Hey, there, folks! I’ll admit this one’s a VERY specific kink for me, involving a haughty, promiscuous heroine getting turned into a sexless frog-like creature. If that doesn’t sound like something you’re interested in, well, move along, I guess. And if it IS your thing, before you do anything else, PLEASE email me at nocomeupance AT gmail DOT com, because I desperately want to talk to you.

Most of my Femme Defenders/Velvet Glove stories are pure pratfall comedies with a bit of sexiness thrown in. This one’s a black humor/bad ending kind of story… with a bit of sexiness thrown in. If you’re looking for full-blown SEX, this one… doesn’t have it. But if you want sex-adjacent fetish material, boy howdy, you’re soaking in it!

I wrote this story with a detachable Happy Ending. If you’re a Downer Ending kinda person, feel free to stop reading as soon as you read the Three Weeks Later heading. If you feel icky about the Bad Guy winning, keep on reading to the end! On the off chance you’re keeping up on Femme Defenders continuity, the Happy Ending is the canonical ending.

Special thanks to PerilsOfDawn for inspiring the general structure of this story in a convo we had years ago, and to Syceus for authoring what’s probably my favorite line of dialogue in the piece. And extra super duper thanks to the artist, who provided the illustrations (who wishes to remain anonymous).

If you’re confused about the characters, I included a Dramatis Personae at the very tippy-bottom of this story.

As always, all characters are entirely original or, when stolen, have at least had the serial numbers filed off.

Velvet Glove: Green Around the Gills

By Amy “NoComeupance” Ziegfeld

*BANG!*

*BANG!*

*BANG!*

The sound of a latex-clad fist pounding on the door coruscated through ancient wood and reverberated through the cold stone hallways that lay beyond the portal. Velvet Glove took a few steps back from the imposing wooden door. She exhaled through tight lips, puffing her cheeks out slightly, as she surveyed the edifice she was attempting to gain entry to. It was a bleak stone castle, decorated judiciously with gargoyles, along with a smattering of tasteful skulls in those places where aesthetically justified. The towering monument of grayness was interrupted only by the large wooden door that stood before her.

“How the hell did she find a goddamn gothic castle in Ohio?” Velvet Glove mumbled to herself. She then cupped her hands to her mouth and hollered, “Hey! Doctor Bionic! I’m here for your court-mandated check-in! You have five minutes to open up or I’m reporting you as not-in-compliance!”

It was an idle threat. A non-compliant report meant a mountain of paperwork and a follow-up visit that Velvet had no intention of doing. An all-clear, though, was thirty seconds spent checking boxes on the one-sheet, and if she could report Dr. Bionic as in-compliance she could be at a club and half-way to drunk within twenty minutes.

When the Femme Defenders signed on as Justice Squad affiliates, Velvet had been excited for the raised profile and a potential shot at getting back on the Squad. As a practical matter, though, it meant way more bureaucracy and, thus far, missions that turned the team of superheroines into glorified parole officers.

“Last warning!” Velvet added, putting her hands on her hips and tapping a booted foot. She glanced skyward, contemplating the overcast skies. Maybe the cloud cover meant the Squad’s satellite couldn’t see her… In which case… no one would know if she hadn’t even entered the premises before submitting the all-clear. Hmm….

No sooner had the purple-clad vixen begun contemplating this dereliction of duty than the ancient wooden door slowly creaked open.

“Lovely,” she muttered as she walked into the castle, head held high. Hopefully this wouldn’t take too long; she was in no mood for nonsense.

The interior of the castle matched the exterior: Cold stone walls and floors, moldy tapestries, dusty paintings, cobwebbed chandeliers. Velvet had now been in enough supervillain castle lairs to idly wonder if they came prefab.

“Ah, Velvet Glove! Welcome! I trust your journey was… pleasant?” An echoing, female voice boomed from nowhere and everywhere simultaneously.

“Cut the shit,” Velvet said, crossing her arms, “I know you don’t care about my trip, which sucked, by the way, because you live in the ass end of bumfuck and the pricks on the Justice Squad won’t let us use their Beta Beam to teleport.”

“How unfortunate,” the voice dripped with devilish delight, “Well, then, perhaps I can offer you a warm welcome! As we speak, my-”

“Look! I don’t care! All I want to do is hang out here for, like, twenty minutes, then I can leave and file an all-clear report when I wake up tomorrow.”

“I think you’ll find- wait, what?” The voice stopped short as its owner processed Velvet’s words.

“I honestly could not give less of a shit about whatever the fuck it is you’re planning. I had big plans for my Friday night and I got pulled away at the last minute for this social work bullshit. All I need is to stay in your ‘lair’ for about half an hour so it looks to the Squad satellites like I’m doing the work, then hopefully I can make a fashionably late entrance at Capes and Cowls. With any luck, I’ll roll out of bed at two in the afternoon tomorrow, hungover out of my mind, and by 2:15 have all the boxes checked so we don’t have to do this again until next month,” Velvet paused, then added, “Also, in my dream version of tomorrow morning, there’s at least one superstud in my bed. Ideally two.”

“Oh! Um. Hmm… I mean, I guess that works for me. Let me think… Yeah, that all makes sense…”

As the voice mulled the offer, a number of doors opened and about a dozen green-tinted creatures waddled in from all directions. They resembled a disgusting combination of human and frog, with slimy green skin and large, orange ping-pong ball eyes. They awkwardly lurched across the room on gangly, floppy legs tipped with flippered feet, with similarly-beflippered arms hanging limp at their sides. Their heards merged seamlessly into their cylindrical torsos, and their large, beak-like noses sloped down directly from their foreheads. Curiously, each one wore a pair of underpants. White men’s Y-front briefs, stripey boxer shorts, colorful panties, even a thong or two.

Whatever curiosity the unusual garments might have inspired in Velvet was overpowered by the disgust center of her brain. She closed her eyes tight and clenched her fists.

“By the way? This deal is one thousand percent off if one of your disgusting hench-beasts lays a single slimy hand on me.” Velvet raised her gloved fists and adopted a fighting stance, knees bent, feet apart.

“Oh! Right!” the voice switched back to a commanding tone, “Slaves! Stand back!”

As one, the creatures stopped walking. They stood still, staring, their only movement the too-infrequent blinks of their bulging round eyes.

“Ugh!” Velvet Glove retched as an involuntary shiver ran through her toned, slender body, “Could you also order them to stop looking at me? Or, better, to go somewhere where I don’t have to look at them?”

There was a brief pause, as though the owner of the voice were contemplating her next move.

“Why don’t you come up here? You can have a seat, I’ll make you a drink, we’ll chat.”

Velvet weighed her options. On the one hand, talking to a villain, especially a nerd like Doctor Bionic, sounded tedious in the extreme. On the other hand, just standing around with these… things for however long didn’t seem especially exciting, either, and the chance to pre-game was enticing…

“Fine,” Velvet threw up her gloved hands in resignation, “Which way to your… throne room? Lab? Whatever. Wherever it is you hang out.”

“Ummm… I actually have a set of death traps between here and there, each more cunningly clever and devilishly deadly than the last, but… I guess I could send you through the back elevator. You’ll have to follow one of my slaves, though…”

Velvet Glove let out an exaggerated sigh. “Whatever,” she said.

“Cherry!” the voice commanded, “Step forward!”

Shlorp! Shlorp! With two floppy steps of its sticky flippers, a creature wearing a black thong printed with cherries moved forward and presented itself.

“Bring our esteemed guest to me! Use the back entrance.”

Wordlessly, the being flopped around in an awkward 180-degree turn, then stumbled its way out of the room and into a darkened corridor beyond. Velvet Glove rolled her eyes, then stomped after it.

Progress was painfully slow, not because of any tricks or traps or other hazards along the way, but because these creatures were clearly not built for speed. As Cherry slowly flopped down the corridor, Velvet Glove gesticulated and swore like a driver caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic who has convinced herself, down to the depths of her soul, that all of her transportation woes are the fault of the driver immediately in front of her.

“Oh, for the love of- come on! MOVE! God, you’re so-” Velvet Glove rubbed her face with her hands, transforming her rapidly-boiling frustration into kinetic energy, “Just- just POINT! Point to where I need to go and I’ll go there!”

Given that the order did not come from her mistress, Cherry ignored it and dutifully continued her appointed task, trudging slowly down the corridor toward the elevator.

“Why. Won’t. You. Move. Move. Your. ASS?” At that last word, Velvet Glove reared back her leg, then gave Cherry a solid kick, the toe of her high-heeled boot striking right on the string down the middle of Cherry’s complete lack of a butt. The force of the super-powered kick sent Cherry flying face-first down the corridor. The creature landed on its nose, bounced twice, then slid a further three feet. After only a moment’s pause, it awkwardly flailed and flopped back to its feet. Its thong had slid halfway down its thighs in the course of its crash landing, so Cherry began awkwardly pulling it up and adjusting it. With a definitive snap the waistband found its proper place, and Cherry recommenced waddling to the elevator.

Velvet Glove found herself giggling at the display, despite herself. Watching the hideous creature fly and bounce and slide, then pick itself up and adjust its lone clothing article in a pathetic simulacrum of dignity was the first thing to lift her spirits since Jackie-of-All-Trades had given her this stupid assignment. An idea occurred to her. She began jogging down the corridor toward Cherry, preparing to pick up speed to give the aberration a running punt this time. She was forced to dig in her heels and stop herself, though, when she saw that Cherry had reached the end of the corridor and pushed a button to summon the elevator.

“Aww,” she pouted, annoyed that she had been deprived of the one spark of glee she had discovered in this decidedly un-sexy, decidedly un-Velvet place.

*Ding!* The elevator arrived and the metal inner door slid open. It was one of those older elevators of the kind Velvet occasionally encountered in Pre-War apartment buildings, where the exterior door had to be physically opened by the rider. Cherry began the arduous process of awkwardly hooking its twin floppy “fingers” into the wooden outer door’s handle, then dragging it open. Velvet briefly considered doing it herself, her impatience at war with her natural inclination never to do physical labor that a servant could do for her. The dilemma was settled for her when the creature at last accomplished its simple task

“Took you long enough,” Velvet sniffed, her nose in the air, as she walked into the elevator. She pulled her purple cape in behind her as the creature followed, inspecting it to ensure none of the creature’s slime had rubbed off on it.

The elevator began slowly creeping its way upward. Velvet tapped her foot impatiently. Either they were ascending a lot of stories, or this was the world’s slowest elevator. Judging by the decrepit appearance and evident age of the device, probably both.

“So I guess you’re some kind of monster, huh?” Velvet asked, “What swamp did she dig you out of?”

The creature, lacking a mouth, gave no reply, nor any real physical response. It blinked a few times, but at roughly the same rate it usually blinked.

“Not a talker, eh? Probably for the best, doesn’t seem like you’d have much interesting to say,” Velvet said. With nothing better to do, she decided to take a closer look at the creature, adopting a slight squat to bring her face closer to its level. Her eyes wandered over its pointed, beak-like nose, sloping down from the forehead, its orange ping-pong ball eyes- like if Kermit the Frog were a real amphibian- its slumped, hunched posture. She bit her lip, disgusted, yet enthralled, like watching a pimple-popping video on Youtube. Then she raised a single finger and gingerly poked the side of Cherry’s face. It made a wet squishing sound, and as she pulled her hand away a thin bridge of green-tinted, viscous slime connected its skin to her fingertip.

“EWWW!” Velvet squealed, shaking her hand as her whole body shuddered with a mixture of revulsion and that peculiar, dark delight that comes from a close encounter with something disgusting.

“I don’t know how you do it,” she said, inspecting her glove to ensure every trace of slime was off. Just to be safe, she rubbed her hand on the elevator’s peeling wallpaper, “If I were as icky as you, I’d kill myself,” she paused, considering, “But then, I kinda feel the same way about Jacky. I guess I just have high standards.”

Having thus reassured herself of her impeccable tastes, Velvet Glove nodded just as the elevator dinged, signalling its arrival at Doctor Bionic’s command center. The metal door slid open and Velvet waited expectantly as Cherry awkwardly pushed open the wooden outer door. Once the beast was well out of the way, Velvet walked past her, carefully holding back her cape to ensure it wouldn’t touch the green thing.

Doctor Bionic’s lair rose to the extremely low standards the rest of her castle had set for Velvet. A few decorative swords on the wall, an oversized globe, some electronic control panels and work benches and monitors scattered haphazardly. And the ground was littered with wires and tools and assorted nonsense. All things Velvet could adequately categorize as Nerd Shit.

“I apologize for the state of things,” said Doctor Bionic, spinning around from one of the work benches, her white lab coat whipping around her legs as she turned. She had the hunched posture of the kind of dork who spends way too much time staring at computer screens, or looming over collections of collectible figurines, and she had the complexion of someone who cares just a little too much about dungeons and/or dragons. Which, so far as Velvet was concerned, was any amount.

“I see that prison treated you well,” Velvet Glove sniffed, walking imperiously toward Doctor Bionic. She stepped heedlessly on a variety of small electronics as she went, destroying them with satisfying crunches. The doctor visibly tensed with each crushed device, but did her best to suppress her evident rage.

“Forgive me for not shaking your hand,” Doctor Bionic said through clenched teeth, “As you can see, the process would be… rather painful for you.” She held up her right hand, wiggling her fingers. The hand was some sort of robotic nonsense, with an assortment of screwdrivers, lasers, and widgets in place of fingertips.

“I really didn’t come here to chat,” said Velvet, shooting a contemptuous sideways glance at the villainous doctor as she brushed past her, making a bee-line for a comfortable chair she had spotted at the far end of the room, “I’m here to hang out for…” she pulled a cell phone from her cape pocket, “ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Then I’m gone. Now, I believe you promised me a drink?”

“C-certainly,” Doctor Bionic stammered, a look of evident dismay on her face.

Velvet sat daintily in the arm chair, crossed her legs, and looked around, bored.

“Definitely ten minutes.”

Velvet briefly contemplated taking a selfie, as she always did when she held her cell phone, but swiftly decided that she didn’t want her followers knowing she was in such a gross location. Her surroundings were very much not Goals, and while they might be A Mood, it was not the sort of mood her followers expected of her. She had her reputation as an influencer to consider. She moved to tuck her cell phone back into her cape pocket; then she looked again at Doctor Bionic and decided her time would be much better spent scrolling Insta.

Doctor Bionic picked her way across the room, approaching the seated heroine. Then she took a seat in an armchair opposite Velvet.

“Well!” she put on an affected cheerful tone, “What shall we talk about?”

Velvet Glove fixed the doctor with the gaze she had first developed for wanna-be friends and hangers-on in middle school and had perfected with years of practice, a gaze that said, “I’m already giving you way more than you deserve by paying attention to you, and you have the gall to ask me to listen and respond to you on top of it?”

“Whatever you want,” Velvet sighed, affecting an obviously fake smile. She had resigned herself that there was no possible conversation to be had with this nerd that could remotely hold her interest, so she elected to just let the villain talk until the clock ran out.

“Ah! Well, let me start by saying that this castle is obviously not up to the standards of my lair the last time we met...”

“The last time we met?”

“...Yes, when you sent me to prison.”

“Sent you to prison?”

“Yes. When you ruined my life and I swore revenge on you and your fellow Femme Defenders. Surely you must remember?”

“Must remember?”

“...You’re just mirroring the last thing I say in a laughably half-assed attempt to feign engagement in the conversation, aren’t you?”

“Aren’t I?” Velvet was idly thumbing her way through Instagram, not even pretending to engage with the Doctor. “Hey, look at the time, it’s drink-o-clock!” she added without looking up from her phone.

Doctor Bionic’s eyes narrowed. She ground her teeth. She contemplated the contemptuous vision in purple that sat in her favorite chair, idly swinging a foot while scrolling through her phone. She recalled the humiliation she had experienced at this superbitch’s hands on their last meeting. She could still faintly taste the waistband of her underpants from when Velvet Glove had yanked her undies out of her pants, stretched them over her head, and hooked them into her jaw. Something snapped. The Doctor made a decision. She straightened her back. The commanding tone in her voice returned.

“Cherry! Make our guest a drink! Something… ‘special.’”

The green creature snapped a salute, then waddled over to a sideboard bar. If one were an expert in the behavior and manner of these unique beasts, one might have noticed an extra spring in Cherry’s waddle as it set about its task, a hint of joyful panache as it carried out its most recent order. It began grabbing various bottles and flasks, pouring them into a metal shaker, then sealing it up and giving it a good shake. At last, with expert precision, it poured the contents into a frosted mug.

“Ewww, you have that… thing make your drinks?” Velvet sneered as Cherry waddled toward her, holding the frothing mug, “Just FYI, I don’t drink anything out of mugs. I have a sophisticated palate and deserve to be served in barware befitting my stature.”

Doctor Bionic rolled her eyes.

“Cherry, please put the lady’s beverage in a martini glass. And I can assure you, Ms. Glove, Cherry was one of the finest mixologists in the midwestern United States before she… found herself in my employ.”

“Eww!” Velvet snorted, “I can’t believe a bar had a frog-beast for a bartender.”

“She wasn’t- Ah, well, nevermind. I’m sure the subject of Cherry’s history is of little interest to you… for now…”

“You guessed it,” said Velvet as she accepted, with evident disgust, the drink from Cherry. During the colloquy with Bionic, Cherry had returned to the bar, poured the drink back into the shaker, then strained it into a martini glass. The froth was now gone, and the clear glass showed off the cocktail’s iridescent green color. Velvet couldn’t help being just a little impressed by the cocktail’s pleasing, ethereal appearance, though she did an amazing job hiding that admiration behind a well-practiced mask of sneering contempt.

Velvet eyed the enticing green beverage, swirling it in the glass and watching it wash down the sides. Then, with a shrug, she raised it to her ruby lips and took a sip.

It tasted wonderful! Sweet, as she preferred, but complex, with notes of elderflower, strawberry, pineapple, and some other ingredient she couldn’t quite put her finger on. What started as a sip quickly shifted to a guzzle, as she greedily quaffed the whole drink in a single swig. Funnily, she couldn’t even detect a hint of alcohol, though it was obviously loaded because by the time she came up for breath she had the lovely 2 AM time-to-pick-a-partner-and-head-home-for-some-fun fuzzies in her head.

“More please!” she squealed, holding out her glass. Suddenly the castle didn’t seem nearly so icky as a pleasant, tingly numbness spread all over Velvet’s body and a generalized euphoria permeated her brain. Cherry dutifully filled it up again, and Velvet threw it back. Two glasses later, Cherry was shaking the final drops from the shaker. Upon finishing this drink, Velvet turned the martini glass upside down, her lower lip sticking out in disappointment at its emptiness. She eyed Cherry’s shaker, then the bar, then raised an eyebrow significantly.

“I think you’ve had more than enough, my addle-brained guest…” Doctor Bionic said with a chuckle. Velvet had a tough time with the bigger words the Doctor used, and on some level she was disappointed that she’d been cut off (an experience not unfamiliar to her), but the singular thought that cut through the fuzzy pink cloud of her thoughts was an overwhelming sense that she ought to obey Doctor Bionic’s commands to the letter.

“Yesh, Doctor Bionic!” she slurred with enthusiasm that surprised even her.

“Please, we’re about to embark on… a new level or our relationship. Call me ‘Mistress.’”

“Yesh, Mistress!” For some reason it felt really good for Velvet to obey her mistress, causing a familiar, pleasant tingly sensation between her legs. Or was it in her legs? She was having a tough time locating it, exactly, but the point was: It felt good.

“Now then!” said Doctor Bionic, folding the fingers of her flesh and cybernetic hands together, “Do you remember the last time we met?”

Velvet tried her hardest to think. She put a single gloved finger to her chin, looking upward, squinting. At last she announced, perkily, “Nope!”

“You… Don’t? But you humiliated me!”

“I humiliate LOTSA bad guys!” Velvet said, putting her hands on her hips.

“But… But that was the single worst day of my life! You humiliated me! You stripped me of every stitch of dignity and foiled an elaborate network of plans that you couldn’t even begin to understand the fiendish beauty of!”

“Sorry, mistress!” Velvet shrugged, giggling, “For you, Velvet Glove gracing your lair was the worst day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday. At least, I assume it was Tuesday. That’s usually the day when I don’t have anything better going on.”

Doctor Bionic’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you should have another drink…”

“YAY!!!” Velvet clapped giddily as Cherry set about making another round of Doctor Bionic’s special concoction.

“While Cherry makes your drink, perhaps we should conduct the parole interview?”

“Prole innerview?” Velvet stared, dumbly, her mouth hanging slack.

“You know, the reason you’re here? The Justice Squad check-in?”

Velvet squinted, trying her hardest to wrap her head around Doctor Bionic’s words. Then she remembered mean old Jackie telling her she had to check on Doctor Bionic instead of going to the kick-ass party she was throwing at the club to celebrate how awesome she was.

“Ohhhh… Riiiight… I guess I should, like, ask you questions and stuff?” Velvet strained to remember what questions she was supposed to ask, since she obviously hadn’t brought the ugly clipboard with her, given how badly it clashed with her costume. Her concentration was interrupted by the merciful arrival of her drink, proferred to her on a silver serving platter by the slimy froggy in the cherry-print undies.

“Oh! I know!” Velvet snagged the drink and began to sip, “What’s up with all these froggy dudes? Like, I know if I were a bad guy all my minions would be buff dudes. Mmm, and they’d def have to pass an oral exam. These frog guys don’t even have tongues! What’s up with that?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” Doctor Bionic grinned, steepling her fingers, “since the details of life as one of my creature-slaves will be… all too relevant to you in the future.” The mad doctor threw her head back and laughed maniacally.

Velvet, who didn’t like to be left out of a joke she didn’t understand, laughed along.

“First, they’re not ‘guys.’ Nor are they ‘girls.’ They’ve no sex organs; they reproduce assexually, with a cloud of spores. Or through… conversion. And they’ve no tongues because they’ve no mouths. They breathe through their porous skin, which is suffused with chlorophyll so they require no food, only occasional sunlight and a splash of water.”

“Ah, yes, makes sense,” Velvet had next to no idea what the villain was saying, but she closed her eyes and nodded in her best imitation of sagacity. She took another sip of her drink, hoping the liquid would aid her comprehension. It didn’t, but it at least made her stop caring.

“You see, they’re creatures of my own concoction. As you know, my passion is the admixture of biology and engineering, the precision of human design combined with the wondrous complexity of the natural world. By combining human DNA with carefully selected genomes from the plant and animal kingdom, I have created the perfect minion. Intelligent enough to obey orders, not intelligent enough to question them, and possessing no desires except absolute fealty to their creator. No need to worry about pay, or expensive food or space-wasting sleeping quarters, and they lack the contemptible base urges that make human minions so… unreliable.”

“So unreliable!” Velvet had returned to her strategy of mirroring the doctor’s words, this time not out of boredom but rather a futile attempt to pretend to be following along with her drink-addled brain. She finished her drink, then held it out for another. She had advanced to the pretending-not-to-be-drunk stage of drunkenness, so the entirety of her meager mental energy was now concentrated on an unsuccessful attempt to hold her glass steadily. Cherry poured her another drink with the closest it could approximate to glee.

Silence, as Velvet took a sip of her fresh drink. Doctor Bionic was looking at her, smiling. Something about Doctor Bionic smiling made Velvet happy, so she smiled back. It took a few more seconds for Velvet to realize that her conversation partner was waiting for her to say something. Panicking, Velvet looked around, her gaze falling on Cherry’s namesake g-string.

“Say, Doctor Bionic-”

“Mistress.”

“Say, Mistress, what’s with all the undies your froggies are wearin’? Some of ‘em are cute and it’s a real waste to get ‘em all gunky with that froggy slime!” She leaned forward, affecting her best Serious Interviewer posture, reasonably confident she had just asked a cutting and incisive question.

“Ah, I’m glad you asked! Those are the undergarb they wore before they became my slaves. You see, each of them used to be a human, like you. I picked them up on college campuses, or in bars, or I lured them to my lair with job postings. And, of course, once you abduct a few popular kids, well, that just starts the ball rolling with futile rescue attempts and before you know it, you’ve got more minions than you can handle! Good problems to have, right?”

Velvet chuckled along, completely failing to follow.

“Cherry, there, used to be a student at the local community college. She tended bar in her spare time. She knocked on my door looking for a childhood friend, who I believe is stationed on the third floor, in a rainbow-print Pride thong.”

“Gay rights are so important,” Velvet glove added.

“Indeed. Anyhow, the nanites I use to re-write the DNA of my victims aren’t quite perfect; they leave behind the wisp of a ghost of a memory of the life my minions used to have, along with certain muscle memory. But I’ve decided not to correct the error; as Cherry demonstrates, it can be quite handy to have a few skilled slaves around. Plus, I derive a certain sadistic glee from tormenting the more obnoxious ex-humans in my coterie by reminding them of the lives they used to lead, now lost forever. It’s why I always conduct a pre-transformation interview and take a photo, so I can taunt them with all that they’ve lost. Speaking of, I wonder if you might do me a favor and take a… I believe the kids call it a ‘selfie.’”

“Oh!” Velvet perked right up as Mistress finally said a word she understood. Of course! How could she forget! She was having such a wonderful time hanging with Mistress and drinking her amazing drinks that she just had to share it with all of her followers so they’d be suitably jelly.

Velvet held her cell-phone up at arm’s length, positioning her drink beside her head and exaggeratedly pouting her lips in her best duck face. Even in her adle-brained state, she still retained one hundred percent of her self-photography skills, an encyclopedic knowledge of ideal staging and angles to create the most flattering images of herself. She took a half dozen photos, then inspected them, carefully chose the best one, then posted it to Insta with the caption “hangin my new bestie Mistress 👩🏻‍⚕️🤖 at a top secret invite-only club (YOU’RE not invited!!) gettin silly drunk with this AMAZING new cocktail!! 😍🙌💘💕🍸🍹 peace, love, and heroism!  stay sexy, velveteers!!! #drunk #castle #peaceloveheroism #mistress #hottie #vg #veej #vip 😘👸🏻💪💋🧤👠💄”

With that done, Velvet Glove looked back at Mistress, enjoying the tingly feeling that a job well-done rewarded her with, and eagerly awaiting new orders that might elicit more of that tingle.

“Wonderful,” Mistress smiled with a sinister tinge that was well beyond Velvet’s ability to process, “Now, there was one more thing you asked about… Oh, yes! The underwear! Well, I need to give each of them a name, you see, otherwise how can I give them orders? They’d all rush to do everything I commanded at once and wind up in a sticky pile! But, as you’ve no doubt noticed, they’re physically near-identical, and I really don’t care enough to note the fine distinctions. So I have them wear the underwear they wore when I converted them, which are usually snugly-fitted enough to stay on their new, curveless forms, then give them an easy-to-remember name based on their undies. As for the care of their undergarments, well, I happen to have an opening for a laundry slave, and if you’re so concerned about their upkeep, it’s just the perfect level of degrading for a haughty ex-superbitch like yourself. Interested?” At this, Mistress leaned forward, resting her chin on her knuckle, awaiting a response.

Velvet Glove nodded, satisfied that most of Mistress’s words made a certain amount of sense, and the thought of contradicting any of it gave her a real bad feeling deep in her tummy, so she avoided thinking about it.

“Well, obviously working for you would be amazing, Mistress!” Velvet chirped, “But I got this dumb job I gotta do and Jackie’ll go all bitchcakes if I don’t do this interview.” Her eyes popped open wide, “Oh! The interview! I gotta ask more questions!”

“Fire away,” Mistress smiled, “What other questions do you have?”

“Oh! Ummmmm…..” Velvet stuck her tongue out in concentration, casting her eyes to the ceiling as though the Justice Squad one-sheet might be stuck up there. Then she shrugged, closed her eyes, and gave a goofy smile, “I dunno! I forget!”

“Well, then, I have a very important question for you: What kind of underwear are you wearing?”

At this, a tiny part of Velvet’s superheroine brain resisted. She had way too many underwear-related traumas not to get a twinge of concern when the subject came up in conversation. She drew herself up to full height in her seat and put her hands on her hips, braving the icky tummy feeling that resisting Mistress’s questions gave her.

“Hey!” she shouted, “I don’t talk about my undies with anyone unless we’re about to have sexytimes. Or if I’m doing an interview with a men’s mag, or a fashion website, or a porn website. Or if I’m just feelin’ cute and wanna post a thirst trap on Insta.” The icky feeling hit her full force, causing her to slump in her chair, dejectedly. She wanted desperately to make it go away. She decided to soften her stance, just a little, “So, like… Why do you wanna know?”

“Well, thanks to the nanite-laced drink you’ve been guzzling, you’re about to turn into one of my creature-slaves. It’s already made you wonderfully compliant. Now I just need to know what underwear you’re wearing so I can check it against my slave database and ensure there aren’t any duplicates. If there are, I’ll need to get you a unique pair. I need you to stand out because I have a lot of plans for you post-conversion.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Velvet as she let Mistress’s words wash over her, her expression blank as she tried to process. She carefully examined each word and phrase, doing her best to make sense of it all. At last, her befogged brain gave an enthusiastic thumbs up, “That all makes perfect sense! Thanks for explaining it to me, Mistress!” She smiled pleasantly, and Mistress chuckled in return. The icky feeling was banished and the pleasant tingle returned. Thank goodness that’s over! That was scary!

Mistress looked at her expectantly, and eventually Velvet realized she still hadn’t actually answered the question about her underwear. She startled when the revelation hit, then contemplated. It was difficult, between her vast underwear collection and her foggy brain, to recall the answer. She stalled for time.

“Well, I don’t wear a bra, on account of my superpowers give me firm and bouncy titties and I don’t even need any support. See?” At this she began bouncing in her chair, pointing at her undulating breasts.

“Your bra, or lack thereof, doesn’t matter,” said Mistress, “Once you’re a pathetic creature, you won’t have tits to support, nor a chest to hold a bra up.”

“Oh! Right!” Velvet said, still bouncing, mesmerized by her breasts. At last she stopped and squinted, trying to recall what she pulled on when she got dressed this morning. At last she had a bright idea. She reached down to her shorts and pulled down the zipper on the front. The purple hotpants were skintight and molded to her curves, which is why she’d had a zipper put in them, extending from the front waistband, down past her crotch, up between her butt cheeks, and terminating at the rear waistband. This way she could wear shorts tight enough to require the Jaws of Life to extract herself from while still being able to remove them in half a second with a single swift hand motion when sexytimes beckoned.

“Ah-ha!” Velvet exclaimed triumphantly once she’d got the zipper down to roughly crotch level and got a good look at her undies, “Well, first of all, it’s from my personal line of lingerie, Velvet Glove’s Superheroine Secrets, available at better boutiques everywhere and appealing to young ladies wishing to emulate my glamorous, sexually-empowered superheroine lifestyle.”

Addled as she was, nothing stood in the way of Velvet’s self-promotion.

“And, of course, it’s a g-string,” she continued, “Given the shorts, I can’t really wear anything else without risking serious VPL. You know how it is.”

Mistress did not, as she never wore anything more constricting than loose slacks, but she smiled encouragingly.

“And it’s a new design, not even in stores yet! I designed it myself, just like I design every piece in my collection. It’s got an elastic lining in Velvet Merlot- that’s my signature shade of purple- and a white Egyptian Cotton crotch panel, and it says ‘Porn Heroine’ on the crotch.” At this, Velvet nodded definitively, satisfied that she had followed Mistress’s command.

Mistress smiled, coyly. “Why Porn Heroine?”

“Oh!” Velvet straightened, then scowled, “Well, lotsa reasons! First of all, it sucks that actresses get all the sexy-credit for the term Porn Star. Superheroines get lotsa action, too! And I should know! So I’m hoping Porn Heroine catches on as, like, the term for someone uber-sexy and DTF, ya know? Also, I want to convince people that doing porn is, like, heroic? Because taking charge of your sexuality by performing publicly is all heroic and stuff? But also because I’ve done three sex tapes and I want everyone to know I’m proud of it even though those jerks on the Justice Squad kicked me out for violating their dumb morality clause. So… yeah!” Velvet crossed her arms and nodded her head definitively, satisfied with her answer.

“Well, I don’t know how great a spokes-babe you’ll be for Porn Heroines everywhere, sadly, and I fear your career starring-”

“Heroineing”

“-Heroineing in sex tapes is about to reach an abrupt end, unless you can find a position as a lube-monger. But your undies are unique, which means you’re fully prepared for your new career as the latest addition to my collection of pathetic slaves!”

Something about Mistress’s words cut through the thick fog in Velvet’s brain.

“Hey, Doctor Bionic!”

“Mistress.”

“Hey, Mistress!” she said, pointing a gloved finger, “Doing everything you say would be, like, totally the best, but I’m nobody’s slave! I work for me!”

“Oh, but you are my slave!” Mistress cackled, “You just haven’t realized it yet! But you will quite soon; that defiant streak you’re demonstrating is a sign that the nanites’ work is all but complete. They always have a moment of clarity before the… changes commence.”

“Ch-Changes?” Velvet gulped. The pleasant feeling that had suffused her since she took that first sip evaporated, replaced by a nervous void. The happy tingle of obedience turned sour as the hedonic center of her brain was shuttered.

“Yes, changes. You’ve already, of course, been instilled with a deep, abiding understanding that the only good and proper behavior is swift obedience of my every whim, and contrariwise that the worst thing you could possibly do is to disobey, or even to hesitate in obeying my commands.”

“Well, duh,” Velvet said. This time her agreement brought no joy, but she nonetheless didn’t even consider an alternative course of action.

“Now that the stick and carrot have been integrated into your psyche, they can be removed. My creature slaves have no need for emotions, they only get in the way of service. So those are all deactivated as the transformation completes, but for a deep, suffusing sense of melancholy at the loss of your former self. I keep that around to satisfy my sadistic side.”

Velvet gulped. She had a tough time understanding what was happening, but she had a feeling this were about to get much, much worse for her.

“With obedience instilled,” Mistress continued, “The physical changes can commence. You should note a distinct sliminess to your skin as the converted sweat glands begin expelling lubricating slime at a prodigious rate. You’ll also note a green tinge to your skin as the chlorophyll integrates itself into your system.

Panicked, Velvet examined her arm and confirmed that it had a slick sheen and a sickly hue. This was all wrong! Her whole makeup look was built around her natural red undertones, not green! She scanned every inch of exposed skin, of which there was quite a bit, and confirmed the change was happening all over her body.

“Excellent, everything appears to be proceeding properly. Next you should experience more… dramatic changes…”

As panic began to seize her, Velvet felt the generalized tingling draw in and concentrate in her tight little belly. Then it slowly migrated, down and right, until it suffused throughout her right leg, from the bottom of her tensed butt cheek to the tips of her purple manicured toes. The tingling feeling grew more and more powerful, until it couldn’t feel any more tingly, and then-

*POP!*

With a cartoonishly loud popping noise, her leg shrank to the size of a silver dollar, her delectable curves replaced with gangly floppiness. Her foot, as though conserving the mass lost in her leg, grew instantaneously into a foot-and-a-half long webbed flipper. Her slimy “toes” burst out of the front of her stiletto-heeled boot, and her newly-shaped heel burst out of the back of her footwear.

“Agh!” Velvet screamed in terror as she frantically shook her froggy leg. The tattered remains of her ruined boot slid downward, then flew off. The tingly feeling then relocated from her now-numb right leg to her still-shapely left. Velvet contemplated her limb fearfully, realizing this might be her last opportunity to enjoy her world-class gams.

*POP!*

Her left leg joined her right in froggy flipperiness, and, unable to contemplate either the magnitude of the change, nor what she should do about it, Velvet kicked both legs spastically, flailing her limbs like an excited Muppet. The tattered remnants of her left boot joined their mate on the floor. The inch or so of leg on her hotpants billowed loosely around her now significantly less form-fitting upper thigh.

The tingle moved on, inexorably, up and across her torso to her right arm. She still held the martini glass betwixt thumb and forefinger and, in her panicked state, all she could think about was what to do with it before-

*POP!*

*CRASH!*

The martini glass shattered on the ground as it plummeted from the slime coated digits of Velvet’s right hand. Her right arm was now a similar width to her legs and dangled floppily from her still-human shoulder. The sudden convergence of five fingers into three digits had shredded the fingers of Velvet’s namesake gloves, leaving only a loose band of purple-and-gold fabric encircling her scrawny wrist.

“What’s happening to me??!?” Velvet shrieked as the tingle moved across her chest to her left arm.

“Honestly,” Mistress signed theatrically, “I’ve already explained this to you at length. And, frankly, you’re not in a position where I have to care about your understanding any longer.”

The tingle spread through her arm and-

*POP!*

*Thump!*

Velvet’s left arm joined her right in frogginess, causing her to drop her cell phone. Fortunately she had a Velvet Glove-branded phone case and pop-out selfie knob, so her cell was mercifully undamaged. The wave of relief Velvet felt at this was quickly replaced with horror as she contemplated her now fully-froggy, flopsy limbs.

Horror turned to anger as it hit Velvet that this NERD had ruined her PERFECT ARMS AND LEGS! She launched herself up to her feet, then almost fell forward onto her face as she awkwardly tried to balance herself on her new, far less coordinated legs. She leaned forward, pinwheeling her arms comically, then overcorrected and pitched back, barely holding herself up by grasping the arms of the chair with her flippery digits. She then carefully pushed herself back up and carefully balanced herself.

“Now see here, Buster!” She shouted, waving a flipper-hand at Mistress.

“Mistress,” Mistress corrected.

“Now see here, Mistress! You’ll never get away with this! You know why? Because nerds always lose, and when they do, the hot girls are there to laugh at them!”

Mistress threw her head back in laughter.

“And what, pray tell do you have to do with hot girls, froggy?”

Velvet opened her mouth to reply, then felt the tell-tale tingle once again, this time spreading throughout her chest, her abs, her groin, her ass, her neck, her head. She had a really bad feeling about this…

“What’s the matter? Frog in your throat? Any last words, ‘Sex Heroine?’” Mistress smirked.

Velvet looked up, wide-eyed. She gulped. Her lip trembled as a single tear came to her eye.

“Buh-bye, bodacious bod!” she whimpered.

*FZZZZzzzzzz-ART*

Velvet watched, horrified, as her world-famous breasts deflated before her eyes, losing their firmness as they made a sound like the air being slowly let out of a balloon. Then, with a final fart-like burst of air, they gave up the ghost, dangling from her chest like a pair of fried eggs.

“At least you still won’t need a bra!” Mistress laughed.

*POW!*

*POW!*

Velvet startled as first her left buttock, then her right, burst, shrinking to nothingness with a sound like a pair of popping balloons. For lack of an awesomely audacious ass to hold them aloft, Velvet’s purple hotpants began shamefully sliding off of her hips, sullenly slinking to her upper thighs. Desperate to maintain the tiniest iota of dignity, Velvet tried futilely to grasp the waistband of her shorts with her frog-fingers.

The tingle continued to grow until it reached a familiar crescendo, and then-

*POP!*

In a single burst, Velvet’s torso, neck and head completed their transformation from human to frog-beast, her body shrinking down and curves ironing out into a smooth, slimy cylinder, her neck disappearing, her lovely green eyes turning into spherical orange ping-pong balls, her petite nose growing into a long, pointy beak as her mouth and ears disappeared.

Velvet’s shorts slid right down her slimy legs, her now much-too-large top drooping off her non-shoulders to hang precariously from her upper arms as the chest area billowed around the smooth green nothingness that was once her world-caliber bust. Her domino mask fell right off her face and landed with a soft plop on the floor.

Overcome, Velvet clasped her slimy fingers to the sides of her perfectly round head. They made contact with the silky-soft perfection that was her luxurious black hair. At this, the tiniest wellspring of hope burst in Velvet’s froggy heart. Yes! She’d been left with one last morself of her radiant beauty, the crowning glory atop her head. Now she-

*FWOOMPH!*

In a rush, every follicle on Velvet’s head simultaneously gave up the ghost, causing her silkily-sinuous hair to fall to the ground in a rush.

“I’ll bet I could make a small fortune selling that as a wig…” Mistress idly mused.

Animal panic set in. Unable to fully comprehend the magnitude of the situation, or how she’d gotten there, or even where she was, the only solution Velvet’s panicky brain could contemplate was fleeing. She took off at a run… or tried to. Within half a step she tripped over her own flippered feet and went tumbling to her scrawny knees. Still clinging to her flight instinct she began frantically crawling, her awkwardly gyrating causing her glove-scraps to fly off and her top to slide down, to her abdomen, to her hips, to her knees, and then off her body, leaving her clad only in her g-string, which clung heroically to her waist.

*Thud!*

Velvet collided awkwardly with Mistress’s shin. Fortunately, she felt no pain… nor anything else. Her entire body was numb, from her flippers to her shiny bald head. The only thing she felt at all was a pounding headache that was growing more insistent by the minute.

Velvet fell back onto her slimy bottom, legs spread out in front of her, feet pointed straight in the air, hands pressed into the ground between her thighs to maintain her precarious balance. In front of her stood Mistress, foot tapping impatiently.

“Are you done?” Mistress asked.

Velvet looked up at Mistress. Her newly-created instinct for blind obedience warred with her indomitable sense of self. Her gangly limbs trembled with rage as she glared at the woman who had taken everything away from her.

“Obviously not,” Mistress sighed, “I suppose, for all your faults, you do have an almost admirable sense of self-regard, an indestructible ego.”

Velvet felt a welling sense of pride that her mistress had complimented her. Then she realized that, pleasant though it was, it wasn’t a feeling she should be cultivating. She shook her head, as though physically dislodging the thought, a process that involved wobbling her entire upper body back and forth.

“After all,” Mistress continued, “Who but a heroine in possession of an indestructible ego would march right into my lab, heedlessly crush my latest projects, insult me, ignore me, and boorishly demand I serve her as though she owns the place? And, worst of all, torment my poor, helpless creature-slaves! Those are MY slaves to torment! You had no right!”

Velvet felt what could almost be considered guilt at Mistress’s words, but was more accurately a mixture of pity and self-regarding regret. She hadn’t really considered her actions, and would have been way nicer… if she had known that being mean would have such consequences…

“And to think! I brought you in fully prepared to accept your deal! I fought every instinct for revenge that I had because I KNEW I needed more time to prepare my master plan! I was ready to offer you a non-nanite laced drink, have a brief friendly chat, then send you merrily on your way to get blitzed out of your mind then pounded into a sex-dazed stupor by some brainless super-powered studmuffin!” Mistress let out a single bark of laughter, “Well! I don’t suppose you’ll be attracting the attention of any studmuffins any longer! And even if you did, you now lack the ‘equipment’ to do anything about it!”

Velvet’s pity-regret turned to petulance as Mistress continued her rant. How dare Mistress do this?! Does she KNOW how important Velvet is?! Has she SEEN how many pictorials she’s done for men’s mags!? What about her legion of Insta followers?!? You can’t just DO this to an Influencer!!! Does Mistress even KNOW who Velvet’s daddy is??? Besides! Velvet’s the HERO! She’s supposed to WIN! It wasn’t FAIR! It wasn’t-

Wait a minute.

Just want did Mistress mean by ‘lacking equipment?’

With a growing feeling of trepidation that matched her increasingly insistent headache, Velvet hooked a slimy thumb-like digit into the purple waistband of her g-string. Then she pulled the front of her undies out and anxiously tilted her body forward to gaze down into her underpants.

Nothing.

A smooth expanse of slime-encased greenness where once the font from which all womanly pleasures flowed lay nestled betwixt Velvet’s heavenly thighs.

Velvet allowed her undies to snap back into place as she leaned back, positioning her hand behind herself to maintain balance.

Gone. It was all gone.

He eyes went wide and her tiny pupil dilated as she contemplated the magnitude of her loss.

No more pounding. No more late-night fuck-fests. No more gentle caresses, nor judicious flicks, nor licks, nor loving worship. No more me-time with a vibrator. No more idle playtime. No more jilling off. No more sex. No more pussy.

No more Velvet.

As the realization of the disappearance of the creature’s favorite body part washed over it, the core of its ego, its fundamental sense of self, cracked, then crumbled to dust and blew away in the wind. The headache grew stronger and stronger and then-

*POP!*

*Fffffffffrrrrrrrttt!*

A pair of grey clouds squeezed through the twin pinhole-sized holes in the side of the creature-slaves head that served as its ears.

“That’ll be your brain right-sizing for its new, more limited purpose. It’ll now be about the size of a walnut. Of course, I can’t imagine it’ll be that much of a change for you, considering you waltzed right into a supervillain’s lair and drank the potion she offered without so much as a question.”

The creature tilted its body back to stare idly at the grey clouds wafting upward toward the ceiling. The gaseous grey matter briefly coalesced into a petulant little mass, frothed angrily for a moment… then dissipated, wafting away into nothingness on the breeze that wafted through the drafty castle.

Buh-bye, brain! The creature thought. Thinking was hard. It remembered that it used to be a lot more thinky, and that it ALSO used to be pretty, like Mistress, but somehow even MORE. But it couldn’t have been TOO good at being thinky, because all its thinkiness made it stop being like mistress and made it into what it is now. After putting a great deal of thought into the subject, the creature decided it was definitely much better off without the brain that made it all thinky. Besides, Mistress was WAY better at thinkyness! Good enough to do all the thinking for herself AND the creature, plus all the OTHER creatures! Back when it was like Mistress, the creature wasn’t even good enough at thinking for just itself!

“Ah, good, the transformation’s complete! Now, stand up, slave!” Mistress commanded. Instantly, the creature obeyed the command… or tried to. Moving was still very hard, so it took a couple of tries before the creature was able to make it to its feet. Now the creature stood, knees bent and bow-legged, arms limp at its side, ping-pong eyes staring blankly into space.

“I suppose that’s good enough,” sniffed mistress, causing a welling of pride in the creature. ‘Good enough for mistress’ was all a creature-slave could aspire to be!

“Now!” said mistress, kneeling in front of the creature and narrowing her eyes, “What shall we call you, slave?”

A smattering of pretty names rose unbidden from the creature’s suppressed memories, and the creature’s minimal reasoning skills determined that they must have been things it had been called back when it was like Mistress. “Velvet,” “Velvie,” “Veegie,” “Veronica,” “Ronnie,” “Vee,” “Sexy,” “Hot buns,” and “Sugar tits,” among others, leapt to what the creature generously called its mind.

“Well, I can’t imagine you have much of a career in porn left to you, at least in front of the camera, given that you’re now a USDA-certified boner killer,” Mistress smirked, “But that doesn’t mean you can’t still aspire to a long and prosperous career behind the camera, doing the important work without which the show wouldn’t go on! And once you figure out how to work those digits, that self-lubricating hand will be quite useful, provided you can keep yourself where the performers don’t have to look at you. As such, I hereby dub you ‘Fluffer,’ in hopes that your dreams of being a real-life Porn Heroine will still be fulfilled!”

In that instant, all the other names were swept from her empty head and ‘Fluffer’ was the only thing the creature could ever recall having been called. Fluffer snapped an awkward salute in acknowledgement.

“Hold that pose…” Mistress said. Fluffer obeyed, doing its best not to move a muscle.

Mistress walked back to the chair in which Fluffer had sat when Fluffer was like Mistress, and bent over to pick up the phone that lay on the floor. She walked back and took a picture of Fluffer, then she scrolled through the former-superheroine’s Instagram posts, getting a sense of her ‘voice.’ Then she composed a post. It was a two-image story, flashing back and forth between the duck-face selfie the ex-Velvet Glove had posted and the new pic of the saluting Fluffer dressed only in Porn Heroine undies.

The caption read: “what up velveteers?? Mistress gave me an on-fleek makeover! 😍💄💅🏻 that means bye-bye sweet titties 🚫🍈🍈 bye-bye awesome ass  🚫🍑, and bye-bye juicy pussy 🚫😻💦🌷🍯🌮, which means no more sex, obvi, so bye-bye hard dicks! 🚫🍆🐓👉🏻👌🏻💔😭 but its cool cuz its all worth it to serve my new mistress, Doctor Bionic! 👩🏻‍⚕️🤖👸🏻👑 oh, and also, bye-bye Velvet Glove! you can call me Fluffer from now on, cuz you know I ain’t really saying bye-bye to all those dicks! ! 🐸🍆👋🏻💦 peace, love, and slavery! stay servile, fluffers!!! #mybestself #glowup #peaceloveslavery #mistress #doctorbionic #fluffer #itsnoteasybeinggreen”

Satisfied, Mistress showed the post to Fluffer. The words, obviously, were way beyond Fluffer’s capacity, but the colorful little pictures were nice to look at. As for the twin images flashing back and forth, Fluffer instantly recognized itself now, and itself when it was like Mistress. Fluffer felt instant pangs of regret, recalling, as best it could, what it was like to be like Mistress, and how fun that must have been. Still, Mistress wanted Fluffer to be like this, and Mistress knew best, so Fluffer decided, ultimately, that the change was good.

“Now, then, I’m tired of looking at you. Go hang out with the spare slaves in the break room,” Mistress waved at Fluffer dismissively, “But don’t zone out! I may need you later for… entertainment.”

At that, Fluffer began waddling in the direction it instinctively knew the great room to be.

“Wait! I have one more present for you!” Mistress cried.

Fluffer halted.

*THUMP!*

Mistress ran across the room and gave Fluffer a hearty kick in what was once its butt, sending it sprawling to its knees. Fluffer awkwardly stumbled back to its feet, then flopped its way out of the room, followed by Mistress’s laughter. It didn’t really have feelings anymore, but it felt as close as it could to ‘good’ that it was making Mistress laugh.

Fluffer found its way to the break room, where a bunch of other slaves stood idly staring into space. Realizing this was where it belonged, Fluffer waddled over and found an empty space between a slave in hot pink panties that said “GIRL POWER” on the butt, and another wearing blue panties with lace trim that said “ONE OF A KIND” in an arch across the front.

There Fluffer stood, staring blankly into space, mind blank, listening to the wind whistling through its ear holes and enjoying the occasional blink. Eventually Mistress called it to assign it it’s household duties: Thong Queen and Laundry Slave. Its job was to collect all the undies every day from a rotating selection of slaves and launder them, then redistribute them to the proper slaves. Obviously, it was terrible at first and got the underpants all mixed up, but soon it harnessed the keen attention to fashion that its former self apparently had and was easily managing all the colorful garments. It developed a system: G-strings on Monday, thongs on Tuesday, cheekies and bikinis on Wednesday, boybriefs on Thursday, shorts on Friday, Y-fronts, tighty-whities, and other ex-men’s briefs on Saturday, and boxers and boxer-briefs on Sunday.

Fluffer quickly settled into a routine. It wasn’t happy, per se, but it did seem to make Mistress’s life easier, which was about as close to happiness as a slave could hope for. Its hobbies included blinking, waddling, and occasionally idly staring down the front of its panties and thinking about how much it missed having a pussy.

It seemed that Fluffer’s life, such as it was, was pretty well set. And then…

THREE WEEKS LATER

“Alright, team, quick recap,” said Jackie, gathering her fellow Femme Defenders together, “Velvet came here for a check-in three weeks ago. When she didn’t show up the next day, we assumed she was just drunk or hungover. When she didn’t show up for a week, we assumed she’d gotten bored and taken a spontaneous vacation. By the second week, we got… Well, I’m not sure ‘worried’ is the right word. Curious? Yeah, curious about where she might be.”

“I was worried!” volunteered Zoe, “Especially after that weird Insta post!”

“And bless your heart for that,” offered Bronco Buster.

“Yes, in retrospect, that WAS an obvious sign that something might be up, thanks for reminding me,” Jackie rolled her eyes. She’d resisted Zoe’s increasingly-fervent requests for an investigation because, if she was honest, these three Velvet-free weeks had been among the most productive in the Femme Defenders’ history. “Moving right along, we came to investigate and, upon arrival, found Doctor Bionic amassing an army of green… froggy… things. Fortunately, their combat capacity is effectively nill and we made short work of the welcome party. Then we surmounted a series of death traps thanks to Mind Mistress…”

“They were nearly challenging,” Mind Mistress offered, “Doctor Bionic proved a quasi-worthy opponent.”

“Yes, of course,” Jackie continued, “Upon apprehension of Doctor Bionic we conducted a thorough search of the premises, discovering what appeared to be the tattered remains of Velvet’s costume. Our suspicions were confirmed when Bionic hysterically confessed to her crimes, saying, and I quote, ‘Good manners cost nothing, but that bitch’s bad manners cost her everything!’ adding, ‘And I’d do it again, too!’”

“Not a lot of wiggle room on that confession…” offered Zoe.

“Indeed. Now, the good news is that Mind Mistress has successfully reverse engineered the nanite-based mechanism by which Bionic converted her hundred-odd prisoners, Velvet Glove included, into her army of slimy thralls.”

“A clever puzzle!” Mind Mistress offered, “It took me nearly a minute!”

“Yes. The bad news, though, is that, while Mindy has engineered a counter-nanite that should, fingers crossed, restore victims to their prior states, there’s only been time to manufacture one dose. The Justice Squad, in their infinite wisdom, wants us to prioritize retrieval of Velvet Glove so that she can give sworn testimony against Doctor Bionic. That means… We need to find an intensely obnoxious needle in this slimy green haystack.”

“This would be much simpler if Zoe could remember what undergarb Velvet was wearing in her Instagram story…”

“I’m sorry!” shouted Zoe, “I was under a LOT of stress! I was on a date with Brad and he was talking about his dog, so needless to say I was distracted, and I only saw it briefly, and you know how Instagram deletes stories automatically, and besides, I’ve… I’ve seen a lot of Velvet’s undies over the years… Can’t we just check Bionic’s computers?”

“As I have already explained,” said Mind Mistress, “Our arrival in Bionic’s lab automatically triggered protective counter-measures that completely erased all data on her mainframe.”

“Why don’t we just ask one of her other Insta followers?” asked Zoe.

Mind Mistress, Bronco Buster, and Jackie-of-All-Trades dropped into simultaneous thousand-yard-stares as they contemplated the possibility of attempting a conversation with someone (other than Zoe) who would willingly follow Velvet Glove on Instagram.

“Anyhow!” Jackie broke the silence, “Let’s get started. We’ve rounded up all the froggies in this great hall. Let’s send them out as we eliminate them. How many are there, again?”

“One-hundred-twenty-eight,” offered Mind Mistress.

“O… kay…”

“Well, we can get rid of the boys right away,” said Zoe.

“Technically, they’re all asexual,” corrected Mind Mistress.

“Well, we’ll get rid of the FORMER boys!” Zoe stuck out her tongue, and Mind Mistress made a note of the implicit critique inherent in the gesture.

The Femme Defenders rounded up all the froggies wearing boxers, briefs, or other men’s undergarb. There was a brief colloquy as to whether Velvet might have been wearing a paramour’s undershorts, but this possibility was rapidly dismissed as “making things too complicated.”

“How many left?” asked Jackie

“Eighty-six,” replied Mind Mistress, after taking the briefest microsecond for a headcount.

“Huh. I guess Bionic favors women,” Jackie remarked. Bronco Buster raised a suggestive eyebrow.

“If I might offer a hopefully-helpful suggestion?” Mind Mistress said. Since there was no possibility of anyone stopping her, she continued: “The highly specific dimensions of the shorts on Velvet’s costume, coupled with the particular dimensions of her, ahem, former posterior, and the vanishingly small volume differential between those aforesaid objects, synthesized with Velvet’s idiosyncratic distaste for unsightly bulges in her costume, lead one to the inexurable conclusion that-”

“Oh!” Zoe snapped, “She was probably wearing a thong or a g-string, to avoid panty lines!”

“Precisely.”

The team performed another culling. This time there were only twenty-six left.

“Huh. Thongs aren’t as popular as they used to be, I guess,” said Jackie.

“The increased popularity of high-rise pants,” said Mind Mistress, “coupled with shifting tastes in the target demographic and the vagaries of fashion have led to a precipitous drop in thong sales, supplanted by the increased popularity of more full-coverage cuts, such as so-called boyshorts. If you’d like, I could prepare a report for your perusal?”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Maybe Velvet wouldn’t be so cranky if she didn’t have a strap hugging her asshole all the time…” Zoe mused.

“If’n I might make a suggestion?” Bronco Buster spoke. It was a rare enough occurrence that it commanded everyone’s attention, not least because it signalled that the urban cowgirl was growing annoyed at all the jabber-jawing going on, “Seems to me that Velvet Glove were the type of fillie that wouldn’t wear britches less’n they had her name on ‘em.”

“Right! She only wore her own brand of lingerie!”

The Defenders set about ushering any froggy not wearing VG undies out of the hall. It didn’t take a twelfth-level hyper-intelligence to count the remaining creatures: Five. Five slimy frog-things wearing Velvet Glove-branded g-strings. The options were: “Atomic Butt-eries to Power! Tur-Buns to Speed!”; “Porn Heroine”; “Face It, Tiger, You Just Hit the Jackpot!”; “Up, Up, and Away!”; and “I’m the Best There Is at What I Do… And What I Do Is VERY Nice!”

“I think I can deduce it from here,” offered Jackie, “First and foremost, Velvet hates puns, so she wouldn’t be caught dead in the Atomic Butt-eries undies. After the unfortunate incident with the flying boots she threw out her Up, Up and Away undies. Quite melodramatically, I might add. For… personal reasons that I’d rather not get into, I know she’s ‘retired’ the Jackpot undies, for, erm, sentimental reasons.”

That earned Jackie some quizzical stares from her teammates. She continued.

“That leaves ‘Porn Heroine’ and ‘Best There Is.’ It’s very close, but my gut says… ‘Porn Heroine’. She was heading out to a club after, I remember her whining about that. When she goes to the club, she comes back with a drunk dude. If there’s one thing you can say about Velvet, it’s that she knows her audience and tailors her outfits to suit them. What’s the point of vaguely-clever, salacious underpants if she can’t provide her fuckbuddy with half a second of fleeting amusement? Given that, ‘Best There Is’ is way too wordy, and the font to small, to get a reliable half-chuckle from a drunken dude at 2 AM. Besides, she doesn’t like short guys, hairy guys, or Canadians, the target audience for that joke.”

“Your logic is impeccable,” said Mind Mistress in a tone dry enough that Jackie couldn’t tell if it was sarcastic or not.

“Thank you. Now, if you’ll please administer the counter-nanite…”

Mind Mistress withdrew the syringe from a jacket pocket and, with evident pleasure, plunged it into what passed for a left butt cheek on the creature in the Porn Heroine undies.

Nothing happened. The creature just blinked, confused (but no more so than usual). It didn’t even react to the assault.

“I thought you said-”

Jackie was interrupted by a loud gurgling, like a tummy rumbling. Then-

*POP!*

Before them, hunched forward, arms limp, bow-legged, mouth hanging open dumbly, staring uncomprehendingly, clad only in a Porn Heroine g-string, was Velvet Glove in all her big-titted, firm-assed, silky-raven-tressed glory.

“Velvet! You’re okay!” Shouted Zoe. She ran forward and hugged Velvet, her stretchy arms encircling the dazed heroine several times.

“Wha-huh?” mumbled Velvet.

“Velvet? Are you okay?” asked Jackie.

“Uhhhhhhh…” Velvet droned, blinking slowly and uncomprehendingly, finally managing to form the words “Where’s Mistress?”

“What’s going on?” asked Jackie.

“Don’t worry, this is totally within my expected operating parameters,” offered Mind Mistress, walking over and pulling out an otoscope, then using it to examine the inside of Velvet’s ears, “My research indicated significant loss of grey matter in the human-to-creature conversion process. Regrowing neurons is, of course, well beyond the science of Twenty-First Century Earth…”

“Oh no!” Zoe gasped.

“Wait for it…” mumbled Jackie.

“Were it not for me, Velvet, and all of the converted creatures, would be doomed to lives of mindless servitude. But thankfully, neural regeneration is trivially easy to a twelfth-level Bolxian hyper-intelligence from the Thirtieth Century. I’ve already implemented the re-constructors in the counter-nanites. However, even futuristic super-science can’t be rushed; it’ll take between three days and a week for Velvet’s regrown brain to be in working order. Until it’s ready for activation, the newly-grown portions of her brain will remain dormant. The upshot of all of this is that, for the next few days, Velvet will retain her walnut-sized slave brain.”

Slow smiles spread across Jackie and Bronco Buster’s faces. Zoe just raised an eyebrow, thankful that her sort-of friend would soon be back to normal.

“Come on, Velvet,” said Jackie, giving the underwear-clad heroine a hearty slap on the butt, “Something tells me this is the start of a beautiful friendship…”

“Do you have laundry? Laundry is my job! Today is tuesday so I’m washing thongs. Can I do laundry?”

***

“What in the HELL am I wearing?!”

Jackie cringed as she heard Velvet’s voice echoing through the hallway.

“Oh, good, you’re back,” Jackie said as Velvet stomped around the corner, fists clenched. She was wearing an oversized white t-shirt with the words “Laundry Bitch” written in permanent marker across the chest. The shirt was accompanied by a pair of black panties with the words “I’ve been a naughty girl…” on the front and “Spank me!” on the butt. The red marks on Velvet’s skin around the edges of the underpants showed that her fellow Defenders had been studiously observant of the underwear’s command. The ensemble was completed by a highlighter-yellow scrunchy that pulled Velvet’s coif into a messy top-pony and a pair of neon-pink Crocs on her feet.

“Why was I doing LAUNDRY like a common MAID?” Velvet shouted.

“Hey! You wanted to! I thought, personally, that hand-washing each and every one of our delicates was excessive, but I really can’t argue with the results! My whites have never been whiter and my brights have never been brighter!” At this, Jackie raised her arms and swayed her hips playfully. She could hear Velvet grinding her teeth.

“What else have you been making me do?” Velvet said through clenched teeth.

“Oh, you know, mopping, scrubbing, vacuuming. All the things you’d expect of a live-in maid. I’ve gotta say, if this superhero thing doesn’t work out for you, you’ve got a second career waiting for you in domestic service!”

Velvet clenched her fists, encased in purple dishwashing gloves. Zoe had been reluctant to participate in the hazing, which made it all the more surprising when she produced the gloves at the last staff meeting.

“You should be thanking me!” Jackie added, “BB wanted to ‘brand’ you with a tattoo! And it’s only because I insisted on a staff meeting to determine what the most hilarious location-and-phrasing combination would be that the whole project got bogged down long enough for you to recover before we could make the appointment! We were torn between ‘Hello, Sailor!’ on the pubic mound and ‘Danger! Explosive Gas Venting!’ as a tramp stamp.”

Velvet slammed a fist into the wall, causing the headquarters to shake and leaving an indentation behind.

“Look, look, I’m just kidding. Mostly,” said Jackie said, “The chores are real, as is the amazing job you did with my undies. But we never would have gotten you tattooed, probably. Now why don’t you go back to your quarters and get some rest, huh?”

Velvet growled, but after a moment relaxed. She nodded, silently, then spun around and flounced back in the direction of her room.

“And, uh, don’t check your bank account…” Jackie muttered.

“Huh?” said Velvet.

“What?” said Jackie

“What?” said Velvet.

“Huh?” said Jackie.

Velvet squinted suspiciously, then continued her homeward journey. Jackie decided that now wasn’t the time to tell Velvet about the generous, tax-deductible donation she had made to the United Sapphic Pleasure Fund, or how many sorely-needed sex toys her donation had provided to needy lesbian superheroes.

Upon returning to her room, Velvet tore the t-shirt off of her body then slammed it into the waste basket. She ripped out the scrunchie and kicked off her crocs, then collapsed face-first on the purple velvet sheets of her heart-shaped bed. She wasn’t really done with Jackie, but certain… urges had reasserted themselves mid-conversation and she abruptly realized that she needed to say hello to an old friend whose absence she had sorely missed.

Velvet flipped over onto her back and buried both hands in the front of her ‘Spank Me!’ panties.

“Mmm!” she cooed, “I’ve missed you, pussy! Did you miss me?” Her ladyparts responded by giving a little, involuntary squirt.

“I see!” she purred, “Now, let’s get reacquainted…”

Outside her bedroom, the sounds of rubbing, squelching, bucking, and moaning were interrupted, only occasionally, by the sound of Velvet whispering, “Oh, Mistress! I’m going to need a TRIPLE load of fabric softener for THESE thongs!”

THE END

Dramatis Personae:

Velvet Glove: Our heroine! Real name: Veronica LeGrange. Both the richest and strongest woman in the world. The wealth comes from being the heiress to Victor LeGrange, sole owner and CEO of LeGrange Security, a contractor that has cornered the market on the manufacture of both superhero headquarters and HyperMax prisons for the containment of superpowered criminals. The strength comes from sources unknown, because I haven’t written an origin story, because origin stories are boring. It’s kind of implied that her powers were bought, however. Velvet used to be on the Justice Squad, the premiere superhero team in this particular universe, but was unceremoniously expelled for violations of their morality clause. Self-confident, self-involved, Velvet has a very difficult time caring about things that aren’t her. She’s a heroine because she sees it as a path to becoming the world’s most famous and popular woman. She’s also an unabashed and unshameable slut. If you want (another) visual reference: http://fav.me/d9mx9ko 

Jacky-of-All-Trades: Until recently, the leader of the Femme Defenders, this universe’s greatest (by default) all-female superhero team. Her power lets her do literally anything, but she can only perform those tasks at an average skill level. She can get better-than-average at skills if she  practices and raises her native skill level… but since basic competence comes so easily, it’s hard for her to concentrate on any one thing long enough to actually get good at it. Long-suffering. Perpetually at odds with Velvet, who finances the team and would prefer to run it herself. Recently came out as a lesbian, surprisingly literally noone. To the extent that any of these characters are based on me, Jacky is the one that’s closest.

Bronco Buster: Mysterious cowgirl-themed superheroine. Nobody knows her name, nobody knows her backstory, she just breezed into town one day and started showing up to Femme Defenders meetings. Despite rumors to the contrary, she can talk, she just chooses not to unless absolutely necessary. In a relationship with Jacky-of-All-Trades, which they kept secret for a long time while Jacky was in the closet. Jacky knows more about her than she’s allowed to say.

Mind Mistress: Time-lost alien visitor from millennia in the future. Green skin and purple hair. I’ve written, like, twelve pages of backstory that have never even come up in any of my stories. The important thing is: She’s super-smart, has a difficult time keeping her thoughts to herself, has a neural implant that allows her to interface remotely with nearby computers, and frequently verbally spars with Velvet.

Zoe: Bubbly and enthusiastic teen rubbergirl hero. Bouncy both physically and in personality. Her persona is “overexcited fangirl.” It’s not intentional, but I created her right around the time Kamala Khan was in the news, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the new Ms. Marvel was subconscious inspiration.

Flower Power and Artemis: Aren’t even mentioned in this story.

Dr. Bionic: This is her first appearance, despite references to a previous encounter with Velvet and the Femme Defenders. I DO have plans for her in the future, though, so feel free to absorb any info you care to from this story, if you care to do so. A nerd, a villain, has a thing for biology, engineering, bioengineering, cybernetics, and all points between.

Instagram, aka “Insta”: A popular social media site centered around image sharing. Unintentionally wound up writing about 500 references in this story. Not a sponsor, but it probably should be.