HOME | DD

Description

In one universe, Svetta Kistrun is the world's greatest hero, Ubergirl, a shining light of justice that fights off all sorts of the most powerful evils.

In another, she is humanity's greatest threat, an unstoppable force of evil.

In another, she is a normal human, a talented writer who has a good friend writing a story for her birthday (entirely of her own free will).

In another, she is the highest potential magical girl the Fey had ever seen.

But in the universe we come to today, she is one of the most trusted agents of Military and Industrial Intelligence 6. MII6 is the espionage arm of the Western Britannian Empire, engaged in counter-terrorism at home; excursions into the United States of South America, the Sino-Soviet Union, the Pan-African Republic and the Kingdom of Australia; and operations against the mega-corporations who control Europe - including East Britannia.

Agent Kistrun is there, on old Eastern Britannic land, entering the HQ of Empire Industries, one of the four largest conglomerates in the Megacorp Territories. She is joined by Agent Grace Harrison, her trusted partner. While Svetta is known for her wide range of skills, she is also known as a loose cannon and for being somewhat eccentric. The reliable Grace is the perfect counterweight to her tendencies. Her skills are more focused on negotiation, stealth and combat, lacking the huge repertoire of her partner. But she makes up for it with her unbeatable will, unrelenting focus, and encyclopaedic knowledge of international law and MII6 policy. Together, they have neutralised more threats than any other MII6 team.

This will be their hardest fight yet.

Two women walked into a wide lobby, completely lit by the morning sun through tinted glass walls. The floor was made entirely of beige tiles, with very 'tasteful' blue panels emerging from them at seemingly random intervals almost certainly determined by a well-paid design consultant. On each of the panels was a screen flashing information to a few well-dressed people sat on plush chairs of the same corporate blue. A long blue desk sat in front of a sign proclaiming the building as 'Empire Industries' in blue and regal green, and sat beside a trio of turnstiles leading to glass doors and, one would assume, corporate purgatory.

That was what Agent Harrison thought, at least, as he tapped the toes of her tall leather boots impatiently on the ground. The little 'click' of the boots' metal zip on the ceramic floor somehow helped focus her thoughts. The blonde woman's face was a stern stare as she watched the receptionists at the desk, trying to listen on any clues she could use to buy the time they needed.

The other woman was a lot less focused. Agent Kistrun's wide eyes surveyed the huge room with awe from behind messy strawberry blonde hair. As she walked, almost skipped, around the lobby her chest bounced enough to almost pop the buttons of her white blouse (which was already straining a bit as she and her less curvy partner had both been provided the same sized outfit by their handlers). Grace sighed, and allowed Svetta the short time to be hyperactive. Maybe for once her friend would actually burn all that excess energy before it ended up getting them in trouble later.

A woman could dream.

Once her turn to go to the desk was called, Grace was faced with someone she could only describe as 'generic corporate drone 3'. The dead eyes that stared out at her from behind a perfectly combed brunette fringe clearly did not care for her small talk.

But, with a detached professional courtesy, the receptionist still engaged Agent Harrison in three minutes of mindless patter about the weather, the decor of the office, and even a specific question about the colour scheme. Finally, a little whisper sounded in Grace's ear. They were ready to go in.

"Anyway, I'm here to see Mister..." She paused for a moment, her lips pursed as if remembering a name. She was actually straining her ears to hear the mumble from the microphone hidden under a few locks of blonde hair. "Mister Soames. We're booked into the system."

The receptionist's face shifted slightly from her perfectly flat expression, a tiny betrayal of her relief at being free from the dreaded human interaction part of her job, and being back to the far more familiar 'entering search queries into a proprietary system'. "Ah yes, I have you registered here, Miss Richards." The woman's lined face turned back to her screen. "And your colleague..."

Grace whipped her head around to see Svetta... doing hops across the floor of the lobby while looking intently at one of the screens on the blue walls. She started for a minute, before checking her partner's eyes and confirming that she was, in fact, just being Svetta. No weird brainwashing this time, thank goodness. "Miss Kelly is over there." She said nonchalantly, and held out her hand for the guest passes. The less questions asked, the better. Both for the mission, and for her own sanity.

After sneaking up on the spaced-out woman and dropping a guest pass around her head, Grace strode towards the turnstiles and flashed the card against them. Behind her, Svetta let out a little 'oooh' as the scanner flashed green and unlocked the entrance to Empire HQ. After running ahead of her partner, Agent Kistrun turned her head, her long hair swishing around.

"Whisper did it again, huh?"

"She always gets us through the first hurdle, yeah." Grace agreed, before fixing her blue gaze on her partner with sudden stern intensity. "But now we need to get to the server room ourselves. No distractions, okay?"

Svetta's cheeks puffed out as the did the most childish pout an adult MII6 agent could ever muster. "I never do distractions!"

Grace simply kept her even, deadpan stare.

"No, seriously!" Her pout receded into a victorious grin. "Oh, my dear Gracie, you think I was just playing in the lobby, don't you?"

Grace nodded, slowly, not willing to give in just yet.

"I was studying the floor plan, and working out the exact distances. Just follow me and I'll take us straight to the server room, we won't even need to look at any signs. It'll be like we actually know where we're going!" Svetta's pace accelerated after that, a spring in her step elevating her gait almost to a skip.

Grace's forehead fell into her hand for a moment, but she followed, with eyes straight ahead and the long strides of someone who knows what's up around here and really does not need your interruption. "One more question, though, Kist- I mean, Kelly."

"What?"

"Why are you unbuttoning your blouse?"

The, admittedly much curvier, agent leaned over with her hand raised for a stage whisper. "To distract that guy"

Without any further explanation (because that would just be too easy), Svetta's body swerved off to the right, where a six foot man in a black jacket and sunglasses leaned against a wall in front of the door to the stairwell. Agent Kistrun lurched forward, her legs flailing as she tripped over some imaginary object. Her chest did exactly what it was meant to do, bursting apart the remaining buttons of her blouse and giving a few bounces for emphasis. Grace ran over to 'catch' her friend, and with an apologetic smile to the blushing guard, she hurried them both through the door.

While they were both panting at the top of the third floor, Grace stepped back from the black plastic rectangle beside the door.

"Yep, it's a retina scanner. You have something for this, right?"

Agent Harrison turned to find her partner wearing a single lens, surrounded by a gold frame, ending in a ruby chain which emerged from somewhere in the strawberry blonde tangle of her hair.

"Why of course, dah-ling." Svetta drawled before collapsing into a fit of giggles. Grace simply sighed again and took a moment to surreptitiously appreciate the wiggling of her partner's rear end as she bent over to present the monocle to the scanner.

"... Why a monocle though?" The weight of the silence was too unbearable, even though the answer would surely give her a headache too.

Svetta drew herself up to her full (still slightly shorter than Grace's) height and put her hand in front of her mouth in a mock noblewoman's laugh. "Oh ho ho! Dah-ling, 'twere I to use goggle, 'twould be simply too tempting to have them used for soporific effect, 'twould it not?"

"Urgh, of course..." Grace pushed past the ridiculous spy that was Agent Kistrun and kicked the door open lazily, all the while attempting to push the memory of Dr. Solaris and his Sunspot Sunglasses out of her mind.

She waited for Svetta to overtake her again - the other spy had dropped the act once she was through the door and returned to a confident walk, her eyes darting about looking for threats even as her body remained completely relaxed.

But it seemed the two hadn't tripped any alarms, since they got to the server room unimpeded (and this time Svetta didn't even do a silly act with the retina scanner-fooling gadget).

Grace reached into her back and passed a laptop to her partner, who immediately flipped it open. She somehow picked out the right cable from the mess of wires coming out of the back of the huge black towers full of blinking lights before them. She even slotted it in to the right hole on the laptop on the first try (Grace had *never* managed that!).

"Can't we get Whisper to hack this as well?"

"Nah, she'd need a visual feed and that's definitely not worth the risk." Svetta's fingers were already typing in meaningless strings of letters and numbers which were being replicated in boring white font on a black screen. "Don't worry, Gracie, you're in safe hands. I got an A in my hacking class, and I didn't even do any coursework in the final year!"

That was meant to make her feel better!?

Agent Harrison resolved her nervous energy by pacing up and down the rows of desks outside, while her left hand spun the lanyard which held her 'Miss G Richards'
badge into ever more complex knots. The constant clack of the keyboard was accompanied by Svetta's voice mumbling incoherent angry noises.

A few moments after an especially loud 'fucktwat', the lights at each far end of the room went off. Then the next ones in. Then the next.

Grace dove under a set of desks as two... no, three sets of footsteps came into the room.

Wait, no, she couldn't let them get to Svetta while she was still hacking in to the database! She reached slowly above her head for the first blunt object she could find. Then, she kicked out the chair she was hiding under to buy however many microseconds of distraction she could. Then, she pushed off the ground with both heels to come to a standing run, and threw what turned out to be a holepunch in the direction of the footsteps.

The very asymmetrical item thunked to the ground after crossing less than half the distance between her and the three men.

Grace backed away slowly as that distance suddenly became a lot smaller. Each of the trio of security guards were bigger than her. But, they had clearly come here in a rush, because none of them were holding a taser, instead each of the three held a baton in their hand. But seeing as they were probably the type which did the shocky-electricity thing, that didn't fill her with much confidence.

She couldn't give any more ground, though, lest they just ignore her completely and electrocute Svetta. So she shifted her weight back on to her front foot and charged forward three steps and kicked the office chair she'd been hid behind with all her force.

It would have been unrealistic to expect it would do anything, and those expectations were matched when the front guard swatted the chair away with a dismissive swing of his arm. But it had given Grace the chance to close the distance. Her knee rose slightly, before firing her leg downwards. The thick heel of her boot crunched into the guard's shin, and even though her leg flailed and landed awkwardly between the guards, her flexible body leaned in to the unbalanced motion, giving her the momentum to bring her fist forward, then up into the man's nose while he was still screaming in pain.

He full back with a thunk, much louder than her failed stationery attack earlier. While her body was still awkwardly bent forward Grace quickly picked up the man's baton (she had no idea how to activate it, but it was still a weapon), then rose into a narrow fighting stance.

One of the guards had settled into his own stance with elbows tucked against his body and one knee raised in front of him. Some sort of kickboxing thing - Muay Thai perhaps - he would definitely beat her in close range unless she got him in a hold and somehow used some leverage. The other didn't seem to have any real combat training, as he simply advanced on her with his baton drawn, already arcing visibly with white crackles of electricity.

The big guy's arm came at her in a wide, wild swing. She was already on her toes, and bounced backwards to easily avoid it. But despite his mindless attack, there was no opening for her - his left was already tensing for a big hook.

But that meant Grace knew what to do next. By the time his fist had shot out, she was already ducking under it and ready to drive her fist into his stomach.

Which would have went perfectly if there wasn't the corner of a desk to dodge around. And if that little slowdown in her movement had given the other guard chance to drive his elbow into her ribs. Pain erupted inwards from her side and left her retching for a moment. But the agent's instincts were good enough that she quickly stumbled out of range while her eyes were registering only a reddened blur.

Muay Thai guy had good reflexes, then. But he also wasn't going straight for the 'kill shots' to her head. Was he being chivalrous? Or cocky and sadistic? Impossible to say. And it didn't matter anyway. What it meant was that he would hesitate if she didn't present him any safe target. Guarding her body and leaving her head wide open, she closed the distance. As she expected, his arms shook in a moment of hesitation. A short moment, but enough for her to release the tension in her arm and send her knuckles into his temple in a reverse swing.

Then the electrified baton came down hard on her outstretched arm. She felt a few twitches of uncontrollable vibration of forearm muscles before she simply lost all sensation below her left shoulder. She whipped around as fast as possible with a pained grunt, seeing the big guy's stoic face and, more importantly, his other arm coming down on her in an overhand arc.

Grace stumbled backwards, her right arm moving in an awkward crescent to deflect his attack away from her head and collarbone. Instead it thundered into her useless arm (at least the numbness helped a bit for that). But now she finally had a clean shot with her right hand. It had been fiddling with the baton for the last ten seconds of the fight and found no purchase, but the blunt force against the man's nose was still enough to cause an explosion of blood, and send him staggering backwards in a daze. After she saw him fall over a desk in an almost cartoonishly exaggerated motion she turned back to Muay Thai.

He was clearly still dizzy. When she moved in to range his legs kicked outwards with weak, meaningless covering fire. Too slow. She grabbed his leg with her good arm, positioned her waist near the knee and pushed down on it with her free hand. The force would either break the joint or his stance. Either would work. She twisted slightly in the opposite direction to build up force for the finishing move.

Before she could thrust her body sideways, she felt a powerful tug at her stomach. She saw a thick black sleeve, and a white rag. Then she could only smell a weird, almost alcoholic concoction. She felt like she'd just downed three gins as well. Suddenly the world felt slightly... apart from her. The sensation of Muay Thai twisting out of her grip barely reached her arm. The bear hug under her chest was more like a pleasant tickle. The ringing in her ears started to fade with all vision of the world...

wait... that smell... shi-

"LIGHTNING SPEAR!" Svetta's voice was still loud enough to be registered in Grace's mind as 'capslock', even through the haze of chloroform. She felt the guard's grip on her tighten unbearably, before it suddenly slackened as a heavy weight started to slide down her back. She wriggled out, and realising she still had her baton, quickly whacked Muay Thai before he could regain his bearings.

Agent Harrison turned to her partner. Svetta was bent over the unconscious guard whose shin Grace had broken earlier, unpicking the barbs of her taser from his hefty back. "Thanks, Kistrun."

Svetta's blue eyes were still expectant. "You're not gonna...?"

"You get to shout your stupid cartoon attack names when you save my life, Svetta." Grace offered her partner a hand to pull her up. "So you got the data?"

"Yep, just waiting on Whisper to analyse it now."

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, in MII6's Research and Technology Centre, a few miles out of New Oxford, a short woman focused her attention away from six screens of security cameras to a single laptop monitor. Her light brown-skinned frame was small enough that she couldn't get a field operative certification, but Agent 'Whisper' had other abilities. She brushed a strand of night black hair out of her eyes and pushed the microphone of her headset away from her mouth.

Time to focus on this code Svetta sent through. Her black screen was now full of tiny white characters, representing the source of the Empire Industries security mainframe, and hence the map to the Device her colleagues were looking for.

There was enough text there that it would take her at least ten minutes to even work out where to start! And that only got worse when the screen started to autoscroll as more text started to fill in at the bottom of the block. (She knew it would be complicated, but this was ridiculous)

What was even happening in this mess... It didn't seem to be at all related to the sort of language she would expect... The only obvious lead was the fact that the scrolling text was now appearing in all sort of different colours.

She focused on a block of red text... Open bracket but no close... No recognisable function... Aaaaand it has scrolled off the top of the screen and was gone.

She sighed, eyes darting to the bottom corner where some indigo text had just nudged into frame. Again, nothing to indicate why her editor was reading it as coloured, there was no obvious reason to.

Or at least no obvious reason she could process before her gaze had tracked it all the way to the top of the screen.

She tried again and again, each time attentively following batches of text in every colour of the rainbow. It was kinda pretty, no doubt, but she couldn't make any sense of it. Her brain just couldn't process what was going on fast enough.

A new tactic. She tried randomly flicking her focus between the different blocks as they sped up to the top of her display, hoping some random thing would jump out at her. But it felt like every time her attention moved, it became harder to keep it on the task at hand. It was easier to give up on one block. Jump to the next... pretty... colour...

It felt weird... she needed to... needed to just look more... no... needed to... to look... no! She needed to ask Svetta if she had any hints at all about what she'd just uploaded!

But she couldn't even raise her hand to pull her mic down. It was too hard.

Easier to watch the pretty colours of the scrolling text.

Easier to keep her eyes glued to the edges of the screen, looking for each new amazing, incomprehensible sight.

Her attention was so drawn she didn't even see the popup window in the centre of her display announcing the download of an audio file.

She didn't even notice when the code was clearly loading a visual filter into her UI.

All she felt was her head spinning as everything blurred into one, colourful, swirly mixture of pure, attention-dominating beauty.

"Whisper, come in!" Grace shouted into her ear for the fifth time as she kicked Muay Thai's head again casually. Svetta shushed her from across the room, than went back to her stolen walkie talkie to explain the 'false alarm'. How Agent Kistrun could perfectly mimic a voice after hearing only grunts of pain was entirely beyond Grace. But, hey, if she got the job done (and looked fine doing it!) Grace wasn't going to complain about a hypercompetent junior.

Finally, her earpiece crackled, then the familiar quiet, deadpan voice responded. "Hey Harrison, sorry about that. I needed to focus to work out the best route. But you were right, the directions to the Device were there."

"Good job, Liu, lead the way." Finally, they were on track. They'd finally take down the source of Empire's power. She only hoped it was worth the fact the anti-Device stuff filling her pack meant she couldn't even afford to conceal a gun. Would've really come in handy against those guards.

As promised, Whisper's route did mean they avoided most guards, and those which they did see were distracted by Svetta whispering "starlight burst" before throwing a flash grenade modified to wipe out the last few seconds of short-term memory. After scaling four more floors of the building, the two Agents used the monocle on another retina scanner, and watched the two three-metre high chrome doors in front of them slide open...

... To reveal an artificial beach. A small moat of water surrounded three walls of the room, and the floor was covered in something doing a decent impression of sand. Deck chairs filled the room, along with fake palm trees, and the ceiling looked authentically like a blue sky and the walls like a vista of a resort spreading out to two sides, and the infinite ocean before them.

Grace took a few steps onto the soft floor, looking upwards in wonder. She noticed little seams in the ceiling and walls, proving it was all high-quality projection from a multitude of honeycombed screens, just like those in the reception. Impressive, but hardly a Device.

Svetta tugged on her arm and leaned in to her ear. "Gracie, not sure it's the Device, but we have a VIP here" Grace followed Kistrun's finger to a lounger. Upon it, a woman draped with the elegance of a Roman ruler. She was tall, and that was mostly in her alabaster legs, and her perfectly straightened blonde hair brushed the sandy floor. Her face was the beautiful features Grace had seen on many an MII6 report.

"Empress..." She breathed. Combat capabilities unknown, but herself and Svetta were probably enough to take her down. But there were at least half a dozen more people here. And, sure, they might have been in swimsuits (and gorgeous), but Grace was sure they were more goons than models. Even Svetta couldn't take those odds.

Grace turned to run, grabbing Svetta's smaller hand. But the second she turned, the silver doors behind her slammed shut with a sound which definitely felt dismissive. They even immediately changed to become an image of a beachside hotel.

Brilliant.

"Welcome to the... Relaxation room, sweeties." The Empress' voice carried easily across the huge room. It was accented like a socialite of old Britannia. A cruel joke from a megacorp's CEO - the opposite of a Britannian patriot. "Please do make yourselves at home."

Svetta leaned in to her ear, and even in this situation, Grace couldn't help but feel a tingle in her stomach as her partner's lips came so close to her skin. "I think we should just play along. She might do the supervillain thing, y'know?"

Grace sighed. She had a point, as usual. She walked slowly over to the furthest recliner from the Empress and slowly lowered her body into it. Despite the wooden appearance, it was very comfy. As if it was the plushest couch imaginable. Weird. Impressive. (Really not the point of the investigation!)

"That's better. Let my Empire Recliners" The 'TM' was somehow implicit in the way she said it "soothe your aching muscles. I know you worked sooo hard beating up my men. But it's fine, I forgive you. Just relax into your chair. Let your back go slack."

Grace had only met this woman face to face for thirty seconds and she was already her number one enemy.

"Oh, how I wish I could get rid of your scowl, too." The Empress whipped her hair back with pure melodrama as she reached into the sand for some sort of silver road. "Wait a moment... I can."

"What was tha-" Grace herd Svetta say from somewhere above her, before she saw it too. The entire vista of the ocean in front of them had faded into a white void. Then a black line appeared at its furthest edges. A long arc, that spun slowly into the centre of the wall. Then it disappeared, but its long tail remained. A huge, spinning spiral. Hundreds of little screens working together to create one, great image. Constantly co-ordinated to keep the spiral inexorably moving. So massive. So powerful. So impressive.

It was nice, really. Just letting the overwhelming sensations of the spiral wash over her like the waves of the sea. A natural force, something no human could fight against. Even if she resisted, it would break through eventually.

So it was useless to fight. Useless to resist.

It would be better to just let it happen to her...

Was what the Empress wanted her to think! And as tempting as it was to give in to the inviting, tingling sensation coming from her legs as they sunk into the recliner, Agent Grace Harrison knew she needed to fight!

"Whisper, come in! We've encountered the Empr-..."

Grace managed to get that much out before her mouth went slack. She couldn't say that name. The Empress... it was who She was, but the name felt wrong on the tongue. She felt in her body and her eyes that the beautiful woman she couldn't even see any more had a different name.

Maybe if she focused more on the huge spiral that completely encompassed her vision she would work out what that name was.

She wanted to.

Her body was urging her to.

Her eyes literally couldn't stop absorbing the spiral.

But her mind knew it was wrong. She had to find some way out. But as she felt a trickle of drool run down her chin, she knew her body was not up to the task.

Not yet... but Grace could fight it... surely...

"Is that resistance I see in your eyes? Gosh, you're lasting longer than anyone else. Isn't that right, my dear Svetta?"

Shit! Svetta was there as well! She bent straight up at the waist, her instincts telling her that her junior was in trouble. Even the ever-surprising Svetta would need help against something as powerful as the Great Wall Spiral. "Svetta!"

Grace tried to whip her head from side to side. It ended up being a tiny, weak shake of her head. She couldn't even see her partner.

Then she felt her. Two arms, stronger than her own, pulling her backwards and down.

She saw a face, framed by amazing strawberry blonde hair, eyes wide and face grinning and drooling. Then the arms pushed her head to look attentively at the far wall. Then she felt her good arm being moved between her own legs.

Her hand started stroking without any instructions from her own brain.

She knew where the instructions were coming from.

And with Svetta keeping her from fighting it, she wouldn't beat it. Svetta was lost, and now she had lost.

She let the tingling sensation rise out of the recliner, filling her whole body with a detached, tired resignation.

She was going to... she had to... s...

But she knew that word was the final answer, the secret weapon. If she thought it, she lost. She had to fight that. She had to get a message out to central command. She had to save Svetta!

"Sleep" said a voice in her ear. Whisper's voice. Emotionless, empty.

Hypnotised.

Just like Grace was.

The all-consuming spiral sucked up everything she felt and thought, and all was black.

Svetta Kistrun skipped around her living room, crossing off items on her mental checklist as she threw them into her handbag with a flourish. It was about to be her first day on the job as a Senior Operative for the Empire Industries Corporate Espionage division! Grace had finally pulled through and got her a job there (and a few of their other friends - but they would be working remotely).

She could not wait to finish working for that sucky West Britannian government. Fuck the nondisclosure agreements she'd signed a decade ago - she was definitely going to spill some state secrets to her new employers.

The only annoyance for her was that Grace was still out on a corporate learning retreat, so her beautiful blonde friend wouldn't be there to greet her. But the Empress herself had personally promised Svetta in an email that she would be reunited with Grace soon.

So Svetta was, all in all, very happy with her new life serving the rightful mistress of Britannia, her Empress.

-----

A (slightly delayed) story for the almighty SvettaK92 's birthday!

Turns out the whole parallel universe nonsense comic books do is Good Actually, because it gives us a chance to do things like this, and explore alternative versions of Ubergirl (and friends (and foes)). Of course we're focusing on Grace here because Grace is the best girl.

Hope you all enjoy! Hopefully I'm getting better at the non-hypno scenes too!

Description

In one universe, Svetta Kistrun is the world's greatest hero, Ubergirl, a shining light of justice that fights off all sorts of the most powerful evils.

In another, she is humanity's greatest threat, an unstoppable force of evil.

In another, she is a normal human, a talented writer who has a good friend writing a story for her birthday (entirely of her own free will).

In another, she is the highest potential magical girl the Fey had ever seen.

But in the universe we come to today, she is one of the most trusted agents of Military and Industrial Intelligence 6. MII6 is the espionage arm of the Western Britannian Empire, engaged in counter-terrorism at home; excursions into the United States of South America, the Sino-Soviet Union, the Pan-African Republic and the Kingdom of Australia; and operations against the mega-corporations who control Europe - including East Britannia.

Agent Kistrun is there, on old Eastern Britannic land, entering the HQ of Empire Industries, one of the four largest conglomerates in the Megacorp Territories. She is joined by Agent Grace Harrison, her trusted partner. While Svetta is known for her wide range of skills, she is also known as a loose cannon and for being somewhat eccentric. The reliable Grace is the perfect counterweight to her tendencies. Her skills are more focused on negotiation, stealth and combat, lacking the huge repertoire of her partner. But she makes up for it with her unbeatable will, unrelenting focus, and encyclopaedic knowledge of international law and MII6 policy. Together, they have neutralised more threats than any other MII6 team.

This will be their hardest fight yet.

Two women walked into a wide lobby, completely lit by the morning sun through tinted glass walls. The floor was made entirely of beige tiles, with very 'tasteful' blue panels emerging from them at seemingly random intervals almost certainly determined by a well-paid design consultant. On each of the panels was a screen flashing information to a few well-dressed people sat on plush chairs of the same corporate blue. A long blue desk sat in front of a sign proclaiming the building as 'Empire Industries' in blue and regal green, and sat beside a trio of turnstiles leading to glass doors and, one would assume, corporate purgatory.

That was what Agent Harrison thought, at least, as he tapped the toes of her tall leather boots impatiently on the ground. The little 'click' of the boots' metal zip on the ceramic floor somehow helped focus her thoughts. The blonde woman's face was a stern stare as she watched the receptionists at the desk, trying to listen on any clues she could use to buy the time they needed.

The other woman was a lot less focused. Agent Kistrun's wide eyes surveyed the huge room with awe from behind messy strawberry blonde hair. As she walked, almost skipped, around the lobby her chest bounced enough to almost pop the buttons of her white blouse (which was already straining a bit as she and her less curvy partner had both been provided the same sized outfit by their handlers). Grace sighed, and allowed Svetta the short time to be hyperactive. Maybe for once her friend would actually burn all that excess energy before it ended up getting them in trouble later.

A woman could dream.

Once her turn to go to the desk was called, Grace was faced with someone she could only describe as 'generic corporate drone 3'. The dead eyes that stared out at her from behind a perfectly combed brunette fringe clearly did not care for her small talk.

But, with a detached professional courtesy, the receptionist still engaged Agent Harrison in three minutes of mindless patter about the weather, the decor of the office, and even a specific question about the colour scheme. Finally, a little whisper sounded in Grace's ear. They were ready to go in.

"Anyway, I'm here to see Mister..." She paused for a moment, her lips pursed as if remembering a name. She was actually straining her ears to hear the mumble from the microphone hidden under a few locks of blonde hair. "Mister Soames. We're booked into the system."

The receptionist's face shifted slightly from her perfectly flat expression, a tiny betrayal of her relief at being free from the dreaded human interaction part of her job, and being back to the far more familiar 'entering search queries into a proprietary system'. "Ah yes, I have you registered here, Miss Richards." The woman's lined face turned back to her screen. "And your colleague..."

Grace whipped her head around to see Svetta... doing hops across the floor of the lobby while looking intently at one of the screens on the blue walls. She started for a minute, before checking her partner's eyes and confirming that she was, in fact, just being Svetta. No weird brainwashing this time, thank goodness. "Miss Kelly is over there." She said nonchalantly, and held out her hand for the guest passes. The less questions asked, the better. Both for the mission, and for her own sanity.

After sneaking up on the spaced-out woman and dropping a guest pass around her head, Grace strode towards the turnstiles and flashed the card against them. Behind her, Svetta let out a little 'oooh' as the scanner flashed green and unlocked the entrance to Empire HQ. After running ahead of her partner, Agent Kistrun turned her head, her long hair swishing around.

"Whisper did it again, huh?"

"She always gets us through the first hurdle, yeah." Grace agreed, before fixing her blue gaze on her partner with sudden stern intensity. "But now we need to get to the server room ourselves. No distractions, okay?"

Svetta's cheeks puffed out as the did the most childish pout an adult MII6 agent could ever muster. "I never do distractions!"

Grace simply kept her even, deadpan stare.

"No, seriously!" Her pout receded into a victorious grin. "Oh, my dear Gracie, you think I was just playing in the lobby, don't you?"

Grace nodded, slowly, not willing to give in just yet.

"I was studying the floor plan, and working out the exact distances. Just follow me and I'll take us straight to the server room, we won't even need to look at any signs. It'll be like we actually know where we're going!" Svetta's pace accelerated after that, a spring in her step elevating her gait almost to a skip.

Grace's forehead fell into her hand for a moment, but she followed, with eyes straight ahead and the long strides of someone who knows what's up around here and really does not need your interruption. "One more question, though, Kist- I mean, Kelly."

"What?"

"Why are you unbuttoning your blouse?"

The, admittedly much curvier, agent leaned over with her hand raised for a stage whisper. "To distract that guy"

Without any further explanation (because that would just be too easy), Svetta's body swerved off to the right, where a six foot man in a black jacket and sunglasses leaned against a wall in front of the door to the stairwell. Agent Kistrun lurched forward, her legs flailing as she tripped over some imaginary object. Her chest did exactly what it was meant to do, bursting apart the remaining buttons of her blouse and giving a few bounces for emphasis. Grace ran over to 'catch' her friend, and with an apologetic smile to the blushing guard, she hurried them both through the door.

While they were both panting at the top of the third floor, Grace stepped back from the black plastic rectangle beside the door.

"Yep, it's a retina scanner. You have something for this, right?"

Agent Harrison turned to find her partner wearing a single lens, surrounded by a gold frame, ending in a ruby chain which emerged from somewhere in the strawberry blonde tangle of her hair.

"Why of course, dah-ling." Svetta drawled before collapsing into a fit of giggles. Grace simply sighed again and took a moment to surreptitiously appreciate the wiggling of her partner's rear end as she bent over to present the monocle to the scanner.

"... Why a monocle though?" The weight of the silence was too unbearable, even though the answer would surely give her a headache too.

Svetta drew herself up to her full (still slightly shorter than Grace's) height and put her hand in front of her mouth in a mock noblewoman's laugh. "Oh ho ho! Dah-ling, 'twere I to use goggle, 'twould be simply too tempting to have them used for soporific effect, 'twould it not?"

"Urgh, of course..." Grace pushed past the ridiculous spy that was Agent Kistrun and kicked the door open lazily, all the while attempting to push the memory of Dr. Solaris and his Sunspot Sunglasses out of her mind.

She waited for Svetta to overtake her again - the other spy had dropped the act once she was through the door and returned to a confident walk, her eyes darting about looking for threats even as her body remained completely relaxed.

But it seemed the two hadn't tripped any alarms, since they got to the server room unimpeded (and this time Svetta didn't even do a silly act with the retina scanner-fooling gadget).

Grace reached into her back and passed a laptop to her partner, who immediately flipped it open. She somehow picked out the right cable from the mess of wires coming out of the back of the huge black towers full of blinking lights before them. She even slotted it in to the right hole on the laptop on the first try (Grace had *never* managed that!).

"Can't we get Whisper to hack this as well?"

"Nah, she'd need a visual feed and that's definitely not worth the risk." Svetta's fingers were already typing in meaningless strings of letters and numbers which were being replicated in boring white font on a black screen. "Don't worry, Gracie, you're in safe hands. I got an A in my hacking class, and I didn't even do any coursework in the final year!"

That was meant to make her feel better!?

Agent Harrison resolved her nervous energy by pacing up and down the rows of desks outside, while her left hand spun the lanyard which held her 'Miss G Richards'
badge into ever more complex knots. The constant clack of the keyboard was accompanied by Svetta's voice mumbling incoherent angry noises.

A few moments after an especially loud 'fucktwat', the lights at each far end of the room went off. Then the next ones in. Then the next.

Grace dove under a set of desks as two... no, three sets of footsteps came into the room.

Wait, no, she couldn't let them get to Svetta while she was still hacking in to the database! She reached slowly above her head for the first blunt object she could find. Then, she kicked out the chair she was hiding under to buy however many microseconds of distraction she could. Then, she pushed off the ground with both heels to come to a standing run, and threw what turned out to be a holepunch in the direction of the footsteps.

The very asymmetrical item thunked to the ground after crossing less than half the distance between her and the three men.

Grace backed away slowly as that distance suddenly became a lot smaller. Each of the trio of security guards were bigger than her. But, they had clearly come here in a rush, because none of them were holding a taser, instead each of the three held a baton in their hand. But seeing as they were probably the type which did the shocky-electricity thing, that didn't fill her with much confidence.

She couldn't give any more ground, though, lest they just ignore her completely and electrocute Svetta. So she shifted her weight back on to her front foot and charged forward three steps and kicked the office chair she'd been hid behind with all her force.

It would have been unrealistic to expect it would do anything, and those expectations were matched when the front guard swatted the chair away with a dismissive swing of his arm. But it had given Grace the chance to close the distance. Her knee rose slightly, before firing her leg downwards. The thick heel of her boot crunched into the guard's shin, and even though her leg flailed and landed awkwardly between the guards, her flexible body leaned in to the unbalanced motion, giving her the momentum to bring her fist forward, then up into the man's nose while he was still screaming in pain.

He full back with a thunk, much louder than her failed stationery attack earlier. While her body was still awkwardly bent forward Grace quickly picked up the man's baton (she had no idea how to activate it, but it was still a weapon), then rose into a narrow fighting stance.

One of the guards had settled into his own stance with elbows tucked against his body and one knee raised in front of him. Some sort of kickboxing thing - Muay Thai perhaps - he would definitely beat her in close range unless she got him in a hold and somehow used some leverage. The other didn't seem to have any real combat training, as he simply advanced on her with his baton drawn, already arcing visibly with white crackles of electricity.

The big guy's arm came at her in a wide, wild swing. She was already on her toes, and bounced backwards to easily avoid it. But despite his mindless attack, there was no opening for her - his left was already tensing for a big hook.

But that meant Grace knew what to do next. By the time his fist had shot out, she was already ducking under it and ready to drive her fist into his stomach.

Which would have went perfectly if there wasn't the corner of a desk to dodge around. And if that little slowdown in her movement had given the other guard chance to drive his elbow into her ribs. Pain erupted inwards from her side and left her retching for a moment. But the agent's instincts were good enough that she quickly stumbled out of range while her eyes were registering only a reddened blur.

Muay Thai guy had good reflexes, then. But he also wasn't going straight for the 'kill shots' to her head. Was he being chivalrous? Or cocky and sadistic? Impossible to say. And it didn't matter anyway. What it meant was that he would hesitate if she didn't present him any safe target. Guarding her body and leaving her head wide open, she closed the distance. As she expected, his arms shook in a moment of hesitation. A short moment, but enough for her to release the tension in her arm and send her knuckles into his temple in a reverse swing.

Then the electrified baton came down hard on her outstretched arm. She felt a few twitches of uncontrollable vibration of forearm muscles before she simply lost all sensation below her left shoulder. She whipped around as fast as possible with a pained grunt, seeing the big guy's stoic face and, more importantly, his other arm coming down on her in an overhand arc.

Grace stumbled backwards, her right arm moving in an awkward crescent to deflect his attack away from her head and collarbone. Instead it thundered into her useless arm (at least the numbness helped a bit for that). But now she finally had a clean shot with her right hand. It had been fiddling with the baton for the last ten seconds of the fight and found no purchase, but the blunt force against the man's nose was still enough to cause an explosion of blood, and send him staggering backwards in a daze. After she saw him fall over a desk in an almost cartoonishly exaggerated motion she turned back to Muay Thai.

He was clearly still dizzy. When she moved in to range his legs kicked outwards with weak, meaningless covering fire. Too slow. She grabbed his leg with her good arm, positioned her waist near the knee and pushed down on it with her free hand. The force would either break the joint or his stance. Either would work. She twisted slightly in the opposite direction to build up force for the finishing move.

Before she could thrust her body sideways, she felt a powerful tug at her stomach. She saw a thick black sleeve, and a white rag. Then she could only smell a weird, almost alcoholic concoction. She felt like she'd just downed three gins as well. Suddenly the world felt slightly... apart from her. The sensation of Muay Thai twisting out of her grip barely reached her arm. The bear hug under her chest was more like a pleasant tickle. The ringing in her ears started to fade with all vision of the world...

wait... that smell... shi-

"LIGHTNING SPEAR!" Svetta's voice was still loud enough to be registered in Grace's mind as 'capslock', even through the haze of chloroform. She felt the guard's grip on her tighten unbearably, before it suddenly slackened as a heavy weight started to slide down her back. She wriggled out, and realising she still had her baton, quickly whacked Muay Thai before he could regain his bearings.

Agent Harrison turned to her partner. Svetta was bent over the unconscious guard whose shin Grace had broken earlier, unpicking the barbs of her taser from his hefty back. "Thanks, Kistrun."

Svetta's blue eyes were still expectant. "You're not gonna...?"

"You get to shout your stupid cartoon attack names when you save my life, Svetta." Grace offered her partner a hand to pull her up. "So you got the data?"

"Yep, just waiting on Whisper to analyse it now."

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, in MII6's Research and Technology Centre, a few miles out of New Oxford, a short woman focused her attention away from six screens of security cameras to a single laptop monitor. Her light brown-skinned frame was small enough that she couldn't get a field operative certification, but Agent 'Whisper' had other abilities. She brushed a strand of night black hair out of her eyes and pushed the microphone of her headset away from her mouth.

Time to focus on this code Svetta sent through. Her black screen was now full of tiny white characters, representing the source of the Empire Industries security mainframe, and hence the map to the Device her colleagues were looking for.

There was enough text there that it would take her at least ten minutes to even work out where to start! And that only got worse when the screen started to autoscroll as more text started to fill in at the bottom of the block. (She knew it would be complicated, but this was ridiculous)

What was even happening in this mess... It didn't seem to be at all related to the sort of language she would expect... The only obvious lead was the fact that the scrolling text was now appearing in all sort of different colours.

She focused on a block of red text... Open bracket but no close... No recognisable function... Aaaaand it has scrolled off the top of the screen and was gone.

She sighed, eyes darting to the bottom corner where some indigo text had just nudged into frame. Again, nothing to indicate why her editor was reading it as coloured, there was no obvious reason to.

Or at least no obvious reason she could process before her gaze had tracked it all the way to the top of the screen.

She tried again and again, each time attentively following batches of text in every colour of the rainbow. It was kinda pretty, no doubt, but she couldn't make any sense of it. Her brain just couldn't process what was going on fast enough.

A new tactic. She tried randomly flicking her focus between the different blocks as they sped up to the top of her display, hoping some random thing would jump out at her. But it felt like every time her attention moved, it became harder to keep it on the task at hand. It was easier to give up on one block. Jump to the next... pretty... colour...

It felt weird... she needed to... needed to just look more... no... needed to... to look... no! She needed to ask Svetta if she had any hints at all about what she'd just uploaded!

But she couldn't even raise her hand to pull her mic down. It was too hard.

Easier to watch the pretty colours of the scrolling text.

Easier to keep her eyes glued to the edges of the screen, looking for each new amazing, incomprehensible sight.

Her attention was so drawn she didn't even see the popup window in the centre of her display announcing the download of an audio file.

She didn't even notice when the code was clearly loading a visual filter into her UI.

All she felt was her head spinning as everything blurred into one, colourful, swirly mixture of pure, attention-dominating beauty.

"Whisper, come in!" Grace shouted into her ear for the fifth time as she kicked Muay Thai's head again casually. Svetta shushed her from across the room, than went back to her stolen walkie talkie to explain the 'false alarm'. How Agent Kistrun could perfectly mimic a voice after hearing only grunts of pain was entirely beyond Grace. But, hey, if she got the job done (and looked fine doing it!) Grace wasn't going to complain about a hypercompetent junior.

Finally, her earpiece crackled, then the familiar quiet, deadpan voice responded. "Hey Harrison, sorry about that. I needed to focus to work out the best route. But you were right, the directions to the Device were there."

"Good job, Liu, lead the way." Finally, they were on track. They'd finally take down the source of Empire's power. She only hoped it was worth the fact the anti-Device stuff filling her pack meant she couldn't even afford to conceal a gun. Would've really come in handy against those guards.

As promised, Whisper's route did mean they avoided most guards, and those which they did see were distracted by Svetta whispering "starlight burst" before throwing a flash grenade modified to wipe out the last few seconds of short-term memory. After scaling four more floors of the building, the two Agents used the monocle on another retina scanner, and watched the two three-metre high chrome doors in front of them slide open...

... To reveal an artificial beach. A small moat of water surrounded three walls of the room, and the floor was covered in something doing a decent impression of sand. Deck chairs filled the room, along with fake palm trees, and the ceiling looked authentically like a blue sky and the walls like a vista of a resort spreading out to two sides, and the infinite ocean before them.

Grace took a few steps onto the soft floor, looking upwards in wonder. She noticed little seams in the ceiling and walls, proving it was all high-quality projection from a multitude of honeycombed screens, just like those in the reception. Impressive, but hardly a Device.

Svetta tugged on her arm and leaned in to her ear. "Gracie, not sure it's the Device, but we have a VIP here" Grace followed Kistrun's finger to a lounger. Upon it, a woman draped with the elegance of a Roman ruler. She was tall, and that was mostly in her alabaster legs, and her perfectly straightened blonde hair brushed the sandy floor. Her face was the beautiful features Grace had seen on many an MII6 report.

"Empress..." She breathed. Combat capabilities unknown, but herself and Svetta were probably enough to take her down. But there were at least half a dozen more people here. And, sure, they might have been in swimsuits (and gorgeous), but Grace was sure they were more goons than models. Even Svetta couldn't take those odds.

Grace turned to run, grabbing Svetta's smaller hand. But the second she turned, the silver doors behind her slammed shut with a sound which definitely felt dismissive. They even immediately changed to become an image of a beachside hotel.

Brilliant.

"Welcome to the... Relaxation room, sweeties." The Empress' voice carried easily across the huge room. It was accented like a socialite of old Britannia. A cruel joke from a megacorp's CEO - the opposite of a Britannian patriot. "Please do make yourselves at home."

Svetta leaned in to her ear, and even in this situation, Grace couldn't help but feel a tingle in her stomach as her partner's lips came so close to her skin. "I think we should just play along. She might do the supervillain thing, y'know?"

Grace sighed. She had a point, as usual. She walked slowly over to the furthest recliner from the Empress and slowly lowered her body into it. Despite the wooden appearance, it was very comfy. As if it was the plushest couch imaginable. Weird. Impressive. (Really not the point of the investigation!)

"That's better. Let my Empire Recliners" The 'TM' was somehow implicit in the way she said it "soothe your aching muscles. I know you worked sooo hard beating up my men. But it's fine, I forgive you. Just relax into your chair. Let your back go slack."

Grace had only met this woman face to face for thirty seconds and she was already her number one enemy.

"Oh, how I wish I could get rid of your scowl, too." The Empress whipped her hair back with pure melodrama as she reached into the sand for some sort of silver road. "Wait a moment... I can."

"What was tha-" Grace herd Svetta say from somewhere above her, before she saw it too. The entire vista of the ocean in front of them had faded into a white void. Then a black line appeared at its furthest edges. A long arc, that spun slowly into the centre of the wall. Then it disappeared, but its long tail remained. A huge, spinning spiral. Hundreds of little screens working together to create one, great image. Constantly co-ordinated to keep the spiral inexorably moving. So massive. So powerful. So impressive.

It was nice, really. Just letting the overwhelming sensations of the spiral wash over her like the waves of the sea. A natural force, something no human could fight against. Even if she resisted, it would break through eventually.

So it was useless to fight. Useless to resist.

It would be better to just let it happen to her...

Was what the Empress wanted her to think! And as tempting as it was to give in to the inviting, tingling sensation coming from her legs as they sunk into the recliner, Agent Grace Harrison knew she needed to fight!

"Whisper, come in! We've encountered the Empr-..."

Grace managed to get that much out before her mouth went slack. She couldn't say that name. The Empress... it was who She was, but the name felt wrong on the tongue. She felt in her body and her eyes that the beautiful woman she couldn't even see any more had a different name.

Maybe if she focused more on the huge spiral that completely encompassed her vision she would work out what that name was.

She wanted to.

Her body was urging her to.

Her eyes literally couldn't stop absorbing the spiral.

But her mind knew it was wrong. She had to find some way out. But as she felt a trickle of drool run down her chin, she knew her body was not up to the task.

Not yet... but Grace could fight it... surely...

"Is that resistance I see in your eyes? Gosh, you're lasting longer than anyone else. Isn't that right, my dear Svetta?"

Shit! Svetta was there as well! She bent straight up at the waist, her instincts telling her that her junior was in trouble. Even the ever-surprising Svetta would need help against something as powerful as the Great Wall Spiral. "Svetta!"

Grace tried to whip her head from side to side. It ended up being a tiny, weak shake of her head. She couldn't even see her partner.

Then she felt her. Two arms, stronger than her own, pulling her backwards and down.

She saw a face, framed by amazing strawberry blonde hair, eyes wide and face grinning and drooling. Then the arms pushed her head to look attentively at the far wall. Then she felt her good arm being moved between her own legs.

Her hand started stroking without any instructions from her own brain.

She knew where the instructions were coming from.

And with Svetta keeping her from fighting it, she wouldn't beat it. Svetta was lost, and now she had lost.

She let the tingling sensation rise out of the recliner, filling her whole body with a detached, tired resignation.

She was going to... she had to... s...

But she knew that word was the final answer, the secret weapon. If she thought it, she lost. She had to fight that. She had to get a message out to central command. She had to save Svetta!

"Sleep" said a voice in her ear. Whisper's voice. Emotionless, empty.

Hypnotised.

Just like Grace was.

The all-consuming spiral sucked up everything she felt and thought, and all was black.

Svetta Kistrun skipped around her living room, crossing off items on her mental checklist as she threw them into her handbag with a flourish. It was about to be her first day on the job as a Senior Operative for the Empire Industries Corporate Espionage division! Grace had finally pulled through and got her a job there (and a few of their other friends - but they would be working remotely).

She could not wait to finish working for that sucky West Britannian government. Fuck the nondisclosure agreements she'd signed a decade ago - she was definitely going to spill some state secrets to her new employers.

The only annoyance for her was that Grace was still out on a corporate learning retreat, so her beautiful blonde friend wouldn't be there to greet her. But the Empress herself had personally promised Svetta in an email that she would be reunited with Grace soon.

So Svetta was, all in all, very happy with her new life serving the rightful mistress of Britannia, her Empress.

-----

A (slightly delayed) story for the almighty SvettaK92 's birthday!

Turns out the whole parallel universe nonsense comic books do is Good Actually, because it gives us a chance to do things like this, and explore alternative versions of Ubergirl (and friends (and foes)). Of course we're focusing on Grace here because Grace is the best girl.

Hope you all enjoy! Hopefully I'm getting better at the non-hypno scenes too!