Hero & Witch Pt. 05.2: Heroine Falls

"Are you getting anything off of the stone?"

"Not off the stone," she turned her head again, swearing a faint voice was speaking somewhere off in the distance, even though she could only sense the two of them.

"Someone nearby?"

"You hear it too?"

"Hear what?" Striker looked around.

"Could be my imagination."

"Or extra sensory hearing?"

Psiana didn't feel like arguing over the limitations, and it was funny how whatever she thought she heard might be mistaken for speaking directly to her. Striker heard his own voice, knowing the source of his beyond a shadow of a doubt.

"You might regret bringing her to the stones."

He wanted to verbally rebut, but didn't want to seem as strange as Psiana was now. Unable to make out her own secretive voice, she let her curiosity get the best of her and step across the outer circle to inspect.

"Don't-" Striker fiercely whispered at her, watching her step across and effortlessly lift up one of the triquetra stones in her hands.

"How did you...?"

"...what? Step into the circle? You mean you haven't tried it?"

"I don't have psi-shielding to protect me so..."

Psiana shook her head, suppressing a laugh as curiosity got her to pick up a decorated stone from the outer circle, and begin juggling them.

"Yeah, I think you've been had. Doesn't seem to be..."

"That's good," a voice whispered to her.

"Good?" she asked Striker, assuming he'd asked the question.

Striker was confused until he saw the same effect that happened to him overtake the heroine all of a sudden, quickly, as her body shivered in pleasure. She dropped the stones and he reached out to grasp her wrist to keep her from falling in. But his arm crossing the threshold again, and touching the psychic who helplessly began to broadcast some of what she was feeling outward weakened him, and they both fell into the inner circle.

The heroes were no longer quiet nor whispering as pleasure seized their bodies, a force surrounding them searching their minds and bodies for enough pleasure to keep them deliriously happy and incapacitated. Had they just been normal people, they might be screaming in ecstasy, but as heroes with some degree of mental fortification, they moaned aloud while trying to recover themselves, unsuccessfully. Psiana rubbed all over her body, in her mind believing she was leading the touch Striker's skilled hands against her body, beginning to succumb the circles. Jon had an easier time fighting the effect, but still had trouble. It was definitely akin to Scryer's magic, the kind that could sneak up on you and make you unaware of having already been taken, but the hollowness of it, having no one to direct him while under the effects, gave him the power to grasp the grass with his hands, pulling himself with every limb that could cooperate out.

Before his wrist could even reach outside the inner circle, Scryer appeared out of nowhere. If stepping into the circle while being completely immune wasn't enough of a giveaway, the dark heels and stockings were. He looked up to see her retrieving the stones Psiana picked up, returning them to their correct positioning, noticing that out of the three, only he seemed to find them immovable. She looked carefully around the circle to ensure it was not further interposed on. Satisfied that it was intact again, she turned her attention to Striker that had found his hands caressing her feet. She smiled down at him, loving how he momentarily couldn't help himself, kissing the material of her shoes, and then her hose-encased feet. Not even the presence of Psiana could ruin enjoying the mutual pleasure of his worship. The influence that kept his mind addled in cloud nine gave him the strength to let his lips climb the length of her legs, feeling them react to everything we was giving her. Hearing moans she tried to hide made it worse as he worked to hear them unfettered. Scryer's legs created a gap so he could kiss more of her inner thighs, hands and head reaching under the hem of her dress unbidden. The witch had trouble controlling her breathing, no longer fighting the urge to moan.

"Nether..." she hesitated, almost as lust-addled as the heroes now. His body took the hint, recognizing the trigger she almost used, and somehow she stopped him and herself before things went further. Pushing gently back down to the ground, Scryer spoke words only the hero's subconsciousness understood, and their pleasure turned to mindless oblivion.

The next time they were aware, Striker and Psiana were waking up outside the circles, needing several minutes to recover mentally, and to let their unsatisfied libidos subside. Neither looked at each other as they both caught their breath, and walked away from the stones. It was a long, humiliating trek back to the town, their only saving grace was avoiding people and changing clothes so they didn't attract people's attention.

***

"Thanks for warning me about stepping into the circle," Jesse complained, sitting at the chair in his room while he stood near the wall.

"I'm sorry for not saying so sooner, but I didn't think you'd be that bold. It didn't seem to affect us the same anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"Putting my hand into the outer circle, I felt some of the pleasure that came over us. As it turns out, a very little sum. It tried pulling me in to the inner circle. You in the outer circle, seemed like no effect. Were you blocking anything standing there?"

"No, I don't think I was. How did we even get out?"

"I...thought I saw Scryer. She might've..."

"No, that I don't believe."

"What other explanation is there for waking up outside the circles? She pulled us out, guided us out, whatever."

"And what did she leave us with? Wicked suggestions we're going to be helpless to follow later?"

"She didn't make us forget about the circles or why we're here altogether, which would've been the smart move on her part."

"You give her way too much credit. There's a better chance that my powers got us out somehow."

"You, who got us in with rash actions, and can't remember how you got us out when it's not the most plausible explanation, and you want to talk about credit or overestimation."

"Call it a...calculated risk. At least we know a few things from it. Women have a better chance of picking up stones than men," she teased "we know the circles are booby-trapped to anyone but witches, that they're booby-trapped with pleasure, that you start to hear voices telling you to go in..."

"What voices?" he questioned?

She blanked out for a few moments, as if forgetting someone that wasn't coming back to her. He didn't think that could happen to psychics.

"Ok, voices I thought I heard. You're right, it does affect us differently. Felt like I got a taste of the Mile High club. You?"

"More or less the same."

Psiana scanned only his face, to see if what he said he saw of Scryer was really her or what he wanted to see, hoping for the latter.

"I saw-"

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"I saw us together."

"In the circle, assaulted by pleasure?" He played dumb, wishing she'd go along with it.

"Assaulting each other, more like." Neither was more surprised than her about how open she'd suddenly become on the topic. Are you sure of what you saw while inside?"

"After I saw Scryer put the stones back in-place, a jumbled mess. She might've did that to me."

"How rude of her." Striker tried to ignore how coquettish that almost sounded coming from her, and the body language she slowly began exerting to support it.

"Maybe it was jumbled to keep you from thinking of someone. You sure you don't remember anyone?"

"Pretty sure," he lied.

"How about I check to make sure?"

"No need for th-"

He looked away from her concentrated gaze, aware of her power in his head, feeling it in waves. The stronger forms of it felt like tendrils trying to root themselves firmly somewhere in his head. He'd been less exposed to a psychic intrusion like this one, but Striker could already surmise she was doing more than scanning. He thanked whatever unique strength Scryer said his brain had for him to fight the unusually assertive heroine.

"Impressive, most wouldn't even feel me entering them. You might have to start calling yourself a super."

Her words were praising, and yet she still felt frustration in him fighting the mental touch. Amping up her focus got at least one tendril past a wall he'd put up. He felt it slip in, and took a step back closing his eyes as if to focus on getting it out. Fighting someone who's powers were solely reliant on the mind was different, more brute force than he was used to, no matter how soft she tried to make it seem. It got harder on him as his vision got hazier, or because he'd never fought mental intrusion harder than that point.

Psiana was eventually rewarded with Striker merely able to keep himself upright as she approached the distracted hero. As per her design, he couldn't see much through his eyes, and used his thoughts to envision pleasure. Multiple flashes of Scryer came through him, confirming to the heroine how smitten, conditioned, or compromised the witch had him. Psiana closed her eyes to concentrate deeper on him.

The flashing visage of Scryer slowly became more than just images. They transitioned from flat two dimensional pictures to three dimensional models that gained more and more detail, until Scryer was right in front of him, where Psiana used to be. "Scryer" was about to speak how disappointed and disgusted she was in the hero, how she'd come to the conclusion that she found him unworthy, anything to mental begin to turn him away from the witch, deeper than surface-level conditioning. But seeing him there, lost in her focus on just him did things to her. In that instance, she couldn't find fault with the witch at all for wanting to take him in his vulnerable state. The small smile on his face from his disposition or from seeing Scryer didn't matter; Psiana couldn't help but capitalize on the opportunity.

She spoke of being happy to see him, putting her hands on his shoulders waiting for him to react in kind somehow. He hadn't; perplexed at why he heard an encouraging voice, but her lips never moved. She got closer to him, whispered teasingly at him, brandishing a school-girls affection. Striker was deep yet aware enough of the difference in what he was being subjected to. The kind of control he was subjected to was different enough, but the person at the reins was totally different from what he was used to. His mind didn't readily accept the Scryer in-front of him. The longer she tried to get him to do something, the more desperation he sensed. Hesitation followed, expressed in her movements as she backed away, wondering why he was able to resist. Downcast eyes searched for an answer she didn't already have, until they looked back at him with a deep yet unclear blue, and he heard what amounted to an attempt at an Irish accent, with poor intonation and an unnatural cadence and intonation, a sound from unmoving lips that brought him no euphoria that he wouldn't admit affected him. The last of his senses confirmed the deception, the smell, or lack there of. She smelled lightly of something, but it wasn't a scent he could connect to the witch. The tendril of control couldn't reach deep enough to make his brain simulate what his senses desired without resistance. Resistance became the only thing that grew as he shook the loosened cobwebs from his head and pushed Psiana back onto the bed, not in the way she'd hoped.

It only took seconds for the psychic to collect herself, unable to wonder for long how he escaped her control or why it occurred to her to act like that. The look of anger Striker wore took too much attention from everything else. All she saw from him was a controlled breathing, and accusative eyes burning into hers. She was afraid to move for fear of prompting movement out of him. For what she knew of Striker, even without powers, she didn't want to imagine what a pissed-off vigilante like him was capable of. Stories among capes were abound of another arrogant superhero who didn't think much of him, until Striker gave him a perfectly-strategized taste of his namesake. As scared as she was, she could tell she was going to be the first to say or do something; she'd have to before his eyes burned through hers.

"I'm...sorry," she said as she slowly got up off the bed. "I admit, I've wanted that kind of attention from you for a while. I get that I took it the wrong way, but..."

She didn't know what to appropriately follow up her "but" with. She could've said how Scryer took him in a similar fashion, and he seemed to like it, how it was her initial intention to help break him away from her spell so he could think more clearly. The possibilities of what to say hung in the air, right next to the silence. What wasn't said got to Striker too, as his expression softened a little, barely taking any of the edge inside him off of him.

"Get out," was all he said quietly, as politely as he could manage, not bothering to look at her as she stepped out the door. Striker locked the door behind her, standing near it until he felt too tired to stand, deep in thought for the rest of the night.

Two floors down and several rooms away, Psiana was as contemplative as the hero she unsuccessfully tried seducing. She don't know what unnerved her more between how things didn't work out and what had come over her. Being a heroine, she knew it should automatically disturb her that it was a question as to which was worse. The old Psiana would've never done something like that, she was as sure as she could feel under the circumstances. Disrobing slowly, feeling ashamed, she took a short shower to get ready for bed. Wiping away the steam off the mirror, afraid to look at her reflection all night, she was prepared to admit to herself how royally she screwed things up. She never got the chance as her reflection took on a smile and posture different from hers.

"Hello," she told herself in a strange Gaelic accent. "I'm Lacine, nice to be a part of you."