Betsy Visits River City.
Chapter 3
When Betsy focused her attention back onto the doors she saw a man enter. A tall man at that. Wearing some sort of armour. Tall and wide, this one had muscles. There was no sign of any servos or any artificial augmentations. Well, it looked like a man but Betsy couldn’t pick up anything from his brain. The armour didn’t slow him down either. He was lightning fast and closed in on Vicky before she could properly recover her senses. He obviously had no problem in seeing her there—how many people here knew magick for God’s sake? Immediately, a part of her mind started to make an argument for extreme hazard pay.
Vicky reacted automatically when the man tried to bash her head in with his fists. She dodged and weaved and backpedalled fast towards the back wall. Betsy was interested in how Vicky would deal with this, she might learn a few pointers. It turned out to be simplicity itself. Vicky turned and ran. Betsy was impressed at her speed. She was out of a rear door in nothing flat.
The man-thing soon gave up chasing Vicky and turned to his prizes. He bagged a lot of the loot then picked up the doors he felled on his way in and threw them away. The super hero was still out for the count. So he picked her up one handed and tucked her under his arm. Then he turned and left, dragging the loot behind him. That woman was starting to come round and struggled a bit to no effect. This ‘man’ just ignored her efforts. Betsy automatically fired a small silent dart into the woman’s arse cheek. She had recovered enough of her wits by then that she flinched and squealed as the dart went in and her hands automatically covered both arse cheeks as if Betsy had shot her in each one.
As Betsy thought, these super heroes were weird.
Betsy wondered why she had shot a tracker into her in the first place. Remembering Vicky, she thought she would simply give her the tracker info before she left. They were friends and that was what friends did, wasn’t it? Betsy couldn’t stay, she had her own agenda, which was to get the hell away from this place as soon as possible. Well, and the parcel as well.
As the man-thing left, Betsy focused for a broad spectrum pattern of his brain, trying to get at least some information about it. She did. It wasn’t a man. Well, it used to be one, but it wasn’t now. It was a robot. It still had its organic brain but that had been modified. In fact it had been modified to fuck. It wasn’t human anymore. It was good at logic but awful at decision making. It needed to be told what to do, be programmed, in fact. This thing was an automaton. This additional information cost Betsy some time as well as energy, because she saw Vicky reappear, quickly pick up the remains of her friend’s whip-thing, which now looked smashed beyond repair, and carefully follow the robot with her friend through the gap where the doors used to be. Now, there was no sound, so Betsy quickly walked over the floor and picked up her parcel.
“What have we here?” said a female voice from the shadows. Betsy looked and the leather clad woman walked out of where she was hiding. “Cockroaches coming out of the woodwork are they?” She smiled. “Now you’re going to tell me all about who those people are and you’re gong to help me get my jewels back.”
Betsy looked at her. Black hair piled high on her head, black leather jacket complete with a large upturned collar toning in with a full black leather skirt. The black heeled boots she wore rose above the skirt level. She looked impressive and had taken care with her looks. Her face was dominated with her bright red lipstick which emphasised the evilness of her smile. Her eyes were hidden by her black eye mask.
“Sorry love. I don’t know who those people are. I only came for this,” She held up the parcel as she said that. “And what with the noise and those alarms, the police will be here soon. You’d be well advised to get lost. I’m going to.”
She got angry and issued the classic phrase, “Do you know who I am?”
“You’re just an American,” was Betsy’s dismissive answer.
It didn’t seem to go down well. “I am The Dominatress and I eat people like you for breakfast. I tell people what to do and they do it. I took the mantle from my grandmother and I’m much more advanced than she was. And you, you’re going to be my little peach of a sex slave and help me get my jewels back while I simple eat you up. And you’ll start by crawling over here and giving me that parcel.”
Betsy was conscious of time passing and wanted to leave. “No,” she said. She didn’t want the protracted conversation such people tended to have where she told her victim exactly what would happen to her and how she couldn’t escape and she would hate herself for the rest of her life etc. What films were they watching for God’s sake? They certainly didn’t read any books.
The Dominatress’ eyes flashed and her hands began to glow as she approached Betsy.
Betsy looked back, now very conscious of the time. “Oh, fuck off,” she said and disappeared again into the shadows. She made her way up to the roof where she exited the way she entered. She certainly didn’t want to exit the public way. Who knew who was out there now, after all that noise?