Crimson Flare: The Threat of Pitchblende
by marat

Chapter 4

JoJo Savanarol had left Crimson Flare in a state of shock. His cum had dried between her thighs, on her naked breasts, around her mouth. It mixed with the dried sweat that matted her hair. Dried blood was caked in the corners of her mouth and bruises scarred her jaw and body. The violence and frequency of his rape also left a small stream of blood around her crotch and the tops of her thighs.

She still wore her mask, but the mystery it had conveyed was now laughable. She also still wore her black leather boots, scuffed and scarred.

Crimson Flare stared blankly at the rope bonds which took away her strength. She had long ago forgotten that their removal would restore her strength and, perhaps, allow her to escape this place. She alternately shivered and spasmed as the enormity of the rape overwhelmed her senses. But the rape was not over.

Across the room stood JoJo’s number-one hit man, known around Mitropoulos as Vas. Tall and powerful, he had a particular grudge against Crimson Flare because she had sent his younger brother to prison when she had caught him in his first major crime, a drug deal that got messy. Vas’s brother had shot and wounded a police officer who had happened upon the scene unexpectedly, then taken his service revolver as a personal trophy. Crimson Flare delivered him with all the necessary evidence to ensure a long stay at Recitative. To protect the profits to be collected from other members of his gang, JoJo stationed three Savoyards near the door to keep an ear pealed to any extreme violence against JoJo’s wares.

‘Get up, supercunt!’ Vas ordered.

Still sitting with her legs pulled under her, the dazed heroine didn’t move. Her naked body glistened with sweat and cum in the unshielded light which hung from the ceiling.

‘I said, GET UP!!’ he rushed across the room and seized the heroine by her shoulders and pulled her to her feet. Her boots hit the floor heavily. She stood unsteadily, rocking forward and back when he released her. She continued to look at her wrists as if trying to remember something.

When he viciously slapped her across the face, driving the helpless young woman backwards to the wall, she seemed to reawaken to her predicament. She raised her arms and held them in front of her bare abdomen, bent at the elbow. She raised her head, staring through her mask at the huge man now threatening her.

‘So this is the great Crimson Flare. Not so much without your muscles, are you, babe?’

The heroine stood silent, working her hands in the ropes.

He reached out and grabbed her wrists in an effort to stop their motion, which was distracting him. One of his large hands engulfed her hands and wrists from underneath, as he continued to taunt the superheroine. ‘All you are now is just another woman, heroine.’ He drove his free hand, curled into a fist, into her stomach. ‘Like all the sluts that hang around here looking for cash or a fuck, you’re all whores.’ Now he slapped her face. Each time he struck her, Crimson Flare’s impetus away from her tormentor was limited by his grip on her hands.

‘Well, there no cash in your future,’ he said. ‘But I am surely going to use my prick to pay you off, for what you did to Baile,’ referring to his brother. Now, he pulled her downward, so that she went to her knees. He was squatting in front of her, still holding her wrists, her hands on the floor. With his free hand he brought a hard chop to the back of her head, driving her the rest of the way.

He released her hands and sauntered around behind the superheroine, whose hands, much to his surprise, continued to work around the ropes binding them. Her arms were almost fully extended above her head. Her masked face lay on its side. The only flaws on the skin on her back were a few bruises left by Vas’s predecessor in this room. Otherwise, the skin looked smooth and soft, shaped tightly to the muscles of her torso.

Everyone agreed that Crimson Flare’s ass and legs were fabulous, the stuff of Savoyards’ wet dreams. Her tight little ass lay right in front of him, her legs spread slightly, smears of blood visible on the inside of her thighs.

Vas stood between her boots. With his toe, he nudged them further apart. He undid his belt and dropped his pants, telling her, ‘Baile is in prison now. In prison sex means only one thing.’ With both hands, he grabbed her hips and raised her to meet him.

‘SQUEAL, heroine! Squeal like a pig!’ he ordered her, remembering a particularly disquieting scene from a movie from long ago.

When Crimson Flare made no sound, he brought his heavy forearm down sharply on the middle of her back. ‘Uuughn-nnnh!’ she grunted as she felt her breasts driven into the thin carpeting under her.

‘SQUEAL! You bitch!’ he ordered again. And he hit her again.

Again, Crimson Flare was silent, though a new pain took her breath away as he penetrated her anus. With a renewed fury, the heroine struggled with her ropes.

‘I told you to SQUEAL!!’

Instead, she shrieked as agony rushed over her. He was now felly extended into her. It felt like she was being broken in two.

As he fully entered her, Vas fell on top of the heroine, crushing her to the floor beneath him. Then, just as his boss had done earlier, he sawed his way in and out of the petite body of the powerless superheroine. With each move she groaned; her breath came in sharp gasps between moments of pain; her eyes rolled back and she forgot everything else except the agony of the moment.

His hand was at her throat now, its fingers holding her head back. His mouth was at her right ear, whispering, ‘You slut! You cunt! You sent my kid brother to prison and I have to pay to protect him there. You’re going to pay now, like you have never paid in your life.’ With that he withdrew slightly and then rammed his cock home again, deep into the heroine. Crimson Flare could hardly withstand the pain. She felt warm blood seep from her asshole to join the blood extracted from her by JoJo.

He withdrew slightly and rammed into her again and again. Each time grunting loudly, drawing from her first a whimper, then a sob, a cry, a shriek. The heroine was in stark terror.

Long minutes passed as Vas pounded into the unresisting woman. Finally, when he came, the two who were physically joined also joined in a loud cry, his of exultation, hers of suffering. This was the end of her resistance. She had nothing more left. As long as she could make an effort to seek release from her bonds, she believed she had a chance. But that moment had passed. She knew she was going to die.

Crimson Flare lay on the floor as Vas withdrew. His cock was smeared with her blood, which he wiped on her backside. He fixed his eyes on her unmoving body, covered in sweat, blood, and debris. Even despoiled as it was, he thought to himself that rarely had he seen such a striking specimen. He walked around her, moving to her masked face.

It was only now that he felt something warm, wet, and sticky in his hand.

Looking at his left hand, the hand that had earlier restrained her bound wrists, he saw a puncture, only now clotting. The palm of his hand was smeared with his own blood.

‘What the hell-?’ His face contorted as he tried to remember how this might have happened.

Suddenly remembering, he reached his right hand down to the beaten, barely conscious avenger. He grabbed the ropes which tied her wrists together and lifted her fully from the floor. She hung again from her wrists, her black boots this time swinging clear of the floorboards. Her naked body showed the evidence of the beatings and rapes that she had endured. Her head hung down over her chest, her mouth open, her eyes glazed behind the vinyl of her mask. Again a spool of drool hung from her swollen and broken lips to her bare and bruised chest.

‘How did you cut me?’ he said, looking threateningly directly into her face.

He took the bloodied hand and used it to lift her head by her chin. ‘How did you cut me, bitch?’ He shifted his hand from cradling her chin to swallowing up her face and pushed her head back. As he did so, he released the rope and the masked champion’s body again flew across the room, landing in a heap at the base of the wall.

Vas crossed to her, grabbed the ropes that bound her wrists again and once again lifted her from the floor. She moaned in pain.

‘I’m asking you for the last time, you bitch. What did you do to me?’

Finally, the ropes, which cancelled her strength and held her in bondage, split, and Vas was left holding only one end of the cord. Surprised, Vas simply looked up blankly. ‘Wha-??’

Crimson Flare actually felt her strength rush back into her. Her body had endured so much punishment, was in such great pain, that the return of her ability to resist and to fight back was like a splash of cold water on her face. The pain was still there, but now she felt able to withstand it.

Rising to her feet in front of the much-larger Vas, she looked up into his face from behind her mask. Remembering what he had done, and before he could utter another sound, she drove her hand in a hard knife-edge to his throat. The blow smashed his windpipe and he dropped immediately to the floor, suffocating. Without thinking, she kicked him in the side of the head. Death followed quickly. It was a quieter death than he had planned for the reviving heroine.

With Vas no longer threatening her, Crimson collapsed to the floor, allowing her returning strength to wash through her body. The rapes were still exacting their toll, for her hips and nether regions were still an agonising pain. The bruising on her body and the pounding that had led to it made every motion torture. She breathed in great gulps of air, trying to revive herself, to arm her body for the trials she knew must come.

She was, after all, still trapped in the centre of the Savoyards’ hideout, with perhaps dozens of gang members waiting their turn with the superheroine. If she attempted to deal with them all at once, even with her strength restored, she didn’t think she could win. She was resilient, but her body had been badly beaten over the last few hours. It would require time before she could take on numbers like that.

Even more important in the long term was the fact that these gang members knew her weakness. They didn’t know the whole story yet, but how long would it be before the fact that handcuffs would sap her strength would also be known? Then her claw would be of much less use. She had been careless; her arrogance about her strength had led some unknown observer-she didn’t really believe that JoJo and Vas could have undertaken to gather information about her this carefully-to identify her weakness. JoJo had mentioned someone who had wanted her out of the way, and had provided the information to see to it that she was.

So, there was someone out there in Mitropoulos who knew of her weakness, and was willing to employ the gangs to use this against her. It had to be Pitchblende! That unknown figure, who lay behind the recent wave of crimes-carefully planned, highly intricate crimes-which had lately taken away the security of the city. Pitchblende was probably behind the store robbery the other night, as well.

All this added up to one thing: Pitchblende was aiming to remove her before he put his plan in operation. And he would provide the information about her, and any new information he gathered about her, to his henchmen.

‘Time’s almost up, Vas,’ she heard JoJo call from the hall.

The new time limit galvanized the heroine into action. Still aching across her torso, with her sexual regions still on fire, she rose and quickly moved to pick up what remained of her costume. It was torn down the front, many of the sequins were gone, but she could still step into it and it almost covered all of her dark brown pubic hair. She slipped her arms through at the shoulder and discovered that, despite its ragged appearance, it also covered most of her petite breasts.

Now, the rest was going to be a little tricky.

Any moment. JoJo would come through the door, order Vas to leave, and send in the next Savoyard who had paid for the privilege of having time with a superheroine. There was only one way out of the room, and the gang stood beyond it.

How many knew of her weakness? All of them? Just JoJo and those he trusted? Had Pitchblende also told the Normans? As she pondered these questions, the solution to her problem was inevitable when all the questions came together.

She needed to raise some doubts about her weakness and the ability to control her, force Pitchblende to back up. She needed to reduce the number of people who knew of her weakness in the first instance. She was sure the Savoyards would not let her escape without a fight, a fight whose outcome was unknown. With Vas already dead, if she could take out JoJo and whomever he next admitted to the room, she would, she believed, have gone a long way to eliminating the Savoyard leadership.

Vas was the first man she had ever killed. She had been blinded by her rage and had not controlled her strength. She did not like this new characteristic, but JoJo himself had said that she was now a part of this world. She was not known for being violent. All of those she had fought in the past were captured, bound, and left for the police. This new attribute might also lead to a reevaluation by those who sought to destroy her.

So, she would fight her way out. The narrow doorway would serve her purposes at first, allowing entry to only one or two gang members at any time. She knew could handle that rush. But others would arm themselves, and then her strength would cease to be an advantage. She had to do what must be done quickly and flee the scene before the level of violence escalated. My god, the heroine thought to herself, listen to yourself. You’re becoming as cold-blooded as the Savoyards. ‘Do what must be done’, indeed! But she would just have to suffer the upshot of this later. If indeed there was a later.

Looking around, in the corner she found her discarded belt. She picked it up and brushed some of the debris from its shiny leather face. Returning it to her waist, she noticed that it helped to secure her uniform in place, covering her exposed sexual areas more securely and convincingly. But JoJo must have taken her baton. If he carried it with him, she hoped he wouldn’t have time to use it.

To clear her area of engagement and to begin a charade she hoped would give her a brief advantage, she easily pulled the body of the big man to a corner of the room near the door. She pulled the dead man on top of her and waited for JoJo to open the door.

It wasn’t long. As soon as she heard the ‘click’ of the catch, she began rhythmically moving Vas’s body on top of her. When JoJo entered, it looked like Vas’s rape of the helpless superheroine continued. For an added touch, Crimson Flare groaned weakly with each thrust.

‘Vas! VAS!! You sonuvabitch! You paid for your time, and that’s all you’re going to get!’ Turning, he called into the hall, ‘Mach, get in here!’

Then followed the sound that Crimson Flare had hoped for-the sound of the door closing behind JoJo and his henchman. The two Savoyards moved quickly to the scene of the apparent rape, and the heroine felt them grab the bulky bully. As they started to pull his body from hers, she released Vas and, with her knees, gave just enough of the push to cause the two men to lose their balance when his mass carried them away from the supine heroine. She leaped to her feet, took a single large step toward the recovering duo, and seized them separately in her gloved hands. Over the body of their fallen enforcer, she smashed their heads together. Her stomach turned at the sound of cracking bone and the sight of splattering blood. They dropped like the floor had been pulled out from under them. They lay on top of Vas, blood pouring from the large gashes in their heads, covering their faces, then dripping to the floor.

The anger that Crimson Flare felt at these men for what they did and intended to do failed to ease her discomfort at this sight. She dry heaved as the room spun around her. She bent at the waist, placing her satin gloves on her knees. She felt a cold sweat join with all the other fluids that covered her face. It took but a moment, and she was ready to resume her effort at escape. She didn’t know what would happen next, since she was making this up as she went along, but there was no question in her mind that the gang would be disorganised at least for the first few moments of her attack. Those moments would determine the outcome of the battle. She knew that she would either escape or be killed, though the latter consequence would be no different from what they had planned for her anyway.

Then, as if this were a Hollywood script, she found her baton, tucked into the back of JoJo’s belt, as if it were his usual .45. This gave her additional options, and the opportunity to spread confusion. As she prepared for the most important battle of her life, she discovered her cowl, also lying on the floor, tossed away during her rape. She returned it to its proper place, and Crimson Flare was now fully garbed for a climactic fight against her captors. Simply having her costume complete gave her more confidence in her ability to emerge from this struggle. The costume had always done that for her.

Taking her baton, the heroine moved to the corner of the room to the left of the door. There she gave the worn carpeting and bare, unvarnished wood floor a brief blast. The flooring began to smolder almost immediately, wisps of smoke curling upward. In a few minutes the dry wood would take flame, she knew.

Drawing a few deep breaths, she felt the aches that had not yet left her body, as well as the diminishing fire where her internal soreness was easing. There was nothing left now but to begin. She placed her hand on the doorknob and turned it slightly. She noticed a silence where there had been a low murmur just beyond. All attention outside the door was now on that small object.

Taking her baton in her other hand, she elevated it to the level of the navels of those who would be waiting. The heroine took another deep breath…

…and pulled the door open, at the same time firing her baton in an arc fully encompassing the doorway. Sounds of surprise and pain filled the hall. The effect of the baton on those its charge struck was immediate. They were thrown back into the throng behind them with a force that knocked many of them to the bare wooden floor in the hall.

It was only a moment before the Savoyards realised that they were confronted by Crimson Flare. As she expected, they rushed the door en masse. Another blast from her baton slowed this assault and gave her attackers pause, as still more were now lying against the far wall up and down the hall, smoke rising from the midriffs of some, groans rising from the throats of many, those who were conscious, a few writhing in pain.

While the Savoyards considered what to do next, Crimson Flare holstered her baton and stepped into the doorway. There were still too many to try fighting her way through the hall, but the fire she had started would soon give those who remained something else to think about. To buy herself time, she simply grabbed the nearest gang member by the shirt and smashed her fist into his cheekbone, crumpling him to the floor.

A few gang members stared at the female fury, aghast at her strength, which they had believed was contained. She grabbed another Savoyard and dealt him the same as his fellow. The rear of the throng around the door began to thin, she saw. But those nearest to the front were still determined.

One of them, a thug she knew as Miller, swung a chair at her head as she stood in the doorway. The heroine stepped back out of the frame as it smashed against the wall, splintering and showering her with pieces of wood. Miller rushed into the now-empty space and drew a gun from his belt. ‘Now, bitch, I got you,’ he snarled. ‘I will be the one who finishes Crimson Flare.’ He fired twice into the room.

While the bullets buried themselves deep into the walls of the room, thanks to the fact that Miller was firing blindly, the black leather boot of his target whipped upward and smashed against his wrist, sending the pistol flying into the far corner. Crimson stepped in front of her opponent and, with a side kick launched him back into the hall where he took down two other gang members. He continued to lay dazed while they pushed him off themselves and onto the floor.

The superheroine, now feeling more secure in the face of the diminishing throng of Savoyards, stepped again into the frame of the open door. She knew she must take the next step, to get away from this place, before the retreating gang members thought to arm themselves to take her out. Again, her powerful arm reached out and grabbed a nearby gang member. Again, a single punch to the face left him unconscious. Looking around, she stepped out into the hall.

Those in front of her took a step back. But she should have checked behind her more thoroughly. As soon as she had cleared the doorway, a pair of bulky arms wrapped themselves around her torso, lifting her from the floor. She kicked her boots wildly, which did serve to keep the gang members who were still in the hall away from the flailing avenger.

She felt her assailant bend back deeply as her hips rode his and her breath disappeared from her body. Her arms were trapped under the large limbs that prevented any movement on her part. A bit of a cheer and a collective sigh of relief went up from the crowd in front of her. But then three things happened which turned the tables definitively in the masked champion’s favour.

First, the heel of her wildly swinging boots smashed into her attacker’s knee, shattering it. Secondly, she drove the back of her head flush into the front of his face, breaking his nose and disorienting him. And thirdly, the fire roared up the dry wooden wall at a point just behind the gang who believed that the heroine had been recaptured. Instead, the thug who held her simultaneously screamed in pain and collapsed to the bare floor. As he fell, she twisted her body in his grasp, so that as he landed on his side. His arms were forced open by her strength and she was able to escape his grasp. The gang now found themselves confronted by the powerful avenger and trapped from behind by a blaze surging out of control, between Scylla and Charybdis.

The fire was racing up the wall, devouring the dry wood, sheetrock, and wallpaper, at the same time that it was spreading out across the floor. The Savoyards were becoming trapped in their own headquarters, as the blaze was between them and the stairs. Panic set in as smoke quickly filled the hall.

Crimson Flare had little to do as the gang turned on itself, those members nearest the rising inferno pushing back, those nearest the petite superheroine turning from her and seeking egress and the safety of the open air.

She saw fists fly as the struggles of the gang members increased. In the narrow confines of the hall, with threats blocking both ends of the passage, the shouts and curses rose in volume and anger. And all the while, the fire rose to the ceiling, creating what was literally a wall of flame at one end. Crimson Flare’s satisfaction was short-lived as she realised, only shortly before the gang did, that in this comparison, she was the lesser threat.

The Savoyards turned on her as one man. The body of them rushed her, driving her back into the room where she had been bound and raped only a short while before. The three who gripped her drove her to the floor, holding her there. Fortunately, now that the hallway was clear, the other gang members did not follow these three, but rather sought only safety down the corridor to the stairwell at the end of the hall.

The force with which she had been driven to the floor dazed the masked heroine. Helpless, she felt herself dragged to her feet and once again the force of powerful blows punished her head and body.

One of her attackers had moved behind her and, holding her arms back in a double chicken wing, left her an open, inviting target for his comrades. But they soon tired of this sport, and, fearing for delaying too long in the burning building, each gave her a farewell punch before she was dropped to the now-warm floor.

One of them wound up and delivered a right cross to the left side of her jaw. The beautiful and mysterious heroine’s head twisted hard to the right and her entire body was lifted from the floor by the force of the blow. As soon as he had delivered this farewell, the young man in the black t-shirt raced from the room and turned right to run down the hall. The second attacker had picked up a splintered leg remaining from the chair broken when Miller had failed to hit the champion mere moments earlier. Swinging it like a baseball bat, the defenseless heroine was doubled over when it powered into her stomach. She gasped for breath and found only the smoke-filled air of the room. Coughing wracked her body, as the remaining Savoyard, who now released his chicken wing, gave her a hard bum’s rush into the supporting wall in front of her. Her cowled head smashed into the barrier and she crumpled to the floor, barely conscious. Her body was almost swallowed up in the smoke, which was settling in the room. Then he walked over to the avenger’s unmoving body and drove his work boot into her crotch, almost raising her from the floor. As he left the room, he turned and saw that she had disappeared into the layers of smoke, which was now reaching up the walls of what had been Crimson Flare’s torture chamber.

Silence reigned in the empty room for many moments. Beneath the smoke, Crimson Flare stirred, pain again filling her groin. Tears flowed from her burning eyes, and sharp pain stabbed at her lungs as they sought something other than the acrid smoke that surrounded her. She pushed herself to her hands and knees, but her diminutive form was still not high enough above the floor to escape the smoke. She reached her gloved hand forward, feeling for the wall.

She fell forward, finding support for her collapsing body in the vertical partition. She continued to cough, not yet finding enough unsmogged air to clear her lungs. She pressed the side of her face against the warming wall, pushing herself up into a fully kneeling position. At last, her face rose above the heavy layers of smoke nearest the floor.

She turned her body, pressing her exposed torso against the wall, raising both her hands above her head as if trying to grab the smooth plaster to help rise to her feet.

Behind the struggling heroine, fire raced down the hall, blocking the doorway with a sheet of flame.

Using her returning superstrength, Crimson Flare at last pushed herself to her feet. She stood unsteadily, still leaning against the wall, trying to draw in enough fresh air in the poisonous atmosphere around her to revive herself fully.

Outside the room, the fire had by now engulfed two of the warehouse’s floors. Within the building, occasional screams could be heard, as the flames swallowed up members of the Savoyards who were unable to escape. Moving through air shafts, and aided by the collapse of dry wooden floors within, the fire spread throughout the warehouse headquarters with unbelievable speed. Following these routes, it soon made its way to the basement and the chemicals used in the Savoyards’ drug business. The heat and flame and these chemicals would soon make an explosive mixture.

The masked heroine turned, so that now she leaned with her back to the wall. She continued to fight for breath, continued to cough and hack as her body sought to clear her smoke-filled lungs. Looking around the room through tear-stained eyes, she saw nothing but smoke and flame. The wall behind her and the hall beyond the open door were fully engaged. Suddenly, the blazing wooden doorframe separated from the wall, falling inward at an odd angle.

She was trapped! The only escape from the room was the window through which she had earlier seen the red morning sky. She stumbled forward again, this time making her way to the window. In the distance she could hear the sirens of Mitropoulos’ Fire Department on its way. They couldn’t save this building, but they could prevent the fire from spreading to nearby structures.

Through the glass she saw only the river three stories below her. The window surveyed a sheer drop of thirty feet or more. Below her, the threatened superheroine could see the red reflection of the fire on the choppy surface of the Hutson River. And she knew that there was absolutely no choice, if she were to survive.

Raising her boot, the black leather sole smashed through the heating glass. With most of the pane gone, the heroine could stoop down and finally find some fresh air to clear her head for the challenge now facing her. She kicked away broken shards of glass from along the base of the window frame, and then did the same along the sides.

Outside there was a narrow ledge. Without even pausing to think, she pushed her small body through the opening she had made and sat on the slender shelf. She looked only for a moment at the water lapping below her, then using her reviving might, she pushed off from the side of the building, soaring far out over the river, downward toward the water.

Mere moments after she began her flight, a shattering explosion ripped through the basement of the warehouse. Chunks of brick, wood, and concrete flew through the air. The hurtling body of the superheroine became a target for the shrapnel. But she arrived at the cool waters with no further scathing.

She plunged deep beneath the surface. Once again, her lungs ached with the desire for a breath of fresh air. She pushed herself upward through the dark liquid, eventually breaking the surface facing the burning house of horror. Without any remorse, she turned her back on its demise and swam for the far shore.

End of Chapter Four