The Bar With No Name

Nairobi led. Sue Storm followed. Away from the Baxter Building, down unfamiliar streets. Into alleys where the Invisible Woman had never gone, had never had any reason to go. Sue would have found herself lost and looking for cross-streets, but the masseuse seemed to know where she was going, and at last she stopped at an unremarkable back door and knocked.

"Are you legit?" a woman's voice said from behind the door.

"Motherless," Nairobi said.

The door opened. Sue Storm followed Nairobi in to what looked, to all appearances, like a dive bar with a vaguely tiki theme. Glass globes hung from the ceiling. None of the scattered tables and chairs matched. Paintings of topless mermaids and Polynesian women covered the walls. There was a long bar at the back, with a brass rail green with verdigris, and two doors in the back crudely marked with generations of genitalia to indicate which was for men and which was for women. Exotica music played from hidden speakers.

Yet it was the clientele that made Sue catch her breath.

The Rhino took up a booth of his own, drinking steadily from a pitcher of something lime-green and tropical-looking, with a little paper umbrella sticking out of it. The Trapster was at the bar, deep in conversation with the Mad Thinker, who seemed to be nursing something blood-red and topped with pineapple fronds. A Doombot stood behind the bar, polishing a glass; the green tunic replaced by a loud Hawaiian print shirt of tropical flowers. Anaconda sat in one corner, her long, thick arm draped across the floor, and on the other end of it, Madam Masque sat rigid as the big fingers played between her legs, barely visible beneath a table.

"It doesn't have a name," Nairobi said as she guided Sue toward an empty booth. "But I did a little henching, got to know the people running the place."

"Henching?" Sue said as she sat down. A waitress, possibly a mutant and possibly just a body modification enthusiast with a thing for subdermal implants that gave her face that appearance of ready to sprout horns at any moment, arrived. Nairobi ordered two Irish coffees.

Sue Storm's shoulders itched. She was sitting here, casually, surrounded by villains. If even one of them recognized who she was, then the Invisible Woman would be in a fight for her life. Yet at the same time this was...kind of thrilling.

The drinks arrived. Sweet and bitter, hot and slightly sticky on the lips from the whipped cream. They sat in silence for a moment and let the caffeine and whiskey settle in their stomachs, suffusing their bodies with a warm glow. Then Nairobi leaned forward and said, in a confessional tone:

"I sort of have a kink for costumes."

Sue's heart leaped. She smiled.

"Do you now?" the Invisible Woman said.

"Something about a woman in costume makes me all weak at the knees. That's why I got into henching. It was like living out a fantasy. Except the sex never came. It was always guard this, fetch that. I sort of chickened out the first time we were ordered out on an operation. It's legal to run around in a henchgirl outfit, but breaking and entering? Stealing stuff? I got cold feet."

Sue Storm felt her tension ease a little. Nairobi was in some ways so sweet and innocent. Not really a bad women. Just...horny.

"I never got a chance to eat out her pussy," Nairobi said, and her ankle brushed Sue's under the table. "I kind of regretted that at the time. But now..."

"Who did you hench for?" Sue asked, unable to keep the curiosity out of her voice.

She was not prepared for the answer.