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Diamond Jack dropped silently out of the vent into the corridor. The hero checked the scanner built into their mask, and cursed quietly. No contact. This storehouse was completely isolated from the outside world, layered with jammers and reinforced concrete to make sure that scanning the interior would be completely impossible. If they ran into trouble… they were on their own.
The hero slipped through the darkened corridors like a slender ghost, their grey camouflage jumpsuit in diamond patterns that blended into the shadows and their spiky red-and-blonde hair covered by a beanie. Years ago, this storehouse had belonged to the Architects, a dangerous conspiracy that was trying to create superhuman soldiers. It should be abandoned, but the last two facilities Diamond Jack had investigated had exploded, so they were being cautious.
They came to a heavy steel door, and frowned as they saw that someone had forced it open - recently, from the dust disturbed around the base. Pulling out a pair of slender batons, Diamond Jack slipped into the main storage bay, and stopped dead.
“Well, well,” they said, looking at the occupant inside. “Come here often?”
“Shut the fuck up, Malone,” Dinah Suzuki snarled, blushing fiercely. She was one of a handful of people who’d discovered Diamond Jack’s secret identity, and had inexplicably not revealed it to the world.
Dinah Suzuki, known to the world as Whispersteel, was tall, fit, and curvy, her muscles toned and her breasts large and plump. They were particularly visible right now because they were pressed against the glass of the narrow glass tube that Dinah was trapped inside, completely naked. The Japanese woman’s pale eyes were narrowed with annoyance, and she looked away from Diamond Jack as she tried to find a way to cover herself.
“Got stuck in storage?” Malone asked sympathetically, walking over to look at the machinery. There was a long row of similar tubes, each of which featured old machinery above and below it. They’d probably been used to store experimental soldiers. “Why don’t you just break out?”
“The glass… is attuned to my vibrations,” Dinah admitted after a long moment. “The first time I tried, they bounced back at me and shook my jumpsuit to shreds.” She gestured down at the floor of the tube, where a small pile of grey material mostly concealed her feet. “So am I under arrest?”
“Tempting. You are a crime boss, after all. Came to investigate the conspiracy?”
“Same as you, I bet. I’ve been working my way up the list we assembled.”
“I’ve been working my way down it. Guess we met in the middle.” Malone frowned thoughtfully at the blank panel. “How did you even end up in there? There’s no power.”
“Emergency systems. I register as an escaped subject, so they want to store me until the researchers come back,” Dinah said with a grunt. “Walked up to the panel there and it just sucked me right in before I could react.” She took a deep breath. “Pacification gas went stale, though. Little dizzy, but I’m awake. You going to get me out?”
Malone leaned against the glass, fingers inches from Dinah’s skin. They waggled their eyebrows at their frenemy. “I don’t know, I’m tempted to store you here until I need you next.”
“That’s not a very heroic thing to say.”
“The heroic thing would be to leave you for the cops.”
Dinah tried to reach up to rub her forehead, but her elbow got stuck, leaving her arm at her side. “Well, my big strong superhero savior,” she said in a demure voice, “I would be ever so grateful if you could break me out of this glass. It’s just the two of us down here, all alone, and no one is coming to look for us for a while…” She winked, and then added more seriously, “Also, if you leave me in here I’m going to blast my way out.”
“You said you couldn’t.”
“No, I said the first time I tried the vibrations bounced back at me,” Dinah pointed out. She nudged the fabric around her feet with her toes. “Which it did. I could still go full-out, break this storage tube, and most of the surrounding ones, maybe the ceiling. But the data discs I already looted are sitting at my feet and I don’t want to wreck them.”
She leaned against the tube, rubbing her breasts up and down in front of Malone. “So what do you say, vigilante? You open this tube, I show you how appreciative I am in a whole mess of ways, and then we review the information together and go smash up a conspiracy, all secret-like?”
“That sounds like we’re the ones in a conspiracy,” Malone said.
“Honey, you’re sleeping with a supervillain and I’m sleeping with a cape. We are in a conspiracy.”
Malone thought about it a moment. Then they reached into their belt, pulling out a small battery and wire, and hooked it into the panel. “If I’m going to be honest,” they said, “you had me at ‘grateful’. I’ve got some ideas about how you can repay me.”
Dinah shivered at the light in their eyes. “You can be a little bit fiendish yourself sometimes, you know that? You going to scare me straight?”
“I sure hope not. I like you crooked.” The tube hissed open all at once; Dinah, who was still leaning against it, fell forward into Malone’s arms. The hero gave her a long kiss, holding her tight. “And you wouldn’t want me to be straight either.”
“Oh, hah hah.” Dinah broke out of the kiss, trying to hide her grin. “You would be a very effective mobster, though,” she said.
“Maybe. But this is more fun. Now come here, and let’s see how grateful you really are.”
“My hero,” Dinah purred, sliding against Malone.