Synaptic Overload

by Brandy Dewinter and Tigger

( © 1999, All rights reserved )

 

Chapter 9 - Checkmate

The slumber that so quickly claimed Synapse pulled at Entropy like the most addictive of drugs. The gentle breeze caressing her hair, the distant surf whispering with a rhythm in tune with her slow breath, her own lack of sleep and the lassitude the flowed through her as her own excitement ebbed all combined to make a greater challenge than any she had faced battling merely human opponents. But she did face it, struggling to stay awake, struggling even more to concentrate on the steps needed to complete the capture of her beautiful companion.

The first thing she did was to set up a partial exclusion field around Synapse's head. Oxygen was "discouraged" from entering, while carbon dioxide was drawn away as previously random molecular motion took on a statistical bias away from the brunette. Hypoxia, as long as there is not carbon dioxide buildup to trigger panting breath, merely makes one sleepy. For Synapse, it deepened a natural slumber into near anesthesia.

Tentative nudges convinced Entropy that Synapse was indeed safely undisturbable. The blonde crimefighter slipped out of the would-be queen's sleeping embrace and looked for something to make the capture a bit more durable. The verandah had been provided with reed mats that could be let down in the event of a too-bright sun. The cords that controlled the mats yielded to an instant's application of Entropy's heat beam and she soon had all the rope she needed. Synapse's wrists were crossed and bound behind her back, then her ankles lashed together. Finally, a line from her wrists to her ankles ensured that Synapse would not even be able to contest her capture with a meaningful struggle.

Entropy studied the belt that held the purple jewel below Synapse's waist and found a way to remove it. The belt and the similarly-jeweled scepter went into her own cape, in a pouch wisely added by Janice for contingencies unknown. Then Entropy prepared to launch into the night.

The Island heritage demonstrated so beautifully by Synapse had given her delicate features and gloriously sleek hair. It had also given her a slender figure that Entropy was able to lift easily in her arms. However, lifting Synapse for a few minutes was not nearly as great a challenge as holding the woman unsupported for the hours it would take to fly her to official custody. There was plenty of extra line, but finding an appropriate position to carry Synapse took a few hurried minutes of trial and error. In the end, given the dagger heels on the thigh-high boots that Synapse wore, plus a need to transfer her weight not only to Entropy's body but specifically to her lifting corset, the only position that seemed to work was face to face. Several loops of line held Synapse snugly to the woman who had been embracing her so sweetly just a short while before.

Entropy was finally ready to go and she concentrated on the lines of magnetic force that needed to be focused even more tightly than she had done for her solo levitation. Her tired mind needed a distressingly long time to meet the demands imposed by her technique, but it was still only minutes before the entwined pair lifted silently from the verandah and started heading north. Entropy climbed as she flew, struggling to find an altitude with minimal headwinds. They ended up fairly high, a bit above ten thousand feet as reported by the GPS receiver in her jeweled pendant. During the climb, Entropy had released the exclusion field around Synapse, not wanting the combination of artificially reduced oxygen partial pressure and true altitude to cause harm to her sleeping prisoner.

Some combination of the cooler air at altitude, the renewed natural concentration of oxygen, and perhaps rest from her own deep sleep caused Synapse to stir an hour after they departed. She struggled a bit as her awakening mind absorbed the restrictions of her bonds, then her eyes snapped open in anger.

Before she said a word, her eyes narrowed again and a furrow of concentration marred her golden skin. Her mental attack did not have the effect intended, though, unless that intention was to send Entropy tumbling out of control.

"Stop that!" Entropy shouted, "or you'll kill us both!"

Even as they tumbled, Synapse was unwilling to relent. "Release me this instant!"

"Look down, you fool," Entropy growled, losing some of the voice control that was an essential part of her disguise. "We're almost ten thousand feet up. Your power interferes with my power and if you don't stop, they'll be burying us in a jelly jar, both of us together."

Synapse managed to twist around and see the lights of a small town rushing up at them as they fell. Her gasp of shock signaled the loss of her own concentration, with a corresponding relief in the mental attack that had destroyed Entropy's. As soon as the buzz in her mind subsided Entropy struggled to regather the strands of magnetic force and arrest their descent. What had seemed like misfortune, the need to go so high to minimize headwinds, had instead been their salvation.

That salvation was not the focus of Entropy's thoughts, though. Once she had her levitation under control to the point that it didn't consume all her concentration, she considered what had happened when Synapse had made her mental attack. That attack had been less effective than she might have expected, and for a reason beyond the loss of Synapse's power amplifiers. The crimefighter had never become so confused that she lost all purpose, only confused enough to lose the focused concentration required to fly. On the other hand, a side effect of Synapse's attack had become all too noticeable.

*She must have sent a confusion effect at me, but it was tuned to a woman's receptors. What I got was out of tune, partial confusion and partial arousal, only it was masculine arousal.*

For the first time since the Entropy had encountered Synapse, the arousal she felt was concentrated, very concentrated. Unfortunately for Entropy, her costume was designed specifically to prevent the normal reaction to that arousal. Even more unfortunately, the inability to respond did nothing to reduce the urge to respond, which faded much more slowly than the basic confusion effect.

*And that was only a side effect, a harmonic!* Entropy thought.

*How much worse would it be if it were deliberate, and focused on a man's receptors?*

For the first time she felt real sympathy for General Oahu. And a bit of envy.

By this time she had them back at cruising conditions. Once Synapse realized the danger was over, she launched another attack though this one was with her voice.

"How dare you handle me like this?! Release me at once!" she repeated.

"I didn't go to all this trouble just to let you go now," Entropy replied, once again using the soft and light tones of her feminized voice.

"I am your Queen!" Synapse declared.

"I am an American," Entropy countered. "We don't have queens."

"I am a direct descendent of Hawaiian royalty! You WILL release me this instant."

Entropy was about to answer back with another round of refusal, but Synapse was starting to sound like a broken record. Instead, the blonde responded to the brunette with a surprising agreement.

"You know, I think you may be right," Entropy said. "Certainly your power seemed enhanced by those purple jewels. If they were really signs of Hawaiian . . "

She was interrupted by a wail of dismay from Synapse, "My jewels!

What has happened to my jewels?!"

Synapse tried to squirm around and feel for the belt she should have been wearing. As tightly as they were tied together, it was quickly obvious that the large jewel that normally hung below her navel was not squeezed between their mutually-compressed abdomens.

"You mean those big purple things?" Entropy asked innocently. "I removed the belt when I was tying you so that it wouldn't get in the way, and you put the scepter thing somewhere yourself. Small loss, if you ask me. They were sort of, well, gaudy, don't you think?"

"My jewels," Synapse whispered to herself, sagging against her captor.

She rode along in silence for a while. After a bit, though, she stirred again, and looked up to use her dark eyes to capture the blue ones she saw.

Squirming in an entirely different way now, she reached her lips up to nibble at Entropy's chin and said, "You really don't need to do this, you know."

Entropy pretended to ignore her, but even without the deliberate use of her special power, Synapse could be quite distracting.

The brunette's full lips worked their way along the line of Entropy's collar, planting soft, moist kisses on all the skin she could reach. Her voice dropped to a husky whisper as she murmured, "Surely, my darling, after all we've meant to each other, you could see how - pleasurable - our association could be."

"Yes," Entropy replied, "but the price would be too high."

"Price?" Synapse snapped, her seductive tone banished into the void through which they flew. "You accuse me of being a harlot?!"

*If the high-heeled boot fits, darling,* Entropy thought, but what she said was, "I won't betray my country, even for you."

"Bitch," Synapse snarled. "You have to land sometime, and when we get down on the ground, I will twist you inside out with lust so sharp it becomes the most terrible pain you have ever felt!"

*Been there, felt that,* Entropy sighed, again silently, then said, "Just remember, Syn, dear, that you land on the bottom. That much I can guarantee. And trussed up the way you are, if we hit even a little bit hard, you're going to end up with two broken arms, two broken ankles, and maybe a broken back. Decide if your revenge is worth it."

With that, Synapse struggled again against her bonds, saved from injuring herself more by the boots and stiff cuffs of her costume than by any sense of concern for her own limbs. Her writhing contortions nearly caused Entropy to lose her concentration again, their intimate contact both a blessing and a curse as the captured queen squirmed against her.

"You better stop," she said again. "You're not going to get loose, and if you distract me too much, we might fall."

"I don't care," Synapse whined.

"Then I guess you might as well just kill us. I know you could, anytime you want," admitted Entropy. "But if that's what you want, you could have already done it. Why don't you just take it easy? You're going to be uncomfortable enough when we get where we're going."

"Where is that?"

Entropy had been thinking of that while Synapse was still asleep, so she had a ready answer, "To the FBI building in Washington. I know you've robbed federally insured banks, so they probably have a good a claim on you as any local authorities."

Synapse had no answer for that, but her squirming did stop as she settled into a deep study, trying to find some escape. They flew along in silence for a long while, long enough that Entropy thought Synapse had fallen asleep again. Even the thought of sleep was like a beckoning lover, whispering sweet promises in Entropy's ear that were so much more seductive than those Synapse had uttered.

She woke from her very short nap to the sound of Synapse screaming in her ear, "Wake up! Wake up you idiot! We're falling!"

Entropy snapped awake to find that they were indeed descending, perhaps not a headlong fall as they had done when Synapse had deliberately confused her, but quickly losing altitude nonetheless. She renewed her concentration, adrenaline doing a wonderful job of combating the effects of two nights without sleep.

"You better put us down," Synapse said reasonably. "Until you get some sleep you're a danger to us both."

"Probably," agreed Entropy, "but no thank you. I respect your power, even if I do think your plan to take over Hawaii was crazy. I'll take my chances on flying. After all, I've got you to keep me awake."

The continued on. Entropy never quite fell asleep again, but it may have been in part because at the first sign of reduced concentration, Synapse was again screaming in her ear. After the demonstrated need for it, Entropy didn't complain, even on the times when she hadn't felt that sleepy.

*This is definitely not going to replace airline travel as the way to visit the islands,* Entropy thought as the sun started to peek over the watery eastern horizon. The dawn confirmed the report of her GPS sensor that they were nearing DC. She could see the famous buildings as she started to lose altitude and used them to orient in on the FBI building. Since it was barely dawn most of the building was dark, but she saw a light in one upper story office and steered toward it.

"Remember, Syn, if we fall, you take the worst of it, and I'm not getting close to the ground until I'm sure you won't be able to get away."

Synapse responded with a curt, "Don't call me Syn."

In the lit office, there was an early morning meeting. Or perhaps, based on the look of the attendees, a very late night meeting.

"We have got to show some real progress on this Synapse thing," the Supervisory Agent In Charge, SAIC was saying. We're getting heat from very high places on this."

"I know," said the deputy director. "I was copied on that e-mail, too. You wouldn't think a law-school graduate would have such a limited, repetitious vocabulary."

"And that she'd know at least a few word with more than four letters," the SAIC agreed tiredly.

"Now *that* she does know," the deputy director corrected him. "As in 'get that black-haired bitch,' and 'if you don't hand me that bitch's ass by the end of the day, I'll have yours'. I really wish that Synapse would have picked someone else to humiliate in public."

"Speaking of which," he continued, "what is the latest?"

The SAIC consulted his notes, including fresh phone messages, and said, "Well, we found the getaway van used for the museum robbery. It was parked at a little county airport. There's no record of what planes were there but there is a radar track leaving on the night of the robbery and heading south. We lost the track once it left US airspace, but we might have something from one of the drug surveillance flights. They don't normally track outbound flights but we might get lucky. In the meantime, we're checking all the islands that have strips large enough for a plane that could make the flight in one hop. That's a lot, but we should get through them in another couple of days."

"In another couple of days, we'll both be out of a job," the deputy director said, but he knew his men were doing all that could be done.

Just then, a light began flashing in his eyes. It took him a minute to realize the light was coming from outside his third-story office. More specifically, the light was coming from the palm of a caped woman, hovering in mid air, with another doubled-up woman clutched in her other arm.

But most importantly of all, the doubled-up woman had thigh-high black boots, a purple-and-black outfit, and long dark hair.

"I'll be damned," he said, pointing to the window.

The SAIC looked and his own response was open-mouthed shock. The deputy director was already reaching for the phone when the SAIC managed to get his mouth closed enough to say, "You don't suppose . . ."

He was talking to himself, because the deputy director was already ordering all the agents in the building to get out there at once. By the time he was finished, he was alone in the room, the SAIC already gone, shouting for everyone in sight to come with him.

Twenty agents converged on the concrete below the hovering blonde woman in twice as many seconds. They all started yelling orders to her, orders which a few seemed determined to enforce at the point of a gun if necessary.

"Oh, stop all that racket," the obviously tired blonde shouted back. "I didn't bring her all this way to let her get away now. Let me speak to someone with at least a little sense. Right now."

By then the SAIC had arrived and his own voice first caused the field agents to be quiet, then began to give yet another set of orders. At least his orders were cohesive, if not terribly effective. Short of actually shooting her, they didn't have any way to coerce the caped woman and it was clear by now that the brunette was her tightly bound captive. The dark-haired woman was silent, frowning in unrewarded concentration.

When the SAIC paused to take a breath, the blonde snapped at him, "'Shut up,' I said. *I* will tell *you* what to do, if you'll just be quiet."

Not having much choice, the SAIC did as he was told. The blonde glanced at her prettily-wrapped package and noted the concentration on her face. Smiling, she whispered, "You're wasting your time," before calling down to the agents below.

"If you haven't figured it out by now, this is Synapse. She's wanted for several federal crimes. Now, before I let you get close, you need to understand the nature of her power. She can confuse your minds, and she can cause powerful sexual arousal. The combination can make you want to please her, whatever it takes. The only reason she's not attacking me is because if she does, we'll both fall to the cement and she'll be badly hurt. That threat goes away once I get close to the ground. Now, here's what you're going to do."

"I've taken away her power amplifiers, so her range is sharply reduced. Still, you need to have someone at least 20 feet away watch anyone who gets close to her. If someone starts to release her from her bonds anywhere outside a locked cell, you have to expect that she's gotten control of them. Somebody will have to run in and separate her from her would-be rescuer. If she can walk on her own, she'll escape, just as sure as sunrise. Is that clear?"

The SAIC looked at the deputy director and nodded, then started issuing orders. In moments a path to a holding cell was cleared of agents, with pairs of guard and watcher identified. The guards gathered below the hovering woman, beckoning her down to land.

She drifted silently downward, almost collapsing as her legs took the strain of their combined weights. She had to stand alone for a moment when the first group of guards did indeed start to help Synapse instead of the blonde. Only her shout, seconded by the SAIC got their attention back on the correct task. With that personal evidence of how seductive the brunette could be, the agents were able to resist her charms for long enough to get her loose from the blonde.

"I'll get you for this," Synapse snarled, held still in her tightly doubled position as they carried her away.

"You can try," the blonde said. She turned to the SAIC who had been directing things, but he was following those who were carrying Synapse. Another man, older and obviously a senior executive stepped forward to meet her.

"I think we owe you a major vote of thanks, Miss, um, . . . " the man began.

"Entropy," the blonde said, then collapsed bonelessly at his feet.

The next thing to intrude on Entropy's consciousness was a tugging at her face. She roused from her exhausted slumber to push away the hands that had been trying to unmask her. Her hands met those of a female agent, capturing them before she was revealed.

"Don't do that," Entropy ordered.

"I was just trying to see what was wrong with you," claimed the agent, a petite, red-headed woman of about 25, with features just a bit too-sharply defined to be considered cute.

"You don't need to remove my mask for that," Entropy said, rising up on her elbows. "What is wrong with me is two nights without sleep, coupled with some very intense concentration. I'm just tired."

She looked around to see an executive office, complete with a couch that she was resting on and the other trappings of a senior official. Standing nearby was the older man she had met just before literally falling asleep on her feet.

He smiled and motioned the female agent to take a seat nearby, then said, "I'm Deputy Director Grove. When we were interrupted, you were telling my your name is Entropy . . . ?"

"That's right," she said, swinging her legs down to sit on the couch.

Casting a wary eye around to see what other hazards the room might hold, she relaxed when she saw that they were alone; just the older man, the female agent, and herself. That relaxation almost did her in again. She felt her eyes start to cross as she lost focus. That triggered a mental image of herself with her bright blue eyes crossed within her red mask, and it made her feel silly, giddy with fatigue.

When Grove asked if there were anything they could do for her, she found her mouth running away without control, saying, "Well, I could use a nice place for a nap. Is the Lincoln bedroom still for rent? I know I didn't make much of a direct contribution, but maybe saving Hawaii rates as soft money or something. They did vote for the incumbent, didn't they?"

A look of shock and irritation appeared on the female agent's face, but the deputy director just laughed and said, "I think we can arrange something around here."

Then he continued, "But I do have to know if there are any more of Synapse's gang at large, and if you know where I might find them."

"Oh, yes!" Entropy said, sitting up straighter again. "There were three others. They're on an island at 76.3 degrees West, 26.2 degrees North. One was an older man they called General Oahu. There was a girl, well, a young woman they called Maui, and a really big man they called Hawaii. I disabled their plane before I left, but they may have fixed it by now."

Grove looked at the female agent like he wanted her to go get someone on it, but that would have left him alone in his office with a beautiful woman. Instead, he looked again at Entropy and moved to the large desk himself. In a few moments he had agents scurrying to follow up on the information provided by Entropy. In another moment, he was standing back by the couch.

"Miss Entropy, I'll leave you in here. Miss Adams will watch over you as you nap, for as long as you wish. No one will disturb you, including Miss Adams," he concluded, with a glance at the agent.

"I'm sorry," Adams said, though her voice held little repentance.

"I guess I just have a problem with people who wear masks."

Entropy nodded, too weary for an argument, "Whatever."

Adams nodded in her turn, then settled back in her chair. Whether she was on there to protect Entropy or keep her from leaving was not entirely clear to the costumed crimefighter, but it didn't matter nearly as much as getting some more sleep. She wrapped her cape around herself and stretched once more on the couch.

 

 

 

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© 1999 by Brandy Dewinter. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.