Rocketgirl costume ages Melissa

"First thing's first," Ms Kyoto said with a wicked gleam in her eye. "Let's give you back your crime-fighting togs. What fun is tormenting a superheroine when you can't even tell she used to be a superheroine? Come in, boys!" She clapped her hands twice crisply, sneering at her captive.

Five burly men marched into the room. One held Melissa's Rocketgirl top, another held her leggings. The other three surrounded Melissa.

"Go on, then," Ms Kyoto said, "Get her into it. She hasn't got much time."

Melissa kicked and clawed wildly as the men grabbed and lifted her. Weakened as she was, she could only put up token resistance as the men pulled her legs into her leggings and shoved her arms and head into her top. "Let go of me, you monsters!" she screamed, her cries muffled in the silvery fabric covering her face. As if purposely blindfolding and incapacitating her, the men left her head inside her shirt while they roughly groped her tits and ass. "Owww!" she yelped as they squeezed and pinched her skin. But she couldn't suppress a shudder of mild arousal as her erogenous zones were molested.

"Enough now," Ms Kyoto barked. "Finish putting her costume on. It's time to let her get on with her life."

Melissa's sixth sense for danger was only mildly tickled by Ms Kyoto's increasingly frequent references to time. Perhaps if she hadn't been so relieved to get her costume back, she would have understood the peril Ms Kyoto was about to inflict on her.

The men finished wrestling Melissa back into her Rocketgirl costume. Each of her limbs was gripped and she was **** to stand akimbo facing her enemy.

"Time to face the music, my pretty little dove," Ms Kyoto said, and the fifth man snapped Melissa's head to look directly at her captor.

Ms Kyoto regarded her with a wry grin. "What a pretty little creature you are," she said simply. "The kind my men would certainly love to get a piece of. That kind of beauty is fleeting. I'd hate to see it go to waste. But something tells me you think yourself the kind of girl who hasn't got time for men like these. So I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you a moment to free yourself. You want to run away? Want to forego a little playtime with my men? Then this is your moment -- your time to make a run for it. Take a moment to get your bearings -- I know you're still recovering, it must not be easy to stand up, let alone make a run for it. But it'll only take a moment, and then I promise you'll feel like a completely different woman."

Ms Kyoto nodded and her men released Rocketgirl's head, arms, and legs. She stumbled briefly, gathering her wits.

"Quick, quick! Before I change my mind!" Ms Kyoto exclaimed. "You don't want to try my patience..."

Melissa didn't need any more convincing. She lurched into a sprint. Only something was wrong. Her legs moved like molasses, turning slowly over one another. Her body and her costume felt like a constricting, heavy weight prohibiting her any forward progress. Indeed she found herself basically standing in place, her legs slowly rotating as though in a pantomime of a march.

"What's going on? Why can't I move?"

"Why, whatever do you mean, my dear?" Ms Kyoto taunted. "You are moving. At least, it sure looks like it to me." Ms Kyoto pantomimed Rocketgirl's slow running motion. "What's the matter? Not going fast enough for you?"

Rocketgirl looked down at her arms and legs, slowly swaying forward and back, up and down. Try as she might, she couldn't move them any faster. And she still wasn't moving forward. At all.

"I don't understand," she said. "How did you... what?"

Ms Kyoto snickered. "Care to take a moment to figure it out?" Rocketgirl glared daggers at her. "Oh, very well, I'll give you a moment's consideration. But I don't want to spell it out for you. I want to see the realization gradually dawn on you. I want to know what it looks like when you know you've been defeated. When you know there's no hope left for you. In your last moments as the sprightly, youthful, attractive, gorgeous, lively Rocketgirl."

"What are you talking about?" Rocketgirl demanded. "What's happening? What scheme do you have planned?"

"Destiny, my dear Rocketgirl. Destiny. It's high time you meet yours. Think you're too young to die? Think again. You can at least get there a just a smidge faster. After all, you're Rocketgirl, aren't you? Faster than anyone. Why not fast in everything? Why not fast in life? "

Rocketgirl scrunched her forehead in confusion. "What the hell are you talking about? Just tell me what you think you're doing. If you don't tell me this instant, I'll smack you in the jaw!"

"I dare you to try," Ms Kyoto said without missing a beat.

Rocketgirl tried to make a move against her captor but found she was unable to break stride. Her arms and legs kept pumping, slowly, ever so slowly going through the motions of a runner -- in perpetual slow motion.

"Can't do it, can you?" Ms Kyoto said glibly. "You can't do anything now but run. It's all you'll ever do for the rest of your short life. At least as long as you're wearing that suit."

"My suit?!" Rocketgirl started. "What's wrong with my suit?" She began clawing at it, her hands moving to tear it from her body. Ms Kyoto's burly henchmen grabbed her arms, two on each arm. The fifth man snapped a handcuff on each of Rocketgirl's wrists, handing one to Ms Kyoto. Rocketgirl strained against the henchman holding one wrist but made better progress against Ms Kyoto, pulling her left arm free. She used it as leverage against the other henchman but soon found herself beset by all five men. Her legs flailing uselessly in a perpetual running motion, she yelped wildly as the men held her in midair.

Ms Kyoto pulled out a small tablet computer and began pressing it coolly, calmly. A section of the floor fell away and from it rose a treadmill. The men lifted Rocketgirl to run on the treadmill and fastened her hands to the rails on either side using the handcuffs already on her wrists. Already imprisoned, tethered to the treadmill, she gripped the handrails desperately, grateful to at least be free from the henchmen's grip.

And still she ran -- slowly -- turning the manual treadmill beneath her feet.

"All right, Ms Kyoto," she huffed. "You win. You have me here, running in place like a damned hamster. Now what do you want from me?"

"Nothing, my dear," Ms Kyoto said, practically unable to contain her joy. "That is, nothing more than you'll give me. I only want you to keep running in place. It's the only thing you'll ever do again. From now until the day you die. Which may be sooner than you think." She winked.

"What are you talking about?" Rocketgirl stammered. She was beginning to feel winded. Strange, she thought. I'm not even running the way I usually do. Why should I be feeling this way? She blinked and sighed heavily as her legs kept churning beneath her.

"Feeling strange, Rocketgirl?" Ms Kyoto asked. "Maybe a little more winded than usual? Body weighing you down? Maybe your suit is a little too much burden to bear?"

Rocketgirl stared again at her familiar silvery togs. "You keep mentioning my suit. What's wrong with it? What have you done?"

"Finally learning to ask the right questions," Ms Kyoto mused. "They say that wisdom comes with age. I guess you'll be getting a lot smarter soon, not that it will do you much good."

Rocketgirl started to panic. "What are you talking about?" Her voice sounded different, deeper. She spoke a little more slowly than she usually did.

"All right, I've dawdled long enough. I suppose it's time I explained your predicament. You can't take off your suit, and as long as you're wearing it, you'll keep running in place like that. Now, as you may have guessed, I've modified your suit. It no longer enhances your incredible superspeed. Instead, it redirects it, channeling your god-given abilities back into your body. Instead of speeding your body through space, it now redirects all that speed throughout your body. I've redirected your superhuman speed into the aging and regeneration of your genes. As long as you keep using your abilities, you'll keep aging yourself. Based on my projections and my observations so far, I'd estimate your body will age approximately five years for every hour you keep running. And because of another modification I've made to your suit, you can't stop running as long as you're wearing it."

Ms Kyoto started laughing maniacally as a henchman passed her a handmirror. "Care to see what you would have looked like in two years?"

Melissa grit her teeth and stayed silent.

"Aw, don't be like that," Ms Kyoto pouted. "It's your only chance! Why, if you wait much longer to look at yourself, you may be a middle-aged woman!"

Ms Kyoto turned the handmirror toward her prey, but Rocketgirl turned her head in a futile act of defiance. "No," she declared. "I won't give you the satisfaction."

From either side, two henchmen grabbed Rocketgirl's head, one by the jaw, the other by the cranium. They steered Rocketgirl's head to face forward as Ms Kyoto walked towards her victim. She held the mirror inches from Rocketgirl's face but the heroine, defiant to the end, clenched her eyes shut.

A third henchman grabbed her right eyelids and pried them open.

In an instant, Rocketgirl saw the change coming over her. Slight though it was, she could see how the last several minutes had changed her, aged her. Her face a little rounder, eyes just a tad baggier. Her hair had paled to a lighter shade of blonde, her mouth downturned just a little from its usual bright smile to a more earnest, mature grimace.

"How old were you, my sweet, before I took you yesterday?" Ms Kyoto asked. "Twenty? Twenty-two? Not anymore. By nightfall, you'll be thirty, by tomorrow morning, eighty. If I decide to let you out of your costume, you may live another day. If not, well..." She shook her head slowly and wiped a fake tear from each eye.

Rocketgirl's panic yielded to her rage. "How dare you? You fiend! You'll never get away with this. When I get out of here, I'll...I'll..."

"You'll what, my dear? Chase me down on a rascal scooter? Clobber me with your walker and cane? I don't know your family's medical history, but the chances of your being healthy and fit enough to do anything to stop me by this time tomorrow are next to none. I hold all the cards. You're washed up. Your best days are behind you. Maybe even all your days."

For Rocketgirl, hope was fading fast. She could feel the weight of her predicament like the weight of the years Ms Kyoto was trying to pile on her -- trying to rob from her. Unable to think, unable to move except for the slow, repetitive cycling of her legs, Rocketgirl, the great symbol of peace, truth, justice, love, and pride, succumbed to the desperation of her situation. She wailed and wept, sniffling uncontrollably.

"You...*sniff* you're a monster," she sobbed.

"And you, my angel," Ms Kyoto said, draping her arms over the heroine's shoulders. Her eyes darted back and forth between the heroine's wet eyes. "You are so pretty when you cry." She pursed her lips and craned her neck, capturing Rocketgirl's quivering lips with her own strong, insistent ones.

As she kissed her charge passionately, Ms Kyoto felt the heroine's lips gradually expand, growing less taut as the heroine aged prematurely within her grasp.

Breaking the kiss after several minutes, Ms Kyoto stared into the face of a thirty-year-old Rocketgirl, a sight unseen by the rest of the world. Even M2, Melissa's duplicate created by Ms Kyoto, would still have been a healthy college co-ed. And would be for years to come, unlike her namesake.

"Now, I don't want you to worry, my love," Ms Kyoto said, stepping back. "You won't be alone in your later years. I'll be here beside you until you draw your very last breath. After all, I want to savor my handiwork -- and I don't want to miss a single one of your few remaining moments. I wonder what you'll say, what you'll do, as you watch yourself celebrate your 50th birthday -- or your 80th. I wonder what you thought you'd do with all the rest of your life. You had your whole life ahead of you, Rocketgirl -- or should I say Rocketwoman? But now, you're all mine."

Ms Kyoto settled into a plush chair, blowing Rocketgirl a kiss. She sipped a glass of white wine as she watched the helpless heroine run slowly in place and age before her eyes.