Chapter Six
November 11th, 8:25 PM
The blustery night air whipped Erin's hair around her face. It was cold up here, on top of a four-story campus housing development, with the sun already set and much of her skin exposed, but the Blue Lynx, with her gloved hands perched on her belted hips, gazing out onto the dazzling cityscape, barely thought about that. Her body was hot with expectation, with the sense that the night promised the thrills that a girl could only experience as a superheroine. But it was hot in another way, too, an uncomfortable way that made her spandex outfit feel clammy and brought beads of sweat to her brow.
She coughed. "Ugh," she thought. "Maybe I should've had some of Margot's stew."
Whatever. It didn't matter. As soon as adrenaline kicked in, Erin knew she'd stop feeling so ill. Once she was in the middle of things-- sneaking around, kicking ass, discovering hideouts, the works-- she might as well be in another world.
So where was the crime?
Erin had been searching around, moving from post to post, leaping from building for building, for at least an hour. But she hadn't caught wind of a single infraction. Typically, weekends around campus were goldmines for basic superheroine action. But tonight, she'd hadn't even seen a jaywalker. It was strange.
"Maybe they get it," Erin mused. "Maybe they've figured out that if they want to do evil, they have to reckon with the Blue Lynx."
Suddenly, a shriek. Erin turned her ear toward the direction of the sound. Silence.
She ran toward the edge of the complex and, in a single titanic movement, vaulted off its ledge, springing through the night air and landing yards away on another rooftop. She poked her ear out again, trying to pick up any other noises.
She heard something. A peep. Scuffling sounds.
She ran to the far edge of the new building and peered over. There, in the dark of an alley, she could see them. Human figures. Four large ones and one smaller one. Two of the bigger bodies seeming to grip the smaller body, from which the peeping sounds continued. The other two large bodies looked onto the scene, mostly motionless, but clearly gearing up for something.
"I've seen this before," Erin thought. "I've got to hurry."
She located a ladder on the roof and quickly shimmied down. The ladder ended at a second story balcony, from which Erin leapt into an open, mostly full dumpster. The garbage cushioned her landing, and she jumped from the receptacle to the ground with a minimum of wasted movement. She pressed herself against brick wall bordering the alley and spied around the corner.
The alley was filthy, mostly empty, far away from the main streets of campus. Twenty yards from the cornered where Erin looked, there were two young men, probably college students, holding up a struggling young woman by her arms. Two additional young men looked on with broad, menacing smiles. None of the men appeared to be armed, but they were all of decent height and build. They could've been athletes, maybe just obsessive weight lifters. The two holders gripped the woman, a fraction of their size, so that she could only kick her legs around wildly.
"I could take them out one-by-one," Erin thought. "But where's the fun in that?"
She walked from behind the corner and stood at the entrance of the alley, her hands on her hips. She whistled. All four men turned around to look at her.
"Hello boys."
One of the men gripping the woman spoke up. "It's the Blue Cat... Lady!"
Erin shook her head, taking calm, slow steps toward the group. "Blue Lynx," she said.
"Get out of here, bitch," one of the witnesses yelled. "This isn't your place."
Erin smiled. "Wrong. This is exactly my place. Taking out garbage like you. Now let--"
Erin erupted into a series of coughs. She brought her glove to her mouth, trying to stifle the sounds. "Not now," she thought. "Not right now."
A few of the men giggled. "You feeling okay, Blue Lynx?"
Erin got a hold of her coughing and tried to stand as straight as she could. "Let her go," she said.
There was more laughter. And then, the other man gripping the woman spoke up. "I don't think so, babe. I think she's staying with us tonight. But there's no reason why she should be alone."
Another voice. "Yeah. We could probably get something going, Blue Lynx. A threesome."
Erin scoffed. "I'll pass."
"That wasn't a request, superheroine," the first man gripping the woman said. "It was a demand." He gestured with his chin at the two free men. "Get her."
The two bystanders rushed passed the struggling young woman and toward Erin, their arms swinging through the air, looks of ugly animal lust on their faces. They always ran toward her, like moths to the flame. She could work with this, especially in this cramped alley. She could use their weight against them, have them bouncing off the walls in seconds,
"Silly boys," Erin said, striking a fighting pose.
The first man arrived, taking a big swing at Erin's face. Erin ducked the punch and sank her elbow into the man's stomach, pushing her body into his, and forcing him against the wall of the alley. He hit the wall hard, and his arms raised up in pain as he slumped toward the ground. Erin swiftly turned around to face the second man, who was winding up a punch of his own. Erin countered with a sudden jab to his chin. The speedy hit knocked the man's head back, and Erin used the moment to deliver a powerful roundhouse kick to his upper body. The kick sent him back against the other wall, so that the two men now sat on the ground, plastered to opposite walls and facing each other, their bodies flushed with surprise and pain.
"Shit!" one of the holding men yelled. "We gotta get out of here!"
"No you idiot!" the other screamed. "We gotta get her!"
He dropped his hold on the young woman, who fell to her knees before quickly getting up and scrambling away. Erin eyed the scene from afar, still primarily occupied with the first two men, both of whom were getting to their feet. She kicked the first one back into the wall, then spun around to face the second. And she pulled her arm back to punch...
And was gripped by incredible pain. It started in her stomach-- he brought her hands immediately to her abdomen, wincing-- and then surged into her upper body and arms. Aching pain, all over her body, and sharp twinges of pure agony at isolated points. Her legs buckled, and seconds later he knees were on the damp, dirty pavement, her head bowed, her body drawn up into a tight blue ball.
"What?" she thought. "What's... (she had to struggle to think through the pain)... happening?"
She could sense that the second man was up on his feet, and that he was now looming over her, probably wondering what the hell was going on, too. She heard the clopping of the other men's feet stop just a few yards away from her down the alley. They too were looking on in amazement.
Erin gripped her stomach with her gloves, trying to extract the pain from her insides with tense, scrabbling fingers. But waves of torment flooded through her system, making her muscles throb, tightening her face into a rictus of confusion and discomfort. She began to cough, and then coughed again and again, her head shaking with each explosive hack. What the men planned to do was now irrelevant to her weakened mind and body. All she could concentrate on was her pain.
"Is this... a trick?" one of the men said.
"Only one way to find out."
One of men dashed over to Erin. Before she could react, or even think about reacting, the man's shoe had been lifted up and into her face. The kick took her out of her crouched position and onto her back, where she groaned in pain and shook her extremities weakly.
"Oh..." she said. "Oh..."
They were attacking her again. They would kill her if she didn't get up. But--
More pain flared up, in her legs, in her neck, in her head. She couldn't get up. She could barely breathe. If she could reach something in her belt-- a Lynx dart-- she could maybe fend off a few of the men and escape. She brought a glove to a belt pocket with halting, obvious movements. She had unbuttoned the flap when she felt a man's hand grip her wrist.
"Not so fast, Blue Lynx."
The man pulled her arm up from her body, yanking Erin up to her feet. She could barely stand-- her toes pointed in at each other, and her knees shook-- and if hadn't been for the man's hand, raising her arm up high above her head, she would have just as easily fallen back to the wet, black concrete. Her eyes were half closed, her mouth half open. She could hear small snickers, and one voice cutting through the darkness.
"Take the belt off."
A man's rough fingers patted their way around her waist, looking for her belt buckle. They eventually found their target in the snap against Erin's lower back. Erin heard a "click," and then felt a weight lifted off her hips. The pain blurred out everything, so that she barely knew what it meant to have her belt taken from her. She barely cared when she felt the rough fingers again, this time in the form of soft but firm slaps on her ass. There were more voices.
"A girl like you shouldn't go around with weapons like these. Too dangerous."
A shaking sound, and then the sound of her tools-- the darts, the bombs, the rope, her phone-- shaking in their pockets in a clinking echo.
"A girl like you-- with an ass like that"-- she felt the slapping hand spread its fingers, grip her buttock, and pinch-- "Should be with us."
She tried to look ahead through the red, torturous waves that had rendered her helpless. Squinting and wincing, she could see the outlines of man holding her up by the arm. He was one of the bystanders from before. Tall. White. Crew cut. Flecks of acne. She could beat him, easily, if not for this incredible agony. She tried to say so.
"You... You won't..."
Speaking required too much effort. She hesitated, coughed, then stopped completely, and then heard the men laugh together.
"Can I rough her up a little bit before, you know?"
More laughter. "Sure Jimmy. I guess you're looking for a little payback after she kicked your ass a minute ago."
Erin heard a grunt, and then felt the grip on her wrist relax. She fell backward into the arms of another man, who immediately pulled her in close. She felt his biceps crushing her upper body, and could sense his hands wandering up from her stomach toward her chest. She tried to kick out of the bearhug, but even at full strength, she would've had trouble with this massive frame. And she was about as far from full strength as she had even been.
Suddenly, she felt movement. Her boots her clattering along the ground. The man was dragging her, rushing her along the alleyway. She couldn't see ahead; she couldn't see anything except the outline of the man's arms. "Off you go!" the man bellowed, and Erin abruptly felt his arms drop. She was spinning, flying, tumbling through the air. She was weightless. And then she slammed against a group of trash cans, crushing one of them from the side, blowing the lids off, throwing trash into the alleyway.
She could see the stars now. Stars and the parallel bars that were the blue-black buildings rising four stories up above her. It would have been peaceful but for the metal and garbage that had been piled beneath, on, and around Erin's body. It would have been peaceful but for the fact that every part of her ached.
Her head lay on the ground, and she could feel her hair being soaked in a puddle. "I must... escape," she thought. "But I can't even move." She had to do something. She could launch her grapple hook up to the roof. "Yes. The hook!" And then she remembered that the hook was in her belt. And she remembered that her belt was in the slimy hands of one of her attackers.
Before she could think of any more plans, she was being wrenched to her feet again, this time by both wrists. The rough hands dropped her gloves, and her arms swung lazily to her sides, until a heavy blow to the stomach had her doubled over, her arms around her abdomen once more.
"Bitch!" a voice croaked. "How do you like it?"
A quick shove to her shoulders pushed over back, and she waved her arms wildly as she lost her balance, finally toppling over onto the heap of trash and busted trash cans. She seemed to rest on a toppled throne, her arms and legs drooped nonchalantly over piles of black garbage. She coughed multiple times, each hack sending ripples through her torso.
"I'm not done with you," the same voice said. A hand now snatched the angle of blue spandex that formed a "V" near the cleavage of Erin's breasts. The hand pulled the fabric back so that it first separated from Erin's chest, and then pulled Erin herself up and off of the garbage, so that she now sat awkwardly between the ground and the man, hanging in the air on a several inch line of stretchy blue spandex.
This moment continued a while longer, and Erin assumed it was because the man was looking inside her top, was ogling her ample breasts hemmed in by a sexy black bra with light pink polka dots. "I've got to get... a sports bra..." Erin thought.
The man giggled, and then, still holding Erin by the edge of her outfit, pushed her toward toward the ground and released, so that she sprang back-and-forth like a wet blue superheroine yo-yo. The giggles grew into hearty guffaws as Blue Lynx bounced around helplessly, completely in the grip of pain.
"Alright, that's enough," another voice said. "You've had your fun."
Erin felt the spandex snap back against her chest as she plunged down into the garbage heap. She coughed, winced, moaned and groaned. It couldn't end here, could it? It couldn't really end like this. Why was she so weak?
"Let's get the main event going."
Hands grabbed her again, pairs of hands lifting her by her biceps. She was in the air for a moment, and then pushed to the ground so that she sat of her knees. She heard whispering among the men, two of whom were now each pulling an arm out from her, as if she were being crucified. While her arms were being held steady, another pair of hands gripped her by the head, forcing her face up in the air. She so had a trio of large, muscular men keeping her locked to the ground and almost completely still. A fourth man stood in front of her with his hands on his knees, gazing into her eyes, grinning.
"There are two parts to the main event," the man said. "Want to guess what they are?"
Erin didn't want to play along, and the intense pain meant that she couldn't even if she had wanted to. Her face seemed frozen; she had lost her tongue. She tried to do something, to spit in the man's face, but it only came out as another round of hacking coughs. The man gripping her head tried to hold her jaw shut against the expulsions. She could feel his body bracing against her back, his feet edging underneath her legs. There was no way out.
"Alright then, I'll tell you," the fourth man laughed. "The first part is where we unmask you."
In a moment, Erin's eyes emerged from their agonized daze, bright and shining.
The man laughed. "Don't like that idea much, do you? Good."
Erin tensed up. These men, these boys, these college students, these idiots-- they might not know who Erin Steele was. But they would surely have phones on them, and they would surely take pictures. It would take just seconds for those pictures to spread all over campus via social media. And there would be thousands of people who'd recognize Blue Lynx's secret identity. She tried to shake her head, but the strong fingers of her holder kept her skull immobile. How could she stop them?
"You're not going to like the second part much either."
The men all chuckled together. They had her here, the Blue Lynx, in this dark alleyway at night, with nobody coming to save her. Their collective grip on her seemed to tighten as the fourth man brought out his phone and pressed its touchscreen.
Erin's eyes widened even more. There was finally something cutting through the pain, something tying her to her current prediacament. Unfortunately, that thing was... This second part... Which was... Oh God...
"Let's just say we lost one fuck buddy tonight, and I'm not losing another."
The man held his phone up to Erin's face. "Smile, Blue Lynx."
He put his fingers on Blue Lynx's mask, and peeled.
On to Chapter Seven
or
On to Chapter Seven (Explicit Ending)
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