Chapter 25 – Rooftop Liaisons
Laura ran as quickly as she could, the colors of the city’s multi-colored night lights streaking by as she crossed the rooftop, her high heels not even slowing her in the slightest. At the edge of the building she leaped high, instinctively knowing just how hard she would need to push herself to clear the four lane street below and reach the rooftop across it. She landed a couple seconds later, her rifles clattering on her back, but she kept moving, taking only a few steps before hopping again, landing atop a flagpole jutting out from the wall of the next building, and jumped from it to the next rooftop in line, hitting the surface running.
“I have to be dreaming,” she thought, and not for the first time that night. Once she had suited up in the bunny costume and secured her mag carrier and thigh holsters, grabbing up her extra ammo and getting her weapons situated on the harness, she’d felt a little goofy to say the least, but she knew she had to help the trio of heroines. When she’d thought first to grab her car and drive across town toward the docks, a peculiar sensation had gone through her. The feeling that she needed to run, to jump, had overtaken her, and she’d gone out to the balcony of their apartment, staring out across the parking lot at the neighboring apartment building, which was only a four story building.
She’d thought the peculiar notion absurd and suicidal at first, and wondered why it had even come to her at all. They were eight floors up; there was no way she could survive a fall from that height. “But you won’t fall. And you won’t be hurt when you land. You can nail that jump.” Again, she hadn’t been certain of whether that was her own voice in her mind or not, but she knew that she could trust it. It had been something…instinctual. So, she’d closed up the door to the apartment, took a very short running start, and jumped…and had sailed across the parking lot to land on the apartment roof.
That was the first time she’d thought she’d been dreaming, and as she raced northward across Sentinel City, it wasn’t the last. Below her, she easily outpaced the traffic flow, and her hopping from one building to the next had her taking shortcuts that were impossible by car. Perhaps the most amazing thing was that she had yet to feel winded, rather, she felt invigorated, energized, like nothing she had ever experienced before. There was just so much energy flowing through her body now!
Before she realized where she was, Laura had landed atop the base of a construction crane, and quickly hopped upward along the narrow struts that formed the framework the main crane rested on high above her. Coming to a stop on the roof of the control cabin, the cold wind whipping at her scantily clad figure, Laura finally realized she had worked up a sweat. Below her, she could see the warehouse that Cyber Seer had marked earlier in the museum, though it appeared heavily damaged now. The walls were cracked in several places, the roof was mostly gone, and some of the upper level support structures had collapsed. Still, she could see movement inside, lit only by the faint light of the surrounding buildings, and pulled a pair of binoculars from the pouch resting at the small of her back, just above the puffy tail of the costume.
Dolls were moving around down there, cleaning up the debris. She counted at least six, no seven of them moving around the large, central open area, all dressed as maids or butlers, each with their own blank, expressionless masks upon their faces. The inside of the warehouse looked more like some rich person’s mansion, though, not the kind of place that should be in this part of town. A raised section of the floor drew her attention, and as she focused in on it, she spotted what appeared to be a finely adorned throne sitting atop it, a purple carpet covering the top of the dais, leading down the steps toward what could have been an audience chamber.
Recalling what Cat had told them about how she had been made to refer to Dollface as her queen, Laura instantly realized that the villainess had more than a little obsession with that idea. Zooming out slightly, Laura gasped. Mecha Musume stood there, right beside the throne, arms crossed, unmoving. Her visor now glowed a deep red color instead of the bluish green it had previously. Worse, she spotted another figure by the throne, actually attached to it via a leash, this one covered from head to toe in latex, with some kind of silver cuffs on wrists and ankles and matching collar. The cat ears and tail told her instantly who it was, and the sight of Black Cat wearing one of Dollface’s masks made Laura’s blood run cold.
She was too late!
The thought crossed her mind that it was rather odd how the dolls all seemed to be functioning just fine in the gloom, and she vaguely wondered how she herself was seeing so well without light-enhancing optics, but those details were lost when she spotted another group coming in from the southern end of the building. Two of the dolls, these without uniforms, only latex bodysuits, pushed an exam table bearing a restrained and masked figure, naked but for a distinctive pair of boots, getting her intimate holes pounded by some kind of mechanical device, while some kind of devices were clamped over her breasts. Cyber Seer!
Following behind was Kitsune, and in front of her the one whom Laura assumed was the would-be queen, Dollface. She was certainly dressed like it in that regal-looking dress, her hair worn with a lot of elaborate curls and ornaments, and she waved her hand about, the dolls scurrying to obey. Interestingly, Dollface too wore a mask, though presumably with the reverse end of the tether that kept the rest of the dolls in control. Kitsune didn’t seem to be under Dollface’s command, though, as she kept looking away while keeping her arms crossed, taking in the room, or even rolling her head in a way that seemed…annoyed.
The dolls wheeled the table carrying Cyber Seer toward the dais and the throne, Black Cat rising to her knees and pawing the ground, tail raised curiously as they neared. Mecha Musume remained motionless, a silent, watchful guardian. The throne lifted a few feet off the ground, an array of computer servers and other electronic devices stowed on a rack beneath, lights blinking rapidly, a mess of cables haphazardly connected between all of the systems.
Dollface quickly approached it, pulling out a laptop and opening the lid, the screen too far away for Laura to make out anything significant.
On the table, Cyber Seer jerked at the straps holding her, her body arching upward as the device pounded her. Laura watched her juices squirt as she came. What the hell was Dollface doing to her? Why was Cyber Seer’s mask more like a helmet, covering her entire head, and why did it seem like she wasn’t following Dollface’s orders?
As Dollface typed rapidly on the computer, Laura focused on Kitsune, who still stood by the table Cyber Seer was secured to. She tapped her foot, her tails twitching, obviously impatient. What was she waiting for?
Dollface returned to the table, connected some kind of cable to the helmet covering Cyber Seer’s head, and then went back to the laptop.
Kitsune’s posture shifted slightly then, and she reached out to Cyber Seer and started tracing the fingers of one hand over the metal surface of the exam table. Her hand brushed over the straps, then her other hand moved toward Cyber Seer’s forehead, two fingers tracing something over the smooth surface of the helmet. Then she went back to standing in her annoyed stance once again, and started pacing along the length of the exam table. The whole thing had taken maybe three or four seconds. What had she done? Those motions had been far too deliberate to have been idle curiosity, and performed when Dollface wasn’t looking.
Laughter erupted behind Laura, a haughty, mocking sound. “Ay dios mio! Who are you supposed to be? And which dollar store did you buy that costume at?”
Laura’s hackles immediately rose. Shadow Lynx! Of all the times for her to show up! Laura’s teeth clicked as she clamped down on the reply that had first come to mind, focusing instead on the situation at hand, keeping her eyes on the binoculars and the scene below. “Just call me Gun Bunny. I’m guessing you’re here to help out with Dollface?”
“Gun Bunny? Help?” Shadow Lynx laughed again, her heels clicking across the metal roof of the crane cabin as she approached. “Oh, pobre niñita, I’m not here to help, I’m here to clean up this mess and save the day!”
That made Gun Bunny lower the binoculars, her suddenly cold glare swinging to Shadow Lynx. The stuck-up heroine stood with her arms crossed beneath her sizable breasts, the leather of her outfit looking a bit tighter than it had previously, the cutout for her cleavage a bit larger. The smug grin on her face looked at once very fitting and very infuriating. “Oh, are you now?”
Shadow Lynx shrugged, raising one hand and flicking it dismissively. “Of course I am, it’s what heroines like me do. Amateurs like you and those three from the museum aren’t cut out for this business; you just don’t have what it takes, especially if you’re using guns. Those don’t work so well on most supers, niña.”
Feeling her blood pressure spiking at the attitude coming off Shadow Lynx, Gun Bunny outwardly kept her cool. “And what do you know about the museum?”
“I know that it was a complete mess,” Shadow Lynx replied, her tone again quite smug. “Those three amateurs could barely handle Pink Pussy, and then they let the fox girl get away with the goods! I’d call that a huge failure, eh? Somehow, I couldn’t get inside the room, or I would’ve taken care of both of the thieves and saved those would-be heroines’ reputations, if they even have any. It’s a wonder they didn’t get that cop killed, to be honest. Fortunately someone working with Pink Pussy and the other one knew their jig was up and sent me the location of this place so that I could come to the rescue!”
Though the anonymous tip was an interesting tidbit, Gun Bunny couldn’t help herself, her lips curling into a grin. “They might be new at this, but they did bring down Pink Pussy in the end. Wasn’t that supposed to be your job, though? I mean, you did promise that to all your fans, didn’t you?”
That soured Shadow Lynx’s demeanor, her grin turning into a scowl in an instant. She was in Gun Bunny’s face immediately, her finger jabbing into Gun Bunny’s chest. “You listen here, coneja puta! You just keep your nose out of this! They got lucky with Pink Pussy, and from the look of things down there, their luck ran out! Now you just stay up here and watch, and I’ll show you just how outclassed all of you are! And if one of those damn bullets even gets shot in my general direction, I’m coming back for you!”
Then Shadow Lynx was gone in a puff of black, shadowy smoke that dissipated almost before it could be seen.
“Pendejo,” Gun Bunny muttered, whipping around and bringing her binoculars back to the warehouse. She wouldn’t begrudge Shadow Lynx for wanting to save the day, certainly, but her instincts told her there was more to Kitsune’s trap than what had already gone down in the warehouse. Just how bad was it going to go from here?
Lowering the binoculars, Gun Bunny instead unslung her rifles, setting her M4 aside, and dropped the bipod of the M24, flipping the scope covers up. She settled out into a prone position, working the bolt to chamber a round as she focused her scope on the warehouse. “Hope for the best, prep for the worst,” she muttered, adjusting the focus of her scope. Would Shadow Lynx actually manage to pull this off?
As much as Gun Bunny disliked the stuck up heroine, she couldn’t help but hope that Shadow Lynx would save the day. If it helped free those women that had saved Cat and stopped Dollface and Kitsune from fulfilling whatever else they had schemed, then dealing with Shadow Lynx’s inflated attitude for a while would be worth it. She settled in against the rifle and looked through the scope at the scene below. “And if she doesn’t win…well…” Gun Bunny whispered, her finger running over the trigger guard.
Gun Bunny was in the right position to make a difference, but the questions started running through her mind again: Could she make that difference? Could she take a shot if she really needed to? Would the bullets even work? What happened if she missed? Would she have time to take a second shot?
Gun Bunny caught sight of Shadow Lynx in her scope, appearing behind one of the dolls on clean up duty, emerging out of the shadows that were her namesake as if coming out of a pool of water.
The heroine’s assault had begun.
Things are getting tense! Will Shadow Lynx succeed despite her ego, or will Gun Bunny have to step in?
Stay tuned next week to find out!
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