90% gone. A mass of worms. (DARK)

Rocketgirl felt a wave of nausea as the MRI confirmed what she already knew. Her head was filled with a wriggly mass of earworms. Where the scan should normally show something roughly the shape and size of a standard human brain, this scan showed empty space, nearly filled with short, thin little creatures. Some were isolated in the empty void filling Melissa's head. But the vast majority -- countless, perhaps thousands -- were clustered around one another. The mass of worms grew thicker and thicker the closer they got to the center of Melissa's head. There, in the middle, thousands of the little bugs were affixed to a small ball -- roughly the size of a ping pong ball.

Melissa's eyes widened, she gulped, and then began to cry uncontrollably. She had failed. Even after days in captivity, days at her disposal for planning, she had not managed to escape the evil Ms Kyoto. She had been captured easily, cloned -- replaced, in fact -- and now she was being slowly, painfully robbed of her wits, intelligence, and personality. Was there no end to her torment? Would Ms Kyoto really succeed in her vile plan to turn Melissa into an empty vessel?

"What do you think?" Ms Kyoto asked, a grin creeping into her voice as she realized her own joke. "Oh, sorry. Are you even capable of thinking about what you see? Do you know what it means?"

"FUCK YOU!" Melissa screamed. Lashing out was the best she could muster right now.

"Oh don't worry, we'll get to that," Ms Kyoto replied coolly. "But before I do, I want to make sure you know -- while you're still capable of knowing anything at all -- exactly where you stand. Do you see that tiny little ball in the middle of your head? That's your brain. What's left of it, anyway. My earworms have already digested the other 90%. Do you know what that means? Can you remember what I told you when I fed that first little earworm into your tiny little skull?"

Melissa no longer screamed when she felt the pain of the worms' bites. But she must have just been bitten again because she was squirting and her body had frozen rigid. Her breathing gradually slowed as she responded to Ms Kyoto, through her breaking tears, "Please." Begging, she'd decided, was her best option since she could do nothing to help herself. "Please make them stop. You've proven yourself. You've made some truly remarkable inventions. The Mind Sifter? The earworms? You've even cloned a person! You are the most brilliant scientist alive today. There's no doubt in my mind. Please just...please don't destroy me. Make the earworms stop; don't let them eat my brain. The last 10%. The last 10%! You said this is the part of my brain that I actually use. Please don't take it away from me. I'll do anything. I'll go away, I won't tell anyone what you've done to me. M2, she can still be me, she can take my place -- I can just go away and be somebody else, somebody new. You'll get no trouble from me, I swear. Just...please, Ms Kyoto. Please don't do this to me."

Ms Kyoto's expression had shifted dramatically during Melissa's pitiful monologue. She frowned now, her brow wrinkled. Melissa thought she detected genuine pity written on her captor's face.

Then suddenly the dour expression was gone. Ms Kyoto broke into the widest closed-mouthed smile Melissa had ever seen on her face. She shook her head slowly back and forth as she began slowly applauding.

"Bravo, Rocketgirl, bravo!" she said. "What a performance. Why, if I didn't know what an intrepid superheroine you used to be, I'd probably even believe you meant it! But no, Rocketgirl. You'll get no mercy from me. I told you I was coming for you. I won't let up now. You're all mine, and I'm never going to let you go. Now, that brain of yours, the one that makes you who you are? That can go. And it will. In fact, I'm going to help accelerate the process. I just can't wait until you really are mine -- all mine, forever and completely -- to rewrite and do with as I please."

Panicked but ****, Melissa tried one more tack. "But if you completely eliminate me, you'll never truly be satisfied. You'll never get to taunt me with it, never lord it over me. There won't be any me left for you to show you're superior. You'll just have a ragdoll that looks like me."

But Ms Kyoto was unfazed. "Wrong again, Rocketbimbo. I did say the worms would eat your entire brain. But I have a confession to make. I'll let you keep just a few things."

Melissa shuddered with fear. "What...what are you talking about? Hunnnnnnhhhh-aaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhh AAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhh AAAAAAAAAAA!" She came again as the worms took another bite.

"Well, I think I already hinted that I want you to keep your pleasure and pain centers. After all, if you're going to be a lust-crazed superwhore, you'll need something to work with. And I'll let you keep your memory of being Rocketgirl, and of everything I've done to you. You'll need to keep a few basic language skills, so you'll understand what I and all your customers are instructing you to do. And you'll have to have some basic motor skills -- it's no fun fucking a limp rag. You'll have to be an active participant! But other than that? Time to say goodbye to your precious," she drew little circles through the air with her index finger as it waggled toward Rocketgirl's nose, "...little...very little...mind." She tagged the tip of the onetime heroine's nose with her finger and giggled.