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An Introduction to the Fabulous Flying Fox
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3a
Episode 4a |
Episode 3a: "The Challenge of the Mental Master"The Flying Fox is enjoying a moonlight patrol, flying through the air above Honolulu when she gets a police call on the little radio she wears on her belt. She swoops down to confront a robber, and we see for the first time that she has more than one way to subdue a bad guy. She doesn't hit him, she doesn't try to fight him, all she does is land in front of him and strike a pose. He stops cold, his jaw drops wide open, and his gun falls from his nerveless hand. He stammers at her, telling her how beautiful she is, and how he's been wanting to meet her. She giggles, moves into his embrace, and allows him to kiss her. As he kisses her, she draws psychic energy from him. A few moments later, when the Honolulu police arrive on the scene, the Fox is gone and the robber is lying helplessly on the ground with a note from the Fox pinned to him. He has a big smile on his face, and mutters how wonderful it is to be a man when there are women like the Flying Fox in the world. As the police wrap up the guy and take him away, Steven Lord and the assistant we met last issue also come on the scene. Steven's been keeping a close eye on how the Fox operates, and has a completely different take on this. He suggests to his assistant, only half jokingly, that if it gets out that this is how the Fox treats the bad guys, he wouldn't be surprised to see a slight bump up in the crime rate. The assistant chuckles and suggests that maybe, if Steve weren't such a strait-laced dope, he could be the one getting a bump up from the Fox. In response, Steve just glares at him. Meanwhile, as she flies over a forested area of the island, Raven is very pleased with herself for not having had to resort to violence. What she did with that thug doesn't work on everyone, of course, but when it works it's a lot easier to handle a lovestruck bad guy than it is to handle someone who insists on putting up a fight. Also, as a bonus, whenever she does make that trick work, she gets a lot of extra energy out of it. For three or four days after she's had an opportunity to drain away a bad guy's will to resist, she's even stronger and faster than normal. Also, she giggles, the truth of it is that she gets an almost sexual thrill out of sucking the energy out of a bad guy. Granted, it's nowhere near as good as the real thing, but it feels just fine. In fact, it's . . . Aaaaaaahhh! Suddenly, an intensely erotic sensation lances into Raven's brain. And it's not a pleasant thing. It's extremely painful. Her body feels as if it's on fire. As she struggles to maintain consciousness, she loses her concentration and starts falling. She crashes through several tree branches before hitting the ground hard. As she lies there, moaning and groaning, out of the corner of her eye she notices someone standing near her. Though she has extraordinary night vision, it's dark, things are blurry, and she can't quite make him out. She does, however, get an impression of youth, skinniness, and a big head. The figure kneels next to her, caresses the curve of her hips, and whispers into her ear, "From now on, you're my girlfriend." Then the erotic pain hits her again, this time with even greater intensity, and this time she does black out. The Flying Fox has been captured by the self-styled Mental Master, a geeky-looking fourteen-year-old boy who uses an oversized cybernetic device to enhance his mental powers. He doesn't actually have a big head, but because of his helmet it sure looked that way in silhouette. The upshot of it is that the Mental Master is thoroughly infatuated with the Flying Fox. He wants her to be his girlfriend and operate out of his secret base. As he takes her on a tour of his impossibly huge underground laboratory, he explains to her that for the past few weeks he's been building stuff for her to use against super-powered opponents like Pele. He offers her overdesigned vehicles, supercharged weapons, and weird gadgets. The gadgeteer in her is fascinated, and the woman in her is flattered that the boy would go to so much trouble to win her favor, but she already has a boyfriend. Besides, the Mental Master is much too young for her, and that wasn't very nice what he did to her to get her here. It was painful, and falling out of the sky like that, she might have been seriously . . . ooooOOOoooo! That's not painful. And as she throws herself giddily into the boy's arms, showering him with affection, he laughs and tells her what she's experiencing now is only a small sample of the pleasures that await her. Unfortunately for the Mental Master, once she regains her lucidity Raven still wants no part of this. Yeah, what he did to her felt really great, but it wasn't real. Ultimately, all he did was push a button in her brain, and that's no basis for a long-term relationship. She tells him she thinks he's a very sick little boy, and that he desperately needs some psychiatric help. Where are his parents, anyway? This sets him off. He tells the Fox he thought she'd be different, but it turns out she's no better than his obnoxious sister, the one who always sneaks into his laboratory and ruins his experiments. After all the effort he's put into preparing this secret base to share with her, how dare the Flying Fox reject him? He starts launches telekinetic attacks, throwing things at her with the power of his mind. But his telekinetic attacks are clumsy, and the Fox doesn't have any trouble dodging them. Eventually, she closes with him, knocks his helmet off his head, and pins him to the ground. For a moment, she's not quite sure what to do with him. Sure, he's a little nutty, and he zapped her and kidnaped her in order to get her here, but he's just a kid. Besides, he did go to a lot of trouble to set up this secret base for her, which is actually pretty cool. In fact, come to think of it, he's not all that bad looking. Maybe, if he were a little older . . . which, come to think of it, he will be soon enough . . . Before she realizes what's happening, Raven finds herself kissing the boy. At first, he's in the throes of rapture. His beloved Flying Fox is kissing him! But after a moment, he realizes something is wrong. He can feel himself getting weaker. He can feel the life energy being drained from him into her. He opens his eyes and catches a glimpse of the Flying Fox as a bat-winged, ruddy-skinned, soul-devouring, demonic succubus. He panics, and even without his helmet launches a powerful psychic attack that knocks the succubus-Fox off him and slams her headfirst into a wall. He blinks, sees that the unconscious Flying Fox doesn't have bat-wings, and decides he must have imagined it. That, he pouts, retrieving his helmet and placing it back on his head, is one of the problems with being such a powerful mentalist. Sometimes reality can get a bit confused. He's not sure why he saw her as a monster, but decides it must have had something to do with the way she'd initiated physical intimacy. Aggressive girls had always frightened him. He'd always seen them as being monsters. Evidently, even the beautiful Flying Fox was no exception to this rule. He kneels next to her, strokes her hair, tells her he's sorry this didn't work out the way he'd hoped it would, and says that it would probably be better for them to get a fresh start under some other circumstance at some other time. At this point, his skinny, gawky older sister pokes her head in, wanting to know what's going on. He explains that he has a problem with his new girlfriend. But the sister's not really listening. She more interested in what one of his nearby gadgets is supposed to do. He yells at her not to touch that, but she pushes a button anyway, and the machine blows up. Grumbling, the Mental Master has his sister help him pull the Flying Fox into a machine that he says will erase her memory of his underground laboratory. The next thing Raven knows, she's waking up on the forest floor, with no memory of what happened to her after experiencing that terrible pain. She sits back on her heels, taking deep breaths, thinking she must have suffered a blackout. Still, despite having some mild cuts and bruises from the fall, she feels pretty good. Supercharged, in fact. She gets to her feet stretches herself, and decides she must be even tougher than she'd thought, to get through a fall like that with such slight damage. She launches herself into the air, and from high overhead takes a look at the forest below. She grins, finds herself thinking that this wouldn't be a bad place to set up a secret base, and decides to come back in a week or so to scout out a location for a Flying Foxcave. Meanwhile, down in the laboratory, the Mental Master's sister is running around breaking things, wondering, "What's this do? What's this do? What's this do?" But he's too exhausted even to try to stop her. He definitely needs to spend some time getting over this strange lethargy and weakness, and plans to take at least a week to rest and recuperate. He's confident that the subtle suggestions he planted in the Fox's pretty head will predispose her to agree to be his girlfriend the next time around, but he darn well intends to be at the peak of his power when next the Mental Master and the Flying Fox meet. |