Diana got home, deposited Natasha on the table, and began doing her laundry, all around 10:30 at night. Everything hurt. Especially her head. This was a terrible, terrible headache . . .

Meanwhile, Natasha herself gave hugs to distribute the warmth. An especially long one went to poor Becky, who was lost and afraid without her twin by her side.

"What's the news? What's her kink?" Rei asked, ready to begin planning.

On the napkin, Natasha wrote, [She likes curves, long legs, and a nice mouth. She likes feet. She gets off on being insulted.]

"Well, shit," Kayla let out a drawn-out sigh. "Val has all that. Too bad you can't talk," she added, "or we could fight back."

"That's mean!" Paris interjected. "Say sorry to Natasha."

"No, no, that's an interesting point," Rei said, interrupting a fight before it could begin. "Physically, Natasha's got everything Diana wants. Val's using what she has as leverage, but if you act like you like her . . . you might just be a competitor for Diana's attention. One she doesn't have to kill for."

Anne, from her glass prison, realized something. "So we were just turning her on every time we tried to mess with her?"

[I almost feel bad for her], Natasha wrote quickly. [If someone I was into just kept teasing me over and over, I'd be tearing my hair out.]

Becky's eyes went wide. "No wonder Val got her going easy!"

Anne nodded from where she was. "She's so desperate that whoever went in there that first day probably would've had the big bitch wrapped around their finger."

"So, if Natasha makes her really feel special, we'll have Diana eating out of our hands," Rei finished the logic train, smiling. 

"Isn't this all kinds of fucked up?" Tamara and Paris voiced. "I mean," Paris continued, "we're playing with her. We're stomping on her heart, guys! C-c'mon now . . ." She got quiet as things continued.

"Look," Rei said sadly, "if one of us really did like her, we'd just send her. But, since we're all straight, this has to do."

"Question:" Anne posed, "why do we care how she feels about this? As long as we live-"

"We're here until she saves up enough to return us to normal," Tamara said harshly. "I don't know about any of you, but I'm not a good enough actor to keep pretending to like her for almost three months. And, we don't know what she's like after a breakup. If she's like Rei, just wanting her space, we'll be fine, but if she reacts like you do . . . we're dead. So it's better to play nice for now."

"Besides," Rei added, "this will give us one advantage Val doesn't have: we'll be putting Diana herself first. We'll treat that bitch like a queen."

[So what are we doing?] Natasha asked. 

"You are going to start having a thing for her," Rei grinned. "Kiss up. Next time you go down her shirt, make her feel good. Act like you've never seen anyone so sexy when she's walking around naked again." Rei's expression was exceedingly serious. "I'll handle shaking her trust in that backstabbing whore."

"I still don't like this," Paris said softly. "What if she gets a real girlfriend?"

"Like hell," Anne interrupted. 

"If that happens, we all die," Rei kept up her serious demeanor.

*********

Diana returned into the apartment, and it looked like all the girls were sleeping. She frowned as their tiny bodies shivered in the night, and she took a single fresh-from-the-dryer shirt from her clothes hamper to cover them all. The lanky ravenette smiled despite herself, despite the raging headache she had.

"Note to self: buy aspirin," she said softly, making her way into her bedroom quietly. 

Val stood there, in the same spot where she'd been left, rather miffed. "You left me here. All day," she said angrily, her whole body practically convulsing with shivers.

"But-but I thought-" Diana started.

"Let me do the thinking, babe," Val purred, "trust me when I say I'm better at it. I'm getting tired of standing on this dresser," she started to complain.

"Got you covered," Diana said, holding up a string tied to a seriously bent staple. "Now you can explore my apartment when I'm not here. You wanna sleep with me?" She changed subjects abruptly. "You look cold."

"I could go for cuddling," Val said cautiously, "but I still get you all to myself tomorrow," she finished. "Since the cat's already out of the bag, you're all mine," she reasoned.

Diana smiled as she removed her shirt and bra, and placed Val in the warmth of her unrestricted cleavage as she laid down. "I'll sleep with pants on, so I won't scare you," she said, clicking off the light.

***MORNING***

Diana let out a horrible groan. Everything hurt. She felt like her head and chest were on fire, and her hands and feet felt frozen. "You okay, Val?" She asked, her voice thick with congestion. "I think I'm a little sick."

When the tiny girl didn't respond, Diana poked her with a finger, trying to ascertain that the blonde wasn't dead.

"Fucking god, no!" She cried as she woke. Val was drenched in sweat, and smacked at Diana's prodding finger.

"Nightmare?" Diana asked sympathetically. 

"Y-yeah," Val said, quickly calming herself. "Something like that. What happened to you?" 

"I'm a little sick. Think I'll just call out of school today," she said, reaching for her phone, "maybe work if I'm not put together by this afternoon."

Val seemed to think about something. "Well, that's not good," she said, frowning. "Tell you what. I'll be right back. Don't wanna get sick, too," she reasoned, grabbing the grappling hook Diana had made for her and rappelling to the floor. Shaking the hook free, she ran from Diana's bedroom as fast as her inch-and-a-half legs could carry her.

It took her nearly an hour, but she managed to get close to the table. "Hey! Can any of you see a bottle of cold meds or something?" Val called, asking her question at the top of her lungs.

"Fuck off," Tamara called, up early today.

"You idiot, it's for Diana," Val responded. "She just called out of school, and it sounds bad."

"Your point?" Anne responded, her tone charged with bile. 

"If she gets too sick to move, then she might die. Then we all die," Val explained, remembering why she hated these girls.

"Oh . . . oh, fuck," Tamara responded. "Yeah. There's one on the counter over there."

[It's expired. She'll get drunk as fuck if she takes it] Natasha wrote . . . but no one was paying attention. 

Val hooked the indicated bottle, and slowly pushed it across the floor. 

Natasha shook Tamara, and pointed at what she had written. 

"What do you want?" The dark-skinned girl said angrily, before noticing what Natasha was pointing at. "VAL!" She called, turning around. "Wait!"

But the blonde was out of hearing range.

"Maybe Diana's a happy drunk?" Tamara said, trying to keep from going insane at this latest development. 

"Doubt it," Anne said from her glass prison.