strong, clear, plastic-like substance kept her confined in a small, cylindrical area. Velvet Glove, wearing a skimpy G-string and her stupid gloves, had her own tube, as did Bronco Buster, wearing a pair of singed panties with a star on the front, along with her boots and her Stetson. A rope lay discarded on the floor of her tube and she was now gingerly picking some cactus needles out of her butt, wincing as she did but not making any noise that Jacky could hear.

“Oh my God, what the hell kind of panties are those? Seriously, do you even pay attention when you get dressed in the morning?” Velvet Glove snickered.

Ignoring the fact that Velvet Glove was actually right about not putting much thought into her clothing, and suppressing her desire to go back in time and throw Velvet Gloves to the wolves back when she had the chance, Jacky looked down at herself.

“Oh.... Damnit.”

Jacky was wearing a pair of black panties. On the front, in elaborate “old-timey” letters, was the classic Jack Daniel's Whiskey label, “Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 Brand Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey, Distilled & Bottled By Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tenn. USA.” On the rear, in those same old-timey letters, was the phrase, “A Little Whiskey Makes Me Frisky!” Jacky, suddenly aware of her undressed state, covered her breasts and blushed bright red.

“Why, Jacky!” smirked Velvet Glove, “I had no idea you were such a lush! And an easy lay, at that!”

“Have you even been paying attention?!” shouted the mysterious figure, who made her presence known to Jacky by whirling around in her chair and lunging to her feet. The shadows in which she kept herself prevented Jacky from making out anything more than an outline, but it appeared to be a woman of average height, kind of messy hair, formless clothing, round glasses. “That was, like, her best plotline ever!”

“Plotline?” asked Jacky, “And it so happens that the last time I got a vacation, which was two years ago, by the way, I went on a tour of the Whiskey Trail and picked these up at the Jack Daniel's Distillery gift shop. They were on clearance! And just because I have one pair of alcohol-themed underpants does not make me an alcoholic!”

“Uh-huh. That's why the 'food and provisions' line item in the budget keeps getting more expensive and you lock yourself in your bedroom at ten o'clock every night!”

“Well, at least I'm in my bedroom at night, not out freelance nursing, performing house calls for all the poor young hunks afflicted with blue balls!”

Velvet Glove sneered. “I should apologize for my earlier statement about you being an easy lay,” V.G. said as her eyes narrowed, “I had forgotten that your alcohol-induced friskiness is probably taken care of by your host of battery-powered boyfriends. In fact... have you ever had a non-electric fuck buddy?”

“Ladies, please!” said the captor, seeming to relish the fighting, “Let's save the great interpersonal dynamics until we have the whole cast assembled, okay? For now, can't we just say that Jacky's an alcoholic and V.G.'s a slut and call it a day?”

Both women looked chastened, pointedly avoiding eye contact with the other. Bronco Buster, meanwhile, was ignoring the entire to-do, as was her habit, and was feeling right pleased that she had just removed the last of the cactus spines from her heiney.

The mysterious woman spun back around. To her delight, the remaining Femme Defenders had just arrived at the next room...

***

“I believe this room might be your area of expertise,” remarked Mind Mistress to Zoe upon entering the next room.

The inference was somewhat obvious. They faced a long corridor, at the end of which was a big red button, helpfully labeled “Press this button, Zoe!” Between the remaining heroines and that button were a series of obstacles: A pool filled with sharks; a set of crushers rhythmically pounding into each other, first vertically, then horizontally; a spiderweb of lasers; and finally a canon pointed straight through a hole in the wall at the end of a really long pit, designed to shoot its payload straight at the button. In the middle of the room, after the lasers but before the canon, was a giant brick of ice against the right wall, behind which an open door could vaguely be seen.

“I suspect we need to get through that ice. Flower Power could likely crush it, but I don't believe she'll be able to cross that pool or the crushers without assistance. I would also note that electrical currents run between that button and the various devices that litter this room; I would infer, based on that, that pressing the button would clear the way forward. I think it is also a safe inference that pressing the button will have deleterious consequences for you, but at the moment I see no obvious way to proceed without playing by our captor's rules. Your thoughts?”

Zoe grinned. “What I'm hearing is that I should run through the obstacle course and push the button. Piece of cake!” This would be just like the danger room back at the base! She stretched her arms above her head, in this case literally stretching them six feet in length, partly to limber up but mostly to show off. Then she touched her toes (without bending over), took a few quick jogging-in-place steps, then took off.

First came the shark pool. Easy enough. She adopted her customary form for dealing with big stretches of impassable territory: A giant spring. She compressed herself, then shot over the pool.

*Ka-ZAP!* *BOOM!*

One of the sharks peaked its head out of the pool, took aim, and shot a pink laser blast straight at the flying spring. An explosion enveloped her, halting her momentum. When the smoke cleared, Zoe had returned to her original shape, wide-eyed and blackened from head to toe.

“WHY DID NOONE TELL ME THESE SHARKS HAD FREAKIN' LASER BEAMS ON THEIR HEADS!!” she shouted as she plummeted down toward the pool.

*SPLASH!*

Zoe found herself submerged in water, surrounded by hungry sharks. She didn't need Mind Mistress's brain to tell her that she needed to get out of there, fast! She quickly surfaced and began paddling freestyle toward the far end of the pool, morphing her feet into flippers and making her hands into long, flat paddles to maximize the amounts of water she was pushing behind her. The shark who blasted her was following close behind and wasn't about to let the meal it had worked so hard for escape.

After about thirty seconds, Zoe was a few feet away from the edge of the pool. She stretched her arms out and latched onto the edge. Just then-

*CHOMP!* “YEEOOW!”

Zoe screeched as the shark latched onto her lower half and began chewing, grinding its teeth as her malleable plastic body yielded to its jaw.

“OWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!” Zoe wailed as the shark pulled and pulled, stretching her legs and torso backwards as it tried to pull her off of the wall and enjoy its hard-won Zoe Burger. Her arms and torso grew thinner and thinner as they stretched out longer and longer. The shark found it increasingly difficult to pull backwards, the rubber heroine pulling forward against its jaw with increasing force. At last its backward movement came to a halt and it sat there for agonizing minutes, its jaw aching as Zoe's arms and torso strained and her lower half screamed in pain. At last-

*SPROING!*

The shark's jaws couldn't hold on any longer. The rubber heroine went rocketing out of the pond and across the room. She landed on the floor and came skidding to a halt, her arms and torso still stretched thin, her bottom half mangled and protruding at odd angles. Fortunately, her recent bath had washed away all the blackness and soot from the laser blast.

“Well,” she said, half-dazed as she rolled her neck around and began pulling herself back into shape, “I guess that could have been wor-”

*KLONG!*

Her words were interrupted by the metal crushers to either side of her smashing together, then pulling apart, leaving behind a paper-thin rendition of the bouncy heroine.

“Oh, right. The crushers.”

*SLAM!*

The vertical crusher slammed down, then retracted. Zoe was now a long square pole. The plucky heroine began wiggling and bouncing in an effort to inch forward.

*FWOOP!* *CRUSH!*

Sensing that an object had found its way into the crushers, a pair of new walls emerged from the ground in front of and behind Zoe. Before she could react, they slammed together, then withdrew. Zoe had been crushed into a six-inch by six-inch by six-inch cube.

“Uuuuuuuuggh!” she muttered. Then she began the slow process of rolling forward, past the crushers, six inches at a time. Fortunately, the crushers had stopped pounding, sensing that all that remained in their area of attack was a harmless cube.

*foomp.* *foomp.* *foomp.* *foomp.*

Zoe shifted her mass up and forward, awkwardly tilting and rolling. First she landed on her face, then her chest, then her butt, then her back, then back to her face again. After agonizing minutes, Zoe found herself at the end of the crusher's reach. The sides of her cube bulged out as Zoe strained, until finally-

*Pop!*

The rubber heroine popped back into shape.

“Well, that wasn't all THAT bad! Besides-”

*KLONG!* *SLAM!* *FWOOP!* *CRUSH!*

Zoe had underestimated the reach of the crushers by a good six inches. In short order she found herself crushed back into a cube again, pushed to the center of the crushers' range. An annoyed, yet determined, look crossed the side of the cube that held her face. She furrowed her brow, concentrated, and began slowly rolling herself back out again.

*foomp.* *foomp.* *foomp.* *foomp.*

Finally, when she was several feet beyond what she was pretty sure was the end of the range, she popped, cautiously, back into shape again.

Now Zoe faced an interlacing web of lasers. They seemed much thicker than the ones from earlier, and she didn't need an aerosol spray to see them.

“Hmmmm,” she thought, “Better not risk just springing through these. They may be more harmful than they look...”

She inched her way up to the first one, moving her head this way and that to plan the best angle to get around it. At last, she decided the wisest course was to just stretch over it like a bridge and re-form on the other side. She took a deep breath and readied herself.

At exactly that moment, the shark that earlier had so relentlessly pursued Zoe finished nursing its sore jaw and, in a moment of spite about the meal that was not to be, peeked its head out of the water, took aim, and with a mighty-

*ZAP!*

-Blasted poor Zoe in the butt.

“YEEP!” *FZZZZZT!*

The rubber heroine instinctively clutched her burnt buttocks and hopped forward, eyes wide at the unexpected singing. She looked back to inspect the damage, only to notice that she was now standing on the other side of the laser.

“Huh. Well, that wasn't so-”

*Plop!*

Her right hand detached from her wrist at the point closest to the laser she had just hopped through, bouncing on the ground.

*Plop!* Her left hand joined her right hand, this time lopped off just below the thumb joint.

“Oh. Well, I guess that's to be expected...”

*SHLORP!* The top half of her body slid off of her bottom half, landing on the ground in front of her. The stretchy teen crossed her arms in front of her, though she found the maneuver a bit awkward without hands, and pouted.

“You're doing great, Zoe! You can make it! I believe in you!” shouted the mysterious voice, “Um, I mean, take that, you goody two-shoes heroine! Grrr!”

“Y'know, just 'cause I'm stretchy doesn't mean I can't feel pain! Getting sliced in half hurts!”

“Well... I mean, that's part of the game, right? You gotta take the sour with the sweet!”

“Well, I still think you're a meany!” Zoe returned to pouting.

After a few moments she felt a soft kick in the small of her back. She twisted around to look behind her. There was her lower half, her legs tapping her feet impatiently.

“Alright, alright, just a minute...” Zoe turned and tried to grab onto her right hand, which was now standing up on its fingers, drumming in a fashion that could only be interpreted as annoyance. Zoe took careful aim with her right stump, sticking her tongue out the left side of her mouth as she concentrated, then lunged her arm forward.

*Plorp!*

She hit her mark and her hand instantly merged with her arm where it made contact with the stump of her wrist. From there it was an easy task to grab the left hand and reattach it, then carefully climb her legs and situate herself back atop her bottom. She shimmied a bit, making sure her top half was precisely aligned with her lower half. To test that she was really whole, she changed herself into a shovel, then a hula hoop, then a chest of drawers, before finally returning to her original form.

“Alright, I've pulled myself back together! Time to get to work.”

With the shark no longer looking to exact vengeance, Zoe found it relatively easy to twist herself through the remaining lasers. Soon she was on the other side, looking back at the obstacle course proudly.

“Just so you know, you took three-point-eight seconds longer to pass that obstacle than Jacky did on her own laser run.  Also, Jacky didn't slice herself into four pieces. Just a bit of constructive criticism, while we're all offering it!” hollered Mind Mistress from the entrance.

Zoe frowned. She really, really, really wanted to like Mind Mistress, but sometimes the brainiac made it so difficult! She spun around and found herself face to face with a large cannon. It was pointed across a deep chasm, straight at a hole in an imposing metal wall. Zoe could see the button, her goal, through the hole.

“Well, this seems easy enough!” She said. She walked over to the canon and inspected it. It looked kind of like a Civil War cannon, based on the boring trips her dad would drag her on to Civil War battlefields. There was a fuse on one end and a hole on the other. Simple.

Zoe morphed one hand into a hard flint, the other into a striking key, and struck them together to make sparks until the fuse lit. She then quickly ran around the canon, hopped into the barrel, and changed her shape into a perfectly round ball.

*KA-BOOM!* *SPLAT!*

The cannon exploded and Zoe flew through the air, passing straight through the hole in the wall and slamming straight into the red button and the wall that surrounded it. The impact flattened Zoe into a perfect circle, her butt and compressed legs the only thing that could be seen through the hole. After a few seconds she fell off the wall.

*Wub-wub-wub-wub-wub-wub-wuub-wuuub-wuuuub-wuuuuub-wuuuuuuuu...*

Zoe rolled around on the floor, gradually slowing down as she did until at last she came to a rest, her slightly stunned face looking up in surprise.

“Ouchie!” she muttered, “On the other hand, I'm not sure what else I was expecting...”

The elastic heroine popped back into shape. An alarm klaxon sounded. “Obstacle course disabled.”

The wall tilted down toward the chasm, spanning the gap and leaving behind only a floor with a hole in it. The lasers deactivated and a long panel slid across the pool, covering it. Then the lights turned red and the room started getting warmer.

“Well done!” said Mind Mistress, “We can now proceed, once Flower Power crushes this ice.”

“I don't know, man,” Flower said, “Does this ice really want to be crushed? Isn't it happier being all together and cubed, at peace with its oneness, keepin' on keepin' on, doing it's thing?”

Mind Mistress's teeth were grinding. “Ice is inert water in solid form. It has no feelings, it has no soul, it has no desires. Just crush it.”

“Looks like somebody's not in a state of oneness with the universe around her. Water is, like, primal, its one of the four elements and you should really get in touch with it if you want to elevate your consciousness. You know, quantum mechanics tells us that water can feel sad. Is that what you want? Sad water?”

Zoe, meanwhile, was sweating as she walked back to her comrades.

“I think the heat lamps that turned on are taking care of the ice problem,” she remarked. She reached a hand up to wipe the sweat from her brow. She glanced at her hand as she did so and noticed that the sweat looked remarkably... peach-colored, “Oh, that can't be good...”

The ice was, indeed, melting, sending a small stream of water trickling down toward the hole in the floor, where it spilled out into the unknowable blackness below.

“Fine,” said Mind Mistress, who was clearly not fine at all, “We'll just wait here for the ice to finish melting. Meanwhile, I'll make a list of all the heroines we could recruit who would be more useful than you, Flower Power. I'm already up to one hundred and thirty-seven. That includes Garbage Girl, a heroine whose power is literally being made of garbage.”

“Groovy!” Flower Power smiled, plopping down to the ground to sit with her legs crossed.

Zoe, meanwhile, fell backwards onto her rear, panting, her arms spread out behind her, holding her body up.

“Guys, I don't feel so great...” she said, her tongue lolling out of her mouth. Little red droplets dripped off of it onto the floor.

“I don't see how your illness is so pressing as to require distracting us from- ZOE! YOU'RE MELTING!” Mind Mistress was pulled out of her reverie by the reality of seeing her compatriot dripping down to the floor and literally spiraling away down the drain.

“Oh, poop,” said Zoe, too put out by the heat to muster an adequate level of concern about the situation, “I'm not so great with heat...”

Mind Mistress ran over and tried to grab onto the teen heroine, but her hand passed through Zoe's shoulder like it was half-melted ice cream. Zoe's left arm fell to the ground with a wet *plop!*

“You guys... had better... go on... without me...” Zoe smiled grimly at Mind Mistress and Flower Power,  “I'll... be fine... just not sure... exactly where... I'll be fine...”

As she said this, Zoe completed her transition from solid to liquid, drifting away with the melted ice water and pouring down into the blackness below.

Mind Mistress gulped. “And then there were two...”

“Bummer,” added Flower Girl.