One Hour of Vulnerability

Billie smiled, but didn't let the flattery distract her.

She sat back down, cross-legged, and encouraged Sylvan to do the same across from her, with a gesture instead of the leash.

"When you said it had 'come to your attention' that you were missing a fundamental experience... someone called you out, didn't they?" Billie asked.

Sylvan nodded miserably.

"Someone you care about called you a heartless bitch, or something like that, for how you treated someone who was hurting for real."

She nodded again.

"Someone on your team?" Billie guessed.

Another nod.

"And is your team all here tonight?"

Sylvan looked up and froze with a horror that answered Billie's question without a word.

"Ah."

"Please," said Sylvan. "I can't face them. Not with this."

"There's no vulnerability like vulnerability in front of someone you love," Billie noted casually. "That would be real."

Sylvan wrung her hands, but could not bring herself to claim that she did not, in fact, want it to be real.

Billie wrapped the leash around the bedpost behind Sylvan and tied it off.

"Sit here," she directed. "Hands on your knees, head down, and pretend you couldn't break this if you tried while I'm gone."

Sylvan obeyed, hands openly shaking on her legs now.

"Use that word now," said Billie, "if you want to keep your shame to yourself and crawl back into the same dysfunctional rut that drove you here. Otherwise, shut up while I gather your team."

#

Less than five minutes later, Billie surveyed the full lineup of the Mind Benders in playroom seven, taking stock of what she now had to work with.

Rewind -- Able to control time itself over short periods and short distances. Intensely hourglass-shaped and dressed like a fifties housewife if she'd had access to eighties neons. Semi-official leader of the Mind Benders team and positively oozing with den mother vibes.

Silhouette -- Able to make darkness solid and shape it to her whims. Cute, goth, and tiny even on her platform boots. Alternating between stonefaced and wicked smirks.

Little Devil -- Able to shrink from Human to subatomic size in 1.8 seconds, or stop anywhere in between. Equipped with his devil-red shrinkable environment suit. Not too pleased with Billie right now, for interrupting his date twice in one night, but unable to resist joining the rest of his team after hearing that a member was in need.

Sylvan -- Strong, invulnerable, immortal elf princess, still stripped to a thong and leashed to the bedpost.

"Sylvan has something she'd like to say to you all," Billie prompted.

"I'm sorry," Sylvan spoke to her knees.

"You can look up, now," Billie told her.

"I'm sorry," Sylvan repeated, looking each of her teammates in the eye. "I'm sorry I haven't shown enough respect for the softness of your bodies. In recompence, I invite you all to educate me through mine, violently, if necessary. And I assure you, it will be necessary."

The other three Mind Benders exchanged cautious glances.

"I... I'm not sure about this, ladies," said Little Devil. "I mean, you're crazy hot, Sylvan, obviously. You all are." He glanced around the room and back to Sylvan. "And I can't say I've never wanted to teach you a couple lessons in Humanity." The slight lift of the corner of his mouth revealed more temptation than his voice. "I just feel kinda weird mixing those two things. I don't know if I can hurt a friend on peaceful territory."

"I get it," said Billie. "You're heroes. You're a team. This goes against a lot of instincts. But let me tell you, she can take a lot for a beginner. And the horror of humbling herself in front of her colleagues really gets her going, doesn't it, princess?"

Billie untied the leash from the bedpost and gave it a tug.

Sylvan nodded, face burning, nipples hardening before her teammate's eyes.

"So, if you can find any way to enjoy yourselves at her expense," said Billie "it's a safe bet you'll be doing her a favor in the process. Just be sure not to let her rush the climax. That would spoil this whole sweet gesture of hers, wouldn't it?"

She rattled the leash, and Sylvan gave another nod.

Silhouette was in one of her wicked grin phases, and Rewind crossed her arms, tapping thoughtfully on her elbow.

"That sounds doable," said Rewind. "If it's that important to her."

Sylvan's eyes widened with combined delight and terror.

"Great, so, first, the practical notes," said Billie. "Any supernatural effect that gets within three feet of me will stop working. Any person who has even a millimeter of skin within my radius will have all supernatural abilities stripped from their whole body for as long as they're there. So, I'm going to sit here." She settled herself against the headboard of the bed, leash in hand, and tugged Sylvan around to face her, so that she was on her hands and knees with her back to her team. "Sylvan's going to stay at the very end of her tether, with just her forehead poking into my radius, so she stays as powerless and fragile all over as the softest Human. As long as the rest of you don't come any closer to me than, say, her chin, you'll be able to do whatever you want to her, with full access to your own powers."

"Me first!" Silhouette jumped in, grabbing the light switch.

For a moment, the playroom was pitch dark.

When the lights came back on, a patch of darkness remained around Sylvan, shaping itself in response to Silhouette's gestures. It formed thick vines, which tested the edges of Billie's power radius, finding the exact barrier where they would fade out of existence if they crossed it. Settling into place just behind that barrier, they twined themselves around Sylvan's wrists and neck, forming a makeshift set of stocks around her, sending down a few strong roots to anchor the structure to the edges of the bed.

Once the shape was complete, the vines slowly began to grow short, sturdy thorns.

Sylvan yelped when she turned her head to better see her new prison, and discovered one of the thorns along the side of the neck.

"Oh, they won't go deep," Silhouette assured her with sharp, taunting undertones. "They'll just scratch you up a bit. Temporarily! Until you get your powers back. And not even that if you stay very still."

Two thornless vines extended from the sides of the woven mass and snapped themselves against Sylvan's ass in rapid succession.

Sylvan moaned once for the pair of blows, and then a second time when she'd had the chance to recognize her new rings of scratches.

"Oh, we will most certainly be doing that again," said Rewind, with well-contained but growing excitement.

She executed a precise counter-clockwise twirl, brightly colored skirt flaring outward, and time itself reversed along with her motion. The vines made contact with Sylvan's ass again, erasing the pink marks they'd left.

When Rewind stopped, time resumed, and the vines snapped again, putting the marks back in place.

Only the consciousness of the five people in the playroom was unaffected by the reversal. Sylvan moaned differently the second time around, experiencing the same pair of blows all over again, without forgetting the first round.

"The next set will hurt more," Silhouette warned gleefully. "With your skin already all raw like that. So don't be surprised if--"

She swung the vines again, before finishing her sentence.

Sylvan gasped and drew blood against the thorns that circled her wrists.

"I said not to be surprised," Silhouette teased.

Little Devil hung back, watching the women intently.

"You know, a warmed-up G-region can take a hell of a pounding without it even qualifying as pain." Billie noted to him. "Maybe you could start there."

Little Devil thought for a moment. "Do you want that, Sylvie?"

"Yes!" Sylvan answered between more snaps of Silhouette's vines. "Hit me where no others can reach!"

Tentatively, Little Devil climbed onto the bed behind Sylvan and pulled her thong down around her knees. He eased one finger from each hand into her opening, and shrank himself down to crawl inside.

Silhouette paused her vines to wait for him to get his bearings.

With no other reaction on her face, Sylvan asked out loud, "Was that intended to be a punch?"

Billie could hear the slight thud of Little Devil's second attempt, but Sylvan still barely responded.

"Harder," she told him.

Turning around, Little Devil poked his head out, hanging upside down from inside her. "How's this?" he asked through his suit's speakers. He gripped her lips and kicked her G-region hard enough to send himself shuddering back and forth inside her, as if he were wrestling with a thick rubber band.

"Throw your stifled feelings upon my flesh!" Sylvan encouraged. "Make me feel them!"

Little Devil wedged his back against the rear wall of her vagina and kicked again, three times in a row.

"Speak them out loud!" shouted Sylvan. "Tell me the memories that fuel your fire!"

"I was just thinking about that time you told me to 'make myself presentable,'" Little Devil admitted. "After Count Tornado broke my arm."

He kicked harder with this, hard enough that Sylvan finally winced with approval.

"Make yourself presentable, princess," he teased, with another heavy kick. "Better not let anyone see you moaning about a little physical sensation."

"I can't help it," Sylvan moaned. "Please, don't allow me to help it!"

Little Devil found a nice rhythm, punching and kicking, occasionally stopping and pinching Sylvan's labia to keep the torment going when he needed a rest.

At the same time, Silhouette's vines whipped against Sylvan's soft ass at unpredictable intervals, painting it with an expanding crisscross of pink lines. Other vines wound their way up and down her legs, scratching and threatening to drag her knees farther apart.

"Am I still the same?" Sylvan asked.

"What was that?" Billie asked, not sure she'd caught the question right.

"The pain, it feels as if I should be able to see it," Sylvan struggled to explain. "Shattering my body, twisting it somehow...."

Silhouette summoned the shadows out from under the bed, formed them into a wide mirror, and hung them on the wall to Sylvan's right, so she could see for herself as the next vine lash landed across her ass, adding to that pretty pink web, but leaving her the same basic shape as ever.

Little Devil waved at her, his tiny upper body dangling from between her legs, and then gave her an extra hard kick.

Silhouette followed up with another pair of hits, faster than usual.

Sylvan responded with an extra desperate groan, grinding her hips against the air.

"Oh, that looked like a good one," Rewind said and turned a full pirouette, sending Sylvan through that particular kick and pair of hits again.

Caught up in the moment, Silhouette jumped into Rewind's arms, wrapped her legs around her waist, and kissed her on the lips. The two made out heavily, while the spanking vines continued to do their work on Sylvan's ass.

Little Devil went on pounding the back of her clitoral nerves, leaving his hands strategically placed on either side of the external bud, denying her that final, direct push over the edge.

Billie watched, fighting a mournful urge to crawl closer to the others, to reach out and touch. The old feeling of being the outsider, the one she usually came to the Moaning Mask to escape, settled particularly heavily in her chest.

That didn't stop her from being incredibly horny, however. She undid her belt buckle and reached down the front of her jeans. If she couldn't have the kind of contact she wanted today, she could at least have the kind that Sylvan was bucking and whimpering for, without being able to get it.

As she stroked her own clit, Billie reached out the one way she could, with her voice.

"Just think, princess," she said, signaling Sylven to look up at her. "Everything we've done to you, people do for fun. A lot of people. Now, imagine if we were real bad guys."

Sylvan's cheeks pinkened with the thought. "I'm sorry," she started to murmur. "I'm so, so sorry."

Her hips were rocking harder, enough that it was becoming difficult for Little Devil to stay anchored inside her.

"What do you think?" Billie asked the others. "Is she close to learning her lesson?"

"Even if she's not, I doubt she's strong enough to take much more," Rewind taunted, setting Silhouette down on her feet.

Billie expected Sylvan to insist that she was strong enough to take any penance her teammates chose for her, but she couldn't seem to stop moaning and humping the air for long enough raise any argument at all. It was definitely time.

"Still feel like being nicer than she deserves, Devil?" Billie asked.

With a nod, Little Devil stopped kicking. Instead, he gave Sylvan a friendly pat on the clit, gently took hold of the edge of her hood, and began pulling it back and forth, giving her the faint friction of the skin itself across her nerve endings.

Sylvan's moans of sensation began to build in intensity. Little Devil escalated to playing a rapid drum solo across her clit with both hands.

She took in a gasp of air, ready to fuel an orgasmic cry.

At that moment, Rewind took another counter-clockwise twirl. "No, I don't think so," she said.

Sylvan whimpered as her buildup dialed itself back down with the reversal of time, and then began to build again.

"Please," she hissed. "I'm so sorry, please."

She reached another gasping edge under Little Devil's hands.

Rewind twirled the same way again, dialing her back down.

"I could keep you on time-out for as long as I want," Rewind reminded Sylvan. "Without this hour coming any closer to an end."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Sylvan murmured, giving up on more direct requests, surrendering to Rewind's pace as the orgasm built yet again.

At the start of the next gasp, Rewind twirled even faster, clockwise this time, skipping time ahead by vital seconds.

Sylvan cried with confusion, finding herself too soon in the aftermath of an orgasm she'd had no time to feel.

Rewind chuckled.

Silhouette landed one more vine strike before she could stop herself, drawing a sharply pained cry from Sylvan, and then looked up at Rewind, in awe of her audacity.

"Did I...?" Sylvan's voice dropped out of the sensual cooing her apologies had taken on. She suddenly sounded as genuinely plaintive as she had when Billie had first figured out her reason for being here. "Was I really that horrible to you all?"

Disappointed tears spilled out in her chemically altered state.

"You were bad enough to need to think about what you've done for a good hard moment," Rewind answered.

Then she relented into a small, indulgent smile, and twirled counter-clockwise again.

Time resumed at the moment before Sylvan's orgasm, and this time, Rewind let her go.

Sylvan thrashed against the thorny stocks, straightened her long legs out behind her, and slammed Little Devil into the bed under her to grind herself against him.

His laughter came out muffled through his suit's speakers.

The moment Sylvan's moans passed their crescendo and began to taper off, Rewind twirled again and sent her back to the beginning.

"Earth and moon!" Sylvan swore as the waves crashed over her again.

Halfway through the orgasm, Rewind twirled again, once to the right, then twice to left, cutting her off, skipping to the end, then returning to a few seconds before the beginning.

Sylvan didn't seem to be sure when she was, until the orgasm hit for the third time.

Unaffected by the shifts in time playing out in front of her, Billie had caught up to the edge of her own orgasm.

She pushed herself over, in sync with Sylvan, and basked in the flood of pleasure while watching the same ecstasy wash over Sylvan's face in front of her.

Well, not quite the same. Billie's pleasure was secure and immune from tampering, while Sylvan's was full of tense uncertainty, but Billie could not have guessed which was more intense.

Rewind let Sylvan run her course completely this time, until she slumped exhausted against the vines and whispered, "No more."

It wasn't "Mercy," so Silhouette left the vines in place, but Rewind seemed to feel it was about time to leave time alone.

Little Devil wriggled out of Sylvan, and out from under her. He jumped off the side of the bed, returning to his normal size to land on his feet. With the release of a few pressure seals, he unzipped his environment suit and set the helmet aside.

Silhouette had been rubbing her hands over her body, hungry for attention, and at the sight of available dick, she pushed Little Devil back onto the bed in front of Sylvan and climbed on top of him without stopping to undress.

Little Devil showed no objections whatsoever to this, helping Silhouette push aside the panties under her skirt and holding his erection steady for her.

Once she was in place and riding him roughly, grabbing at the side of the thorn stock for leverage, he reached out in Rewind's direction.

"Room for one more," he said, and wagged his tongue.

Rewind primly slid her panties off under her skirt and accepted his invitation, climbing onto his face.

Rewind and Silhouette held each other up while they fucked him together, kissing and reaching down each other's tops for nipples to rub and pinch and suck.

Little Devil spread his arms luxuriously, reaching for Sylvan with one.

Billie was a little surprised when he reached for her with the other one, just as casually, as if she were part of the team, now and every day.

She supposed there was no reason he couldn't invite her closer, now that he was back to normal size anyway.

He stroked Sylvan's thigh comfortingly, and touched the open zipper of Billie's jeans in a gesture of questioning. Billie took his hand and guided his fingers very gently against the lips of her pussy, orbiting her contented clit.

No superpower could allow her to skip her recharge time, and she knew she wouldn't be able to build to a second orgasm the ordinary way in the time they had left, but the contact was nice all the same.

She leaned back and stroked his arm, watching him with Silhouette and Rewind, and watching Sylvan watching them.

Even leaning against the thorns that held her, temporary scratches all over her neck and wrists, Sylvan looked utterly peaceful. Billie suspected that it was not just the orgasms -- just one, physically, but about three mentally -- that had soothed her.

"Glad we made it real?" Billie asked.

"Indeed," Sylvan sighed, reveling in what might have been the first tension-free moment she'd shared with her team in months, maybe years. "I chose well, coming to you."

Billie laughed at her choice of words. "Do you make a habit of describing group efforts in ways that give you as much credit as possible?"

"I suppose," said Sylvan. "I had not thought on it."

Billie grinned. "Maybe that's what we'll spank you for next."

***

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