Queen of the jungle

I was pulled to my feet and towards the turtle throne by Critter Captain, made to watch as Mighty Minotaur and Wicked Werewolf (two of her most infamous and recognizable goons) carried Regina away towards a different part of the woods. The vast majority of the furries that were in the court area followed them, leaving the two of us alone with Critter's standing guards and Labrador Lass.

"So, naive and enthusiastic? How long do you think it will be before your sidekick breaks? Think you're gonna be able to find a replacement once she decides to-"

"I know you're in charge here, but I'm going to have to cut you off there." Unsurprisingly, Captain Critter swatted me again.

"Yes, I am. But I am such a nice host that I will allow you to continue. It's called politeness, you could learn a thing or two about it." As annoying as it was to hear a villain sermon me, I was not planning on provoking her again.

"I can assure you that Flashy is unbreakable, at least in that regard. The longer you have her here the bigger the risk of your followers defecting from you, not of her joining." She contained her laugh. "I am as serious as a heart attack. She could literally take it for days without a break."

She remained unconvinced of it."You did see the size of the dicks on the beast-men carrying her, right? I've seen many ladies and men who enjoy intercourse more than they enjoy living. Few of them can take being Eiffel towered by foot-longs for an hour without having their psyche change dramatically. I've only seen one who endured two hours. The pair that took her can do that for three." She raised a finger at the mention of each number. "And even if she could outlast them, I saw more critters going there than I could be bothered to count. Your sidekick will join my safari and I would advise you to make peace with that fact."

When I opened my mouth to voice a protest, she shoved those three raised fingers inside of it. They pressed over my tongue while her thumb and pinky positioned themselves under my chin. "No, no, no. I think I've heard enough from you for quite a while. Letting you speak more silly stuff would be quite counterproductive towards your taming, wouldn't it be?"

Labrador Lass barked in agreement and shifted into a mostly human form, on which only her ears and tail appeared abnormal. "Captain, shall I strip her?"

My mind panicked over the possibility of them removing the ring from me. Captain Critter had seemingly agreed with her minion since the latter had already started her task, throwing away my hat and pulling the mask away from my face.

"Ah, but I should have guessed it was you- dammit, random stranger." The captain swore something too quietly for me to hear it. "One of these days I will actually have someone important unmasked and it will make up for all these embarrassing moments."

I probably should have kept quiet, but I was not going to let my ego get bruised like that. "I'm literally a journalist!" I tried to yell in defense of my civilian importance. Unfortunately, I kinda forgot that there were fingers in my mouth, and I was cut off by the screams of pain at the very first word.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that!" I apologized to my victim who also happened to be my supervillain captor. My life had really gone off-rails at some point. I stood up, accidentally throwing Labrador Lass to the ground. A few of the guards tried to take me down, but it was rather easy for me to shove them a good couple of feet away while I attempted to check the damage.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck! They're broken!" Captain Critter had fallen to her knees due to the pain and was bawling her eyes out over the injury I caused her. I was blindsided by this feeling of a shotgun shooting straight through my heart. No one ever cried in pain during training, and my fights had been adrenaline fueled scrambles where both sides had other things distracting their minds. This was the first real time where I was witnessing how easily I could make someone else suffer. It disgusted me.

"Fix her. Fucking fix her right now." I yelled at my ring, as if it was a person and the one truly responsible for me breaking Captain Critter's fingers. The light fire made me feel like there had been an elephant stomping on my chest and it just now decided to move. I mindlessly went towards the captain and put my hands on her shoulder. "You'll be okay. You're okay now, please feel yourself. I swear you're okay."

She stared at me with tears still falling down her cheeks. She looked around us. She was perplexed over what I had done, intimidated by the fact I so easily took control away from here by pure accident, and I dare say there was even a hint of admiration.

It took a minute for the tension to evaporate. No one dared say anything, but it was obvious that I had somehow healed Captain Critter's hand. Which raised questions on who was really the authority here. Not wanting to learn what the outcome would be otherwise, I invited her to sit again on top of the gimp as I kneeled in front of it. She wordlessly thanked me with a nod of her head, likely fearing that her guards might have been scared enough to try and flip loyalties otherwise.

"Why did you let us take you?" She asked once her voice was steady enough not to crack.

"It's your zone." I answered, surprised that it needed mentioning.

"And that's it?" She asked again, which left me confused as to how I was meant to respond to that.

"Do I need another reason? Aren't you the authority here?" It felt like one of us didn't quite know how this was meant to work, and the likelihood of it being her rather than me didn’t seem high.

"Correct, I am the authority here.” She slowly nodded, not quite believing herself in evidence of the facts. “But you could have easily overpowered the beasts that took you and your sidekick in, and left. Why didn't you do so? The coat that Lass took couldn't have been that valuable. And even if it was, you would have no reason to have let me speak down to you, much less the rest of the stuff I did."

"But it's your zone. And I am a heroine. There are rules and regulations to this stuff. Sure, I’m not officially registered with the government and such, but I’m pretty sure that I have to follow the law of how zones work. And since I’m not a lawyer, it was just safer to assume that, you know…” I felt too embarrassed to finish the sentence myself, since the look in all the faces around me showed that my impression of what I was and wasn’t allowed to do was mistaken. “Besides, even if I hadn’t been legally obligated to do it, I should have! What’s the point of you being a professional villain if a hero could just come into your turf and beat you up? That’s hardly sportsmanlike, and it sure doesn’t sound fair!”

Captain Critter took a moment to process those last words. She put her hands on her face, and stared at me intensely. Suddenly, she stood up, stripped naked, sat herself on top of her throne once more, opened her legs, and touched her right knee a couple of times. “Strip yourself and lay on it.” The order was loud and clear, and she did a masterful job at hiding any emotions she might have felt. I would have applauded her over it, except I had just fallen back into the reality of my situation and that I had to hurry to obey her.

The one good thing about this is that at least I was the one taking my clothes off, rather than Labrador Lass or someone else doing it. Not only I wouldn’t be able to take my ring off, but surely no one would even notice if I didn’t go for it. I might have caused another scene if someone had tried to take it from me, so the relief of not having to worry about it negated the few nerves I got from what was about to come. Once I laid on top of Captain Critter’s knees, the swift swatting started.

“Out of all! The chivalrous! High horse! Honor code! Bullshit! I’ve ever heard of! That has to be! The most! Absolutely! Mindless! Self-sabotaging! Nonsense! There is!” The statement was cut off at every stop by yet another hit of the crop. It was honestly getting me excited, and I just had to assume at this point that the influence of the ring along with my current lifestyle were slowly but surely turning me into some kind of sadomasochist.

“Labrador Lass! Eat her ass!” A set of chompers clamped down on one of my buttcheeks, which was strangely not what I expected to happen when I heard a dog-girl being ordered to eat my ass. The cheek that wasn’t being used as a chew toy was barraged by hits of the crop, with that same cheek being the one bit while the other got a series of swats a short moment later.

The lass was asked to stop and then I felt a set of fingers inside my pussy while the other set pressed against the sides of my throat. It wasn’t long until I came, and Captain Critter made a show out of shoving her cum drenched fingers into my throat. After that I was dumped to the floor, my eyes drifting into the sky until I felt a tongue cleaning up my crotch. Surprisingly it wasn’t the dog doing it, but the turtle-gimp. A shadow came over my head, and I nearly screamed when I noticed that it was Labrador Lass’s leg and what that meant, but I was beaten by her very own boss.

“No! Bad girl! You only do that with guests when I tell you to, and that’s to the ones I hate.” Captain Criterr, who was once again dressed, saved me from an experience I hope I never have to endure in my life. She forcefully dragged me up and pulled me away from the throne area. “I’m keeping your clothes as a trophy, but I’ll personally escort you and your sidekick out of here.”

“You’re sure I can’t stay half an hour longer there? They really seemed to like me.” Regina had reverted to her whining state. Only this time, I got to enjoy the experience of being a spectator to it.

“Yes, they liked you too damn much!” Captain Critter was shocked to see the piles of bodies left in Regina’s wake. From my vague estimate of how many people there were and what genitals they had (which I intellectually knew wasn’t the right way to determine gender, but I wasn’t about to wake up any of them from their post-orgasm bliss to ask them if they were cis or not), around 47 men and 22 women had collapsed to the floor in the middle of an attempt to bring Regina to her limit. All Regina said when I told her about that was ‘Nice!’

“Don’t you think the ones who didn’t end up getting a turn with me will be annoyed once they learn how good I am and that you forbid me from ever coming back?” She gave her a mischievous grin. “I bet it would be a real problem for you if that caused some discontent among your minions.”

The captain didn’t dignify that with a response. At least, not one directed to Regina directly. “We will seek a way to establish a line of communications with you. We’ll negotiate when she’s allowed to come here. Once a month is a maximum, if they get it weekly then productivity is going to go the way of the dodo.”

“I’m not a pet.” Regina crossed her arms.

“Correct, you’re a pest.”

“I mean it in the sense that she’s my master, not my owner.”

“Oh, so you’re the genie of the lamp? Or should I say, the genie of the ring?”

“Wait, how did-” I got shushed.

“You screamed at your ring to fix my fingers. I can add up two and two, Ringmaster.” The captain petted the top of my head, as if she wanted to really drive the point home at how unimpressed she was with my ability to keep the secret. The nastier part of me wanted to remind her that I could break them and fix them all day if she pushed it. “The only thing I don’t get is how she didn’t know about the zones, despite you ending up holding such relevance to them.”

“Oh, that’s simple. The ring and I are from another dimension. No idea how I ended here, since superheroes and supervillains and all that other stuff is absolutely not a thing where I’m from.” Regina shrugged.

“Flashy, my loyal friend and worthy sidekick that I love with all my heart: Why did you tell her about that when not even our close friends we live and work with have been told about that yet.” I was sooo going to **** her into a chastity cage one of these days as a punishment.

“I thought that was largely because it hadn’t come up yet. Besides, it's pretty clear that the two of you are friends now, so what’s the big deal?”

I looked at Captain Critter, curious about her reaction. “Captain Critter does not have friends, she has minions, followers, and occasionally some associates. You might fit into the third category. However, since she’s also not an idiot and can tell where the wind will be blowing, here’s my civilian identity business card with personal email and cellphone on it.” She picked it out of one of her pockets and offered it to me.

“If you want to hang out with me, be prepared to just sit on a couch and watch nature documentaries, because that’s what I’ll want to do 99% of the time. And I do not do engage in sexual activity unless I’m able to do it as Captain Critter, which requires me to spend at least fifteen minutes in front of the mirror to get in the mindset of.” She turned to Regina. “I am sorry that you’ve lost your previous world.”

“It’s fine. I was used to getting thrown around countries and time periods all the time anyways. One day I wake up and the USSR exists, then another one I wake up and it doesn’t anymore, and then-”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE USSR DOESN’T EXIST ANYMORE?!”

Regina looked at both of us, noticed that we had both screamed the same thing, and grinned. “Ah, so this is what it feels like to be in the other shoe? I dig it!”

I decided that with the day I had, I didn’t have it in me to explain geopolitics of the last 30 years to Regina. Poor Rose ended up the first person we saw once we got back to the base. “Regina is from a world where we won the cold war. Someone has to explain to her how we lost it and became the only liberal democracy left in the world thanks to the creation of superheroes. And after what we encountered in the city, I think I would rather bash my head against the wall that is getting through to Land Shark than to do that. Good luck!”

I walked away from a very confused Rose. I fully expected that Regina would ask her to ignore all of that and just have sex with her instead. Rose would probably end up doing that. And I was going to be the one that would have to explain it all. But at least, I likely had earned myself a whole night of relaxation before having to do it.

I needed a shower, but what to do after that? I had a professional villain’s number, a friend in a jail cell who can only be herself for a limited amount of time per day, and a redneck couple with scary but sexy technological toys. If I lived to see the end of this whole mess, then I would make a killing in writing an autobiography and selling the adaptation rights.