Chapter 18. In which the dominoes fall

A week after our little tête-à-tête with Blake Warren, the Majestic Woman “sex tape” hit the Internet. To say that it was a popular download would be a bit of an understatement, any site on which the video appeared, any site on which the video was rumored to appear, almost immediately crashed under the weight of eager clicks from all over the world.

After several days of this churning chaos Google decided to host the damned thing themselves, just to get things back to normal. All these site crashes were not good for their business either. Even though there was hardly a second in the whole seven hours that didn’t violate the company’s “Terms of Usage”, they made an exception.

And what an exception. The video showed the powerless superheroine being stripped, beaten, fucked, and mind-fucked by her nameless, faceless tormentor, ending with a blow to the face that looked as if it might have broken her jaw.

There had been a brief text statement that had accompanied the video wherever it had popped up, and eventually, Google provided access to that as well:

What you are about to see is a sample of the enslavement and degradation of Majestic Woman, who was once one of the most powerful people to walk the face of the earth. But here she is anything but powerful. She is anything but majestic. She is a slave.

Her master whores her out to anyone that can pay the price. The only thing that saves her from suffocating under a mountain of male flesh is the asking price that her pimp has set:

One Hundred Million Dollars

One Hundred Million to have Majestic Woman completely at your mercy.

One Hundred Million to have Majestic Woman grovel at your feet.

One Hundred Million to fuck that “Majestic” cunt.

Or any other orifice you desire.

All. Night. Long.

So if you have a hundred great big ones to spare, and you happen to be passing through Dubai, why not stop by and let her show you a “super” good time.

“This is ‘Action-9 News at 10’ the ‘Desert Jewel’s’ most award-winning news source. Good evening, I’m Dan Simpkins along with Gloria Morales, Gloria?”

“Thanks, Dan. At the top of the news again tonight are the shattering revelations about Portal City’s own Majestic Woman. Just hours ago Portal City Police released a series of nine-one-one and other calls related to Majestic Woman that all have a common theme. Here is a typical one:”

“ ... um, officer, so I was watching the, uh, the tape ... I’m not proud of that ... but ... anyway, when she took off her uniform I recognized her immediately. It was my neighbor, Cynthia Royal. Um, I mean, not that I’ve seen Cynthia naked or anything...”

Gloria was annoyed. She had specifically told the sound engineer to cut out that last bit. But she was a professional. She maintained her cool and continued to read the script.

“There are literally dozens of calls like this, all pointing to this ‘Cynthia Royal’ as Majestic Woman’s secret identity. Police have cordoned off Ms. Royal’s house and have been questioning neighbors. It is apparent that no one in the neighborhood has seen Ms. Royal since shortly before Majestic Woman’s disappearance. Dan?”

“Thanks, Gloria. After the break we will share some interviews with some of those callers, including the woman who may have taught Majestic Woman how to ‘shake her booty’.”

By the time the “On Air” light had switched off, Gloria was on her feet and boiling mad.

“What the fuck was that, Dan? ‘Shake her BOOTY’? What are you trying to pull, you sick sonofabitch?“, Gloria shouted.

Producer Bill Crestly ran onto the set to intervene, actually jumping in between them.

“Don’t blame Dan, Glory. It was on the teleprompter. I allowed it.”

“Well then, fuck you all!” Gloria shouted, “If there is not an apology after the break, and I mean right after the break. I will not be sitting in that chair!” She pointed to her familiar place behind the on-set news desk.

Now Dan unwisely piped up, “Look, Glory, c’mon, sex sells. Majestic Woman herself figured that out months ago. I don’t see the prob —”

“The problem, Dan, is that I won’t sell it. Besides, the very point of that interview that you mocked is that Majestic Woman may be acting under duress. Ah, fuck it, I’m out of here.” She walked off set and began to remove her mike.

Bill headed her off. “Look, Glory, you’re right. We’ll apologize. But not right after the break. That would cut into the interview time, right? You don’t want us to have to cut the interview, do you?”

The main interview was done by Gloria’s protégée, the woman Glory had groomed to replace Glory herself as anchor when she retired. And the interview was good, really good, a scoop that could go national! But that would only happen if the whole ten-minute segment got air-time.

“Alright, Bill. But tomorrow night’s newscast starts with a lengthy apology out of Dan’s fat, smarmy mouth, or I swear I’ll walk off the set on-air. Got it?”

“Sure, Glory, got it. And we’ll do it, I promise. It was a mistake. We’ll fix it, okay?”

Gloria’s grudging acquiescence was lost to Bill as his assistant tapped him on the shoulder.

“Shit! Time. Thirty seconds, everyone!”

Back at the desk, Gloria waited for the cue and began, “Some of those Majestic Woman police callers agreed to talk to us on-camera. Tonight we’ll start with a local dance instructor who may have a stunning revelation. Our own Stephanie Jenkins has this report.”

“Thank you, Gloria. Today I sat down with local dance instructor Yasmin Shadid, who wanted to share details of her encounters with the mysterious Ms. Royal:”

“So, Ms. Shadid-”

“Yasmin, please.”

“Yasmin. How do you know Cynthia Royal?”

“Last fall she was a student in one of my dance classes.”

“And what class was that?”

“Um, Erotic Belly Dancing.”

“This woman, a woman who you believe is Majestic Woman, was taking a class called ‘Erotic Belly Dancing’.”

“Um, that’s, that’s right, Stephanie.”

“And how exactly did you come to believe your, ah, student was Majestic Woman?”

“One of my other former students called me after she saw the Majestic Woman sex tape on the web. She asked me to watch to see if I thought it was Cynthia. So I did. It happened in the first 3 minutes. It’s weird, but before she took off the uniform I would have laughed at anyone who said that Cynthia was Majestic Woman.”

“So in your ‘Erotic Dance’ class, you’ve seen Ms. Royal naked?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not the point. It’s like there is something about the uniform itself that changes the way she looks.”

“I see. So what were your impressions of Ms. Royal?”

“She was one of the most naturally talented students I’ve ever had, even though she missed the last class. At the time I put it off to body shyness, since her final dance would have involved, well, ‘taking it all off’. But now I’ve gone back and compared the times. That last class was just after the last time anyone saw Majestic Woman, the same day she went missing! But really, none of that is important, since she almost didn’t make it into the class at all!”

“Why is that?”

“Stephanie, for this class I always conduct screening interviews with the students. There are lots of reasons for that, but one of the most important is to try to identify abuse victims who are being forced to take a ‘sexy’ class by their abuser. At first Cynthia came off exactly like one of those poor girls.”

“You thought she was being abused?”

“I thought it was a possibility. She told me that she signed up for the class because ‘her boyfriend wanted her to’. That is a big red flag to me. A lot of times that means she’s being forced. Between that and the metal collar she had locked around her neck, I had a really bad feeling.”

“Was it the same metal collar that Majestic Woman was wearing in the video? The one that was used to chain her to the floor?”

“It looked the same to me, Stephanie.”

“But you let her in the class anyway. Why?”

“She told me it wasn’t like it sounded, so I gave her another chance to convince me. She gave a better answer the second time. But Stephanie, after seeing that video I think I made a mistake. I think somehow she really was being abused. I think if the ‘hundred million dollar prostitute’ stuff is right, then she is being forced into it. I think this ‘boyfriend’ who wanted her in my dance class was abusing her then ... and now.”

Gloria’s hunch about the interview had been dead on. The story went viral, then national, then global. It seemed that anyone anywhere who had ever had dealings with Ms. Cynthia Royal immediately recognized her from the Majestic Woman video.

There was even an oddball report from a sex shop owner in Nez Pierce, Washington, identifying Cynthia Royal as Majestic Woman. It would have been discounted as self-promotion, except that his nine-one-one call turned out to have been the very first, predating all the Portal City calls. He had made the call only minutes after Google posted the sex tape at two am Pacific Time. He too claimed that Ms. Royal fit the classic profile of a sexual submissive, although he hesitated to call it abuse.

“Hey, live and let live, right? Look, she came into my shop to buy something that would help her learn how to deebleep! a massive bleepck. I’d say she got what she wanted and then some. On the video it looks like she passed that test with flying colors ... several times, if you know what I mean. Oh yeah, she’s acting like a battered woman, but I think it’s all an act. Hell, I’d take all that abuse and more for a hundred mil a night. More power to her, I say.”

In the wake of these and other reports, there were more interviews with “experts”, with most debate centering around whether or not Majestic Woman was acting as a free agent in the video. Was she in true bondage against her will? Or was she merely the world’s foremost — and most expensive — willing BDSM prostitute.

A smaller circle of experts was called upon to comment on the curious effect caused when Majestic Woman removed her uniform. This issue was less satisfying to debate. There was no “victim or whore” angle, and besides that, it was all wild speculation. The most cogent among the so-called experts freely admitted this.

“Look, she can lift a diesel locomotive. How does she do that? Not with the physical body she appears to have! She flies through the air. How? Are there invisible strings holding her up? So now you are asking me why she looks so different in the uniform when the best facial recognition programs can’t find a difference in the before-and-after faces to eight decimal places? I don’t know! And anyone who tells you that they do know is full of it.”

Of the two stories, though, the “slave or slut” angle was clearly causing the most buzz. It was having an effect everywhere.

For example, in the Legion of Heroes. Here they knew Cynthia. And they knew that she would never do something like this willingly. In just days the members of the Legion were a frothing mob, ready to storm Dubai and free their friend, whatever it took. In order to stop that, Blake had to reveal that Majestic Woman was acting undercover. In order to convince them of that, he had to reveal that he himself had been the source of the video, as well as being the male subject of the video, the abuser.

They all knew how close Blake and Cynthia were, so that mollified most of them. Sadie in particular relaxed, determined to let the sting play out. Her cousin Claud, though, was still seething about it. Powerhouse might not have been blaming herself for Cynthia’s disappearance any longer, but Power Man knew that if he had been closer to Earth, the world would not have had to wait for over a month to find out that Majestic Woman was truly missing. He wanted to go on “stake out” duty over Dubai. He wanted to watch over her, to protect her, to guard her back. Blake convinced him not to do it. He argued that Power Man’s radar signature would be too hard to hide, that he would not be stealthy enough. So Claud agreed to stay away.

Of course, no one was trying to prevent the Amazons from storming Dubai. Themiscyra went onto a full-scale war footing overnight. After the video broke, Hippolyta asked her military Chief of Staff, her sister Antiope, to come up with a plan to take Dubai and perform a massive search and rescue operation. It was General Kalliope and her commando team who came up with the amazing blitzkrieg battle plan to move all seventy-five thousand Amazon warriors across some of the most sensitive airspace in the world in a matter of hours.

And damn if it wasn’t doable, too. I was amazed. Kalliope’s battle plan was a work of art, and I would almost love to see them execute it. Almost.

All the Amazon Queendom needed was the “Go” order from Hippolyta, but Hippolyta was not convinced yet. This operation would blow the lid off of the existence and location of the Amazons. She would do that for her daughter — and gladly! — but only if her daughter was really in danger. She had visions of confronting her angry daughter in the smoking ruins of Dubai, and finding out that her Kynthia had actually been living happily as the world’s most expensive harlot.

Hippolyta needed a sign. I was going to give her one.

“Good evening, this is Newshour on the BBC World Service, I’m Rachel Hawthorne. Tonight we will be devoting the entire programme to an unprecedented live telephone interview with Majestic Woman, who will be calling us from Dubai. Our BBC production staff are just waiting on the signal that she is on the line ... There.”

“Hallo, Majestic Woman, are you there?”

“Yes, Rachel, good evening from Dubai.”

“Good evening, Majestic Woman, and welcome to the programme. Or ... may I call you Ms. Royal?”

“Ha! Call me Cynthia. I guess the lid is pretty thoroughly blown off of my secret identity by now.”

“Then are you admitting to the legitimacy of the so called ‘sex tape’ as well?”

“Um, yes, Rachel. It’s legitimate. That’s really me, folks.”

“And the rest? The text that accompanies that video claims that you are now one of the millions of women involved in the worldwide sex trade.”

“At the very high end of it, yes.”

“One hundred million American dollars per night, if the text is accurate.”

“Yes. That is the asking price ... a hundred million.”

“Cynthia, the video is ... disturbing ... to say the least. I am sure that you know that most women in the sex trade perform under duress. Most prostitutes are forced into prostitution. Are we to believe that you are actually consenting to do the things that you are seen to do, or, I should say, have done to you, in that video?”

“ ... Rachel, I’m ... I’m a pretty tough broad. I can take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.”

“Cynthia, I am not asking if you can take the abuse. I am asking if you are consenting to this of your own free will. I am asking if you are doing it willingly. As you must know by now, there are reports out of your old hometown of Portal City in the US that raise serious questions about whether or not you are under some sinister influence. What do you have to say about all that?”

“ ... Um ... Rachel ... Of ... Of course not! N-n-n-no one is ... is ffforcing me ... to ... to do anything. Remember ... I’m, I’m banking m-millions here.”

The subject was rattled. Rachel’s instincts took over. She moved in for the kill.

“That raises an important point, Cynthia. So you are claiming that this ... endeavour is an equal partnership between yourself and your, ah, handler, a Mr. Ibrahim Beg?”

“Um ... sure ... equal ... fffifty-fifty.”

«Got her! Forgive me, Ms. Royal. This is for your own good.»

“Then perhaps you can explain reports from our sources that show nine staggeringly large deposits, ranging in size from fifty million to one hundred million dollars, all to numbered accounts around the world, all traceable to Mr. Beg, but no such deposits traceable to yourself. It doesn’t seem, Cynthia, as if you are making any money out of this at all.”

A pause. A long one. Finally, Cynthia answered, “Maybe ... maybe I’m just ... b-b-better at c-c-covering my tracks?”

“Ms. Royal, are you alright? You sound very nervous, almost distraught. Are you in fact a free agent and equal partner in the, er, actions we all saw on this video?”

“I’m not ... nobody’s making... Oh no! No! Please! Not that!“

There was an audible dial tone. The connection had been cut. The sound was quickly cut off and replaced by stunned silence.

Rachel, shaken to her core, finally filled the dead air by stating the obvious.

“Our telephone connection with ‘Majestic Woman‘ Cynthia Royal has been disconnected. Our staff are working to reestablish the call now.”

But they never did.

Eleven AM the next day in Themiscyra, all was organized chaos. Operation Angels’ Vengeance was scheduled to execute in only fourteen more hours. Soon the whole world would know that the Amazons weren’t just a myth. Their eons of hiding from the world would be over. But none of them were thinking about that. One of their own was in trouble. They were, to a woman, ready to give their all to rescue Kynthia.

I knew that the “Gods” couldn’t let that happen. They couldn’t let the Amazons announce themselves and Themiscyra to the modern world. So the “Gods” were coming out into the open instead. They would have to take action, and I thought I was ready. But even I couldn’t have guessed how sudden and violent their action would be.

At that same moment, it was noon in Dubai. It was going to happen, G-day Number Two. Annette and Greg were, again, making whoopie during what was supposed to be their sleep time. Annette was wearing the bike lock and cable to dampen the Majestic Woman powers, but was nonetheless using Cindi’s athletic Amazon body to great advantage in her efforts to please her man. Suddenly the cable snapped and Majestic Woman’s powers flowed back into that body. Before either of them could think, the Shield of Athena expelled Greg’s Ibrahim Beg penis from Annette’s Majestic Woman vagina. They looked into each other’s eyes for just a second wondering what the hell had happened. It was their last second together.

The two-story apartment and everything in it exploded. Majestic Woman’s naked, invulnerable body was awash in gore, all that remained of the body that had been housing Greg Wolfe’s consciousness. As Annette realized her husband was dead, her face contorted into a mask of terror. As she began to scream, I swapped Cindi back into her own body. There was no time to give Cindi any warning, so now the “Chosen of the Gods” would face the “Wrath of the Gods”, alone and unprepared.

In Falkirk, Annette was curled up into a small, shivering, screaming, sobbing ball. She was a wreck, as well she might be. She had just watched the love of her life explode in her arms. “Traumatized” didn’t even begin to cover the shock, the grief, the overwhelming pain that Annette was experiencing. I had to get her together fast. Soon it would be time to swap her back. Annette would have to be ready to act.

In broad daylight, one hundred sixty-three stories above the streets of Dubai, Majestic Woman was being drawn out to meet her “Gods”. Unlike their last meeting, seventy-three years ago in Themiscyra, the “Gods” were not happy with her. They were not in a giving mood. They were angry and they most certainly wanted her to know it.

I was trying to do too many things at once, from too many places. First I was trying to get everyone in Dubai, every businessman with a smartphone, every tourist with a camera, every news crew in the city, everyone, to record the spectacle that was taking place in the air above them. Remember, my first objective was to bring these bastards out of hiding.

Besides that, I needed to help Annette get her act together, she was the only person other than Cindi who knew how to operate as Majestic Woman in that body. And Cindi was already lost in the “Glamour of the Gods”. She couldn’t help it. If it were me I would have been just as awestruck. I couldn’t even communicate with her anymore. Oh sure I could ride along and hijack her senses. I could even read her thoughts, such as they were. But I couldn’t get her to acknowledge me, much less talk to me. I had been afraid this would happen, just like it happened to my slave villagers back when I first discovered these alien bastards.

Annette would be the only one who could act now, but I couldn’t rely on her to do anything while she was screaming and crying in horror about poor Greg.

And then, on top of all that, I had to keep track of where all the players were on the board. I had to figure out a way for everyone (except the “Gods”) to survive. I couldn’t think about that now, but the more the “Gods” drew her out into the open sky with them the worse it looked for Cindi.

I was looking at the scene now through a news cameraman with a zoom lens. I almost felt as if I were right below Cindi and the “Gods”. I was also touching Cindi’s mind, lightly, lightly. I couldn’t afford to get swept into the secondhand glamour spell.

Oh shit! The bastards were talking about taking her powers away! Time was up. This shit was going down now.

“Annette, baby, you have to pull yourself together. You have to do it now, or Greg will have died for nothing!”

That sobered her up pretty quickly. But I didn’t have time for a pep talk. Instead I absolutely flooded her with warmth and love and confidence. It was something I would not have known how to do nine months ago. It was just one more reason to be thankful that I had Cindi in my life, now that I was on the verge of losing her.

Annette was doing better. She knew what the plan was. She knew what she had to do. She would have a two-second window before the glamour overtook her. But with super-speed, super-strength, and flight, one might accomplish amazing things in two seconds. That’s what I was counting on. Annette was gonna rip these pretenders to shreds.

A dazzled, frightened Cindi was still being lectured by the “Gods” for the way she had disgraced them. They hadn’t started removing her powers yet.

So. Swapping Annette back into Cindi’s body. Here goes nothing!

And...

Nothing.

Annette began frantically mentally calling «Mayday!», so I swapped her and Cindi back into their own bodies. Picking Annette’s memory I could see that she had found herself completely unable to act in Majestic Woman’s body. Not only was she physically paralyzed, but she couldn’t call on Majestic Woman’s power of flight either. She could tell that the power was still there. She just couldn’t get to it, like that part of Cindi’s mind was blocked off somehow.