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Subtlety was the word of the day (night) for their recon. It wasn’t a word used to describe Elsie often. Or ever. As her powers had developed, her appearance had as well. Long, dark hair grew green and her eyes gained a glow when she strained to peer through solid surfaces. Tam had tied her seaweed-like waves into a pair of loose plaits for her in preparation for the mission. Stylish and still out of the way, according to her. Of course, she left some sections to frame Elsie’s face because heroes couldn’t save the day looking less than lovely. She was the face of the city’s rookies now, after all.

Their squad would circumvent security measures with the assistance of Marge Charge. She could jump her consciousness into the network from a node… at least, that was Elsie’s understanding. Although they had the owner’s permission to be creeping around their private property (the CEO had tipped them off herself as to the possibility of dodgy goings-on) it wouldn’t do to let Venin know they’d sniffed him out too soon. Let him think he had the protection of the security systems… until he very suddenly didn’t.

“These are unused storage buildings that seem to be getting broken into on a regular basis, leaving no trace aside from a strange smell like gas or chemicals,” the owner advised them over a video that their investigate team had taken while interviewing her. She was nondescript, mousy-looking, not the boss bitch CEO that Elsie had expected. She supposed that was her own silly imaginings based on TV shows… “Nothing is taken. All the stock in there is old and unused so there’s no reason for them to return and try again.” The woman shrugged, her limp brown hair immobile. “I don’t know if it’s drugs or something else… but I think someone is using the space itself rather than taking anything from it. Only, by the time someone drops by to take a check, they’ve moved on.”

Although they don’t say so to her on camera, Elsie wonders if the team informed this woman that their suspicions lay with a villain known for leaking literal poison from his very pores. Venin was a damn dangerous individual. It was possibly for the best that they be allowed to search the area before panic set in.

Over their supersuits they were ordered to seal protective gear in multiple layers to protect them from touching, breathing or, worst case scenario, tasting any of the vile toxins that Venin could produce. The rest of the squad she had been inducted into included Evergreen and The Berg (Elsie held back her desperation for autographs) in the hopes their powers could cancel out the pure poison that Venin dripped, and Silver Skipper – all healed up from their last encounter. She and Elsie waved at each other beneath their hazmat-suit-like coverings. Their commander, a non-powered member of the police force, allowed them to practice waddling about in the outfits for all of five minutes before he snapped them to attention with a gruff bark. It was time to head out. Thank goodness for the helmet or someone might see how scared Elsie was.

Within the tall metal gates were warehouses, and within those warehouses they had reason to believe the toxic, noxious villain known as Venin was holding his hero captives, waiting out a chance to strike again. They said he embalmed them, dead or alive, and kept them as trophies… The darkness unnerved Elsie just as much as the thought of a poison-pored villain ready to trap her in a jar of formaldehyde…

Elsie and Silver Skipper brought up the rear of their troop, eyes and ears on high alert, swinging their crinkling suits around every time they thought they noticed… anything. It always turned out to be nothing, which was just as suspicious to them as if it were something.

The first warehouse they reached showed no signs of life from the outside, not that they expected any. Evergreen grew a weed from a crack in the concrete and stepped upon it, peering into the windows that began above their heads. She shook her head to their commander. Taking the double steel doors’ padlock in his meaty palm, The Berg froze and unfroze the metal in rapid succession until it crumbled into brittle metal shards. He dusted off this hands away from the others and put his protective gloves back on and their commander led them inside. The digital alarms were all blocked by Marge, and they had permission from the CEO to enter by any means necessary for the good of rooting out evil. And, of course, it had to be legal. They were still representatives of the Hero Commission after all.

The silence was eery. The space felt too large despite being full of crates and plastic covers and bungee cords. One covering seemed to be hiding a bumpy gathering of objects in the back corner. The commander gestured to them and the more senior heroes nodded, so Elsie did too. A rustle from the blue lump energised them and the heroes surged forward.

“Captives?” Silver Skipper whispered.

Elsie shrugged one shoulder, a pit forming in her stomach. She turned to survey the room and cover their backs while they investigated. It was so dark she knew her eyes must be glowing with the strain. Luckily the helmet wasn’t too reflective.

Evergreen pulled back the tarp, instantly disproving their theory. The disappointment was silent but visibly shared amongst the team even with plastic face guards getting in the way of their expressions. Elsie’s stomach refused to unknot itself.

The commander urged them onwards immediately, they had plenty more places to check. The next was near-identical. And the next. Was four a lucky number? Because in this one there were far fewer shelves and a ring of seats. Following the commander’s lead, they snapped on their shoulder torches and approached.

Nebulosity flooded the room. Their torches choked out. Hands fought the haze in flailing grabs that caught nothing of the cloud and smacked each other haphazardly. There was a whoosh of attempted power usage that Elsie couldn’t place. How close were these higher grades throwing out their abilities to her? She hadn’t considered the possibility of freeze burn from this mission...

“Stop that!” the commander barked. “Formation!”

“Smoke bomb?” The Berg asked the dark. But it wasn’t, it was solid and liquid and gas all at once and it was everywhere. “My ice ca-”

The rest of his words were swallowed by the dark. Evergreen called out something about ‘vines’ and ‘glow’ or maybe ‘time to go?’ but Elsie couldn’t decipher it before she had fallen quiet too.

“Send the sig-” The commander’s voice disappeared abruptly next.

Elsie heard enough to pull her phone free of her suit and attempt to hit ‘call’ on their emergency line as she backed up in search of a wall to brace herself to. Nothing happened. She had no signal. Her back finally hit brick. A shout muffled in the fog sounded like it could have been Marge. Elsie tried to shout something back, to make her position known to her team mates, and a strangled noise was all that came out of her suddenly moisture-less mouth. She squinted, trying her super vision, but she had never practised on whatever shadows surrounded them now. She kept herself to the wall and shimmied along, phone shoved away again, in search of a door to fling open. At the least maybe some fresh air could thin out the smoke. There was no fire to accidentally oxygenate.

Her fingers found a pair of doors with no handle, she ran her palms side to side until she found a key pad. None of the buttons reacted to her touch, no indignant noise to accuse her of not knowing the code, no emergency exit signs blaring. Elsie clenched her fists and refrained from slamming them to the metal in frustration. If she couldn’t get out, she had to do her best with whatever she was trapped with.

Reception extinguished. Lights void of electricity. Door panels dead. Elsie turned stiffly on her back foot, bringing her knuckles to her eyebrows.

“Brave.” The darkness retracted, sweeping through the warehouse and leaving not another soul in the space. Except the owner of the smooth voice. She stood over Elsie, mask revealing only eyes the colour of the shadows she wielded. From the top edges sprung silky black hair that sat behind her with perfect pointed flicks at the ends. Gloves stretched all the way up her arms, almost to her shoulders. Her body suit covered as much as a gymnast’s leotard, and when Elsie snatched her eyes back up from the wide sash tied around her waist, a knowing smirk was waiting for her in the crinkle of those obsidian eyes. She slammed Elsie’s raised wrists to the wall behind her and chuckled darkly, “brawny.” It sent an unfortunate shiver through Elsie’s insides, unfortunate because it was accompanied by a flush of arousal. The gap between their faces shrunk. “Beautiful.”

Elsie blinked up at her mark-appointed nemesis. She… was scared? No, that wasn’t what she was feeling. The knot in her stomach unravelled into fluttering butterflies, a tickle that wasn’t unpleasant. Maybe she’d spent so long feeling afraid of Blackout that now they were nose to nose she’d all run out of that emotion. Heat flooded her face and fogged her visor. She made to speak, uncertain what just yet, and stuttered a squeaky noise instead. This time, it wasn’t fear drying her mouth and mind up. Her helmet cracked through the centre and fell in two halves to the floor, abandoning her almost immediately in the face of danger. A really gorgeous face from the teasing snippets she could see… and really dangerous, that was just as important.

Another masked woman stepped out from behind the metal shelving that split the enormous space. Blackout sensed her but did not turn. Some signal must have been shared, although Elsie wasn’t privy to it. A tendril of thick shadow caught the bottom of Blackout’s mask, flipping it up to reveal glossily painted lips, plump and upturned. And then those lips were on hers. Spicy heat prickled through her from the first touch, like a fire within her that had been waiting to be lit for every day till then. Blackout’s grip on her wrists dug harder with the lean of her body closer, pressing herself into Elsie with all of herself, not just the tongue that demanded entrance to her mouth. Elsie opened to welcome it, recovering her senses after a frozen moment, and earned a humoured noise from her nemesis that rumbled against her chest. Blackout toyed with her, slanting her mouth and flicking her tongue, encouraging Elsie to attempt to follow her lead and then changing the game just as she thought she had offered the correct combination. It was soft in touch but demanding in movement and Elsie’s muscles were taut with the strain not to roll her hips forward and take things a step too far. The arousal flooding her pulsed along with her heartbeat, throbbing between her legs, quivering the tips of her tits. Even the restraining of her wrists made her want to squirm and make pathetic noises.

When the kiss broke she noticed, without much concern, that the other woman had vanished from over Blackout’s shoulder. Her much more pressing thought was for everyone else that had.

“The others-” she garbled.

“They’re fine,” Blackout cooed, sliding her grip from Elsie’s wrists to her elbows to her biceps and giving them an appreciative squeeze. She pulled her from the wall and spun them, swapping positions and hitching a leg up Elsie’s side. Elsie staggered and spread her stance. Between her and the wall Blackout was wedged like Elsie was the one who had initiated, like she’d caged her in the corner of the club after a dance, like Blackout was the damsel in distress.

Elsie’s brain stalled. “But-” There was a bare thigh hooked over her hip. There was a tiny black leotard stretched over an hourglass pressed to her front. There was smudged lipstick that she could do much worse to given a second chance… “They-” The heel of Blackout’s boot nudged Elsie’s ass. A reminder. An encouragement. “Um-” Her head dipped as though weighted, without her intent. “Yeah.” She returned her lips to Blackout’s again before she could struggle through another word.

She squashed Blackout with the kiss, pressing as much of their bodies together as was physically possible with all her protective gear. Feeling her breasts spread under her hands once she had the confidence to pry them from the bricks beside her head and shake the gloves off, the silken outline of her pussy through skin-tight bodysuit against her hip, the scrape of almond-shaped nails through costume gloves down her back when she sunk her hands beneath Elsie’s supersuit. And she kept kissing her. She kissed her nemesis because her body didn’t know what else to do in her presence. She kissed her until Blackout’s hands returned up her neck and pried her jaw back. Elsie’s breaths puffed out embarrassingly shakily. Blackout’s dark chuckle should have made her feel worse, but she enjoyed hearing it too much.

She curled a ribbon of Elsie’s hair around her gloved finger, like a vine growing around it, and her smile tinged melancholic. Elsie almost asked what was wrong when she felt a hand cup the back of her head. Not one of Blackout’s, hers were both in view. But the touch was strangely familiar, a lost thought breaking through that this sensation made her feel like a baseball about to be thrown as the world went dark.