Ellen Dyson was, in every sense of the word, a nerd. She was most definitely plain and ungraceful, physically and socially, but these flaws were both balanced and exacerbated by her superb intellect. Ellen had always been by far the smartest person in school, but it also made her the largest social outcast. Junior high had been hell, and only her family’s move had saved her from worse in high school. In her new high school, she found herself in a select group of “gifted” kids, who, although they were all subject to the high school humiliations of the unpopular, the shared experience bonded them together as kindred spirits. It was there that she found both a fondness and high aptitude for fantasy gaming, allowing her to escape into any one of several powerful alter egos. She graduated from high school in three years, and finally, in college, met her intellectual equal, Dennis.
The two became fast friends, both working in biological, chemical, and physical sciences with equal resolve and the unique quality of being able to provide the missing links in each other’s train of thought. Dennis and Ellen spent their down time in fantasy gaming, usually working together with efficiency, a certain style that gained them some admirers, and surprising ruthlessness when called for.
Strangely, but perhaps not-entirely-surprising, this incredible synergy did not blossom into romance. They were still dreaming of the perfect mate, unattainable except in their fantasy game world, and even there, their characters never once shared an intimate bed, instead taking the most beautiful avatars as sex partners by any means at their disposal.
Therefore, it was no surprise that when they received their Ph.D degrees five years later, they went their separate ways, he into pharmaceutical research, she to neurology, and on alternate sides of the country. Although no longer co-located, they were still the masterful fantasy gaming pair online, with a negligible decline in their ability to work together. However, their lives began to diverge to the point where it was rare that they were online at the same time.
Tragedy struck when Ellen was 24. Her doting parents were killed in a failed carjacking, leaving the poor girl devastated. Dennis was at her side within hours, and he watched over his friend for two weeks, putting his own life on hold, but she urged him to go back, because she could not take advantage of his friendship like that. He reluctantly agreed, and from this parting, Ellen found the strength to move her own life forward.
About a month later, one of her well-meaning co-workers dragged her to a party, where she met George, a strong, handsome, successful businessman who had been widowed. An older gentleman, his gentle, understanding demeanor comforted her, and they quickly became friends. Ellen was attracted to him beyond friendship, but she had no seduction skills in the real world; fortunately, for her, George made a very gentle overture during one of their good night hugs, and her virginity was a memory before midnight.
It was a whirlwind romance between the seemingly ill-matched nerdy young college professor and the handsome, mature businessman, but George was attentive, caring, supportive, and by anyone's account, Ellen’s Prince Charming. They were wed within four months of that first meeting, eloping on a honeymoon cruise to the Caribbean.
Ellen couldn’t believe her luck, and for the first six months, everything was almost fairy-tale perfect except that George’s investments went sour, threatening to take his associated businesses under, but Ellen was happy to support her beloved husband just as he had supported her in her time of need. Besides, her parents had left her more than enough to provide for herself and her soon-to-be-expanding family.
George, bless his heart, was still worried about his business, and he wanted to hold off on children until he had his life back on an even keel. She agreed, knowing that he was under stress and out of town a lot. Indeed, George was working extremely hard to hold up his end of the household, having to fly to investor meetings almost every other week, only to return depressed at each failure. Throughout, Ellen remained the ever-faithful trooper, even insisting that her husband had to keep appearances, flying first class, and wining and dining the powerful people who were used to such treatment.
The end of Ellen’s fairy tale came swiftly and cruelly: George went to Australia for two weeks of investor meetings. He had insisted that, after his meetings, she join him for an indefinite, extended, well-deserved vacation and alone time with the man she loved—her first-class ticket to Australia sat in the corner of her mirror. Four days before her departure, she came home to find a man waiting for her. “Mrs. O’Connor?” he pleasantly asked. She answered affirmatively, and he handed her a large envelope. “You’ve been served. Have a nice evening.” It turned out that Ellen was being sued by a more than a dozen people whose money George had taken under false pretenses. She called the hotel right away, but was devastated to find that no one by the name of George O’Connor had been registered there in the past ten days, and his cell phone never picked up.
After two days of fruitless searching, Ellen began to realize the depth of her predicament. George had insisted that she sign on as an equal partner in his business when they had married, ostensibly to share in the wealth, but in his absence, she was now being held responsible for the victims left in his deceitful wake. The police came to pick her up the night before she was due to leave for Australia because she and her absentee husband had been indicted for criminal fraud, and the increasing number of civil suits became the least of her problems.
Despite her lawyer’s protests, Ellen had volunteered all of her material assets to help pay restitution to George’s victims, including all of her nest egg from her parents’ death, her own remaining savings, and her house. She pleaded not guilty, believing that her transparency and her genuine remorse would reinforce her rightful claim that she had been misled by her missing husband as well.
Unfortunately, the DA didn’t believe her, and aggressively did everything he could to portray her as an amoral temptress during the trial, using the unused open return ticket as damning evidence of her complicity. He portrayed her remorse as a coldly calculated effort to shield herself from the full weight of justice, and insinuated that she had to have been the mastermind of the whole scheme; after all, she was a certified genius, and besides, how else could someone who looked like her catch someone who looked like George. The DA had even obtained transcripts of her on-line gaming and pointed to her most ruthless alter ego as “the real Ellen Dyson.” In his summation, he brought up Enron and likened her to Bernie Madoff, stealing money from decent, hard-working people.
The jury believed that she was materially involved, and wanted to put her away for twenty years. At sentencing, however, the judge wasn’t so sure that Ellen was the mastermind, pointing out that no one had proven that she'd received any money from the scan, and the presumption that it was all waiting for her with George in Australia was just that. She worried that they were penalizing Bernie Madoff by proxy. In the end, given that no one named George O’Connell had been on record as leaving for Australia, and Ellen's unwavering declaration of innocence, even in the face of the DA’s aggressive badgering, left enough of a doubt in the judge’s mind that she ignored the jury's recommendation. Instead, the judge gave Ellen a year of observation in a mental facility and five years’ probation instead of jail time, citing Ellen’s voluntary forfeiture of all her financial assets and explicit wish for their use as mitigating factors. Nonetheless, she was a convicted felon, and the University fired her, turning her promising academic career turned to ashes.
Despite her best efforts not to involve him, somehow, Dennis found out and offered to come to her rescue, but she refused and rebuffed his efforts, without really knowing why. Ellen managed to convince herself that it was for his sake; a vice president of R&D should not be associating with a convicted felon.
Nonetheless, Dennis left money for Ellen through her lawyer, hoping that one day his friend would come to her senses and that, even if she didn’t want to talk to him, she would accept his offer of help.
Ellen was a model inmate, and when she was released, she got a job as a clerk in a liquor store, which allowed her to support herself. Her tiny two-room apartment wasn’t in the greatest neighborhood, but she felt that all of this was fair penance for letting herself be deceived. Despite being robbed at gunpoint twice in her first few months of freedom, she rationalized that, as long as she could go on-line and be her fantasy self, this was far better than being in prison.
However, one day after work, she came home to find that she had been burglarized, and her computer, her lifeline was gone. It would take at least two months to replace! As she dumbly gave her report to the police, she overheard one of the male officers cynically remark that it was too bad she hadn’t been home; that way, the burglar would have seen her and they could have just arrested the stone statue that used to be the burglar. Something inside of Ellen Dyson finally snapped, and she vowed never to let any man victimize her in any way, ever again.
It had started with the realization that her life was over at the young age of twenty-five, because her former path, once so secure, was no longer available to her, for society had no use for ugly, nerdy girls outside of the science lab.
Ellen needed a new life, one where she wasn’t ugly and a convicted felon. This meant that she had to die. While Ellen was almost broke, she was not without resources, and friends, especially from the University’s Chem lab and more importantly, its stockroom. The things she needed were surprisingly common, and would not be missed in the quantities she required. She also cashed in the trust fund Dennis had set up for her, telling her lawyer to write him a thank you note, but not to disclose her whereabouts. His presence would only complicate things for both of them. There were still many problems related to the issue of her new identity. She did not have anywhere near enough money for a boob job, let alone a complete facial reconstruction, fingerprint erasure, some body sculpting—plus the boob job, and to have all of it done in secret.
This was the moment of truth. Did she have enough nerve to kill Ellen Dyson, in spirit as well as deed? No, she didn’t; but Felicia Fatalia, hit woman and one of her on-line persona, did. As Felicia menacingly stood over her, Ellen, with trembling hands, typed a web address that was sent through several proxies, revealing a hidden cache of files on the server of a Swiss Bank, where they’d been stored for about three years. Lady Sylvie Mes-Méram, the seductive and elegant superspy, leaned over the women’s shoulders to read the scientific notes for her favorite information-gathering weapon, le gaz de Mes-Méram. This had been where fantasy had always met the impenetrable wall of reality. Now, the imperative to breach that wall gave Lady Mes-Méram a reason to contact Substrate, who could make any chemical reaction happen, no matter how complicated or rare. Drawing on Ellen’s vast knowledge of neurobiology and neurochemistry, which had grown enormously since the last time the super-heroine had appeared back in high school, the heretofore missing links were quickly deduced, a plan was created, and, at gunpoint, Felicia Fatalia directed her victim to fetch the instrument of her own death. With Sylvie watching closely for any sign of duplicity and advising their victim on style, Ellen Dyson returned to the villainess’ hideout with two cartons of Virginia Slim 120’s. “Start smoking,” ordered Felicia, and Ellen took her first-ever drag from a cigarette.
Two months later, Ellen was still held captive in the warehouse, only venturing out to buy more cigarettes and other accessories, and always in the company of Lady Mes-Méram. The super-heroine Substrate had not been any help; she had been spending most of her time in the makeshift lab anyway, occasionally appearing to ask Ellen a question about neurobiology. Ellen had given up asking Substrate for help, since the obviously corrupted and co-opted teen super-heroine would merely giggle in response, leaving Ellen to the mercies of the other two villainesses. Her lack of exercise and diet in captivity had added at least twenty pounds to her boyish figure, causing Felicia to mock, “Wow. Maybe we’ll give you a real woman’s body yet,” on more than one occasion. “It’ll also make it more difficult for them to recognize you—later.”
Ellen was now a regular smoker as well, under the watchful tutelage of Lady Mes-Méram, and aided by the plethora of smoking fetish material on the net. Ellen now had several cigarette holders, cigarette cases, and her brand repertoire had expanded to include the long brown cigarettes called “Mores”, incredibly slim ones named “Capris”, festively-colored cigarettes, and black cigarettes, both with gold-papered ends. “Eet will become important—later,” the superspy had cooed when Ellen had asked why she was spending so much time on smoking. However, for whatever reason, the superspy had seemed to take an interest in the nerdy girl, so Ellen did her best to learn how to use all the different smoking paraphernalia, about all of the different brands, and paid particular attention to make sure that she always smoked with style. Ellen hoped that if she stayed on Lady Mes-Méram’s good side, the spy might be able to stop the hit woman from killing her.
One night, Substrate made a loud noise from the lab. Ellen was the first one there, simply because she had been the closest. “I’ve got it!” the brainy now-supervillainess excitedly declared. “Gaz de Mes-Méram! It works like it should! All we need is the targeting agent!”
“Excéllent,” the French superspy echoed. “Now, we may proceed wiz ze plan toute de suite!”
“Not so fast, ladies,” Felicia snapped, instantly shutting down the enthusiastic celebration. “We need to make sure that this shit works in the field, not just the lab.” Ellen shuddered as the cold, calculating assassin fixed her steely glare on her. “And we need to make sure that Tinker Bell here can follow orders.” There was a silence, and the hit woman pointedly finished, “if not, we’ll have to get rid of her and find another agent.”
“Don’t worry Felicia, I can do whatever you want me to do! Really, I know I can! I won’t let you down! I can follow whatever orders you give me!” Ellen immediately begged.
“You’d better be able to,” Felicia shot back. She smiled, which did not comfort Ellen in the least. “Because now that we have the formula, we don’t really need you at all.”
The plan was simple: find a man, use the gas, and make him do something that he would not normally do. Felicia thought that Ellen was the perfect test subject, since not many men would give such a frumpy girl the time of day. Sylvie had scoped out a gorgeous gym rat; Ellen was to capture him, and then bring him back to the hideout as he left his daily workout. However, the devious assassin hadn’t revealed the full extent of her plan to the girl. Felicia figured that if the gas could get him back to the lair with Ellen, and then into her pussy, then yes, the formula did work as advertised, and they could proceed with the master plan. “Bonne chance, ma cherie,” Sylvie said, blowing Ellen a kiss as she left the warehouse.
Ellen waited in the parking lot in a nondescript car that Felicia had “secured, and the less you know, the better.” She passed the time by studying the “mission dossier” to memorize the face of the man she was to seduce using chemical-saturated Virginia Slim 120s. Lady Mes-Méram had allowed her to choose the brand for today, and noted approvingly that Ellen had chosen the cigarette least likely to be remembered by a casual passer-by. The doctored cigarettes were stored in a gold case to distinguish them from her “normal” cigarettes in their pack. Her target came out, sharply dressed in a suit. Ellen took a deep breath, removed one of the long white cigarettes from the gold case, and lit it, filling the car with a slightly sweet-smelling smoke. “Excuse me,” she called, “I’m having some car trouble. It won’t start. Could you help?” While Felicia had told her to walk right up to him and blow the smoke in his face, Ellen wasn’t that bold. As long as the guy gets gassed, she thought, what does it matter?
John Castor looked at the plain woman in the car, and had no interest at all—if she’d have been a looker, maybe he could have gotten a phone number or something useful, but his conscience nagged at him for having such a cynical thought. He figured that he would put one in the positive karma bag, and walked over to her. He opened the door and almost gagged from the smoke filling the car. Great, not only is she ugly, she’s a smoker. “Can you turn the ignition?” There wasn’t even so much as a click. “Open the hood, please.” John blinked a couple of times to clear his vision; his eyes were burning. “Do you have a flashlight?” he asked, walking to the front of the car, relieved to get away from the smoke.
The girl got out of the car and handed him a flashlight. He bent over to take a look but the air around him suddenly filled with smoke. “Do you—mind?” he angrily asked, standing up. “I don’t care if you want to pollute your lungs, but at least have—” He got another face full of the sweet-smelling smoke from her lips. “—the… decency… decency… to…” John breathed in another cloud of the smoke as the woman took rapid-fire drags, almost as if… as if… she was trying to…
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“John,” he haltingly answered, looking at her with a funny expression. He sniffed the air, and she exhaled more smoke at him. He watched as she walked past him, and took a deep sniff as she passed. There was something in the air… He barely noticed that she did something under the hood. “What are you…?”
“Why don’t you just forget about that and climb in the passenger side of my car?” the girl smiled.
John did as he was asked, still trying to place the scent, but the smoke that lingered in the car seemed to make not only his vision hazy, but his thoughts as well. He opened his mouth to say… something, but he heard her say, “Why don’t you just relax and take a little nap after your tiring workout? Just take a little bitty nap for me, John. Can you do that?”
It sure sounded like a good idea to him. A nap was just the thing to refresh him after his tiring workout. “Suuurrre,” he drawled, and was fast asleep in seconds. John never even heard the car start or felt the acceleration as Ellen pulled away from the gym.
“Wakey, Johnny,” Ellen said, smiling. So far, the gas had performed exactly as Lady Mes-Méram and Substrate had predicted. It suppressed higher brain functions, while simultaneously enhancing the more primal signals that were usually only perceived at the subconscious level, and filtered by the higher brain functions. One of them was responsible for primal attraction. The microscopic bits of DNA expelled in the smoke triggered those receptors, effectively defining the smoker’s unique chemical signature, normally ignored amidst all the other brain processing, as a target object for the fogged brain. The total effect was to render the victim extremely suggestible, but only to the person who was smoking. That had been why Ellen had to learn how to smoke; uninhaled smoke didn’t quite have enough DNA in it for the gas to do much more than put someone to sleep.
John sleepily opened his eyes, trying to gather enough wits to figure out exactly what was going on. He was at the gym… no, where was he? After he left the gym… something about a broken car… his… no. Some ugly chick… A smoker… disgusting…
Suddenly, he heard a click of a lighter, and instinctively turned toward the source. It was the ugly smoking chick! And then he was wrapped in a wreath of strangely sweet-smelling smoke, and she was saying something. As more smoke filled the car, he found what she was saying to be very important, and agreed with her. He got out of the car and followed her into a deserted-looking warehouse.
Ellen called for her captors. She was eager to show Felicia that she could be the good little soldier, and maybe that would make the gang leader decide to spare her. She took a deep drag from the laced cigarette, and exhaled forcefully into John’s face, keeping him under her spell.
Felicia was the first to appear. “Great,” she curtly said. “Now let’s make him do something he normally wouldn’t. Make him fuck you. Here. Now.”
Ellen gasped in shock. Not that John wasn’t attractive—in fact, he was gorgeous, but… sex was supposed to be something… private and loving. The appearance of Felicia’s gun quickly overcame any reluctance Ellen felt.
John watched in wonder as the ugly chick picked up a gun and pointed it at air, and her voice changed; if he hadn’t been watching, he would have thought that there was another person in the room. He watched her put the gun back down and draw on her cigarette before walking to him. He leaned forward slightly for more of the interestingly scented smoke, and she did not disappoint him. Then she told him to get undressed, and make himself hard.
He did all of this surrounded by a smoky haze, and although he didn’t know why, it sounded like a good idea, so he did, getting a sinking feeling when she started to disrobe as well. Even though she wasn’t close to his type, there was something at the back of his mind keeping him erotically interested enough that his hand job was working—albeit very slowly.
“We will ’ave to teach you ze bedroom skeels next,” Lady Mes-Méram observed. “You do not even know ’ow to undress properly. Nonezeless, you must get ready for ’eem.” Ellen fingered herself, sending sexual signals through her body for the first time in over twenty months, and she was wet and ready very quickly.
All of this was amusing to John as he watched the ugly chick’s voice change again. This time, it was kind of French-sounding, and she began to play with her pussy. Probably doesn’t get much dick, he snickered to himself, but when she actually asked him, he was surprised that his cock successfully fought his revulsion to become a little harder. She led him over to a sofa, and told him to fuck her. Feeling oddly enthusiastic without feeling aroused, John knelt, positioned himself, and plunged into her. She was wet, and came within the first few strokes, writhing and wailing in joy. Yeah, I am pretty good at this, he smiled, and redoubled his efforts.
Watching all of this was making Sylvie increasingly horny. She hadn’t had any sex since Felicia had signed her up for this operation, and there had been no opportunity to slip away for a little relaxing pas-de-deux. Given Felicia’s compulsive nature, control issues, and temper, the French superspy was positive that an unexcused absence to have a liaison could be markedly more than just dangerous. Ellen’s lack of skill at giving pleasure did not keep the girl from receiving it, and Sylvie was getting jealous, and very tired of being a spectator. She got her opening after Ellen’s third orgasm, when the mousy girl gasped to her stud that she needed a break, extricated herself from beneath him, and staggered away on rubbery legs.
Lady Mes-Méram grabbed the case and lit one of the special cigarettes. Luxuriating in the first drag, french-inhaled (of course), the sexy spy fixed her gaze on their prisoner before surrounding him with her namesake gas. “And now, cheri,” she husked, “eet eez my turn.” Sylvie took another drag and dosed him again, purring, “Lie down zere and prepare to receive ze love-making.”
Surrounded by the smoke that he was coming to love, John began to obey, keeping his eyes on the ugly chick who had just pushed him away on the verge of passing out. She had made a remarkable recovery, and now was looking at him with an incredibly sensual stare. He absently reached for his softening dick, but then she began to move toward him with such a natural, inflammatory, sexual grace that his cock began to swell in spite of the woman’s—plainness. She seemed too hot now to be ugly.
Lady Mes-Méram shimmied onto her stud’s cock with a satisfied sigh, and slowly began to move her hips. It was good to have a man again. He felt wonderful, if merely average in size, inside her. She stirred her juices with his cock for a while, savoring the sizzle that began to increase in intensity, and culminated in a relaxing, yet all-encompassing orgasm. Sylvie sighed; it was marvelous, but good sex was a two-way proposition, and no one was ever going to accuse the Lady Mes-Méram of just being average in bed. She lit another of the special cigarettes and exhaled into John’s fascinated face. After making sure that he’d breathed enough gas for the next phase, she leaned forward and whispered, “You will not let yourself go eenside of me, cheri. You will contain yourself, oui?”
John nodded, and then the plain chick started moving differently on top of him, and the sensations from his cock magnified. Whatever the hell she was doing now, it was making his dick sing more than he could remember! It was as if speaking in a French accent gave her the sexual skills of a French courtesan! He never would have thought that an ugly chick could fuck like this! She came with a loud, deep, throaty moan, drenching his pubes, and John began to shudder as her pussy contractions pushed him to the edge.
Lady Mes-Méram felt her sex toy begin to vibrate and moan; he was close. Begrudgingly shaking off her orgasmic lassitude, Sylvie reached down and gave him a pair of precisely-located squeezes. Her partner groaned once, loudly, as his head snapped back and hit the sofa with a distinct thump. He tried to arch his back, but she held him still with her weight. A few moments later, she dismounted him. “Cherie, I know zat ’e eez not your type but—?”
The hit woman shook her head violently in response. “What about me?” came an eager question from Substrate.
“Non, my leetle one,” Sylvie gently replied, “ze first time should be weez someone tu aimes, not some ’eepnotized sex toy.”
“Enough of this, ladies,” Felicia irritably snapped. “Now that we know the stuff works, it’s time for our experimental subject to go bye-bye. Smoke him, Sylvie,” she curtly ordered. Watching Sylvie cum had started a distracting buzz between her legs, and Felicia’s pussy reminded her that it needed attention. She also wanted a cigar, but the frilly Frenchwoman had considered it too masculine even just to ask for one at the tobacco shop. Both problems could be solved, but Felicia figured that the less she was seen in public, the better. Her annoyance increased, along with the buzz between her legs when Sylvie put a cigarette into a long black holder first, and then took a deep drag, breasts rising. She exhaled downward forcefully at the man, aborting his attempt to reach for her. As the French superspy gazed downward at him, she took another elegant draw. Damn, it’s sexy the way she does that, thought Felicia. I wonder if she does girls—off the job.
Sylvie sat next to the man, who regarded her with fascination engendered by the smoke. “Now eet eez your turn, mon cheri,” she cooed, wrapping one hand around his softened member. She began to stroke him, all the while bathing his face in le gaz de Mes-Méram.
John regarded the ugly woman smoking through the cigarette holder and blowing the sweet smoke at him, but she was giving him an exquisite handjob, and the smoke didn’t smell bad at all. He quickly decided that he liked her as the French-sounding woman the best. Suddenly, his cock was boiling over and she was cooing at him, surrounding him with smoke and he was cumming and cumming and cumming…
Sylvie spoke to her sex toy in the tones one would use with a child at bedtime, gently, constantly bidding him to sleep throughout his long orgasm. When he finished, he stirred to kiss her, but a brush of her hand against his chest was enough to sabotage the attempt. “Sleep, ma chere, sleep, deeply and you will forget everyzing. Rest easy and sleep.” Saturated with orgasmic exhaustion and the gas, the man was deeply asleep within seconds without any further resistance.
“Excellent work, Sylvie,” Felicia said, casually adding, “Why don’t you take Substrate out for some frozen custard to celebrate her accomplishment with the gas? I'm going to have a little chat with our friend here before I take him home.” As Substrate excitedly turned away, the hit woman mouthed, “No loose ends,” to the spy, getting a surreptitious, although disappointed, nod of affirmation in return. Felicia knew that despite her disappointment, Sylvie was also a professional, and thoroughly understood the difficulties that loose ends could pose. After the spy had departed with the merrily chattering teen, Felicia carefully began to fit the silencer onto her gun. Ellen gasped in horror at the realization of what was about to happen and opened her mouth to protest, but Felicia cut her off with, “Just be thankful this isn’t you.” The indignant horror fled her face along with all color, replaced by fear. Good. Felicia decided that a little more intimidation wouldn’t hurt. “And it still might be,” she warned, making the girl vanish. Felicia Fatale calmly finished putting the silencer onto her weapon. Standing up, she admitted, “You really did make a pretty boy toy,” to the unconscious man as an apology. No loose ends.
An hour later, as she sped away from a deserted stretch of waterfront in the car she’d appropriated, the assassin off-handedly wondered if she could find a decent cigar at this time of night. Her other problem would have to wait; she couldn’t risk that much exposure just yet.