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The Latex Flood

Part 4

Sponsored by Sanmer

By Draconicon

For the next three days, the stallion didn't come in, and in those days, Margaret was kept busy. Not so much with the super-stuff (though there were some heroes that came in and tried to cause some trouble that she had to deal with, surreptitiously) but more with 'enhancing' some of the workers at the club. Wesley might have been afraid of supers as regards to himself, but he sure didn't mind her working on his employees.

The moose wasn't the only one that got an enhancement down below, either. Every male got their dicks sheathed in latex, grown by at least three inches for the viewing pleasure of the crowd. Some of them went further, the employees asking her to make their balls bigger, some of the females asking her to give them breasts that would catch the eye a little bit more. She was honestly surprised at the level of cosmetic aid that they asked for, and how willing they were to get it.

Then the tips started rolling in.

Three nights after she started, the workers came by after their shift and dropped off some bills. Not much in the case of some, more in the case of others, but enough to total up to a few hundred by the end of the night. The hippo blinked at the sheer amount that she'd been left, and managed to catch one of the guys leaving at the end of the night. She pulled the badger over by the shoulder, holding up one of the twenties that he'd left her.

"What's this about?" she asked.

"Hey, just giving you your share."

"What do you mean, my share?"

"Would you prefer a surgeon's fee or something?"

She looked down, glancing at the black sheen on his dick. His was one of the more complicated models, since he'd asked for his cock to look like a horse shaft as it emerged from his sheath. It had taken a bit of imaginative work to spread some of her goo around the entrance of his sheath, leaving it with the command to form into a horse cock shape as he got hard. Particularly difficult considering that the middle-aged badger only had about seven inches to show and the demand was for a horse cock at twelve inches, but she'd made it work.

She looked at the bill again, then slowly let it absorb into her arm. The badger shivered at the display, as she had half-expected he would. Powers were scary to the average person, even when they were beneficial.

"Alright...I'll take it."

"Better not to be beholden, you know."

"Yeah...I get that."

The badger gave her a one-finger salute, then turned to leave. He barely bothered getting dressed before walking out the club door. Margaret shook her head, sitting at the empty bar as Wesley worked on closing the place up.

"You're boosting my business pretty well," he admitted as he turned some of the stools upside-down, putting them up on the bar. "You think that you're going to stick around when the week's up?"

"Only if you want a war with the Union."

"Heh..."

"I'm serious."

The bull's face fell. She knew that he knew the consequences of her turning down the V. G. They were going to tell everyone where she was, and considering that the news were still blaring about the 'attack' she'd made on one of the stations, there was no way that they would turn down the chance to come after her. She'd escaped once by surprise. She didn't put that much likelihood on escaping the full-blown efforts of the Union a second time.

As Wesley continued cleaning up, she stroked her finger along the top of the bar. Little bits of dust and crumbs faded into her body, not quite going down for digestion but rather for storage. She'd started taking in stuff that didn't go stale or go bad so easily when she had the time, storing little bits and pieces in pockets of latex inside of her. They would be useful if she ended up having to run off somewhere.

Here's hoping I don't have to, but better to be prepared.

So far, things hadn't gone as badly as they could have. In the last three days, there'd been two incidents with other supers. One was a hero, the other was someone like her that hadn't chosen a side just yet. The first had been dealt with simply enough; she'd just created a little latex mound and sent it scurrying out the door. The hero had seen it, immediately disregarded the reason that they'd come into the club in the first place - harassing one of the dancers, from the look of it - and had chased after the latex blob.

The other, however...

She shook her head. The second incident had nearly spiraled into an explosive finale, and if she hadn't been on the ball at the time, it would have. The mouse female had been at the bar, her hands pressed against her head, staring into her drink. It had seemed completely normal until Margaret spotted the way that the glass was trembling when nothing else in the room was, and seen the way that the water inside was starting to flex and shake and freeze and expand.

She'd had ice powers, and she had no control of them. The frost had spread across the glass while Wesley was dealing with a drunken patron, and it had spread halfway across the bar to the glasses and bottles just behind them before Margaret got to her.

She remembered how that had gone. A woman that wanted to drink to forget, but whose powers were getting more and more out of control the more that she tried to forget. She didn't want to stop, so Margaret had to make her stop.

Pressing one hand to her side, she winced at the marks along her latex body. The ice shards that had come from that little fight had been...rather uncomfortable. Some of the marks had healed, some hadn't, so she kept them covered with extra latex to keep them from showing. The fewer people that found out that sharp stuff could cause her problems, the better.

Hopefully the ambulance found her, she thought, remembering flowing around the other woman and walking her out to the alley in the back. Lots of internal stabbing during that incident. Hopefully someone found out what she could do, too...

She sighed. She understood better than most people the urge to stay free when they found out that they were a super. God, she didn't want to be a hero, not after what the Union had done, but the idea of being a villain was almost as bad. The V. G. encouraged all kinds of chaos, and they committed all kinds of crimes. The only thing that made them vaguely better was that they had a better internal code about behavior, and anyone that stepped over it ended up getting slapped down. Hard.

"Gonna sit there all night again?"

Margaret looked up from the bar, then slowly turned around, glancing at the rest of the club. She leaned back, her body sagging slightly as she sighed.

"I'll stick around. Sleep in one of the VIP rooms or something."

"Alright. You got the key?"

The hippo stuck out her tongue, the iron thing popping out of the black latex inside then disappearing into it again. Wesley shivered.

"Never fucking going to get used to that."

"Might want to try. I'm going to be here for another four days."

"Don't remind me..."

She was never entirely sure if he was looking forward to her departure or not. At the beginning, she would have said that he couldn't wait to see her go, but after what she had done for his business, particularly with keeping the place from imploding with random hero raids and super problems, it seemed like he was warming to her. At the very least, he was good with what she could do, even if he wasn't entirely good with her.

That was something, she supposed. When you got a racist to admit that someone that he hated was useful, even if not likeable, it was a step forward. Not the best end point, but a step forward, nonetheless.

Shaking her head, she waved him out and leaned back against the bar. As soon as he was out of sight, she let herself puddle a bit, some of the solidity going out of her body as she just formed to the shape of the long flat surface. She was halfway liquid at that point, the strain of holding a solid shape disappearing. It was almost like sliding into a relaxing bath, if one was the bath rather than sliding into it.

She bubbled a bit as she tried to get comfortable, failing utterly. Even with four days left, she knew that she needed to make a decision sooner than later. Waiting until the last minute was just begging for fate to hit her with something of an emergency, preventing her from calling the V. G. The Guild would make good on their threat, tell the heroes where to find her, and her life as a normal citizen would be over.

Margaret laughed. It was over, anyway. All she could do was make sure that the next part of her life was better than the old part.

And that's going to happen with the villains? she thought.

Well, it's not happening with the heroes, she answered herself. And how long does anyone make it as a neutral? The record's a year.

To be fair, neutrals weren't common. Any super that didn't join either the Union or the Guild ended up dealing with being hunted by both, scapegoated by the city for everything that went bad for either side, and generally being hated by most of the people in the city. The Union had the reputation for doing good things (even if explosively and dangerously) and there was nobody that really trusted people from the Guild, considering they actively called themselves villains. Neutrals had no reputation but that of monsters, of those that were so bad that not even the villains would touch them, and that meant that the city tended to look at them the same way. Even if it was completely subconsciously, they were on the watch for those that didn't fly the colors of either side.

Kind of amazing that Wesley is willing to go this far with trusting me, she thought, her head bubbling down into a puddle as she went as close to liquid as her body could go. Guess all that money means more to him than the possibility of me blowing this place up in a frenzy.

People thought that neutrals eventually went crazy without support. Maybe they did. Maybe it was propaganda. All the sources that she'd been looking through over the last three days hadn't been very good at giving her facts, considering they were almost all anecdotal rather than biographical. But the fact was that no neutral had lasted longer than a year before either committing suicide or being hunted down by either side for being a 'danger to the city.'

She sighed. Maybe if things were actively worse for her, she'd have tried that, but at the moment, she knew that she had little choice. Shaking her head, she forced herself to get solid again.

Call them in the morning, she thought. Call them and just make the decision.

There was no point in stalling, but she knew that it would have to be morning. She was too melancholy at the moment to really give a believable acceptance message now. She'd just sound like she was doing it out of desperation. She was, but she didn't want them to know that. Bargaining was probably going to be a thing, terms of entry and all that, and she needed them to take her seriously.

As she reformed to a proper hippo shape, she heard the soft 'snikt' of a key in the door. She threw herself back to half-liquid shape, flowing up and over the bar like a fountain firing off, and settled behind it, under cover. The door opened, and she extended an eyestalk just past the top of the bar.

It was her dancer, she was surprised to see. The stallion hadn't shown up for three days, and now he was finally here. He looked left, right, left again from the door, then stepped inside and locked it. The stallion was dressed in a trench coat, something that was barely open in the front, enough to show that he was wearing very little under it.

What's he doing here past closing? she wondered.

She remained behind the counter, watching as he made his way to the stage at the far end of the club. He tossed his coat off, standing there in nothing but a thong. It wasn't until he started snapping his fingers, sparks flying from his digits and rising in the air, that she realized just what he was doing.

He was here to practice, not as a danger, but as a super.

Margaret stayed low, internally cursing as she realized what sort of sticky position she was in. Either he had recently developed his powers, or he had them before she'd come crashing in that first night. Whichever it was, he'd been avoiding the club ever since her return, probably hoping to keep from outing himself as a super.

He sent me to the heroes, she remembered. Pushed me, at the very least. That means either he's a recruiter...or he's a spy...

If he was the latter, that would explain how the hero had known to look here for her. The chase had been easy enough to divert, but if he had told them where she was, then this was a big problem. A big problem.

The question right then was whether she should confront him. If she did and he turned out to be one of theirs, then they were going to have a fight. There was no ifs, ands, or buts there. They were going to have a fight, and she'd have to use that fight to send a message to the Union. If she did, what would she say?

If she didn't confront him, then she'd need to decide what to say to Wesley. Considering his hate of supers, that meant that he would either fire the stallion immediately - something that would get him in trouble with the Union - or he would say something that might put him in danger. In either case, that meant that she'd have caused another mess.

Well, you already decided to join the villains, she thought. Might as well see if you can bring another name to their side.

The hippo dragged herself upright as the stallion continued his dance. Sheathing her eyes in a lens of latex that was just thin enough to see through but not quite thin enough to show the lights, she made her way to the stage. He was still dancing with his back to her when she reached the edge of it, shaking his ass back and forth to lights that danced on either side of him.

"Hey, there."

And just like that, he froze in place. He whipped his head around, staring down at her as she crossed her arms under her breasts.

"Y-you're still here," he said, stuttering.

"Yes, I am. And you've been missing."

"...Uh, oh, that's just my days off."

"For three days running?"

"..."

"I'm not hearing an answer."

"Why didn't you join them?"

The question was as expected as it was sudden, but even as he asked, she felt a sudden flare of heat. Instead of answering, she brought her arm up, latex flowing off as it did. The heat caught her hastily-made barrier, burning against the latex and leaving it bubbling, but not quite falling apart just yet. She looked around it, shaking her head as the stallion leaped from the stage.

Well, he's going to be reporting me if I don't stop him. Why do you make me do this?

Margaret was surprised at how calm she was. The fact that he was going to report her should have had her shivering in her non-existent boots, but instead of panicking, she was on the move. The black ooze slid through her feet to the floor, converting everything that it touched to a shiny goo blob. She stretched it all the way to the door, and managed to cover and coat it before he reached it. The stallion grabbed for a knob that was no longer there, then stumbled back as he realized that he was trapped.

The same ooze filled the windows. Not just to keep them from being used as an exit, but also to keep them from being broken. She had done what she could to keep things stable and safe in the club, and she didn't want Wesley to come back to a ton of damages. The latex could at least act as a cushion for the furniture, too.

By the time that the stallion looked back at her, she'd coated most of the main room of the club. She walked with a slurp and smack on the floor, her body dripping and oozing into it with every step.

"You wanted me to join them. I tried."

"No, you went there with a record!"

"And?"

"And...and...you should have told me. I would have -"

"Reported me?"

"...I...well..."

"Like you reported me being here, once I got settled? What happened? Wesley tell you that I was looking for you, and you decided to try and get rid of me before I caused more problems for you?"

He stumbled back against the wall. A hint of light burned bright enough to allow her to see it through her lenses, but the heat was what concerned her. Since he was right against the wall, though, that was easy to handle. She forced the latex up and around his hand, and the light went out.

Of course, the screams started after that. He howled, holding his hand at the wrist as he fell to his knees. The stallion begged for mercy, shouting for her to stop, that it hurt, that his hand was burning off. Probably was; he had seared the latex to his skin, and it was bubbling all over his fingers.

Oddly enough, that only settled the calm further around her, and she realized that she was sinking deeper into what she had been for GenEnji. Someone that went out to torture. Someone that went out to hurt. Someone that went out to take care of the problem. The stallion was a problem, and she had to deal with him.

But...

Margaret took a deep breath, looking down at his hand. Rather than remove it, she clenched it tighter, smothering the flames and the light. She sealed the latex to his nerves, binding it to him as new skin. He still screamed, but fear equaled pain, now.

Then it was done. He lifted his hand to his face. Black, soft, smooth, rubbery. That was what he had, not flesh. He tried to snap his fingers, and the sparks and light refused to come. His breath came faster.

"What...what did you do to me?! What happened to my powers?!"

"You burned your hand. I fixed it. Consider it the last favor that you're getting from me."

She might have been a torturer, and she still could do that. But that didn't mean that she had to. Whatever she did now, she did because she wanted to, or decided that it was the right course of action. Anybody else was just someone in the background, someone that affected things a little, but she was the one that made the final call. Nobody else to blame, nobody else to make her do the stupid things, but that meant it was all her responsibility.

Margaret had finally reached him, and the first thing she did was grab him by the throat. She lifted him properly to his feet, leaned him against the wall, and then made herself let go. It took more effort than she wanted to admit.

"No more games. What's your name?"

"...Sunspark."

"Let me guess. You snap your fingers and create little explosions with gas and hydrogen. Harmless in small amounts, vaguely hypnotic, even, but with the ability to make much bigger ones in a pinch."

"..."

"Yes, that's what I thought. You wanted to blind me and run. Then you thought you could just burn your way out if you had to. Instead, you managed to melt something to your skin, stifling the air that you could reach, and then you ended up burning off everything from the top layer all the way down to the nerves. Which is why you're being smart enough not to try it again with your other hand."

"You...you're a villain already..."

"No. But you are making it clear that it's my only option, if this is how I'm going to be treated by the other side."

"We can't have criminals...not in there...What if they did more bad things? What if they committed crimes as a hero?"

"Then I guess I'd be no different from someone that just tried to kill me, would I?"

He gritted his teeth, obviously still fighting pain. She didn't care, not nearly as much as she should. She wished she did. He had been friendly, and a good dancer, and seemed like a good person.

But it had been a lie. She sighed.

"Are you a recruiter, then?"

"Well, yes. We need to keep our numbers up somehow."

"I see. So, what, you keep an eye out for any supers you can find?"

"Lots come to the clubs. They want to forget about things, pretend that nothing happened. As soon as you used your powers on Wesley, I knew that you'd be someone that the Union could use. Maybe even make you better."

"Unless you had a way to get rid of superpowers, I wouldn't be interested. So...why did you finally come back?"

"I needed to practice. The Union wants me to keep my powers secret."

"So why are you telling me - oh."

The pieces clicked just as she heard the first thump on the door outside. She looked at it, then at him again.

"You came with back-up."

"You made a mistake with the mouse," he muttered, grunting as he rubbed his latex hand. "She could have been a hero, but you threw her out, and she woke up at the hospital in a panic. The villains got her before we could seize her and deal with her. We knew someone was in the club, but we didn't know it was you."

"I see..."

She should have guessed that they would have picked up on that. Handling the mouse the way she had was messy, but she'd been limited in options at the time. So much for her having a good way forward.

Thump. Another 'knock' on the door, one that strained the latex across it. She shook her head again, looking back at Sunspark.

"You know what? I liked you, but you really are a piece of shit."

"Go on, then. Be a villain. Hurt me more."

"You think that's what I want to do?"

She did, but it wasn't all she wanted. Margaret shook her head, slowly pulling the latex that surrounded the club back in. She drained the drawers of the cash registers, pulled in all the receipts. Every single financial resource she could find, she pulled out, and she even managed to take some of the bottles from the bar. She shook her head at the stallion.

"Every single time that I think there's something good out there, someone like you has to take it away."

"Well, we're taking you in, now."

"I'd like to see you try."

He did, and just like before, he screamed.

Margaret emerged from the sewers a few miles off, having bound Sunspark inside of a bubble of latex when he tried to create something hot enough to relate to his namesake. It hadn't gone well for him, and she'd be surprised if they managed to save his other arm.

Still, it hadn't gone perfectly for her. Even though she'd managed to regenerate the arm that had been burnt off - she'd had to keep adding more and more to keep the heat from reaching her while she retreated, and that meant staying connected to the burning sensation - she still had the marks from it. Rather than being smooth and clean, her arm was pock-marked and bubbling, almost like a burn victim's. The only thing that kept it from being a true horror show was the fact that she could cover it, and more than that, that she didn't have to feel the pain. Her nerve endings could be shut down, at least for the moment.

The hippo groaned as she stumbled away from the manhole, slowly stumbling down the darkened street. In the distance, the club was on fire, and she knew that Wesley was going to be pissed. Not in the morning, but in a few minutes.

She looked up at the apartment building ahead of her. She knew the bull kept his residence here, had checked that out on her second day of employment. Shaking her head, she dragged herself up to the side of the building, then extended her arm up the brick wall. As soon as she found his window, she pulled herself up, leaning against the brick wall as she tapped the edge of it.

He woke up almost immediately, the paranoid bull looking at her and going wide-eyed. He rushed to the window and opened it, whispering in hissing fashion.

"What are you doing here?"

"Giving you what's left."

"What's left? What are you talking about?"

"You had a Union guy among the dancers," she muttered, pulling herself up to the windowsill. "He came back tonight."

"What - who?"

"Remember that stallion?"

"...no, no way."

"Yes. He did this."

She showed him her arm, the bubbling, burned one, and he stared at that. He looked at her, then at it, then at her again.

"Holy shit..."

"Yeah. Sorry to tell you, but your club's gone."

"What?!"

"He brought back-up, and then tried to burn me to a crisp. I tried to contain it, but..." She flexed her arm again. "I saved what I could. Here."

As she slowly pushed out the bills, receipts, and equipment that she had managed to save, as well as the most expensive bottles that had been behind the bar, Wesley just stared at her in shock. The bull didn't say anything, didn't ask for any explanations, didn't do a damn thing. Instead, he just stared at her, and she wasn't sure if he was angry, scared, or something else entirely.

What she did know was that it wasn't safe for her to hang around if the Union started poking around the surrounding area. As soon as Sunspark was conscious again, he'd tell them that she had managed to get away from the building, and that would start a search party. She needed to find the V. G. before that if she wanted any chance of maintaining even a hint of freedom.

"Do you still have the phone?" she asked.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"What? The phone. I need the phone."

"Woman -"

"Phone."

Some of her control was slipping, the pain starting to slide up her arm. She didn't want to stay here any longer than she had to, but she needed that phone. It was a direct line to them, and that meant that she'd be able to get in touch faster than any other way if she had it. Was she panting? Maybe, but it was a remembered reaction.

Wesley hesitated for a moment, then reached for his nightstand. The bull in his briefs pulled the phone out and slapped it into her hand.

"Here. Now, are you okay?"

"Will be," she hissed through clenched jaws. "Hurting after that."

"Come inside."

"But -"

"Inside."

Much as she didn't want to risk spreading the danger around, she owed Wesley something. It had been business thus far, but he had given her a good place for a few days, and she had been the cause of his place of business being burnt to the ground. She had managed to save a few ledgers, most of his cash, and some of his supplies, but the brick-and-mortar place was gone. That was going to take him a long time to recover from.

As she settled herself, she realized that her legs were wobbling. She was weaker than she thought, and had a hard time staying on her feet. He caught her as she stumbled, leading her to a chair and helping her sit on it.

"Nnngh...I'll just make this call and go," she muttered.

"Yeah? Try and walk without me helping you."

"I'll do it."

"Yeah? Show me."

She tried to get up, only for her legs to almost collapse beneath her. It was like her body couldn't decide whether to be solid or liquid at that point, both too hard and too soft from the extreme heat and drain that she had gone through. Margaret slumped back, rubbing her head.

"Water...I just need some water."

"And some fucking medical attention, woman. Look at you."

"I have to get out of here. If they came for me there, they'll come for you, too. They'll know it was your place, and they'll hold you responsible."

"Maybe."

"Definitely. The Union..."

"I'll figure that out. Besides...my workers would kill me if I just kicked you out. They made that fucking clear."

"..."

"You rest for a minute. Worst comes to worst, we'll stuff you in a wheelbarrow and I'll carry you back down to the sewers, but for now, fucking rest."

"...What happened to wanting me gone, huh?"

"...Idiots can learn."

Apparently, they could. Margaret watched him leave without so much as a growl or a sneer, not even a scowl on his face. He would have been allowed all those things for the fact that she had been responsible for his club going up in smoke, but he didn't indulge. Instead, he just went out of the room to the kitchen, and she heard water running.

Either he's pulling the best scam of all time, or he genuinely wants to help.

Then again, he might just be hating the Union so much that any dislike for her was just eclipsed by that fiery fury, but he didn't seem angry. Some small part of her worried that he was going to call the Union on her, direct them to her in an attempt to get a reward, but she squelched that. That sort of thinking was going to get her killed. The minute that she decided that everyone in the world was against her was the moment that they might as well be. It was a way of thinking that basically guaranteed it would come true, somehow.

There's crap people out here...but there's decent ones. You're not that unique, you know, she told herself. If you can be good - and you're goddamn good, in your own way - then there's other people that are the same.

It was the only way that she could convince herself of that at the moment. Mathematically, it stood to reason that if she could be good, then so could other people. God knew that the odds favored other people in that direction more than her.

The End

Summary: Margaret faces a big danger this time, and ends up in some serious trouble.

Tags: F/solo, nudity, latex, burns, pain, horse, bull, club, supers, superpowers, injury, hippo, Latexia, series,