Wasn't super hearing supposed to be an advantage? That was the closest thing to a thought to pass through Adventure Girl's blank and foggy brain, as she found her flight veering off course from its intended path to meet with the mayor at City Hall in favor of an unexpected detour to the Pyramid City branch of First Century Bank. It wasn't an intentional decision on her part, but then again very little felt intentional to the famous superhero at the moment; the instant she'd gotten within two miles of the faint, mesmerizing violin music playing just at the edges of her perception, she'd found herself drifting into a stupefied trance before she even knew what hit her.

Which meant it had to be something magical that was enthralling her, and it would have been frustrating to once again have her supposedly secret weakness used against her so easily if Adventure Girl's amiably mushy brain was still capable of feeling anything but a sleepy desire to please. Already that momentary wave of rueful self-awareness was fading, replaced by a muzzy urge to find the source of the sweet, seductive tune and just... just see if there was anything she could do to make its creator happy. She already knew she wanted to make them happy.

As she got closer--still several city blocks away, but well within range for her venture-senses to discern the details of the situation she was entering--Adventure Girl began to hear a voice under the music, saying, "...could just please deposit your valuables in the bags my colleagues are bringing around? Any large denomination bills, any jewelry that contains gold or precious gems, just anything you think it would please me to own, really. You know you want to please the Virtuoso, after all." Adventure Girl patted down her costume instinctively before sluggishly remembering she wouldn't have brought along any of the wealth she carried in her civilian identity as Samantha Steele.

She briefly considered going back to her apartment and finding something to serve as tribute, but the pull of that alluring music was simply too enticing to imagine resisting--she barely managed to remember to keep to subsonic speeds, an automatic and unthinking degree of caution that everyone standing near a window deeply appreciated, but she couldn't imagine anything as absurd as deliberately turning away from that beautiful, hypnotic tune. All she wanted to do was find the person playing it... a woman, judging by the sound of her voice... and show her gratitude for being lulled into mindless obedience, and her heart leapt on realizing she was mere seconds away now.

Admittedly, it was probably a little melodramatic to come crashing through the wall the way she did, but Samantha's venture-vision gave her a nice clear view of everything on the other side and there was no one anywhere near the front of the bank. All the customers and most of the staff were gathered near the vault, gazing up in rapture at a masked woman whose fingers were carefully pressing down on the strings of an antique violin made of ebony and bone while she sawed her bow back and forth to produce the entrancing sound. "Now the vault should be open soon, and once it is, you can all just relax and WHAT THE FUCK?!"

The abrupt shift in tone from soothing, melodious murmur to terrified screech caught Adventure Girl a bit off-guard, but she soon shook off her momentary dismay along with a light dusting of powdered concrete and smiled endearingly at the dark-haired stranger. "My name's Adventure Girl," she sighed out, slipping into the same tone of breathy vacancy she so often adopted as Samantha Steele. "I, um, I heard your music, and, uhh, you know, I just... I kind of wanted to see if there was maybe something I could do to help?" Her hand moved up to twirl the ringlets of her long blonde hair, normally an affectation she used to fool people into thinking she was some vapid debutante but somehow feeling far too natural to resist right now.

"...oh." The Virtuoso looked as well as sounded a bit dismayed... perhaps even disconcerted, if Samantha still had the wit left to make the kind of pun superheroes were famous for. The mask probably concealed a bit of her anxiety to the other victims, as well as her three henchmen, but of course Samantha could see right through it and knew exactly what the woman looked like. "Well, um, I, I guess you could... I mean, can you just rip the vault open for us?"She nodded over at the thick metal door as best she could with her head settled into the chin rest, and for a moment the music wavered almost imperceptibly as she divided her concentration. Apparently she really was playing the instrument herself.

Samantha beamed brightly, an almost sexual pleasure washing over her at the realization that she could actually do something real and concrete to make the person behind such beautiful music happy. "Of course!" she burbled, amiably sauntering over to the vault and simply ripping the door off its hinges without any appreciable effort. "Is there somewhere you'd like me to put it, or....?"

The Virtuoso seemed pleased, which sent an orgasmic burst of ecstasy through Adventure Girl's befuddled brain, but her venture-senses couldn't avoid picking up a trace of lingering anxiety as well. "Uh, um, wow, you... you really just did that," she muttered, her gaze practically magnetized to the heavy chunk of solid steel held lightly in Samantha's hand. "Didn't take you any effort at all. Um, no, no, you can just set it down anywhere, and maybe help my boys fill up those suitcases with cash."

Samantha nodded eagerly. "Can do!" she chirruped, sprinting into the vault with venture-speed and using carefully controlled bursts of activity to plop stacks of hundreds into the cases without so much as ruffling the bills. "Oh, um, by the way, I think I just set off the silent alarms when I did that, I could hear the electrical relays closing. It probably triggered a call to the police. I just thought you'd want to know, ma'am."

The Virtuoso audibly gulped. Well, audibly to Adventure Girl, anyway. "Oh," she muttered again, sounding more nervous than ever. "Um, well, you... you can hold them off, right? I mean, you can just disarm them and, and, I don't know, wrap them up in lightposts or something while we get away." Her voice had a worried cast to it, as though she'd finally found a way to summon a genie in a bottle and was finally beginning to realize just how carefully she needed to word her wishes to avoid catastrophe.

"Oh, sure, so long as I'm in earshot!" Samantha babbled, cheerfully volunteering every detail of the plans she was sure she would have come up with if her brain was even close to functional. "But I mean, the second the spell wears off, I'll just set them free and come after you myself. That's not going to be a problem, though, right? I mean, I'm sure you can just put suggestions into my vulnerable mind to make me your oh, ohhh... obedient slave even after the music stops." There wasn't so much as an infinitesimal fraction of Adventure Girl that objected to giving the Virtuoso ideas for how to permanently subjugate and control her--even the momentary hitch in her voice wasn't hesitation so much as it was a pulse of orgasmic bliss that made speech difficult for a few seconds. She craved to be owned, because she knew it would make the Virtuoso happy.

Which made it all the more disappointing when the Virtuoso admitted, "Um, no. It doesn't actually work that way. Once the music ends, the spell ends with it and all its effects just... fade. The boys here are actually my willing accomplices, they're going to get a cut of the money when this is all over." She winced, obviously realizing that in her panic she'd just implicated the men she was with, but gamely pressed forward. "I, uh, I don't suppose we could offer you some money to let us go, could we?"

Samantha giggled. "Oh, no, I'm completely incorruptible. Would you like me to open up the safe deposit boxes, by the way? There are some bearer bonds in there worth about two hundred thousand dollars." She heard the tiny whimper in her own voice, a mere sliver of the pure and potent euphoria she felt on finding another opportunity to please her Mistress, and it was frankly all she could do not to slide her fingers into her waistband and rub herself while she waited for an answer. She already noticed that more than a few of the customers had given in to that exact same urge.

"Um, yeah, sure, that's fine--so long as there aren't any alarms!" That last part was blurted out just a tiny bit too late, given Samantha's venture-speed, but it was fine. The safe deposit boxes weren't tricked out like that, and Samantha's brain was soon reeling with slick, shuddery bliss as she scooped out the bearer bonds and several other valuable items for the Virtuoso to add to her haul. Assuming she could get away with it all, of course, something Adventure Girl was now racking her brains in an effort to ensure.

"Okay, so you're incorruptible, and you'll arrest me as soon as the spell wears off, and... fuck, god, my fingers are fucking cramping here... and you don't have any, like, weaknesses I could use against you?" The panic was now visible on her face, even in the places not concealed by the mask, and Samantha wanted to give her a big hug and tell her that everything would be okay if not for the inescapable knowledge that she might accidentally interrupt the song if she did. And more than anything she wanted to keep listening to that wonderful music.

But she also wanted to answer the question, because that would please her owner so, so much. "I'm vulnerable to argonite and magic," she chattered, casually revealing the vulnerabilities that could destroy her. "There's no argonite nearby, but maybe you have something else magical besides the violin? Something that could enslave me p-permanently?" Adventure Girl couldn't help it this time, she surreptitiously slipped her hand into her panties and began to rub her soaking cunt, but if the Virtuoso noticed she didn't care. She looked like she had bigger fish to fry.

"No, no, I found the fucking thing in the back of an-ow! An old pawnshop, one of those weird places that's not there when you go back to it. I don't know what else they had in there, but this was the only thing I could afford." Beads of sweat were beginning to form on her brow, and Adventure Girl wondered exactly how long she'd been playing--certainly if what she said was true, she couldn't exactly take a break, not without ending the spell and leaving her vulnerable to a whole crowd of angry staff and customers. It was obvious Samantha had messed up her plans simply by arriving, and she would have felt just terrible about it if her clit wasn't throbbing so hard from everything she'd already done to please her new Mistress.

"M-maybe I could just tell you to fly away as fast as you could?" the Virtuoso volunteered, strain beginning to show in her voice as the music wavered again just that tiny little bit. It wasn't enough to free Samantha, not with her brain so muddled by pleasure, but it did make her briefly realize that her knees were beginning to wobble with the effort of holding herself upright so close to her impending climax. She decided to kneel, and it felt like such a perfect pose to take with her owner that she couldn't understand why she hadn't done it sooner.

None of which stopped her from answering the question openly and honestly. "It wouldn't do any good," she said sympathetically, hating to be the bearer of bad news but knowing that lying would only hurt her Mistress even more. "I'd snap out of it as soon as I got out of earshot, and my venture-senses would be able to pick you out of a crowd no matter where you tried to hide. I already know what you look like underneath that mask, so you couldn't even disguise yourself. The moment you stop playing, I'm going to catch you."

"Fuck!" The outburst exploded from the Virtuoso's lips so vociferously that it nearly dislodged her head from the chin rest, and the tune verged on discordance as she struggled to get her fear and anxiety back under control. "Okay, um, just... maybe you could just, um... um... fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

There was no command Samantha could imagine wanting to follow more, and she swooped at the Virtuoso with venture-speed to embrace her lover... but when the unexpected collision sent the music to a screeching halt, her thoughts cleared as though doused in cold water and she quickly realized the other woman hadn't exactly intended that particular instruction. Not that it would have mattered, judging by her trembling fingers. It probably only accelerated the inevitable by a few moments anyway.

She plucked the violin from the Virtuoso's hands, testing it briefly with her venture-strength before reluctantly determining that it was unbreakable, and tucked it under her arm while she went through the mildly tedious business of arresting the woman and her henchmen for attempted robbery. A quick trip to the Liberty Squad satellite to deposit the instrument in a vault later, and she was on time for her meeting with the Mayor... and if she was maybe just a little bit distracted by the lingering echoes of her unsatisfied lust, Samantha was at least able to keep most of her attention on the matters at hand. But she resolved to take some time for herself when it was all over.

Because even though the spell was finished, the memory of the sweet music Samantha was making with herself remained.

THE END