The Life of the Curator 3

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#4 of Stories Involving The Curator

The Curator ends up finding someone with a bit more power than she has, and deals with it in a not-entirely-good way.

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The Life of the Curator

Chapter 3

for Dreixes

by Draconicon

When the hour was over, Charlize was a mess, but to be completely fair, so was Liam. The rhino was completely soaked with her loads, and he was going to have to wear that under his costume on his way back home. He didn't seem that bothered by it when he left, but then again, she was half-sure that he was flying high on dopamine and who knew how many other happy chemicals from what they'd done.

She wasn't cruel. The panther had sent him off with a new contract mark on his body, just to ensure that his powers didn't drop further than they had to. From their original contract, she knew that a minimum of two were all but required to keep him at the heroic level that Suprenum expected of its superheroes, and without that, he stood a good chance of losing his job. Without that boost, he wasn't able to gel the water in the air, for example, and without that, he had less chance of beating someone unless he got much closer to them.

As the rhino leaped from the rooftop down to the alleys below, Charlize took her time to arrange herself. Her panties, discarded as they were, had been damaged by the various cumshots that had come out of both of them. There was little point in trying to wear it save to keep her cock down, and after their fun, she doubted that she'd have enough stamina to get that up again before tomorrow. She used them to wipe off the bits of seed that she hadn't been able to convince the rhino to lick up, dabbed her fur back down, and then threw them over the side of the building. Someone would probably find them and enjoy them. The city had enough perverts around that someone would get off to it.

Her high heels slid on easily, and her dress flowed over her body once more. There were a few wet spots that could be seen through her cleavage, but with any luck, anyone glancing there would know better than to comment. Besides, it was smeared enough that it would probably look like sweat rather than anything else.

Then, it was time to climb down.

She passed a window of normal people, and she paused to wave. The dumbstruck Golden Retrievers inside paused their dinner to stare at her, and Charlize chuckled.

"Sorry. There was only one way down, and you weren't here when I went up."

"What were you -"

"Nothing that you need to worry about."

"But -"

"Back to your meal, everyone. Nothing to see here."

She normally wouldn't have made contact with the normals on the other side of the window, but they'd already seen her, and why not? She was feeling good. The fuck on the rooftop had been just the thing to restore her mood after dealing with the rather unsatisfying owl, and the rhino, for all that his aesthetics no longer entirely matched her desires, was good at what he did. She could be a little light-hearted.

She continued the climb down to the alley below, hopping off the fire escape and stretching her arms overhead. The bus would probably be coming by in the next few minutes, and then she could be on her way back home.

The panther sat at the bus stop for no more than a few minutes before the bus arrived. As she stepped inside, the driver looked down at her and raised an eyebrow. Charlize smiled back at him, half-daring him with a slight cock of her head to say something about the sweat and other stains on her fur. He opened his mouth, but the Doberman took the smart route and said nothing, choosing instead to gesture to the payment pad. She held her phone to it, then made her way to the back of the bus.

Click, click, click went her heels as she climbed up to the raised back. No obvious supers rode the bus, and she liked it that way. There were express buses that the supers tended to use to get from place to place in Suprenum, built to withstand greater firepower and dangers than the average city buses and having the right to put on sirens like emergency vehicles did to get somewhere fast. It meant that citizens tended to be safer since villains didn't go through the trouble of bombing or sabotaging regular buses or public transit vehicles trying to get a super.

At least, not anymore. There had been some grandstanding in the early days of Suprenum - back before the Curator was well-established, though not before she'd actually moved here - when the villains were more likely to do the greater doomsday plots of comic books and the old movies. From taking people hostage on buses to setting entire buildings on fire and more, they had been as full of spectacle as the newspaper had been filled with obituaries.

She chuckled as she sat down, remembering how the city's civil services had had to get involved at that point. Vigilantism, formerly allowed under the charter that had changed the city from Guadao to Suprenum - and had established quite a few other changes to the former resort - was outlawed, forcing people to get a license and fill one of the sharply-limited superhero slots that were actually meant to fight crime. Anyone that didn't fit into those slots were made to either get a job with one of the mega-companies that were sponsoring the whole Suprenum experiment, deal with civil services that didn't offer much in the way of reward, or do something on the dark side of the law.

If they knew how many of us were just giving the law the finger on a day to day basis...

As the Curator, she knew a great deal of them. While most of her contracts were with those on the more heroic side of the law, she was the first to admit that she didn't play favorites on the hero vs villain spectrum. Most of the villains weren't really doing much with their powers besides making ends meet, though there were a few that did poke the metaphorical bear a bit more often than she liked. Smokestack, in particular, had been getting more attention than she'd like, and that roo would need a chat sometime soon.

But by and large, the 'villains' were harmless. They operated without licenses, did a few things that were on the gray side of the law to keep surviving, and that was all there was to it. Of course, there were some like her, who operated a much more illegal network - body-control powers were nearly as suspect as mind control, after all - and there were other villains that took it even further, necessitating the differentiation between the 'acceptable' targets of heroes and the unacceptable targets of civilians.

Most villains were smart enough to know how it played out, she knew. No matter how much you disagreed with the system, you had to admit that the optics were part of the game. She looked out the bus window, watching as the electronic billboards they passed played ads for Suprenum's greater heroes. Mostly the pretty boys and girls, she noticed; the older ones, more experienced and more useful over the last few years, were slowly getting filtered out now that they were getting close to retirement.

Better start hustling if they want to make good on their reps while they still have it...

Shaking her head, Charlize sighed. It was always depressing to think about how the city had to pay homage to the rest of the world. No matter how much the supers in the city had changed the status quo in the rest of the world, no matter how much they threatened to upend the order of the last century or so, there was always the matter of money. Money made the world go round, and even a 'Superman' couldn't turn back the clock on that. You had to learn how to play the game, even if you hated it, and hope that you could avoid the worst pitfalls.

The bus stopped and a new set of passengers stepped onboard. Ding, ding, ding went the payments, and most sat in the front of the bus. One, a mouse in a long black dress that looked like it had been slapped on almost as a maid costume, climbed into the back of the bus with her. Charlize glanced at her, giving her a once-over. No super-logos, nothing beyond the simple maid costume. She didn't recognize her as a new hero or sidekick, nor did she remember anyone on the news mentioning any new super that went around cleaning or doing something in an outfit like that.

So, why was the mouse sitting -

"Organizing your collection, Curator?" the mouse asked, her soft voice nonetheless deep and smug in that moment.

"...Elias."

"Everyone, please. Everyone."

"Right. I was wondering when you'd poke your nose into my affairs again."

"As if you'd want me to stay away. How else would we continue our game?"

The panther gritted her teeth. Of the villains that she ended up cooperating with from time to time, Elias was one of the more annoying. Not merely for his personality - of which she could quite happily get less of - but also for his many breaches of contract.

"You owe me quite a few favors at this point."

"And I wish you all the luck in collecting them, old girl."

"You started out older than me, you little weasel."

"Weasel, ferret, orca, bull, cow," the mouse said, tapping them off on her - no, his fingers as he went down a list two-dozen long. "And now, mouse."

"And female for the first time in a while."

"I figured it was time to work on my flexibility. Ten male bodies in a row? I needed to shake the dust off my brain."

And it wasn't a bad body, either, to be fair. The mouse beneath the dress was soft and slight, perhaps just over four and a half feet tall, and quite a bit smaller than the panther was. There was no muscle there to be seen, and though the rodent was slender, she had the slight bumps on her chest of an A-cup, and the short skirt did show a pair of hips that might grab someone's attention. Those that liked them small, at least.

But all those soft bits, those little teases of weakness, were belied by the smile on her face. The mouse was anything but a weak toy for the taking, and Charlize knew it.

"Here for the usual, then?" she asked, turning her head back to the window with a casualness that she didn't entirely feel.

"Mmm, pretty much. This one's not quite at the potential that I'd like, and there's so much more I can do as a Duo than one of you."

"Hmmph."

"Of course, we can always do our usual song and dance over you refusing to do it, me reminding you why it's a good idea, you deciding that it's worth trying again to see if you can beat me..."

As usual, Elias was his infuriating self. New body that was cute as a button or not, the damn weasel was still a weasel, and no matter how many times she told herself that she was being conned, she knew she was going to fall for it again.

Just once. She just wanted to win, once.

"When we reach my apartment."

"I can wait."

"You had better."

"Why don't you tell me about your latest lover in the meantime? It seems like he left quite a load on you."

"Do you think I can really be shamed with that?"

"No, but you might get more visitors at your gallery if they realized that this panther was really -"

"Elias." She turned her head, fixing him with a stare. "Do be careful about your threats."

"Mmm, you're right. I shouldn't threaten public humiliation. That doesn't bother you. Losing it all, though..."

The mouse reached out, fingers curled. She didn't let the budding fear show on her face as the rodent grabbed her shoulder. The touch wasn't required for Elias's powers, but it did make the threat of them that much more potent.

"I should be reminding you what I could do without even trying. Throwing the great Curator into someone else's body, letting her fend for herself for the next month or more until she comes crawling back, begging to do me a favor so long as I put her back where she belonged. That is, if her old body was still around. You know how it goes; sometimes, you just can't get used to the new body. Sometimes, it's just too much."

The casual ease in how he said that reminded her of his old bodies being found in ditches or alleyways. It was more than just the dysphoria of being in a different, wrong body; it was the wrongness, the ill-fitting feeling of a different soul in a body that was never designed for it, a mind in a skull that hadn't been molded for it. Of the various bodies that he'd taken in the last few years, she knew at least half of them had turned up in the morgue when the person he'd swapped with hadn't been able to cope.

That could be her old body if he decided to follow through with his threat. Charlize stiffened her spine, pulling her shoulder out of his grip.

"So long as I have something you need, we both know you won't do that," she said, as much for herself as for his sake.

"Hmmm, so long as you have something I need...but that won't be the case forever."

"You're not going to stop swapping, and you're not going to stop being greedy."

"Heh...You know me almost as well as I know you."

"Better, at this point."

"Don't forget, dear. I've been inside you as often as you've been inside me."

"Don't remind me."

"Please. I know what you've seen..." The mouse tapped her head. "The link doesn't always go one-way, after all..."

The more the mouse talked, the more she was reminded why she hated most of the other villains in the city that got too good at their jobs. They were cocky assholes that got too into the whole 'being above other mortals' mindset. They were constantly of the opinion that they could do what they wanted, as they wanted, and nobody would stop them, because nobody could.

The annoying part was when they were right. So far, Elias hadn't been, but it was only a matter of time before he swapped into someone with a potential power that was great enough to actually make him a real threat rather than an annoyance to the city, and when that happened? Things were going to get real bad, real quick.

That, she knew, was the other reason that she didn't entirely bar him from her presence. As much as his power sent shivers down her spine, she knew that she was the only one that had an accurate history for his work in Suprenum, and more than that, the only one that would know what he could do before he did. She had a record of every power that he had learned how to control, and that would be useful one day.

"How long until we reach your stop?" the mouse asked.

"Ten minutes."

"Then -"

"And I want to spend that time in silence. I'm quite finished with listening to your threats."

"Mmm, I suppose that's fair. I'm still getting what I want. By the way, whatever happened to my last body? That policeman, that elephant?"

"He's alive, though in an asylum."

"Ah, then he's still around as a back-up. Unless you already -"

"I burned that favor the minute you left his body to send him there."

"Softy."

Perhaps, but at least it wasn't another body on a slab.

They left the bus together outside of Bonifacio's Fifth. Elias chuckled, the slender mouse falling in step at her side as they walked through the front door of the building.

"I'm still surprised you live here. The building was meant to be let to supers, after all; aren't you afraid someone will connect the dots?"

"Money talks," she said, shaking her head. "As long as the bills are paid, nobody cares if you're super or not."

"Hmmm, I should remember that. These apartments are better than anywhere else in the city."

She had no doubt that he would make the attempt to get one. They were great places to live, and they were supposedly out of reach of those without powers. They were expensive buildings, made to withstand various applications of super abilities, and as a result, they were supposed to only go to those that could be a danger to a standard apartment complex.

That said, it hadn't taken long for the Bonifacio buildings to be opened to those that had the cash to pay for them, too. Mostly through under the table dealings, to be fair, and some of those that were caught out were pushed to leave the building through court cases that were paid for by Bruno Bonifacio himself, but that didn't mean that they were always on the watch for it. Money talked, after all. Money talked quite loudly.

One short trip up the elevator, and they were back to her apartment. The windows were closed, the curtains pulled, and the apartment still smelled of last night's sex. Elias sneered with his new rodent face, shaking his head.

"You never change."

"Everyone has needs. Me as much as any other. I just have the chance to be pickier over who fulfills them."

"I love the way that you pretend that you're not some slut. You act like some artiste, like you matter, but in reality, all you do -"

"I don't want to talk about me, Elias."

"Everyone."

"The day that I call you by that name is the day that you take my body, Elias. But I am not here to talk about me, and you don't want to spend all day trying to break me. It's never worked in the past, and it won't work now, so let's just get this over with."

"Hmmm, you're no fun."

"Good. I have no intention of being fun."

"I'll just strip down, then."

She expected him to make it awkward, and of course, he did. The mouse stripped out of its clothes with a slow, teasing ease, one that showed off every bit of fur and flesh with an exaggerated flair that left the tense situation somehow more disturbing. Elias's taunting smirk and over-sensualized sneer made that soft, innocent body seem out of its element, but the skill with which it disrobed left it sensual despite itself.

It was the way that he did things. As she collected people, he collected skills, and he brought too many with him from body to body. She imagined that whoever had lost herself to Elias's fascination with new bodies was completely lost in his old shell. The elephant was living well enough in the asylum, yes, but the poor girl probably didn't know what to do with herself.

She didn't feel empathy very strongly very often, but he had a way of making her feel for his victims that few others did. She didn't care, precisely, but she didn't want him to win, either. Finding a way to at least keep the shells from being shattered by their new occupants was the only thing that she had found that she could do.

Soon, the mouse had shed her dress to her waist, revealing white fur with soft pink accents that had to have come from some sort of dye. Most other men would have been embarrassed by the look, but Elias showed no shame as he reached up and cupped his chest, fondling the small breasts and thumbing his nipples through his fur.

"Mmm, sensitive. Lovely."

She refrained from rolling her eyes as he continued to fondle his new shape. Was this rape? Perhaps, as the original owner of the body wasn't there to give consent, but she had little doubt that the legal system would have let him off. Laws had yet to catch up to the full capabilities of supers, and the civil rights lawyers were still of the opinion that those that were more or less walking weapons should be treated the same as those that didn't have such powers.

She didn't care for the majority of people, but she had her doubts that they were right this time. When one person had a gun and one person was unarmed, then there was sufficient discrepancy between them to alter the legal circumstances, and some people had powers far more threatening than any firearm.

As Elias continued to fondle the female, going so far as to force one hand below his waist and into his new pussy, Charlize busied herself with cleaning a few clothes off the floor. Garbage that had been left alone for the sake of convenience suddenly became all too easy to focus on, offering a convenient distraction from the asshole waiting for her help.

The soft squelches of forceful fingering faded after a second, and Elias's voice - no longer deep, but more feminine and soft and high - reached out for her.

"I'm ready."

She turned with a pile of old letters and delivery boxes in her hands. The mouse was completely naked and wet, sexual juices running down furred thighs. Elias's smirk was as debasing as ever, and he crossed his arms under the small breasts, hips out to the side.

"You're standing wrong," she said.

"Petty differences."

"If you want to get caught, then by all means, do."

"There's plenty of people that can't pass."

But regardless, he stood upright again, no longer quite so sassy. It was hardly something that would have gotten him caught, really, but it brought some small satisfaction to 'correct' him on something. It meant that she still had something to hold over him.

"Now, give me power," he said.

"What's your hurry?"

"I have things I want to try."

"Things?"

"No need for you to know," he said, dismissing the question with a wave of his hand. "You never want to do anything fun."

Fun was an interesting way to put it. She had her fun, yes, and Charlize was not so deluded as to think that it was all consensual. Sometimes, her favors put her clients in a rough spot, and some were taken off to prison, and supers could only be locked up in one very special, very dark place, overseen by other supers that were desperate to keep their job and avoid making any mistakes. She knew that she was responsible for putting at least a few people behind bars that didn't entirely belong there.

At the same time, she wasn't like this. She didn't take this much pleasure in sadistic torment, and she never would. It was beyond her tastes.

As the mouse sat down on her couch, spreading her legs and showing off the digit-devastation that had been left on her pussy after working it out for a while, Charlize considered just putting the contract on him and sending him in to the authorities. She had enough credit with the police - and enough contracts in high places - that she wouldn't end up getting caught, even if he gave her up. Even if he took control of the police chief, or managed to shift with someone even more powerful, the odds were on her side.

But that...that wouldn't be a win. Not enough of one. Not enough to bury him and teach him a lesson.

Elias knew it, too. That smirk on his face, twisting the innocent mouse's muzzle up in a sneer befitting a far more evil-looking species, told her that he knew exactly what she was thinking.

"Now, come on. We don't have all day. You have things to do, and I -"

"Don't talk."

"Mmmm, you're going soft, Curator. You should like this."

She refused to answer him. She didn't trust her answer.

Instead, she knelt down in front of the other woman. The mouse leaned forward, sniffing the air as Charlize reached in to access her power.

"Mmm, you smell sweatier than I thought. And more...musky. How many times did your other playthings use you?"

"I used him, not the other way around."

"You think that?"

"I know that."

"Then -"

"Elias." She looked up, breathing out slowly. "You are pushing my last nerve."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Do you think I care?" He chuckled. "I am the one calling the shots right now, dear. I can change bodies with you myself, if I want."

"Do that, and you'll never get another power-up ever again."

"You can't power yourself up?"

"No."

"You're lying."

"Would I be letting you do this if I could?"

He glared, eyes twitching from side to side as he clearly tried to pick at what she'd said. Charlize took advantage of the silence to reach inside and touch her power, pulling it forth. Pushing down her utter loathing for the man in the woman's body in front of her, she dragged the power up again, feeling the same stretching feeling that she'd felt when she was doing the same thing for Jericho.

The tightness turned into a taut feeling running over her entire body, feeling like something was inflating inside her. It was worst in her head, her skull pressed down on her brain as if someone had stuffed it full of some sort of cotton or fluffy thing, so much of it that it had gone from soft to unbearably firm and plush. Her head ached, and her eyes watered as she dragged up the usual power.

The thoughts of all her other clients blared at her in the back of her head. Liam's thoughts of what it would be like going home to his wife and getting a comparison to her ass. A heroine that was in the middle of a fight, feeling grateful for what she had and fearing what it would be like if she didn't have the contract that the Curator had given her. A kangaroo that was mothering someone else, fending off non-powered cops with particles of smoke and hot gasses, angry at the intrusion into her little life in the sewers and the underground.

Those three and eight more pushed at her mind, dragging her this way and that, cramping her skull and making her wince. It was so crowded in there these days, and Elias would only make it worse. He'd do it intentionally, too, and that made her all the more pissed.

But there was no choice. It was this, or being made to do something worse.

She pressed her hands to the mouse's thighs, dragging one claw through the fur. She pricked the flesh, drawing a gasp of anger and pain from the rodent over her, but she didn't care. The pain was one of her few revenges against the asshole, and it at least meant that she had made a mark that mattered.

Digging deep, she drew her name through his flesh rather than just writing it in light. Soon enough, it was locked on his flesh, 'The Curator', and she was in.

Again, she reached out to the mouse's mind.

Again, she felt for the network that was just below the rest of the nervous system.

Again, she opened the floodgates, and again, she felt the power that was waiting on the other side.

Flight, this time. Not so dangerous as some of the other powers that she had seen him wield in the past, but one more that might cause problems if he found out how to operate those powers in other bodies. Not so dangerous as his body-swapping powers, however.

She pulled back, feeling the new 'screen' in the back of her mind taking shape, blaring with new sounds. She heard perverted thoughts, the squelch of fingers in holes, the sound of wet slaps and pops. Images of perverted rutting, of two species too close and too similar-looking for her tastes ramming against each other. They were familiar; Elias loved to flood her mind with his perversions under the mistaken idea that the pair of them shared that sort of debauched taste.

He was wrong, of course. She was far more selective with her perversions than he was. He was a glutton, while she was a connoisseur.

"It's done?" he asked.

"Yes...it's done."

"What - oh, that's going to be fun. Flight. That's new."

"Yes, I know."

"Heh...hehehe..."

Giddy as he always was with a new power, Elias pushed her back with hands that were too weak to actually do anything. She let it happen, not wanting to be close to him for now. There was something repulsive enough about having him in the back of her head.

He was already thinking about what he was going to do next. She could feel the thoughts of debauchery shifting, becoming something foggier and less tangible. They pushed forward, fresher and stronger than the other 'screens' of thoughts in the back of her head, and -

Her breath caught in her throat. He was going for something far more extreme this time.

"That's murder," she said.

"Mmmmm, more suicide."

"You're killing whoever you swap with."

"Mmm, it's a thought. Just a little idea, after I get this power managed," the mouse said, floating a few inches off the ground, the air rotating around her hips and heels. "Once I figure flight out, I'll need something else, something more -"

"There are limits. You change bodies with someone else while you're overdosing, getting off to the feelings of self-snuff, and you're going to kill whoever you swap places with."

"Eh, happens half the time anyway. And besides. Nothing's saying you can't tell them to live."

Charlize hated him, and the reasons for hating him grew ever more numerous. She hated that he came to her. She hated that he saw her as anything similar to himself. She hated that he looked down on her.

And she hated, hated, hated the fact that he made her be his 'hero', picking up after his messes and keeping him from being utterly successful as a villain.

"Well, I think that this was a fantastic use of my time. Not as good as if I were putting you to a better use, myself, but this body is hardly going to be good at that. Not like the time I was a giraffe with paralysis powers, hmm? The fun we had then..."

Something snapped. Charlize narrowed her eyes as she reached out to the power she'd just established, and she burned the contract, firing her one command. Elias stiffed, the mouse's body going from limp in the air to ramrod straight.

"You - this isn't -"

She couldn't kill him. The body might resist that. There were some, those that were suicidal, those that were willing to embrace death, that would run right into it. Soldiers, those in the grip of deep depression, those that wanted death on some level: she could make them die. But Elias didn't want that. He would resist that sort of command.

So, she did the next best thing.

"Throw yourself into the sea."

The mouse was unable to resist. With a burst of energy, the airborn rodent threw himself through the half-open window, shattering the glass and sending it flying to the street below. Blood stains were left behind, and as Charlize watched the mouse fly off, she saw the hints of red running down flailing limbs as the body obeyed her command.

It wouldn't be enough to completely break Elias. He would be back, probably in another body now that he knew that he'd pushed things too far. He'd find someone else, possibly killing this one in the process after the swap to cover his tracks. She couldn't stop him, and she couldn't save this one without tracking it down herself, considering that burning her favor would kill its super-state once it hit the water.

"Stupid," she muttered, rubbing her forehead. "That was so stupid..."

Lashing out didn't feel good enough to justify losing what little control she had. She...she'd have to do better, next time.

She'd have to have someone ready to help her next time. Someone that could help stop him from running away. Someone to keep this from happening again.

"Idiot...you stupid idiot," she muttered, sitting down on the couch and covering her face. "Ugh..."

Another body on another slab. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon enough, and all because she couldn't control her temper, and all because she couldn't stop him.

Stupid.

Stupid.

STUPID.

The End

Summary: The Curator ends up finding someone with a bit more power than she has, and deals with it in a not-entirely-good way.

Tags: Intersex/Female, Possessed Female, Nudity, Fondling, Masturbation, Goading, Gloating, Supervillain, Body Swapping, Mouse, Panther, Supers, Superheroes, Supervillains, Shameless, Series, Curator,