The Execution of Supergirl

The Execution of Supergirl

by

Tom diCentauri

Christmas Week, 1966 Dec 24 - 1967 Jan 01:

Once the Town of Stanport had been a fishing village whose docks had played an important role in the first wave of industrialization in the northeastern part of the United States at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Goods manufactured in the nearby Town of Stanhope had flowed through Stanport and thence around the world, enriching the people of both towns. Over time, though, new modes of transportation reduced the need for the deep ships with the tall masts to come to Stanport and the town went back to being a sleepy fishing village, but with an area occupied by the families that had grown wealthy.

As the Nineteenth Century segued into the Twentieth, the wealthy enclave grew, drawing in new families from outside the area, people who had various ties to the original families. And as the Twentieth Century approached middle age the last of the fishermen left and Stanport stood as a mini-polis of the wealthy, some of whom had actually gained their riches honorably.

No one would put the du Fossés among that latter group. Not all that surprising, really. Lenore du Fossé, neé Lenore Luthor, was the older sister of one of the country's most notorious criminals, the mad scientist-cum-criminal mastermind Lex Luthor. Her husband was a Roma pretender to minor French nobility who had his own secret sources of ready cash. But we are not concerned here with Lenore and what's-his-name; no, we are concerned here with their daughter, the well-steeped-in-the-family-ethos (or lack thereof) Nasthalthia. For, you see, it was Nasthalthia who was occupying the family digs in Stanport while she attended Stanhope College and terrorized anyone foolish enough to try sharing the road with her as she drove to and from her classes.

Better known to her classmates as Nasty Doofus, she shared their devotion to their common alma mater, but in the way unique to the Luthor clan. For relevant example, she rooted for the college's football team, the Stanhope Gentry. But her school spirit went a bit farther than cheering for the team: all too often teams that were rated better than the Gentry ran into strange difficulties when they confronted the Stanhope team. Thus, in the middle of December, when the Edwardtown Pilgrims faced the Gentry, they were obliged to do so without the services of their unstoppable quarterback, Bubba Joe Harlocke.

It wasn't unusual for a valuable player of the opposing team to disappear the day of the game and show up a day later with a hangover and no recollection of how he came to miss the game. But after Stanhope won their game against Edwardstown Bubba Joe stayed missing. He was still missing a week later. The Stanhope police were stymied, as they had been in the other cases, so a private detective from out of town took over the case. To say "from out of town" was an understatement of astronomical proportions in this case: the young lady who decided to find Bubba Joe had acquired strange abilities when her rocketboat had come out of hyperspace in the vicinity of the yellow G2 main-sequence dwarf star that served as Earth's sun. She could see through walls; she could hear a mouse nibbling a marshmallow a hundred miles away; she could watch a bee a thousand miles away and see the pollen on her legs clearly enough to identify the species of plant whence the bee got it. And now she went hunting.

She had made certain that everyone in the Stanhope area and a few townships outside Tiggamak County knew that she was on the hunt. Then she sat and waited. She didn't have long to practice her patience; late on the first night of her hunt she heard whispers carrying Bubba Joe's name and then more whispers advising silence. Listening to the whispered voices, she floated up off her seat on top of the town hall and drifted in the direction whence the voices came. In a kind of trance she flew slowly toward Stanport, toward the Stanport High School campus.

She quickly discerned that the whispers came from the school's gymnasium. Coming to a hover over the campus, she looked hard at the gym and watched it turn transparent for her. She noticed that half a dozen tarpaulins covering small mounds on the floor refused to go clear for her x-ray eyes. She let out a little sigh of exasperation and landed by the gym's outside door. Finding it unlocked, she opened it and looked into the space within.

With only minor concentration, she made her vision ignore all light except for one particular wavelength of green. If kryptonite lurked under those tarps, she would she its light seeping out from under them. But she saw no green. She did, however, hear heartbeats and the sounds of breathing coming from the mounds. She shifted her consciousness into superspeed mode, lest the people under the tarps had kryptonite in lead boxes; if she felt the all-too-familiar sting of kryptonitic radiation, she could levitate herself through the skylight with enough momentum to carry up out of the range of the radiation and far enough for her superpowers to return to her.

She walked into the gym and went to the center of the basketball court. Suddenly she heard a loud click and the gym filled with red light. And it wasn't just any red light, she saw: it was red light that mimicked perfectly the spectrum of a red sun. The laugh came to her so suddenly that she couldn't suppress it, only turn it into something that sounded like a choking cough. But that distressed sound was perfect.

"Get her!" one of the women emerging from under the tarps yelled.

A dozen women attacked her. They had her surrounded and they were charging her with burning hate in their eyes. As she turned she was just in time to dodge a punch that would have shattered the woman's fist on her cheek.

In less than ten seconds it was over. She had torn several of the tarps into strips and woven the strips into ropes, with which she bound the women. Then she couldn't help herself: she laughed at the sullen women sitting on the floor before her. The red light, reminding her of home, was comforting to her, but it certainly did not suppress her superpowers as some thought it might.

"Now," Supergirl said to her captives when she regained her composure, "let's be good girls and tell me where Bubba Joe is."

"We ain't tellin' you not'in'," one woman said. "You can't do not'in' to us, 'cept call the cops, so we ain't talkin'."

Supergirl drew a deep breath as if to heave a sigh, but instead of an exasperated sigh she gave out a loud hum. Up and down the scale the hum went until Supergirl saw that her captives were trembling. She heard the windows rattling in their frames and saw that the women noticed the sound too. Of course, if the windows shattered she would spread her cape to protect the women from the flying glass, but she was in no hurry to tell them that fact. She continued to hum.

Some minutes later flashing red lights appeared outside the gym. A police officer came into the gym. A shocked look came over his face, he clapped his hands over his ears, and he retreated. The women were desperately trying to cover their ears with their shoulders. The gym's floor and walls were trembling now and Supergirl continued to hum.

"Nasty has him!" one woman shrieked at last. "Nasty has him! Nasty has him!" She kept on screaming it, even after Supergirl stopped humming.

The police took possession of the stricken prisoners, leading the unresisting women to their squad cars. In shock, the women could only stare into the night. Supergirl assured, actually warned, the police that the women would recover their normal insolent composure all too soon and then lifted herself into the star-speckled sky.

She felt and heard her cape and skirt fluttering in the wind that combed her hair straight back behind her. She luxuriated in the sensation of the airstream caressing her as she threw herself onto a high parabolic arc that would take her from the high school to the du Fossé mansion. Soaring like an artillery shell, she had to suppress the urge to let out a long descending whistle as she descended toward her target. Two hundred feet above the mansion she executed a forward half somersault and stood on her thrust to come to a hover, well out of range of any kryptonite that might be around. She was well aware of Nasthalthia's family tree and was not going to take any chances around her.

She stared at the house beneath her and the roof, floors, and walls all went transparent for her. Like looking into a glass model, she examined the house, concentrating to make certain features appear to leap toward her for closer inspection. In some areas of the house, she saw, certain things refused to go transparent for her: she resolved to avoid those areas until she could secure the house and ensure that those things would not pop open and expose her to kryptonite, even the tarp that looked just like the ones in the gymnasium.

She found Nasthalthia quickly enough. The woman was in a second-floor room with a wooden rocking horse. Dressed in a cowgirl outfit, Nasty was practicing rope tricks, twirling a lasso as cowboys in rodeos did.

Supergirl landed on the balcony outside the room, slid open the door, and walked into the room. She walked over to confront Nasty and Nasty responded by playfully tossing the lasso over her and pulling it taut, tugging on it as if to draw Supergirl closer.

"Don't move!" Nasty said.

She wanted to laugh at the sheer stupidity of someone who thought that she could give orders to the most powerful woman on Earth, but the laugh died in her throat when she found that she indeed could not move. No matter how much she tried, how hard she commanded herself, she stood paralyzed. She recognized the lasso then: it belonged, not in Nasthalthia du Fossé's hands, but rather hanging from Wonder Woman's power-girdle. A feeling of horror swept through Supergirl then as she understood that the magic inherent in the golden rope trumped all of her powers and left her helpless.

"Sit!" Nasty commanded.

Supergirl obeyed, sitting herself down on the floor.

Nasty loomed over her, as if to gloat, and pulled on the lasso, reassuring herself that it had a firm grip on her prisoner. "Now," Nasty said in an ominous voice, "tell me the name of your secret identity!"

Supergirl wanted to lie, to prevent Nasthalthia from discovering her secret, but she found that she couldn't. The magic of the Amazonian lasso was too strong. Not only could she not tell a lie, she could not even think of one. The golden lasso compelled her to think only truth and to tell it.

"In my secret identity," Supergirl said in a casual tone, "I am Linda Lee Danvers."

"That loser?!" Nasty responded. "No," she said, as if correcting herself. "No, that makes sense. Who would ever suspect? Very well, get up and come with me!"

She led the way out of the room, holding the lasso like a leash as Supergirl submissively followed her. She towed her captive down a long hall and then took her into a room overlooking the mansion's central courtyard.

Supergirl saw that the room's only furnishings were a pair of inflated transparent-pink plastic air mattresses and that something the size of shoe-box stood on end under a leaded gray cover that she had seen on her examination of the house. The sight of the lead-covered object filled her with fear. In response to Nasty's next command, she stood passively as Nasty slipped the lasso down around her legs, slid it under her left foot, and then cinched the lasso up around her right thigh.

"Take off all of your clothes!" Nasty commanded.

Supergirl complied, taking off her blue minidress with its red cape still attached, taking off her red boots, and finally taking off her blue panties, sliding them past the lasso when Nasty loosened it for her. Then she submitted to Nasty tying her hands behind her back with a thick satiny cord.

Still holding the lasso, Nasty walked over to the gray cover and pulled it away from the object it had shielded. To her horror, Supergirl saw a sculpture of a man's fist from which the middle finger, rendered as an erect penis, jutted. It was about the size of a man's fist, but what horrified Supergirl was the green glow emanating from the entire surface of the thing.

As soon as Nasty removed the cover Supergirl felt a faint burning sensation on her skin. She felt the world go dull and felt gravity oppress her. She felt a strange emptiness within her as the aetherial nimbus that gave her powers and abilities beyond human comprehension withdrew from her and retreated into the spooky realm whence it came. A slight dizziness came and went as her body adjusted to the effects of the kryptonitic radiation. She soon inferred that the radiation was too weak to kill her, but was just strong enough to rob her of her superpowers and to weaken her for Nasty.

Nasty confirmed the last inference by abruptly punching Supergirl's soft belly. Normally Nasty would have broken her hand against Supergirl's invulnerable, super-resistant body (she wasn't called the Girl of Steel for nothing), but instead Supergirl grunted and bent over with the impact.

"Perfect!" Nasty enthused. "As you can feel," she went on, "my sculpture is plated with a layer of kryptonite, just enough to keep you weak and helpless." She gloated over how she made the thing, saying, "I had to make sure I got the dosage right. I tried electroplating the kryptonite onto the armature, but that process turned the kryptonite into ordinary nickel-iron plus impurities. That didn't do me any good, so I ground some kryptonite into dust, mixed it with a little linseed oil, painted it onto the sculpture, and heated it to the melting point. Sintered kryptonite, as I'm sure you are feeling, is still magnificent, beautiful, magical kryptonite!"

She removed the lasso from Supergirl's leg and picked up Supergirl's clothes and the leaded cover. She held up the lasso so that Supergirl could see it and curled her lip in an expression of revulsion.

"This thing seems to have a mind of its own," Nasty said. "I can feel it trying to change my values, so I have to put it away until I get my evil back."

With that she left.

Supergirl tried to untie herself and, failing at that, tried to break the cord. She tried to get as far from the kryptonite as she could in an effort to regain enough of her strength to free herself. But she discovered that even in the little bathroom next to her prison she wasn't far enough to gain enough strength to help. She was Nasthalthia's prisoner and could only wait for her captress to make the next move in whatever game she was playing.

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Supergirl was bound and ball-gagged in the room overlooking the mansion's covered courtyard. As she knelt at the window, she could see through the decorative grill that covered it. By the lighting she guessed that it was late afternoon. The courtyard itself was covered with an array of camouflaged fiberglass panels: from the air it looked like a garden. But from her vantage-point Supergirl could see that the courtyard was no garden. Paved with smooth marble, it was laid out like a chapel or a courtroom. Directly below her window she saw what looked like an altar with a chair behind it. On the opposite side of the courtyard a double row of benches flanked an aisle. And in the near center of the courtyard, in the space between the altar-thing and the benches she saw a strange mandala-like pattern laid out on the marble in black.

In front of the first row of benches, Supergirl saw, stood a row of fully inflated plastic punching bags. Each bag was large enough to bear the life-sized image of one of Supergirl's friends. She saw Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, and the Martian Manhunter on one side of the aisle and herself, Batgirl, Robin, Wonder Woman, and Red Raven on the other side. Meant as friendly sparring partners for children, the punching bags stood as Nasty's plastic prisoners waiting to witness some bizarre ritual.

She heard voices then and saw Nasty lead three other women out into the courtyard and up the aisle. Nasty was wearing black satin pajamas and one of Stormette'sE"Angel Wings" raincoats, the Batgirl version. It was a sleeveless A-line coat with an attached cape and pixie-style hood, all made of soft, smooth, transparent-black plastic film. The cape hung to just below Nasty's waist and its hem was scalloped, like Batgirl's cape. Held before her in both hands, Nasty carried a half-inch thick rod a foot-and-a-half long. Supergirl could see that the rod had a thickening at one end and that the other end seemed to emit violet sparks.

Two of the other women wore white satin pajamas and Angel Wings raincoats made of transparent-white plastic. Like Nasty, they wore their raincoats with the hoods up. Between them they escorted a naked woman with raven-black hair.

Supergirl recognized the naked woman immediately. She was Princess Diana, better known to the world's people as Wonder Woman. Of course, Wonder Woman was Nasty's prisoner, Supergirl understood; it's the only way in which Nasty could ever get her evil hands on the Amazon's magnificent golden lasso. As she watched, Supergirl saw the escorts position Diana on the mandala and then back away from her.

Nasty turned and confronted her prisoner. She held her rod by its thick end and brandished it. "In the presence of these witnesses," she said, "I hereby find you, Wonder Woman, guilty of offenses against the Advance of Evil. As representative of all who prey upon the weak and innocent, I condemn you to spend the rest of your existence giving me pleasure to compensate the displeasure that you have given those who serve Satan. Prepare yourself!"

One of the escorts reached inside her pajamas and pulled out a beret-style shower cap. She handed it to Diana and as Diana docilely put it on Supergirl saw that is was a Pert and PrettyEWonder Woman shower cap. It was made of transparent-black plastic on which little gold and red starbursts formed a tiara pattern and Diana's hair filled it and puffed it out like a balloon.

Supergirl didn't understand what they were doing to her friend, but tears flowed from her eyes nonetheless: what they were doing had all the look and feel of an execution. After putting on the shower cap, Diana put her hands on her thighs and stood at attention, submissively awaiting whatever Nasty wanted to do to her. What Nasty did was to touch the sparkling tip of her rod to a point on Diana's neck an inch below and behind her left ear.

A loud "thoomp!" echoed in the courtyard. Diana's D-cup breasts seemed to bounce up and to swell out into a more spherical shape. Other than that, Diana showed no signs of movement.

Nasty set her rod on a holder on the altar that kept the sparkling tip from touching anything. She turned back around, opened the cape of her raincoat and turned it so that it hung down her back. Then she punched Wonder Woman and the Amazon princess tipped over backward, still standing at attention. But instead of hitting the ground, as Supergirl half expected, she bounced back up as if begging Nasty to punch her again. Nasty complied, punching her fist deep into Diana's belly. Diana bent over double and then bounced smartly upright and tipped over backward again. The ball gag muffled Supergirl's shrieks.

Princess Diana was gone for sure. They had killed her by some strange procedure that left only her inflated skin to serve her captresses as a toy. Supergirl was distraught and didn't want to see what was before her eyes, but in horrified fascination she watched Nasty and her friends use Wonder Woman as a punching bag, bopping her and taunting her. Supergirl could only weep for her friend and eventually she collapsed on the floor of her prison.

Sometime later Supergirl heard the door open and when she looked she saw Nasty and the thing she had made of Diana, now wearing Diana's transparent-red plastic raincoat. As she watched in growing horror, the Diana doll walked into the room and came to her as Nasty closed the door and locked it. She heard the soft swish of plastic as the doll came to her and felt warmth coming from it as it knelt down next to her and sat on one of the air mattresses. Supergirl noticed that, rather incongruously, the doll was wearing a second shower cap, one made of transparent-pink plastic that seemed to glimmer and sparkle faintly. Her eyes went wide at what happened next.

"Supergirl," the doll whispered, "I want to...."

That's when Supergirl passed out.

When she regained consciousness she noticed that her hands had been untied and the ball gag had been removed from her mouth. Half fearing what she might see, she slowly opened one eye and saw the Diana doll sitting on the air mattress gazing at her in rapt admiration.

Seeing that Supergirl was awake, the doll leaned forward and whispered, "Are you all right?"

"I think so," Supergirl said quietly, then corrected herself by saying, "no. No, I can't be all right after seeing what happened to you. What did they do? Are you...are you still Wonder Woman?"

"Yes," the doll whispered, "I'm still Diana, at least inside." She patted her belly and produced a series of hollow, rubbery thumps. "Outside, I'm not so sure. They turned me into some kind of inflatable plastic doll, but I'm still alive and I can move."

Supergirl sat up. "So they can use you as a punching bag? How horrible!"

Diana averted her gaze. "It's worse than that," she said. "Tonight Nasthalthia is going to take me to bed with her so that she can play with me. She wants me to be her special sex prisoner."

"Isn't there anything we can do?" Supergirl said, more for rhetorical effect than for any expectation of receiving an answer.

"There's one thing that I would like for you to do," Diana said, still not able to look Supergirl in the eye. "I...I don't mind having sex with another woman, but I don't want her to be my first." She looked up at Supergirl then and said. "Please, if you can, take me down and play with me. Let my first time be with a friend."

Supergirl felt dizzy and became intensely aware of the warmth emanating from Diana's raincoat. She didn't know what to think. True, like the Ancient Greeks, the Kryptonese appreciated the sexual beauty of both sexes and when she was still living in Argo City Supergirl herself had been in love with a raven-haired girl. The Kryptonese, with their advanced super-scientific rationality, conceived homosexuality as a quaint little mystery of Existence and not as a vile disease whose carriers were meant to be shunned and abused; something to be, perhaps, explored, but certainly not to be oppressed. But Diana was a full generation older than she was; having sex with her would be like going to bed with one of her mother's friends. That thought made her hesitate.

But then she put aside that abstraction and looked at the reality confronting her. Diana certainly didn't look her age; in every respect she appeared as a woman in her early twenties, the prime of her life. (Possessing superpowers has its odd little perks). And the relationship between the two super-women had always been that of peers; they had fought the forces of evil side by side as equals. In truth Supergirl had never regarded Wonder Woman as an older woman at all; such thoughts, even now when she examined them, seemed wrong.

Bowing her head, Supergirl reached out slowly and put her right hand on Diana's left thigh and slid her left arm around Diana's shoulders. She felt a strange quiver pulse through her body as she felt Diana's special warmth in the silky-soft, skin-smooth plastic of her raincoat and she felt her nipples begin to stiffen.

For her part Diana slipped her arms around Supergirl's back and embraced her. She pressed herself wholeheartedly against the smaller woman and then kissed her neck. Her voice trembled as she said, "Oh, you're so soft and warm!"

Supergirl ran her hands over Diana's raincoat and embraced her. Slowly, tenderly she ventured to kiss Diana's lips. Then she kissed her cheek and then her neck. "You're so big!" she whispered in a quavery voice. She was trembling all over now. She pushed the hood of Diana's raincoat back so that it draped down Diana's back and she saw a translucent inch-wide aureole with a quarter-inch nipple with a wide hole in it protruding a half inch from its center, from the place where Nasty had touched Diana with her magic rod. She noticed as she kissed Diana's neck that as she came closer to the aureole Diana reacted by trying to move it closer to her lips and by hugging her harder. Supergirl kissed the aureole itself and heard Diana give out a series of quavery little moans.

"I want to be your plastic sex prisoner," Diana whispered in a trembling voice. "Oh, my warm Kara! Make me love you!" She pulled on Supergirl as she tried to lie back on the air mattress.

Taking the hint, Supergirl leaned forward and pushed Diana down on the soft pink plastic, then laid herself down next to her. Diana opened the front of her raincoat and Supergirl helped her slip it off and slide it off the air mattress. Then Diana rolled toward Supergirl and Supergirl felt the warmth of their bellies coming together. She felt her clitoris lengthen and stiffen within her and then slide forward until a full inch of it protruded from its sheath. She kissed Diana some more and then mounted her.

Supergirl took Diana in a full embrace as she rolled the other woman onto her back and got on top of her. Her heart was pounding and her breath coming in shuddery little gasps. She slid her right leg over Diana's and came down on Diana's warmth with a slight bounce. On Supergirl's chest two-inch-wide brick-red aureoles rose up in shallow cones topped by large nipples. She felt Diana's breasts pressing against them like a pair of party balloons. She pressed her right thigh into Diana's crotch and felt Diana's erect clitoris press back.

Diana gave out little whimpers as Supergirl began to move on her, thrusting her hips up and down to rub her thigh against Diana's clitoris as she ran her own clitoris up and down Diana's thigh. Supergirl ran her hands over the pneumatic softness of her inflated friend and felt hot libido grow within her. She was panting in squeaky breaths as the libido's pressure grew. She felt as if she had never wanted anything as much as lying on Princess Diana and rubbing her naked body with her own. She felt like a balloon that Diana was inflating with sexual heat and she knew that soon she would either pop or deflate in a rush.

She felt Diana squirming and writhing in her grasp, rubbing warm plastic against her skin. Suddenly Diana bucked and hugged Supergirl tighter than Supergirl had thought an inflated toy could do. As Diana climaxed under her Supergirl felt a hard tickle in her own clitoris and jerked as she reached her own climax. Convulsing, she rammed her clitoris against Diana's thigh while keeping her own thigh rubbing against Diana's crotch. Both women let out half-sobbing quavery moans as they kept hugging and rubbing against each other.

Finally they could go no further and Supergirl lay panting on Diana. A moment later Supergirl felt a blush of heat come off her body and she heard Diana utter a little moan of pleasure.

After a time Supergirl kissed Diana's left cheek and whispered, "I love you."

A moment later Diana whispered back, "When you get out of here, take me home with you. Blow me up and take me to bed with you. Please!"

"If I can, I will rescue us both," Supergirl said. "It was magic that made you plastic, so magic can make you flesh again. I just have to find out how Nasthalthia did it."

"But if you can't," Diana said, "if I have to be a plastic slave girl, I want to be your love slave."

"If it comes to that," Supergirl said, "then, yes, I'll take you with me. But I can't believe that's what you really want."

"No, of course it isn't," Diana said. "But after what I just experienced I have to say that if I have no other alternative, then being your sex toy would be a pretty good deal."

"I can't believe that this was actually your first time," Supergirl said.

"Well, I've never been able to make myself trust men and this society doesn't give me much option when it comes to loving women," Diana replied. "Hera knows, I've learned a lot about myself, though."

"You seem to have a rather low opinion of men," Supergirl commented.

"How could I not? They worship only a male god who disparages the feminine," Diana said with a sigh of exasperation. "How can we ever hope to do any lasting good in a society that promotes an extremist version of masculinity?"

"All we can do," Supergirl replied, "is to show them a better way and hope that they develop the wisdom to follow us on their own decision. Part of that is finding the ones who do make that decision and engaging them to go further in their moral development."

Diana quickly put her raincoat back on when they heard the door being unlocked and Supergirl moved to sit on the other air mattress. When the door swung open they saw Nasthalthia, wearing only a tee-shirt and shorts, standing in the hallway.

"I didn't want you girls to get bored," Nasthalthia said with a wicked grin as she reached to pick up something out of sight in the hall.

First Nasthalthia brought in a bouncy inflated plastic punching bag. Clearly she had compelled some teen-aged boy to strip himself naked, put on a transparent-white plastic shower cap and a floral-print transparent-green plastic half slip, and then transformed him into the roly-poly toy. The hem of the half slip segued into the ellipsoidal weight on which the boy's feet stood and which kept the boy bouncing upright when he was punched. Supergirl saw that his hands were tied behind his back and that his penis was fully erect and pressed against the inside of the slip. Nasthalthia set him down in the middle of the room, gave him a quick punch in the belly, and then left as he rocked to and fro. Instead of wobbling to a full stop, though, he bucked and writhed as if struggling to get free from the trap. Then Supergirl understood what he was doing.

"Stop that!" she said. When he didn't stop masturbating himself against the slip's plastic, she bopped him. But that got him all the more excited, so finally she grabbed him and turned him to face the corner away from where she sat.

Then Nasthalthia came back leading another plastic prisoner. Supergirl recognized him immediately as Bubba Joe Harlocke. He had been turned to plastic while wearing only a beret-style shower cap made of transparent-pink plastic and a pink rubber band. As he came into the room Supergirl saw that he was wearing a full-skirted dress made of transparent-pink plastic that did not hide his fully erect penis. When he noticed Supergirl he tried to run back into the hallway, but Nasthalthia grabbed him and shoved him toward Supergirl. Thoroughly humiliated, he stood with his head bowed.

"You are so mean!" Supergirl said to Nasthalthia.

"Why?" Nasthalthia asked with an air of feigned innocence. "Because I let him wear a pretty maternity dress? I thought it was rather nice of me. After all, he is pregnant." She grinned wickedly at that as she put an arm around Bubba's shoulders and patted his belly.

Supergirl's eyes went wide at that last statement. "You can't be serious!" she said.

"As weird as this seems," Nasthalthia said, suddenly serious, "I wish you were right." She let out a sigh of exasperation. "With all the others it worked so well; everything went as smoothly as clockwork. I would get my target alone and seduce him. With the chemicals I got from my uncle I had these guys falling all over themselves to get at me. I had no trouble at all in getting them to put on the shower cap that catalyzes the transformation. Then when the clown showed me that he has a giant boner I would pretend to reach for him to hug him and then I would touch him with my magic wand. Poof! He turned into a big helpless blow-up doll. Then I would let the air out of him, put him into my gym bag, and take him home."

"So he couldn't play in the game against Stanhope," Supergirl commented.

"Well," Nasthalthia said a little defensively, "at least one of us has some school spirit."

"And it's not you," Supergirl said. "Cheating is an acknowledgment of weakness and inferiority. Based on your kidnaping of other schools' football players, I would say you don't think much of Stanhope."

"Enh, maybe so," Nasthalthia said with a shrug.

"So if you're turning these guys into inflatable dolls," Supergirl asked, "how come they reappeared after the game?"

"Easy," Nasthalthia said. "I'd just take the guy back to the same sleazy motel room, blow him up into a straitjacket, change him back to normal, and then drug him so he won't remember anything. It all worked so perfectly," she said as she went over to the punching bag and confronted it, "until this little punk found my latest and got frisky with him." She walloped the bag so hard it hit the floor before bouncing up to be punched again.

"What do you mean?" Supergirl asked as Nasthalthia bopped her punching boy yet again. "What did he do?"

"Oh, you want the details, do you?" Nasthalthia said with a chuckle as she drove her right fist into the boy's belly and watched him bounce and writhe in climax. "OK, let's see. First, when Bouncy Boy here found Bubba Joe folded up on the chair in my bedroom, he blew him up. Then he put my raincoat on Bubba Joe. Then he took Bubba Joe down on the bed in the guest bedroom. Then he stuck his weenie into Bubba Joe's butt and made it squirt. And that made Bubba Joe pregnant with a copy of my raincoat. Now, if I can find some guy to pump more love juice into Bubba Joe's butt, Bubba Joe will get nice and fat and then give birth to a new raincoat. Won't that be nice!"

"No!" Supergirl exclaimed in horror. "I don't think that's nice at all!"

"Oh," Nasthalthia said. "And which part of that is it that you think is not nice? The part about bringing his pregnancy to term so that I can change him back to normal and put him back where he belongs?"

"No," Supergirl said. "It's the part about him being pregnant!"

"And pregnant with a raincoat!" Diana added.

"Hey, it's a nice raincoat!" Nasthalthia objected. "But if you're really cheesed off about it," she added with a gesture toward her punching boy, "then feel free to beat up Bouncy Boy here." She grinned wickedly when she saw Supergirl roll her eyes and shake her head. "Now, as long as we're judging raincoats, let's put on a fashion show," she said. She went to the closet and opened the sliding door to reveal an array of plastic raincoats hung on fat hangers.

From somewhere inside the closet Nasthalthia picked up a Pert and PrettyESupergirl shower cap. Made of transparent-blue plastic that had printed on it a tiara pattern of tiny pink and silver copies of her ess-on-a-shield emblem, which Supergirl shared with her cousin. She held it out to Supergirl and told her to put it on.

Supergirl took the proffered bath beret and put it on her head. She expertly tucked her blond hair under the blue rubber band, gave her head a shake to distribute her hair smoothly inside the shower cap, and then waited to find out what else Nasthalthia had in mind.

"Now," Nasthalthia said, "we get to see you strut your stuff on the runway. You're going to model my raincoats for us. Today we'll play Fashion Show, maybe tomorrow we can play Slave Auction." And with that said, she demonstrated the moves and poses used by the women who modeled new fashions created by Parisian designers.

With a little sigh, Supergirl tried to get into the mood of the game, if only to lull Nasthalthia's suspicions that she might try to escape. She mimicked the moves and poses as Nasthalthia demonstrated them until the two women looked like some bizarre vaudeville team performing a mime of a modern dance. Then Supergirl was given a raincoat to model for her captress.

First she got to try on a StormetteEAngel Wings raincloak. She luxuriated in the soft, skin-smooth transparent-white plastic warming at her touch as she slid her arms into the sleeves and then wrapped the coat around her body in order to close the soft rubbery magnetic patches on the placket. She pulled up the pixie-style hood and tied the long doubled-plastic ribbons neatly under her chin. She exaggerated the moves she was expected to make, doing so in order to enjoy as much as possible the sensation of the plastic sliding over her bare skin. As she walked back and forth along the line in the carpet that Nasthalthia had designated the runway, she felt her clitoris starting to enlarge and stiffen within her.

After she had displayed the Angel Wings to Nasthalthia's satisfaction, Supergirl was given one of Stormette'sEBallerina raincoats, one made of soft, smooth, transparent-blue plastic. The raincoat's full skirt swirled around her legs as she walked the line and gave her even more of a thrill as it rubbed her buttocks.

Finally she was given Nasthalthia's own Batgirl raincloak to put on. She heard the whispered swish of silky-soft plastic sliding on her bare skin as she slipped her arms into the capelet sleeves. She felt especially warm inside as she thought of Batgirl and imagined that this was her own raincloak, captured by Nasthalthia for its sexual appeal. She had to restrain herself when she felt her clitoris starting to slide forward in its sheath: she didn't want Nasthalthia to see her reaction to wearing her raincoats.

It wasn't long before Nasthalthia called a halt to her fashion show. As Nasthalthia put her rainwear away in the closet Supergirl sat down on her air mattress and waited to see what came next.

Nasthalthia left to put her inflatable toys away, pushing Bubba Joe before her. Then, several minutes later, she came back for her Bouncy Boy punching bag, leaving her Wonder Woman punching bag in his place.

"Well," Supergirl said quietly to Diana, "at least we know that the process that turned you into plastic can be reversed. Now we just have to get that wand and make it happen."

"That means that we have to find some way to get your powers to come back to you," Diana whispered. She started to say more but stopped when she heard the door open.

Nasthalthia stood in the doorway and beckoned to Diana. Reluctantly Diana went to her and was taken away. Nasthalthia closed the door behind her and Supergirl heard the click of the lock engaging. Moments later the lights went out and only the glow of kryptonite and the faint light from outside the window gave her the means to see.

She had nothing better to do, so she went to the Wonder Woman punching bag and picked it up. She carried it to the air mattress on which she had slept the previous night, the one on which she and Diana had made love, and set it down. Sitting on the air mattress, she saw the bag looming over her and felt quivery inside at the lesbian menace that the bag seemed to assert over her. The bag was made of opaque-teal plastic on which a life-sized image of Wonder Woman was printed. A gently tapering cylinder with a round top, the bag was welded to a fuchsia plastic base that had a rubbery weight inside to keep the bag held upright. A short translucent-white tube between the character's feet led to a simple flap valve through which the bag could be deflated and re-inflated. Supergirl reached out to touch the plastic, felt its rubbery soft, skin smooth, and warm to her touch. Then she tipped the bag over into her lap, embraced it, and, with the image of Wonder Woman looking over her left shoulder, rested her cheek on the bouncy plastic as she stroked it with her right hand. She felt the plastic soft, smooth, and warm on her breasts and felt her nipples begin to stiffen again. She kissed the bag, mouthed the words, "I love you", and then rested her cheek on the spot she had kissed. After a time she let the bag bounce back upright and, with the bag standing over her, went to sleep. Some time later she dreamed:

<<The Amazons had kept her naked in the fattening cage less than a week. Whatever they had fed her, it had filled out her already zaftig figure, giving her a slight paunchiness that made her look pregnant. And she was helpless to stop them. True, the bars of her cage were mere steel, but they had hung on a peg just out of her reach a long full apron made of transparent-white plastic on which luminous green stripes had been printed. The woman in charge of fattening her up wore an identical apron when she brought food.

<<She could see what her captors were up to. The cage had been built up against a window that overlooked what looked like an exercise room. Spaced three to four yards apart, strange black mandala patterns were inlaid into the white marble floor and on most of them stood inflated plastic women, each trapped by the rubbery forcefield emanating from the pattern on which she stood. Each woman wore the plastic shower cap that had been used to catalyze her transformation and either a plastic apron or a plastic half slip. As Supergirl watched, Amazon girls and women came into this weird gymnasium to play with their captives as punching bags, filling the gym with soft rubbery thumps as the prisoners bounced off their fists. At off hours, when there were no other Amazons in the gym, a girl or young woman would come into the gym, pull a desperately squirming prisoner off her holding spot, and take her to a dimly lit corner of the gym to play with her as a lesbian masturbating toy.

<<Now two women came to the cage room. One was wearing the cook's apron and the other took the apron off the wall and put it on over her satiny white dress. They came to the cage and looked their prisoner over.

<<"I can't wait to have you as a punching bag," one woman said. She stroked her apron in a way that hinted at what she really intended to use Supergirl for when she got the chance. The women then faded out and Supergirl saw Diana standing in front of the cage wearing a plastic full apron that was modeled on her Wonder Woman costume.

<<"You have been condemned to become a plastic slave-girl and that won't be changed," Diana said. "But you don't have to go to the gym. Just answer one question. Will you marry me?"

<<The question evoked its own answer as the cage room faded out and Supergirl saw herself, wearing a translucent cream-white plastic slave-girl dress, coming into Diana's bedroom. She herself had been turned into an inflated plastic doll while wearing a Supergirl shower cap and now the time had come for her to submit to Diana as her bride.

<<Diana was still wearing her Pert and PrettyEGreek Fantasy shower cap, a beret-style cap made of transparent-gray plastic on which a wreath pattern of silvery-green olive leaves and pale gray-brown olive twigs had been printed. Her raven-black hair puffed out the plastic, smoothed it, and the sight of it, of the soft highlights shifting across the plastic as Diana moved, made Supergirl feel warm and quivery inside.

<<She stood submissively by Diana's bed with its red and gold comforter neatly folded at its foot. She became intensely aware of her nipples and her clitoris already swollen with passion as she watched Diana come to confront her. At five feet, five inches, she had to tilt her head back to gaze into six-foot Diana's eyes. As Diana embraced her she felt Diana's body heat filling her plastic dress and she trembled all over as her lust grew. Then she felt Diana taking her dress off of her and saw her toss it onto the inflated red plastic love seat by the bed.

<<Completely naked and helpless in Diana's bedroom, Supergirl felt hot desire fill her like air in a balloon. She gazed deep into Diana's eyes, then bent her knees just enough to let her kiss Diana's nipples. She felt Diana's left nipple swell and stiffen against her lips: Diana's right nipple was already hard by the time she got to it. Diana was begin to breath heavily as Supergirl knelt before her in submission. Seeing the tip of Diana's clitoris peeking from between her labia, Supergirl reached up and tenderly touched it. She heard Diana inhale a deep shuddering gasp. At Diana's command, she stood up to confront her fate.

<<Diana put her hand on Supergirl's back and gently nudged her toward the bed. Taking the hint, Supergirl got into the bed, sliding herself under the covers, and lay on her back. She watched Diana go to her side of the bed and crawl under the covers. Pausing only to touch a switch to turn out the lights, Diana pulled the covers up and turned toward her quivering bride.

<<"Please, Diana," Supergirl said, "be gentle with me."

<<"I wouldn't have you any other way," Diana said softly. She reached out her right hand and stroked Supergirl's belly, then moved her hand up to stroke her breasts. Breathing heavily, she lifted herself up onto her bride and kissed her.

<<Supergirl gasped in pleasure as she felt Diana's breasts come down soft and hot on hers and felt Diana's lips press firmly against hers.

<<"Oh, you're so soft and warm," Diana panted as she mounted Supergirl and slid her right thigh between Supergirl's legs.

<<"And you're so big and strong," Supergirl said as she gently squeezed and kneaded Diana's biceps. Then she felt Diana push her belly against hers, felt hot rubbery flesh press against her plastic skin, and the passion that had been simmering within her flared up. She slid her arms under Diana's and took Diana in her embrace.

<<Diana put her left cheek on Supergirl's as she began to move her hips to and fro, rubbing her erect clitoris on Supergirl's right thigh and rubbing her thigh against Supergirl's clitoris. Diana's heavy breathing segued into a series of desperate-sounding groans. Watching the soft, smooth plastic of Diana's shower cap bobbing in front of her face, Supergirl let out a series of quavery squeals in time to Diana's motion.

<<Supergirl felt her heart beating faster, felt a fluttering in her belly, and felt her clitoris hardening more than she had ever felt it do before. Then Diana turned her head to get her face out of the pillow and pushed the plastic of her shower cap into Supergirl's face. The sensation of Diana's most intimate plastic pressed soft and warm against her nose, lips, and cheek brought Supergirl to climax. She bucked against Diana and quivered as waves of heat surged within her. And she felt Diana convulse on top of her, writhing over her and making her climax all the harder.

<<All too soon it was over. Diana lay panting on top of her plastic bride and a few minutes later Supergirl felt a last burst of heat from Diana's post-coital blush. Slowly Diana's breathing resumed its normal pace and then slackened as they both drifted off to sleep.>>

As Supergirl came awake she became aware that in her sleep she had drawn the other air mattress to her, the one she thought of as Diana's, taken it in an embrace, and had half mounted it so that she could masturbate with it by rubbing her clitoris on one of the air chambers as though it were a woman's leg and by kissing the pillow. She slid the mattress down so that she could wipe her crotch on the still-dry part of the air chamber and then pushed the air mattress away from her. She lay herself back down on her own air mattress and went back to sleep.

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Nasthalthia came to her the third night of her captivity. Wearing only her bathrobe and her shower cap, she came to test her new toy. The bathrobe was made of sea-green satin with violet floral patterns embroidered upon it and her shower cap was Pert and Pretty'sEmatching Lavender Maid style, made of transparent sea-green plastic that had violet comets streaking across it and a silver-green rubber band.

Supergirl had, for her part, been playing with Nasthalthia's raincoat. It reminded her of Batgirl and she wondered whether Barbara Gordon was also on Nasthalthia's list to join her inflatable harem. Meanwhile Supergirl enjoyed the raincoat, its plastic, so soft and smooth, warming immediately at her slightest touch. She wondered whether Nasthalthia would let her wear it to bed as a nightgown.

But even that thought was vanquished when she saw Nasthalthia take off her robe, drape it over the green sculpture, and then come to stand by the air mattress she was lying on. She felt an electric thrill that was not entirely fear shoot through her as she looked up at her captress.

"At last I've got you right where I want you," Nasthalthia gloated. "You're all mine now, my personal plastic prisoner!" She laid herself down on the air mattress next to Supergirl. "I am so hot!" she whispered. "And all because of you! C'm'ere my pretty love slave!"

She half rolled herself on top of Supergirl and, trembling all over, kissed her. Supergirl tried to turn her head, but wasn't fast enough. Nasthalthia's lips pressed against hers and her struggle to escape the kiss only intensified it. Nasthalthia was beginning to breathe heavily and Supergirl, for her part, felt quivery inside, felt her heart beat faster, felt the pressure in her crotch intensify.

Nasthalthia's voice trembled as she said, "Oh, Supergirl, I can't believe I'm really fucking you!"

She was panting as she fully mounted her prisoner, getting on top of her and sliding her right thigh between Supergirl's legs. Supergirl felt Nasthalthia's rubbery-smooth breasts slide across her chest and press down soft and hot on her own A-cup mounds. She felt Nasthalthia's belly press body heat into her with every breath Nasthalthia took. And she felt Nasthalthia's thigh press hot into her crotch, against her labia and her clitoris, and she squirmed in Nasthalthia's grasp.

"Oh, yes," Nasthalthia panted. "Try to get away, Supergirl! You're my helpless prisoner and I can play with you all I want."

She began to thrust with her hips then, rubbing her clitoris on Supergirl's thigh. She began to emit squeaky little grunts in her panting. She hugged Supergirl harder and rammed her clitoris even harder against her thigh, rubbing her own thigh against Supergirl's clitoris at the same time.

"Oh, Supergirl!" she moaned over and over as she climaxed, her thrusting motions becoming jerky as she bounced slightly on her squirming love-toy, rocking slightly from side to side.

Supergirl felt a tickling in her clitoris and then felt the pressure in her crotch seem to be released through her clitoris in long, hard spurts that sent shuddering waves of warmth throughout her body. Her climax was made all the hotter by Nasthalthia's convulsions and the knowledge that she had been the cause of them. She wanted the sensation to go on all night, wanted Nasthalthia to love her until the sun came up to fill the land with light. But even she couldn't climax for long and she went limp to bask in the afterglow of the heat-storm that had swept through her.

Nathalthia, too, exhausted herself. After playing with her slave and while she was resting on top of her, Nasthalthia described the wonderful New Year's Eve party she was planning, one that revolved around the act of turning Supergirl into an inflated plastic punching bag for her guests to bop. Satisfied, she simply went to sleep on her special soon-to-be-plastic prisoner. As she let her head come to rest on the pillow, the body-warm plastic of her shower cap kissed Supergirl's left cheek and Supergirl felt her arousal come up anew and then fade.

After a time, Supergirl wanted to play with herself, but she couldn't reach the places she needed to touch: Nasthalthia had them covered with her body and Supergirl was too weak to move her. It didn't help that she could not stop thinking about Nasthalthia's raincoat, the more so when she looked over to where it was draped over the Wonder Woman punching bag and saw green light shining upon its smooth plastic, showing her its texture in its highlights. Eventually, though, she drifted out upon the Sea of Somnus. She dreamed.

<<She was standing completely naked on a dais at the head of the mansion's ballroom. Already wearing her Supergirl shower cap, she was aware of the warmth emanating from Nasthalthia's raincloak as Nasthalthia stood behind her on her left and she felt herself coming sexually aroused. Standing helpless under the spell imposed upon her by Nasthalthia's use of Wonder Woman's golden lasso, she submitted to Nasthalthia putting on her an ankle-length raincape made of transparent-white plastic on which vertical transparent-black stripes have been printed. Nasthalthia pulled up the pixie-style hood and tied the long doubled-plastic ribbons neatly under Supergirl's chin. Then, with Supergirl standing with her hands put through the arm slits and pressed against her crotch, Nasthalthia touched her wand to the magnetic patch near the hem of the raincape and turned Supergirl and the raincape into a big bouncy punching bag.

<<The transformation into an inflated plastic doll broke the spell and Supergirl became aware of the women sitting around tables in the ballroom. All of the women wore bathrobes and some wore their shower caps as well. One by one the women were called up to the dais and when called each woman slipped out of her bathrobe and came naked to confront Nasthalthia's prisoner. For several minutes the woman was allowed to bop Supergirl.

<<The punches didn't hurt, but Supergirl felt the jolt each time a woman's fist rammed into her inflated plastic body. Each punch and jab made Supergirl bounce and rub against the plastic of her raincape as she rocked vigorously to and fro for her captresses. In most of the cases Supergirl got aroused and was brought to orgasm by the bopping. She bucked and writhed, rubbing her clitoris against the soft, warm plastic as her hands pushed it into her crotch.

<<The women that came to her were pretty and sexy, warm, and surprisingly gentle with her. Their aggression took on more the overtones of sexual play than of belligerence and she enjoyed it as such. [Of course, somewhere in her unconscious mind she understood that the real thing would be different, but this was a fantasy, a thing to be enjoyed without ugly reality intruding. Strange feelings, ones that she could not acknowledge openly, even to her conscious self, played out in the weird symbolism of the dream.]

<<Finally the time came for the winner of the drawing Nasthalthia held to enjoy her prize, the pleasure of deflating Supergirl. The winner was a tall woman with large, firm breasts and she hugged Supergirl to her as she carried out her task. As she contemplated her prisoner, holding up the flanged straw that she was to use, the woman came aroused by the realization that she was about to let the air out of Supergirl. Her nipples swelled and stiffened as she put her hand on the back of Supergirl's head and pressed Supergirl's face into her breasts. Then she slipped the straw into the valve stem in the back of Supergirl's neck and Supergirl went weak and faint as she felt warm air blowing out of her. As she slumped against the woman she lost consciousness.>>

And in the real world she drifted off to sleep.

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At night, as she lay upon one of the air mattresses, Supergirl would stare ruefully at the green-glowing sculpture that kept her trapped. It was, she knew, the source of her problem, the cause of her weakness. If she was to escape the fate that Nasthalthia had planned for her and rescue Diana, she had to find a way to rid herself of that kryptonite. She had thought about using the electroplating process to destroy it, but she would need direct current and an electrolyte for that. Direct current in the amount she would need was just not available to her. She could use ordinary table salt for the electrolyte, but she knew that she could use the salt more directly to solve her problem.

So it was that she complained from the beginning of her captivity about the food, complaining that it was too bland and needed more salt. Indeed, she was downright snotty about reminding the cook that she was not of this Earth and therefore had needs the cook could only dimly apprehend. As she had hoped, the cook responded by placing a one-pound cylindrical box of salt on the serving tray along with a sarcastic note.

In the wee hours of the morning Supergirl came awake and made her move. She went into the bathroom, took the shower curtain off its hooks, and laid it in the tub under the spigot. She placed a washcloth and sponge on the curtain to cushion the statue and prevent its sharp edges from cutting the plastic. Then with a great deal of effort she moved the sculpture into the bathroom.

This was the hard part. The closer she came to the sculpture the weaker she became, but not so weak that she could not move the thing. She began by tipping it over and lowering it gently and quietly to the floor, then retreating from it to try to regain some strength before taking the next step. When she felt ready she moved the sculpture into the bathroom, mostly by half rolling it on its elliptical base. After resting yet again she lifted the sculpture into the tub to set it on top of the shower curtain. She strained to move the thing gently, to avoid making any noise. By the time she had lowered it gently onto the washcloth and the sponge, laying it on its side, her muscles were trembling from the effort.

She didn't wait to regain her strength this time. Quickly she tied a cord around the shower curtain above the sculpture to make the shower curtain into a crude bag. Then with the salt box by her side she began to run hot water into the bag, offering a little prayer to whatever powers that be that the sound of the running water would not awaken anybody.

When the water had covered the sculpture, she began to sprinkle salt onto the kryptonite. For a time nothing happened except for the salt sliding slowly off the green slopes of the sculpture. Then she saw a green spark flare off the sculpture and a few seconds later another. Soon the sparks were coming rapidly as the kryptonite began to corrode. More green sparks came off the metal in a dense and dazzling array and Supergirl heard faint cracklings coming from the sculpture. As she watched, the water began to boil and she had to add cold water to prevent the thing from drying out. She added the last of the salt to make the water as corrosive as possible and she prayed that the plastic could take the heat without rupturing. She was glad of the time that she had spent at her cousin's Fortress of Solitude experimenting with kryptonite and gaining a full understanding of its composition and chemical properties. With the salt enhancing the process, the kryptonite corroded much faster than steel would rust and the corrosion products flaked off the sculpture immediately to expose fresh layers of kryptonite to the corrosive liquid. Finally, the sculpture emitted one last burst of green sparks and then went dark.

The ache in her muscles went away immediately and the chill that she had felt was replaced by a sense of warmth. For days she had been plagued by the sensation of not being able to take a deep enough breath to satisfy her body's need for oxygen, but now she felt no need to breathe at all. She felt suddenly light, felt her muscles regain their control over forces that defied all scientific understanding.

Like a fuzzy picture coming into focus, the world regained the super-clarity that she was accustomed to sensing. In a way it was like waking up from a semi-aroused state that one often experiences in the morning. Again she could feel magnetic fields, both the sixty-cycle products of the alternating electric current flowing in the wires embedded in the walls and, much fainter, Earth's half-gauss field. She became aware of the nanoscopic pops of muons generated by cosmic rays decaying within her like subatomic popcorn.

She listened carefully. The cacophonous roar that had assailed her ears when her superpowers came back to her had subsided and now she could hear what she needed to hear. She heard nearly a dozen hearts beating slowly and nearly a dozen pairs of lungs taking slow, shallow breaths. No one in the house showed any sign of the terrified excitement that would accompany the discovery that she had regained her powers and her will.

She looked around and the house turned transparent for her in stages. She quickly found the opaque boxes that were mounted in strategic positions around the house. Each box, she saw, radiated warmth, as if something inside the box were emitting light and the lead was absorbing it and turning it into heat. She estimated each box to be emitting excess heat at a rate of about twenty to thirty watts, about the amount of power in the light emanating from a fist-sized piece of kryptonite. Her lips curled in a grim smile: Nasty may not have worn the name, but she was every inch a Luthor.

Supergirl then saw that the prison room was well wired with sensors: she could escape, but it would be noisy. She wanted to rescue Diana with a minimum of warning to her captresses, so she checked the forgotten dimension and smiled in sheer delight; the air conditioning duct was not wired to sense motion.

She levitated to the ceiling and stared heat at the bolts holding the screen in place, catching the molten metal in her left hand lest it start a fire. She caught the screen as it fell and gently lowered it to the floor. Then she went into the duct.

She floated through the duct at a leisurely pace. Mind you, for Supergirl a leisurely pace would leave an express train in the dust. In all of ten seconds she was out of the duct in the estate's main security room and before they could respond to the sudden, indeed downright abrupt, intrusion the women on duty were bound and gagged. The guards had been leaning back in their chairs watching their monitors. It would have taken them only a fraction of a second to lean forward and slap the panic button to sound the general alarm. It might as well have been an hour for all the good it did them. Before they could react to anything they had been pulled away from the console and gagged. A few seconds after that they were securely bound to their chairs, staring up in fear at a Supergirl who was no less dangerous for being completely naked. A minute later all of the estate's security systems and kryptonite-laden booby traps failed catastrophically without any alarm being given.

She used Wonder Woman's golden lasso to interrogate her prisoners. It was like handling a golden silky snake; she could feel aetherial muscles pulsing as it moved. Using it as a truth-extracting tool turned out to be easy and soon she had the information she wanted. She even found out whence Nasthalthia had obtained her magic rod: it had been given to her by her paternal grandmother, an old Roma witch who had developed contacts with an underworld that went farther down than the so-called underworld of mortal criminals.

When they discovered that Bubba Joe could not be restored to his flesh-and-blood self before his pregnancy was brought to term, the blow-up clown, citing the sheer humiliation of his condition and of the process required to terminate it, begged to be destroyed. "At the very least", he begged via the vocalizer, the pink shower cap that Diana had worn, "just let the air out of me and put me away somewhere."

"I have a better idea," Wonder Woman said. She picked him up and carried him into the bedroom. Half an hour later they returned to where Supergirl waited and Bubba Joe acknowledged his willingness to serve as Princess Diana's inflatable bedwarmer.

Diana also acquired another toy. The punching boy in the plastic half slip chose to go with her as well, rather than have to face going back home with false memories and a lack of sexual outlet to which he had become accustomed.

With her new toys deflated and folded up in a canvas bag, Wonder Woman stood on the balcony outside the room where she and Supergirl had been captured. She bid good-bye to Supergirl, who was to remain behind to talk to the authorities. The two women had decided that only the meeting of criminals would be addressed and that Nasthalthia's other activities would remain their secret, so Wonder Woman would leave as if she had never been there and Supergirl would close out the situation. Then they had caught a glimpse of moonlight reflected off glass high above the mansion and Wonder Woman found a rising air current, stepped onto it, and rose into the sky.

Over the next few days guests arriving at the mansion were given new pairs of bracelets courtesy of the Stanport Police Department, with assistance from the Metropolis Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was a giddy time for law enforcement and in all the excitement somehow Nasthalthia disappeared.

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It was an extra cold January weekend in Midvale when Linda Danvers came home from Stanhope to visit her foster parents. Not needing as much sleep as Earth-folk do, she drove her pink VolkswagenEBeetle late Friday night, parked it in the driveway of the Danvers's house, and entered the house through the basement, using a burst of x-rays from her eyes to activate the hidden mechanism that made the basement door open silently. With her overnight case and her special duffle bag in hand, she levitated up to her bedroom, floating through the house like a ghost lest she make a floorboard creak.

Next morning she made breakfast for herself and the Danverses and spent more than an hour bringing them up to date on her adventures as well as on her studies. She knew that later that day they would be gone from the house for several hours, leaving her alone with lots of time to "study".

When Fred and Edna had left, Linda went up to her bedroom, sat down in her chair, and slipped into a long reverie to put herself into the proper mood. Once she began to feel warm and quivery inside she wasted no time. From her closet, from behind a well-disguised panel that no mere human could open, she took a lead-lined case. She set it on her dresser and opened it. At her first sight of the faint green glow from inside the case she felt the world fall in on her. She felt weak. No longer did she feel the flux of Earth's magnetic field coursing through her. Her ears felt as if they had been stuffed with cotton and she seemed to herself to be half blind. Once again she was helpless in this human world. She imagined that she had done this to herself under compulsion from a powerful witch and used that thought to begin preparing herself for what she was about to do.

With a swish of soft plastic sliding on soft plastic, Linda took her toys out of the duffle bag in which she kept them. She laid deflated Nasthalthia out on her bed and laid out Nasthalthia's Batgirl raincoat next to her. Then she set Nasthalthia's Wonder Woman punching bag on the foot of her bed. Finally she took out the Supergirl shower cap that Nasthalthia had given her and the transparent-pink plastic Wonder Woman raincape that Diana had worn when she was Nasthalthia's plastic sex prisoner.

She undressed herself, stripped herself completely naked, and then took off her wig, freeing her blond hair with a shake of her head. Trembling slightly, she put on her shower cap and the raincape. Feeling the soft, smooth plastic sliding over and warming against her bare skin as she moved, she slipped Nasthalthia into her raincoat and then held her up in front of her like a new dress she was trying for size.

Feeling warm and quivery inside, Supergirl took the valve stem in the left side of Nasthalthia's neck in her lips and blew warm air into her. She gained further arousal from watching Nasthalthia's head start to come up as she filled up with air, her excitement coming from the fact that Nasthalthia was wearing the same Wonder Woman shower cap that had catalyzed Diana's transformation. When Nasthalthia was only a few puffs shy of being blown full, Supergirl stopped inflating her and laid her on the bed.

Going to the foot of the bed, Supergirl knelt and inflated Nasthalthia's Wonder Woman punching bag. Leaning forward as if to kiss the bag, she took the valve stem in her lips and blew. Slowly she inhaled fresh air and then blew it into the bag, all the while watching the bag fill up and then rise before her like a giant erecting penis. When she had blown the bag bouncy full she gazed up at the image of the Amazon princess standing over her in an attitude of triumph, remembered her fantasy, and felt her heart beat faster.

Putting her hands through the raincape's arm slits, Supergirl picked up the punching bag and set it on the floor next to her. Turning to face it, she put her hands on its sides to steady it and kissed the image of Diana's crotch. She opened the front of the raincape and left the cape draped over her shoulders, so that she could embrace the bag fully and rub her crotch against it as she continued to kiss Wonder Woman's panties. She felt her clitoris grow and stiffen, sliding forward in its sheath until it, too, kissed Diana's plastic. Supergirl almost climaxed then and there and only with difficulty did she bank the fire of her passion. Slipping the raincape off her shoulders and letting it fall to the floor, she turned the punching bag so that the image of Diana gazed over the bed, then she got up and turned her attention back to Nasthalthia.

Once again she held up her prisoner and embraced her from behind. With the tenderness of a kiss, she put her lips on the valve stem in Nasthalthia's neck and blew into her the last puffs of air needed to fill her up. As Nasthalthia became bouncy firm she became warm and began to squirm in Supergirl's grasp. Supergirl responded by kissing the right side of Nasthalthia's neck.

"You're mine now," Supergirl said. "My big blow-up love slave."

Nasthalthia jerked her head from side to side, taking in the scene before her. Then in a panic she bucked and writhed in Supergirl's embrace. Supergirl simply kissed her neck some more and stroked her belly and her breasts.

"You wanted to get me into bed with you," Supergirl reminded her prisoner. "And now we're going to go to bed together so that I can test you as my plastic sex prisoner."

Nasthalthia responded to Supergirl's caresses by trying to squirm away from her, but she only succeeded in getter Supergirl all the hotter. As Nasthalthia's warm plastic stroked her breasts, Supergirl felt her nipples swell and stiffen. Her breathing became quivery. She kissed Nasthalthia again and pointed to the punching bag looking over the bed.

"Wonder Woman can't be here herself," Supergirl explained, "so I'll let her proxy watch me play with you for her."

Nasthalthia went limp in defeat. Tentatively Supergirl released her and stood as if ready to catch Nasthalthia if she should try to escape, but the pneumatic witch simply crawled onto the bed and laid herself on her back. Supergirl wasted no time in crawling onto the bed herself and laying herself down with her toy. Supergirl then half rolled to her left and put her hand on Nasthalthia.

"Oh, you're so soft and warm," Supergirl sighed in her soft, breathy Linda voice.

Nasthalthia put her left leg over Supergirl's right thigh and tried to mount her.

"Ahem!" Supergirl said to get Nasthalthia's attention. "Aren't you forgetting something? Hmm? Such as, maybe, that the slavegirl is supposed to be on the bottom, submitting to her mistress?"

Slowly, reluctantly, Nasthathia slid herself off Supergirl and laid herself on her back. Submissively she opened the front of her raincoat and waited to serve Supergirl's pleasure.

Supergirl rolled to her left and got partly on top of her prisoner, feeling Nasthalthia's plastic skin soft and hot against her own naked body. She felt warm and quivery inside and also felt strange mounting another woman's body. She slipped her arms behind Nasthalthia's back to embrace her and kissed her tenderly on the lips. Then she put her lips on Nasthalthia's right breast and felt the nipple swell and stiffen. She thought that Nathalthia's skin felt like the plastic of her raincoat and that thought make the pressure in her clitoris rise. Her heart beat faster and she felt all quivery-warm inside. She got on top of Nasthalthia and kissed her lips as she slid her right thigh between Nasthalthia's legs.

Supergirl was just inhaling and suddenly she deepened her breath with a gasp as she felt Nasthalthia's thigh come up soft and hot against her clitoris. She was already excited and the sensation of mounting her inflated prisoner and preparing to pump her full of passion got her very hot inside. She knew full well why she heated up so rapidly and so intensely: she was being aroused by the sensation of Nasthalthia's plastic skin hot on hers. She put her arms around Nasthalthia and stroked her back, feeling her clitoris grow even harder in response. The sight of Nasthalthia's shower cap right in her face got her all the hotter.

"I love you, Nasthalthia," Supergirl said as she pressed her clitoris against Nasthalthia's right thigh. Supergirl was breathing heavily and letting out little squeals as Nasthalthia squirmed under her. Supergirl kissed Nasthalthia again and began thrusting her hips to and fro, rubbing her clitoris on Nasthalthia's right thigh and rubbing her right thigh against Nasthalthia's labia and clitoris. Nasthalthia responded immediately and eagerly and in less than a minute Supergirl was panting and emitting quavery little grunts. She felt Nasthalthia's hands kneading her biceps, then embracing her, squeezing her, and Supergirl began making desperate grunting noises, as if she were trying to lift something heavy.

Supergirl felt the pressure in her crotch growing and then felt something tickle her clitoris. Then Nasthalthia shuddered and Supergirl felt the tickling in her clitoris rise to an almost painful intensity and then kick off her own climax. She bucked and squirmed in Nasthalthia's grasp and Nasthalthia convulsed under her. Supergirl whimpered with quavery little cries as both women gushed out their passion, their pressurized libido, in long, hard spasms. They wrestled together on the bed, each ramming her clitoris against the other's thigh, until, all too soon, it seemed, the winds of ardor abated and they ran out of libido. Supergirl lay panting in tremulous respirations, resting until she gave Nasthalthia a flash of heat from the post-coital relaxation of her circulatory system. She sighed in Nasthalthia's left ear and dozed off.

She didn't sleep long. After a brief nap, she got up to deflate her toys and to put them away before her foster parents got home. Using a damp washrag, she wiped her crotch slobber off the punching bag and off Nasthalthia. As she let the air out of the punching bag with a flanged straw and folded up the raincape and Nasthalthia's raincoat, she saw Nasthalthia standing by the bed with her hands crossed over her crotch and her head bowed. She put a hand on Nasthalthia's shoulder.

"This is what you did to Diana and what you wanted to do to me," she said. "So you can't really object to me doing it to you. Besides, I'll treat you better than you would have treated me."

Nasthalthia responded by taking Supergirl in an embrace and pressing her cheek against Supergirl's shoulder. She held her captress for a long moment, then kissed her and submitted to being deflated.

Late that night, when the Danverses were deep in sleep, Supergirl would reinflate Nasthalthia in her bed and play with her again.

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This fantasy was inspired in part by a Superman story from the early 1960's (I think it might be the two-part story "The Mortal Superman / The Cage of Doom"; Superman #160, Apr 1963) [in which story Superman unwittingly ingests kryptonite and loses his superpowers, is captured by crooks, and is put into a glass booth at a mobsters' banquet to be put to death] and the Supergirl stories "Johnny Dee - Hero/Bum" (Adventure Comics #399, Nov 1970), and "The Frightened Supergirl" (Adventure Comics #401, Jan 1971)(Supergirl as Nasthalthia's rather dangerous toy).

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Kara

In my rant at the end of "Supergirl - Barefoot, Plastic, and Pregnant" I promised to explain how I know the correct pronunciation of Supergirl's given name. OK, here's the payoff.

I claimed that Supergirl's given name is properly pronounced kah-RAH. But the comic strip never gave any clues on the correct pronunciation of Kryptonese names, so how can I make such a claim without being a fool? Actually it's amazing what we can infer from the few clues that we find in the comic strips.

We know that the Kryptonese religion was an advanced animism, similar to Japan's Shinto or India's Hinduism. The average Kryptonese would agree with the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus in saying that the world is full of gods. Like those animisms, the Kryptonese religion acknowledges an ineffable godhead behind all that we experience and infer, an inchoate thing that can only be defined by the endless repetition of "Not this!" That Kryptonese godhead takes the denotation Rao (RAH-oh).

Thus the Kryptonese refer to Reality as k'Rao-bado (k-RAH-oh-bah-doh), the "dream of Rao". From that they derive the name of their home-world, k'Raop'tonu (note that in Kryptonese ablation of a vowel hardens the flanking consonants), which, when spoken at the normal Kryptonese rate of speech, sounds to Terran ears like "Krypton".

The word k'Rao is simply the hard genitive form of Rao, the possessive form that applies to things that are the property of Rao (in both the scientific and legal senses of property). This form contrasts with the soft genitive (denoted by the prefix ge-), which refers more to relationships (e.g. my wife, my son, my job, etc.).

But if Rao is the ineffable godhead, how can it have properties? The conventional answer to that question is that of divine deputation: the godhead spins out any putative attributes into personifications that then comprise a pantheon of gods and goddesses who hold those attributes in a kind of aetherial escrow. In the Kryptonese religion that pantheon comprised the Ashoa (the male Ashonom and the female Asho'inth).

The first of the Ashoa, the one that took as her name the simple k'Rao, was the Asho'inth who personified elegance and beauty as the organizing principles of Reality (in the Kryptonese religion morality is not so much about the struggle between good and evil as it is about the struggle to bring beauty out of ugliness). In this we see an analogy with a feature of the Norse religion. In that mythology the goddess Idun, whose golden apples cured all diseases, healed all wounds, and gave the gods and goddesses eternal youth and life, was spun out of Odin (note the similarity of names) to free the one-eyed All-Father from the duties of a healer and enable him to function more effectively as a wizard-god.

Over time the name k'Rao was feminized and the pronunciation shifted, though retaining the original stress, until it became Kara (kah-RAH). Then one day, in an avoshan that corresponds, in part, to the Earth year 1944, a girl was born to the daughter of a priestess and was given the name Kara. She was destined for the priesthood herself, but fate intervened and she was sent to Earth where she became something of an Asho'inth herself, the world's greatest heroine, Supergirl. - TdC.

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Of Starlight and Superpowers

Sooner or later the comic strips had to offer some explanation of Superman and Supergirl's superpowers, the strange abilities that went far beyond a simple extrapolation of human abilities. Inspired by Philip Wylie's 1930 novel "Gladiator" and the Popeye cartoons and by a hint from science-fiction writer Otto Binder, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster originally conceived Superman as an augmented human, a man who was stronger, faster, and tougher than Earthmen simply by virtue of coming from a planet where his people evolved in a gravitational field roughly five times stiffer than Earth's. Aside from depicting the Kryptonese as looking just like Earth's people, there was nothing in that concept that flew in the face of known science. On the other hand, the ability to see through solid, opaque objects, to hear small sounds at great distances and to hear them against the cacophonous background that would necessarily accompany them, to defy gravity and fly, to mimic the Norse god Baldur and be absolutely invulnerable to everything except one small green thing (mistletoe in Baldur's case and Kryptonite in Superman's case); all of those involve violations of known laws of physics. Superman had acquired those special abilities in the comic strip in the early 1940's, but the writers and editors simply left them unexplained, contenting themselves to depict the occasional Kryptonese character noting that all Kryptonese people had those abilities.

In the late 1950's and early 1960's the writers and editors at DC Comics began trying to justify those godlike abilities by reference to Superman's special origins. In one episode in Superboy Comics our teenaged superhero goes to the asteroid Ceres and finds an Earth-like environment where a boy who originally came from Earth has superpowers like his. That story element was explained with a diagram showing the relative sizes of Ceres, Earth, and Krypton, the explanation being that the lighter gravity of one world gave someone from a larger world "powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men". Well, that doesn't work for superpowers, only for Gladiator-like augmentation of natural human abilities.

In another issue of Superboy Comics the editors explained Superboy's invulnerability by referring to "ultra-solar rays" from the sun giving his skin a kind of super-tan to make it super-tough. We hadn't gone far into the '60's before DC Comics decided that the solar explanation worked well and they gave Krypton its red sun so that they could make vague references to Earth's yellow sun as an explanation of the superpowers. That works reasonably well, but sometimes it led the writers of the comic strips into things that they should have rethought.

A good example of that error shows up in "No Mercy for Supergirl" (Action Comics #374, March 1969), in which a roving alien avenger has condemned Supergirl to eternal imprisonment in a prismatic realm reminiscent of the Phantom Zone. The avenger traps Supergirl in a forcefield lasso powered "...by the energy that I'm drawing from a red sun...which cancels the super-powers that you have under Earth's yellow sun!" Or consider the Superman story "This Hostage Must Die!" (Action Comics #402, July 1971), in which a Native-American shaman, who is also an astrophysicist, captures Superman with a "jeweled lens which siphoned the rays of a distant red sun" to deprive Superman of his superpowers. Worst of all, I think, comes in the graphic novel "Superman, Red Son", which looks at how history might have gone if Kal-El's rocketboat had landed in the Ukraine rather than near Smallville and Superman had grown up to become the heir of another Man of Steel, Josef Stalin. In that story the rebel Batmankoff uses an array of lamps to recreate the red light of Superman's native sun and thereby render Superman powerless.

But those examples are nonsense. Exposure to red light, from whatever source, cannot compromise the Kryptonese's superpowers. If so, the Kryptonese wouldn't have superpowers to begin with because Earth's sun blasts out huge quantities of red light itself: the reason that Sol appears yellow is that it also glows out even larger amounts of light at higher frequencies. For that matter, if it were the light itself that conferred the superpowers, then the super-cousins would lose their superpowers at night and the comic strip has never, ever asserted such a thing. No, it's not the light from Sol that explains the superpowers and no amount of red light can interfere with them.

So what is it about Earth's sun and stars even higher on the main sequence of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram that gives the Kryptonese "powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men"?

Certainly the fact that light decouples from the stellar plasma in the star's photosphere at temperatures well above the roughly 3000 Kelvin of a red star has something to do with the answer to that question. We can say with some confidence that the aetherial nimbus that confers superpowers on Kryptonese lifeforms comes from the quantum subvacuum, pulled up into the quantum vacuum by some feature of an active star. That feature may be part of or may be marked by the fact that for the stars whose presence confers superpowers light breaks out of the star at a high temperature to fly off into space. Stars that hold light until it cools to red or orange in its journey away from their thermonuclear cores don't have that feature or have it in a less intense manifestation.

We have, then, a kind of spooky influence coming from an alternate space with different physical laws and entering our space via the quantum vacuum. That influence extends away from the star just as the star's gravity does, enabling the Kryptonese to carry their superpowers into the interstellar realm.

But there's more to the superpower nimbus than that. We know that it must be an animate thing and that it must have its own kind of intelligence, if only an animal intelligence. Consider, for example, Superman's dog, Krypto. He's definitely a dog, not noticeably different from Terran dogs, but the comic strip has maintained from almost the first episode in which he appears that he possesses human-level intelligence. That intelligence must be a consequence of his acquisition of superpowers.

That intelligence has a relationship with the intellect, however small, of the entity acquiring the superpowers. For the most part it seems to be a subservient relation. When Supergirl wants to fly, she doesn't have to ask her nimbus to help her; she merely exerts her will and she flies.

But like an animate thing, the nimbus instinctively flees pain. Like some skittish animal, it seems to panic and run from the first touch of kryptonitic radiation. On rare occasions, though, Superman has been able to hang onto his superpowers long enough to melt a piece of kryptonite with his heat vision. If the nimbus could be trained, like an animal, it might be possible for Supergirl to keep her superpowers long enough to get herself away from the kryptonite that's causing her distress or to precipitate a catastrophic meltdown of the stuff. In "Supergirl's Greatest Victory" (Action Comics #262, March 1960) Supergirl attempted to condition her nimbus to do just that, by exposing herself to a piece of kryptonite that she had sequestered in a cave. She believed that she was succeeding only to find out at the end that her developing "immunity" to kryptonitic radiation was due to a weird little alien animal eating the kryptonite from within and thereby reducing the amount of radiation it was emitting.

Nonetheless, the relationship between Supergirl and her superpowers was still evolving. Under the right circumstances, with the right conditioning, the nimbus might have been able to resist the effects of kryptonitic radiation long enough to get its possessor out of trouble. But that's a topic for another time.

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