princesspottypants

A Normal Rivalry

Published: January 2nd 2023, 1:00:02 pm

It wasn't hard to tell what Mommy was up to. At least, not for Payton... Not for The Prodigy. The difficulty came with trying to convince the other heroes about it.

"You're being overly suspicious," Quicksand told her. "Look what she did with Aphrodite!"

"Sure," she agreed. "But don't you think it's weird that so many heroes that have worked with her have vanished? And her new sidekick..."

"We've all heard the conspiracy theories," Solar Flare rolled the two orbs of fire that approximated where their eyes would have been, if they still had human form. "You don't honestly believe them, do you? Tempest was a boy, and Baby Girl... Well, it's in the name, isn't it?"

Payton had to bite her tongue. She'd known the truth about the new Tempest from the moment they'd made their debut, but she'd chosen not to say anything to respect their privacy. Saying that now, however... That would only make it seem like she was pretending she'd known to make herself appear smarter.

Not that she needed any help with that, usually. The problem with your only power being hyper-intellect, though, was that it could be hard to prove, and, since it was less flashy than super strength, or being made of fire, or having the ability to liquify the ground beneath your enemies' feet, even after you had, it was easy for your teammates to forget about it, to, perhaps, wonder why you were on the team.

"Besides," The Piranha added, always more reasonable than her name would lead someone to think, "those missing heroes are why we need to team up with her... There's something going on, and while I can't imagine she's responsible, she is at the center of it. So, if we're working with her, maybe you can help solve it. If anyone can do it, you can."

The Piranha was buttering her up, obviously... But it was working. "I mean, I could," she shrugged, as meekly as she could manage. "Except, I already have, and it's all her!"

They still wouldn't listen; that was the curse of being so much smarter than everyone around you. Even when you were right, that didn't mean you could make them understand. That was fine, though... She'd just have to take another approach.

It wasn't difficult to track down her lair, despite how cagey she'd been about giving out the address before the team had made an official arrangement with her. Payton did her best to talk at least one of the others into joining her, but they all refused, telling her that they were afraid it would look like they didn't trust Mommy if they showed up unannounced... Which, of course, Payton didn't.

"Fine," The Prodigy sniffed. "If anything happens to me, you know where I'm going, and you know who's responsible."

She marched right into the front door, staring down the nurses at the desk. "Do you have an appointment?" one asked.

The Prodigy reached into the pocket of her lab coat, finger on the button of one of her devices. She could tell straight away that these were robots, and, fortunately, she had a mini-EMP that would be able to take them out. If all of Mommy's henchpeople were like that, she'd have no problem with this at all... So long as the battery didn't wear out.

"No need for that," Mommy swept in. "Hello, my dear, I've been expecting you... Right this way."

"You... have?" The Prodigy frowned.

"Of course," Mommy smiled. "I knew from the moment I approached your team that you wouldn't dream of letting me on without examining my headquarters... It's only fair! Right this way!"

She hadn't anticipated this... It was what she wanted, however, and she had her EMP if Mommy sicced her robots on her... "All right," she nodded. "Let's see what you have."

She saw Baby Girl first - she'd been there all along, in fact, hiding behind Mommy - and she gave a few shy, one-word answers when The Prodigy asked her if she was okay, if she liked being here, on their way to see Aphrodite, who was, indeed, every bit as babified as she'd appeared to be on television. There was no way she was secretly working with Mommy... Not that The Prodigy had really thought she was.

"And do you recognize her?" Mommy inquired at the next door.

"The Lioness," The Prodigy blinked, hardly able to believe what she was seeing. One of the most infamous assassins in the world... Sitting here, in the middle of a nursery. She was dressed in a red onesie, playing with a plush lion, sucking away happily on a pacifier. "Is this where she's been?!" She'd lost track of her months ago, had assumed that she'd finally been taken out.

"She has," Mommy confirmed. "I didn't want to advertise it, since she's made an awful lot of shady enemies, and she's in no condition to defend herself now."

"Okay," The Prodigy said, after stepping away from the nursery door. "Now, where are the others?"

"What do you mean?" Mommy asked innocently, not missing a beat. "I do hope to rehabilitate many, many more, but so far..."

"Do you want me to find them myself?" The Prodigy demanded coldly. "I've seen the blueprints to this place... I can guess where you've hidden the door to the other half... Or I can just blow a hole in the wall, and..."

Mommy held up one hand. "No need for that. My nurses could clean it up, but why go through the bother?" She led The Prodigy, and Baby Girl, back down the hall, taking out a device of her own and hitting a few buttons to make a section of the wall sink in, and then slide to one side, revealing another hallway on the other side. "Is this what you wanted to see?"

The Prodigy didn't answer, gesturing for Mommy to go first, and for Baby Girl to follow, not wanting either behind her. Only then did she cautiously step through herself. "You live up to your reputation," Mommy commented as she led onward. "Nobody else has asked about this part of my facility. I thought I'd scrubbed that version of the blueprints from the records."

"Well," The Prodigy couldn't help boasting, "you did. But I saw that they'd been modified, and cross-referenced them with other buildings of this size, and I knew something was up."

"Such a clever girl," Mommy chuckled, The Prodigy pouting slightly, unsure if the laughter was directed at her, or at the woman's realization that she hadn't covered her tracks as well as she should have. "Now, where to start? Ah, yes... This is interesting. You're not familiar with them, because they're from other worlds, but here are three versions of the same person, all from different dimensions... Kind of."

The three did seem to look very similar, all curled up in their own cribs, all wearing the same frilly, pink crop tops with an S on the front, over big, bulky diapers. "And they were all villains?" The Prodigy pushed.

"It's all a matter of perspective," Mommy replied evasively. "Go on, they're sleeping... You can take a closer look." 

The Prodigy didn't step all the way in, not wanting to give the woman a chance to shut the door on her. She went in far enough to hear the music being played, however, to feel a shiver down her spine at it. "No, thanks," she shook her head. "I get the picture. Who else do you have?"

Mommy appeared a bit disappointed, perhaps having hoped The Prodigy would go in and let her trap her in there with what was clearly hypnosis. She quickly perked up, though. "I think you'll find the next one very interesting..."

And she did. She recognized the woman instantly, of course... They'd been rivals, at one time, vying for the title of smartest woman in the world... She'd also been one of the first heroes to go missing. "The Scarlet Sage?" The Prodigy gasped. "She's been here all along?!"

There was no competition now... She could smell the load in the Scarlet Sage's diaper before she noticed the lumpiness beneath the padding, could see the drool dripping off her chin as she played with her dolls... The Prodigy stepped back, horrified.

"We can keep going, if you want," Mommy offered. "I think you already know what else is here... And that, now that you've seen it, I can't let you go." Before The Prodigy could move, Mommy had grabbed her wrist, pulling her hands out of her pockets, away from the devices hidden away there, twisting them behind her back, a pair of hard, metal cuffs appearing around them.

The Prodigy's eyes shot back towards the Scarlet Sage, heart racing, knowing that could, very well, be her fate. "M-My team knows I'm here!" she blurted out. "You can't do anything to me!"

"I can't, huh?" Mommy smirked down at her, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. "Don't worry, dear, I'm not going to hurt you... I just thought we could play a little game. You and her had a little rivalry going on, didn't you?" She nodded towards the Scarlet Sage. "I always found that so cute... Wouldn't you like a chance to prove, once and for all, how much smarter you are than her?"

"Y-Yeah," The Prodigy admitted. 

"Perfect! I have just the thing..." Mommy gave her a shove, pushing her forward, down the hall, to the next nursery, which had no occupant, as if it had been waiting for her... As if Mommy had known, all along, that it was going to happen this way...

There was nothing she could do, no way, even with all her squirming, to stop Mommy from cutting off her costume, leaving her naked before, worse yet, pushing her up onto the changing table and taping a diaper around her waist, the same kind she'd seen everyone else here wearing. She whimpered and thrashed uselessly, unable to keep away from it, to prevent it from being put on her, images of the Scarlet Sage, and what she'd become, dancing through her head.

"I'm going to give you a chance to escape," Mommy told her. "I'm going to walk away, and tell my robots to leave you alone... Nothing is going to stand between you and freedom, and being able to tell your little team all about what happened here, except... For this." She reached under the changing table, producing a straight-jacket.

That was it? The Prodigy felt a grin cross her face, despite everything. She'd studied this, knew all of the ways to escape from a straight-jacket... She was going to make it out after all, and, as Mommy had pointed out, show everyone that she was more clever than the Scarlet Sage, who hadn't managed to do the same, who had let herself be regressed into a mindless little baby. There was only one problem...

"I have one condition!" The Prodigy declared.

Mommy raised an eyebrow. "You do, huh?" At this point, she didn't have to grant any request, or do anything... She had The Prodigy at her mercy, and they both knew it... And yet, she said, "Let's hear it," anyway.

"You can't play anything through the speakers I know you have hidden here," The Prodigy glared up at her smugly. "I know that's how you're doing all this, with hypnosis... And it's not going to work on me."

Mommy seemed surprised, and a little disappointed. "All right," she shrugged. "If you insist." She buckled the straight-jacket tight, The Prodigy wriggling in it, testing it out, feeling excited to get to test out her knowledge...

And then, Mommy pulled out the headphones from the changing table's shelf. "W-Wait!" The Prodigy's eyes widened. "Y-You can't...!"

"I can't, huh?" Mommy snickered. "Then why don't you stop me? You said I couldn't use the speakers... You didn't say anything about these." She'd had them ready, too, as if she'd been anticipating that tactic, as if she'd seen right through The Prodigy, indisputably the smartest person in the world now the world, now that she knew what had happened to the Scarlet Sage... For the moment, at least. 

At first, the headphones played nothing, but as soon as Mommy slid her phone out of her pocket and hit a button, it started. Unlike the music she'd heard, this wasn't trying to hide what it was, blaring it right at her eardrums, telling her the ways she could, and should, be a good girl, how much she loved using her diapers, and doing everything her Mommy told her. She'd always thought her intellect would give her some protection against this sort of attack, however, already, she could feel her resistances weakening as she shook her head, futilely attempting to make the headphones fall off.

And then... It all stopped, as Mommy slid a pacifier into her mouth, all of her panicked thoughts instantly replaced with peacefulness as she concentrated on that.

"Uh-oh," Mommy cooed. "Is sucking your paci all you can think about now? I wonder how that happened!"

She couldn't... She shouldn't... She knew it would be bad, and yet... The voice in her head, and the one in her ears, screamed at her to do exactly that, to give in, to try it, her mouth moving almost on its own, the motion so soothing, even as, with each suck, she could feel her mind emptying, her thoughts replaced with more and more of what the headphones were telling her....

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Pink," The Piranha sniffed. "I can't imagine her choosing to wear pink."

Quicksand rolled his eyes. "That's what bothers you? Not the, you know...?"

That was, of course, troubling, too, enough so that The Piranha knew, immediately, what Quicksand meant, and why he couldn't bring himself to say it. The whole thing felt off, surreal, from the moment Mommy had called them, to being taken past those other nurseries, with the bad guys in them, only to find their teammate right in the next room, wearing a pink and white crop top, pink ribbons in her hair, and a pair of tights that did absolutely nothing to hide the diaper underneath, sucking her thumb and playing with a huge teddy bear.

"So," Solar Flare turned to Mommy, flames burning hotter than usual, showing their discomfort, and anger. "What did you say happened?"

"She came to me," Mommy replied calmly. "She said she'd seen what I'd done to Aphrodite, and she wanted to check in on her. I was happy to comply, and let her see that I was still working on her rehabilitation... Imagine my surprise when she took one look at her and told me the real reason for her visit. Being as smart as she was can be very difficult, and Aphrodite's new life seemed so peaceful to her, so worry-free... She said she was jealous of her!"

"Jealous?" Quicksand wrinkled his nose, no doubt thinking back to what they'd seen in the nursery.

"How could I say no when she asked for a taste of it herself?" Mommy shrugged innocently. "As you can see, her door is unlocked, so she can leave anytime she wants..."

As if on cue, Payton's knees began to bend, her head turning towards them with a vacant smile as she sucked away at her thumb, and her diaper began to swell beneath her tights, just a sweet, empty-headed baby.

"All she has to do is ask me, and I'll let her go," Mommy smiled, secure in the knowledge that her newest little girl would never dream of doing such a thing. "And if any of you ever want to come visit her in the meantime... She'll be right here."