Nancy entered her apartment, swinging the door open with her hip as she brandished the large pizza that she had picked up on her way home, "Alex, I'm..."

The carpet was messed up. A chair was knocked over. The kitchen was still slightly messy from breakfast that morning.

Nancy closed her eyes, thumped the pizza onto the table, and considered which of two dozen vile strings of curses she should use this time. Alex, her darling, lovable, adorable boyfriend, had been kidnapped. Again.

One of the two of them was supremely unlucky.

Nancy took a breath. It was not Alex's fault. He could be a little thick when it came to clearly nefarious people taking advantage of him, but it wasn't like he went out looking for trouble. Hell, she had specifically asked him to stay inside the apartment all day today, because she had specifically wanted him away from danger so that they could actually have a real date night tonight. An actual evening in that didn't involve her rescuing him from monsters, cultists, lunatics, or criminals. Just a normal evening for Nancy to sort out how she felt about this boy she'd been rescuing without realizing, over and over again, for well over a year. This boy who every ne'er do well to cross her path had seemingly decided was her secret boyfriend anyway...

And the only person besides one or two of her superhero friends who knew that Nancy was Lady Starlight...and that Lady Starlight was Nancy.

She strode out of the entry hall towards the kitchen, one hand reaching out to run over the apron that had not been hung up...which more than anything else had shown that Alex had indeed been grabbed and hadn't just run out to get something. He might be messy and unlucky in many aspects of his life, but the boy could cook and loved to do it...and had more or less taken over her kitchen. He was always particular about cleaning up...which meant that this particular snatch and grab had to have happened virtually the instant that Nancy had gotten called away for that bloody Super League conference. She pressed a small recessed button by the breadbox, and the breadbox itself flipped around to reveal a small secret screen that was connected up to a pair of cameras that covered the entrance and main living space of Nancy's apartment.

Given how kidnap prone Alex was, Nancy had had a techie friend of hers from the League install them as a bit of an insurance policy...which meant that she should be able to...ah. There we are.

Nancy watched as Alex answered the door. A woman stepped inside, clad in black leather, and wearing a superior sort of smirk as she did...something. Some arcane motion and words, because the camera went briefly grainy as Alex stiffened, thrashed in place, and then toppled backwards. Nancy gritted her teeth at that, leaning in closer. She recognized the bitch.

Morgaine Lancaster.

Unlike many of the two bit sorcerers and magicians that Lady Starlight had to deal with normally, Morgaine Lancaster was the real deal. A competent practicioner of the dark arts, she combined black magic, an ambitious thirst for power, and an obsession with drawing her magical powers and life force from the frequent practice of depraved, kinky, sexual acts. She owned half the sex clubs and other dens of iniquity in the city, and had clawed her way to municipal prominence over the past year. She had been on Lady Starlight's radar for a while, but given the city ending or world ending foes she had often fought, had seemed like something that could be safely left for another day.

Until now that was.

Nancy watched as Morgaine bent down and, clearly with the help of whatever spell she had cast, began to rapidly tie Alex up on the mussed up carpet. His thrashing knocked the chair over as he was wrenched into a brutal hogtie, and Nancy bit her lip in fury as Morgaine traced gloating proprietary hands over her boyfriend's body. As she touched him, reached down his pajama pants to tease his cock, and then back up to plunge her fingers into his mouth with devilish delight before shoving a large ball gag in. Tendrils of darkness plucked at him, pulling him up to float at Morgaine's hip, and she squeezed Alex's ass a few more times, delighting in her control before she wiggled her fingers again, muttering another spell. An illusion sprang into existence, wrapping Alex up and making it appear that Morgaine was totting an overlarge gym bag...and she turned and left.

The whole thing couldn't have taken more than five minutes. And Nancy hadn't been able to stop it. Hadn't even known about it until this moment.

Sensors. She was going to install sensors into...into...

She swore again, and hurriedly began stripping down to get into her Lady Starlight outfit. Maybe the silver lining out of this would be convincing Alex of the need to not answer the bloody door when she was away...

----

Alex moaned as he squirmed in his bonds, flushing as he felt many hands composed of darkness and villainy tracing over his naked flesh. His arms were held high above him in thick leather cuffs. A large leather collar was buckled around his neck, and his legs were held far apart by a large spreader bar. He was intensely vulnerable, still wearing his pajama pants, yet that wasn't the worst part. At this point in his life, he had spent weeks and weeks of time tied up in various methods. Captured by criminals, enslaved by seductive lunatics, staked out and prepared for some cultist ritual, or simply nabbed by someone like Snakebite who wanted to thumb their nose at Lady Starlight by irritating her with another abduction of her boyfriend. Bondage, at this point, was pretty normal for Alex.

No, the worst part was that he had swum back up to consciousness in the middle of some sort of villainess monologue.

"...most delicious part of it all my sweet." The hands squeezed and groped Alex's ass, patting his jawline, and running down his arms and legs, "Once this spell is complete, you're going to be a passenger in your own brain for a full day. Plenty of time for me to drop you off back at your apartment...where your dear Lady Starlight will find you. Where you will assure her that everything is alright, and insist on an intimate evening in with just the two of you. And then, mmmmm...then, you'll tie her up, using some special cuffs that I'll have left you...and then you'll call me. And so by tomorrow evening, I'll have Lady Starlight in the position you are in now, sweetling. I can use a superheroine of her potency for years of spells...all while ensuring her compliance by keeping you here on a short leash."

Alex groaned, struggling and shaking his head wildly, and the villainess who was still standing somewhere out of his field of vision cackled, "There's no point in struggling. You are not getting away. There's no possible way for you to escape short of--"

High above where Alex stood glass shattered. A rolling boom shuddered its way through the complex, reaching down to where he stood, swaying amid the devilish seductive magical field that had already pulled energy from him and was continuing to do so. Alex perked up, craning his neck upwards, just in time.

"WHERE IS HE!?" Lady Starlight boomed from on high, sweeping across Alex's vision, clad in her form fitting black and silver catsuit, her white leather boots, that almost liquid seeming cape billowing around her and framing her in its sensual embrace. Her white hair was free of any accouterments, and it waved about in the stormy wind of her passage...and her deep purple eyes blazed with righteous fury behind the domino mask that helped keep her identity hidden from (almost) everyone.

The villainess screeched in fear and fury of her own, and the hands that had been groping and toying with Alex suddenly vanished in a rush of wind, arrowing themselves upwards to grasp and grapple with Lady Starlight. Alex heard the metallic sounds of rapid footsteps as the woman who had taken him decided that discretion was the better part of valour and fled, casting further ravening energy swirls of madness and destruction towards where Lady Starlight hovered, battling with her eldritch summoned minions. Arcs of brilliant light soon began to cut through the darkness, and the entire space was filled with the din of heroic battle.

Alex heaved a sigh of relief and allowed himself to sag a little in his bonds as he hung in place, his eyes flicking up to watch with a sort of eager academic interest that any sports fan might recognize. He was utterly confident that Lady Starlight, that Nancy, would win. That his girlfriend would save him. He squirmed in delight, a flush of purest pleasure and happiness suffusing his face. She always saved him, after all.

He was the luckiest fellow alive.