Trust is Wonderful
Having decided to take my place as Gaslighter, avenger and heir to (or victim of?) Maxwell Lord, and gain my revenge on Wonder Woman, I began by reactivating my old data network. Maxwell Lord had tentacles in every source of power known to man, and a few as yet undiscovered. It had been my job to do the grunt work about keeping his network happy and running, to soft filter the intel for things that were potentially useful. His network is thought of as being something created by his powers of mental control, but that is idiotic. Maxwell never lowered himself to use his power if he didn’t need to. He taught me to look for human weakness, and to use them. Half his network had been suborned with his power, over half of what was left broke contact because they feared reprisals. That left a quarter of his network, made up of those with grudges of their own, who waited in place for the chance something they knew would be useful for Maxwell Lord to hurt the people they worked for, and hated.
I put them to work. There were enough people in government and press circuits who played the good guys and just couldn’t wait to sell them out. People who worshiped heroes like Wonder Woman for saving them, and hated those same heroes for being strong and brave enough to do it when they themselves would not. I used them to get a sense of Wonder Woman’s movements, for her patterns, for her hunting patterns in particular.
Then there was the other half of the network. You know the thing about organized crime? Bad guys don’t play nice. It may sound funny, but big strong scary men get off on intimidating those around them. Those around them are often not quite as big, not quite as strong scary men who really don’t like being intimidated, abused, and mocked without being able to do anything about it. They would never sell out to the cops, I mean, they are not snitches, but sell their abusers out to a bigger badder predator who will see they never get a chance to wonder who sold them out, why that they could do.
I found a local cause. Fentanyl overdoses. Heroin on the streets is as old as industry in America, before that it was opium, so it has been on the streets in America since before we called it America. It has been a big money earner for organized crime since ancient Rome, and while addicts have been happily destroying their lives for thousands of years, that wasn’t enough for some people. They started cutting it with Fentanyl. Synthetic, stronger, cheap, and oh yes, it killed people faster than war in the Middle East or even Viet Nam during the bad bits. Honestly, it isn’t like heroin and coke weren’t bringing in enough, and dangerous enough without turning to Fentanyl, but some guys would rather kill their customers than test their batches. I had a perfect reason to reach out to Wonder Woman, to have her in regular contact with me, away from any of her kind that would notice subtle changes in her behaviour, and around my kind who were ready and able to show Wonder Woman the time of our lives when the changes reached the tipping point.
Plus, I dearly wanted those guys cleaned up. I mean, I was a villain, but they were scum. Let her work her heroine needs out cleaning up the heroin trade.
I reached out to one of her old contacts in the IADC that Maxwell had ID’d. Not a dirty one, a clean one. The whole thing had to be clean. You don’t go after the woman that killed Maxwell Lord, the woman that kicked the tar out of Superman long enough to free the Man of Steel from being Maxwells little toy soldier and give her even a hint of a reason to suspect you. I gave the location of a warehouse the dirty drugs were being produced in, and ID’s of the mules with a note that someone with the power to make them tell the truth could save potentially thousands of lives by shutting down this network. I gave my own contact information. Why not? When Wonder Woman killed old Max and accidentally neutered me, she had no idea who I was. I adopted the pseudonym G, let her find out later what it meant!
Then I did the hardest thing I have ever done. I turned my power upon myself. I pushed so hard I bled for half a day afterwards. “Do not even try to lie to Wonder Woman.” Max got caught playing the two face game with her. She isn’t like Superman, not just a powerhouse who always wins by being stronger. She is like Batman without the bullshit. She was always paying attention. She was good at reading people, and she felt all men were scum. She was right ninety percent of the time, and gracious when she was wrong. If you want to catch her, you can only do it from the front, while she is watching, without even trying to hide.
My info checked out, my contacts reported that she was having me checked out. Well, I was clean as her star spangled spankies. She neutered me before I had a chance to spread my wings in evil. I sat in the park, watching the entrances, trying not to sweat. I failed utterly. Not only that, the first clue I had was when a surprisingly large hand closed gently upon my shoulder. I froze.
“You are G?” She said softly, and I swear my balls nearly exploded. Her voice! You know how in WWII and all the way through Viet Nam the enemy used sexy voiced radio DJ to spread disinformation and try to break soldiers lonely soldier’s morale? Well they were nothing compared to Wonder Woman just trying to be causal.
“Yes!” I squeaked, I began to ask “Are you Wond…” I trailed off as I turned and her physical presence hit me like Maxwell Lord’s power when he used to seize control of my own in training. It wasn’t anything she did, she was just, more. Strong, gods yes. Beautiful, beyond the ability of photos or even video to capture. Graceful? Well ballet teachers would cut off their own feet in shame if they saw her move up close. The body, oh man, you would think that fact she could punch out Superman and she killed my own master would make it impossible for me to have any reaction beyond fear, but there is a reason she is called Wonder Woman, because once you have seen her, there can never be another woman for you.
“You have some information for me? Information that if true, could save many lives.” She said casually, tossing her hair so one errant lock of it would fall back over her alabaster shoulder.
“You will want to do this under the lasso. Just so you understand, I used to manage the informant networks for Maxwell Lord, and you need to be sure what I am telling you is straight truth.” I said, holding a hand out to her.
She looped one loop of the lariat around my wrist, and I felt something, not like my power, not like Max’s power. I guess that is the magic he always bitched about. I don’t know how it works, but I could feel it setting up tendrils of something in my brain. If I tried to deceive her, she would know, and I would fail. They were less invasive, more subtle, less damaging that my own commands. I guess fifty years experience, being a goddess, or just the fact that it was magic made it smoother, but what was important is that it was less rigid than my own self imposed limits, and would never be able to find me attempting to lie.
“Why are you doing this?” She asked, her eyes boring into me.
“Fentanyl is murder. These people are killing kids for chump change. They are scum, they need to be stopped, but the law can’t catch them. The only way to shut these networks down is for the people who act as cut outs between the disposable street scum and the big money men confess to what they did, who they did it for, and show you where to find the truth. Who else but you could do that without torture, who else but you could survive trying?” I felt her power singing through me, looking into me, and I saw her eyes widen, her gasp of surprise. Oh my fucking lord, those boobs! She could see the truth. Why not, I wasn’t lying. I meant every word. I hope she takes them apart and it hurts the entire time.
“Do you mean me any harm?” She asked.
“I would rather die than see you hurt. I would kill anyone I thought might have a chance to actually injure you. You are important to me.” Fucking HELL. Where is the off button on that lariat? Okay so maybe my obsession about her was a little unbalanced, and while it is awesome that I am convincing her that I am not plotting her death, it sounded like the sort of cringy love confession a pimple faced sixteen year old makes to his first love. I may, just may, have fixated on her a bit more than I admitted.
She smiled, and went to remove the lariat. Generations of men, and no few women, had laid their hearts at her feet to be trampled and ignored. She was used to it, and gracious about it.
“Don’t be embarrassed G. The lariat can lead to oversharing. Let me free you.” She said graciously, but I gathered my power and struck before she could release me.
“You can always trust what I say, Wonder Woman.” I put all my power in it, and being under the lasso only made it stronger, as the web of her power meant none of mine went anywhere but right up that beautiful conductor and into every part of her mind tuned to listen for every scrap of potential information. Every center of the brain concerned with memory, judgement, threat assessment all drank in that suggestion like parched earth drinks summer rain. From this point on, she would be unable to even think I would deceive her. I had said only truth, that I wouldn’t lie to her. We have a thousand years of fairy tales talking about the dangers of fairy creatures who speak only truth and deceive and destroy foolish mortals. This time, the fool was a GODDESS.
She smiled, unwrapping the lasso from my hand, and stroking my face casually. “Yes, I can trust you.”
She walked away with a confident stride. My god, that ass. I was staring after her when she turned and caught me.
“Mr G, we will be seeing a lot more of each other if this works out.” She said, smirking at catching me checking out her ass.
I blushed. If she had any idea how much more I would be seeing of her, she probably would have killed me then. I wasn’t Max. I couldn’t reach out and strip her will away. I had to unweave her will like I was unweaving her star spangled hot pants. That is fine. Thread by thread, if it took a week, a month, a year. I would strip that ass bare, then I would own it.
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/10w5if2/wonders_of_gaslighting_2_mf_2050_nc_mind_control