Siren's Swan Song (Chapter 4 Up)

[Personalias]

Siren’s Swan Song (Part 1)

Circe Castallanos walked along the city sidewalks humming to herself, looking for her first target.  What fresh havoc to sew?  More importantly, was it worth it?  If she picked the right mark, she’d be having a little petty fun and practice at warming up her powers. If she picked the wrong one, some detective in tights would bust her before her grand plan even got underway.

It’d been half-a-decade since she’d last tried to use them for anything more than getting a free meal or a bed.  Were she just starting out on the meta-scene, that wouldn’t have been too bad.  She technically had never worked a day in her life.  All she had to do was sing a little ditty into some fool’s ear and she’d have them under her spell for up to twenty-four hours.

Free meals. Free beds. Free clothes.  It all came straight to her like sailors crashing on the rocks.  Being the reincarnation of the mythical Sirens had its perks.  If she was smart and random, and didn’t victimize too many high rollers back to back, she could live extremely comfortably and quietly if not lavishly.  Singing “Let me in my love” in tones of deep purple could get her a penthouse for a night or two, as long as she jumped into another random person’s car when she was done and sing “Take me away from here” in sultry reds to relax in  a modest but well furnished house in the suburbs. If she needed money to acquire something discreetly, singing in golds about “Cash cash cash” to her mark did the trick. 

Singing “I’ll have the chef’s special tasting menu and a souffle for dessert,” directly from the menu in earthy greens used to be enough to get her supper, but that was getting more difficult in an age where crowds recorded buskers and performers with cell phones.  The Siren’s powers didn’t work through recordings.  That was a drawback of being gifted a powerset invented before the phonograph was invented. The magic and colors of her songs didn’t translate through recordings.  It didn’t count in the same way that Medusa’s reflection didn’t count.  Such were the limitations of the Siren’s powers.  

 

At least Circe didn’t need a microphone to amplify her voice.  Her singing could fill a stadium and her battle shrieks could shatter glass.  Wagyu beef and Champagne were not worth the attention having to entrance an entire restaurant worth of people and the attention that brought with it.  Same for going viral online when a French speaking monkey, a datamancer, and a psychic with touch based pre and post cognition learned you were recently at a famous bistro or burger joint.   A garden variety speedster could be on the spot and cold cock her before she finished her meal if she was noticed too soon.

She was mighty and powerful, but the world was filled with heroes who could triumph over the perils of the Odyssey and Heracles’s labors in an afternoon.  Surprise, discretion, and anonymity were her allies.  The mortal part of her understood that and was responsible for her greatest successes.

The Siren part of her was another matter entirely. Unfortunately, as the reincarnation of the legendary sultry bird women who dashed sailors on the rocks, Circe was essentially a living story. She had certain urges that could be delayed or worked around, but never completely ignored.  The Sirens of yore were dangers, but they were known dangers; tantalizing dangers that the foolhardy did not prepare for and even the wise and cautious were tempted by.

 To Circe’s Siren soul, being defeated or overcome was nothing compared to being forgotten.  At forty-five, she’d been defeated many times over.  She had a nearly three decade career as a “supervillain” so of course that was going to happen, but she’d had some good times too.  She was briefly the true ruler of a small Southeast Asian nation; had brought all of West City to the brink of collapse fighting over her, and started a cult that had gotten very close to gaining official religious protections.

The trick to that particular one had been that the people under her songs’ spells never saw her but instead whatever person or thing would get the desired emotional reaction she wanted.  A few layers of protection made it nearly impossible for her to be tracked down

The cult trick had been ten years ago, however. Presently, she was forty-five,and feeling it in the worst way.  Her looks were fading, her hair had turned silver, and her three options for shelter at any given time was prison or a place she’d stolen.  That was great in her twenties.  Fine in her thirties.  Would she be like this in her fifties?  Sixties? Did supervillains even make it to seventy?

The Siren would not be denied, however.  And finding her name in an article entitled “Thirteen Formerly Fearsome Supervillains You Won’t Believe Are Still Alive!” had been the last straw. The part where it said her greatest weakness was earplugs stung particularly badly.

It was time.  She had to act!  To remind the world that she was still here and to be feared!

“Run awaaaaaaay,”  She whispered into a passerby’s ear, her haunting melody tinted yellow with fear.  “I’m coming for you.”  The man in suit and tie dropped his briefcase and dashed away screaming away. She’d timed it just right so that his panicked retreat caught the attention of the sheep around her instead of the source.

Pretending to be one of them, Circe followed their gaze towards the man’s retreating form.  There was a brown wet blotch forming on the seat of his pants.  Her lips curled inward to hide the satisfied smile.  “Still got it,” she said to herself.  She wondered what the man saw.  It was so hard to tell when they weren’t coherent to talk.

The heroes were easy enough to guess at.  You do enough super-brawls and revenge plots and it’s easy to guess what will push a body’s buttons. Circe remembered the time she sang “Help Me!” blotted with morbid black. Every single member of the Sentinels immediately fell under the delusion that she was a loved one or a sidekick at death’s door and started fighting each other to save her.  Every. Single. One:  Uber; The Owl; Glamazon; Techno; Blitz; Neptunia; Emerald Archon. What a glorious day that had been!  How she’d loved tormenting the Sentinels and their ilk!

Those were the days.  Days that would start again very very soon

Circe didn’t know if it was because she was a genuine misanthrope and thus loved tormenting virtue signaling, false piety loving heroes in general, or whether her Siren’s soul just loved torturing demigods.  Frankly, she didn’t much care.  The only thing Circe cared about was getting her fix and making sure these peons remembered her name!

One long inhale and a determined sigh a second later and the Siren had steeled herself.  A flick of her wrist and a snap of her wrist would transmogrify her plain jain jeans and orange blouse into her single piece skin tight nigh indestructible hydra skin suit. 

She looked down at her waist.  Her suit used to be a two piece, but it was getting harder to hide her tummy.  She wasn’t flabby, she just didn’t have the body that she used to.  A moment of vanity made her consider fanning some of the scales out like fringe on a salsa dress, just in case.  Hydra skin was good like that.

Circe was about to start the day off right by causing a mass panic, being seen long enough to take credit and then disappearing into the masses, when she noticed that her warm up act had left behind a briefcase.

No one had so much as bothered to pick it up.  The milling crowd on the busy city sidewalk simply stepped over and around it, too self-absorbed in whatever was going on in their short and meaningless lives.

“Excuse me,” Cicrce muttered, shoving and sliding her way through the nameless masses.  Curiosity overcame her and she felt compelled.  That or maybe she was stalling.  Afraid. A Has-Been.

Nope. It was definitely the other one.  Definitely the compulsion.  The super-villainess scooped the briefcase up into her arms and slinked to an alley.  A common mugging was slightly beneath her., but only slightly.

There amongst the dumpsters and the rats, she opened up the briefcase and peered at the documents inside. Nothing but papers and designs for something.  Patents. NDA’s. Copyrights.  Boring business stuff, but also something more on the technical side.  Something…something…?

The Siren’s eyes widened as she flipped through the patents in the businessman’s suitcase.  “What…do we…have here?”  And the more she read, the more she understood.  And what she understood the most was that she wasn’t going to be doing a simple street level riot performance.  She was going to melt back into the shadows and wait for night to fall.

And after tonight, the Siren would be well on her way back to the top, better than ever.

******************************************************************************************************
That night:  A.S.T.R.A.L  Labs. Long after the doors had been shuttered and locked and all the lights turned off, the Siren made her move. 

In full, green scaled regalia, Circe walked up to the back entrance of the sleek and polished multi story building. During the day, the one way mirror glass plating made the research facility look like a bright and shining beacon that could be seen for miles around.  At night, the glass took on a darker, bleaker, more obsidian color. 

It was also supposed to be shatterproof.  Circe smirked.  “Let’s test that, shall we?”

She took a deep breath and screeched: “OPEN SESAMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”  She didn’t need to say anything, there was no hypnotic magic woven into it.  It just felt appropriate.  The difference between a supervillain and a common one was presentation.  She did feel a little dirty about quoting from Arabian Nights, mostly because the reference was from the wrong set of stories and culture.

That didn’t matter.  Her scream was  The panel closest to her cracked like a lollipop tossed on the ground.  Alarms blared and buzzed in howling cacophony that made Circe want to flinch.  Instead, one foot in front of the other like a model in a catwalk she strut forward with her hands on her hips.

The token security guards rushed forward from the front. Fit young things in white and black full body jumpsuits. Simpletons looked less like private law enforcement and more like glorified janitors.   “Stop right there!”  One of them shouted before reaching for his holster.  Poor things weren’t issued guns, but had to make due with silly crossbreeds of billy clubs and tasers.  They’d never get the chance to use them. 

One of the others, a guard with a bit of a gut and some gray in his temples gasped. “Hold up! Stop!” He yelled.  “That’s the Siren!” His calls were almost completely muted by the wailing alarms.  “Cover your ears! Get the ear-!”

He didn’t finish the sentence in time.  His comrades couldn’t hear him clearly, and Siren was more than loud enough to drown out every other noise.  “FALSE ALAAAAAAAAAARM! GOTCHA! FAAAAAAAAALSE ALARM NO NEEEEED TO WORRY!” Overpowering, enrapturing, and above all  very very loud, the Siren’s playfully cyan call reached out to every year in the building above street level. 

The lead guard, the one with the gut, took out a control pad and punched in a few codes.  The buzzing stopped abruptly, and all the of the guards slumped their shoulders and shook their heads. 

“Chuck, you asshole!” The head guard on duty said.  “You had us scared half to death!” The others were already muttering to themselves and walking away.

Circe managed a shrug and guilty looking smile.  “Sorry boss,” she said. “I guess I just got a little carried away.”

“I oughta fire your ass for this,” he scowled. 

“Yeah, Chuck!”  One of the other guards returning to their post grunted.  He slapped his compatriot upside the back of his head.  “Way to screw around dickweed!”

His coworker rubbed the back of his head and flinched away.  “Yeah,” he chuckled. “I really do suck sometimes.” He thumbed backwards to where a most bemused Siren stood. “Pretty funny though, you gotta admit. How the hell did I manage to get all the way over there and be here at the same time?”

“How the fuck should I know?!”

Evidently, Chuck was something comparable to the night shift’s resident cut up.  Another benefit of her hypnotic songs is that the suggestions didn’t regularly have to make any common sense whatsoever.  Siren shrugged again, lowered her voice to a suitably ‘manly’ tenor and said, “Sorry, boss.”

“You better be sorry,” The head guard scowled. “Now go clean this shit up!”  He finally walked away, leaving the Siren smirking at her own cleverness.

“Well that was amusing,” Circe said to herself.  It was too, almost like a bit of roleplay before the hot stuff really got going.  Or more innocently, a fun game of pretend.  Either worked for this metaphor.  “Now to get down to business.”

The business at hand was, of course, larceny.  By sheer coincidence, her terror mark earlier that day had been a lawyer of some kind working for A.S.T.R.A.L. labs.  In his briefcase she found the very basic designs for a new type of sound transmitter, one that specifically mimicked the human voice box and throat.  Instead of electronic speakers that blasted out digitized sounds, the synthetic muscles inside would perfectly replicate any recorded voice. 

Okay for music. Good for cybernetic and prosthetic advancement. Great for Circe. Perfect for the Siren.

If she could have something that perfectly replicated her voice in every facet, the range of control she could exert would be virtually limitless.  If she could record and recreate her voice instead of broadcasting it, all of her technical limitations would be overcome.  She could leave mesmeric songs all over the place hours ahead of time like hypnotic time bombs.  She could record herself serenading someone a song of worship and put it on loop at key locations.

With this kind of technology, Circe could do what no one in her field had ever done: She could take over the world!

The high heels of her costume clicked against the tile.  She waved herself by security, smiling placidly and pretending to be a very repentant Chuck while heading towards the elevator.  All the good experiments were kept in a sub basement deep beneath the city.  It was practically an open secret.

The elevator dinged open.  “Stop right there, Siren!”

Circe rolled her eyes.  “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”  Right in front of Circe was another superhero.  A new one;  one she didn’t recognize right off the bat.  She was a young black woman with short cropped hair that blinked white light at different points along her skull, and the glowing tattoos on her arm resembled a circuit board.  A cyborg of some kind.  The belt and wristbands with compartmentalized segments suggested a hint of gadgeteer.  “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”

“Wait. Seriously?” The other woman said.  “You don’t remember me?  I’m Glitch.”

The Siren put a hand to her cheek.  “Glitch?  Techno’s sidekick?”  There was no way that was Glitch.  “Aren’t you twelve?”

The younger woman looked offended. “I was the first time you kidnapped me. I’m twenty-two.”

Oh god that made her feel so old!  Nevermind! Push that thought aside.

A terrible smile blossomed on the Siren’s face.  “Ten years as a sidekick. Not a bad run.  Techno’s going to need a new sidekick after tonight.”

“He’s already got one,” Glitch replied. 

“I beg your pardon?”  Siren asked flatly.  Was this some kind of joke?

“I’m a full fledged hero now. Doing my own thing. Techno got a new sidekick.  Their name’s Binary, which is kind of ironic since-”

“Be the love of my liiiiiiife.” Siren belted out to the young hero and hot crimson.  A super hacker or a cyborg would be a good thing to have in her back pocket when robbing this place.  Why not make her a love slave?

Instead of fawning over her and showering her with affection, Glitch just stood there.  “Yeah.  About that.”  She tapped one ear, one eye, and then her head. “Had a couple upgrades since last time. I’m more wired up than techno, just most of the hardwear is internal.  I’m hearing and seeing all this, but there’s so many gadgets and gizmos in my brain that I’m basically perceiving you through a camera. “I’m basically immune to your schtick.”

Shit.   She thumbed back towards the guards.  “Are they?”  A quick deathly sing of “Security Breeeeeach!” It worked on the Sentinels. It would work on these mooks.  They might not stop the hero, but they could hold her off and inconvenience her long enough for a sonic blast.

“Chuck?!” They screamed, and drew their batons. “CHUUUUUUUUCK!”  Well, looks like Chuck was as beloved as much as he was derived.  Good for Chuck.

“MEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

The men charged forward as Siren sidestepped out of the way.

“BE THE LOVE OF MY LIIIIIIIFE.”   Pure and lustful and red the melody came out as intense as the first time and much, much, louder. The goons froze and stared slack jawed and drooling with passion and lust. Circe was used to seeing that look in people.  But they weren’t looking at her, and with good reason: That song hadn’t come from her lips at all.  The men were all looking goo-goo eyed not at Siren, but at Glitch.

“Huh,” the younger hero smiled. “That worked just how I thought it would.  Neat.” She turned her gaze to meet the Siren’s. “Thanks for letting me try that out.”

Circe froze; stunned and shocked  “How?” she stuttered.  “How…how did a little brat like you…manage to do… that…?!”

Without further banter, a bola shot out of the hero’s right gauntlet, spinning through the air and wrapping itself right around Circe’s throat.  The Siren gasped for hair, feeling like there was a noose wrapped around her neck that had been improperly tied.  If she hadn’t been so bewildered at someone using her own powers against her, the Siren might have thought to use a sonic shout to stop the projectile in its path and bust out whatever fancy equipment was in the ex-sidekick’s body.

Too bad. So sad. Too late. Her hands clutched at her neck, trying to rip the cord from around her throat. Defeated again, before she even had the chance to set any kind of brilliant or chaotic plan into motion. By a sidekick no less.  How humiliating.

Circe Castallanos didn’t know the half of it.

“Brat, huh?”  Glitch said.  “You just gave me an idea.” The Siren tried to sing or scream or at least give a sufficiently monstrous reply.  All that came out was gargled gasps.  “This is gonna sting a little bit.  Sorry.”  Jinx pressed a button on her wrist gauntlet.

The volts and jolts of electricity did not sting at all.  The Siren was knocked out before she so much as consciously noticed anything painful.  She’d wake up extremely sore, however.
*************************************************************************

The Siren woke up on a cold metal slab, surrounded by hues of cobalt blue and foghat gray.  Her entire body ached and her head felt fuzzy. Instinctively, she tried to sit up. That was how she realized that her arms and legs were restrained.  She lifted her head and took full view of herself, completely naked.  Her suit? Where was her hydra skin suit?  It should be irremovable unless she willed it so.  Where was she?

Her mind began processing both past and present simultaneously.  The plan to return to greatness that didn’t so much as get off the ground. The humiliating and sudden defeat at the hands of a sidekick.  That was the past.

Presently, she was in some kind of laboratory. It had to be a laboratory.  Too many computers and screens and keyboards and what she assumed were fragile monitoring devices to be a holding cell.  The lone entrance way had neither a laser grid nor the slight wavering crackle of a forcefield.  There were none of the minor comforts or conveniences for it to be a medical facility or hospital.  No mattresses or chairs. No sinks. No televisions.  Scanning her body she found no evidence of I.V. bags or other basic medical equipment.  Both a proper holding cell and a proper hospital would have someone nearby on guard for when she regained consciousness.

Unless she wasn’t considered a threat…

That intrusive thought, that single bit of half baked analysis almost sent Circe into a frothing rage.  How dare she not be under strict monitoring conditions. She was Siren! THE Siren!  She was a walking weapon! A threat to global security!  Anything less than a gun directly to her head and a clear threat to her life should she so much as whisper was an insult!

They would pay! They would PAY!  Starting with that bitch, Glitch.

Circe slowed her breathing and forced herself to calm down.  Even her screams required a degree of breath control.  She’d need her screams. She saw more than a few A.S.T.R.A.L. Labs logos in her immediate vicinity.  She hadn’t been moved very far, then.   There were no windows or outside source of light; only the ever buzzing fluorescent lights overhead illuminated the air. 

She was likely in one of the very sub-basement labs she’d been meaning to break into.  Probably not the lab with the sound systems she’d planned on stealing, sadly.  No one would be that utterly stupid.

Her do-gooder captor was immune to Circe’s charms, but she could likely still scream her into oblivion or cause some major damage to all of this fragile equipment.  Circe wasn’t sure how she could get out of her present restraints with that strategy.  She’d shattered bones with her screams before.  Could she break her own wrists and ankles to get out of the restraints?

That seemed like a bad idea.  The Siren in her didn’t much care about escape, per se.  If need be this slab could be her rock in the middle of the sea of monsters again.  Wreck the place apart and ensnare the fools that came to the rescue.  Chances were that not enough time had passed for Glitch to alert the authorities and lacked a proper holding cell.  Even if the heroes came at her call armed with earplugs, she could be satisfied at the damage she’d done. 

The point of being the reincarnation of a monster wasn’t specifically to win. Circe smiled, despite herself.  She was breathing easily enough.  Nothing was regulating or obstructing her airway. She licked her lips. Time to test out the equipment.

“Hmmmm…” she let out a light hum to herself.  Good. Her throat felt undamaged.  Nothing rattled or made her want to choke.  Nothing felt forced.  “Time to bring the house down,” she said a little louder.  Perfect.  Now to follow through on that threat.  She laid her head back and with a deep breath she took all the air she could into her lungs and screamed out as loud as she possibly could.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH?!” Circe ended the near deafening shriek on a rather confused note.  Pink? Soft baby bootie girly girl pink? She’d never sang or screamed in that color before.  Sophisticated rose pink, sure.  Fun and bright poppy punk rock pink, yeah.  But never pink-pink.  Little girl pink?  Baby bonnet pink?  Training panties pink?  Never.  Never that color.

She hadn’t meant to scream in any color whatsoever. She’d been going for pure volume.  She tried again, and got the same result. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” Another try.  “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH-AH-AH-AH-AH!” Circe was left gasping and slightly winded.  She was trying to bring down this place like the Walls of Jericho; not…whatever this was.  “What in the name of Tartarus?”

The quiet sound of quick yet confident footsteps drew Circe’s attention to the entrance way.  In walked the cybernetic superhero, with glowing circuit board tattoos beneath her skin and various points of her skull lighting up and shining through her hair.  “Good morning,” Glitch said chipperly.    “How are you feeling?”  Over her more tactically minded form fitting jumpsuit that was so common for people in their specific line of work, Glitch wore a white lace apron with a pocket.

“Let me out!” the Siren called.  “Release me you little whelp!”

“Subject has regained consciousness,”  Glitch said. “Temperament; hostile.  Cognitive faculties appear to be operational, and judgment such as it is unimpaired; or at least unaltered from previous encounters.” The comment into the upturned palm of her hand like it was some kind of recording device.   If she’d gone the route of Techno, it very likely was.  That was the problem with tech based heroes in Circe’s mind. They were never quite what they seemed. It was so…disingenuous.  The blatant hypocrisy considering her own power set didn’t occur to her.  “Glad that you’re awake.”

“You’ll wish I wasn’t,” Circe sneered. “Let me go, you freak of science!”

Glitch’s hair glowed and twinkled, but her face remained passive and preoccupied with whatever was going on with her hand.  “Nope.” 

“Mark my words, girl, you have made a powerful enemy!”

Glitch lowered her hand and seemed to consider the threat.  “Objectively? Yes. Your abilities are quite formidable.”  The Siren felt herself filling up with pride. Finally! Some acknowledgement!  “You could do a lot of good with them if you wanted.” 

“I don’t,” Circe Spat.

Her captor went on, ignoring it.  “In this particular instance and circumstance, though?  To me specifically?  No. You’ve got nothing.  Don’t feel bad, though. Most one-on-one super fights are about power compatibility and susceptibility over tactics or brute force. It’s rock paper scissors, and I’m your scissors.”

Cicre picked her head up and screamed. “LISTEN TO ME!”  More little girl pink notes sailed into the air. That was supposed to have taken the hero’s head off.

“You didn’t really think that would work did you?”  Glitch stood with one hand on her hip, head tilted and unblinking.  Circe held her tongue, confused as to what was going on.. “Did you?”

She didn’t know how to answer that question.  She was more used to being on the other end of the hostage captor dynamic.  And the younger woman’s unblinking, unafraid gaze was unsettling.  It wasn’t angry or cruel, more annoyed than anything.  Disappointed?  It had been a long long time since anyone had ever looked at Circe that way.  “Why is everything coming out pink?”  she heard herself blurt out.

Glitch righted her head and looked somewhat confused. “Pink?  What do you mean pink?”

Ugh,”  Circe rolled her eyes indignantly.  Had she not been restrained she would have crossed her arms.  “My voice turns different colors depending on the songs I sing.”

“Iiiiinteresting,” Glitch remarked.  She leaned in closer.  “So you’re saying that you perceive the different vibrational frequencies that your hypnotic songs produce through a form of synesthesia?”

The Siren blinked, confused.  “Um…”

Glitch leaned in even closer. “When you sing do you see colors in the songs?” 

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

The hero winced, slightly, but still had a head. Damn.  “And that was pink to you?”

The Siren felt her temper rising.  “That was supposed to destroy you!”

“I’m well aware.  Was that pink?”

“What did you do to me?”

“Was that scream pink?”

Circe allowed herself an indignant huff. “Yeah.  Why?”

“Good.”  Glitch  spoke again into her palm.  “Sonic modulation is successful and working well within expected parameters.”

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?”  The supervillain hadn’t even tried to do a sonic scream or a hypnotic song that time.  All she’d done was raise her voice and everything came out princess baby pink.

Glitch lowered her palm. More flashes of blinking lights shone through her hair.  Did that mean she was thinking or something; like a computer doing complex calculations?  The kid used to wear a weird skater helmet back in the day.  Circe had no idea.  “Okay, I’ll catch you up to speed,” the hero finally said. 

A screen lowered down from the ceiling.  “As you know, you mugged and stole designs from an employee of A.S.T.R.A.L. Labs.”  High angle footage showed Circe’s deed replayed in front of her from the vantage point of a traffic light.  “Based on your reaction, you didn’t know what you were stealing right off the bat, you just knew you were assaulting a Lab employee with a secure briefcase.”  Circe hadn’t even known that much; not that she’d admit it.  “Due to your innate understanding of sound waves and vocal chords,” Glitch lectured on, “you figured out what you were looking at and realized the potential for strategic power enhancements; hypnotic time bombs, subliminal messages played on loop and such. The only problem is you lacked the resources and technical expertise to build this yourself.  How am I doing so far?”

She took the Siren’s silence as a sign of how accurate her synopsis had been.

Circe was treated to a replay of her break in. Sonic scream and false alarm and all.  “So you decided to break in and steal the prototype yourself.  What you clearly didn’t know is that A.S.T.R.A.L. Labs is my base of operations and that I invented the technology you were seeking to steal. So from the moment you stole that briefcase, you were on my radar and effectively walking into a trap.”

“GRRRRRRRR..”  Circe shoved her anger and her volume deep down inside herself.  “Typical hero,” she spat.  “You claim to be for the greater good, but you’re just as selfish as the rest of us.”

Glitch fiddled with the lace apron straps.  “Um…no?  I’m inventing new technology to revolutionize broadcasting, communication, and hearing.  You’re trying to sew discord and stuff. We are not the same.”

“So you’re not getting paid?”  Circe smirked, starting to enjoy the battle of words.  She’d bait this girl into doing something stupid.

“Not as much as I should be getting paid,” Glitch replied, “but yeah.  Saving the world is pro-bono. I still need to eat.”

“Spare me,” the Siren rolled her eyes.  “Just send me to prison, already.”

“Nope.”

There was a pause. “No?”

“Nope.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN NO?” More pink!  Why was it always pink?!

Glitch put a finger to her temple and one of her irises turned bright blue like a computer screen booting up.  “That scream was pink, too, wasn’t it?”  Circe gave no response. Her face was enough of a tell.  “Iiiiiinteresting.  To answer your questions, your voice is coming out ‘pink’ because of the collar I put on you.”

“What collar?” The television screen above her patched through to what could only have been the cyborg hero’s point of view. Around Circe’s neck was a delicately thin pink ribbon with a decorative heart shape in the middle; a choker of sorts.  “This isn’t a standard power neutralizing collar.”  It was so thin that she hadn’t noticed the foreign (and only) article of clothing until she saw it on the screen.

The younger woman suppressed a proud grin. “Yeah. Nah. Those things are too bulky. Lowest bidder tech. You’d find a way to break it or pick the lock or something and break out.” This was true… Circe had been counting on that.   “So, I made you a new one.  Synthesized your hydra skin costume and got rid of the fire weakness.  Oh yeah, apologies for burning up your hydra skin costume.  It was the only way I could get it off of you while you were unconscious.”

Hearing that her costume had been destroyed bothered her.  It felt like more of a violation than just laying naked on a metal slab. ““LET ME GO!”

Glitch ignored her and went on.  “Thanks to the decades of data you’ve provided the superhero community, I’ve been able to isolate the unique frequency that your voice operates on when you’re singing or screaming.  That little heart around your neck is constantly scanning and anytime it picks up something coming from you that is either too loud or too similar to your songs, it turns the sound ‘pink’ instead.  Your sonic screams work on the same basic principle of sound manipulation, just kind of inverted, so it was easy enough to modify those too.”

“Why pink?” Circe asked.

“Couldn’t have you seducing everyone in earshot by turning into their crush or making them think you were a dying loved one, could I? I chose the vibrational frequency that would do the least damage.”

“What does pink do?”

A bit of confusion crossed Glitch’s face. “You don’t know?”

“I mean… I know what it does, but do you?  Did your data or calculations tell you the exact power of pink?  Are you prepared for it?”  Circe was both a fantastic liar and a godawful one.  She’d grown so used to manipulating minds through her particular brand of magic that she’d all but forgotten how to bluff the old fashioned way.

“You really don’t know, do you?”  Glitch asked. “Heh. Heh-heh.  You don’t know your own powers!”  Glitch started to lose composure and began laughing quietly yet condescendingly.  “You poor thing!  Has all of your havoc through the years been the result of poor impulse control and guess work?”

“SHUT UP!”

The hero's eyes went pure white, glazed over and static filled. “Compiling all known data and running through psycho analytic profiling algorithm,” she said.  Circe saw a glimpse of binary code flash by.  Maybe even some two’s.  One second later Glitch’s pupils came back and she gasped. “It has!” Glitch smacked her own forehead, seeming reminiscent of a teacher or nanny that finally understands a childish misconception. “You’re not a super villain, you’re a victim of your own lack impulse and insecurities!”  She gave a full belly laugh, folding her hands over the pristine white apron and doubling over in hilarity.

Stupid Glitch! Stupid ex-sidekick!  Stupid know it all technology user! Stupid hero!  Stupid..stupid…STUPID!  “SHUT UP YOU BRAT!”

The super-scientist stopped laughing, yet a smug, somewhat cruel smile remained.  “Oh yeah.  That.  You calling me a brat gave me an idea…”  The Siren suddenly did not like the look on her younger foe’s face.  “All things considered, I think you’re the real brat, Circe.”  Circe flinched at being called her real name instead of her proper title.  What was more embarrassing, the Siren realized, was that she couldn’t return the insult.  “I was going to just humiliate you before I dropped you off at the nearest police precinct with a note…or maybe the nearest metahuman preschool.” Preschool?  What was that about?  ”But the more I’m figuring out about you and your powers, the more opportunities I’m seeing for advancement.”

“Do your worst,” the Siren sneered.  “I was once imprisoned in the Hell Pits of Malboge!”

“Yeah,” her captor said bluntly.  “You were twenty three then, and haven’t grown from any of those experiences, successes, or defeats.  I was looking to embarrass you.  I’m not going to break you. I might actually end up helping you.”

“You? Help me?” The supervillain scoffed.  “Get real. How?”

“For starters?”  Glitch replied. “A new wardrobe.”  Her arm tattoos lit up, buzzing almost as brightly as the fluorescent lights above, and the sounds of something just out of eyesight moving haunted Circe’s ears.

“Fuck you!” Circe spat. She could feel the slab tilting back. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck yoooooou!”  She tilted her head back as far as she could and rolled her eyes to see behind her. A panel in the floor had slid open, revealing only a deep dark hole with only empty blackness inside.  In seconds she was hanging upside down at a forty five degree angle.  “FUCK YOU!”

“See you on the other side. Brat.” With a snap of her fingers, the restraints released, sending Circe sliding into the abyss.

“FUCK YOOOOOOOU!”

 Down she plummeted, yet never did she achieve freefall.  It turned out that the hole she’d been dumped in was dark, but not close to empty. Slipping and twisting and turning; corkscrewing backwards and forwards, Circe braced and gripped at the sides with everything she had but couldn’t get a grip.  Friction was not on her side. Either this ramp was greased up beyond belief or it was made of a frictionless substance.  Given where she was, she supposed the latter. 

The darkness was disorienting and her increasingly pinkish screams and gasps fell on deaf ears. She had no idea how long this insane roller coaster would last.  A sudden sudzy splash, head first, gave the villain a new metaphor.   “A water slide?”

Circe’s lips drew back from her teeth. A bit of bitter, metallic tasting, almost burning liquid had slipped into her mouth.  If this was a water slide, someone had gone overboard on the chlorine. She brushed her sopping silver hair out of her eyes, and cursed when she tried to open them.  “Agh! Soap!” That explained the taste.

A dry piece of terry cloth dabbed at her eyes and she was able to see.  “Thanks,” she said accidentally. “I mean-!”  But when her vision cleared there was no one in front of her.  “Huh?”
Lights snapped on, forcing the drenched and sudsy Siren to squint and force her eyes to focus.  Looking back up at the slide, a ride that didn’t seem so hazardous now that she was at the bottom and could see- she estimated that she’d traveled only twenty-five to thirty feet vertically.  She felt her skin take on a more pinkish hue.

Speaking of pink, the walls around her were a kind of rosy salmon colored. Calming, gentle colors to the point of boredom.  At about waist height, she noticed a white border going around the room’s perimeter.  Stenciled in the border were simple shapes like circles, triangles, squares, stars, and hearts, all in the same calming salmon.

Three of the four walls were solid, and other than the oddly childish border running along the middle, and an open doorway, they seemed fairly unassuming. The fourth wall wasn’t, with a pane of glass peeking out into a well lit hallway. It reminded Circe of the viewing glass window in a hospital’s newborn unit.

Thankfully, no one was in the hallway.  If they were, they would have seen her standing naked, waist deep in a large jacuzzi like vat with bubbles providing the only form of modesty.  Modesty, at the moment, didn’t matter so much; escape did.

The Siren made it three sloshing shuffling steps.  Little did she know that right behind her, like a sea monster rising from the depths, a robotic manacle was rising up from the suds. Before she could so much as swing a leg over the rim of the tub, Circe heard and then felt a definitive click as.the massive steel cuff locked itself around her waist.

“The fuck?”

“Ah ah ah,” Glitch’s voice was piped in from an unseen speaker.  “Don’t want you falling down.  You could get hurt.”

“Keep talking, brat…” Circe growled.  “See what happens.”

“Just relax.  Enjoy your bath.  Get pampered….” 

Circe didn’t understand the chuckle that followed. She would soon.

 The manacle around her waist dragged her splashing and screaming back to the center of the tub.  Where the previous terry cloth had come from became immediately evident. Panels in the ceiling were coming down and robotic hands lowered from them armed with towels, wash cloths, and bars of soap to spare. The only thing they were missing was little white gloves.

Right above the still unoccupied viewing window, An electronic sign came to life.  “BATHING…” it read.

“What is this?” Circe demanded.  “A FUCKING CARTOON?”

“No,” Glitch’s voice chimed back in. “Though cartoons would be very appropriate, all things considered.”

The Siren would have dropped another F-Bomb, but a mechanical arm forced open her jaw so that another could shove a spare bar of soap into it. She tried to spit it out but the extra appendages held her arms down and the bar firmly pressed in. Trying not to retch her tongue retreated up and back to the roof of her mouth to keep her from either tasting or swallowing the stuff.  The next few burbled screams came out as pink, too.
 

 Washcloths and towels whirled around her and scrubbed her skin just roughly enough to be uncomfortable at the intrusion.  Shoulders, armpits, breasts, bellybutton, and behind her ears were all attended to; more sensitive and delicate areas were not spared.  Simultaneously shampoo was massaged into her scalp and rinsed off. 

Some kind of advanced filtration system wicked the bubbles out of the pool as soon as they were rinsed off her body.  The soap came out and she was allowed to wash her mouth with the last bit of rinse water falling atop her.  A final spit almost banished the terrible taste. 

Almost.

The water didn’t drain as much as it dropped out of the massive tub through fine grating on the bottom of the floor. Circe hadn’t felt the grating before. The bottom must have dropped out from underneath her with only grating left to hold her weight.  “Wouldn’t a hose and delousing powder work better?” Circe complained. 
She was dripping and miserable. The air conditioning made her shudder, and she resembled less like a person and more like an alley cat that had gotten caught in a sudden downpour.

WOOOOOOOOSH!

In place of a smart aleck reply from the techno-brat, deafening gusts of hot air erupted out of the floor and blasted her hair up like Frankenstein’s Bride. A second blast from the ceiling pushed her hair back down. Fluffy towels came spinning and softly dabbed away the few remaining water droplets.

The electric sign above the viewing window flashed. “Drying.”

“Very funny.”  Circe said. “You’re trying to teach me a lesson by putting me through a glorified car wash.”

“Wait for it,” Glitch came in over the speakers.

A buzzing noise signaled another change on the sign.  “Hair styling?!”

The mechanical appendages returned, now wielding scissors, spray bottles, razors, cream and curlers. The manacle on her waist held her fast, while terrible, invasive hands erupted from the floor to hold her legs and arms steady. 

“STAY THE FU-!”  Circe started to scream.  A bar of soap riddled with teeth marks lowered from the ceiling and she corrected herself before it was lodged back in.  “Fuuuuuuudge!”

“She’s learning!”

Circe’s building anger and resentment at the know-it-all’s taunting were the only thing keeping her calm while the mechanical monstrosities cut, brushed, curled her hair. The cream and razors weren’t for her head.  Not just her legs, either…

When the job was done and everything was left, A full body mirror was transported in from a side panel. The only hair left on the Siren’s body was right on top of her head, and in place of her long seductive locks, were snowy curls that bobbed up and down around her ears and over her forehead.  Every other follicle had been shaved down to a molecule with laser sharpened steel.  “I look like a toddler!”  she gasped.

“Mmmmhmmm…”  Glitch said.  “Guess what’s next?”

The styling arms ascended and another buzz from the sign above the viewing window drew Circe’s attention.  “Diapering?!” This had to be a joke.  There was no way the superhero was serious about this!  Had to be a typo.  That bitch couldn’t possibly-

But she could.

The mobile restraints lifted Circe into the air as easily as if she were a ragdoll and held her parallel to the floor until another slab raised up beneath her. Only the manacle around her waist released itself, and that was only so that a similar metal tendrel could wrap around her, securing her.  The hands that had been lifting her were similarly traded out.

This particular table was the same base rectangular shape as the one she awoke on, but was much softer.  Not quite so soft as a bed, however. It was closer to the sturdy couches of a state mandated psychologist’s office or the massage tables of a five star resort she’d once sung herself into. 

This was neither of those things she realized.

“Is that a diaper?” The Siren cried out looking at the ceiling.  The hands had returned, and in them was a neatly folded, thick, fluffy, shining white plastic backed diaper.  If she had any doubt about it, the bottle of baby powder and the jar of diaper rash cream sent the message home.   “I AM NOT WEAR-!”  The pacifier that zoomed in cut off the rest of her sentence. 

The moment the rubber bulb came into contact with Circe’s tongue it started rapidly inflating, filling her mouth until it was impossible to spit out, yet alone suckle on it.  It was more akin to a ball gag with a cute little mouth guard and knob at the end.  She looked down past her nose and caught a glimpse of lilypad green.  At least it wasn’t pink…

The massive diaper was unfolded and her legs were forced up by the tendrils keeping her restrained to the robotic changing table.

She was helpless to resist.  Of all the times that her legs had been hoisted up over her head (very few since she preferred cowgirl), this was by far the worst.  The thick, smelly diaper cream had an unpleasant smell that reminded her of hospitals.  Circe could only moan around her bulb, while the goop was pasted onto and between her cheeks.  The cold yet dry baby powder that followed had a pleasant aroma that calmed her down. 

Her bottom was lowered down onto the diaper, and she became intensely aware of the thick padding that crinkled beneath her.  Some extra powder was dusted on her now hairless mound and sprinkled onto her belly button for good measure.

Inhaling more and more of the perfumed dust, Circe felt more and more of the fight go out of her.  Her breathing slowed.  Her fists unclenched.  She stopped testing the strength of the restraints every three seconds.  She was completely aware, but much of the fear and outrage and emotion was gone; numbed. The monster in her was silent and she became a curious observer in her own body. 

She lifted her head and examined herself as the diaper was brought up between her legs.  An adult diaper, obviously, but…not?  It had four tapes to accommodate her wider more womanly hips, but there was a childish decoration, a blue dog on the front.  Only baby diapers had cute little decorations on them; likely so as to not repulse the poor parents tasked with changing them.  No self-respecting adult would wear something this obviously infantile.

Circe was beginning to wonder if she had such a thing as self-respect.

“That’s right,” Glitch’s voice came back in.  “Breathe deep, baby girl.  Smells nice, doesn’t it?”
Reluctantly, Circe nodded her head.  “This should make the rest of the process go much smoother.  I figured you were immune to pure hypnotism given your background, so I whipped up a little cocktail to help you relax. Nothing like a little aromatic chemical restraint.”

Aromatic chemical restraint.  Her mind, foggy as it was parsed the words out. The baby powder.  She was being drugged.  She should be afraid, the Siren realized, but couldn’t muster the effort.  Better to just lay here.  In her nice, snug, and comfy diaper.

“Good girl,” the speakers whispered.  “I’d leave you like this but you’re not likely to learn anything.  Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Joy, or any strong emotion was beyond Circe by the time the board changed to “Feeding”

A bottle came down and the pacifier was removed.  Circe’s slackened jaw did not try to resist the fresh nipple as it was inserted between her lips.  Completely aware, but powerless to resist, she suckled lightly on the milk, letting it dribble and drip down into her mouth and swallowing. Dribbles and drips turned to trickles turned to gushes.  Practically of their own volition, her lips started sucking and draining the overly large bottle while her belly extended.

The rubber teat slipped out as easily as it had gone in and the last bits of milk leaked down the sides of Circe’s lips.  The tendrils propped her up.  She read the flashing sign.  “Burping.”

A foam paddle in place of a warm hand did the deed, patting her back up and down her spine until she inevitably burst.  “BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARCHK!”

The hands came down a final time to lift the diapered and bloated woman up into the air and deposit her in a newly arrived crib.  The pacifier found its way back into her mouth, but didn’t inflate so much that it hurt the second time. The sign flashed one final word that Circe was able to read.  “Nap.”  Nap? Already?  Well…alright.  She felt uncomfortably full.  Sleep would dull the sensations, no doubt.  Something must have been in the milk.

The viewing window rushed by Circe while an unseen force propelled the adult sized crib through the singular doorway.  On the other side of the threshold was a room very similar to the one she’d existed, but much less sparsely decorated.  She caught sight of a giant highchair, a large baby bouncer and of course, a more proper looking changing table with shelves stacked full of the same babyish print diapers that she now wore.  It still had the same salmon colored paint job and preschool level shapes stenciled in along the border.

Her ever dimming view was cut off by Glitch.  “Welcome to the nursery, bratty baby girl.”  Circe finally understood the frilly white apron:  Major nanny vibes. The younger hero stared at her wrist.  “Everything should be kicking in about three…two…one…”

Circe’s knees bent and raised up to her stomach.  Without meaning to, she felt herself start to push.  The once feared villainess was passing muffled farts and more.  Warm, mushy stool shot out of her and into the back of her once clean diaper, causing it to balloon out slightly to accommodate.  She was pooping but too stoned to care.  Her bladder finally relaxed for good measure, soaking the padding between her legs and mingling with the mess for a moment before being completely absorbed.

“Right on time,” Glitch said. “Go ahead,” she coaxed.  “Sleep.  The bottle and the powder should conk you out for an hour or two.  Rest up.  You’ll need it.”

Rest.  Yes. That sounded good.  And this crib and these ‘clothes’ felt oddly comfortable, even in their current state.

“Okay everyone,”  Glitch called.  “Experiment complete.  Cloaking fields off.”

Circe managed to see the viewing window to the giant nursery fill with the blinking forms of a dozen or so scientists in white lab coats deactivating personal invisibility devices.  Her complete and total degradation had been witnessed and likely documented by those pathetic sheep. Sleep was now more than a relaxing suggestion, but a much needed emotional retreat inside herself.

She woke up, Circe promised herself, she’d find a way to get out of this and make Glitch pay.  Glitch, that upstart. That brat.  That….that….that…

[Personalias]

Chapter 2

Circe regained consciousness before she opened her eyes.  She woke upon a mattress so comfortably soft that it could best be described as decadent.  Feeling surprisingly relaxed she was awoken only from the pleasantly stiff feeling in her legs and arms.  Eyes still closed, the Siren locked her knees and raised her ankles just an inch or two above the mattress, pointing her toes away from her as if they might separate from her body if she tried hard enough.  She did the same with her arms, thrusting them towards her feet and making a fist. She felt the most comfortable ache and flex of her biceps, doing that and let out a gentle purring hum. 
Briefly, she remembered one of her contemporaries actually could separate their limbs from their bodies.  Who was that? Dizlocate?  Or was it Reach Around?  Whomever it was, they weren’t important enough for Circe to remember.  The idea that their powers might give them this oddly relaxing feeling was the more important thought.

Go to sleep.  She should just go to sleep.  Her body was telling her as such.  No need to open her eyes. Her limbs felt heavy in a miraculous way.  She went limp and puffed air out of her nostrils; the faintest hit of a smile tugging at her mouth.  No thoughts. Not right now.  Thoughts later.  Sleep now.

Annoying, she knew that sleep wouldn’t come back to her. Her neck and back were getting into the act of being sore, and she knew how this routine would go: She’d roll over and stretch her spine, but that would make her legs uncomfortable. She’d pick a new position on her side and try to get the crick out of her neck and inevitably her arms would complain.  Then she’d roll again and again and again, until her heart started pumping faster making the limbs antsy. Her brain would start working to calculate the best position, and in that calculation would make it impossible to drift back off to sleep.  Inevitably her Siren soul would get restless and cry out for causing some kind of havoc and it’d be back to work.  Damn, but getting old sucked.

Might as well get it over with and wake up.  Heavy lids struggled open and blurry eyes strained to gain focus.  The computer of her mind turned off its screensaver and started to come back online.  Computer? Technology?  The metaphor came so easily to her for a reason. She was more than sleepy, she was groggy. Drugged. After fighting (and losing) to a hero.

Fuck.

The real world came back into focus for Circe and her short term memory separated dreamless sleep from memories she’d wished had dreamed up.  Beneath the fluorescent lights of an A.S.T.R.A.L. Labs sub-basement, things came to focus.  Directly above her, Circe stared at what she thought had been some kind of gyroscope that was actually a dangling mobile of the solar system.  This wasn’t the first time the supervillain had woken up behind bars, but she could never remember having those bars be made of thick pink painted wood surrounding a crib mattress.  And as far as surveillance went, the tiny camera attached to the footboard of the giant baby bed; nothing more than a baby monitor.
“Oh Tartarus, no…” Circe cursed.  She gritted her teeth, reached out and grabbed the crib rails, and pulled herself up to a seating position.

A curse turned into a gasp and any trace of a blissfully ignorant smile spilled down into a massive horrified frown like splattered paint on the wall.  The solid, room temperature, almost grainy mass in the back of her underpants shifted in her underpants beneath her wait.  As did the swollen midsection that bulged out to the front.

Calling the thick plastic backed diaper taped around her hips, encasing her buttocks and loins while forcing her to sit splay legged and lay spread eagle ‘underwear’ was her being generous to herself.  It was a diaper.  Definitely a diaper.  Not an adult one either.  Four tapes, but a childish blue dog decoration placed just above her mound. She had no idea what kind of diaper it was, whether Snuggies, or Crampers, or Wuvs or whatever they were called.   She had near ancestral memories of when babes were naked lest swaddled.  Circe hated kids and didn’t keep track of such vapid clothing fads.  Why keep track of styles that she would never wear?

Such minutiae only served to delay inevitable realizations that would upset the silver haired supervillain: She was sitting in her own excrement and had been sleeping in it.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” The scream of outrage that blasted out her throat rumbled out and would have brought the ceiling down.  Or it would have had she be able to use her powers the way she’d intended to.  Her scream just warbled out as a pastel rose petal pink.  Her hand jumped up to her throat, her fingers brushing against the choker that had been attached to her.  To the Siren being unable to control her voice was more embarrassing than being able to control her bathroom parts.

Her voice! She had her voice back! When she’d lost consciousness, she remembered, a sadistic rubber gag had been shoved in between her lips, preventing her to do anything more than impotently mumble as the laxative and sedative laced bottle took hold of her senses. Circe touched her lips as if she almost expected it not to be true. 

It was! She could talk again!  Even if she couldn’t scream or sing her way out, talking was an invaluable tool at her disposal.  One could gain information to escape if they asked the right questions and played on their jailor’s sympathies.  One could provoke their jailor to act unwisely with well chosen words.  These were bits of wisdom that the Siren’s soul soothed to her.

Soothing was minimal, sadly. Circe tilted her head to the side and a bit of her own silver locks brushed up against the side of her face and into her field of vision. Her head tilted the other way and another clump of hair brushed up against her.  Her hands traveled up to the top of her head and gained purchase in the form of two massive clumps on either side of her head.

Pigtails!  Stupid, immature, little-girl pigtails! Her pacifier had been removed, but her hair had been done up like a little girl. All while she slept, too! Such an injurious insult!  It felt like such a violation!  No one had even changed her (she hoped).

“Glitch,” Circe whispered. That stupid arrogant wannabe hero had done this to her.  Circe would make that upstart bitch pay. But first she had to get her powers back.

She grabbed the ribbon with both hands, trying to quickly yank it off, managing only to scratch and scrape her neck.  She couldn’t get so much as a fingernail under the modified restraint collar; it might as well be tattooed on.

Footsteps signaled approach from out of sight. She’d been heard and her captor was coming.  Circe made no effort to stop her attempts. She was a Siren. The Siren! Sirens beguiled in plain sight and need not conceal themselves.  If Circe hadn’t been clouded by rage and pride, she might have reasoned that no restraint placed on her would be easy enough to remove by hand.  It still felt good to struggle.

A young Asian woman in a white lab coat approached the crib with a datapad, reminding Circe that the nursery surrounding her was a facade more than anything.  “Good morning, Miss Castallanos. How are you feeling?” She avoided any kind of eye contact, concentrating and reading some kind of readout on the tablet on her hand, scanning dating from behind thin round rimmed glasses.

Circe wrinkled up her nose into a scowl. This wasn’t a hero. This lab coat with legs wasn’t even old enough to be an actual accomplished scientist; just an intern. Not a single wrinkle or gray hair. Glasses that were more for style than function. Hair pulled up behind her head in a messy bun.   This was nothing doctor’s sidekick! A child playing dress up, and she wouldn’t even look at Circe! How dare that Glitch?! How dare she?! Wouldn’t even give her a proper guard to antagonize!  She was the Siren, damnit!  She should be taken seriously! 

The intern punched a few things into the datapad. “I’m here to collect some qualitative and quantitative data. My name is D-”

“GET! THE FUCK! OUT!”

The young woman’s eyes glazed over and stared into the middle distance, a perfectly acceptable and predictable reaction to her powerful charms.  Circe licked her lips in cruel anticipation.  Time to find out what pink sound did.

The Asian woman whipped her head directly to Circe and her formerly clinical expression melted.. “Hey honey! Are you okay?” The woman’s voice pitched up almost an octave and lowered in volume to a soft gentle whisper.  “Did you have a bad dream or something?”

Circe narrowed her eyes, parsing out the information she was being given.  Her newest victim was acting gentle and sympathetic to her.  Perhaps a pink modulation made it so that she appeared to be a victim, or a damsel in need of rescuing. 

“Help me,” Circe whispered, and leaned up against the bars. “Get me out of here. Please!”  She’d heard this speech plenty of times; just not from this side of the crib…er…cage.  “I’m trapped. And scared.”  She pouted her lip out and made big hopeful puppy dog eyes.

“You want out?” the woman cooed softly..  Circe bobbed her head in a nod. The intern sniffed and her nose wrinkled. She frowned curiously. “Oooooh,” she said after a beat. “You want out of that diaper!”   More than Circe’s voice was pink upon hearing that. “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll change you.”  The woman’s head started scanning the faux nursery and her body meandered around the carpet. “Where is…?” 

“Wait!” Circe called out. “Where are you going?”

The Siren’s whining went unheeded while the lady in the lab coat took inventory. Finally, she stopped and pointed to a comically oversized changing table.  “Ah! There they are!” 

The monster in the crib gripped the bars while her mark came back to the crib.  Yes!

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” the intern said. “We’ll get you in a clean diaper and maybe a snack. Then you can play! Would you like that?”

Diaper?!  Why would…?  Nevermind. Not important. Focus. 

“Yes please,” Circe begged. Just focus.

BEEP!

The woman’s data pad rang in a high pitched alarming whine.  The so-called scientist looked down at her data pad, her brow furrowed. “Hm?”  She looked to the glass observation window. Circe followed her gaze.  Just like before she’d passed out, the hall just outside the nursery appeared empty.  Circe knew better.  Knowing better did nothing to stop her blush from spreading at the realization that more than one person was seeing her in pigtails and a loaded diaper. “What? No. I’m not doing that. She’s just a-”

BEEP!

Eyes went back to the datapad.  She shook her head. “No. There’s got to be some kind of mistake.  That’s not the Siren.”

Circe’s eyes widened. “Please,” Circe begged. “Don’t listen to them. Get me out of here. Please…”

The stranger’s eyes were glued to the datapad.  “Just a second, baby.”

“Baby?”  Circe drew back.  “I’m not a-”

BEEP!

The nameless scientist turned ninety degrees from the crib so that she was facing the hallway filled with invisible strangers “Are you sure?” she asked.

BEEP!

Circe shifted to her knees and sat, entranced, curious at the struggle playing out on the woman’s face.  A terrible idea. “Mama?”

The data pad fell from the woman’s hands and clattered to the carpet floor. “I can’t!” she screamed, shooting her hands up to her hair and dug at her hair. “I just can’t!” 

A door on the far end of the pseudo-nursery slid open.  In walked Glitch, hair blinking and arm tattoos pulsating with white light.  “Dr. Zhao,” she said. “You’re needed in the observation room.”  She regarded the seeming empty hallway.  “Please make room and way for Doctor Zhao so she can safely review the footage.”  Circe saw something blinked in the young cyborg’s  earbud.  “Yes, have a counselor present just in case.  I think she’ll be okay.”

Airwaves rippled and just as before, a hallway full of men and women in white coats shuffled off and away.  Leave it to super-scientists to create personalized cloaking devices that broke down with movement when a two way mirror would do.

“Glitch! I’m sorry!” Dr. Zhao,-who was still very much a lowly intern in Circe’s book- snatched the tablet up off the floor and held it between her and the newly arrived superhero. Circe thought she looked like someone who had been caught in the shower and was reaching for a towel to cover herself. “I can’t do it! I just can’t!”

The dark skinned super closed the distance and gently placed her hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “You did fine, Dr. Zhao. This is excellent data, and I think you will be fascinated upon a reflection.”

“You’re not going to harm her, are you?” Dr. Zhao asked.  “She’s just…it’s wro…”

Glitch carefully took the datapad out of the meeker and more pathetic woman’s hand. “It’s okay. You did well.”

“Are you going to do anything to her?”

“No harm will come to her, Stephanie.”  Glitch said. “I’m just running some diagnostics.”

“Promise?” The scientist was turned away from Circe, but the Siren could tell from the quaver and cracking in her voice that she was on the verge of tears.

“I promise you, Doctor.” Glitch repeated.  She removed her hand from the woman’s shoulder and tapped her temple. “My brain operates under Asimov’s Laws, remember?  I couldn’t harm her if I wanted to.” A half-second. “And I don’t want to.” 

“STEPHENIE!”  Circe yelled from her crib. “MOMMY!”  It wouldn’t accomplish anything, Circe knew.  It was still fun to watch the woman’s shoulders bunch up to her ears.

“You should go,” Glitch said calmly.  “I’ll take care of her.”

“MOMMY!”

“But-!”

Glitch pivoted and put her arm around the other woman. She started walking the mere mortal out towards the exit. Circe wished for laser vision.  She made do with the one power she had.  “MOMMEEEEEEEEE!” 

The superhero leaped back and in front of the intern holding her arms out.  “It’s okay,” Glitch intoned. “She’s okay. She’s just nervous. The longer you draw this out, the harder it’ll be for her.”

Dr. Zhao inhaled and bit her lip. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right.”

“MOMMEEEEEEEEE!” 

It seemed less effective that time.  The illusion was still being weaved in the victim’s mind, but she was controlling herself. “She’ll be fine?”

“She’ll be fine.  I’ll take care of her.  Starting with a diaper change.”  Glitch looked behind her and the hero and rival through menacing stares at each other.  At least that’s what Circe told herself.  Later footage would show Glitch’s expression as more of a calm and confident smile.

“She’s been in it for a while,” the walking labcoat nodded.

“We’ve got top of the line rash protection,” Glitch said.  “But you have to go and get to work. That’s the whole purpose of daycares.”

Dr. Zhao blinked. “It is. Isn’t it.”  Stuck in the giant crib, the Siren had the distinct feeling that Glitch was weaving her own illusion; her own cold reading of the situation.  And she was doing a better job at it than Circe.”

“Yes. Now go.”

The young Asian woman, young enough that Circe should have been thinking of changing her diaper (not the other way around) craned her neck and leaned sideways over the science hero’s shoulder.  “Okay.  Bye…  I love you!”

“MOMMEEEEEEEEE!” 

Finally, the woman was pushed past the threshold and the door slid shut. Glitch spun on the ball of her foot and cocked her eyebrow.  “I hope you’re proud of yourself, Siren.”

Circe inhaled through her nose and caught another whiff of the fetid mess she’d been sleeping in.  She leaned back off her knees and tried not to wince feeling the lump move with her. It was more solid than was comfortable. It also didn’t rattle or shake around very much. Part of it was probably stuck to her.  She purred anyway. “Now that you mention it, yes.” 

A wicked grin revealed pearly white glistening teeth.  You could put a demon in pigtails and crinkling undies. It didn’t make her any less hellish.  Being called by her supervillain name was just SO exhilarating!

“Good,” Glitch said. “You should be. Thank you very much.” 

The smile evaporated. “What?”

Calmly, Glitch grabbed the white lace apron she’d had on before from a hook on the wall. “That young lady you just entranced is one of the keenest researchers at the facility.”  She draped the apron over her neck, and then tucked the fled scientist’s datapad under her chin so that she could the strings behind her back. 

It seemed so completely casual, too. could have been practiced precision or it could have been something she’d programmed into herself.  “At nineteen, Dr. Zhao is also something of a wunderkind. Genius I.Q., mathematically proved the existence of God, and quite frankly, something of a sociopath.  She discusses her parents like they’re uninteresting historical footnotes, has no siblings, or deep familial connections. No maternal instincts or desire whatsoever. When she got her first menstrual cycle, she half a month off from all other interests and designed an artificial birthing chamber that would house, nourish, exercise, and program-slash-educate a fertilized embryo from conception to age eighteen; all while keeping it unconscious.  Darndest thing is, as near as I can tell it would work.  That girl does not like children.”

Circe crossed her arms over her chest. “So?”

“So?” Glitch laughed.  “Just a few of those ‘pink words’ from you and she turned into a heartbroken first time mom feeling like she abandoned her daughter after maternity leave.  She wanted to change your diaper. This is a woman who almost got in a fight with one of our actual mother on staff because she suggested that hospitals should catheterize and give newborns colostomies ‘for efficiency’s sake’.”

Terribly amused, Circe laid back down on her side, ignoring the crinkle so she could get away with the smell of herself.  She also had to bend her top leg so that her thighs wouldn’t squeeze the soaked bulging garment in a vice.    “Hmmm….you sent me a scrapper; a provacateur. I’m actually flattered.”

“You don’t understand,” Glitch corrected her, “Zhao was the one who picked the fight. The mother laughed. She thought it was a joke and Zhao was insulted.”  Glitch came up to the crib, holding the tablet.  “Considering that your powers normally have a history of drawing from the affected’s psyche, I confess to being deeply curious about what she saw when she looked in this crib.”  She turned the data pad around so that Circe could view it.

Circe reached up and took the data pad from Glitch. It was filled with orange text on a black background.  In the upper right hand corner, there was a live camera feed coming from Circe’s crib, showing the supervillain in all of her non-glory, a rolling set of numbers and abbreviations that she could only assume were for her vitals, and a series of text messages that must have corresponded with the correspondence.  The Siren looked at each in turn and savored the information gleaned from them.

REMEMBER: Subject is Circe “Siren” Castallanos.

14:29:34 Subject is attempting to manipulate you. Engage restraints before continuing interrogation.

14:30:28 SUBJECT IS SIREN! NOT A CHILD!  

14: 31:01  You are not thinking clearly, Zhao.  You’ve been compromised. You will think yourself
ridiculous and you’re not the one in a diaper.

14:31:28  Yes. We are sure.  Do NOT extract subject from crib. Your life will be in danger if you do.

Like a kitten playing with a ball of yarn, Circe rolled over onto her back and admired the messages on the tablet. “I am good, aren’t I?”  She might have as well been a reincarnation of Narcissus. 

“You really are,” Glitch complimented her.  “Zhao had a live feed, a briefing on your powers, and constant reminders from unaffected third parties. And she still wanted nothing more than to play Mommy with you.”

“With great power,” Circe purred, “actually, I forget the rest.”

“It’s not just the power,” Glitch said. “You had a very limited idea of what you were perceived as, yet you adapted remarkably quickly, turning the situation to your advantage. It’s not just your powerset, Circe, you’re good at this.”

The words were sweet perfume to Circe’s ears. This. She loved when a worthy opponent acknowledged her skill.  Not that Glitch was a worthy opponent. Yet, even Penelope was clever enough to unweave Laertes’s shroud night after night. The upstart ex-sidekick might not be Odysseus, but she might yet earn her place of honor in someone else’s myth. 

“It’s not like it was that hard,” Circe said. “Look what you dressed me as. She kept talking about changing my diaper.” She scrolled down the data pad and eyed an icon labeled ‘Extract.’ “I wish I’d stumbled upon this pink voice earlier,” she mused. “It has some of the same advantages as some of my other voices, but it’s far more subtle.”

Glitch cocked a curious eye brow and her pupils flashed thousands of tiny digits.  “Subtle? How so? I wouldn’t think of registering as a child as subtle.”

“Typical machine,” Circe gloated. “All facts and figures, and no social nuance. How many myths do you know about children? Kids are invisible extensions of their parents. I belt out something in red or yellow or green or purple, and people want to take notice of me; make me the center of their world.”

“I thought that was how you like it.”

“I do,” Circe admitted. “A child though? A toddler? If I can pass myself as someone’s random kid, I can be introduced, go unnoticed, cause havoc, and then get away with a slap on the wrist. Best of several worlds.” She thought of all the recent times her cons and illusions were spoiled by a video going viral and people realizing she was behind it all.  “Nobody takes pictures of other people’s kids. Wouldn’t have to have sex with some old rich guy either.”

“Wouldn’t everyone you used the voice on just think that you’re their baby?” Glitch asked. “You’d just start city wide Amber Alerts and brawls over people wanting their baby back.

Circe sat up and immediately regretted it.  The mess couldn’t spread much further than it already had, but being right underneath it was uncomfortable.  “It’s far more subtle and nuanced than that, dear,” she condescended, trying to sound wider than she looked. “My illusions are dependent on the individual viewing them, but there’s always a measure of context involved. I tricked all of your security staff into thinking I was Chuck with just a little bit of cyan.  I highly doubt he’s the only jackass in their mundane collective lives, just the one that made the most sense in the context of a lab break in.”

Stupidly, Glitch began to pace away from the crib.  Circe’s time was approaching, she could feel it. “Interesting. So while you can’t influence people precisely, if you know and can account for different circumstances of their psychology you can more readily predict what reactions they’ll have. That’s why historically your illusions are more precise outside of violent confrontation where you have the luxury to control the circumstances and environment.”

“Precisely, my dear sidekick.”  Circe was disappointed to see that the cyborg didn’t so much as flinch.  “Sometimes all it takes is for me to establish myself for one mark to see me as the love of his life, his lady in red, and then when we’re together…”

Glitch finished the thought. “Everyone else would still see you as a tempting seductress but infer the connection between you and your latest boy toy. They might see different physical traits that they themselves would lust after, but they’d be more inclined to lust after you from afar due to societal pressures.”

“Now she’s getting it,” Circe grinned. If she didn’t kill this brat, maybe she would make a worthy adversary. There was nothing inherently wrong with helping the next generation of heroes get their trial by fire. Coming of age stories were their own forms of mythologies. “ All I’d need is to establish someone as my Daddy-”

“Or Mommy,” Glitch interrupted.

“Or Mommy,” Circe conceded, “and then there’s a good chance that everyone would see me as someone else’s adorable little girl to be admired, fawned over, and then ignored when it came time for serious stuff.”
“Interesting…”

Circe didn’t hear the intense curiosity in Glitch’s voice. She was busy poking and broadening at the off-white swollen padding taped to her hips. “I wonder what would happen if I wasn’t wearing this,” she thought out loud.  “Would I be seen as a four or five year old? Young and adorable but potty trained?”

“Why does that matter?” Glitch’s eyes were still doing an unknowable number of computations.

“Besides not wanting to pee in front of an audience?” Circe asked. “The illusion only goes so far, honey. I don’t know if you noticed with all that wiring in your cranium, but kids are dressed very differently from adults depending on their age.  A little girl might be in a ball gown to dress like the grown-ups, but a thong is still a thong and that sends up red flags.  What if someone went to check me or change me and realized that the diapers they bought from the store don’t come close to fitting?  I might need to invest in a whole new wardrobe to pull these types of operations off and not get caught as soon as bathroom matters..  Is Lolita fashion still a thing?

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Glitch smirked.

Presently, the superhero was near the middle of the laboratory turned nursery. More than enough for Circe to charge in and attack. Upgrades or not, Circe had fought Techno-Glitch’s mentor and predecessor- enough times to know about weak spots and defenses. Her bones could be reinforced with Titanium; it wouldn’t protect the joints. Noses could be broken, digitized camera eyes could be clawed out and wind pipes could be torn open with teeth.

The Siren sighed theatrically. “Me neither.  You know what else I wouldn’t do?”

“What’s that?”

“Hand me a datapad with an ‘Extract’ link.” She felt a surge of adrenaline and triumph pressing down on it.  “Ha!”  That triumph was short-lived.
 

Robotic hands dropped down from the ceiling, snaking and twining around Circe’s waist and hoisting her up, up,up  and over the crib bars. Her bare feet struggled and dangled in the air and the full weight of her very loaded diaper tugged down at her hips.  “What?! Hey!”  Slowly, like a ride at a theme park, Circe was being railroaded over to the giant changing table.

Glitch clicked her tongue and shook her head knowingly.  “Circe, baby: do you really think I’d hand you the keys to your own freedom that easily? I just wanted to see what variables were needed to get you to act.”

“But the button said…!”

“It’s basic coding,” Glitch shrugged.  “Appearances can be deceiving. I thought you would already know that.” She flashed a mean spirited grin at Circe. “Or maybe appearances aren’t that deceiving and there’s a reason why you took to the pink sound so quickly…”

“Mother fucking bitch cunt twat waffle cyborg asshole dyke mother fucker!” Circe added in several more colorful euphemisms that would have meant a duel to the death in ancient Greek, even the literal translation wasn’t so impactful in these overly modern times..  Sadly, colorful or not, the only color coming out of her mouth was babygirl pink.

Glitch hissed and sucked in her breath through her teeth.  “Ooops. Shouldn’t have done that, baby girl.” The changing table up against the wall on Circe’s left started to slowly drift away.  “This place is automated and has voice identification.”

“What the-?!” Circe whipped her head to the right. Up from out of the ground, a large padded lump raided up out of the ground.  It was obviously cushioned and padded, but not nearly big enough for a full grown adult to comfortably lay across. It looked similar to one of those pommel horses that gymnasts used but without the handle bars on either end. “Glitch, what are you doing, what’s going on?”

Glitch crossed her arms. “You activated the program and then said a bad word. Naughty actions have consequences here.”

The supervillain was lowered across padded pommel horse, with the mechanical tendrils not releasing her until its compatriots had sprung up from the floor and secured her by the wrists and ankles.  “Naughty? Why are you talking like that?”
A mechanical whirring sound made Circe’s ears twitch. If she turned her head she could just barely see a positively massive paddle, the kind used in fraternity college movies, rise up behind her.  More easily in her view was a group of scientists on the other side of the window taking notes on datapads.

A saccharine sweet voice came over speakers hidden discretely inside the ceiling.  “Baby said a bad, bad word. Naughty naughty! Mama spank!”

Spank?

WHACK!

The paddle clapped into her diapered backside, causing Circe to shrink pink in surprise.

WHACK!

Again it thundered into her. The padding absorbed most of the impact, but she felt the slightest uncomfortable itch.  She’d been sitting and sleeping in her mess for quite a while. A rash was likely forming, and the impact and pressing up against the soiled undergarment wasn’t helping.

WHACK! WHACK!

The paddle was picking up speed, smacking into her with increasing force with every blow.  It was starting to hurt, and it wasn’t just because of the rash that she was developing.

“Ow!” Circe winced. “Glitch stop!”

WHACK! WHACK!

“Baby said a naughty word! What a bad, bad naughty little baby!”  The message came from above her, prerecorded, but still in Glitch’s voice nonetheless.  “Baby needs to say ‘Sorry Mama!”

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

Speed and power increased. It was genuinely hurting. The paddle moving by inches in between smacks so that the impact would be spread out.

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

The backs of her thighs were being lit up, too.  Circe started to struggle and kick. The restraints holding her gave her only enough gift so that she could wriggle her arms and legs, impotently kicking and thrashing.  “Glitch! Stop it!”  The ex-sidekick stood firmly with her hands on her hips and a satisfied close lipped grin on her face.

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

Her ass was on fire and her head was shaking between each volley.  She was letting out little pink yelps with each concussive blow and each sting against her flesh. She turned her head to the side and saw men and women in lab coats jotting something down between squeaks and screams of pain.  They seemed particularly interested when they caught a glimpse of Circe’s watering eyes.  This was cruel and unusual punishment at its finest.

Glitch cocked her hip to the side and pointed towards the ceiling. “Don’t talk to me, talk to her!”

“Baby said a naughty word! Bad! Bad! Baby!”

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

“Who?!”  The words were just coming out pink. Circe couldn’t help it.  She was in increasing pain and far too much humiliation to properly control her vocal chords.  Anything beyond the normal range of human hearing would simply leap out of her and then be transmuted to that damned pink.

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

The program running the spanking machine clued her in. “Say ‘Sorry Mama!”

Circe clenched her jaw and ignored the tears leaking out of her eyes.  She would not say that.  She would not give glitch or these stupid labcoats the satisfaction.  She didn’t care that she’d been reduced to nothing more than a squirming toddler over her Mommy’s knee. “NO!”

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

The spanking was turning into a pummeling.  Circe could swear she was feeling the bruises on her thighs and backside start to form and swell.  She was having trouble catching her breath; her entire skin felt like it was on fire from the rush of endorphins alone!

“This can be all over when you say it’s over,” Glitch called.

“Bad bad naughty little baby! Say ‘Sorry Mama’!

“NOOOOOOOOO!”

The tears were in free fall down Circe’s face and snot bubbled up out of her nose. Over twenty years of villain going down the drain now that she was being treated like a stupid two year old that had spoken out of turn.

Just like back home…

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!
 

To say that Circe was behind pain would have been a lie.  She felt every stinging impact more than before. But something in the Siren’s spirit cracked if not broke.  She’d stopped kicking and struggling.  She drew breath only to cry out and stopped wailing in anguish only when she ran out of breath and needed to inhale. The inhalations were the worst part.  All the pain of impact with none of the release of screaming.

"Say ‘Sorry Mama’!”


Even Glitch was beginning to look uncomfortable. “Circe! Say it! Safeword out!”

“SORRY MAMA!”

Her sobbing continued, even though the paddle machine stopped on a dime.  “I’m sorry Mama!” Her body racked itself with sobs and her chest hurt from screaming so much; quite an accomplishment given that she screamed as a form of combat.  “I’m sorry Mama.  Sorry Mama.  Sorry. Sorry Mama.”  Circe kept saying it with every breath, in whispers and inhales.  She felt the wetness in her hair and forehead. She’d broken out into a sweat.

The tendrils snaked down from the ceiling and lifted her up like a ragdoll or a broken puppet. The parade of shame stopped right in front of the young superheroine.  She reached up and gently stroked the side of Circe’s face. “You did good,” she said. “You had the power to stop it the whole time.  You just had to decide that your pride wasn’t worth what you were being put through.”

Circe opened her mouth to give a hearty ‘fuck you’ to her captor, but thought better of it. She settled for a “I hate you so much.”  It came out breathy and exhausted and weak and pink; just like Circe.

Glitch ignored the declaration and inspected Circe’s padded backside.  “If this diaper wasn’t ruined before, it is now.  Held up pretty well, though. The spanking mechanism worked extremely well.”  Circe could hear the self-satisfied congratulations in Glitch’s tone.

She yelped, feeling a cold finger prod at her thighs. She’d had throw downs with Power Guy that left her feeling less sore.

“Yikes, that’s a mark.” Glitch noted.  Circe moaned pathetically feeling the younger woman poke and prod at her bruises. “Will have to adjust that during the changing sequence.” Glitch walked back around. She had regained that cocky look in her eyes that the Siren inside of Circe wanted to devour. “Fun fact, that was supposed to be a bare bottomed spanking, but the nursery’s A.I. detected the full diaper and left it on you as a result”  More digits streamed across the woman’s pupils.  “And I want to say the spanking reduced impact after your heart rate reached a certain level. Damn, I’m good!”

The supervillain noticed that no tendrils snaked out to take her to a giant spanking knee.  The pommel horse was already descending back into its hidden floor compartment. “Why are you doing this to me?” Circe asked, perhaps sincerely for the first time.

“To see if this works,” Glitch replied.  She stepped away out of arm's reach.  “Computer, resume changing.”

With all the power and gentleness of a mother elephant the mechanical tendrils took Circe’s limp body to the nursery’s changing table.  Unlike its predecessor earlier this morning, there was no mistaking this one’s intended purpose.  The sturdy wood was painted a soft eggshell white with with a concave padded mattress that made it more difficult to roll in. 

Not that Circe could roll. The moment her sweaty ragdoll body was laid out on the table, more restraints leapt out from the table and pinned her arms down to the sides and kept her shoulders square to the mat.  The wood outside was only for aesthetic, as was the low railing meant to keep an actual giant infant from accidentally taking a plunge.

“Don’t want my snuggly little baby to fall out,” the pre-recorded voice cooed at her.  It was so jarring hearing Glitch’s prattling from both a machine while the woman herself was standing twenty feet away.  “Oh, such a stinkle little baby. Mama will clean you up so you can get back to playing!”

The sound quality was jarring, too. It sounded like another version of Glitch was right beside her, hovering over her and cooing at her like she was a silly toddler.  No doubt those same sound systems Circe had been hoping to steal were placed throughout this mock nursery.

“Quit playing games you-!”  Another pacifier came up between her lips. Circe prepared to scream and bite down for the bulb to comically inflate just like last time, but the inflation never happened. A motorized whirring drew her attention and a mobile over her head started spinning. The mobile  was nothing special:  just some dangling preschool shapes: squares, circles, triangles, stars and the like, just like occasional stencils in the wall.  But when it turned a flash of bright pink light strobed into Circe’s eyes.

Mechanical hands came out and lifted Circe’s legs up by the ankles. “Baby made a poopy in her pants, didn’t she?” The Siren winced and sucked on the pacifier while the hand pressed itself into her ruined padding. “Yes she did! She wettums too! Soaked and soggy! Much too little to be ready for potty training!”  Circe didn’t need the pink strobe light to make her face rosey red.  “Let’s get Mama’s little bun bun cleaned up!”  Her legs were lowered back down.

RIIIP!
RIIIIP!
RIIIIIP!

RIIIIIIIP!

One by one the tapes of the over-large children’s diaper came off, each rip of a tape of the plastic backing was a needle scratch on the record of Circe’s confidence and feelings of adulthood. As the diaper was peeled back, Circe chose to look up into the flashing, blinding, mobile instead of down at the trainwreck below her waist.

“Peeeee-yew!” The changing table said. “Where did baby put it all?  Don’t worry, sweetie. Mama will fix and make it all better!”

Circe wanted to yell, either at Glitch or her demeaning contraption but sucked on the pacifier instead.  If Glitch knew that she’d accidentally given the supervillain a real pacifier instead of an infantilized gag, she might correct that error.

The lights strobed down, the mobile spun, and Circe sucked on the paci while the machine went to work.  Up, up, up, her legs went, and baby wipes came to gently cleans her backside, between her legs, and atop her mound.

“This is the way, we wipe the bum, wipe the bum, wipe the bum,” a machine with Glitch’s voice sang almost tunelessly.  “This is the way we wipe the bum, because the baby made a mes-sy!”

She would save her screams.  She would suck and act pacified.  This wasn’t her moment.  Her moment would come.

The new diaper was unfolded quickly enough and slid underneath her hips, but the Siren’s legs were not lowered until they smeared with a numbing rash cream that felt heavenly on her thrashed bottom and thighs. The pink strobing lights vanished, but only because her eyes rolled back into her skull momentarily from relief. Even her moans of relief came out pink. 

She tried to hold her breath, when the baby powder was dusted all over her, but keeping the pacifier in her mouth was no small task, forcing her to inhale the altered stuff, breathing in the calming chemicals.  The mobile and the strobing stopped in time for Circe to crane her neck and see that the nice new clean diaper that was being taped around her hips had a cartoon giraffe on it.

The task complete, the restraints left Circe and the various tendrils and mechanical appendages vanished into whatever extra dimensional holding space super science had manufactured for them.  Circe spit out the pacifier and lolled her head to face her captor.

“Why did you do this?”  Circe asked. 

Glitch leaned over her and smiled down.  “Your powerset and psychology are presenting me with numerous unprecedented opportunities. It would be a waste not to test it.”

“You made a giant babysitting machine for me because of my voice powers?”

Glitch shook her head, but seemed no less pleased with herself. “No. Not for you silly.  This actually started out as an automated nursery prototype for actual childcare.  It didn’t work out.  Actual children are too fragile for my restraint systems.  Adults seem to work rather nicely.”

Muscles still aching and not ready for a counter attack- her body practically wouldn’t let her- Circe exhaled. “You kept a rejected invention fully stocked with…with…” Circe tapped the giraffe on her new diaper.  “Just in case you caught me?

“Pffft, no.” Glitch waved the question off. “I was actually trying to capitalize on it by marketing it to fetish conventions.”  Circe felt uncomfortable enough right then that she wished she hadn’t spit out the dummy.  She settled for sucking on her teeth.  “Waste not want not.”

“That explains the spanking machine.  And the diapers.”  She thought more.  “Everything really.”  She supposed that explained why these recordings had Glitch’s voice programmed in.  A home project wouldn’t need a professional voice actor until the final stretch.

“Thanks for letting me test it.”  Glitch said.

Circe closed her eyes and pretended she was just naked instead of diapered and pigtailed.  “You’re welcome.  Can I please just go to jail now?”

“No.”

“No?!”

“We’ve got more experiments to run.”

She wouldn’t cry.  She wouldn't. This isn’t how Circe was going to break. The great Siren would not cower.  “You think you can break me, brat?”

“No.”  The young super scientist booped Circe on the nose. “I think I can fix you.  Make it so that you’re both happy and no longer a threat to society.”

No chance. No chance in Tartarus.  “Do your worst then, upstart.  Let’s get started.”

Looking at the mischievous grin on her captor’s eyes, Circe knew her bladder was well and truly empty.  If it hadn’t been, Circe would have felt her fresh dry diaper grow sopping wet for sure.  “I already have.”

[Personalias]

(Chapter 3)


TRIAL 2
“Come on,” Glitch coaxed. “Open up.  You can do it.  Just open up and say ‘Aaaaah!”

Circe kept her mouth shut. That science-freak, Glitch, had made the situation awful enough as things stood.

Right after the changing table, the room had wasted no time in degrading Circe further. It kept her silvery hair up in pigtails and added a yellow toddler dress with white trim and a Peter Pan collar for good measure. The hem didn’t come close to covering up her diaper, making the garment literally just for show, and there was enough room in the chest so as to minimize the curves of her breasts.  It made her less obscene, and therefore worse off than when she woke up topless.  At least topless she could imagine one of the lab coats taking notes might be slightly aroused or unnerved by the sight of her nakedness.

She looked like a little girl.  Not even a little girl; a baby!  What the fuck?  She didn’t even get nice hard and pointy Mary Janes to kick with; having to settle for yellow grippy socks. Ugh! Adult baby booties! 

The Siren wasn’t so much as given the opportunity to properly struggle before she was plopped into an adult sized highchair and buckled into a harness. A plastic backed bib was tied around her neck, covering the harness and adding another layer to her humiliation by making her seem even less capable than she really was.

More cruelly, her arms weren’t pinned inside the highchair’s tray, giving her a nearly full range of motion and movement. Circe had a compulsion, no, an obligation to struggle and escape. Leaving her arms free was just another demonstration on how powerless she currently was.

She immediately started yanking at the bib but it wouldn’t come undone; practically soldered together at the back of her neck.  She dug her hands down and reached under her skirt to at least rip the tapes of the diaper open, but her fingers couldn’t find purchase on the sticky tapes.  The harness she’d been buckled into wouldn’t budge either; likely more of Glitch’s meddling modifications.  The smug bitch’s self-approving nods confirmed as much.

Seconds after testing beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was good and trapped, more of the cursed animatronic tendrils lowered down from the ceiling. One of them wielded a mush filled spoon.  Just out of reach, too.  Circe all but welded her mouth shut and swiped at the damnable thing, just out of reach. 

Damn machines didn’t even have the decency to put the spoon in arm’s reach so that she could snatch it! Nor was there a bowl to tip off the side of the feeding tray.  It just waited patiently for Circe to run herself out of steam.

Presently, Circe had given up on going for the spoon; the robotic nursery wasn’t even giving her a sporting chance by bringing it tantalizingly close and snatching it away at the last second.  There were better, more effective hells than this, and part of her Siren soul remembered that intimately.

So she sat there in the highchair. Her arms crossed like a pouty toddler, and the tops and bottoms of her teeth grinding down on each other. Every other time she’d opened her mouth, some gadget had zipped in to deliver its sinister payload.  Snakes only struck when you gave them an opening. Circe knew how to play this game.

The Siren waited.  She was a villain, but part of being a Siren meant being patient. The original Sirens were a type of ambush predators; not stalkers.  Sailors would wreck themselves upon her rock if she ust waited long enough. It only unnerved her if she let herself nurture the idea that they wouldn’t.  But there were men and women in lab coats watching her, and a subtly annoyed super-sidekick standing by.  Emotional food was there; physically farther away but so much closer than the mush.

“Come on, Circe” Glitch tried to coax her. “Just open up, baby girl. That spoon has yummy num-nums for you.  Delicious and nutritious.”  Her voice was artificially sweet like splenda; taunting her without sounding like it.  What did the young people call that? A dog whistle? If not, it was close enough.  Circe was very good with sound metaphors “Unless you don’t think you can handle just one spoonful?”

The Siren wasn’t falling for it. Not this time. She locked her jaw. ‘H’m hmm hmmmmm hmm hmm hmmmmmmmmmmm, hmmmm!”

“Very mature,” Glitch rolled her eyes. “ ‘I’m not giving you the satisfaction, bitch’?  Really?” Circe almost gasped in surprise but remembered herself and did a close mouthed scowl, instead. “I’ve got an entire database of your speaking patterns and intonations in my brain,” Glitch said. “I can do better than lip reading.”

Circe narrowed her eyes. She could understand Circe down to the hum?  Good. This stand off would be easier. It would be simpler to agitate and provoke this way, while putting her at zero risk.  Heroes were always less clever than they suspected; their will never as strong as they fancied.

“Hmm’mm hmmm hm hmmmm hm hmmmm.”

“I’m not going to break your teeth,” Glitch said. She started pacing the floor, her face turning into a concentrated snarl.  Circe was presenting a problem the hypocrite didn’t know how to solve. “That would cross so many lines, even for you. I’m trying to help you.”

“Hmm?!”

Glitch looked genuinely exasperated.  “How? You literally wouldn’t understand.  I’m intellectually superior to you, and more importantly too…too…?”

Cockily, Circe rested her elbow on the tray, and laid her chin in the palm of her hand. “Hm-mm-mmmm?

“Immature?” Glitch scoffed. “I was going to say ‘old’.”

“OLD?!”  The spoon jumped into Circe’s mouth and bland mush slipped out onto her tongue. On instinct, the supervillain swallowed it down, then grimaced. Not because it tasted bad- it didn’t taste at all- but because she’d been tricked yet again.  Odysseus was a trickster too, but the comparison felt hollow; a lie a child might tell themselves to help them feel big.

As soon as the gloop and glop was down Circe’s proverbial hatch, Glitch’s pre-recorded voice rang out from the headboard of the highchair.  “Good baby! Eat your num-nums!” It was both disturbing because the genuine article’s lips remained still, and the recording sounded perfectly like the real thing.  Glitch was utilizing the technology that Circe had hoped to steal. 

Circe’s blood boiled a bit more, and it had nothing to do with the condescending verbage and tone, and everything to do with its source.  Witty repartee was worth her time, pre-recorded responses were just a soft form of torture. She could get better from rank and file guards at a SuperMax. One did not give witty one liners to non-sentient automatons unless they were about to destroy them and it would look cool to an imaginary audience.

Prosthetic fingers danced up her bare legs.  “Good baby!” 

 

The tickling wasn’t nearly enough to make Circe laugh or open her mouth, but it made her hold her breath and fidget in her chair.  A kind of reward in return for her compliance; or perhaps a threat to gently force her lips apart.

The spoon refilled itself with mush via a hidden compartment in the appendage holding it. No dipping into a bowl required. Damn.  She resumed her defiant position in the highchair, and did an internal monitor of herself. No strange gurgling, bloating, or cramping sensations presented themselves.  Chances were that this mush was just mush, and not some cocktail meant to make her poop herself again. She detected no feelings of other biochemical tampering, either. This wasn’t drugged.  At the very least, a single spoonful wasn’t enough to do her in.  Glitch was playing at a different game.  In order to win, Circe would have to play a different one.

Ancient Greek Proverb: When rock collides with rock, the bigger rock wins.  When rock is covered with parchment, the rock ceases to be.  Or maybe she was getting that mixed up with something else; reincarnation was tricky like that.  Either way, she was going to throw paper.

“Open up, baby! Time for num-nums!”  That came, of course, from the room itself instead of Circe’s not-quite adversary.  Circe didn’t react. She sat still, a defiant yet tranquil pool of acid.

“Come on Circe,” Glitch repeated herself with an exasperated sigh. “This is a Skinner Box.” A Skinner Box, eh?  Circe wasn’t sure what that meant, but she was sure that there was more than one way to skin a cat.  Glitch rolled her eyes. “It means the environment is reactive. You’re perfectly safe.”

Oh really? Reactive?  A leads to B leads to C? How very predictable and mechanical.  This merited further study.  Circe opened her mouth for another spoonful. “Aaaaah!”

The spoon slid in easily and left behind its mushy payload. “Good baby! Eat your num-nums”  Circle swished it around in her mouth, noting the distinct lack of flavor and creamy mashed potato texture.

Glitch inched up closer, pleased with herself, like always. “See?” she lectured. “It’s not so bad. Chock full of vitamins and nutrients, specifically formulated for different body types towards a desired end goal.  Yours is the um…silver formula.”

“Good baby!” Circe got another tickle for swallowing another spoonful. A led to B.  Everytime.  Predictable.  Anticipatable. Abusable.  Potentially delicious.

“It presents as baby food, but like much of your treatment, it’s been adapted from a different source to achieve the desired results.  It’s not baby food, just people food.” 

“Good baby!”  Yet another tickle to accompany the mouthful of mush at a one for one ratio.  Somewhere in the back of her brain Circe was keeping track of this.  Patterns. Patterns Patterns. Boring machine generated patterns.

“This is most fortuitous,” Glitch mused. “You’re helping me with so much research from a marketability perspective.” And people thought that villains liked to monologue.  Glitch inched closer, and Circe received another spoonful.  “Your food is tasteless, but I’m working on different flavoring before marketing to the public.  It just happened to synergize well with this particular aesthetic, and you’re providing me with an excellent-”

“PTEW!”

A huge heaping chunk of light brown grayish mush made the relatively short trip through the air onto Glitch’s nanny apron. The superheroine stared down her chest as the blob drip-drip-dripped all the way down to the floor.  “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.

Circe knew she shouldn’t have done that. And that’s why she loved it.

“NAUGHTY NAUGHTY BABY!” the room boomed.

The highchair propelled forward like a roller coaster, briefly disorienting Circe. It was a short trip at least, straight to the spanking pommel horse.  In no time at all Circe was back over the robotic knee, laughing hysterically.

“Haaaaa! HAHAHAHA!” 

Glitch neither wiped at the stain, nor approached Circe physically. “I don’t think you know what you just did to yourself,” Glitch called over Circe’s insane cackling.

“Of course I know what I just did,” Circe called back. “I just earned myself a spanking!”

“That’s not how this Skinner Box works.”

“BABY SHOULD NOT SPIT THEIR FOOD OUT!”  The machine room declared. “MAMA WILL FIX!”

Metallic tendrils snaked up and hiked down the back of Circe’s diaper so that her bare bottom was exposed. 

“Huh?” Circe wiggled her rump in abject curiosity. How the Hades had her diaper come off so easily?  She’d thought the plastic backed panties would have been effectively super glued to her skin.  “You think a bare assed spanking is gonna mess with me a second time?”  Circe taunted.  If there was one trait that Circe prided herself on having it was her resilience. The Siren’s soul was quick to adapt, and she’d seen this part coming.  A punishment machine gave her more control than her captor had beckoned.

““BABY SAID A BAD, BAD WORD. NAUGHTY NAUGHTY! MAMA SPANK!”

“You didn’t earn a spanking,” Glitch replied, coolly. “Not until you just said bare-assed.”

Circe was about to demand that Glitch explain herself, but said demand was cut tremendously short by the feeling of something pushing its way up into her anus.  “EEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

The supervillain was lifted slightly off the pommel horse, still bent over, as a rubber hose pumped something thick and sludgy was pumped inside of her.

NG-NG-NG-NG-NG!

It had an unnatural mechanical sound to it, like paddlewheels trying to churn up a river.

NG-NG-NG-NG-NG!

With every chug, Crice felt her belly start to distend and an uncomfortable full feeling came over her. Every glugging pump added to the feeling of being overfull and stuffed with none of the satiety of having consumed a meal.  It wasn’t half-a-minute before Circe felt like she’d consumed far too much far too quickly and lacked so much as happy memories or a pleasant aftertaste coating her throat.

NG-NG-NG-NG-NG!

DING!

The glugging stopped.  Circe felt her diaper hiked back over her and the hose withdraw. A little bit of something wet slurped out of her and into the back of the padding, but pride and years of potty training forced the Siren to squeeze her cheeks together.

“BABY WON’T SPIT THIS OUT” The recorded voice boomed over unseen loudspeakers.

Gently, the tendrils lowered her back onto the spanking bench and fullness quickly progressed to pain.  Cicre found herself quietly wishing she had a bar of soap or a pacifier to bite down on so that she could resist moaning out in baby bootie pink.  “Hnnnnnnnnnnnnn…”

“Your body will take in those nutrients one way or another, Circe.” Glitch lectured, her scalp blinking as trillions of calculations ran through her cybernetic brian. “Too bad for you that it requires a lot more of the stuff when it’s shoved up the other end. You chose this, honey. Not me.”
Circe battled with herself, struggling to speak. She held her breath while her stomach gurgled and cried out in pain.  Any exhalation, any relaxation, could result in her emptying her bowels back into her diaper’s waiting seat.  And oh, she had just started to get used to being clean!

Where had that thought come from…?

““BABY SAID A BAD, BAD WORD. NAUGHTY NAUGHTY! MAMA SPANK!”

Uh oh.

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

Again the automated paddles sounded off of her padded  backside bottom. Again, the diaper did little to nothing to ease her pain. If anything it was worse the second time around. There was no build up this time, no gradual progression or picking up of speed.  The spanking machine continued exactly where it left off, and Circe’s cheeks and tailbone screamed out in pain as though doing so were muscle memory.

BLRRRRRRRRRRRT!

Finding herself unable to scream, the supervillainess exhaled and a stream and bodily sludge exited her, ballooning out the back of her diaper and causing her to grimace and wince in self-disgust.

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

It was the same as before but worse! So much worse!  She was being spanked in the middle of messing herself and unable to stop either.  Guilde kicked in and Circe broke.

“SORRY MAMA!”
 

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

It didn’t stop! The spanking machine didn’t stop! Why hadn’t it stopped?! It stopped last time! It had stopped immediately last time, practically like it was under one of Circe’s spells.

“SORRY MAMA!”

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

“SORRY, CIRCE!” Glitch yelled over the sound of Circe’s beating. “YOU’RE NOT GETTING OUT OF IT THAT EASY! THE MACHINE COUNTS HOW MANY SPANKS YOU GET AND MAKES SURE TO ADD ONE MORE TO YOUR PUNISHMENT EACH TIME NO MATTER WHAT!”

Circe was on the verge of tears.  Her bowels had fully re-emptied themselves and she was struggling for breath.  If she was going to get spanked anyways, she might as well make the most of it.  The siren let out a slew of curse words, euphemisms filled with vile imagery, and outright slurs for good measure that would have made even the most hardened criminals blush and set a good man’s ears ablaze with the vile thoughts such imagery induced. At least three devils and multiple demons would have taken notes had they been present to listen.  It didn’t matter to her that it all came out pink.  Glitch could understand her. That’s all that mattered.

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

Instinctively knowing when the thrashing was approaching it’s xenith, Circe let out a final “SORRY MAMA!”  and prayed that the spankings meted weren’t per swear uttered.

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

The spanking stopped three swats later, and Circe collapsed over the giant artificial knee. “Thank you,” she whispered to no one. “Thank you.  Thank you. Thank you.”

Much to her relief, Glitch did not say “You’re welcome”. That would have been unbearable. Rather, the ex-sidekick walked around with her arms folded behind her back and leaned forward just enough to look Circe in the eye. “Do you want me to clean you up?”

“Ffffff…” Circe froze.
“Or would you rather play in a messy diaper.”

“Fffff!” She stopped.  She couldn’t take this again.  Not without a breather. “Screw you,” she hissed.  The Siren  tensed for a second, but the spanking machine did not start up again and there was no additional flittering beneath Glitch’s skin indicating any sort of technopathing restraint.  Middle school and PG curses were still allowed her. 

Speaking of flashes, a look of guilt crossed the younger woman’s face. “Nevermind. Let’s get you changed. Leaving you in a dirty diaper is a bad choice, and I want as few bad choices available to you as possible.

Those words were poison to someone like Circe. She was not to be limited, and if she was, it would be her decision.

“Fuck you. Sorry, Mama!”

Glitch’s face fell.  “Oh, Circe. Don’t…”

““BABY SAID A BAD, BAD WORD. NAUGHTY NAUGHTY! MAMA SPANK!”

Circe could have sworn she almost lost consciousness with what followed.  She was still cognizant, though barely, when the machines carried her back over to the changing table, wiped her, powered her and rediapered her while the stupid mobile flashed pink in her face.
*****************************************************************************

TRIAL 3

The lights were out and no one was home. Circe lay there in the dark, in her crib, tossing and turning in the footie pajamas.  She’d tried to work the zipper but her fingers froze up and her arms wouldn’t move whenever she grabbed on.  It must have been something to do with magnets, she reasoned..

Still, Glitch had gone easy on the villain the rest of the day. Less actual restraints had been applied in favor of more chemical ones:  That damnable baby powder that got poured on her with every change made her heartbeat refuse to go over sixty beats per minute, and she was being pumped full of Zeus knew what in the bottles that followed.  Hard to plot on a full stomach, a tired body, and a broken pride. 

More annoying, as she lay in the crib, Circe realized that there was nothing containing her inside beyond moderately high bars.  If she wanted to, she could jump out of the crib and nothing but fear of repercussions could stop her.

It wasn’t pride, or fear that drove the villain, but something deeper and indescribable.  Compulsion. Purpose.  Destiny.  She knew she was expected not to do something, and so she was dishonor bound to do it.

She stood up on the cushy crib mattress and looked around.  Those mechanical hands could literally come from anywhere and any direction. No angle was safe.  But this place was a place of consequences. It didn’t act as much as it reacted, and there was no Glitch or her science squad in sight.

Part of her knew she would not get away in this attempt.  Yet how would she know unless she tried.  How could she be patient and wait when someone else wanted her to be?

“Here. We. Go.” 

Circe didn’t make it on the first jump. Having a thick cushy diaper between her legs continued to throw off her gait, and it didn’t help that she’d wet herself at some point, causing the pulpy core to expand. What was that about? 

“Ah-ha!” Circe explained upon her feet touching the floor. 

ZZZZZZT!

The lights came on and  Circe convulsed on the floor, drooling and twitching as even more of her bladder emptied out into her pants.  She’d been punched by Tom Turbine and ShockMaster and had it hurt less.

“Good evening, Circe.” Glitch said from the doorway.  “Let me help you up.”  Blinking and flashing from the woman’s circuit breaker tattoos preceded metal appendages raising her up from the floor. “The fibers in the carpet and your clothes are actually superconductors, not insulators.” A beat. “Did you need something?”

Circe coughed and almost swore, but she thought better of it.  She wanted her time with her adversary to be more special than a spanking.  “Don’t you ever sleep?” she asked.

The other woman didn’t even pretend to yawn. “No.”

“Cyborgs,” Circe spat.

“Grown-ups,” Glitch replied.

Back in her crib, Circe allowed herself a smirk  “As something of an authority on brainwashing, you’re going to have to do better than that, my dear Glitch.”

To Circe’s dismay, Glitch did not approach.  “No I won’t. I don’t care what babies think.”

The door slammed shut, leaving Circe alone in the dark.
****************************************************************************************

TRIAL 5

Breakfast had been more mush from a self-refilling spoon. Circe had eaten it, but only because of hunger. She went all the way full ragdoll through changing and being dressed and plopped back in a highchair until Glitch entered the room.  She only ate after Glitch promised to alter the formula so that it tasted like vanilla.

Presently, Circe busied herself playing with naked Barbie dolls, forcing them to fight to the death, clacking their heads together. The dolls with unrealistic proportions for a woman had started off fully dressed, but Circe had taken care of that.  She’d stripped them almost immediately and started the raunchiest simulated sex scene that she could manage without invoking the spanking mechanisms wrath. 
Spitting out food meant an enema.  Cursing meant spanking.  Part of her needed to know what else she could do to get a response out of the punishment box.

Nothing happened at first.  Glitch just kept wandering about the nursery machine running diagnostic scans or whatever Science people called memorizing spells.  Plastic crotchless dolls fucking had turned to plastic crotchless dolls fighting.  It was amusing to.her.

“Having fun?” Glitch asked, ruining the moment. 

Circe quickly put down the toys she had and glared up at the toy she wanted. Her outfit today was the same as yesterday, save it was a deep forest green dress, she had a bow on her head instead of pigtails, and she had proper booties on instead of socks.  It almost (almost) complimented the green dragon peeking out from the front of her squishy wet diaper.

“Not as much as you, I’m sure.” Circe replied, trying to keep her cool. “I have to admit, Glitch, you’re doing a far better job of villainy than I thought you capable of.”

“Thank you,” Glitch said.  “Have fun playing with your dollies.”  She turned her back on Circe and Circe felt her throat swell up.

“I’m not a baby!” Circe yelled after her. “I’m not a brat! You…you…brat!”

The hero stopped and reversed course, coming up to the edge of the playpen. “You’re not a baby?”

“No!”
 

“Then why do you commit crimes?”

Circe’s opened her mouth, but hadn’t expected that question.  “Huh?”

“Babies have cribs and playpens and highchairs because they can’t be expected to follow the rules.  They can’t be trusted.  Can you be trusted?”

“NO!” The words erupted out of the Siren’s throat and she knew them to be true before the echo reached the far wall.

“Exactly,” Glitch replied. “You can’t be trusted. That’s why you’re here instead of a penitentiary.  You’re incapable of experiencing penance, so there’s really no point. Easier to keep you in daycare.  More fitting, too.”

Circe sprung to her feet…and regretted it instantly.

BTTTZ!

She was down on the padded playpen mat immediately, convulsing lightly.  Her bladder spasmed again and she thought she might have pooped a little.  That wasn’t going to get her to grovel for a change, however.  “What the fuuuuuu…udge?”  she censored herself.

“You tried to run away last night,” Glitch explained. Now your booties will give you a helpful reminder.

“You are sick!”

Her tormentor shrugged. “It’s not my fault you’re immune to sound based attacks. Otherwise I’d just play a sonic frequency to disorient your equilibrium.”  Glitch about faced away.  “But thank you for the compliment. I know me being ‘sick’  means a lot coming from you.”

“Quit turning your back and face me!”  A naked doll flew end over end over the playpen and lightly struck the hero in the back.  The younger, less infantile looking of the two, didn’t break her stride. “Stop ignoring m-!” 

Circe cut herself off as the playpen itself rose up to attack her. Added to her outfit were stiff, inflexible mittens that left her completely unable to do anything but keep her palms flat and stop her from grabbing onto anything or balling her hands up.  She effectively had flippers in place of fists. 

Circe lost her Barbie doll privileges for the rest of the day, and lost all hope of using utensils to feed herself.
********************************************************************************************
TRIAL 7
The next day, Circe lost her Barbie Doll privileges entirely when she bit their heads off.  From then on she would only have simple toys that she could manipulate if she used both hands in unison and lacked any parts that she might accidentally choke on.

Circe swore extra hard just so she’d earn a spanking.  She tried to make herself choke on the mush, but that only earned her another enema.
  ***************************************************************************************************
TRIAL 11

“How about some potty training?” Glitch suggested.  She placed the prop on.  “That might be a good place to start in your rehabilitation.”

The Siren glowered.  “I am potty trained.”

“Not according to my sensors,” Glitch replied. “You’ve made no effort, whatsoever. Show known discomfort in wearing a wet or a messy one.”  She was kind enough, Circe noticed, to not mention or bring up any of the enemas she had earned herself. 

No. That was a strategy, too, come to think of it.  Don’t mention certain punishments unless prompted so that CIrce would trick herself into thinking she deserved it.

“I’ve bathed in the blood of my enemies,” Circe said. “What’s a little feces?”

Glitch nodded.  “Yeah,” Glitch said. “I don’t buy it.  You’re not the Grinning Man. Nice try though.”  She opened up the lid. The inside was a big goofy smiley face.  It wasn’t a child’s plastic potty, but not another scaled up variant like everything else in this funhouse.  “You want people.”

“Do not!”

The fact that Glitch continued to ignore her was worse than the indignity of constantly soiling her disposable panties. “When you think of it, potty training is one of the first times that a person has to learn to follow rules.  They have to practice physical introspection and communication as a way to scaffold up to self reliance.”

The Siren rolled her eyes.  “Uh huh.  If I didn’t know any better I ‘d say you get off on this.”

Her opponent didn’t take the bait. “Maybe.  Anyways, I know you know how to use it so I don’t need to explain the mechanics; you’re just an emotional infant after all; so here’s what we’ll do:  If you ask to use the potty, you’ll get your diaper taken off, then you can sit and go.  Then you’ll be cleaned up, and the diaper will be put back on, and you can continue on about your businesses.  If you can follow those rules for a few days, I’ll remove one of your clothing restraints.”  The taser booties and the flipper mittens had been a constant part of Circe’s outfit, rotating color with the rest of her. Today she wore blueberry colored baby clothes and a bonnet.

“Hmmmm….”  It was tempting.  Would giving in, just a little help her?

Glitch tilted the large chamber pot so that Circe could see inside  “There’s a picture of my face…” she offered.

Circe narrowed her eyes.  “So I call for your help and get to shhh…poop on your face?”

The dark skinned woman threw back her head and laughed, her tattoos glowing the full color of the rainbow.  “Oh no. No no no.  I’m not doing that. The nursery will be doing that. Do you think I’m crazy enough to get near you, Circe?  You could do something crazy or at least stupid if I got near enough to even take the diaper off of you!  But if you’re a good girl….Circe…? Circe? What are you doing?”

Circe was back on her hands and knees, pushing the mess out intentionally.  “Nnnn…nothing…” she lied.  “Nnn…nothing …at…ahhhh…”  She relaxed and breathed deeply when she’d finally emptied herself.  For good measure she shifted and sat all the way down on the floor, wriggling and smushing her messy diaper around.

Glitch dragged her palm over her face and Circe had known she’d won a battle.  She smiled all the way through that next diaper change, hoping the mobile that took her picture with a pink flash was getting her best side.

*********************************************************************************************************
TRIAL 17

Circe shook, but for the first time in over a week it had nothing to do with spasming on the floor from electric shock or having her body be wracked by mechanical paddles.  “S-s-s-s-s-s-taaaaaaahp!”  She was back on ‘Mama’s knee’, her soggy sodden diaper squishing beneath her.

As per usual, Glitch kept her distance.  “But why, baby girl?” she asked. “Isn’t this nice?”

It was nice, alright. More than nice. If not for the restraints keeping her place, Circe would be teasing her nipples.  If not for worry that a well deserved spanking might interrupt this, she’d be dropping pink colored F-bombs in ecstacy. 

The pommel horse had shown off a new future.  ‘Mama’s knee’ could bounce, and not just like a cheap knock off at a rodeo bar.  It vibrated.  It pulsed.  It pushed all the right buttons that Circe had been too preoccupied to push each night when she was alone in the confines of her crib.

While she inched closer and closer to orgasm, more A.S.T.R.A.L. scientists looked at readouts and took notes.  The damn perverts watching her was making it harder and harder not to climax.

“W-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-yyyyyy?”

“I’ve been replaying our interactions and I found the fatal flaw in my design,” Glitch told her from a distance. (Always at a distance).  I’ve been offering you sticks but no carrots. Ways to avoid punishments, but no rewards.”

This was a reward?  Being forcefully beat off?  It was sadistic is what it was and Circe appreciated it on a level she could not express.

“You’ve been known to be carnally motivated,” Glitch spoke over the buzzing and humming noise of what was essentially a giant vibratror that she was forcing the supervillain to straddle. “So this might be an appropriate reward.”

“D-d-d-d-d-d-ooooon’t!” Circe tried to say.  “S-s-s-s-s-ta-a-a-a-aahp!”

"This one’s free,” Glitch said. And if you can make it to your naptime without a punishment, you’ll get another orgasm.”  So far that hadn’t happened. Circe just kept earning spankings and losing more privileges.  “And again if you can make good choices between naptime and bed.  And a again in the morning if there’s no mischief in your crib.”

Glitch was so absorbed in her pre-programed spiel that she didn’t notice the look of stressor Circe’s face.  “Circe?  Circe?”  she reached out and touch Circe on her thigh.

That was the touch that drove the woman over the edge.  “O-O-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

The shockwave that followed was so loud and focused that cracks formed in the observation glass. Scientists started dropping their data pads and shouting “baby girl!”  Security staff with an extra layer of noise canceling headphones had to escort them away for additional debriefing.

The mechanical arms slackened, the vibrating surface stopped shaking, and Circe collapsed on the pommel horse, panting and breaking out into a cold sweat.

“Interesting,” Glitch noted. “I didn’t think you could still do that.  I wonder if it’s replicable…”

“I...I…I hate you…” Circe panted.

Glitch got up even closer and seemed more confused than anything.  “Why?”

[Personalias]

(Chapter 4)

Trial 59

Glitch withdrew immediately after the “horsey ride” incident.  The ex-sidekick had seemed genuinely puzzled at Circe’s declaration of loathing. It was the happiest that Circe had been since her capture. She’d done it! She’d gotten underneath the idiot’s artificial skin! Success! Total success! 

It had been so deceptively easy using those three words.  Normally, hero-villain reparte was more complex than all that.  Long monologues and barbed insults.  Had Circe been trying too hard all these years?  Was it really that easy?  Perhaps this next generation was just too soft; bunch of special snowflakes.

That made her feel old…odd considering everything else about her prison.

Regardless, the declaration of hate still hadn’t had the desired effect; not completely.  Instead of saying “I hate you, too” Glitch frowned and asked “Why?”.  And when Circe couldn’t vocalize an answer, she’d just up and left. 

What did that idiot cyborg mean in asking that question?  Wasn’t it obvious why Circe hated her?  Wasn’t it self-evident? Putting such complex and self-evident truths into spoken word was harder than it looked, however. That and the question had been posed right after Circe climaxed harder than she ever had in her life.

Who did that?!  Seriously!!!  Asking those sort of things right after orgasm was right up there with interrupting your rival when they were making their bold declarations about how good triumph or evil  It just wasn’t done!

Instead of waiting until she’d recovered, and showing ink blots, Glitch had exited with an awkward amount of urgency and haste, and hadn’t come back since. Then Circe was maneuvered over to the robot changing table, stripped, wiped, powdered, and re-diapered, and then left on the nursery floor to change and entertain herself with less than breakable toys. 
 

Circe had no way to keep track of the time in this box. There were no clocks and her sense of time wasn’t the best as it was.  Both her human mind and Siren soul tended to keep track of things based on victims and crimes or other natural biological urges. 

Now all she had was feedings, nap times, and bed.  Oh, and diaper changes. Those too.  She hated all the mechanized events, but hated diaper changes the most.  Not the diapers, specifically; they were dreadfully comfortable all things considered.  But the process of being changed, like some prop on an assembly line: That was the worst.  Having to lie there at her most helpless but needing to struggle and not being given the proper opportunity to.  It wasn’t sporting!  All she couldn’t do was scream in pink.

Speaking of pink, that annoying light always flashed in her eyes when she got changed. It was so bright and annoying that even slamming her eyes shut did nothing, she could see the strobing pulses through her lids. It recharged the voice modulator she suspected.

At least with feeding and toy time and the crib she felt she had the option to spit something out or try an escape.  The table didn’t give her even that much, just calming powder and cooing pre-recorded words along with fresh underwear (that never actually stayed UNDER anything).

How long had it been? Where was Glitch?  Circe hadn’t  seen anyone in what felt like a week. Possibly more.  Had there been an apocalypse that the world’s heroes needed to gather to stop?  That Circe hadn’t caused?!  That she’d missed out on?! Or what if it had been successful and the Siren was now just trapped here, forever until some nigh magical super-science power source ran out?

She didn’t and couldn’t know, and it was driving her crazy.  She didn’t even know if the security cameras were on or if the nerds in lab coats were watching her still.  She might just be alone instead of under careful observation of invisible scientist.

More than once she’d screamed at the windows and got nothing. She would have pounded on the windows but she was unable to stand without getting tased. She could break toys, but that would just lose her the toys.  Everything came out pink, of course, even swear words.

Not that she was swearing much anymore.  The paddling machine got well past a hundred before she lost the count.

Presently, Circe crawled around in circles on the floor.  Her thoughts were zig-zagging quicker than she could process.  The need to be her Siren self gave her the need to transgress and destroy.  Her need for self-preservation struggled to reign her in.

“Stupid Glitch,” Circe muttered to herself. “Follow the rules, Circe. Be a good girl Circe. “Her voice gained a whining nasally quality, as they often do when children.  “Eat your mush, Circe. Don’t break your toys, Circe. Don’t run away, Circe! Do what you’re fu….” she stopped. “Do what you’re effing told to, Circe.”   Her entire face fell when she realized she’d stopped herself from swearing because she knew that she feared the spanking machine. 

Torture was pointless without someone to defy.  There were no other tormentors for her to put a brave face on. No other inmates to impress with how awful or resilient she could be.  No victims to intimidate or terrify.

Just her. Alone. In a room.  And the only means of entertainment were bits of rainbow colored plastic that were too sturdy to break.  She’d done everything else.

Circe shifted so that she was sitting on her bottom.  Disturbingly, she noticed the squish of her wet diaper. When had that happened?  The Siren hadn’t even noticed or remembered peeing herself.  Had she gone and just forgotten out of boredom, or was she well and truly on her way to losing her potty training?   “The fudge?”

She poked at her padded  crotch. Even through the inflexible mittens she was incredibly squishy.  “What is happening to me?”

As if on cue, the pommel horse shot up from the ground. Circe felt panic rise up in her.  What had she said?  Was ‘fudge’ now a curse word? 

“GOOD BABY! YOU GET A REWARD!” Glitch’s recorded voice boomed.  “LET’S GO FOR A HORSEY RIDE!”

“NO!” Circe screamed. “NOT AGAIN!”  But the mechanical nursery paid her no mind. On soaking, sopping wet padding, the supervillain was lowered, straddling the ‘Mama’s Knee’ and held in place with metallic tendrils

“Bounce me Bounce me on your knee

Bounce me bounce me pretty please

Bounce me bounce me here and there

Bounce me bounce me EVERYWHERE!!!”

The songs did not help, only adding to the woman’s humiliation. The fact that they would do nothing to halt the eventual orgasm made it worse.  The machine seemed to learn what motions and intensity stimulated her most.

It was short work before Circe was collapsed on a heap on the floor, too flustered to move.

If she rebelled, she was severely punished. If she did nothing, she was given a mind blowing orgasm.  And she was running out of the will and ways to rebel.

“Why me…?” she softly cried.  “Wh me? Ffffff….” But she couldn’t finish it…


*****************************************************************************
Meanwhile…

Glitch was capable of performing over a million calculations at once in her cybernetic brain.  Something still wasn’t making sense to her.

“Why isn’t it working?” she asked herself.  She was doing everything right.  She was precisely controlling the environment, and giving Circe as much freedom as she could safely handle. Granted, it wasn’t a lot, but one had to start somewhere. 

Circe should be thriving, not crying in a puddle on the floor.  “There’s a variable I’m missing,” she wondered aloud. “But what?”

“Ma’am?”

Glitch blinked.  The camera feed for Circe’s rehabilitation nursery was taking up space in her right eye. She’d been so engrossed in this conundrum that she wasn’t paying attention to what was going on in the left.

“What are you talking about?” The technician in front of her was waiting for her to sign off on the latest experiment- a way to use time’s relationship with gravity to speed up the lifecycle of certain endangered species of plants using bits of dwarf star in the hydroponics bay.  The real trick would be doing it so that they didn’t affect the evolution of said plants making reintroduction into the wild impossible.

“Sorry, Mitch,” Glitch said. She quickly reviewed the proposed calculations, power sources and equipment needed to execute them.  Out of politeness she waited a whole three seconds to finish her reply.  “Everything appears in order.” She handed the data tablet back.

“Thank you ma’am.”

Glitch said “You’re welcome,” but she was already observing the images in the nursery.  What was she doing wrong?

She was giving regular predictable rewards and positive reinforcement, and removing anything and everything that gave Circe a chance to act out, while still providing consequences if she made bad decisions.

Combine that with the strobes from the changing table, and Circe should be ready to reintroduce to society by now.  Based on even the most conservative simulations,Circe should have been at least back in middle school by now, re-learning adult feeling communication and conflict resolution.

There were at least a dozen different rooms she’d constructed that weren’t being utilized at the moment. 

Circe just kept regressing further and further, and not in a good way. This was supposed to be a Groundhog Day scenario wherein if someone was given enough time they would eventually make the right decision.  But Circe had forced the programming to remove almost every decision she could possibly make. Everytime it presented her with a positive option, she destroyed it, leaving her only with the most childsafe and infantile scenarios on file left.

Note-to-self: Create virtual reality time lapse to simulate Groundhog Day.

Her Asimov protocols were the only thing preventing the room from swaddling the woman up and leaving her paralyzed. The young hero shuddered to think that it could come to that.

Glitch had honestly predicted that by removing herself and the staff as a source of perceived antagonists Circe might start to recover.  Without someone to rebel against, though, the villain was practically trying to destroy herself, it seemed.  How deep did her psychological scars run?  “At least she’s not cursing as much…”

The cameras zoomed in on the crying woman. Her wails were strengthening to the point where three staff members had resigned in protest because of “what you’re doing to that poor baby”.  Naturally, they’d been given their positions back when the effects of Circe’s voice wore off.

“What am I doing wrong?”

***************************************************************************
Trial 61.

Circe was not awake. Not at all.  It was the only reason she was able to smile behind her pacifier.  The pacifier had been inserted before the lights went out and Circe kept falling asleep with it because she kept trying to chew through the bulb and swallow it out of spite.

Lying in her crib and fast asleep, the silver haired woman wasn’t consciously aware that the pleasant wet warmth between her legs was her own urine leaking out of her. She’d be mortified enough once she woke up and realized that she’d wet the bed.

Too bad for her that it didn’t stop there.

The Siren stirred slightly beneath the covers of her nice warm blankie, an unconscious moan rumbling out past her binkie. Microphones installed in the crib would record the churning gurgling sounds coming from her abdomen just a millisecond later. 

Her eyes would not open but they didn’t need to for her legs to raise up off the mattress and take pressure off her tailbone. Slowly but surely, Circe grunted and pushed out a healthy mess into the seat of her diaper.  To her it was no more physically uncomfortable than for a normal sleeper needing to roll over in her sleep.

She smiled in her slumber as her legs lowered back down and the lumpy mess spread back down. The fetid odor wouldn’t reach her nostrils beneath the cozy blankets, and even if it did, Circe was mostly smellblind to her own excrement by this point. Her body only knew that it had become extremely used to the feeling of a bulk between her legs.

The extra swelling and wet, warm, squishiness from urine just made it more comfortable, like a warm sponge against her sex.  Her subconsciousness associated the warm, clay-like texture coming out the back of her as a positive reinforcer tied into the relief of the mild pain that had been gurgling up inside her gut. 

Beyond the initial doses used to “break her in and clean her out”, laxatives were not a part of Circe’s diet.  Laxatives weren’t needed however.  The specialized nutrients in her ‘baby food’ were incredibly easy for her body to digest and process. 

  Her innards were well and primed to expel any and all unneeded waste.   That and Circe had all but purposefully sabotaged her own potty training. Like a two year old who understands the basic mechanics of the toilet, but refuses to partake out of stubbornness and an irrational fear of upsetting their own status quo, the Siren had doubled down to the point where her body outright refused to relieve itself anywhere that wasn’t a pair of her thick crinkling baby panties. Whether it was psychological or physiological- at this point it might be both-Circe had very little desire or ability to regulate herself.

Bladder swelled up and uncomfortable? Relax and let loose. No more discomfort and things got nice and warm.  Discomfort in the bowels? Push it out immediately. No more pain and things got nice and warm.  Her brain didn’t want to think about it, so her body certainly didn’t.

Somewhere off in her dream scape, Circe was likely sitting on a warm, if muddy, beach, with ocean water gently lapping up, singing songs that would lure Odysseus to his doom once and for all.

This was the first time in forever that this had happened in her sleep, however. Until tonight, her unconscious battle against her own toileting had only  ‘progressed’ so that wetting and messing herself was habit forming bordering on second nature. It had never been something wholly unconscious…until tonight. 

She’d be disturbed in the morning, no doubt.

More disturbing, something she wouldn’t have evidence of was what she did with her hands. The nursery protocols meant to encourage her to ‘behave’ had left another miscalculated scar on her psyche.

Almost every time she was ‘encouraged’ to be good by the nursery protocols, her diaper had been in dire need of changing. One can’t orgasm that many times in a wet and messy diaper without making a connection.  Circe certainly couldn’t.

In her dreams, Circe may have been making love to a foolish sea captain who thought he could ride her the way he rode the waves.  Throughout her lifetimes, many would be conquerors and lovers became her victims and thralls. As far as fate was concerned, it was no coincidence that the Siren’s human namesake was another Greek woman known for twisted men to her will.

In reality, Circe’s hands were doing all the work.  She was too insensate to plunge them properly past the waistband of her adult baby diaper, but they made do gripping and massaging the front.  The crinkling of her diaper was just the crackling of a fire and the crashing of the waves to her subconscious. Her pacifier kept her own lustful moaning from waking her.  Her thrusting hips and the ever shifting mass cooling in her seat only increased her body’s excitement.

It wasn’t easy. Her imaginary lover wasn’t very good. A virgin without proper technique. Still…eventually she got there, fumbling and sighing contentedly as the orgasm tripped and staggered to completion.

She would get better at it.

************************************************************************************************
Glitch frowned in bed. She never slept, not as normal people understood it. Ever since she’d ‘upgraded’ herself she was never truly unconscious. She was always thinking, always calculating something. Boredom was largely a result of a lack of imagination and physical fatigue. 

The young cyborg always had something to think about. Never boring. Always something to do. Always some problem to fix.  She was still organic enough that her body required rest at roughly the same intervals as a normal human being.

That was no reason to sleep, though.  In lieu of dreams, Circe spent six to eight hours a night, resting her body in bed and recharging her physical hardware while her consciousness connected with the closed system wireless software of A.S.T.R.A.L. Labs.

She was flitting about working on at least three different equations to try and bring about world peace, end scarcity, and reverse global warming to pre-industrial levels respectively.  Problem was, things never quite worked out in the math. Doing all of these things, really, anything of significance required people cooperating with her calculations: Rich and powerful people agreeing to be slightly less rich and slightly less powerful in return for long term gains; relatively powerless people motivated out of a cycle of apathy due to learned helplessness; politicians willing to pass laws that restrained and discouraged bad impulses and protected and encouraged good ones.

None of her perfectly logical calculations worked in systems controlled by irrational, fearful, greedy, meat computers piloting skin robots from their bone cockpits. Humanity, as a whole, had advanced to amazing degrees of technology to ensure global prosperity and balance, but never completely dropped the evolutionary survival baggage of “different means bad” and “everything for me and mine first”.

Being an advanced cybernetic being for over half her life at this point, Glitch just didn’t “get” people anymore. People were the hardest part of any system to fix.  It would be so much simpler if she could just find a workaround for that terribly pesky “free will” that everyone had. But no. That wasn’t going to happen. Her Asimov protocols wouldn’t allow it.

That’s why she was so invested with Circe. If she could figure out a way to re-mold Circe, break her of these bad impulses, and build her back up without violating her free will, she would be a step closer from finding a way to ethically generalize the process.  At the very least, she could find a way to truthfully rehabilitate people that actively used their free will to directly harm others.  Getting rid of super-crime through positive intervention would be a huge step in the right direction.

That step wasn’t coming.  Circe just kept regressing, and not in a good way! She just kept getting worse and worse. The pink light should be having more of an effect than it was, subtly taking away bad habits and impulses as she literally saw herself in a different light. None of that was happening!

Why???

Viewing her sleeping charge from the security feed, Glitch absorbed and pondered new data. Masturbation? Direct sexual stimulation?  For some reason she had never considered that. Was this unique to Circe? Had a child's lack of autonomy further eroded her inhibitions? Had the nursery programming caused her to have a faulty cause and effect association?

Without candor from Circe or the ability to read minds, Glitch couldn’t know.

Should she punish that? She didn’t really have any tangible rewards to offer Circe and encourage her to modify her own behavior. What would B.F. Skinner say? Perhaps she should activate the artificial intelligence based on that brain scan of his and ask…

A lightbulb flicked on above the tech-hero’s head. Literally.  “Oh!” A security guard said, startled. “Sorry about that, Miss Glitch. Didn’t know you were in here.”

Glitch opened her eyes and stepped out of the cylindrical container that was her charging station.  “You’re fine, Mr. Harlowe,” she said. She hadn’t known the man’s name, but cybernetic eyes could quickly read name tags from across the room.  “I was just about to get up as it was.” She waited a moment to say, “And please. No Miss. Just Glitch.”

That put the watchman at ease. “Okie dokie then, there errr…Gltich. You can call me Harry.”

Glitch stared at him in bemused disbelief. “Harry?  Harry Harlow?”  She was actually fighting a thin smirk.

“Yeah?” the man said. “Why? What’s so funny?”

“You share a name with something of a pioneer in the field of psychology?”

“Yeah?” Harry said. “Whose that?” He frowned, realizing the redundancy of his question. “I mean, I know his name but…?”

Glitch was happy to share. “He did experiments with rhesus monkeys,” she explained. “Took them away from their biological mothers and provided them with surrogates.”  The security guard nibbled his lips. Glitch was losing him.  She pulled up his personnel file. Good background check. Not the best grades.  “He gave the baby monkeys replacement mothers. Nothing fancy. Think scarecrows.”

Harry the security guard’s eyes went to the right, imagining it.  “Something that’d fool a baby monkey but nobody else?”

At least he was invested. “Yes. Exactly. Each baby got two fake mothers. One was covered in warm cloth but had nothing else. The other was made of basically chicken wire, but had a bottle of milk where the mother’s nipples would normally be.”

The guard nodded his head like he understanded, but everything about him signaled that he didn’t.  Thankfully, he was honest about it.  “Why?”

“He wanted to see what was more important to a child’s development: Comfort and affection, or simple sustenance?”  She was about to tell him how the baby monkeys would cling to the cloth mother until they were overcome with hunger, then climb to the wire mother to feed, and then travel back immediately to cling to the cloth mother’s arms.

She didn’t get the chance. “Both.”  Harry Harlowe the second said. “Babies need both.”

Glitch stared dead ahead so that she wouldn’t roll her eyes. “Obviously, but the experiment was an attempt to isolate the two factors.  What happened was-”

“How did the scarecrow monkey things raise the babies?” Harry cut her off. “They just sat there and did nothing. That ain’t no way to raise a kid.”

“Well, no but…”  Come to think of it, those monkeys were psychologically damaged and unable to reintegrate with others of their kind.

Then Harry hit the nail on the head. “Is that what you’re doing with that supervillain? Doing the monkey thing to recreate it or somethin’?”

“No,” Glitched scoffed. “I’m…I’m…I’m…”  If Glitch’s brain had been fully cybernetic she might have accidentally shut herself down at the realization. The problem with her entire method had been undone by a single random employee with a highschool G.P.A. of 1.9.  “Harry, you’re right.”

“Oh…” The man didn’t hear those words in that order very often. “Yeah. Thanks. For what?”

She’d been coming at this from precisely the wrong angle. Her entire premise was flawed. But like any good scientist, she took the new data in stride and adapted accordingly.  “For preventing me from wasting any more time.”


*************************************************************************************************
Trial 62

Circe’s eyes opened. She felt unusually well rested considering she’d been sleeping in a crib. The dreams, memories, and fantasies of a life she may or may not have lived slowly faded into the back of her mind, her Siren soul feeling unusually well rested. 

The super villain softly smiled to herself. “What a wonderful dream,” she whispered.  Perhaps she was so well rested, she pondered, because her bladder hadn’t woken her up.  She sat up in her baby bed and felt her own room temperature feces sticking to her bottom. 

This had happened before. It didn’t lessen the shock.  “Oh fucking gross!” she whined in pink. Her skin prickled up and she slammed her hand over her mouth.  “Sorry!” she called out to the air. “Sorry Mama!”  She drew her body into a ball, bracing herself for the coils to pick her up and carry her over to the spanking knee. She hadn’t even gotten her diaper changed, yet.

And nothing happened.
 

Nothing?  Nothing?  Why nothing?  Had something happened?  A power outage? A malfunction? One of her peers making an attack on A.S.T.R.A.L. Labs?  Oh gods! What would happen if another supervillain saw her like this?!  Circe peered through the bars of the crib and wondered if maybe…just maybe…this was her chance to escape.

The door to the nursery slid open and Circe caught herself jumping.  Glitch was back.  At least, Circe thought it was Glitch. She had the rubber apron she’d taken to wearing, but beside that, the woman was wearing civilian clothing.  “Good morning, Circe,”  Glitch said, sounding positively…positive. 

Where was the smug know-it-all? “Here to gloat?” Circe asked. “Here to talk about how you broke the great Siren?”   She hoped so. It would be so nice to have a little bit of witty repartee again. To snipe. To shout. To sneer.

“No,” Glitch told her. “Not at all, Circe. I respect you too much.”  It was a trap. It was a trap… It was a trap…! It was a trap!  But Circe didn’t want it to be.

“Oh?” Circe said, trying to sound blase.  “Then what are you here for?”

The younger woman walked up to the side of Circe’s crib, and lowered the railing herself.  “To change your diaper.”

The supervillain felt numb from shock.  Change her diaper?  She’d had many, many, many, many diaper changes. Too many to count.  She went through four to five diapers a day; had even picked up on a pattern to the decorations: Blue dog, giraffe, dragon, racoon.  Her routine had become that painfully, kafkaesque and predictable.

She’d gone through many diaper changes, true, but no one had changed her. It had been all machine operated at this point.

“Change? My? Diaper?”
 

"Mhm,” Glitch said.  She leaned into the crib, and lifted Circe out of it. As far as superheroes went, Glitch wasn’t particularly strong; her cybernetically enhanced body able to tip over a small car but still walloped by a runaway eighteen wheeler.  That strength was still more than enough to carry Circe as if she were an infant.

The warmth of another body pressed up against her made her body tingle all over. Touch starved as she was, the simple skin to skin contact was better than champagne. Better than sex.  Circe groaned to herself, clinging to her warden with both arms around her shoulders.

A wave of loss welled up inside her when the changing table approached.  “NO!”  She didn’t even know how she said it.  Defiantly? Terrified? Lustful? Desperately? She felt a mystery to herself.

“It’s okay,” Glitch said.  “You’ll be fine.”

Circe was powerless to stop herself from being peeled off Glitch’s body like wet paper. “FUCK YOU!” she shouted. “NO-NO-NO-NO!”

“Let me clean you up, honey,”  Glitch said, not unkindly. “I want you to smell as pretty as you look.”

The Siren’s muscles unclenched and she relaxed on the changing table.  She was pretty! Someone else saw that she was pretty! Tempted by her! She knew Glitch swung that way! Who wouldn’t for Circe?  Even in middle age, she still had it!  “Oh…okay.”

She laid still and allowed herself to be strapped down to the table.  Allowed. Not forced. All part of playing the long game.  “Good girl,” Glitch cooed. “Very good girl. Thank you, honey.  This helps a lot.” 

Gratitude! Adulation! That was the stuff!   Oooooh, that was the stuff!


The tapes came off and the wipes came out.  “Oh wow,” Glitch remarked. “You really hammered this diaper into submission! Nice going!”
A blush almost as pink as her words came over the supervillain’s whole body.  “Nice job? I thought you wanted to potty train me.”

“I did,” Glitch admitted as she began cleaning between the Siren’s legs. “But it doesn’t matter what I want. As long as you’re happy, Circe.”

Circe didn’t know how to feel about that. Circe was still being dominated, forced to soil herself and allow herself to be cleaned and taken care of.  But coming from Glitch it felt more like a kind of submission.  “Okay…”

The change went slower than Glitch had become used to. The table automatically changing her had gotten it down to a sweet science. Quick. Efficient.  Sterile. The giant baby version of a NASCAR pit crew.

Glitch lacked much of that. She was clumsier. Less efficient. Used more wipes than perhaps was necessary. Not as polished.

“What’s the matter?” Circe taunted. “Couldn’t find a diaper changing tutorial or algorithm to beam into your computer brain?”

The young hero balled the giraffe diaper up and tossed it away.. She grabbed a fresh one off the stack and unfolded it.  “Didn’t look for one,” Glitch replied. “When I use those programs, my body goes into autopilot. Good for fighting. Bad for people-ing. You deserve the extra attention.”

Flattery was starting to get her somewhere.  Circe tried to resist on principle. “Admit it, Glitch. Your machines broke down and you had to rush back to pitch in. Your network or whatever science magic you use is malfunctioning.  You’re only doing this because you have to.  That’s why you’re here out of uniform.”

Glitch put a little too much powder on Circe’s bottom.  It was a human touch. A nice touch.  She waited until she’d finished diapering the supervillain to reply.  “No,” she said simply.

Circe bent her head and looked down at her diaper.  Blue dog?  That was out of rotation. “Then why?”

Glitch released the restraint and helped Circe up to a sitting position.  “My uniform is for work, Circe. I wear it for my co-workers, and my enemies. You’re neither. You’re not work.”  Circe braced herself for a cutting remark. Some quip about her being a ‘project’ or ‘hobby’ or ‘experiment’.  None came.

“I am too an enemy,” the Siren pouted.

“Okay, Circe,” Glitch said. “I’m sorry. You’re definitely my enemy.”

She was being condescended to, but just hearing another person’s voice, someone to fight and seduce and manipulate…it felt like water to a thirsty mind.  She still mattered enough to be condescended to. She wasn’t being ignored.

Glitch stuck her arm out to the side, and her tattoos lit up bright white once again.  On cue, the day’s big baby dress lowered from the ceiling and was draped over Glitches outstretched arm.  Today’s order was white with red polka dots. 

 

So much for the broken nursery theory.

A little bit of Circe luxuriated at being dressed in baby clothes. When the nursery did it, she felt like a piece on an assembly line. Some dressmaker’s dummy being wrapped up and vacuum sealed.  When her new nemesis did it, it felt sensual. The touch of her fingers. The little clumsy tugs to adjust things, here and there. 

Circe had had lovers undress her before. This felt very similar, only in reverse.  Rather than helpless, it felt kind of powerful in a way. Circe could lash out and headbutt the woman. Force her to get a titanium nose.

But she didn’t.

But she could.

“I'm very impressed by you, Circe,” Glitch said to her. “You’re showing remarkable patience and restraint. Good girl.”

How did she know?! Was mind reading something the cyborg had achieved?

Another thought creeped its way into Circe’s gray matter. Every time she’d had someone dote on her, Circe had been called by a different name.  She was always someone else to the world. A long lost love. Someone who got a way. An imaginary affair. A highschool sweetheart. Her greatest power manifested as the world’s strongest case of mistaken identity.  She had long gotten what she wanted through her powers, but not through her merits.

The woman presently dressing her was immune to Circe’s charms. The only person she ever saw when she looked at the Siren was Circe.  That was a weird feeling.  To Circe’s complete and utter surprise, the mittens and booties came off, giving her back the use of her fingers and feet.  She stared at her fingers and toes as if they had miraculously regenerated.

“All done,” Glitch said when she’d placed the matching polka dotted headband on Circe’s head.  Back into the hero’s arms she went.  “Good girl.”

Warmth and touch. Fresh clean clothes, right down to the underwear. Underwear that she could soil and be praised for, evidently. How transgressive…

Instead of the highchair, Circe found herself being carried dangerously close to the exit.

“Where are we going?” she asked, feeling for the first time in forever that she didn’t know what would happen next.  “Aren’t you going to plop me in a highchair and feed me mush?”

“I’m going to get you breakfast,” Glitch replied, nonchalantly.  “Just not here.”

“Where?” Circe asked.

“Out.”

Out?!

****************************************************************************************************

Circe was shivering, and it had nothing to do with the cold. The weather was temperate if anything.  Likewise, the adult stroller she was in was surprisingly comfortable. It had likely been a modified wheelchair at some point.  Correction, knowing Glitch she’d made it from scratch with far too much attention to detail and unnecessary engineering.

Leaving A.S.T.R.A.L. labs and out into the open city air, nothing else was comfortable.  The strap that kept her buckled in pressed up between her legs and caused the hem of her already short dress to ride up, exposing her diaper. “Glitch, what are you doing?”  Circe asked. “Why are we going outside?  Am I finally going to jail?”

“Nope,” Glitch said. “Just getting you some breakfast.”

Circe looked above her.  They’d left through the back way. Technically the way she’d broken in from. This thing didn’t even have a roof or a hood.  Nothing to obscure her face.  “Can’t I get a car ride, or a police escort?”  The stroller just rolled along through the alleyway. “Glitch?”

 

“You’ll be fine,” Glitch promised. “You’ll see. Though you may want to stop calling me by my hero name. Might draw attention.”

“What am I supposed to…?” Circe began to ask, but knew the answer. “No. No way I’m calling you that!”

Glitch just shrugged lightly and kept pushing the stroller. They were approaching the end of the alleyway. They were about to turn the corner.  A steady stream of humanity walked by obliviously in front of her.  

“Glitch?” Circe said. “Please stop.”  What would people say?  How was she going to gain the fear back of the pathetic masses? ”Glitch?”  As soon as someone saw her, they’d take out their phones.  She’d go viral in minutes.  “Glitch? This isn’t funny anymore.  Take me back to the underground nursery.”

Glitch kept going.

She’d be the laughing stock everywhere.  “Gliiiiiithc?”  All she had was this stupid pink voice to use.  Her other voices wouldn’t have helped her out of this anyways. She was doomed.

“Glitch?”

Ten steps away….nine…eight…seven…six…five…four…three…two…one…!

The stroller turned right out into the busy sidewalk.

“MOMMY!”

Everyone within a three block radius stopped in their tracks for exactly two seconds. They blinked.  Then kept walking.  Some regarded her briefly, but then they quickly went about their business.

“Huh?” Circe wondered.  “Why aren’t they staring? Why is nobody talking to me? Or running? Or pulling out their phones?”

A deceptively strong hand came down and booped Circe on the nose. “Because you’re a baby, Circe.  A baby in a stroller. Who would try to talk to a baby they didn’t know?  Or run away from one?  And taking pictures of a random baby? That’d be creepy, no matter how cute she was.”

Yet another strange feeling. Circe had almost always gone unnoticed by not using her powers. To be safe in crowds she had to not sing her songs and deny that part of herself.  This was a real having cake and eating it too kind of moment.

A few passerby walking in the opposite direction made eye contact with Circe and gave her big bright smiles, and friendly waves, but otherwise did not engage.  “Why aren’t they trying to take me away?”

Glitch had an answer for that too.  “Remember Dr. Zhao? The heartless psychopath who hated kids?”

Circe warmed to that memory.  “The one I had in tears? What about her?”

“With her feedback, I was able to tinker with your collar just enough so that people see you as just a baby, not their baby. That and you’re with me, so they trust that you’re my baby.”

A variation on the red voice phenomenon that made people lust after her, but held them at bay if she appeared spoken for.  Circe frowned. The warmth she felt was more than emotional.  Her diaper hadn’t remained dry very long.

“Fuck!”  Wetting in public added on an extra layer of surprise to the scenario. At least it was still fairly comfortable.  Circe knew from experience that her diaper would hold far more than this one little wetting.

“Circe…” Glitch warned from behind her. “Dont’...”

An opportunity! No spanking machines here, and surely Glitch wouldn’t blow her cover or make herself look bad by taking an innocent little girl over her knee in public. Not in front of these sheeple.

“FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKITY FUCK FUCK GODDAMN MOTHER FUCKER CUNT BITCH ASS TITTY FUCK CUNT DICK CHEESE WAFFLE TROTS SHIT MOTHER FUCKING ASSHOLE COCK!”

The stroller ground to a halt. Civilians gasped and followed their ears to the Siren’s lips.  They scowled and twisted up their faces in horror and revulsion. 

Yet none of their anger was directed at her.  “Ma’am,” one woman said, “Your child…”

“Is hotter than you B-Cup!”

“I’m…really sorry about that.” Glitch said, sounding embarrassed.  “She’s going through a phase.”  She glared down at a positively beaming Circe. “A forty year phase, it seems.”

“Where did she learn to talk like that?!” Another one of the sheeple asked Glitch, as if they expected a reasonable answer that would make them less upset.

“I learned it from your Mom when she was eating me out last night!” Circe crowed.

A man bent over and did his best to intimidate her.  “If you were my little girl, I’d teach you some manners with a belt.”  Amateur.

The Siren returned the glare.  “Do it, bitch.  Do it.  Hit me. Right now. In front of everyone. My Mommy will let you.  Go for it. Hit. Me.” He broke off eye contact and kept walking.  “Thought so.”

People gasped and sneered and shook their heads in tremendous disapproval.  Then kept walking on.  That was so unusually satisfying.  And it was causing this hero so much consternation.

Except…

“Well done, Circe.” Glitch complimented her. There wasn’t a trace of irony or sarcasm. Not a drop “You’ve definitely still got it, girl.”

“What are you talking about?” the Siren asked from her stroller.  “You’re not mad?”

Glitch snorted. “I’m plenty mad.  I’m just better at hiding and regulating my emotions than you.”

“Then why are you smirking?”

“Because I finally figured out how to help you.  I’ve been trying to help you start over, but you never really began, did you?”

The words sounded insulting, but the way she said it sounded warm.  Circe folded her arms over her chest and drew Glitch out with silence while strangers flowed past them like a river.

“You literally just want attention, don’t you? It’s a core part of your being, and you don’t care how you get it as long as it’s your idea.” 

Circe tried to refute the accusation but she had a point.

Glitch walked around and took a knee so that she could look her nemesis in the eye.  “You’re not a supervillain, Circe. You’re a brat.  You’re a toddler with hypnosis powers and are stuck in your terrible twos. You’ve got an adult body, but that’s not really your fault. That’s why my pink light didn’t work.”

Circe coked an eyebrow. “What pink light? The one on that stupid mobile above the changing table?”

 

Glitch showed that cocky, condescending smile. “Oh. Yeah. I neglected to mention. I knew you were immune to sound based perception alteration, so I converted your sound frequencies into colored strobes. It was supposed to alter your perception of yourself. Bring you back to a more innocent time.”  Her smile seemed less nasty all of a sudden.  “But you never exactly left that mindset, did you?”

“No,” Circe huffed. “I’m just immune to hypnosis.”

“Are you?” Glitch asked.  “Look to your right?”

The Siren turned her head. The stroller had stopped by a skyscraper with windows that reflected back at mirrors.  Sitting in the stroller in the reflection wasn’t Circe, a past her prime middle aged supervillainess. In her place was a silver haired, slightly chubby cheeked cherub who couldn’t have been more than two years old.  Neither the stroller, nor the cute polka dot dress and matching bow, or even the big puffy diaper peeking out beneath looked an ounce out of place.

It felt right.

“Hypothesis confirmed,” Glitch said. Then tenderly, softly, she took Circe’s hands in her own, the way a mother would a child, Circe thought.  “I don’t think you really wanted to take over the world or anything like that.  I think you just wanted to be free of responsibility and get to act out so people would notice you on your own terms.”  No comment from Circe.  “Let me make you an offer, baby girl. Stay with me and let me keep working on my research with you.  No more robots. No more spankings. No rules that you wouldn’t get if you were really the age you act like.”  The Siren was about to say something.  “And yes, I expect you’ll break those rules too.  But do you really want to live the rest of your life looking over your shoulder or planning some big grand scheme that you’re not really interested in so you can get a dopamine fix?  Or do you, Circe, want to subvert expectations and go a way that no one would ever see coming?”

When she put it like that…
 

***********************************************************************************
Four Months Later…

Jack B. Nimble, the city’s king of arson and highrise robbery, woke up with a pounding headache.  He wasn’t all that surprised to be waking up behind bars. Sometimes in his line of work, a costume vigilante caught one unawares. That didn’t bother him. Prison was just a government funded vacation at this point. 

He’d escape via fire or leaping.  He could practically build his combustion leaping boots out of pencil shavings and rubber bands by this point. That’s how many times he’d managed to improvise his escape.

Why were bars wooden though?  He had weird dreams, too.  He remembered falling down a slide naked…and a bath…and pink strobe lights. Maybe he’d gotten another concussion?

The last element of his fever dream came into play when he sat up and felt his own bodily waste squish up against him.  He looked down at himself.  Was that a diaper he was wearing?  “What the hell?”   Why did his voice sound…not different but…pink? He tugged at his throat and felt something.  A choker?

Before he had time to think, a door opened up, and in walked a lady wearing pink scrubs. They had pictures of rattles and storks and safety pins on them.  “Good afternoon, Jack,” the strange lady.  “Are you ready to get up?”

He was about to tell her something awful about what he was ready to ‘get up’, when the little Asian woman hoisted him out of the crib, dirty diaper and all.  “WAAAH?!”

“Don’t be scared,” she said. “I’ve got muscle enhancing exo-armor underneath.”

That part didn’t scare Jack. Jack didn’t scare easily.  Disturbed though? This was very disturbing, and it only got more so when he was carried into a nursery filled with little brats running and playing everywhere

His pleas for decency and modesty were ignored as the lady changed his diaper. In front of kids no less!  Funny thought that other men and women in the same kind of scrubs were attending to the children.  Why would they need fancy tech for lifting up toddlers?

He’d get his answer soon enough when he was put in a onesie, and stood him up on the carpet.  “I’ll give you a bit to get acclimated.” The millisecond that the Asian woman left him alone to absorb the weirdness around him, a silver haired toddler marched up and stared him down.

“Listen up, loser.  I don’t care how big and bad you thought were on the outside. You’re just another pants shitter now and you’re on my turf. Got it?”
 

A moment of cognitive dissonance rocked Jack’s brain. If she was a baby, why was she able to look him in the eye? What did that say about him?

“Circe,” one of the daycare attendants called over.  “Are you being nice to your new friend?”

The little terror whirled around, her dress flaring off and revealing her diaper- identical to his save for it being very very wet.  “No! And he’s not my friend!”

“Do you need a time out?” they warned.

“I don’t know,” the mealy mouthed baby taunted back. “Do you want to have this fight? Over me not being all smiles? To Jack B. Nimble?”

The daycare worker huffed and growled in frustration.  “I’m…I’m not doing this right now. I don’t get paid enough. I don’t. I just don’t.  Just…use your words, okay?”

“I. Promise. Nothing.”

Eyes rolled and heads shook.

“Circe?” Jack repeated. That was an uncommon enough name.  “Siren?”

The little girl whipped her head back towards him.  “Yeah? What? You gotta problem?”

Jack gulped. “No.  No ma’am.”

“Good.”

(The End)
 

[Zguy40]

One of the best stories I’ve read in a long time. A masterpiece from beginning to end. You are a true master of your craft.

[BabyJilly_S]

Great story, enjoyed that it was so different from other stories and an unusual take on the super hero.

[Personalias]

18 hours ago, Zguy40 said:

One of the best stories I’ve read in a long time. A masterpiece from beginning to end. You are a true master of your craft.

Thank you!  I'm trying to get better every time.

4 hours ago, BabyJilly_S said:

Great story, enjoyed that it was so different from other stories and an unusual take on the super hero.

I like experimenting with storytelling angles and twists and concepts.