Siren's Swan Song

Chapter 2
Chapter 2

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.”