She always knew this life was going to be hard, always knew there were going to be moments that cut deep but expecting something doesn’t always make it easier. Not she had expected this specifically, to watch her best friend break, to watch her spiral out of control and become a danger to herself and others. One might wonder how she found herself in this situation, Toronto’s Vigilante Vixen, the woman they call the Vulpes, a woman currently struggling to stop herself from breaking as she squares off against someone she isn’t sure she can bring herself to hurt.
It all started a few weeks ago now as spring was starting to first turn to fall. Coraline’s father was in Florida with her mother and she was the fresh new face at Penrose and Macleod it wasn’t too long ago she had tangled with Toronto’s newest supervillain a woman now called Psychedelic, who had given her several weeks of difficulty before she tracked her down and made sure she was locked up. She hadn’t taken the time to rest on her laurels though, there was no rest for the wicked after all.
So it came to be that she was burning the candle at both ends. Her new job at the firm was easy, she was basically a figurehead there to keep her fathers name on the sign and no one expected too much out of her as a novice lawyer who she was sure was the subject of more than a few rumours of nepotism from her peers. Her life as a masked crime fighter was however a challenge she had been trying to find evidence to put away the Ruso Crime Family but they and their cleaner were too damn good at covering their trail.
Then there were the other syndicates in Toronto that were problems in their own right or the street gangs and she had a distinct feeling that Psychedelic was just the start of her problems with the people they dubbed as supervillains. To say she was stressed out was an understatement and on top of that her best friend since her first year of college Alice Little was getting married next spring to a guy who she wasn’t overly fond of.
All this she had to keep unseen as she sat through a meeting at work. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be playing Lawyer and needed to focus on a meeting about some dry as burnt toast legal matter the firm was handling. A part of her wanted to fall face first into her bed and embrace the darkness of sleep and a reprieve from the weight she knew she had no one else to blame but herself for carrying on her shoulders.
Coraline paid just enough attention to the conversation to offer a few nods and well-timed "hmm's" that would convince anyone watching that she was engaged. The matter being discussed was a routine contract negotiation, the kind of tedious, low-stakes legal wrangling that Penrose & MacLeod could handle in its sleep. She suspected that her father’s partner—now her partner—the ever-boisterous Arthur MacLeod, had made her sit in simply because misery loves company.
Uncle Arthur, as she'd come to think of him, looked equally unimpressed, though his thick beard did a better job of hiding it. His usual jovial energy was dulled as he leaned back in his chair, idly twirling a pen between his fingers. Every so often, he’d throw Coraline a glance that seemed to say, If I have to suffer through this, so do you.
Arthur eventually chimed in with a dry comment that earned a few forced chuckles from the others at the table, but Coraline could see the boredom in his eyes. This wasn’t his kind of case either—he thrived on the flashy, high-stakes ones involving legal gray areas and, if he was lucky, something to do with superheroes or vigilantes. Not... this.
Coraline’s gaze wandered to the windows, the sun slanting into the room as her mind drifted back to her growing list of priorities. Another night spent digging into the Ruso Crime Family, another morning playing catch-up at the firm. And now, here she was, wasting valuable time sitting through a meeting that didn’t need her input.
Her phone buzzed softly in her pocket, a welcome distraction. She shifted slightly, retrieving it under the table. The screen lit up with a message from John:
“Got something. New shipment coming through Ruso docks tonight. Details when you're free.”
Her heart jumped slightly. A lead—finally. But there was no way she could excuse herself from the meeting without raising suspicions. She quickly typed back:
“Will call after this.”
She slipped the phone back into her pocket, her thoughts spinning. The Rusos were careful, but if John’s tip was solid, this could be her chance to finally gather the evidence she needed.
Her focus snapped back as Arthur cleared his throat loudly, signalling the meeting was drawing to a close. Thank god. As the lawyers exchanged pleasantries and packed up their papers, Arthur leaned over with a knowing smirk.
"Don’t say I never gave you a taste of the glamorous side of lawyering," he quipped.
Coraline forced a small smile. “You’re too generous, Uncle Arthur.”
He chuckled and gave her shoulder a light squeeze. “Go on, get out of here. You look like you’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
He wasn’t wrong. She grabbed her things and made a beeline for the door, her mind already racing ahead to tonight. The Ruso docks... she’d finally be able to do something meaningful.
“Before you go, I need you at a meeting tomorrow for the Agosta case” he added offhandedly.
Coraline kept her expression neutral, but her mind was racing. Bianca Ruso. The name carried weight, both in legal circles and in the shadowy underworld Coraline had been working to expose as the Vulpes. She had crossed paths with Bianca in law school—enough to know that the woman wasn’t just good; she was brilliant. Sharp, cunning, and utterly ruthless in her pursuit of a win. Coraline had seen that firsthand during mock trials where Bianca’s charm and skill could disarm even the most prepared opponents.
And now, here she was, representing Lou Agosta, a made man in the Ruso family. Coraline’s stomach churned at the thought. This wasn’t just another case. This was a golden opportunity. Lou Agosta wasn’t just some low-level thug; he was a vital piece of the Ruso machine. If she could play her cards right—both as Coraline and as the Vulpes—this might finally lead to the break she needed against the family.
“Alright,” Coraline replied, keeping her tone measured. “I’ll be there. Anything specific I should prepare?”
Arthur leaned back in his chair, scratching his beard thoughtfully. “For now, just familiarise yourself with the case file. Bianca’s not going to come at this directly. She’ll exploit every loophole, attack every weak point in our argument, and pull out tricks you haven’t even considered yet. The judge won’t let her drag the case into the mud, but she’ll dance right up to the line.”
Coraline gave a tight nod. “Understood. I’ll review everything tonight.”
“Good,” Arthur said with a small smile. “I wouldn’t have brought you in on this if I didn’t think you could handle it. Just remember—Bianca might be one hell of a lawyer, but she’s not invincible.”
Coraline forced a smile as she left his office. Bianca might not be invincible in the courtroom, but her connections—and her family—made her untouchable in ways the justice system couldn’t address. At least, not by traditional means.
As she closed the door behind her, Coraline’s thoughts shifted. This case wasn’t just a legal battle. It was a battlefield. And if she played this right, it could be her first step toward dismantling the Ruso empire from both sides of the law.
First things first though, John had a lead for the Vulpes and that had to be addressed.
***
She walked into the room, and all eyes fell on her. Her legs were long and smooth, her breasts perky with joy, her eyes like blue stars. Her lips were plump and kissable, as if begging him to taste them.
Alice blinked and slowly closed the paperback after reading that passage. She glanced down at the cover, its title in bold letters: Passion of the Privateer. The illustration featured a pirate who was far too clean-cut and sculpted to be historically accurate, holding a busty woman in a strategically torn dress tightly against his bare, rippling chest.
"Who writes women like this?" she muttered, shoving the trashy novel into her desk drawer. Alice Little devoured books, especially fiction, but even she had her limits. It was her lunch break, and she’d hoped to push through her most recent read, thinking it might improve. While the quantity of smut had certainly increased, the quality was in sharp decline.
She reached out a delicate hand and plucked a radish from the salad she was eating at her desk. It wasn’t a real loss. Real romance was coming her way soon enough—or so she supposed. After all, she had a date with her fiancé this weekend, and he never disappointed her—or attributed emotions to her breasts.
Her blue eyes flicked back to her salad. It was half-eaten, and so was her lunch break. Soon enough, she would return to R&D to continue working on her brainchild. She removed her glasses and cleaned the lenses before slipping them back on. She really needed to get contacts or laser surgery one of these days, but, in a rare moment of vanity, she’d decided she looked cute in glasses and was reluctant to give them up. Not that Alice wasn’t attractive or unaware of it—some people found her quite pretty—but the glasses made her feel pretty. And for someone with her insecurities, that held a lot of value.
Alice took another bite of her salad, glancing at the clock. Fifteen minutes left. She sighed, absently pushing a cherry tomato around with her fork. Lunch breaks never felt long enough, but the quiet solitude of her office was a welcome reprieve from the chaos of R&D. The lab was her sanctuary, yes, but it was also a hive of activity—machines humming, researchers bustling about, and constant demands for progress. Here, at her desk, she could steal a moment to breathe.
Her eyes drifted to the drawer where she’d stashed the trashy novel. She wasn’t even sure why she’d picked it up in the first place. Maybe part of her was curious about the appeal of such overly romanticized drivel. Or maybe she just wanted to understand what people found so captivating about these wildly unrealistic depictions of love. Love, after all, was supposed to be her reality soon enough.
She smiled faintly at the thought of Michael. Her fiancé wasn’t perfect, but he made her feel seen in a way few others ever had. He supported her work, encouraged her brilliance, and even managed to make her laugh when she was too wrapped up in her projects. Romance novels didn’t need to shape her expectations—she had the real thing.
Still, something about that book had lingered in her thoughts. Not the over-the-top descriptions of the heroine’s attributes, but the underlying message that passion and adventure were somehow inseparable. That love, in its truest form, was wild and untamed, sweeping people off their feet like a raging storm. Alice didn’t need a storm. She needed stability, partnership, and someone who understood that her mind was her greatest treasure.
She chuckled softly, shaking her head. "Romance novels. What a rabbit hole."
The thought made her glance at the photograph on her desk—a candid shot of her and Michael taken during a weekend hike. They looked happy, carefree. She adjusted the frame slightly, then turned back to her salad, feeling a little more centered.
The clock ticked down, and Alice shifted her focus to the documents scattered across her desk. Notes on neural mapping, diagrams for the next iteration of her VR interface, and a dozen ideas scrawled in her looping handwriting. Project Wonderland was her pride and joy, a culmination of years of work and the key to unlocking the untapped potential of the human mind. It was ambitious, revolutionary, and—if she were being honest—just a little bit terrifying.
But that was what made it exciting.
The intercom on her desk buzzed, pulling her out of her thoughts. “Dr. Little, we’re ready for you in the lab.”
“Be right there,” Alice replied, standing and straightening her lab coat. She gave the photo on her desk one last glance before heading out. Love and adventure, she thought with a wry smile. Maybe the two weren’t so incompatible after all.
Alice entered the R&D lab, her white lab coat trailing slightly behind her as she navigated the bustling room. At just 5’3”, she often felt invisible amidst the towering figures of her colleagues. But that suited her fine; she’d never been one to seek attention for her physical presence. It was her mind that set her apart, her intellect that commanded respect.
Platinum blonde hair was pinned back in a neat bun, her sharp blue eyes scanning the room with quiet precision. She wasn’t here to be seen. She was here to lead, to create, to push the boundaries of human understanding. Though petite and unassuming in appearance, Alice Little’s reputation preceded her. To the outside world, she was "the smartest girl in Canada," a title the media had bestowed on her as a child prodigy. To those in the lab, she was a polymath whose insights and innovations were nothing short of extraordinary.
Her colleagues often marveled at her ability to leap between disciplines—neuroscience, computer engineering, psychology, even art—all in service of her grand project: Project Wonderland. A revolutionary blend of virtual reality and cognitive enhancement, Wonderland wasn’t just an experiment; it was Alice’s magnum opus, the culmination of a lifetime spent chasing knowledge and breaking barriers.
“Dr. Little,” one of her assistants called out, handing her a tablet with a flurry of updates. “We’ve completed the latest calibration tests, but there’s still a 2% drift in the feedback loop.”
Alice frowned, her fingers tapping the edge of the tablet as she reviewed the data. "That’s within tolerance, but it’s still not good enough," she said, her tone decisive. "If we don’t resolve the drift, we risk undermining the entire stability of the interface. Let’s increase the sampling rate on the neural sensors and see if we can tighten the feedback loop."
The assistant nodded, scribbling notes as Alice set the tablet aside and approached the central console. The room hummed with energy, every surface gleaming with high-tech equipment. At the heart of it all was the Wonderland Interface—a sleek, helmet-like device surrounded by an array of monitors and cables. It looked almost innocuous, belying the revolutionary technology it housed.
“Alright, team,” Alice said, her voice carrying a calm authority. “Let’s run another test. Full system diagnostics this time. If there’s a weak link anywhere, I want to find it.”
As the team sprang into action, Alice allowed herself a small moment of pride. This lab, this project—it was everything she’d dreamed of. Yet, in the back of her mind, a small, nagging voice reminded her of the pressure she was under. The expectations, the funding, the relentless pace—it was all consuming. But Alice had always thrived under pressure. It was when she was at her best.
And yet, she thought as she adjusted her glasses and prepared to oversee the next test, there were cracks in the foundation of even the sturdiest structures. Little cracks she had learned to ignore, like the vague unease she felt whenever Michael Macentyre’s name came up.
It was nothing, she told herself. The work was what mattered. And Wonderland was going to change the world.
Michael Macentyre, her Michael, was going to be at her side, supporting her and making her feel like she was living her very own fairytale. After all, he was her prince charming: the dashing, broad-shouldered son of Joshua Macentyre, CEO of Macentyre Systems, the very company that had plucked her straight out of college with her latest doctorate. A small smile tugged at Alice's lips as her thoughts wandered to him—his easy smile, his confident demeanor, the way his eyes seemed to sparkle whenever they met hers. He made her feel special, grounded, and safe.
“We’re ready to wire the quartz into the psionic interface,” came the voice of one of the lab’s Psi-techs, pulling Alice from her reverie. She blinked, storing thoughts of her handsome prince for later. There was work to be done, and Wonderland demanded her full attention.
The Psi-tech in question, Jeremy, was a Delta-Four empath, one rung above Alice on the psionic scale. While her psionic potential was barely worth registering—a Delta-Five, the lowest category—she had made her mark not through innate power, but through her brilliance. Psionic technology was bleeding-edge super science, a field teetering on the line between theoretical physics and metaphysics. Since its advent in the 1960s, it had seen limited understanding and even more limited applications.
Alice nodded, her sharp blue eyes focusing on the intricate apparatus before her. At the heart of it was a crystalline core—a shard of synthetic quartz infused with psionic resonance. “Be careful with the connections,” she instructed, stepping forward to examine the setup. “Any misalignment could cause feedback loops. We’re working with psionic currents, not electricity. It doesn’t obey the same rules.”
Psionic tech remained one of the most mysterious branches of super-science. Its most notable application was in meta-power suppression devices—harnesses designed to disrupt certain powers via psionic "white noise," severing a user's connection to their abilities. Alice had studied suppression rigs extensively, refining NATO’s standard issue. Her improvements had reduced power failures and increased their effectiveness against lower-tier psionics, but the technology had its limits.
Magic, for instance, was almost entirely immune to suppression devices. Psionic tech couldn’t interfere with spellcasters or sorcery, phenomena that defied even the most advanced scientific scrutiny. Similarly, the harnesses struggled to affect individuals whose abilities were genetic or biological in origin—Extras, some aliens, prenatal augmented beings, and the like. Even psionic suppression wasn’t guaranteed against high-level psionics, with Beta-Two or higher individuals often overpowering or outright nullifying its effects.
Alice tapped the console beside the psionic interface, her mind whirring as she reviewed the calibration. “Once the quartz is integrated, we’ll need to retest the feedback stabilizers,” she said, glancing at Jeremy. “Let me know if you sense anything unusual in the field resonance.”
“Yes, Dr. Little,” Jeremy replied, carefully handling the delicate quartz core.
Alice stepped back, watching her team work with precision. This was bleeding-edge science, the kind that required every ounce of their collective focus. It was exciting, exhilarating even, and yet she couldn’t quite shake the feeling of unease. Psi-tech was unpredictable by nature, its very principles challenging the boundaries of what they understood about reality.
But that was the challenge Alice had always thrived on. Wonderland wasn’t just a project—it was the culmination of her life’s work, a bridge between the impossible and the attainable. And with Michael by her side, her dreams of changing the world felt within reach.
For now, though, she focused on the task at hand, pushing aside both her doubts and her daydreams. There would be time for romance later. Right now, Wonderland awaited.
