12-layer slowdown wrap

Melvin's clothes were too baggy for Melissa's lean body, and they hindered her ability to run down the stairs. "Auuugh!" she groaned in exasperation. "Fine." She threw the clothes off, naked once again. No matter; she would simply have to retrieve her Rocketgirl costume when she was through with Miss Haller. Time to teach that wicked professor a lesson.

But when the naked heroine reached the bottom of the stairs, Miss Haller was prepared for her. No sooner had she spotted Miss Haller than she watched something emanate from the professor and expand as it came towards her. She watched as though in slow motion the translucent, cottony filter through which she perceived Miss Haller came in contact with her, sticking to her skin and expanding to wrap around her entire body. Melissa looked down and watched the sticky material seem to dissolve on her skin; where she found some not yet dissolved on her arm she picked at it, but couldn't get a good grip; it too quickly dissolved.

Another sticky, cottony layer of film hit her, wrapped around her, and quickly dissolved. She had only just looked up in time to see Miss Haller press the trigger on a strange looking handgun. A third sort of cobweb shot from the gun and wrapped around Melissa, dissolving almost instantly against her skin.

Melissa raised her hand as though to block further gunfire, but she wasn't fast enough. A fourth cobweb was already on its way, this time wrapping first around Melissa's outstretched hand before wrapping around the rest of her body and dissolving.

"Stop doing that," she grumbled and began striding towards Miss Haller to make her stop. Only Miss Haller was quicker than her, easily stepping out of her path and firing the weapon again.

Melissa couldn't turn fast enough to get a good view of Miss Haller, who continued to walk in a circle around the confused heroine. She fired a sixth cobweb at Melissa before she finally stopped walking, allowing Melissa time to finish turning around to see her.

When Melissa did finally get a good look at Miss Haller, the professor was just finishing reloading her strange weapon; six more rounds of...whatever that stuff was.

"Whaaaat...wuuzzzz...thaaaat?" Melissa drawled out her question. Her eyes slowly widened and she blinked in alarm. She slowly lifted her right hand to her lips as though she could feel why her words had come out so slowly. Only her arm, too, was moving far too slowly to make a proper analysis. She looked up again at Miss Haller and, fuming, started to charge the evil woman.

But even engaging her superspeed, she took only one stride before Miss Haller said, almost too quickly to be understood: "Ah-ah-ah, can't have you coming after me. Must get a bit further away before I can explain." And Melissa watched astonished as Miss Haller calmly turned her back and walked away. She'd gone to the far side of the living room, sat in a chair, put her weapon on a table, had a sip of tea and crossed her legs before Melissa had finished two more painstaking strides. What the hell is wrong with me? the heroine wondered.

"By now you've noticed your incredible superhuman speed is gone," Miss Haller said calmly, picking up her weapon. "That's because of the slowdown wrap I've been firing at you. Thank you again for having sex with my boy. It seems you worked up enough of a sweat doing him that you absorbed my wrap much more quickly than you might have if your skin were dry. And now that you have absorbed it, well," she shrugged and grimaced, "I guess you aren't Rocketgirl anymore."

Horrified and furious, Melissa tried to make her still-agile brain work faster to give her as much of an advantage as possible. Still walking slowly towards the villainess, and channeling her superspeed into her speaking voice, she was able to speak at a normal speed -- though to her it sounded, like everything Miss Haller said, very fast.

"How did your...," she strained her memory, "...slowdown wrap do this to me?"

"What a surprisingly intelligent question from someone so devastatingly slow," Miss Haller replied admiringly. "My slowdown wrap functions as a sort of combination symbiote and virus. It is absorbed through moist skin cells and bonds chemically to the inner layers of skin. Fragments of it are also absorbed into the bloodstream to reinforce the slowdown on a more permanent basis. Each layer of the wrap negates roughly fifteen percent of your speed. I shot you with six layers, so I've effectively reduced your speed by about ninety percent."

Rocketgirl's eyes bulged -- slowly -- as she continued to creep pointlessly forward. Too distracted by her horror to bother modulating her voice, she said, "That's...not...how...math...works."

"Oh, really, Rocket-brain?" Miss Haller replied incredulously. "Which will you believe, a bunch of figures or what you're experiencing right now? Fine; I've reduced your speed by about sixty three percent. But you'll still never be the same. I was only going to shoot you a seventh time, but for your insolence, I think I'll make it a full twelve."

Engaging her superspeed to try to get out as many words as she could, Rocketgirl blurted, "No, wait, that's not --"

Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!

To all outward appearances, Rocketgirl stood perfectly still. Her mouth hung open mid-sentence, not a sound emerging from between her lips. If she still breathed, it was imperceptible. Miss Haller walked up to her, waved a hand in front of her face, snapped her fingers by her ears. No response.

Miss Haller stared into Melissa's eyes. She craned her neck to look closely into Melissa's left eye, and was pleased to see the heroine's eyes failed to follow her. She could see veins starting to become visible in the heroine's unblinking eyes as they grew drier. Then, ever so slowly, she watched for a full minute as Rocketgirl's eyelids finally started to descend and she was able to blink once.

"This Rocketgirl is much more my speed," Miss Haller declared. "What shall I do with you?"