Hit Me with Your Best Shot

"See, that's exactly what I'm saying." Lisa mentally scratched her head at that one. It sounded like exactly the opposite of what he was saying, but... "You get into the whole 'avenging angel' thing, and I go all 'bad boy' to compensate. We're bringing out the worst in each other. Honestly, if you get to know me, I'm really not that bad. And I'm not out to hurt Cassie--she's a sweet kid. I just wanted to make sure she wouldn't, you know, pass me over without a second look."

Lisa frowned. She had to admit, she hadn't exactly taken the time to look into Cassie's head to see what kinds of suggestions he'd put in there. She hadn't even waited to see if Cassie had made it in to class the next day. She'd heard Rick's name, seen one missed class (and what first-year student hadn't missed a class or two?) and assumed that if she didn't do something, the next time she saw Cassie's face would be on a milk carton somewhere. Maybe she had jumped the gun just a bit, even if Rick was a sleazebag you couldn't trust further than you could throw.

Rick must have seen the look on her face, because he gave her a crooked grin. "Come on, Lisa, you understand. You've seen Cassie. She's a catch! You wouldn't mind if she gave you a second look, or even a third. Come on, just tell me you haven't thought about using the power just a little, just to give her a few ideas."

"Well, of course I've thought about it," Lisa said in exasperation, as her treacherous pussy reminded her just how much she'd thought about it the last few minutes, "but--"

"So there you go!" Rick interjected before she could explain to him just how big the ethical difference was between 'wanting' and 'taking'. "You can understand perfectly why I just made a few tiny nudges in her brain here and there. It all makes perfect sense, doesn't it?"

"Well, yes, I understand," Lisa replied, now slightly annoyed at his interruptions, "but--"

"But you thought I was going to go overboard," Rick said, breaking in on her train of thought yet again. "I understand completely. It's just because you didn't know me. You expected me to be a bad guy, but you know you can't prejudge a person like that. You know that you wind up imposing your negative expectations onto the other person, and that just leads to reinforcing those same old stereotypes."

Lisa hated to agree with someone who sounded as much like they were regurgitating Women's Studies lingo without thinking about it as Rick did, but she really had walked in there expecting Rick to have turned Cassie into a stripper or something. She'd been ready to go at him tooth and claw, and he had to have known that--was it really any wonder he fought back the way he did?

"But now that you get to know me," Rick continued, "you can see that I'm actually a pretty decent guy. I'm totally honest, I'm very trustworthy, and you know I'm not going to hurt Cassie." Lisa nodded, her anger subsiding. She'd let her natural protectiveness get her into a fight, when she really should have just talked to Rick. He was a decent guy, after all.

"And if you can trust me with Cassie's mind," Rick said, standing up and heading back over to her chair, "you know you can trust me with yours. You can trust me completely." Lisa figured it out then, but even as she did so, she felt her smile become fixed and her eyes become glassy as the thought sank into her head. He'd gone for precision this time instead of strength, using tiny mental strikes at the exact moment she was thinking his words over. Not much power behind any of them, but each one worked on that moment of doubt and hesitation as she evaluated his words to shift her thoughts into a slightly different pattern. And each pattern became closer to the one he wanted, the one that would trust him enough to open up her defenses and let him in completely...

And she would, Lisa realized. Even though she knew on one level that she shouldn't trust him, it was just too hard to shift her mind out of those new thought patterns. All her intellectual arguments for resistance just seemed to crumble under the weight of the new certainty in her mind--she could trust Rick completely. She could trust Rick with her mind.

Desperately, she put all of her force into a single thought-bolt and sent it arrow-sharp at the core of Rick's mind before her resistance evaporated and her shields irised open to receive him.

*****

Rick felt Lisa give one last, desperate struggle...and then nothing. He saw her eyes open wide and blank, and her body go limp as she gave in completely. He gave out a long, low sigh of relief and exhilaration and collapsed onto the couch. He'd done it. He had beaten her. He'd won.

He could feel his whole body shaking with adrenalin backwash. She'd actually turned out to be an easier fight than he was expecting. Every night he'd gone out and bumped into someone she'd tangled with, he'd come home wondering if he could take her in a straight fight. He'd actually dreaded this day a little...but it had come and gone, and her mind was as open as her legs. He could do anything he wanted to her, anything at all, because he'd actually managed to beat Lisa Stensgaard!

All sorts of ideas came to mind as he sat there, recovering his strength. It would start with sex--he hadn't expected her to be much of a looker, but she was hot as hell and naked to boot, and their fight had left Rick with a boner that just would not quit. He was looking forward to sliding his cock into Lisa's hot little quim. Maybe while she ate Cassie out--it wouldn't be the first time Rick had gotten to sleep with two girls at once, but it was damn well going to be the best. There was just something so sweet about the thought of fucking these two, the rewards for all his hard work and struggle. Of course, Lisa still thought she wasn't into guys right now, but that would change as soon as he took a few minutes to really dig deep into her mind and reshape her core personality.

And once he did...Rick's cock throbbed at the thought. He knew he was pretty powerful, beating Lisa proved that, but he'd always known that there were limits to what he could handle. He hadn't wanted to press those limits. But once he'd rewired Lisa's brain...she'd be totally loyal to him. He'd make sure of that. When he fought another telepath, she'd be right there with him, two against one. And when they'd won, when they'd cracked that mind open and rewired it, then the next time it would be three against one, and then four, and...

The possibilities blossomed and unfolded in his mind so brilliantly that he barely noticed Lisa stirring in the easy chair. It didn't matter. He'd beaten her. He'd broken her, and she was just the beginning. He'd be able to assemble an army of telepaths, all totally docile and subservient to his will. The first few might be a challenge, but the more he beat, the more he'd be able to beat, until nobody could stop him. Then...he could do anything. He could have whole nations at his command. He could command the whole world, put a telepath behind the throne of every king and dictator and play with them like puppets. And it all started here, with this one victory.

He looked over at Lisa, running his gaze up and down her body as he admired his new possession. She looked back at him, and he smiled indulgently. He still needed to do a little tinkering inside her head, but that could wait. He'd beaten her, after all. She couldn't possibly fight back, not now that he'd won. He didn't need to worry about a thing. Rick felt the questing tendrils of her mental probes, and he relaxed his shields and let them in without fear. He had no need to be afraid of Lisa. He'd broken her. He'd won. He knew he'd won, even though he was the one slumped in his seat now, and her thoughts were probing through his non-existent defenses. He knew he'd won, because...because...

Because he had, that's all. He'd won and she'd lost.

*****

Lisa still felt too shaky to try to mount much of a psychic defense, but thankfully that last assault of hers had settled deep enough that Rick wasn't even trying to fight back right now. Still, she had to be careful. She'd dealt with enough telepathic predators to know that they had pretty resilient minds. If you didn't keep reinforcing your suggestions, sooner or later their original thoughts popped back up like weeds in a garden. She didn't want to risk him fighting that suggestion off mid-way through her attempt to disable him. She had to work quickly and precisely in altering his thoughts.

But Lisa was so exhausted that she wasn't sure how much precision or speed she could manage. She felt like she'd run a mile in the last...how long had it been? Lisa suddenly realized her time sense had gone to hell over the course of the fight. The battle seemed to have lasted an eternity, but fighting at the speed of thought meant that a million gambits could be played out in just a minute. Or possibly hours could have passed as they spent the time too occupied with each other's minds to really notice.

She risked a quick glance at the window, even though it meant distracting herself from the work in Rick's brain. The sun still shone brightly, but somehow that felt wrong to Lisa. Disturbingly wrong--the endless mental struggle felt like it had taken hours. She glanced over again. Her body kept expecting to see darkness and shadows, the deepest part of the night, but all she could see was sunlight again. Somehow, that just disoriented her further.

She returned her thoughts to the task of neutering Rick's mind, but it was all Lisa could do now to keep her own thoughts from scattering. It wasn't just exhaustion--her whole mind and body felt like it was 3 AM and she'd just pulled an all-nighter grading papers. She looked out the window again. Still daylight. Had they been fighting around the clock? Was it back to the late morning again? But it just felt like night...

She closed her eyes for a long moment, feeling her mind and body relax into the absent-minded drifting of sleep, then jerked them back open. Rick. It had to be Rick, he must have...must have done something, somehow. She could feel his mind, still so weak--but her own wasn't much stronger, she realized. She couldn't fight off an assault from Uri Geller right now, let alone a full-fledged telepath. But Rick didn't have the power to table the pretty monkey-frogs, not when the dancing girls were sparkling like--

Lisa blinked her eyes open, smacking herself across the face to try to keep her thoughts together. She looked out the window. Still daylight. She looked over at the clock on the cable box. She hadn't been here more than fifteen minutes. She closed her eyes again, trying to estimate the time. Her body kept coming back with "3 AM".

This time, her eyes wouldn't open again. Circadian rhythms, she thought muzzily. He's done something to them. Her body clock was stuck on "time to sleep", and she needed to unstick it before...before the slick and shining flesh, the silver queen with her magic wand came to sing her to sleep with her sad, sweet song...

*****

Rick gave a tiny smile. It was all he could manage. That last trick had taken a lot out of him; the deeply rooted instincts were always hard to push around. But the internal clock was designed to be reset by the sun and the moon; all you needed to do was convince it that you were the one who was supposed to give it a little push, and round it went.

He started to sit up, got a little headrush, and thought better of it. They'd been pounding on each other pretty hard; why exert the physical effort, when the mental side was already pushing you to your limits? He could just sit here and rework her brain. It wouldn't be hard; he could feel it from here, she was drifting along the edges of sleep and didn't have the strength to pull herself out.

All he needed to do was just work his way past those foggy patches of half-dream and find his way down into the core of her mind. It'd take work...Rick sagged into the cushions. Okay, it'd take a hell of a lot of work...but he could do it. She was so tired she'd never notice. With her shields down, he could feel every bit of the exhaustion he'd caused. She'd probably made half the building want to sleep late, but they were just normal people. He was a telepath.

A weakened, unshielded telepath, he realized dimly as his eyes shut. He tried to open them, but they just didn't seem to want to. He knew he wasn't quite asleep yet, but he was way too close to be able to finish her off. His mind and his body just felt so comfortable here, like he actually could fall asleep sitting up on the couch. And to think, he'd always thought that was the most bullshit line he could possibly use...

He tried to wake up, but it felt like trying to pull himself out of a tar pit. Every time he thought about waking, more of that dreamy, mindless energy would pour out of Lisa's head straight into his unshielded mind, and he'd just sink that much deeper. And every time he thought about bringing his shields back up, it just seemed like so much work because he was so tired, so very...very...tired...

He decided to stop fighting. Maybe if he gave in and slept, he'd wake up first. He'd catch her still sleeping, while he was wide awake and able to finish her off. Or maybe they'd both wake up at once, and start all over. It seemed like better odds than trying to fight the relentless waves of sleep. Rick relaxed completely, letting himself sink into them one last time.

*****

Cassie wandered out of the bedroom in a daze, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. She hadn't bothered getting dressed yet--something in the back of her mind gave her a naughty thrill at the thought of wandering around Rick's apartment naked, and the reaction she'd get when he saw her pert, lithe body. "Rick?" she called out blearily. "You shouldn't have let me sleep, I missed a class--"

Her mouth hung open as she caught sight of the tableau in the living room. There were clothes scattered everywhere. Her professor from Women's Studies class was slumped in Rick's easy chair, totally naked and with her eyes closed! Rick was naked too, sitting on the couch next to him, eyes closed and cock sticking straight up. Come to think of it, Professor Stensgaard looked like she was pretty worked up, too, and the whole room smelled like sex. (Not that Cassie had much experience with that, but her night with Rick had been...she shivered...very instructive.)

She crept over to the two of them, unsure of exactly how to react. "Rick?" she said softly. "Professor?" She wasn't even sure if she wanted them to wake up right now. They'd probably freak out at being discovered like this...whatever "like this" turned out to be.

She reached out and poked Rick gently, but his only response was to let out a little sigh and snuggle down into the couch cushions. Wincing, she did the same to her professor, but instead of an intimidating lecture on privacy and boundary issues, Cassie just got a dreamy little smile and a little bit of drool.

Cassie started to get a little worried. This was...weird. Freaky weird, actually. They both acted like they'd been drugged or something. She picked the professor's arm up, and shook it a little, then let it drop. Still no response. She headed back over to Rick and pried his eyelid open--his eyes had rolled up into the back of his head, showing nothing but the whites, and he didn't wake up either. Cassie shuddered a little, and let it close. No good. They were both totally out like a light, she decided.

And when she realized that, Cassie went away for a while. And Cassandra came out to play.

Cassandra's face twisted in a cruel grin. "Let's you and him fight," she muttered in satisfaction. She reached out with her own telepathic abilities--sure enough, both of them were unshielded, exhausted and aroused. Absolutely putty in her hands. She began to sift through their thoughts, burrowing deep down to the core of their identities and reshaping them as her thralls.

She could never have done it while they were awake, of course. She'd learned the limits of her meager powers the first time she'd tried to enslave another person and run into a do-gooder telepath like Lisa...well, like Lisa used to be, she thought as she delicately snipped away Lisa's ethics from the rest of her. It had taken her years to reassert her true personality out from under the obnoxiously sweet, perky little twerp he'd made her into.

And that's when Cassandra had gotten her idea. Instead of getting rid of oh-so-nice Cassie, she'd elaborated on her, refined her, and made her into a personality that could withstand serious examination. She'd polished Cassie's bright, shiny innocence until it was just the kind of mind no telepath could possibly resist. It hadn't even been hard. Cassie was designed to be a girl with a nice mind. Cassandra just turned her into a trap.

She spent a few moments restructuring Lisa and Rick's minds so that they would constantly link with each other, continually suppressing each other's attempts to regain free will. She'd spent a long time nudging Cassie's mind from the very depths of her subconscious, looking for a situation where she could find two telepaths that could do this to each other. She wasn't about to let them go this easily.

It had worked. And the next time, it would go even easier with two powerful psychics she could call on for backup. And the next, and the next...she caught the traces of Rick's idle fantasy in his memory, and smiled. It sounded like a fun way to spend a few years.

She reached into Cassie's mind last of all, erasing all of Rick's reprogramming and setting her on a shelf for later. There'd be plenty of time to become perky little Cassie again, she decided as she settled herself onto Rick's cock and beckoned Lisa over to lick her ass while she fucked him. Right now, she was enjoying the sort of things that Cassie never even dreamed of.

THE END