"Randolph & Kim". Bratty violent evil supergirl fiction by Conceptfan.

Chapter Index

Chapter 1

Submitted for your evaluation: the story of one Randolph Thomas Sherman. Not a particularly attractive man at first glance, but appearances can be deceptive. In order to make a balanced observation of the man, some back-story is required. It has taken Randolph many decades to become the ageing, sour-faced and conservatively-dressed individual he is now. Much might have happened to him in the course of those decades to shape him into the form we now see. Let's find out if that is the case...

First entry in Randolph's file: Chicago, Illinois, USA. September 21st 1940. That's when he was born. Those were tough times. When Randolph was three years old, his father was reported as Missing In Action in Normandy. He remained Missing once the Action had stopped.

His widow, Randolph's mother, lasted four more years, although she spent her last eighteen months in an asylum for the mentally ill. The double tragedy left young Randolph, from the age of five, in the care of his father's sister. A cold, unloving woman, bitter at finding herself taking care of her dead brother's child, Marcie Sherman blamed the boy for her own unhappiness. And she rarely missed an opportunity to remind him of that fact.

Books and learning provided Randolph with his only his only effective escape from the harsh, unwelcoming world around him. Every moment that he could, he spent in his local library. In breaks at school, he read. At home, he read. He absorbed knowledge and thirsted for more. He excelled in his studies, and was rewarded by the reaction of his teachers - for the first time in his life receiving praise and attention from adults.

In 1959, Randolph won a scholarship to attend a prestigious university. He majored in biology and chemistry. There were no women studying sciences with him, but the few that were around the campus - mostly arts undergraduates - intimidated him. At first he simply could not find the courage to talk to them. He fretted over this; a desperate inner urge to be with females occupied his thoughts and yet he lacked the basic social skills to fulfil it. The more this paradox troubled him, the more his fear of women grew.

He began to resent the opposite sex for its apparent inapproachability and increasingly saw women as the unreachable, untouchable keepers of the secret to life's joy. As his need for them grew, so did his confusion. He told himself lies to calm his mental turmoil. His favourite lie stated that all women were evil and that the great "thing" that he was missing out on (he could never bring himself to refer to it, even internally, as "sex") was an overrated distraction. Women used their devious ways, their strangely fluid movements, their bewitchingly pretty faces - their wickedly-shaped bodies - to trick men like him into believing that "the great thing" (sex) was some glorious pursuit. Randolph convinced himself that this was not the case and, over time, came to believe that his shunning of women was to his credit, rather than his loss.

Still, he could not completely conquer the stabs of jealousy that tore through him every time he saw another man with a female companion. He dealt with them by developing a hatred for anyone of his sex who seemed comfortable around women - in other words, most other men. His strongest disapproval was reserved for his contemporaries who were most successful with girls. Those who went on dates. Touched women. Did what he really wanted to do more than anything else in the word: had sexual intercourse. He told himself, repeatedly, that those men were fools, letting themselves become slaves to their basest instincts. He was above all that. He, Randolph Sherman, was superior.

But it was difficult. To begin with, he was fighting a one-man war. No-one else acknowledged his moral superiority. Quite the opposite; they looked down on him because of his awkwardness, ignoring his principled stand. He knew that the other young men called him all kinds of words with disgusting connotations and, as for what the women muttered to each other behind their hands before giggling in that obscene, flirtatious way that they loved... Well. he didn't want to know.

That, of course was not entirely true. He did want to know - desperately in fact - but he convinced himself of the opposite. Terrified of the witch-craft-like effect women seemed to have on him, and sickened by the female-obsessed behaviour of other men, he shunned the rest of the human race as much as his studies allowed. This caused his general dislike of the species to strengthen. With plenty time to spend by himself, he thought about it a lot. He thought about how much he hated the male half of the world for allowing itself to fall under the spell of the female half. And he thought about the female half and how much he hated everything about them.

Randolph spent a great deal of time thinking about the things he hated most about women. He would think about those things most of all when he was naked. And as he thought, he would touch himself, all the while revolted by himself, by the way he was so powerless before the mysterious, hateful force known to the rest of the world as femininity. The images that came into his head disgusted him and made him touch himself more and more aggressively. His brain was at war with itself, confusing him, betraying him with pictures... disgusting, immoral, unignorable pictures.

In those quiet, solo moments, twice - sometimes three times a day - as he thought of all that he detested, his hand, with a will of its own, would seek out his penis which, also with a will of its own, became erect. His mind filled with the terrible images his yearning, repressed imagination generated. He saw women. Young women, fresh as spring, their faces bright with clear complexions. Their eyes would be blue or brown or green, but always radiant with long, showy lashes. Randolph saw lips, rich and thick, pouting overtly. The lips were usually brightly painted, drawing attention to their alluring presence. Drawing not just attention but also men - innocent, proud, intelligent men like himself. Ensnaring, cutting through male wisdom and intellect to something far more primitive beneath. Something which could not fight back.

As well as faces, Randolph saw bodies. Voluptuous, curvaceous bodies with long, beautifully-shaped limbs, rounded, smooth thighs and flat, flawless stomachs. His mind tormented itself with images of taut, spherical buttocks that bounced so suggestively as their owner walked away. Above all, the picture that most tortured him - the sight he most hated himself for seeing, and the one he was least capable of ignoring - was of breasts. Big, round, firm, proud, bouncing breasts. Breasts which begged him to touch, to caress. Begged him to feel their weight, to squeeze them, pinch their upstanding nipples, lick them and finally, to lay his head between them. Randolph imagined himself surrounded by the warmth of the breasts in his mind, made himself believe they were pressing, pushing so insistently into his face until... until the breasts and the bodies and the women won. At that point, he would reach for a kleenex in disgust.

He consoled himself with the knowledge that as he had committed the obscene act alone, his morality - his purity - was still intact as far as the outside world knew. He made sure of that by letting his dislike of all things female and all concepts sexual go on public display. The guiltier he felt about his frantic under-the-blankets fiddling, the more he presented to the world an image of a morally superior man sickened by the weakness of his fellow creatures.

Occasionally, jealousy won him over. He justified acts of cold-hearted maliciousness towards the objects of his envy as punishment for their immorality. One spring morning, he walked, nose arrogantly in the air, past two of the more popular male students. Each of them had his arms around a girl. The girls were dressed in the kind of obscenely tight clothes he thought about when he was touching himself. He knew as he saw them that he would be thinking about them that night and was furious that they would, with their evil dress and disgracefully voluptuous bodies, cause him to do something so foul.

Randolph punished the quartet by writing an anonymous letter to the local F.B.I. office in which he accused them of harbouring communist sympathies and of trying to subvert the entire university. All four were expelled soon afterwards. Although the author of the "red" scare was never revealed, most suspected Randolph. If he had been shunned prior to that, he was violently ostracised thereafter. He blamed everyone else for that and saw their treatment of him as yet another symptom of their moral bankruptcy. Proof of his need to stay away from them for fear of becoming tainted by their poison. Especially the women.

In this way, Randolph became one of the least popular students in the University's long history. At the same time, however, his academic work was equally as notable for very different reasons. His examination results were invariably excellent. His papers drew universal praise from his Professors and soon came to the attention of the wider academic community. When his degree course was completed, those who had followed his work urged him to continue his studies and work towards a PhD. The concept of researching alone towards that qualification and avoiding the social contact that employment would entail appealed, and he needed little persuasion to extend his student years.

His papers continued to provoke stir after stir in the scientific community. Rapidly, he became well known in his field, a rising star in the world of bio-chemistry research. His theories began to push back the boundaries of knowledge, opening up new avenues of study and experimentation. At the forefront of this new work, he continued to impress and enlighten those who read his work. The successful completion of his course, marked by the addition of the letters "PhD" to his name, surprised no-one. That was in the summer of 1967.

Randolph had no concerns about finding work after receiving his academic qualification. A queue of potential employers beat a path to his door, all keen to sign up the brightest young man in the field. But despite the offers of lucrative salaries and access to some of the best-equipped laboratories in the world, he did not find any of the propositions appealing. They all seemed to be promoting their "teams" - other men and, worse of all, women that he would be obliged to work alongside. One by one the representatives of the big pharmaceutical companies left without acquiring his signature.

As he was slowly coming to the realisation that, regardless of his reservations, financial imperatives required him to accept one of the posts on offer, the ideal solution presented itself to him. He'd met with a dozen men from a dozen companies all wearing the same grey suits, offering the same kind of working conditions, reeling off the same prepared speech about joining their "team". The thirteenth man was different. He wore a long, dark blue trench coat and a trilby hat and his offer contained no mention of any "team". Instead, he promised Randolph that he could work alone in a laboratory that was as up-to-date as any with a budget greater than most. And, as the man in the trench-coat said, his research would be for the greater good of mankind: "The U.S. government needs people like you to help in the fight against the spread of communists and their degenerate immorality." Randolph signed his name on the contract.

A sense of revolution was in the air. Not the kind of political revolution that Randolph would have known all about from newspaper reports, but a social revolution. Huge crowds gathered at generation-defining music concerts. In many circles, people talked openly about previously taboo issues. The ring of ice surrounding the topic of sexuality melted away. Films were made that reflected this new attitude and played to packed cinemas. Bright, flamboyant styles of clothing became an increasingly common sight. Men wore their hair long. Randolph Sherman bought himself a new, grey suit and started his new job, working for the government.

At first, they gave him small projects to complete, which he found deeply unchallenging. But after a couple of months, he was called in to see his supervisor. He was commended on his work up to that date. "We like your work." the supervisor had said. "And we like you. We feel we can trust you." He was asked if he was willing to take on a new, far more difficult task and he didn't hesitate before accepting. This, he was told, would be top-secret work. As he had no friends or close family, he was deemed ideal for such a project. There were documents - scores of them – which he was required to sign. His supervisor warned him that revealing a word of his new research to the outside world would be an act of treason, punishable by death. Randolph accepted the terms without giving them too much thought. Who would he tell, anyway? He was excited by the prospect of the project he would be undertaking.

Randolph threw himself deeply into his task: trying to create a device which could physically enhance a human being. His preliminary investigations into the effect of sunlight on chlorophyll in plants lead to him discovering that certain types of solar radiation produce a similar, but much more potent and permanent reaction in animal tissue. If enough energy from the sun could be somehow gathered, it might have hitherto unimaginable effects on a man's body. He worked on refining that theory, and began to test out various aspects of it in the laboratory. Every time he mentioned to his supervisor that he required another piece of equipment to carry out his experiments, no matter how expensive or difficult to procure it seemed, the machinery would arrive and be installed within days. Sometimes, even within hours. Randolph read the newspapers; he knew his country was fighting a war in Asia and that military interest would explain the government's enthusiastic support for his work, and, for the first time, he began to think about the wider implications of his research.

If his estimates were correct - he acknowledged that, at such an early stage, much of it was guesswork - then he might just be able to devise a method for greatly enhancing a soldier's strength and stamina. The effects might also include a substantial decrease in the subject's reaction times and a much improved speed of movement. If he was right about the behaviour of human cells - a very big "if" - then the subject might also become vastly less vulnerable to physical damage. Such a man would be an ideal soldier; harder to kill, almost impossible to defeat in battle. And, once again, if he was correct, a greater dose of stored solar energy would cause a greater augmentation of these physical abilities. A soldier could be made stronger, hugely stronger, or, even...

Randolph was convinced he had invented a method for creating a superman. He needed more tests to be certain of his discovery. He began to wonder what it would be like to be the subject of his final experiment - to be the man who would be given physical abilities far beyond the imaginations of most. Were he to be proved right, then such a man, given the maximum possible dose of concentrated solar radiation, would be virtually unstoppable. Such a man would not have to put up with things he found distasteful, like men who chased around after girls, or women who dressed like whores and constantly distracted men from higher callings. Such a man could lay down rules that would have to be followed. Such a man could punish those who transgressed his rules. Especially the women. He could punish the women for their sluttish ways. He could do whatever he wanted with the women... That is, whatever had to be done.

Over the weeks, Randolph began to realise that the full potential of his discovery would be wasted on soldiers or other men. Only he possessed the moral fibre and sensible, uncluttered judgement required by someone who commanded so much power. He resolved to withhold the potential of his work from his employers. He would give them what they wanted, a handful of stronger-and-quicker-than-average soldiers to kill communists in the jungle. But he would keep for himself the secret of real power. And by the time anyone realised what he had done, it would be too late for any of them to stop him. Then the women would come to him, and beg him for forgiveness, throwing their bodies at him for him to... No! Why did those creatures and their damned flesh keep invading his thoughts even now, when he was trying to ponder the greatest scientific breakthrough of all time?

Every Friday, he had to present a report on that week's progress to his supervisor. His earliest reports, about his theory and the tests he had carried out which supported it, were full and frank. But as he began to covet the full extent of his discovery, he became less and less honest in his briefings. At first, he simply neglected to reveal a key fact or two. As the months went by, he found himself inventing ever more elaborate lies about the limitations of his theories. The supervisor seemed interested and encouraging none-the-less, taking notes as Randolph spoke, posing questions. Almost every week, at some point, the supervisor would ask him if he was still certain that the process could be applied to any human being. He always appeared reassured when he received an answer in the affirmative.

The supervisor took a much keener interest in Randolph Sherman's project than he did in any other work being carried out under his authority. When he had first heard the young man's theories of creating a superman - since, sadly, revised to the creation of a near-superman - the supervisor had visions of a soldier in the jungle, surviving the best attempts of enemy soldiers to shoot him whilst he lifted one of their number off the ground with a single hand around his throat. And then his mind had wandered. Clips of a movie he had gone to see with his wife a few months before jumped into his conscience as they had done many times since that night in the theatre. The film was "1 Million Years B.C." and the clips in his head all featured its lead actress, Racquel Welch, in her movie costume of tattered cavewoman rags.

He'd been struck by the sight of her on the big screen. Her beauty affected him deeply. Her gorgeous face, long legs and fantasy figure were etched into his brain. Her glorious breasts moving beneath her costume haunted him so much that even now, months later, their image would pop into mind and push all other thoughts into some far, inaccessible corner. Now, as the part of his mind responsible for his professionalism struggled to bring his attention back to his meeting with Sherman, a couple of wires crossed. He tried to return to his original mental image of the superhuman soldier in the heat of battle. He almost succeeded. Almost. Except, in his imagination, he saw the battle, and the enemy soliders. But not the superhuman good guy. In his place, he saw Racquel Welch as a cavewoman.

She was in the same pose as the soldier had been before, her arm extended high, her back straight, which caused her generous chest to appear even more prominent. In the hand at the end of that extended arm, was an enemy soldier's neck. Racquel was holding his entire weight with one of her hands, clamped tightly around his throat. The supervisor could tell both from the way the soldier was dangling and the casualness of the screen beauty's stance that the man felt lightweight to her. Somehow, the image was the most erotic he'd ever known. He sought to enrich it and imagined a hail of hostile gun fire hitting the film star and merely bouncing harmlessly away from her, its only effect to tear away her rags, leaving more and more of her body exposed until she was completely nude and he could imagine the sight of her large breasts jiggling as bullets struck them before rebounding away.

A moment later, the supervisor was silently reciting the names of baseball players to himself in a last-ditch, panic attempt to prevent himself reaching an orgasm as he sat behind his desk in his office in the middle of a top-secret meeting between government scientists. He averted the crisis, but only just. Shortly afterwards, he ended the meeting early. As soon as Sherman had closed the door behind himself on his way out, the supervisor ran to his private bathroom. Less than a minute elapsed before he returned to his main office. As he did, he wondered if he would be able to influence the powers-that-were into selecting a woman as the first test subject should Sherman's work ever come to fruition.

As unaware of his supervisor's particular interest in his project as the supervisor was of Randolph's own selfish plans, the young scientist set about his work in the laboratory with an even greater fervour than before, working long into the night and at weekends, forgetting meals. He had no social life to neglect, no friends to miss, just a single goal to aim for: the acquisition of power. Power for himself. But to achieve that target, he had to continue his efforts for the government. He still had to turn his theories into some kind of practice. Then, one Saturday night, whilst his contemporaries were all out in filthy bars, listening to degenerate music, and going to repulsive parties where unspeakable acts were carried out in upstairs bedrooms, he made a huge leap forward. By bombarding a chemical compound with a very specific type of radiation, he created a crystal that could absorb the sun’s radiation, store it, and act as a partial bridge between solar energy and organic cellular energy.

He was more than halfway to making his theory a reality. Without sleep, he waited for dawn when he could begin the process of filling his crystal - which he immodestly named the Sherman crystal - with the sun’s power. Setting the fist-size semi-transparent, multi-facetted rock in a housing by an East-facing window, he arranged an array of testing and measuring devices around it and waited. And waited. The morning passed, and the first seeds of doubt began to sprout in his mind. Then, about noon, the first measurement of stored energy was recorded.

The Sherman crystal was absorbing power. He was vindicated. But as he watched his instruments in vain for signs of any further development, he realised that he had grossly miscalculated the speed of the process. He moved the crystal to the windows on the opposite side of the room to make the most of the afternoon sun. By dusk, he recorded a tiny further increase in its stored radiation. His experiment was working, there was no question about that. But it was a slow, slow procedure.

Randolph made sure he was in the laboratory every morning before dawn to position the Sherman crystal. He began to loathe overcast weather, cursing the hours of solar energy that were lost to clouds. Whilst the crystal slowly gathered power, he busied himself working on the final part of his process: the transmitting of energy stored in his giant-dull-diamond into a living being.

It took him three months to devise and build the transfer device. Despite its appearance - a huge, complicated affair – the principle on which he hoped it would function was simple. The charged crystal would be placed in the machine and then a beam of pure radiation would be fired through it into the recipient. But until he actually tested it with a prepared Sherman crystal and a live subject, he could only speculate as to its effectiveness.

One morning, a grey-haired man in full military uniform entered the laboratory, accompanied by Randolph’s supervisor. A curt introduction was rapidly carried out during which the stranger was named as General Smithson. “I’ve come to see how your work is progressing.” The general announced. “If you could please arrange a demonstration.”

“I should have something ready in a couple of months-“ Randolph began.

“Now.” The general interrupted.

Randolph knew he was obliged to comply. In truth, he too was keen to measure the effects of the small amount of energy that had built up over the past fourteen weeks within his original crystal. Retrieving the rock, he noticed it was slightly warm to the touch. He interpreted that as a good sign. He set it up inside his cumbersome transfer device and pointed the end of it at a work-surface on which he placed a small cage containing a rodent’s wheel and an adult white mouse.

There was a large meter with a dial affixed to the side of the cage. Randolph drew the General’s attention to it. “It measures revolutions per minute of the wheel,” he explained. As if on cue, the mouse climbed into the wheel and began to run. The needle on the dial responded immediately. “As you can see, the mouse is currently turning the wheel approximately 22 times every minute. Now I will switch on the beam generator and transfer the energy from the crystal.” Somewhat anticlimactically, the enormous device made no noise save for a low hum as it was powered up.

“How long before you can fire the beam?” the General asked.

“It’s already fired,” Randolph explained. “It’s radiation is well beyond the visible spectrum, so it is completely invisible to the human eye.”

“When will we know if it’s worked?”

“I estimate that in an organism of that size, we should be able to measure the effects of the energy transfer within a couple of minutes.” None of the three men present were apt at making small talk, so the next one hundred and sixty seconds passed in silence. At the end of that period of time, the mouse stretched as if awakening from a sleep and clambered into its wheel. And then it began to run.

“Ha!” Randolph exclaimed, delightedly if unprofessionally. “I knew it! I knew it would work!”

The general was peering at the meter beside the spinning wheel. “25 revolutions per minute,” he read, in a monotone. “Is that it? Is that tiny increase all you have managed to achieve?”

Randolph was crest-fallen. “The… the Sherman crystal needs time to charge up properly. A much much greater effect will occur if the crystal is exposed to sunlight for a longer period.”

“How long would it take to produce a doubling in an organism’s strength?”

Randolph went to a pad of paper, picked up a pencil and began to scribble illegible notes and calculations. After a while, during which he had filled most of the page with graphite markings, he looked up. “Approximately six years.”

“Six years?” the general seemed stunned. “We’ll have lost the war by then!”

“I thought we were winning,” Randolph said, confused by the general’s lack of enthusiasm and the statement which seemed to contradict everything he had read in the newspaper that morning.

“Um… yes, yes. Just a figure of speech.” the general muttered before clearing his throat and thanking Randolph for his time. Before Randolph could respond, the military man was halfway out of the door, the supervisor close behind. As soon as the door closed, Randolph grabbed his pad of paper and the pencil once again. He began jotting a fresh calculation.

He was certain now that the accumulation of power in a Sherman crystal was an exponential process; the more energy the crystal absorbed, the faster it could absorb new energy. He wanted to know how long it would take until the crystal became completely saturated with power. Until it could absorb no more. Until its power could be transferred with truly startling results, not just a fifteen percent increase in a mouse’s speed. He wrote frantically, tearing off one page to begin filling the next, figures and formulae appearing as fast as he could write them down. Finally, he drew a thick circle around one particular number. The answer.

Randolph had calculated that in order to soak up sufficient solar energy to be capable to transforming a man into a superman, a Sherman crystal like the one he had used on the mouse would need to charge for 37.4 years. He could give the government what they wanted within half-a-dozen years, but his own dream would have to wait for four decades. He would have to be patient.

The next morning, pre-dawn, he arrived at the laboratory entrance. One of the regular young ladies was seated behind the reception desk. Randolph loathed her. He hated her immaculately-brushed long blonde hair, which she let cascade, shamelessly, over her shoulders. He hated her perfect, white teeth which she flashed so ostentatiously and her big blue eyes with their long, fluttering lashes which she made even more prominent by painting them with mascara as if to tell every man she greeted that she was available for… for disgusting things. Things she evilly made him think of by wearing her uniform shirt so tightly that he could see the outline of her breasts.

As normal, Randolph stared disapprovingly at that hypnotic, rounded outline as he completed the formality of stating his name and security code. Why did he have to go through this ridiculous ritual with this... this whore day after day? Surely even her man-snaring, lust-obsessed brain could remember his face by now? But he knew it was not the vile woman’s decision that the protocol had to be observed. It was someone higher up the chain. Someone who feared the possibility of agency staff being replaced by doppelgangers. Or worse: doppelgangers with communist sympathies.

Now what was happening? The stupid whore was looking down at a list of names. Was she checking his code, just in case he was an impostor? Someone who had gone to the finest details to transform himself into a carbon copy of Randolph Sherman, but had not bothered to memorise his six-digit security code-number correctly? She looked up from the sheet, the movement of her head de-obscuring, once again, his view of her chest. Surely she had to know the effect those two… things had on men? Why did she flaunt them so disgracefully?

“There’s no-one by that name on the list, sir,” she said. Randolph thought he could detect a note of something more than professional courtesy in her smile. Satisfaction, maybe.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded.

“There’s no Randolph T. Sherman on the list, sir,” she repeated. It was definitely satisfaction. Randolph wanted to slap her. And to rip her shirt off and bury his face between those… No, no! What was she doing to him? How could such an intellectual inferior play with his mind in this way?

“Stop this nonsense!” Randolph exclaimed, rather like an exasperated parent addressing a tantrum-throwing child.

“If you like, sir, I can call a member of the security team.” She picked up a telephone, already dialling a single-digit number and turned to face him, the radiant grin still fixed on her features. Randolph returned it with a sneer of contempt. Within seconds a security guard appeared from the room behind the reception desk. In terms of physical size he had more in common with a grizzly bear than he had with Randolph.

“What’s the problem?” the bear growled.

“The problem is this: your receptionist here is so busy making sure her face is well-painted that she doesn’t seem to have enough time to do her job. She can’t find my name on her list. Maybe there’s too many letters in it for her.”

“What’s your name…. sir?” enquired the big man, leaving a long-enough pause before the “sir” to make it clear that any implied respect was not intended.

“Randolph T. Sherman. I work on Hercules Project. Hell, I AM Hercules Project. Now let me get to my lab!”

“Sherman, Sherman, Sherman….” the security guard muttered. “Ah yes. I have a package for you.”

“Bring it to me in my laboratory.”

“I’m afraid that you cannot enter the building unless your name is on this list, sir.” The receptionist chimed in. Now her grin was one of smug victory.

“This is preposterous!” Randolph exploded. Neither the girl nor the bear responded. The large man disappeared into the room behind the main desk for a moment, returning clutching a brown paper package and a white envelope. Randolph snatched the envelope and tore it open, reading the brief, typed message it contained twice before mumbling “No. No. They can’t do this to me. Not after all I’ve achieved!”

“Looks like Randy’s going to be looking for another job.” the pretty blonde receptionist giggled, relishing his crushing defeat, any pretence at civility now abandoned.

“Bitch. Whore.” Randolph cursed her.

The security guard raised an eyebrow and took an intimidating step towards him. “Your personal effects, sir,” he snorted with a nod towards the brown paper package that was now lying on the desk. Slowly, humiliated, Randolph picked it up. He turned on his heels and walked pathetically away.

When he got home, he re-read the curt dismissal note he'd been given then angrily threw it into the trash. He sat down on his bed, thinking of the injustice of it all. His anger focussed on the receptionist who had first told him he couldn't enter the building. He thought of her delight at his suffering, the brightness of her smile, her painted face, the shape of her breasts so ill-concealed by her uniform shirt. He loathed himself for not being able to stop himself as he unfastened the fly of his grey trousers and reached in to take hold of himself.

A while later, he tore the brown paper from the parcel containing his personal effects. The contents - a comb, some loose change, and a retractable pencil - spilled out across the kitchen table. The only other thing in the packet was his lab-coat. Disgusted, he tossed it onto the tiled floor, and was surprised by the dull thud he heard as it landed. Something was still in one of the pockets. He bent down to investigate. A cool, hard object.... It couldn't be... But it was. Randolph extracted the discharged Sherman crystal and held it up to examine it. His creation. The thing that could have given him the power to change the hateful world in which he lived. If only the government had been more patient. Now his dream was in ruins.

A shaft of sunlight momentarily beamed through the kitchen window, and it made Randolph freeze in his thoughts and movements. He'd told himself that his dream of power had died because, without access to his remarkably-equipped laboratory, he would never have been able to create another Sherman crystal. Yet he now had his original crystal in his hand. He knew that it worked; the mouse had proved that. He just needed to charge it properly. As for the ray to transfer its accumulated energy into his body... well, he had 37.4 years to build another. The rock didn't need a lab in which to be exposed to sunlight... it just needed sunlight.

"I can do it!" Randolph shouted out loud, although there was no-one there to share his delight. "I can get the power! Then I'll show them! The supervisor, that stinking general, his army, the government! They'll all be sorry for the way they treated me. That big security guard... I'll toss him aside like a matchstick! That receptionist bitch with her painted face and her obscene breasts - I'll make her regret messing with my mind and laughing at me. All of her kind will learn! One day, one day, they will all learn!" He struck his fist down on the kitchen table, determinedly.

His brain was alive with calculations. 37.4 years... he'd be 65 then. It wouldn't matter once he transferred four decades' worth of energy from the Sherman crystal into his body. His age would be irrelevant. He held the crystal up in front of his eyes. It was hard to believe that this insignificant piece of semi-transparent rock was going to change the world. All he had to do was get it charged. But where? His kitchen window only let in direct sunlight for part of the day. The obvious place was the roof. But, where he lived, there was little sun from late autumn until early spring. He needed - deserved - better than a Sherman crystal that wasn't in direct sunlight all day, every day...

A month later, Randolph had sold his house. His government salary had been huge, and his expenses low so he had managed to save a considerable sum. More than enough to tie him over while he found a new source of income. Somewhere sunny. After considering the possibilities, and finding them all to be abhorrent in their own way, he chose California. He immediately rejected Los Angeles. He hated the bustle of big cities anyway, but L.A.'s smog made the place completely unsuitable for his crystal. San Francisco, he realised after only a few hours, was full of those so-called "hippies". They disgusted him. He hated their garish dress and above all the way the women were so open with their whorishness. Sitting on the lavatory in his motel room, he pondered their obscenity as he manipulated himself to an angry, despicable orgasm.

He bought a modest suburban house in a small town far from the major cities. Before he'd even begun unpacking his personal effects, he visited the local hardware store and purchased a ladder. Back home, he immediately climbed onto the roof of his new home and set to work installing the Sherman crystal. He mounted it carefully on top of a weather-vane he'd bought for the purpose. Climbing down, he noted with satisfaction the way the crystal glinted in the streaming sunshine.

His new neighbour, a man maybe slightly older than himself, came out of the house next door and introduced himself. "You're not going need a weather vane much in these parts!" the neighbour commented.

"It's a family heirloom." Randolph deadpanned in reply.

"Oh, family heirlooms are wonderful. Do you have any kids to pass it on it?"

"No. I hate kids." Randolph could not keep the contempt from his voice.

"Well, perhaps you'd like to come over for a glass of lemonade once you've done unpacking.."

"No thank you." said Randolph. He and the neighbour barely exchanged another word for the next two decades.

Randolph got a job working part-time in the back room of the town's electronics store. He repaired televisions, radios, electric toothbrushes - whatever the townspeople brought to the store. The work was a long way beneath him but he had decided never to use his genius for the benefit of others again. Besides, the arrangement suited him. He didn't have to deal with customers and the short hours gave him plenty of time to pursue his hobby - trying to recreate the energy-transfer-beam generator. To that end, he stole parts from almost every piece of equipment he repaired, taking them home to his garage which he converted into a kind of workshop.

Increasingly he became known around town as a sour, miserable, anti-social presence - one best left alone. In his street, rumours spread about the noises of machinery coming from his garage when he was in. Sometimes, bright flashing light could be seen escaping from the edges of the big door which was never opened. Gossiping neighbours invented tales in which he was building a Frankenstein's monster or an atom bomb or a rocket ship. But he never gave them cause for real concern. People soon understood that all he wanted was to be left alone, and they were, on the whole, happy to oblige. Especially as any contact with him invariably left the other party stunned by his rudeness.

And in that manner, twenty years went by. Randolph became middle-aged, but other than the ageing of his body, outsiders could discern little difference in his manners. Of course, the loneliness of his life did cast an ever darker shadow over his countenance, his mind’s defence mechanisms building up an ever more solid and impenetrable dislike of the rest of the world. The passage of time did nothing to ease his bitterness towards the government that had discarded him so abruptly. If anything, it had intensified. Every time he left his house, or returned to it, he would glance up at the Sherman crystal on the roof, glinting in the sun as it slowly absorbed energy from Earth’s star. That was his one hope of retribution. Of eventual triumph.

Two decades was plenty of time for him to collect a huge array of parts from domestic electronic equipment. He worked long and hard to re-create his energy transfer ray, spending hours alone in his garage testing theories. New appliances began to be taken into the shop for repairs. Small machines for playing audio cassettes through headphones for people to listen to that horrid modern music that he so disliked. Video recorders. And, most excitingly for Randolph, microwave ovens. The types of energy converters that had been the exclusive property of top laboratories were now beginning to appear in every kitchen. He realised that, with extensive modification, parts from these new cooking devices could be used in his beam-generator.

In the autumn of 1985, his long-time neighbour moved out. A young, newly-wed couple moved in to the house next door. Randolph hated them on first sight. The man was too casually dressed, often appearing unshaven. As for his wife – she was an abomination. She would parade around the street and in the yard behind her house wearing tops that were so tight they were little more than second-skins. From his upstairs bedroom window, Randolph could look out on that garden and see her. He spent many hours doing just that, tutting in disgust as he stared at the way her T-shirt did nothing to hide the obvious roundness of her generous bust. Sometimes, when he used his binoculars, he could even see the clear shape of her nipples. That was obscene. It made him touch himself as he watched her.

It was worse at night. With his window open he could hear the cries of the couple as they performed the disgraceful act of intercourse, oblivious to the fact that any normal, morally-upstanding person might be listening in to… to their filthy activities. He knew the woman was a harlot. That was why she dressed the way she did. But couldn’t her husband learn some self control? Obviously not. He was completely under her spell, just another weak-willed man unable to resist the siren’s lure of a whore. The noises they made were disgusting. He convinced himself that he was not jealous. He was just morally outraged. When he was most outraged, he would listen to the sounds from next door as he furiously stroked his organ.

The degenerate couple had been his neighbours for two and a half years when, as Randolph watched the wife in her back yard one morning, he noticed that she looked pregnant. They hadn’t told him their good news, of course, as any communication between them had ceased after the husband’s first, disastrous attempt at starting a conversation. Randolph’s reaction to the woman’s state was one of disgust. Procreation revolted him. Worse than that, the thought that shortly his privacy would be disturbed by the sound of a wailing infant from next door really angered him. For a few weeks, he considered moving house. But he realised that anywhere he moved to would likely be just as bad, if not even worse. And his beloved crystal would never find a better home than the one it had occupied for the past twenty-three years.

The spring of 1988 was one of the worst of Randolph’s life. The new baby screamed long into the night most nights of the week. The sluttish mother brought her damn child out into her back yard often, meaning that its yells seemed even louder to him. Sometimes, he could even hear it screeching as he worked in his garage. Worse than that, she would often feed the thing out in the yard. Randolph could not believe her complete lack of decency as he held his binoculars to his eyes to study as she scooped out her milk-filled, bigger-than-ever breast and put the baby to it. As he played with himself, he shook his head in horror at the thought that this woman could expose herself like that in a place where anyone – well, him anyway with his eye-glasses – could see.

The child’s nocturnal screaming became less and less frequent as the months went by. The mother stopped suckling, and Randolph, carefully examining her in disgust from his bedroom window as she sunned herself in the garden, noticed that her belly and breasts returned to their previous dimensions. One day, he saw the two parents encouraging their child to try and take a few, shaky steps out in the garden. Three months later it was running around unaided, making far too much noise for his liking. He heard the child’s name being called more than often enough. “Kimberly, come here! Look what I’ve got for you!” He considered complaining about the noise, but decided not to. His words were unlikely to have any impact on such morally lax people.

For her fourth birthday. Kimberley’s parents bought her a bright pink tricycle. To Randolph’s horror, the child took to riding it up and down the pavement in front of his house. No matter how many times he came out and gave her disapproving looks or even openly scowled at her, she continued to pedal past his front door. The tricycle had one of those irritating little bells attached to the handlebars. She used it incessantly. The sound of that horrible tinkling outside his house infuriated him. It annoyed him most when he was working in the garage and he could hear her outside on his driveway, ringing that damn bell, going around and around and around until he wanted to grab a shovel and… As he worked on his transfer ray, he longed for the day that he could use it. There would be no more children riding tricycles in his driveway after that!

One day, late in the autumn of 1996, Randolph was at home when his doorbell rang. He went to the door and opened it, prepared to tell whatever salesman was out there to get lost. Instead he found his hated neighbours’ now eight-years-old daughter. Next to her, a rough home-made cart stacked with boxes of cookies. “Hello Mr. Sherman” she trilled brightly.

“What do you want?”

“I’m selling cookies for the girl scouts. Will you take one? They’re only a dollar a box.”

“I don’t like cookies.”

“Mr. Simpkins over the road took ten boxes. It’s for the girl scouts.”

“If I buy something, will you go away and leave me alone?” She didn’t answer his question, but the look on her face seemed to say “yes.”

“I’ll take half a box.” Randolph said, fishing two quarters from his trouser pocket.

“Um… I can’t break them in two,” the girl said. Randolph snorted and extracted a crumpled dollar bill from another pocket. He almost slammed it into her tiny hand, grabbing the box she proffered in return and slamming the front door in her face without so much as a “thank you.” Inside the house, he threw the unopened box of cookies into the trash. He hated that child.

When Kimberley was twelve, she started playing her horrible music too loud in the garden. Randolph decided that his best hope of retaining his sanity was to completely ignore the child. The policy served him well for two years. After that period had elapsed, as he glanced out of his bedroom window one day after fourteen year old Kimberley had returned from school, he noticed something. The girl had started to change. He could see the beginnings of her figure now starting to appear. How reprehensible of her parents, he thought, that they allowed her to wear clothes so tight that he could see how her body was developing.

He began to watch out for her as she left in the mornings and when she came back in the afternoons. What was wrong with the society he lived in that she could go out, day after day, with her flat midriff on clear view? Her wardrobe was a disgrace. Many of her tops were so tight, he could almost follow the daily increase in the size of her bust. He found himself tortured by impure thoughts once again. Despite his disgust, he could not take his eyes from her maturing body. He knew all her outfits and spent hours watching her trying to tan herself in the back yard. He heard the disrespectful way she spoke to her parents and closely studied the obscenity of her dress.

By the following summer of 2004, she had started to wear bikinis. Randolph was sickened by the way her parents let their fifteen year old daughter flaunt her still-ripening body in that way. Staring down from his bedroom window as the young harlot walked into her garden, he noticed that she now had quite a visible cleavage. It was just so obscene. His hand stroked his throbbing erection as he looked at the disgraceful spectacle, shaking his head in disbelief at the sheer immorality of it all. When she bent down to pick up something from the lawn, the view she offered of her nubile, rounded buttocks nearly gave him heart failure. How could such a public abomination be allowed? He almost dropped his binoculars in horror.

That autumn, Kimberley got a new set of clothes. Within a fortnight, Randolph was familiar with just about all of them. Of course, he found them all disgusting. She had a green top that was the least-tight fitting of all of them, and covered the largest portion of her midriff. He went to great lengths to convince himself that he was not secretly disappointed on days that she wore it. The top he found most unacceptable was the yellow one. It was ridiculously tight, allowing him to see the precise shape of each of her burgeoning nipples. More shockingly, it was low cut, leaving a large expense of young cleavage clear for all to see, as well as the three inches of tanned, smooth belly below. Sometimes, Randolph saw her wearing it in his dreams while he slept.

Over the next half-year, her physical development completed. Her breasts became full; astonishingly large for such a slim young girl. They were firm and upstanding at the start of her first summer as an adult. Her face was fair too. Randolph noted with great displeasure how her lips were large and usually pouting, her eyes big and blue with those long lashes he found so repulsive. She remained slender, her navel and the surrounding smooth flesh constantly on display, even as her hips became increasingly curved. Increasingly, she wore cut-off shorts that showed off her lengthening legs and her disgustingly round thighs. She learnt and quickly perfected what Randolph called the “whore’s walk”, making all the obscene parts of her body move in such as way that he couldn’t help but touch himself as he watched her striding into the yard.

It was not just her appearance that he loathed. He could not stand the way she spoke to her parents and other adults. So disrespectful. The music she listened to was hateful, too. The tunes just incomprehensible repetitive noise, the lyrics – those that he could understand – just obscenities shouted over the background racket. Working in his garage, he occasionally overheard her passing by talking with one of her friends on her cell-phone. He could not believe the way she spoke. It was as if she was proud of her ignorance, her lack of proper education and moral fibre. To Randolph, the girl symbolised everything that was wrong with the modern world he lived in. There was no morality. No discipline.

A change was desperately needed. A new sense of leadership. An end of the tolerance of moral decay. Society needed a strong leader, someone who could teach people to be decent, who would punish those who were not. A leader who would truly lead by upright example. According to his calculations, the Sherman crystal that had been on his roof since 1968 was almost fully charged. Once he transferred its power into his ageing body, he could become the leader that the world so badly required. He would show the youth of the day how to behave. How to dress decently. His moral code would be the only moral code. As leader, he would force the women to be decent. Not to torture innocent men like himself with their obscene flesh. All of them. Except perhaps for that hateful tease next door. He had special plans for her.

He also had special plans for the government that had mistreated him. And the army that didn’t have faith in his work. He’d show them all just how wrong they were. There wasn’t long to wait. His transfer-beam-generator was ready now. Soon. Very soon.

And that is Randolph Sherman’s back-story. Perhaps your first impression of him wasn’t so harsh, after all. Let’s re-join him now, in the present.

 

Conceptfan, Jul. 2005.

Chapter 2

The calendar on the kitchen wall displays the month of June in the year 2005. The 5th – that’s today - is ringed in thick red marker pen, but there are no other markings. Randolph doesn’t need any. He’s known the significance of that date for nearly forty years. It’s the day, according to his calculations, that his Sherman crystal will reach energy saturation point. In his garage, the transfer ray device is complete, waiting for the moment for which it has been built. Made from parts stolen from televisions, microwave ovens and other bits of domestic equipment, it doesn’t look like a device that could change the world.

Randolph is outside of his house, puffing and sweating as he awkwardly tries to climb the ladder he’s rested against the side of the building. He remembers how easy it was to get up there when he first installed the crystal on his roof. Now, he is an old man and the physical effort is challenging. But the prize is almost in his reach now. The weather-vane has rusted over the decades and it’s hard work to remove it. He smiles to himself through the struggle as he thinks of how easy such physical tasks will become once he completes the energy transfer.

The crystal is hot. Too hot for him to touch with his unprotected fingers and he has to extract a handkerchief from his pocket, fold it in half and use that to handle the rock. Even so, it is beginning to burn his fingers. He hurries down from the roof, but he can’t climb down the ladder with one hand, so he has to drop the hot crystal into his pocket and hope that it isn’t so hot that it burns the fabric during his decent. On the way down, he slips twice, once almost falling, but clings on, determined to complete his life’s work. He pauses for only a few seconds to catch his breath when he gets to the ground and doesn’t waste any time removing the ladder, so keen is he to get to his garage.

Once there, he places the hot Sherman crystal into his bizarre ray generator. He’s designed the thing to be a tight fit, so that the crystal will be properly held in place when he activates the beam, but it’s a test of his remaining strength to insert it. For a minute he struggles, sweat soaking his forehead. He wipes it off with the still-warm handkerchief. Finally, he succeeds; the rock is properly in place. He switches on the machine and a low hum fills the garage. A small green light labelled “Defrost” – stolen from a freezer he once repaired – illuminates telling him that the ray is ready to be fired.

Randolph goes over to a work-bench and picks up what looks like a television remote-control. A series of scratch marks around the “Volume +” button indicate that that is the one he needs to press to activate the machine once he is standing in front of it. He can’t help laughing. He’s so close to fulfilling his dream now. He begins making his way towards the garage door. The transfer-ray is aligned so that the recipient needs to be standing in front of the centre of the closed door. He’s almost in place when he hears a familiar, hateful, young feminine voice. “…Yeah, it was like, so, gross! He PROMISED he’d take it out of my mouth in time. It’s not like everyone doesn’t know that I don’t swallow. And he’s so well-hung… Not!”

The slut-girl from next door! Randolph realises she’s walking past the front of his house on her way home from school, chatting with one of her so-called friends on her cell-phone. Unable to resist the opportunity to check which obscene outfit she is wearing today, he moves as quickly as his ageing limbs allow, standing on a broken television to peek at her through a small crack in the garage door, the customised remote control unit still in his hand. He has to rise onto his toes to see through the chink in the panel, and it's no easy feat for a man of his age. The old television creaks beneath him as he puts his eye right up to the gap. His reward is a glimpse of the girl's dramatic profile, so whorishly displayed by her clingingly-tight top as she walks by.

Her big chest is moving slightly with each stride. Now that she's passing almost directly in front of him, he can even look down to see the outline of her proud ripe nipple beneath her T-shirt. How can her parents allow her to go out in public dressed so outrageously. Subconsciously, Randolph's hand leaves its post against the garage door where it had been providing extra support and makes its way down the front of his body to begin rubbing his groin through his trousers. Completely distracted now, the rubbing intensifies. But with his body slightly unbalanced, and all his weight concentrated in the tips of his feet, the cheap plastic casing of the ageing television he's standing on can no longer hold out.

A crack appears in the plastic beneath his toes. It spreads instantly, and the casing gives way. The television crumbles under him. With nothing supporting his weight, his feet fall, the left faster than the right, tipping him off balance. The hand that should be bracing his body against the garage door is still on his groin. The other hand is gripping the remote control to his energy transfer device. Instinctively, he flashes out that hand to try and protect himself from injury as he collapses towards the television-wreckage on the ground. The little black rectangular box slips out of his grasp in the confusion, crashing down a half-second before Randolph joins it on the floor. Pain registers in his brain as he impacts with the shattered glass, broken plastic and electronic components. The wind is knocked from him, and he lies in the mess for a full half minute, recovering his breath before gingerly, awkwardly, hauling himself up to his feet.

"That damn slut!" he mutters to himself. Angrily, he thinks "That only happened because she walked past in that ridiculous whore's costume. I'm all bruised down my right side because of her. If she hadn't been passing, I'd have already activated the transfer ray making myself unbruisable... The transfer ray! Oh my god! I dropped the remote! Where the hell is it? It must be near here somewhere.... Down there! Ouch! It hurts when I bend down now, thanks to that little bitch... Got it. Is it OK? Looks alright.... all in one piece, nothing rattling inside when I shake it. It should still be alright. Thank God!"

On the other side of the garage door, Kim - it's been years since she thought of herself as "Kimberley" - is still chatting on her cell-phone, completely oblivious to the farcical scene taking place just yards away from her. If she heard the commotion inside the old man's garage, she did not register it. Her free hand momentarily presses against the front of her T-shirt, scratching, through the thin material, the narrow valley of flawless skin between her two generous, perfectly-shaped breasts. Absorbed in the conversation with her friend, she turns from the pavement on to the path to the front door of her house. The sun in shining and she's thinking about the rays she's going to catch out in the yard once she's changed into something more suitable.

Back in the garage, Randolph is still examining the remote control unit he dropped when, suddenly, he panics. The colour, what little there is of it, drains from his features and he feels unsteady. Every movement makes his fresh bruises ache, but that is not his prime concern anymore. He's realised that there's a chance, a horrible, terrifying chance, that the remote control unit may have fallen onto the "Volume +" button, activating the energy beam. If it did, it would have happened as he fell, out of the line-of-fire of the ray and the power of the Sherman crystal would have been shot into thin air. The radiation is invisible and the machine that generates it is quiet; there would have been no way of detecting that the thing was firing, other than the crystal becoming cool and dull.

Ignoring the pain in his body, Randolph almost runs to the transfer-beam-generator. Without care for his creation, he tears open a side panel to peer inside. He feels sick as he examines the contents. He reaches out, already certain of the worst, and touches the cold crystal within. "No!" he screams, as if by denying the truth he can change it. "No! No! My energy! My power!" He falls to his knees, not caring about the extra discomfort this causes him. His hands cover his eyes as tears start to roll down his wrinkled face. Forty years of work and patience has been lost. Lost because he had to climb precariously on top of an old television to peek at that... that damned whore from next door.

Why did that bitch have to dress so obscenely provocatively? If only her parents had taught her some decency, he would be super-powered now. Instead, he’s nothing but an old man, on the floor of his garage, crying for his cruelly murdered lifelong dream. The slut! Her degenerate ways have cost him everything! Everything... Four decades' worth of the sun's energy, slowly stored in his crystal waiting for the moment that he could transfer that energy into himself. And now, it has all been discharged into... into the garage door and the empty air beyond it. Wasted. The injustice of it all burns. How can his genius and his years of patience be nullified by an ignorant, immoral, indecent teenager?

Meanwhile, up in her room in the house next door, Kim is slowly pulling her tight T-shirt off. It's a little bit of a struggle, especially manoeuvring the stretched material over her large breasts which have developed so spectacularly over the past two years. The cotton and polyester rubs over her barely-matured nipples and the sensation, as ever, is far from unpleasant. The two points of her chest grow hard with the stimulation, swelling as her eyes close for a moment and she lets the feeling suppress all her other thoughts. Ever since she became a woman, she has enjoyed the way her breasts feel, but today - right now, especially - it's particularly lovely. So much so that once she has finally taken her T-shirt off, she can't help cupping her big mounds, which are so much larger than her girlish hands, and caressing them.

A familiar feeling spreads within her from the point where her fingertips are massaging her youthfully firm chest. Surrendering to it, she starts to gently pinch her engorged pink nipples between her thumbs and forefingers. Oh, that feels so good! She normally enjoys it, but this is something else. Mmmmm... She loves her body, the way it is now. The way it makes her feel... So tingly. So warm inside, so... She could spend all day fondling herself, but she collects her thoughts, brings her mind back to the present. She was planning on working on her tan. Her prefect skin is already an alluring golden tone but it wouldn't hurt at all to lie out in the sun for a couple of hours.

She opens her closet and selects a new, rather brief, two-piece bikini. Sliding out of her shorts, wiggling her perfect rear as they fall to her ankles, she stands in front of the wardrobe's full-length mirror as she slips into the swimming costume. She's only worn it once before, in the fitting room at the store, and once she's put it on, she spends a few extra moments admiring the way it looks on her lithe, ripe body. The top half bulges where each of its hardly-adequate cups overflows with full, round teenage breast, a little of each mound visible around the edges of the material, the prominent protrusion of an aroused nipple marking their centres. In the centre of her chest, a deep, stunningly erotic cleavage is dramatically displayed, as sexually inviting as any image plucked from an adolescent boy's hyperactive imagination.

Below the top, an acre of smooth, even skin is on view. Her belly is as flat as her chest is rounded. The flesh is silky and unblemished, spreading like a plain around the small, profound navel just below its middle. Her hips are curved and fully visible as only the tinniest of strings fastens her lower garment together. It's a tiny affair; little more than two pieces of material, one to protect her modesty in front of her body, the other behind. The one in front just about covers her pubic area but leaves her thighs and her hips on show, the other hides the crevice between her buttocks but does not enclose much of either of those two solid, peach-like spherical cheeks. She can't help admiring herself in the mirror for a few more moments before she grabs a bottle of lotion from her dresser and her cell-phone from where she'd dropped it on her bed and makes her way downstairs to the back door.

Out in the yard, she finds that her mother has left a reclining chair open and ready for use on the lawn. She sits down on the edge of it, and places the bottle of lotion and her cell-phone beside her. She's not lying back yet, because she needs to apply her cream first. Taking the bottle, she uses her index finger to flick open the lid, taking care not to damage her recently-manicured bright red nail in the process. She transfers her grip so that she is holding the bottle in her small right fist, its digits with their lustrous nails curled around the cylinder, gently squeezing it, urging the thick white liquid it contains towards the small hole in the lid until a large blob of it squirts out onto the flawless skin of her waiting forearm. She repeats the process several times. First, by switching the hand holding the bottle of lotion, with her other arm. Then she eases some more cream onto each of her thighs in turn.

Her skin is warm out in the Californian sun, and the lotion is much cooler. The contrast feels lovely as she slowly starts to rub the various dribbles of white paste in. She massages her arms and legs as she distributes the cream, her thick, pouty lips parting as she works, her two rows of straight white teeth set slightly apart, her eyes closed to the glare from the sky. When she's satisfied that she's covered every inch of exposed limb, there's still plenty of lotion on her hands. Rather than wasting it by wiping her hands off on the grass beneath her feet, she rubs the excess into her neck and then top of her torso, spreading the sun protection as far as the uncovered upper edges of her breasts. She almost shudders at the sheer delight of the contact. What is it with her breasts this afternoon? When she touches them, they make her feel incredible. She continues the caressing, long after every trace of lotion has been absorbed by her flawless skin.

About five seconds earlier, Randolph entered his bedroom. His bruised legs seemed to carry him there of their own accord. His mind, still in shock, still unable to come to terms with his loss, played no part in picking him up off the garage floor and carrying him upstairs. He moves like a robot; a thing devoid of emotion, mechanically going about its function. His bloodshot eyes with their obvious traces of recent tears are the only clear indication of his membership of the human race. They cast about the familiar room with detached disinterest, resigned perhaps to the knowledge that nothing they might alight upon will ever be enough to replace the dream that has just died. His life is ruined. It has all proved pointless. With hunched shoulders, he drags himself towards the window. Maybe he wants to look out at the sky and curse it for the injustice it has allowed to pass beneath its canopy. But he never gets to do that.

Randolph's gaze is caught by the scene in his neighbours' back yard. The disgusting trollop of a girl is out there. The bitch, whose sluttish dress he tells himself was the real cause of his failure, is lying on a recliner, sunning herself. He notices that she's changed clothes. Gone are that whore's shirt and the disgracefully revealing shorts. Instead, she's wearing a far, far more obscene swimming outfit. It's red. He's not seen this one before. It must be new. How could anyone wear such a thing? There's hardly anything to it. All her disgusting feminine bits are out on display where anyone - anyone in an overlooking window next-door - can see them. She might as well be completely naked. From his vantage point, he can see right into her cleavage. It's so disgusting! And far from being ashamed of her near-nudity, the slut seems quite comfortable. Why she's even touching herself, rubbing the edge of one hand slowly along the underside of one of her breasts.

It's wrong. It's obscene. He stares, shaking his head in sheer disgust at the scene down there. How could anyone touch themselves in public like that? Randolph's right thumb and forefinger pincer the tag on the fly of his trousers and slowly draw it downwards, his eyes not flickering from the disgraceful exhibition, even when he releases the zip and his fingers enter the newly-opened fly and grip his already-stiffening member. His left hand feels around on the window sill. He knows he left his binoculars there last time the little trollop was out in the yard, but he cannot tear his gaze from her even for an instant to search for them. He doesn't have to. He finds them by touch and brings them up to his ageing eyes. Now he can see the disgusting things she's doing much more clearly. He can see the way her large mound moves as she touches it.

It gets worse. She starts to use two hands, pushing her oversized bosoms together, squeezing them in her fingers. Her mouth is open. He can see her teeth. He doesn't realise that his own jaw is also open and that his tongue is now hanging out as his right hand strokes his shaft with increasing insistence.

The binoculars are trembling in his hand. That's partly because of his ageing fingers, but mostly because his whole body is shaking as he masturbates. A drop of saliva falls unnoticed from the tip of his tongue as he sees the girl sliding her fingers under the flimsy cloth of her bikini, exposing more and more of her creamy breast as she does so. Her eyes are closed, and Randolph can tell she's losing herself to her lust. It's unbelievably vile that she can allow that to happen. The movement of his right hand speeds up a little.

Down on the recliner, a low moan is passing through Kim’s rich open lips. She is surrendering to the wonderful sensations in her body caused by her hands as they massage her chest. Her eyes, which have been shut for a minute or so, open and look down at her fingertips as they compress and stroke her large breasts. A small part of her mind is curious to know why the feelings are so intense. After some moments of self-examination, she decides that upper body looks the same as it did yesterday, it just feels different. Not just different, in fact. Better. She rests her head backwards as is just about to close her eyes once more when something moving in the very periphery of her vision catches her attention.

The far side of the lawn lies in shade as two large, leafy trees stand between it and the afternoon sun, casting their shadows. But standing out from the relative darkness over there is a bright patch of light on the grass. It could be caused by a glint of sunlight finding its way between the branches of one of the trees, but that’s unlikely. The area of light is dancing about on the lawn whereas the trees are dead still in the hot, windless afternoon. That brightness must be the result of something else… perhaps the sun glinting off something shiny. Something shiny that’s moving around rapidly. Maybe it’s something behind her. She turns to look and as she does so, the patch of light suddenly disappears. She sees nothing that might have caused it – nothing is moving behind her… except…

What was that? Her eyes flick to where she thought she’d detected some motion. She’s looking at the upper storey of the house next door. Is that… yes. Yes. She’s certain now. The curtain in one of the upstairs rooms is twitching, as if someone has just hurried to hide behind it. Kim realises immediately what has happened. Someone’s been watching her as she played with herself. And there’s only one person in that house. The miserable old man. She’d noticed him checking her out quite a few times since she’d grown up. Now he was taking it one step further. He was perving on her from the window. The filthy old bastard, spying on her. “Well, old man,” she thought, turning away from his house once more, “if that’s want you want, I’ll give you a show you’ll never forget. Let’s see if your heart can take it.”

Randolph eases the curtain about half an inch away from the widow and peers cautiously through the tiny gap. The relief when he sees the girl reclining with her back to him once more is palpable. For a moment, he feared she saw him watching her. But it turns out she’s as stupid as she is degenerate. No match for a man as worldly and intelligent as he. Not only has she failed to spot him, but she hasn’t even found cause to stop her filthy self-manipulation. Her hand is already inside her bikini top once more, already squeezing her breast. And what’s this? Her other hand venturing inside the waist band of her knickers! He grabs the binoculars again. He can see her fingers moving about inside that tiny lower garment. She’s touching her sex! How repulsive. That is not what nature intended. He recommences stroking his penis as he watches and thinks about the wrongness of it all.

Kim is so wrapped up in the way her body feels as she touches it - so much better than when any boy has done it and quite a few boys have in the past eighteen months - that she almost forgets that she has an audience. Whilst her right hand is buried inside her panties, its index finger extended to trace circles around her moistening labia, her left is thrust into her top. Her dainty, feminine fingers aren't long enough to completely encircle her left breast, but it's wonderful the way they're digging into that soft, sensitive flesh.

Remembering that she's being watched, she sensuously digs her fingers under her mound and scoops her entire, heavy breast out of her bikini, lifting it slightly so that her voyeur can get a good view of its round perfection and the glorious, erect nipple that crowns it. She bends her head towards that wonderful breast, and slowly, with practiced erotic expertise, extends her pink tongue. She licks her nipple repeatedly, surprised by the astonishingly gorgeous sensation, taking her time as she traces around it with the tip of her tongue.

Her left hand's index finger has now been joined by two of its colleagues. She's working the three digits more and more energetically around the entrance to her sex. Her fingertips slip on her increasingly wet flesh, sliding over her body and plunging a little inside her. It's like an explosion in her mind, so strong is the wave of pleasure that fills her entire being. Losing track of her surroundings for real this time, she throws her head back, her eyes shut, her breast still bared. Her right hand rolls and pinches her big nipple as her left rhythmically darts a short way in and out of her vagina. It's never, ever, felt this good before.

Randolph has already been pushed over the edge of control. The sight of the girl pornographically licking her ripe mound is more, far more, than he can take without erupting. He has to drop his binoculars to grab a fresh kleenex from the box he keeps handy for these occasions. After shuddering for a few moments in guilty, obscene pleasure, he wipes his penis and his leg, the carpet beneath him and the wall beneath the window where some of his seed has landed. Then, he heads into the bathroom, throwing the soiled tissue disgustedly into the toilet, and flushing it to destroy the evidence of his moral weakness. All that remains is for him to scrub the stench of degenerate sexuality from his body in the shower.

The old man is still rinsing soap off himself under the stream of warm water as Kim, who has forgotten about him entirely, feels her orgasm begin to build. Her fingers are working frenetically now. One set is intensely rubbing the entrance to her sex and teasing the opening of her love-canal with expertly applied movements, the other is squeezing and stroking her breast and her nipple in particular, generating sensations that reverberate within her more forcefully than any she's ever known. She already knows that the release that is approaching may well be the most passionate and explosive of her life, and that its arrival is almost guaranteed now. As long as she can keep stimulating herself as she is now doing. Her eyes are closed, the features of her face slightly contorted as the overwhelming physical sensation takes full control of her body.

In anticipation of the imminent, fabulous, internal eruption, Kim grabs her big breast as tightly as she can, her other hand plunging deep inside her vagina. A burst of sexual pleasure rips through her and, without thinking, she arches her back violently. There's a cracking sound which she barely registers, but then she cannot help but notice as the sun lounger suddenly collapses beneath her, its plastic legs giving way so that the chair, with her on top, falls the eighteen inches to the lawn. The jolt distracts her for a moment. Her eyes open instinctively, and she realises immediately what was happened. She curses the cheapness and poor quality of the garden furniture and that is enough to disturb the rhythm she has spent so much time and energy building towards. The moment has gone. She removes her hands from her intimate zones, rearranging her bikini and then placing her palms flat on the grass either side of her.

Kim sits up. The frustration of her close call with sheer ecstasy is prominent in her mind. She glances down at the wreckage of recliner that is beneath her. If it wasn't for that heap of junk, she'd probably still be riding the waves of a glorious orgasm. She takes a deep breath that makes her large breasts rise even more prominently than usual on her chest and, pouting her gorgeous lips, theatrically sighs. She's shocked to hear a sound like a hurricane. A tree twenty yards in front of her shakes violently for a moment, as if caught in a sudden wind-storm, and every single leaf is torn from its branches and sent flying. A second later, everything is calm again. The noise has ceased and the displaced leaves are slowly floating down to the ground, making a dark green carpet in the far corner of the lawn, some distance behind the now naked tree.

Kim sits for a moment in shock. She's never experienced anything like that before. It's not just the remarkably powerful gust of wind that came from nowhere and disappeared so quickly. It's the fact that the wind coincided with her dramatic sigh. It kind of felt at the time as if the hurricane was actually coming from... from her - through her mouth. Maybe she should - just to put her mind at ease - try blowing, and see if the same thing happens again. But before she can resolve to do that, her cell-phone starts to ring. She glances down and sees it on the broken recliner beside her. She grabs it to answer the call as she has already done twelve times today. But this time, as her fingers close around the handset, something strange happens. The phone crumbles into little pieces in her grip. She doesn't even feel it resisting for a moment. It just seems to dissolve between her fingertips.

Now Kim is completely confused. Something really weird is going on. She brings her right hand up to her face and examines it, turning her fingers slowly in front of her gaze. It looks the same as ever. Carefully, she picks up a piece of phone-debris and squeezes it between her fingertips. She doesn't use much pressure - less in fact than she was using to stimulate her nipple moments before - but the solid lump of plastic shatters instantly into countless smaller chunks. Intrigued, she places her left palm on the handrest of the broken recliner she's still sitting on. It's made of metal, covered in decorative fabric but when she pushes down, she feels the solid frame yielding beneath the fabric. A loud metallic groan confirms her suspicions. She's compressing the thing with her hand! "Oh my god!" she thinks, jumping up onto her feet.

Kim bends down and grips the edge of the recliner with her right hand. As she straightens up, she's stunned by how easily she lifts the entire lounger with that single arm. She's moved this chair many times before, and she knows how heavy it always felt, but now it seems utterly weightless to her. She tries raising it above her head and lowering it a few times, and finds it's completely effortless. She tightens her grip, and hears and feels the metal tubing succumbing to her fingers as if it were wet cardboard. "What the fuck?" she asks herself. Experimentally, she tries to toss the recliner into the air. "Shit!" she exclaims as her careful toss sends the large folding chair rocketing into the sky. Her head is tilted back as she watches, amazed as the thing gets smaller and smaller. Soon, it gets lost in the glare of the sun.

Instinctively, she blinks, and to her amazement, her eyes seem to adjust to the brightness and she can once again make out the tiny dot that is the recliner still rising into the atmosphere. She can tell it's still travelling away from her, despite its remarkable distance from her now. It's about to disappear from her view altogether when she blinks again and suddenly, she can see the thing in detail once more. It's as though her eyes have zoomed in, like a telephoto lens on a camera. When she briefly closes her eyes and reopens them, the view returns to normal and the recliner is almost too small to spot at all. She spends a few seconds alternating between "zoomed in" and normal views of it until she's confident she can control whatever it is. It's awesome.

The chair is finally beginning its descent. She's no idea how high it peaked, but some time has passed since she tossed it upwards. She watches it coming down and glancing between the object and the ground, realises that she can predict where it will land. She can't quite understand how or why, but she's absolutely confident that the broken recliner is going to crash down onto the roof of the house next door. The old pervert's house. She smiles. If she'd been given the choice, that's the place of impact she would have chosen. She wonders if it will do much damage. She has to wait ten long seconds to find out. The chair hits the roof with a sound like a small bomb detonating. Bits of smashed plastic fly off in all directions, clattering against the house and the pavement around it. A small cloud of dust rises from the point of the main collision and she hears a muffled sound, like something heavy falling inside the house itself. "Wow!" she says, as the realisation that she is responsible for the damage sinks in. She's amazed, and more than a little proud.

Her curiosity is rampant now. She has to know if the business with the recliner was some kind of fluke. Can she really, suddenly, be incredibly strong? She casts her eyes around the yard, looking for something to test herself with. There's nothing obvious around. Her gaze settles on the big redwood tree that spectacularly lost all its leaves a minute before. Thinking of that strange incident, she wonders. Did she do that too? If her fingers were now strong enough to crush a cell-phone to dust and her arm contained enough force to easily throw a big garden lounger into the sky, were her lungs also inexplicably more powerful? She turns her face towards the wide-spread carpet of leaves on the lawn and tentatively exhales a very measured breath through her pursed lips. Immediately, she hears the same sound of rushing wind that accompanied the initial stripping of the tree. The leaves on the ground are picked up by an invisible force and tossed backwards, dancing in the air as they fly away from her. She stops blowing and the gale-like noises cease at once. A second later, the leaves stop moving and settle back onto the lawn.

Kim laughs out loud. This is just so cool! She walks excitedly up to the trunk of the big tree. It's huge. If she were to hug it with her arms fully extended, they'd barely reach half-way around. But she's not in a hugging mood. She extends one hand towards the bark and jabs it carefully with her index finger. To her delight, her petite digit sinks into the solid tree as if she'd poked it into a slab of near-molten butter. She wiggles her finger about and is stunned by how easy it is for her to enlarge the hole she's made. She can hardly even feel the wood resisting as her slender digit carves out big chunks of it. Pulling her hand away, she pauses for a moment, then comes to a decision. She makes a fist. Her hand is small and feminine and seems to carry no threat. But when she punches the tree, it sounds like a muffled gun-shot and a shower of bark and wood fragments spray out. It felt like hitting a sponge, but she can see her arm buried almost up to her elbow in the tree. Effortlessly, she pulls her hand free, admiring the damage she's caused.

"What the fuck's happening to me?" she mutters, examining her hand for any sign of an injury and finding none. "I'm like, totally fucking strong. I've got to try this some more!" She racks her brain for a moment, trying to think up a new test for her apparent strength. She looks at the huge tree with the hole she's just created. "No way!" she thinks. "But.. I've got to try." She walks right up to the trunk. It's hard not to be intimidated by its sheer size, but she's determined to go through with her experiment. She opens her arms and reaches them around the tree. To get any kind of purchase, she has to lean into the thing. Her large breasts press against the trunk, briefly reminding her of the wonderful sensations she was enjoying a few minutes ago. Wanting more of that indescribable pleasure, she briefly removes her hands from the trunk, reaching behind herself to unclasp her bikini top and lets it fall at her feet. Now bare-chested, she leans forward against the tree, savouring the feeling of the rough bark against her breasts. She hears a loud crunch and, looking down, sees that a large area of the trunk has crumbled around her naked bust.

"No fucking way!" she exclaims, delighted. She rotates her upper body slightly and watches as the side of her right breast carves a massive channel out of the solid tree. She turns in the other direction and is rewarded by the sight of her left mound causing similar damage. Pressing herself hard against the trunk, she sees how, rather than compressing against it, her chest keeps its rounded shape and it is the wood that yields - chipping, snapping and breaking off in chunks. She takes a step back and stares at the deep, wide recess her bare breasts have torn out of the tree. "Even my tits are super-strong! This is totally awesome!" she comments. She brings her hands up to cup herself, and notices that there's no trace of any scratch or bruise anywhere on her big mounds. Her body feels great to her touch, yet she barely even noticed the resistance when she had been using it to carve out the tree.

She bends down to retrieve her bikini top and fastens it over her generous, youthful chest. Approaching the trunk once more, she's pleased to note that there's now a pre-cut recess to accommodate her big bust. She stretches her hands as far as she can around the tree, and presses them into the bark. There's a series of cracking and creaking noises as her palms sink a little into the wood. Her forearms also push an inch or so into the trunk. Confident of her purchase now, she tentatively tries to pull upwards. Nothing happens at first. She pulls a little harder and hears something groaning inside the tree. Encouraged by this, she keeps lifting. A large chunk of trunk breaks off under her left hand. She lets it fall and re-adjusts her grip. She's not straining. She is conscious of the strength flowing into her arms and she can tell, somehow, that there is much much more of that power available for her if she requires it. But she doesn't need it now. The ground below her shifts a little. She can see the lawn beginning to tear in a few places near her feet as the tree's roots breach the surface.

The creaking sound increases in volume and intensity. It's fantastic to think she's exerting so much power. She's smiling as she continues to pull her arms upwards. There's a series of sharp snaps, followed by the loudest creak yet and then a crack and suddenly, her arms shoot up about six inches. She has to look to see that the four-yard-diameter tree trunk has torn completely in half at her waist height. Even though she's now supporting the entire weight of the top five-sixths of the tree, branches and all, she hardly registers the load on her arms. It's only the lack of resistance to her lift, brought about by the trunk breaking in two, that has captured her attention. She looks up at the huge bare tree that is dwarfing her. "I'm so fucking strong!" she exclaims, excitedly raising and lowering the massive object with far greater ease than she would have lifted a single branch this morning.

Even though it has already lost all its leaves to a puff of her breath, the broken tree is still top heavy. Its weight might be negligible to her, but maintaining balance, what with the base that she's holding being far, far too wide for her arm-span, is difficult. After tossing the whole thing several yards into the air and catching it again as if it were nothing more than a beachball three times, she inevitably loses control of the massive tree on the fourth attempt. She grabs the bottom of the trunk as it falls, but does not manage to keep the rest upright. Gravity takes over and the top part of the tree begins to fall earthwards. She's still holding the other end off the lawn, but the thing has tipped beyond rescue now and its upper portion is crashing down towards the ground. She tries to get a better purchase to regain control, and succeeds only in crushing a large section of lower trunk to matchsticks between her palms.

The top half of the tree accelerates on its way to ground. Only now does Kim realise just how tall it once was. Laid on its side, the thing is too long to fit inside the yard. The top of the ex-tree crashes unceremoniously onto the fence that marks the boundary with her neighbour's land. The wooden posts offer no resistance to the falling weight, instantly breaking as the giant plant finally comes to rest, one quarter of it now lying inside her neighbour's yard, the ruins of a section of fencing buried beneath it. She's still holding what's left of the far edge in her hands. "Ooops!" she giggles, looking at the damage she's caused to the old man's fence.

From her holding position right at one end of the tree, raising the battered trunk back to vertical looks like it will be difficult, given the unfavourable lack of leverage. So she is pleasantly surprised to find that with very little effort, she can lift the fallen tree off of the broken fence and back into the air directly above her. Extending her arms, she holds the torn trunk over her head and tosses it upwards, taking care not to lose balance when she catches it on the way down.

Randolph is standing in a towelling robe outside his bathroom, shaking his head as he looks at the mess caused by a huge chunk of plaster that has fallen from the ceiling. When he heard the crash from the shower, his first thought was that something had fallen onto the roof of his house from a passing airplane. He ran out, grabbing the robe, to investigate. He found the hallway full of dust and quickly identified the dislodged plaster, but was relieved to note that the roof itself appeared to be still intact. Not that it matters, he thinks with a heavy heart. There's no longer a Sherman crystal up there collecting solar energy. Thanks to that delinquent whore next door, his forty-year experiment has ended in total failure. His dream of power is, like the hallway ceiling, in ruin. It might be the dust irritating his retinas, but it's more likely it's the sense of loss that causes a single tear to appear in his left eye.

He needs something to wipe his eye. Whatever other household supplies he might run out of, he always, always, makes sure that there's a supply of Kleenex, along with his trusty binoculars, within easy reach of his bedroom window. He makes his way there, his vision blurred and grabs a tissue. He cleans his eye and blinks. He's facing the window and that's why he notices the broken fence. "What happened there?" he wonders. "Did that happen at the same time as the ceiling? It looks smashed, not like it's just fallen over, but like something has crashed on to it. Maybe something did fall out of an airplane after all. What's that moving over there? Did that tree just jump into the air? What the..." At this point his thoughts switch gear from silent to spoken aloud. "Oh my god! No! No! It can't be! It can't!"

 

Conceptfan, Jul. 2005.

Chapter 3

Randolph runs as fast as his bruised, ageing limbs can manage, nearly tripping more than once on his towelling robe. His mind races with questions, but it already knows the answer to the key one. He didn't fire the transfer-beam at thin air... he fired it directly into the obscenely-shaped body of that slut of a teenaged girl. The same slut of a teenaged girl who had caused him, by her immodest clothing, to misfire the beam in the first place. He thought his life's work had simply vanished into the ionosphere. Now he realises the truth, and it's far, far worse. The idea that no-one would ever reap the benefits of his labour seemed a cruel, bitter blow. But the fact is that someone - someone so repulsive - has profited from all the energy it took him so long to gather... It's too much! He could have almost borne losing the power he has so patiently craved if no-one else would ever gain it. But he cannot accept that he is to get nothing - nothing at all - and that this trollop is to have everything.

How could fate play so cruel a trick on him? To take the fruit of his genius and forty years of waiting and hand it to the least deserving, most ignorant, morally-bankrupt of adolescents! Worse: an undeserving, ignorant, morally-bankrupt adolescent GIRL. A whore of the lowest kind. Who dresses not to hide her shameful allurements but to expose them more temptingly. Who not only flaunts her sexuality but actually enjoys it! Who lures upstanding citizens to surrender to their own basest impulses.

With the power, he would have changed the world. He would have forced all the degenerates like her to accept decency and morality, to show him the respect he deserves as a scientist without equal, a man of values far beyond the lax society in which he's forced to live. He would no longer have been vulnerable to the witch-like tricks of women. He would have been the master, the one to punish their witchcraft with proper justice. The one to make them regret their degenerate displays of so-called feminine power with his own, pure, male authority. He would have risen above the ethical decay to lead by example - once he had taught her and her ilk the consequence of her ways. Now, instead of him being in a position to correct the likes of that slut, it's she who has the power to do as she pleases and he who is powerless to do anything to stop her. She can flaunt her obscene body as much as she wishes, using it to confuse and distract upstanding men like himself to her heart's desire.

Just the thought of her disgusting body and what she can now do with it makes him want to scream. She's lifting a tree with those long, shapely arms! It should be him with that incredible strength. Who knows what else that trollop might do with her powers? Whilst he has nothing to look forward to but the final degeneration of his weakening, frail body, she can now pervert his dream in ways he dare not even imagine. He cannot abide the thought of those obscene, over-sized breasts, which she loves to display so immodestly, now even firmer than before, possessing the strength and power that he had dreamed about for so long. She can probably crush stone with those mounds now. She can flaunt them, destroying the moral fibre of helpless men as she goes about her selfish, ignorant ways. It horrifies him to think about it all. It's the complete opposite of his plans and his hopes. His dream has become a nightmare.

Randolph tears out into the yard. "What are you doing with my power?" he practically screams at the slim big-breasted teenager in the red bikini who's carrying a massive tree like it's a matchstick. "That energy is mine!"

"Hey, what's your problem, old man?" Kim asks from behind the huge tree trunk.

"You've absorbed the energy from my Sherman crystal! My transfer-beam must have hit you as you walked past my garage. It's my power! You stole it!"

"Your power? Transfer beam? You mean, like, you zapped me with something? Dude, is that, like, legal?"

"Yes! No! Who cares?! You took the power of my crystal!"

"So 'cos of your shitty aim I've, like, got superpowers now? That's pretty funny."

"It's not funny! It's a disaster!"

"Seems funny to me. I mean, you build a super-ray and then you can't even shoot it straight ‘cos you're so old and feeble so I get the superpowers!"

"No. That energy is mine! They're MY superpowers!"

Kim tosses the huge tree into the air and catches it once more. She's getting better and better at keeping it balanced. "They don't feel like YOUR powers to me!" she says.

"I've been working on that process for forty years, you ignorant trollop!"

"No wonder you're so pissed off then. Looks like you fucked up big time, pervert." She pauses for a moment, as if considering her final verdict. After about three seconds' thought - which is all he deserves in her opinion - she pronounces: "Bummer for you, funny for me!" A gentle lifting of her arms sends the whole tree spinning into the air. It crashes down just a yard away from Randolph, making the ground shudder and the old man jump back in terror. "Ooops, sorry. That's gonna take you a while to clean up!" Kim says.

Randolph can almost feel his blood boiling inside his brain. "You little whore! You've stolen my life's work!" He screeches. With an arm raised over his head, he charges as best he can at his age, wearing a towelling robe, through the gap in the fence between the two yards.

Kim doesn't move, but she does put her hands cockily on her hips and retort with "Well, you should've thought of that before you zapped me with your transformer-thing."

"Whore!" Randolph yells as he leaps at the girl. She turns her head, closes her eyes and flinches from his first blow. Something isn't right. She can hear slaps - one, two, three, four now - but she can only detect what feels like raindrops on the top of her head. The old man is yelling now. "Ow... Ow... What have you done to my hand, trollop?" Slowly she opens her eyes. She sees her neighbour clutching is right hand with his left. The right is turning purple with bruises. Before she can work out what's going on, he hits her with his left. At least, she thinks he hits her. He definitely strikes at her, but she feels nothing other than another light tap before he screams and pulls his hand away. It takes Kim quite a few moments to work it all out.

"Hey! I'm in venerable!" she announces.

"The word is 'invulnerable' you ignorant, thieving whore!" Randolph hisses between clenched teeth, clearly in pain as he nurses his damaged hands.

"This is so fucking cool!" Kim trills. "I gotta show my friends!"

Before Randolph can even begin to formulate a response, she seems to dissolve into a pink-and-red smear. A rush of displaced wind almost knocks him off his feet.

"Wow!" it's the girl's voice, but it sounds like it's coming from a long way behind him. That can't be - she was standing in front of him a second ago. But when he turns around and looks, it is her. She's at the other end of the yard now, one foot already in her house. "I'm like, ultra-fucking-fast! Awesome!"

"Come back you slut! Those are MY powers!" Randolph yells, the despair evident in his voice. For a second time, the girl becomes a streak of colour. The next thing he knows, he's staggering backwards as a wall of wind briefly hits him from the front. He recovers his balance only to be shocked almost off his feet once more as she seems to materialise just a foot in front of him. She's so close, he cannot help but glare down at her stunning cleavage, so well-displayed by her red bikini. She notices, and smiles, pushing out her large breasts and taking a mini-step towards him.

"You're such a perv, old man." Kim tells him, slowly moving her chest from side to side under his gaze so that his eyeballs oscillate from one side to the other, like a hypnotist's victim staring at a swinging pocket-watch. "Just look at your eyes following my bod! What a joke!"

"How dare you speak to me like that you trollop!" Randolph shouts, but the impact of his chastisement is lost as his eyes remained glued to her breasts. Beneath them, her hand streaks out, but he doesn't have time to react. He feels a tug on his waist and hears a tearing sound. He looks down, beyond the twin mounds that have been filling his vision and realises that she's torn his towelling robe open. The loose material falls around his ankles, leaving him standing naked from the waist down. Now his obvious admiration for her nubile body is clearly on display, his grey-haired, erect penis fully exposed.

Kim looks down at the disgusting sight of the old man's prick. "That'll learn the old pervert," she smiles to herself. Then, she thinks of something really clever to say to him. "No wonder they call you Randy, pervert." she sneers at him, very pleased with her wit.

"Whore!" Randolph explodes. But the girl becomes a blur before the word has even left his lips. She moves too quickly for him to even know in which direction she has gone. “Trollop!” Randolph spits. "Thieving whore!"

She has his power. All of it. It's worse than if he'd fired it into the air. "Now," he thinks to himself, "this disgraceful slut has it all in her disgusting body... Wait a minute! If the transfer-beam filled her body with energy from the Sherman crystal, then maybe I can find a way to reverse the process and draw the energy back into the crystal... Yes, it must be possible... And once I get the energy into the crystal then I can re-transfer it into my body. Into its rightful owner. And then, that whore will pay for her disrespect." He bends low, wincing in pain, as he picks up the torn piece of towelling robe from his feet. He holds it in front of his naked groin as he makes his way back into his house.

 

Conceptfan, Jul. 2005.

Chapter 4

Kim feels as if she's jogging gently down the sidewalk but she realises from the way that everything else, including the cars on the road, appears to be static in comparison that she's actually running remarkably fast. "Like, hundreds of miles an hour!" she thinks to herself. It's funny the way that every pedestrian she passes gets knocked over by her slipstream without her even needing to touch them. She wonders if it's because she's so super she makes everyone else faint in awe. Of course, the truth is that none of them have any idea what's happened to them. Even she realises she's moving far too fast to be seen. It's all just so cool. She's not even getting tired or out of breath with all the running, even though she's never been any good at sports. Now, she knows, she could smash every single world record for running. "And weightlifting, too," she reminds herself, thinking of her adventures with the tree in the yard. "And fuck knows what else!" That sets her thinking as she runs.

Spotting a trash can left out in the middle of the sidewalk, she decides to see if she'd be any good at hurdling. Of course, she's got no concept of the correct technique. She doesn't need one. She launches herself mid-stride - not at all ungracefully for a complete novice - with a fairly lazy leap. She's not making any effort to run fast, and she didn't make a lot of effort to lift that tree, so why should she do any different with her hurdle? She's right not to push herself off the ground too hard. As it is, the concrete pavement under her foot crumbles to dust as she takes off. She clears the trash can that was a yard from her lift-off point with no bother. In fact, she's still rising from the ground. She sails over the heads of a couple of pedestrians. The sidewalk flashes past beneath her. Glancing to the side, she passes the second floor windows of a building. Then the third floor of the next. "Fuck, this is awesome!" she thinks as she counts the number of green ties being worn by office-workers on the fifth floor of an insurance company. She knows that in reality, she's moving too fast for any of those guys - no matter what colour tie they're wearing - to even see her pass.

The trash-can is a distant memory as Kim's vast leap carries her high over an intersection, the cars and trucks like toys below her. She looks down at them, so far, so very far beneath her feet. "This is cool," she thinks. "I'm way up here with all these new powers and they're all way down there, so small and so slow in comparison. It kinda feels right like that." She's only now entered the descent phase of her enormous arc. She passes fourth floor windows, then third floor then... Then she thinks about her landing. She's pretty sure she can't fly, so she knows she's going to meet the ground pretty soon. Will she be able to control herself? Will she smash through the sidewalk? Or through some innocent pedestrian and then through the sidewalk? "If that happens," she tells herself, "it'll be that old man's fault for zapping me with his super-ray, not mine anyway." Still, she's a little nervous as she scans the pavement ahead and below. She can work out where she's going to land, and she sees there's a couple of guys just walking past the spot. She's knows she’s got to concentrate on her knees and bend them just right when she lands to absorb the shock...

It turns out to be pretty easy. The timing of it, the knowing exactly how much to bend her knees as she hits the concrete... it all seems to come naturally to her. "I can, like, do anything now!" she smiles to herself. She lands on both feet like a gymnast. Her legs absorb a huge proportion of the impact. So much so, that the - admittedly slightly cracked - pavement beneath her bare feet is less damaged where she lands than it was where she took off. Her leap has covered over a block and a half. "So fucking cool!". She comes to ground about eighteen inches behind the two guys and the shockwaves of her arrival, or maybe the jolt on the sidewalk, send them both sprawling, face first. It takes them a while to move. One of them has a bleeding, broken nose. The other has badly hurt his arm. Kim is already a blur in the distance by then. "Serves them right for being in my way" is the only thought she spares the two injured men.

In the time it has taken Kim to run a couple of miles through the town, Randolph has just managed to go back into his house. He goes upstairs and starts putting on some clothes. As he dresses, he's already thinking about the changes he will need to make to his energy-transfer-beam-generator so that it will function in reverse, drawing all the undeserved power out of that disgusting slut and returning it to his Sherman crystal. He imagines what it will be like to watch the strength being drained from that little whore. Her cries of protestation as he takes away what should never have been hers. The pathetic high-pitched moans as she begs him to leave her with just a few shreds of HIS powers. He cannot wait to see her obscene slim-waisted, full-busted body reduced to its proper state of weakness and vulnerability. And then... then he can restore the energy to its rightful owner. Himself. He makes his way slowly, painfully downstairs to his garage and bends to peer inside his ray device. There's a lot of work to be done in there. But the theory suggests it should all be within his abilities. He is, after all, a genius. That ignorant juvenile trollop could never build a machine as magnificent as this. "That's why I will triumph in the end!" he assures himself, reaching for a screwdriver.

By now, Kim has blurred through the centre of town and is heading towards the suburbs. It's terrific zipping past everyone else like they were just statues. She doesn't have to wait for anything or anyone and she loves it. She's in an area which she knows well. It's where a number of her friends live, and she often hangs out here. She thinks about going to one of their houses and maybe showing off a little. And then she spots the familiar hoardings of Luigi's Leaning Tower of Pizza. It used to be her favourite restaurant. It used to be the place where she went every weekend with her friends and with dates. Until the night when Luigi, the miserable prude, had thrown her out and told her he'd never let her back in again. And for what? For daring to have a good time with... with what’s-his-name. She couldn't remember which guy she was with that night - it might have been Brad, or Steve, maybe even Todd - but that wasn't the important detail. What was important was that Luigi ruined the meal by constantly asking her to stop sticking her tongue down whichever-boy-it-was' throat. Then, he found them together in a cubicle in the women's restroom.

What the hell was he doing in the women's room anyway, the pervert? Kim remembers her anger as he stood watch whilst she and whoever put their clothes back on, threatening to phone their parents if they didn't leave immediately by the back door and never come back. "Why would anyone want to come back and eat your greasy pizza?" she had called over her shoulder as the door was closing. She hates that stuck-up jerk. He's nearly as bad as the pervert next door with his binoculars and his crazy ray-guns... An idea dawns on Kim. For the first time since she sprinted out of her yard at home, she stops moving. She's been running at hundreds of miles an hour, but now she stops. She doesn't slow down or ease off, she just stops dead in the space of a single stride. It's all so easy! She celebrates the glory of her physical powers by spinning on the spot with pure joy, her nubile body rotating hundreds of times a second. The wind, which her brief spin displaces, sends people up to fifteen yards away sprawling. Some of them barely have time to register the shock of seeing a teenaged girl materialise out of thin air on the sidewalk before they're knocked off their feet. Kim giggles at the sight of them all, not even considering the possibility that some of them might be hurt. It’s not as though she cares if they are, anyway.

Thinking of the old man's ray, her new superpowers and the prude in the restaurant, Kim beams brightly. Now that she's super-strong and super-fast and she didn't even feel it when the ancient perv tried to slap her, how's a jerk like Luigi going to stop her doing whatever she wants in his restaurant? "This is going be cool!" she thinks as she jogs across the street, at a normal, human speed, giving the finger to a car that brakes just in time to avoid colliding with her. She walks arrogantly up to the door to Luigi's Leaning Tower of Pizza, and gives it a careless, one-handed shove. Instead of flying open, the door seems to explode inwards, its copious glass shattering into countless fragments that ping against her face and body - most of which is left exposed by her brief two-piece bikini. The shards of glass feel like confetti to her but a customer, sitting at a table some five yards away yells in shock as some pieces hit him in the face, cutting him in the cheek, the forehead and under his eye. The metallic frame of the door is badly bent where she pushed it, and, as a result, the thing is stuck in the open position. Kim glances at the damage and thinks "That was cool!" as she walks in.

Luigi hurries from behind the counter. He glances from his wounded customer to Kim and says to her "You break-a my door! You gonna pay-a for that. But you cannot-a come in-a like-a that. You put on-a some clothes!"

"No, I want to come in like this." Kim sneers back. After all, she considers, there's no fucking way somebody super is going to follow some pizza-jerk's stupid dress-code! "Don't you like my body?" she asks, out loud, leaning forward and hugging her chest with her forearms so that her cleavage stands out more than ever. "I bet this makes the bastard hard as a rock." she thinks to herself.

"You!" Luigi replies, as recognition dawns on him. "You are-a banned from my restaurant! Get-a out!"

"Make me." says Kim, really starting to enjoy herself.

"Why, you-a little-" Luigi is interrupted by another shout of pain from the customer who was hit by flying glass. Over his shoulder, he calls in the direction of the kitchen. "Bruno, bring-a da first-aid-a box!" Then he takes a step towards Kim, who has abandoned her glamour model pose for a more natural, but only slightly less alluring one-hand-on-hip, one-knee-casually-bent stance. "You get-a out at once!" he bellows, trying to sound as authoritative as he can. Kim just giggles. She's not in the slightest intimidated. She's coming to the understanding that being this powerful means she doesn't have to accept anybody else's authority any more. "I will not-a tell you again! I call-a the police!" He steps closer, making himself look as intimidating as possible, but the girl just has that stupid grin on her face. He moves to grab her arm. Suddenly, she's not there anymore. A strong wind zips past his right, making him stumble before he can regain his balance. The girl has simply disappeared.

"Superspeed is awesome" Kim thinks to herself as she effortlessly zips around Luigi. "He doesn't even know, like, where I've gone!" She realises she'll have to tell him.

"Looking for me?" her voice calls out. But it's behind him. He whirls around and sees her standing inside his restaurant, her hand still comfortably rested on her shapely hip.

"How... how.... did...."

"What happened here?" that's Bruno's deep voice as he enters the main restaurant, carrying a small green box with a large white cross on it. He's a tall man in his mid-thirties, broad shoulders, not exactly slim, but well-muscled. He hasn't shaved for at least three days. Kim turns to see him and stares for a second. Bruno meets her gaze and stares back. Kim slowly licks her lips sluttishly. Bruno shifts his weight uneasily on his feet and swallows.

"Bruno, please-a help this-a gentleman." Luigi says, indicating the man with the cuts on his face. "The young-a lady is just-a leaving."

"No I'm not." Kim pouts. Just what is this jerk's problem? Doesn't he understand that she's not going anywhere until she wants to? She folds her arms under her chest, giving Luigi and Bruno an even better view of her breasts.

"For the last-a time, get-a out!" Luigi shouts, exasperated.

Bruno puts down the first aid box and walks towards Kim, laying his huge left palm under her petite elbow. "Come on," he says, "you'd better go."

Kim turns her head to look at Bruno. He might be a large man, but she's got superstrength. No way is she about to take orders from a pizza waiter. "You stay over there." she tells him, giving him a very gentle push in the stomach. She's careful to use less force than she used on the door, but still Bruno's big frame lifts from the floor and flies over a couple of tables to crash down on top of another which collapses beneath him. He's left lying on broken wood, a table cloth, and a mess of cutlery. He gasps for air, but does not move. Luigi's eyes grow huge. He looks back at Kim who cocks her head to one side and parts her lips in a sexy, arrogant sneer. She's feeling exceptionally pleased with herself. Bruno's flight was spectacular to see, but she knows she only used a fraction of her strength to launch him. Tossing guys around like that is cool. Behind her, the man with the bloody face slowly stands up and, as discretely as possible, makes his way towards the door at the back of the restaurant that reads "Men".

Luigi reaches out with his left hand and picks up a large wooden pepper-mill. He brandishes it over his head like a weapon, lets a feral cry rise up from his throat and runs at Kim, intending to slam the pepper-mill down on top of her skull. "Oh, like that's really going to hurt me!" Kim laughs sarcastically to herself. She doesn't move an inch until he's right on top of her. She feels she has all the time in the world to react. Lazily, she reaches up, grabbing the wrist that's connected to the hand holding the bizarre weapon. She's amazed how easy it is to hold the big man's arm immobile. "This is just so easy!" she thinks as Luigi's face goes red and he starts to sweat. She keeps his arm in place without any effort. "Does he know how little effort I'm using to overpower him?" she wonders. She smiles at him, and he responds by punching her stomach. Kim hardly feels the blow, but she hears the Crunch! as the restaurateur’s hand breaks against her rock-hard, pancake-flat belly. He pulls his hand back, screaming. But his other arm is still trapped above her head by her delicate fingers. "Oh wow! He's busted his hand on my belly and it didn't hurt me one bit! How cool is that?" Kim thinks.

"What the fuck's going on?" Luigi demands through clenched teeth, breathing hard. Suddenly, his accent is native West-Coast.

"Hey, I thought you were supposed to be Spanish!" Kim says, not releasing his arm.

"Italian! I'm supposed to be a freakin' Italian, you stupid, dumb- aaaggghh!" Kim only squeezes his wrist gently. His yell is loud, but not quite as loud as the sound of his bones disintegrating. "Cool! I just squeeze a little and he goes crunch! So easy!” she says to herself.

Out loud, Kim pouts: "Aw, I liked it more when you were Indian."

"Ital-" Luigi begins.

"Oh just shut up!" Kim thinks. Before Luigi can correct her again, she uses her hold on his wrist to casually fling his entire body over her head. "Wow, it's about as hard as tossing an apple-core over my shoulder!" says the delighted voice in her head as her effortless movement lifts the bogus-foreigner into the air. “That'll teach him to call me 'stupid', the stupid jerk," she thinks. He's so light to her, that she misjudges the throw. He flies into the back of the restaurant, smacking into the far wall about six feet up with a horrible wet slap. He bounces down to the ground leaving a huge, dark red stain. "Fuck!" she thinks "That was just like something out of a movie! I love being super!"

"Whoops!" says Kim, for the benefit of her remaining audience. The men's room door bangs. That must have been the guy with the bleeding face! Kim realises that she could be in big trouble if he tells someone about what she's done. She's got to go after him. She becomes a blur as she runs into the bathroom, the wooden door flinging open so violently that it snaps into three pieces, each of which is embedded about an inch into the plaster wall. She takes a split-second to admire the damage she's caused. It's so cool being this strong! And so fast, too - the customer still hasn't had time to select a cubicle to hide in as she runs around him at super-speed and stops dead, just inches from him. The displaced air knocks him a step backwards. He stumbles. She's thrilled by the way he starts backing up towards a wall as she quickly advances on him.

"P.. P... Please...." the man stammers, tears washing some of the blood off his face. Kim pauses for a moment. No-one has ever been scared of her before. It's a bit weird, really. This guy is older than her, and taller. She hasn't done anything to him, and he's already terrified of what she might do. Having superpowers is going to completely change the way other people treat her. Especially guys. "This is awesome!" she thinks. "This guy is like, shit-scared of me! Maybe I can have some fun with him."

She puts her hands on her hips to make herself look even more in charge. "Take off your clothes." she says. She has to concentrate not to start laughing when he obeys. It's so cool - he's actually shaking as he undoes the buttons on his trouser fly. In less than a minute, he's standing in his shorts and socks. "ALL your clothes." she says, trying to sound dominant. He hesitates for only a second before complying. She’s delighted. She really can make him do whatever she wants. When he's done, he puts his hands in front of his groin. "Hands behind your back!" she commands. He does as he is told. His trembling seems to get worse. She reaches for him, gently taking his manhood in her small hand. She's held quite a few before, but never under these circumstances. She's enjoying herself enormously. He rapidly starts to swell in her palm. "Not bad." she says. "Come with me." She doesn't give him any choice in that matter, gripping him painfully tightly by the shoulder and charging out of the men's room back into the restaurant, pulling him behind her. His feet hurry to keep up with her. Whenever he misses a step, she just drags him along the carpet. She’s not the slightest concerned for his comfort and carrying his weight doesn’t slow her down in any way, so she doesn’t care if he moves under his own power or hers.

She pulls the customer over to the wall where Bruno is still lying on the broken table. "No more escaping for you!" she thinks, "Not with super Kim on the scene." Bending low, she grabs the big waiter by the collar of his shirt and lifts him. He's so light! His huge hands rise to try and pull her comparatively tiny fingers off him, but his efforts come to nothing. She’s still got the naked customer in an unbreakable grip with her other hand. She sets Bruno on his feet and releases him. It's so much fun, dominating these big men. "What do you want?" Bruno croaks, rubbing his throat. "Money?" Kim is about to answer, when she stops herself. She hasn't thought about money. She just wanted to teach that Luigi a lesson. Now that he's dead - and he wasn't even a real Indian! - her priorities have shifted to making sure neither Bruno nor the other guy tell the police anything about her. But, why shouldn't she take some money while she's here? It's not like Luigi's going to be needing it... Plus, she reasons, she deserves it as compensation for that time Luigi threw her out.

"Yeah, money." Kim says to Bruno. "Hand it over." She arrogantly holds out her upturned palm in readiness to receive.

"It's in the register." Bruno tells her. "Over there."

"Well, you'd better, like, get it then." Kim tells him, glancing briefly at the ceiling in mock exasperation. Bruno edges nervously past her and makes his way to the register. It opens with a "Ding!" and he starts pulling out notes. Kim watches for a few seconds but soon gets bored and turns her attention back to the naked man whose arm she's still gripping. She can go back to testing out her power while she waits for Bruno to gather up the cash. "Do you like me?" she asks the guy with the cut face.

"Er.. yes, yes." he says, completely scared.

"I mean, do you, you know, like my body?" Kim is learning fast that teasing guys, now that she has superpowers and she can throw them across the room if they attack her, is a lot more enjoyable than it used to be.

"Yes, yes."

"So, like, how come you haven't got a boner, then? Can't get it up?"

"Er... I... I…" he tries to reply. If he’s not even going to talk properly, he’s not going to be as much fun as she hoped. Kim wonders what she should do with him. She's got to do something to stop him telling the police all about her.

"You nearly got wood back in the men's room." she says. "Maybe you'd should just stay in there." The man says nothing. Kim seems to think for a bit. She realises that exiling the guy to the toilets won't stop him giving the cops a description of her. She's got to come up with a better plan. After all, she's super Kim now. Maybe she can find a more creative solution...

Then again, she reasons, why should she bother? It's not like she cares about what happens to him. She reaches her decision and announces it: "Fuck it. You can stay here. With Luigi." She pulls sharply on his arm and lets go. It’s enough to fling him, hard, into the back wall some ten yards away. He impacts directly on top of the stain Luigi left and spectacularly dissolves in gore, making a much larger area of fake-frieze wet and red. "Eeeuww. Gross!" Kim comments, pulling a face. But it's awesome to see the effects of her casual strength.

Watching over by the register, Bruno nearly vomits. Just as the girl didn't notice at all when he pressed the small red button under the counter a few moments before, he's relieved that she's also not looking now to see him pulling a pistol out of the bottom of the cash tray. With trembling hands, he points it at her.

"Put your hands up." he says. Kim spins around in the blink of an eye and freezes. "Shit!" she says to herself. She hasn't thought about guns. She doesn't feel quite as super for a moment.

"I said, 'Put your hands up', freak bitch!" Kim doesn't know what to do. Maybe she should just run out at super-speed. Or... wait! She knows. She'll do like she did with those leaves back in the yard and just blow at him and... But it's too late. Bruno is far, far too nervous to give her a chance to raise her hands. After all, she's already killed two guys. He pulls the trigger. Kim panics for an instant, her mind, quite out-of-character, filling with thoughts. One particular notion rises to the surface: "Why is the smoke just hanging motionless at the end of the barrel of the gun? No, wait. It's not motionless - it is moving, just very, very slowly." A few moments later, an object unhurriedly appears from inside the puff of smoke. It takes her a while to realise that it is a bullet. "Oh my god!" Kim thinks, "How totally cool is this? My super-speed has kicked in and I'm so fast, a bullet is like a snail to me. I don't have to worry about guns!"

Kim realises that she has time - plenty of time - to simply step out of the slug's path. She could even run out of the Leaning Tower of Pizza before the thing is halfway to where she's now standing. Or she could jog around the bullet as it hangs in the air, and grab the gun from Bruno before he knows what's happening. But, she's no longer afraid of the shot. Something travelling as slowly as this bullet appears to be cannot possibly harm her. She decides, mostly out of curiosity, to stand her ground and wait for the slug to reach her. She remembers the way the tree crumbled against her body without hurting her. She thinks "It'd be, like, so totally cool if gun-fire didn't affect me ‘cos then I'd be really, really super! I'd be, like, oh my god, the most powerful person in the world!" She smiles as the bullet leisurely floats towards her stomach.

It feels like a gentle tap from a pencil-eraser. The sensation is disappointing, really. She was expecting being shot to feel more noticeable. But it does look awesome. The bullet just seems to fold up on itself, compressing against her belly, getting shorter and wider until it just changes direction and starts moving away from her. Her stomach must be harder than steel! She laughs, the result of a mixture of emotions including relief and joy, and that seems to switch off her super-speed mode. The world reverts to its usual pace. The squashed bit of metal falls onto the floor midway between Kim and Bruno. She examines the flawless, smooth skin of her abdomen and can't even see a little red mark where the thing hit her. She's glad. She puts a lot of time and effort into her appearance and it would be really annoying if she got a blemish. Bruno, meanwhile is staring at her, the gun shaking violently in his hands, his jaw hanging open. "What the fuck?" he mutters. He’s in total shock. It's as if she's blowing his mind. It's so cool, it makes her laugh even more. That, in turn, makes Bruno even more terrified. He fires the gun at her again. And again. And again.

Kim doesn't bother to use her super-speed as Bruno shoots at her this time. She knows she doesn't need to. Besides, she wants to know what it's like when a bullet hits her in "normal mode". Of course, it's the same as before, just the lightest of little taps as the shots smack into her sexy, invulnerable body. She can't see them slowly crumpling up against her skin at this speed, but she can see them pinging off her wonderful flesh and clattering into the walls and floor. It's as if her silky skin is actually solid steel. One bullet hits her neck, another bounces off her nose, and another her cheek. To her initial amusement, one of Bruno's wasted bullets actually strikes her on her prominent left breast, about an inch outside her nipple. It feels quite nice, but nothing like as good as her own hands feel. When she glances down at the point of impact, she sees that a small hole has been torn in her red bikini. The area around the hole is charred black. Suddenly, she's less amused. "Hey, this is a new swimsuit, arsehole!" she tells Bruno, who by now is reduced to a quivering wreck, his mouth opening and closing as though he wants to speak, but can't think of any words.

In desperate panic, Bruno pulls the trigger again and again, but it's just clicking now. There's no more bullets left. He looks up to see the incredible bullet-proof girl now walking towards him. His terror is complete. He starts to back away behind the counter. Why haven't the police responded to the panic button yet? Still she's approaching. With nothing else to hand, he throws the now useless gun at her head.

Kim is pretty angry over the damage to her bikini. It's totally cool that bullets don't even hurt her, but if her clothes are going to get ruined, that's a bit of a bummer. At least her superpowers mean she can get a proper revenge on the jerk for messing up her swimsuit. She sees him tossing the pistol at her and thinks "Don't waste my time, asshole." After the ineffectiveness of live rounds, she cannot even be bothered to move out of the way of the improvised projectile. She doesn't need to, so why should she? The butt hits her forehead with a clang and the gun bounces away to land on the floor. She doesn't even blink. But this guy is really starting to annoy her now. She's glad that he's terrified. She can see the sweat beading on his forehead and hears that his heart is racing. A single tear forms in his left eye and rolls down his cheek. "I'm the one who's had her brand new bikini ruined," she thinks. "I've got more reason to be crying than he has."

Kim reaches the high counter. She barely presses down on her toes at all to produce enough spring to leap gracefully over the four-foot high obstacle. After her short "flight" through town earlier, she's not impressed with herself this time. She knows she can jump huge distances now. It's nothing special. She lands on the other side perfectly balanced, just a yard away from Bruno. He's backed up as far as the wall now. He can't retreat any further as she takes the last few strides towards him. "This'll teach you to damage my clothes," she thinks. She grins, purely to make him feel even more uneasy. The smile achieves its aim. In blind panic, Bruno tries to make a dart to the side. She takes a step, reaches out with her left arm, and encircles her fingers painfully tightly around his right shoulder. He yells in pain as she gently squeezes and crushes his bones, pushing downwards at the same time, forcing him onto his knees without really putting any effort into her one-handed attack. She looks down at the much bigger man completely at her mercy and thinks "I'm so fucking powerful! This is the coolest thing ever."

She transfers her grip from his damaged shoulder to his armpit and, with total ease, lifts his entire body. The pain makes him groan, and the knowledge that she's the sole cause of his obvious discomfort does not displease her. She pulls him up, not all the way to his feet, but until his eyes are right in front of her ripe, generous chest. His legs are still bent. He tries to straighten them, but she is holding him exactly where she wants him, and there is nothing he can do to change that. She turns her upper-body slightly, positioning her left breast - the one that got shot - right in front of his face. "Look what you did to my bikini!" she chides him.

"I'm...s..s.. sorry." he wheezes. His vision is completely filled with the glorious sight of the young girl's remarkably firm and wonderfully full and rounded breast and the sheer eroticism of the spectacle is not lost on him, regardless of his agonies and his rampant fear. Kim hears the way his heartbeat speeds up, and smells the particular note in his sweat that reveals his arousal. It's just so amazing to be able to do all these things. She feels a new sense of power. It's not just the way she's physically dominating him. It's the way she can now use her overwhelming sexuality without fear of taking things too far. No guy can ever do anything to her against her will now. She can drive them all wild with lust without any fear of them trying to attack her. Her lips part in a mischievous smile. She's going to enjoy his punishment.

She holds him fast as she slowly moves her body a little, making her breast sway very slightly in front of his startled eyes. "You know," she says, taking her time and savouring the moment, "I smashed a big hole out of the side of a tree with this tit earlier on." Bruno swallows hard. She's loving the way she's got him completely in her power. She goes on: "And your bullet didn't do any better, did it?" She's not interested in any reply he might have. She has another, more interesting question for him. "What do you think would happen," she begins, still moving her mound so enticingly right next to his face, "if I just leant forward right now?"

"Please... don't!" Bruno's voice is a weak, pale imitation of its former depth and authority. Kim doesn't really care what he has to say, anyway. She's already made up her mind. He damaged her swimsuit, so she's going to damage him. It seems fair enough to her. She holds Bruno perfectly still as she bends at the waist and dips her shoulder, thrusting her large breast towards his face. Right away, there's a burst of cracking sounds like someone stepping on an eggshell. A scream starts to leave his throat and then stops completely. She feels as if she's pressing her chest into a fresh, warm apple pie. When she glances down she sees why. Her big mound has completely crushed his face, pulverising his bone and pushing apart the stuff beneath. It's an absolutely disgusting mess. She pulls Bruno's corpse away from herself and drops it on the floor, repulsed. She finds a cloth on the counter and tries to wipe herself clean. The blood and gore comes off her creamy skin with no problem but her bikini top is now stained as well as holed. She's pleased that the guy who caused all the mess is dead because, as she convinces herself, "he deserves it."

Now, there's no more witnesses. No-one to tell the cops anything. The only evidence of her involvement in the carnage is the hole and the dark damp patch on her brief top. There's no other mark on her. She hasn't so much as broken a nail. "I could just stroll out of this dump and no-one will ever know a thing." she congratulates herself. Just at that moment, she hears the crescendo of police sirens. "Fuck!" she thinks. "Maybe I'd better change." She considers taking the bikini off, but there's nothing else she can wear in its place. Looking around at the three corpses in the restaurant, she realises that the shirts on all of them are far more bloody than her the top part of her swimsuit. It's amazing to think that she is responsible for all this carnage, especially considering the fact that she hasn't used any weapons. Just her hands... and her breast. She looks down at her jutting chest. It doesn't look like a murder weapon. But the stains on her bikini and the bullet hole in one of its cups tell a very different story. If it wasn't so annoying that the swimsuit is ruined, it'd be funny. She knows now that her body is indestructible. But as for her wardrobe... today is the first time she's worn this red two-piece and already, it needs replacing!

Thinking about the shopping she'll have to do reminds her of the money Bruno was removing from the register before he decided to try out his gun on her. The sirens are getting nearer and nearer so she needs to hurry. The cash is still lying on the counter, a rough pile of used notes. She picks it up and counts the four hundred and twenty-seven dollars in less than a second. It's not as much as she would have liked, but she decides she'll take it anyway. Realising she's got no pockets, she tucks the bundle of notes into the waistband of her panties so that about an inch of the stack is visible against her flat stomach. Then, she turns for the door to the street which she smashed on her way in. But, as she's just about to step out of the Leaning Tower of Pizza, a police squad car screeches to a halt right outside the restaurant. She knows she should break into a superspeed run and get as far away as possible, but she hesitates. She's thinking "What can the cops do to me that Bruno and Luigi didn't already try? This could be fun. And even if it isn't, I can get away anytime I want anyway. Fuck, it's cool having superpowers!"

A second car arrives from the opposite direction to the first. The two vehicles form a kind of barrier across the front of the pizza parlour. Four uniformed police run out of the cars. Two of them crouch down behind the stationary autos. The other pair draw their pistols and edge carefully towards the shattered door. It's like something out of a cop drama on TV. After a quick nod to his colleague, one of them springs into the door way, his revolver pointed at the only upright person he can see in there. "Put your hands in the air and don’t move!" he barks at Kim, his eyes flicking briefly from her face to her chest and then back to her face before lingering on her chest for a while. He takes half a dozen cautious steps towards her. Kim looks at him contemptuously. "Who the fuck does this creep think he is, shouting at me like that?" she wonders to herself. "I'm super now. I don't have to take this crap anymore."

Kim becomes a blur that solidifies a foot in front of the policeman, the displaced air buffeting him like a storm gust as she decelerates so sharply so close to him. He's in too much shock to react as she reaches, at only slightly-faster-than-normal speed, for his gun. She pulls it out of his hands as easily as if he wasn't holding at all. The cop screams because he was holding it, quite tightly in fact, and Kim has broken a few of his fingers tearing it out of his grasp. "That's what you get for shouting at me." Kim thinks to herself.

As the officer comes to terms with the pain, the realisation dawns on him that the girl - who seems to possess superhuman qualities - is now holding his gun. His features betray his sudden fear. She just smiles and casually closes her small fist around the stolen pistol. Amazingly, the steel yields to her hand, her fingers effortlessly overpowering it. The bullets in the clip are crushed with such force that they explode, but Kim's invulnerable hand absorbs the powerful blast without her experiencing any discomfort.

"Piece of shit." is Kim's internal verdict on the weapon as she tosses the now useless lump of ex-revolver over her shoulder. It travels so fast, it embeds itself deeply into the blood-splattered wall some ten yards behind her. "Oh my god!" the policeman breaths. Kim is increasingly enjoying herself. She takes her time, reaching for his collar with her left hand, and places her right dominantly on her hip as she lifts him off the ground by his uniform, using only her left arm. He's a big man, and he must weigh quite a bit, but he feels as good as weightless to Kim. He uses both of his hands to try and prise her fingers off him but his best efforts are useless. He hammers his fists on her face until they're so badly bruised he has to stop, but her smile does not even flicker for a moment. He tries to knee her in the belly, and receives nothing but fresh pain as a reward. "Keep trying, arsehole," she thinks, "nothing's gonna hurt me. It’s up to you if you wanna break yourself on me." The policeman's body dangles, at the end of her slender, bare arm.

"Put him down and raise your hands above your head!" shouts the dangling man's partner as he runs into the restaurant, trying to aim his gun at Kim and not the other officer.

"Oh, what now?" Kim thinks, getting fed up of these guys interrupting her with their shouting all the time. What good is it being super-powered if nobody shows her any respect? Enough is enough! She releases her captive with an easy flick of the wrist that throws his entire body through the air at great speed. He slams into his would-be rescuer, knocking the second man off his feet and back through the doorway. They land together in an unmoving heap on the sidewalk, only a few yards from the two startled policemen crouched behind cars outside the Leaning Tower of Pizza. Kim dusts off her hands, satisfied that she's dealt with the two men appropriately. Leisurely, she strolls out after them.

"Hold it right there!" yells one of the crouchers over the hood of one of the parked cars.

"I'm getting really pissed off with these jerks." Kim tells herself. "They still don't get it. I’m super.” She places both her hands on her hips and cocks her torso in a movement that is simultaneously defiant, casual and extremely sexy.

"Or what?" she demands.

"Or we'll shoot!" the other surviving officer explains.

"Boring!" thinks Kim. She's already been shot. She removes one hand from her hip and pretends to be examining her perfect nails.

"Hold it right there or we'll shoot!" the policeman shouts again, even more insistently than the first time.

Kim decides that if he's got nothing new to say, she's not even going to bother to acknowledge him. She doesn't even look away from her fingers which are flawless and certainly don't require being examined right now. Both cops decide to fire their guns. Repeatedly. Two sets of bullets strike Kim. She's hit on the eyeball, the nose, the throat, both breasts - the left just above centre and the right bang-on her big nipple - her upper abdomen and her lower belly. Not a single one of the shots hurts her, or leaves a mark on her perfect skin. The two that hit her chest do cause further damage to her bikini, however. The left cup has two holes in it now, through which her erotic flesh is visible. The right cup has been punctured dead centre. Her stunning, engorged pink nipple pokes through the circular tear. "Someone's going to pay for that." Kim thinks.

Both the men behind the cars stare in total disbelief at that remarkable, desirable bit of female anatomy. They do not see the young man hiding behind the blinds in a window on the opposite side of the street. He too is focussing on Kim's recently-exposed nipple. He's quite some distance away from her, but his view is much clearer through the viewfinder of his video camera. Kim does not spot him either. She's much too concerned with the two cops who have just emptied their guns on her and, more significantly, caused further damage to her outfit. She glares at them as she walks towards them. They remain motionless, each still crouching behind a different patrol car. "You're both so fucking dead." she thinks. She lets her body sway sexily as she approaches the cars. She can read the awe and the terror on the two faces. She loves the thought that her new superpowers mean she can affect grown men in this way.

Sashaying up to the two cars, she stands for a moment where the two front fenders are almost touching. "This is going to be easy," she tells herself. "A lot easier than getting a new bikini." The two rapt policemen are just a couple of yards from her, on the other side of the vehicles. She places one of her palms on the near-side of each car and smiles down at the crouching men. "You've had your turn," she thinks, "now it's mine. Let's see how you like this." She gives the vehicles a gentle, almost unthinking shove. Immediately, both big machines career away from her. They move sideways-on with such force that they instantly knock down the two policemen. Still the cars move. The two sets of tires burst, unable to withstand the friction and the loose rubber soon rubs away. Sparks fly as the wheel hubs scrape over the tarmac. Both cops disappear under the vehicles, reappearing a moment later as hideously gory streaks on the road as the two vehicles continue to cross the street. Kim glances at the mess. "Well, they should have been nicer to me." she concludes.

The cars Kim has shoved crash into parked vehicles on the other side of the road hard enough to knock them up onto the far sidewalk. Broken glass tinkles as finally, the mass of metal comes to rest. There’s a moment of eerily silence as Kim proudly surveys her handiwork. Then, as people come running out of the shops and offices all around to investigate the commotion, she thinks "I've had enough here. Someone else can clean it all up." With that, she simply turns on her bare heels and runs away. In less than an instant, she has become a blur once more, moving far too fast for ordinary human eyes and brains to process. She’s just murdered seven men using her new superhuman strength and discovered, in the process, that she is invulnerable to gunfire. Her thoughts, however, are pre-occupied by her torn and bloodied bikini. She decides to head for home where she can change. After that, she thinks, it would be cool to find her friends so she can show off her powers to them.

It’s been five minutes since Kim entered Luigi’s Leaning Tower of Pizza. Randolph meanwhile has only just managed to remove a circuit board from his transfer-beam-generator. He hasn’t even begun the difficult process of de-soldering the components he needs to remove. Then, with his less-than-steady, ageing hands, he must affix the replacement parts and reconfigure the machine to draw energy into his precious Sherman crystal. It’s late afternoon now, but the task is going to take him most of the night. But one night without sleep is a small price to pay for taking what is rightfully his away from that obscene, undeserving trollop. He shudders to think what a frivolous waste she is making of his life's work. How could she know what to do with his powers? He imagines her, parading her obscene, superhuman body as his right hand absent-mindedly begins to rub against his groin once again.

 

Conceptfan, Jul. 2005.

Chapter 5

A blur of colours streaks through the suburban streets, its supersonic passage displacing the air with such force that the resulting gusts of wind knock over trash cans, street signs and more than a few pedestrians. Those sent sprawling catch barely a split-second glimpse of a pink-and-red smear disappearing into the distance. Human eyes cannot follow the blur. Human brains cannot process it as any kind of recognisable shape. It’s travelling far too quickly for that.

The form turns corners with a remarkable degree of precision and control for its speed. If anyone could track its progress, they would note that it seems to be travelling from the centre of town towards the residential districts. But those who come too close can do nothing more than pick themselves up once it has passed. The blur shows no concern for the people it tips over. In fact, it’s quite pleased that its remarkable velocity allows it to remain largely unseen. It wants to get home and change clothes before anyone gets a good look at it.

The blur, of course, is Kim, running barefoot towards her house on the outskirts of town. The pink that is just about visible for the briefest of moments as she streaks by is her uncovered flesh; her slender arms driving her run and her long, beautiful silky legs effortlessly eating up the streets at a speed that very few people have ever matched on land. The select band who have experienced the exhilaration of such velocity travelled in custom-built vehicles with state-of-the-art, roaring engines. Kim is almost silent as she rockets by, the powerful-beyond-human-technology engine that is her body is vastly more efficient and effective than any jet propulsion system.

There’s a tiny glimpse of red amongst the pink, too. It’s her brand new scarlet bikini, or rather what is left of it. This is the main reason why Kim does not want to be seen. It’s not because she is particularly concerned that she might be identified as the perpetrator of seven murders. Indeed, although it is just a few minutes old, the massacre at Luigi’s pizza parlour is already diminishing in importance in her thoughts. Kim is much more worried about her appearance. She, or more specifically, her bikini, is a mess and she does not want anyone to see her in such a state. She takes a great deal of pride in her appearance, and she cannot bear the thought of anyone, be it a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger, seeing her dressed in a manner than falls short of her usual standards.

Of course, the less-than-immaculate condition of her upper garment is directly linked to the events that have just unfolded at the Leaning Tower of Pizza. The left cup, so wonderfully filled by her breast, is badly stained with not-yet-dried blood, formerly the property of Luigi’s employee, Bruno. It barely needs stating that the discoloration of the over-stretched material is a minor blemish compared to the damage inflicted on the pizza waiter’s face when the over-filled bikini cup was pressed into it, but between Kim and Bruno, only the former is in any condition to complain. Kim’s glorious breast proved vastly too firm for the unfortunate man’s skin and bone to resist.

As well as the dark, damp blood stain, the left portion of her bikini also now boasts two large, circular holes. Each aperture is about half an inch in circumference, and bordered with a thin, black edge of burnt material. If Kim were to stop running at several hundred miles per hour, it would be possible for people to observe, through those two holes, small areas of the most luscious, perfect, rounded feminine skin anyone has ever seen. That skin is as flawless as the rest of her body. Amazingly, it shows no marks or any other evidence of what created the two geometric tears: a pair of bullets, fired at short range.

There is also evidence of a third bullet which hit her bikini. This one is on the right cup of the tiny garment. The shot actually bounced off her magnificent, prominent nipple. The material covering this most exquisite part of her anatomy is now missing, the circular hole with its tell-tale burnt edge perfectly framing the pink glory of the point of her breast. Her nipple remains a faultless monument to female sexuality utterly unaffected by its high-speed meeting with a policeman’s bullet. On the pavement outside Luigi’s, a crumpled, misshapen lump of lead is evidence of its own, very different, experience of the impact.

The resistance of the air Kim is zipping through is heating that exposed nipple to nearly the boiling point of water, but she feels little other than a mild and rather pleasant warmth as she turns the final corner on her journey home. This street is more familiar to her than any other, although she’s never travelled down it at such a speed before. Yet the fact that she is moving faster than the speed of sound is irrelevant to her ability to take in her surroundings. Somehow, her mind seems just as capable of processing the information her eyes are sending it as it was when she strolled this way as an ordinary - if exceptionally attractive - teenager earlier in the day.

She streaks past her neighbour’s house, sparing barely a passing thought for its ageing owner. It’s thanks to him, of course, that she is now superhuman. She’s well aware of his unsavoury obsession with her nubile body, but she does not know that it was this unhealthy fascination that led directly to him accidentally endowing her with the fantastic abilities he had intended for himself. If Randolph Sherman had not clambered atop an ancient broken television set to get a better view of her as she passed his garage door, it would have been the sexagenarian who became strong enough to lift a grown man with a single finger and throw him to his death against a wall, not Kim. If he had managed to resist the temptation to steal a glimpse of her voluptuous, ripe cleavage, it would have been his skin that was impervious to gunfire, not hers.

This time, as Kim goes by, Randolph is once again in his garage, working on his energy-transfer ray. But on this occasion, even if he’d had advanced warning of her passing, he would not have been able to indulge his repressed lust by spying on her. At around eight hundred and fifty miles an hour, she is invisible to the leering eyes of men of all ages. She covers the length of his house in less time than it takes him to blink his tired eyes as he focuses on the circuit board he is working on.

He knows what he has to do, but it is no easy task. He’s reconfiguring his beam generator so that rather than carrying energy into a human subject, it will draw the power out. On his workbench nearby, lies a dull, unremarkable lump of semi-transparent rock. This is his beloved Sherman crystal. His greatest achievement. His life’s work. The would be salvation of his tortured soul. It was this crystal that collected the sun’s energy, photon by photon, for forty years whilst he waited patiently, his youth, then his middle-age slipping away until he was left with nothing but his decrepitude. Now the crystal is empty, its four-decade-long accumulation of unthinkable power discharged into the disgusting, depraved, and degenerate body - he can’t help shuddering at the thought of the word “body” in the context of that trollop - of a wholly and utterly undeserving sixteen year old girl.

His only hope of salvaging almost half a century of work is to reverse his transfer-ray so that it can remove the energy - his energy - from that immoral whore and restore it to his crystal. Then, he can finally use it for its true, intended purpose. Energising his own tired, declining body. He is the only one worthy of possessing the powers the crystal can endow. He alone has the strength of character, the upstanding moral fibre, the proper understanding of correct behaviour. With him as the “Superman”, the world would be a vastly better place. Loose females, with their evil wiles would finally, finally, learn their place. No longer would they be permitted to use their disgusting and superficially attractive bodies to distract fine men like himself from the noble pursuits of science and learning. No more would young, stupid females like the thieving whore next door be able to flaunt their wicked flesh, their painted faces, their obscene curves…

Randolph shakes his head to clear his mind, snatching his palm guiltily from his lap where it has been stroking his rapidly engorging penis through the thin fabric of his trousers. No! He will not allow himself to be diverted from his work by wicked thoughts cruelly inspired by that trollop! She has taken from him what is his by right. He must take it back. Leave her with nothing. And then… then, he can punish her. And all her kind. Then the world will see a new way.

He must concentrate on the energy-transfer beam. He’s almost completed the process of de-soldering unwanted components. Next, he must attach the small pile of new parts that he has assembled on the workbench. He knows exactly how he is going to reverse the effects of the ray. He knows precisely what he must do. There is plenty of work still remaining to be done before it is ready. Before he can use the reversed beam. Before he can reclaim his energy. Before he can turn that disgusting whore back into her natural state as a powerless, pathetic female, begging him for mercy, willing to do anything - anything at all - for him…

It’s taken Randolph a quarter of an hour to remove six electronic components from his device. That’s a little longer than it has taken Kim to remove seven men from existence. But she has also managed to run five miles and destroy a restaurant and several cars. Remarkably, she’s not even slightly short of breath. Neither is she perspiring, despite the heat of the Californian afternoon. The only moisture on her body is Bruno’s blood soaked into her bikini.

She’s home now. She stopped running as she turned off the sidewalk, decelerating from airliner-speed to stationary in the space of a single stride, her stunning body coping effortlessly with the seemingly impossible task of absorbing so much momentum. She doesn’t even realise the significance of the feat that she has accomplished with such ease. She just wants to change into something less blood-stained and bullet-holed so she can go and show off her superpowers to her friends. But a sudden realisation has made her halt dead in her tracks.

It’s not a pang of guilt for the men she has killed; she dismissed, with adolescent disinterest, any thoughts of remorse in the instants after taking each life. The thought that has brought Kim to a halt is far more mundane in nature: given her exceptionally brief attire and the hurried way she left home earlier after a cruel exchange with the old man from next door, she is not carrying her house keys. A simple curse passes through her lovely, pouty lips. She considers the possibilities available for her next move.

It’s late afternoon, which means that her mother might well be home. But ringing the doorbell to summon her might well involve having to explain the state of her clothing. More precisely, her mother might want to know why there was blood on her bikini. The alternative was to walk round to the back of the house and hope that the garden door might be open. If it isn’t, she thinks, she’ll have to find a way of climbing up to her bedroom window. It’s all such a bore…

She's just about to start making her way around the side of the house, when something clicks in her brain and her internal voice reminds her that she's superhuman now, and that there's an alternative to circumventing her home which she can try. She recalls the massive leap she performed a short while ago which carried her well over the length of a city block and peaked at four storeys up. The house is only two storeys tall.

There's no excitement in her thoughts as she bends her knees preparing to spring upwards. She fully expects to be able to complete the feat. She's super now, so she can do stuff like this. She launches herself off the sidewalk, the paving cracking slightly beneath her dainty toes as they press down on it momentarily with enormous force. Then, she is airborne, sailing gracefully into the sky, rapidly passing the upper floor of the house.

She looks down on the roof, and the other houses and gardens spread out like a map beneath her. She thinks the view is "pretty cool" but she's not sorry that it's only a brief flight. It could get boring otherwise. She's passed the high point of her jump now, beginning her descent towards the back yard. Of course the tree she uprooted and left lying across the fence into the neighbour's yard is still there. She comes down close to the felled trunk. Her bare soles sink a few inches into the soft lawn but her knees barely bend at all as they absorb the impact of her landing.

She has just leapt over a house with an effortless standing jump, but she doesn't even pause to reflect on her achievement. She's too pre-occupied with the job of getting into her bedroom unseen and the hassle involved with that, superpowers or no superpowers. Turning around she sees that her bedroom window is open. She sighs, her full lips briefly parting, revealing a glimpse of her attractive top teeth, her stunning chest rising and falling dramatically. To get up there, she's going to have to perform another big jump. "Bor-ing!" she thinks.

A split second later, she's soaring upwards towards her bedroom. As it turns out, the few instants she spent internally complaining about the negligible effort would have been better used in planning. She should have looked before she leapt. Kim is only a few inches short of six feet tall. Her bedroom window is barely three feet in height. Her last-second attempt to tuck her knees in and bend her head is nowhere near enough.

The crown of her head smashes into the brickwork above the window frame. Of course, her skull is vastly harder than brick. Even her shiny straight brown hair is harder than brick. Not a single strand of it is damaged. In fact, she feels nothing but a light tap as her head carves through the wall of the house like a gorgeous wrecking ball. Her feet do similar damage beneath the open window.

The impact does not alter the trajectory of her leap in the slightest. She lands, as intended, on the floor of her bedroom, perfectly balanced. Olympic gymnasts spend years trying to achieve the level of technique that comes naturally to her now. But the landing is slightly spoilt by the piles of smashed brick and plaster all around her. The air is full of dust, but she doesn't cough or sneeze. Instead, she curses whoever it was who built the house with small windows. Taking a step, her foot lands on a piece of displaced brick. And crushes it to powder. If she notices, she doesn't react. She's just glad that her clothes are safely stored in her wardrobe, protected from all the mess.

Downstairs, Kim's mother is watching a soap opera on television. The show's scheduling - it began just as she arrived back home from the mall - is the main reason why she hasn't yet discovered the uprooted tree and ruined fence in the back yard. Her shopping is still in the bags it was originally packed in, left by the side of the sofa. She'd barely had enough time to switch on the TV and remove her shoes before the programme started.

A loud crash upstairs makes her sit up with a start. It sounded like it came from Kim's room, but she doesn't recall hearing her daughter coming home. Suddenly, she feels uneasy. She makes her way, barefoot, from the TV room to the foot of the stairs. Craning her neck to address the upper floor of the house, she calls out "Kimberley? Is that you?"

Up in her bedroom, Kim hears her mother's shout. "Shit!" she mutters. The last thing she needs right now is for her mom to see her in her ruined bikini. Then she has an idea. "I know, I'll change... at superspeed!" she thinks. She reaches behind her back. With her lightening speed and phenomenal strength, she snaps the strap of her red top and discards the unrepairable garment in less than a tenth of a second. "Superspeed is cool." she tells herself, zipping over to her wardrobe at rocket-like velocity.

She doesn't slow down as she pulls the wardrobe door open. The furniture was not designed for superhumans, however, and the large wooden door rips from its hinges. "Cheap crap." Kim thinks, tossing the unattached panel onto her bed thoughtlessly. She grabs at a top hanging inside the closet. The steel hanging rail bends sharply and the garment in her hand tears in half. All the clothes hanging on the rail slide down towards the low-point of the bend. "Fuck!" Kim mutters.

More slowly, but still many times faster than the rest of the human race could manage, she removes a bright yellow bikini from its hanger. Hurrying, she places the cups over her big, firm breasts, letting her glorious scoops of flesh completely fill out the material. Then she rushes to fasten the garment behind her back. There's a loud tearing sound. She has pulled the strap tight far, far too quickly. Both of her big mounds have entirely refused to be compressed by the bikini and have asserted their superiority by pushing through the thin fabric, the elasticity of the bikini no match for the wondrous solidity of her generous chest.

Kim curses once again. After the new red one which got ruined this morning, the yellow bikini was her favourite. She'd wanted to wear it when she shows off her new powers to her friends. Now it’s just a useless bit of rag. She rips the fastening strap off her body and tosses it aside in disgust. Being super is becoming a total pain. What's the point of having superspeed if she's going to have to dress at normal speed, treating her clothes like they're made of egg-shells?

Downstairs, her mother is becoming increasingly concerned by the crashing sounds coming from her daughter's room. As softly as she can, she takes a couple of steps over to the hall table and slowly pulls open a drawer. Reaching in, taking great care to be as silent as she can, she extracts a small handgun. She holds it at arm’s length as she uses her other hand to release the safety lock. She makes her way back to the foot of the stairs and calls up once more: "Kimberley? Honey? Is that you? What are you doing up there?"

Kim is still looking through what's left of her bikini collection. Instinctively, she looks around when she hears her mother's voice through her bedroom door. She catches sight of the bricks and plaster on the floor. Her mother is going to freak out when she sees all that. She has to stall her. "Just a minute, Mom." she shouts over her smooth round shoulder.

"Kimmie?" A tremendous feeling of relief slips over the older woman. She carefully uncocks the pistol in her hand. "Are you OK, honey?"

"Yeah Mom, I'm fine."

"What was that noise, dear?"

"Er... I dropped something."

"Well, you be careful now, OK honey?" Kim's mother says. She's already moved away from the stairs to put the gun back in the hall table.

"Yeah Mom. Whatever." Kim makes no effort to conceal her slight annoyance with her mother's concern.

As her parent, the senior party in the exchange is well used to Kim's adolescent moods and, as ever, is happy to adopt the path of least resistance. Barely ten more seconds elapse before she's back on the sofa, her thoughts once again dedicated to the drama playing out on the television. Meanwhile, Kim is fully engrossed once again in the task of selecting a swimsuit and subsequently getting it on her body without her awesome curves bursting through it.

Just a few yards away from Kim and her mother, Randolph is crouched over his workbench, his soldering iron gripped tightly in his not-as-steady-as-they-used-to-be fingers. The last of the unwanted components is almost loose. Just another little dab with the tip of the iron to melt the solder holding it fast... there! Randolph quickly blows on his fingertips to cool them after touching the overheated diode which he's tossed in the trash. He holds the circuit board up to his eyes, as his vision is also not as good as it was ten years ago. He squints at it for a few moments. Yes, it's ready for him to begin affixing new components.

He needs to insert quite a few pieces into the circuit, so that it can act as a conduit between the beam it attaches to and his Sherman crystal. The beam, with its polarity reversed, will now draw energy - "his" energy - out of the target. The circuit board will process it into an electrical pulse which will feed a tiny ultraviolet laser directed at the centre of the crystal. That way, every last drop of power can be collected back where it belongs. Into his hands. For him to use as he intended. On himself.

As he begins the process of fixing the first new component in place, he can't help imagining the moment when he finally gets to use the device. The look of puzzlement turning into horror on the sluttish features of that degenerate adolescent. The squeaks of protest in her pathetic, feminine voice. The sight of the Sherman crystal filling with the power she never should have possessed. The trollop getting weaker and weaker by the second, her obscene body becoming normal, vulnerable, soft - just as it should be. She'll protest at first, but he'll be too firm and upstanding in his principles to allow her to sway him from his decision. Then she'll beg him. She'll get on her knees, maybe trying to use her evil beauty to seduce him, but he will not be moved.

He is Randolph Sherman, the greatest genius in the world, inventor of the Sherman crystal, discoverer of phenomenal power. No juvenile whore can deflect him from his destiny. He has been born to wield that power. The girl will offer him anything to keep even a shred of it, but he will not be so easily distracted. She will pout her rich, full lips, she will thrust out her oversized, disgusting chest and offer all manner of disgraceful things if he relents. But he will not. He will drain every single microjoule of energy from her. Every last one. Until she is lying, defeated at his feet, just another useless, weak, inferior female.

And then... Then he will turn the ray back onto himself. And fill his entire existence with power. Pure power. Power that will course into every corner of his elderly body, renewing his tired muscles and decaying limbs, turning him into the mighty leader that he was always intended to be. She will look up at his mighty form, tears in her eyes, and plead with him for mercy. All the women will do that. They will offer him their sickeningly soft, yielding bodies, willingly giving him their tongues, their breasts, their groins...

"Ouch!" Randolph drops the hot soldering iron that was still in his hand as he started to unthinkingly rub his crotch. He's managed to burn a small hole through his trousers and his underpants. A small blister is already forming on his groin. The air is full of the smell of burning fabric and pubic hair. It hurts. Worse, he knows the pain isn't going to diminish for quite some time. That is his punishment for allowing his thoughts, his mighty brain, to be derailed by evil images of women. He cannot wait for the moment when he reclaims his power and transfers it into his body. Then, pain like this will be nothing but a memory for him. A memory for him and a constant, never-ending reality for that trollop and all her kind.

Meanwhile, up in her bedroom, Kim has finally selected a bikini to wear. It's a simple, unadorned and rather skimpy lime green affair. It's definitely the best of what's left. She's fairly sure of that. No, she's totally sure. This is the one. With the kind of care an archaeologist would show extracting a prehistoric artefact from the ground, Kim picks up the bottom half of the bikini. She bends down, her stunning chest hanging like two proud grapefruit at the very instant of perfect ripeness. She holds the waist of the panty-like garment open. Very slowly, she lifts her pretty, bare left foot off the ground, pointing her dainty toes and steering them through the left leg-hole. Then she repeats the process with her other foot.

Now, she's ready to pull the bottoms up. She eases them over her delicate-looking - but powerful beyond reason - ankles and her shapely calves. Like someone playing one of those steady-hand games where a loop of wire has to be steered over a squiggley course without setting off an alarm, she pulls the panties up her beautiful smooth lower legs, beyond her flawless knees and ever upwards towards the round, firm perfection of her thighs. She's even more careful as she begins the next phase of the operation; easing the bikini over her tight, sexily spherical buttocks. The two bulges of her cheeks fill the material in a way its designer can only have dreamed of. The thin cloth stretches to accommodate her ideal feminine shape, hugging her rear so that no nuance of its shape is unrevealed.

She pulls the panties up as much as she dares until they stretch flat over her groin and she's satisfied there's no wrinkles. Then she slips her thumbs out of the waistband, allowing the elastic to cling to her tiny middle, just below her deep, alluring navel - the sole feature of the marble-smooth flat plain of her abdomen. She breathes a slow sigh of relief. She is halfway there now. Just the top half of the swimsuit to slip into.

She picks it up as if it were a priceless vase and holds it out in front of her body, hesitating for a moment. She does not want to destroy this bikini like she did the yellow one. She manoevers her long, slender arms cautiously into the straps and then, nervily, guides those straps over the warm, cottony skin of her shoulders. So far so good. The operation to steer the two cups over her chest now beings in earnest. The two empty pockets of material look large, but as she lifts them carefully over their intended positions, it's clear that they are barely big enough. She manoeuvres first the left then the right cup over her arrogantly haughty and inconceivably firm breasts.

With real love and pride, she lowers the material onto her breath-takingly large and perfectly-shaped mounds. The already thin cloth now has to expand to try and accomodate the full glory of her chest. Stretched in so many different directions all at once, the cups cling for dear life to her dramatic breasts so that the precise shape of her large, prominent nipples is extremely visible. She watches worried for a moment, fearing that those finger-tip-sized protusions will burst through at any moment, but somehow, perhaps miraculously, the bikini holds them in.

Kim uses as little movement as possible to reach behind herself. She pulls the two sides of the fastening strap towards each other at a speed of a millimeter a second, conscious that any extra strain on the garment might be too much. Finally, the two halves of the clasp meet and interlock. She releases them with maximum care and trepidation. Her upper body looks ready to explode through her swimsuit at any second, but it doesn't. Experimentally, she takes a slow, deep breath. Her chest rises, her breasts performing the remarkable feat of looking even more prominent and dramatic. The bikini, to her relief, proves itself just about up to the task of containing her magnificence. Vast areas of her breasts, especially the cleavage between them, are left uncovered. The outline of her nipples dominates the covered parts.

Kim looks down at her feminine protusions with satisfaction. She can't resist brushing her fingertips over the centre of each cup, teasing her points through the bikini and sending shivers of delight through her body. She pinches her nipples, a low moan escaping through her luscious lips and then she cradles both her exquisite mounds in her palms. They feel so wonderful. She turns to see herself in her full-length mirror and scans her body from her feet slowly upwards past her hips, her waist, her chest, her face and up to her hair. She meets and exceeds her own high standards. She looks good. In fact, she can't help thinking, she looks super.

 

Conceptfan, Oct. 2005.

Chapter 6

Soldering fresh components onto the board requires a greater degree of hand-eye co-ordination than removing them. It's a painstakingly slow task for Randolph. Each transistor he has to attach has three legs which he must solder accurately into place. He is still working on the final leg of the first one. A pile of others lie waiting to be added to the circuit. He curses the way the passing years have severely restricted his dexterity. But it's not for long. With that power inside his body, his hands will shake no longer. Better yet, with that power inside his body, he could have an army of servants to perform these menial tasks for him...

Meanwhile, next door, Kim is making her way downstairs. Her Sherman-energy-enhanced hearing detects, as well as the sound of television soap-opera dialogue, the booming of her mother's heart. It's kinda weird, she thinks. Kinda cool, too. Once she's in the hallway, she calls out "Mom, I'm going over to Jessie's house for a while."

Kimberley's mother breaks her intense concentration on the exchange between the millionaire's long-lost daughter and the millionaire's third wife who's cheating on the millionaire with his brother who he thought was dead. What did her daughter just say? That she's going over to Jessie's? Jessie... which one's Jessie? Oh yeah. The blond girl. The one with the wealthy parents...A very polite couple, she recalls. And didn't that Jessie get straight A's last semester? That's right she did. That's the kind of kid my Kim should be hanging out with, rather than that usual crowd of punks or grungers or whatever it was kids like that call themselves these days.

"OK, honey. Have fun. Don't be late." The slamming of the front door is her daughter's only reply. What else can she do but sigh and try to work out what the long-lost daughter has been telling her cheating stepmother for the past half minute?

Kim is heading for the sidewalk. She's pleased with herself and the controlled way she closed the door without smashing it to pieces or tearing it from its hinges. She's also pleased with the ease with which her mother has swallowed yet another of her lies. Maybe being super isn't so bad after all. She's certainly going to have fun with her powers in a few moments when she meets her friends. Her real friends. The ones her parents tell her not to hang with. Definitely not Jessie, she thinks, quickening her stride, her legs suddenly a blur a moment before her whole body becomes a shapeless smear of pink and traces of green as she leisurely accelerates to an easy jog.

Jessie definitely won't be there. That boring do-gooder is probably at home with a book, or otherwise doing whatever her boring parents want her to be doing. Kim's got no time at all for Jessie, socially or in any other context. Let her mother think she's with her. Mom's too engrossed in her soap-operas to ever check up on her or anything like that.

She approaches a road she needs to cross, but rather than checking for oncoming traffic, she launches herself into a balletic leap that carries her, at a height of over twenty feet, comfortably over to the other side. She lands on one foot and continues her cross-country, five-hundred-mile-an-hour-run as if her stride was never interrupted by her amazing jump. She feels completely at ease with her superhuman abilities. It's going to be so cool when she shows her friends some of the stuff that she can do now. Like running so fast. Even Kim is impressed by the way a journey that was previously a twenty minute walk has now become a fifteen second jog.

Her friends are gathered at their usual meeting point, the bus shelter outside school on the highway. As she rockets towards them, somehow Kim has time to study the school building, looming in the distance, a hundred yards behind her classmates, a menacing reminder of education, discipline and social responsibility. Things she hates. She focusses back on the small group of teenagers by the road. She deviates from her arrow-straight trajectory, the blur of her passage taking on a tight kink that seems to be laughing at preconceived notions of what is, and is not, possible. Kim has already learnt to take the apparently unfeasible for granted. It's all an effortless game to her as she comes to a sudden stop about two yards behind her clustered friends.

The small crowd, as one, takes a stumbling step forward, pushed by the air Kim's arrival displaces. A split-second after that, the vague streak of movement that has shot through the town becomes a solid, very real form. A sixteen-year old schoolgirl with long straight brown hair and a body direct from a million fantasies, stuffed into a simple, overworked, green two-piece bikini. None one sees her, though, or notices she's there. She's standing behind them, completely silent. Her ultra-rapid approach has not left her panting. She's not even breathing at all. It's only when she calls out a casual "Hi guys" that they whirl around, shocked, and notice her.

None of the five girls in the group know what to say at first. Stephanie, Skye and Alex are too stoned, anyway. The most recent of the joints they have been sharing smoulders in Skye's hand, forgotten for the moment. Veronica has only had a few puffs to appear one of the crowd and Carly has only arrived in the past few minutes and has not yet had time to catch up with the others. The thoughts of this last pair are much less clouded and unsurprisingly, they are the first to find words to express them.

"Fuck, Kim!" Carly exclaims.

"Oh my god where did you come from?" Veronica asks, astonished. The other three just continue their jelly-eyed staring. Kim looks exceptionally pleased with herself, her hands on her hips, her fabulous bust thrust out proudly.

A slight look of disapproval flickers across Skye's features as she greets the new arrival "The beach is, like, that way, Kim. Can't you parents afford to get you proper clothes?"

The line of questioning seems to touch something in Veronica. Maybe it's the way Kim is so brazenly showing off her curvy body. Veronica can't hide her gnawing envy as she looks at her classmate's overdeveloped and over-displayed chest. "Yeah. You look cheap. Your breasts look like they're fake or something."

What happens next is amazing. Kim seems to vanish. There's a whoosh, a gust of wind, a blur. Then Kim reappears. It's all over in less than a second. Somehow Kim is now standing right in front of Veronica, so close to her that the contents of her lime green bikini are almost touching the barely noticeable bumps beneath Veronica's loose sweatshirt. Veronica staggers backwards. Kim's arm flashes out and grabs her by the throat, stopping her mid-stumble. Before anyone can even start to show their shock at this latest turn of events, Kim has lifted her "friend" completely off the pavement with that single hand on her neck. Her free palm rests, casually, on her hip.

Veronica is struggling to breathe. Both of her hands are scrabbling furiously at Kim's fingers but she cannot dislodge even one of them. Veronica's feet hang uselessly a foot from the ground. Her face is becoming paler by the moment. The other girls stand around nervously, awed by the display of strength and uncertain what they should do. Kim looks up at Veronica's white features.

"There's nothing fake about me." Kim hisses. "And I don't think you want to piss me off anymore, Ver. I'm, like, super now." Veronica coughs and nods frantically in a bid to secure her release. Kim opens her fingers and lets Veronica drop to her knees, gasping for breath and rubbing her throat.

"What the fuck happened there?" Carly demands of Kim.

"I told you," says Kim, nonchalantly, "I'm super."

"You... you got super-powers?" Alex asks.

"Duh!" says Kim.

"When... er.. like.. what did... you know, like, how?" Stephanie joins the interrogation.

"From this old perv who lives in the house next door. It's his invention... some kind of crystal or ray or whatever. He zapped me with it, like totally by accident. I think he was trying to look at my tits or something. He wanted to make himself super - Super Perv, I think - and now instead he's totally pissed and I'm, like, totally super!"

"So you got super-powers?" Alex repeats her previous question.

"What kind of super-powers?" Carly demands.

Kim pauses. The question has made her think. What kind of superpowers does she have? How can she show them off best? What kind of display would really impress her friends? "Well.." she says, "I can jump pretty high." She springs off her knees almost straight up into the starry sky. The others gasp as they stretch their necks to watch the leap. Finally, Kim starts to come down. She lands on the highway, the tarmac cracking beneath her bare feet. "Ta da!" she calls out towards her friends, taking an uninvited, unnecessary bow and then spinning around on her toes and taking another.

They're all staring, too shocked by what they have just seen to react to what they can see now. All except Carly who manages to scream "Kim! Look out!"

"Huh?" asks Kim, disappointed at the reaction to her big jump. She turns around, just in time to see a station wagon barrelling down on her at sixty miles an hour, it's headlights bathing her in their bright glow. The driver hits the horn and slams on the brakes. Kim has enough time to move, but she doesn't. The surprise has rooted her to the spot. "Shit..." is the only thought she can come up with.

The car slams into her knees. Her knees don't move. The car continues to come forward, but the front section of it is forced to bend and tear around Kim's legs. The metal starts to fold up, wadding against her, but still she does not budge. She's now surrounded by crumpled car, the scrap metal building up against her body. The solid block that is the vehicle's engine hits her lower belly and, unable to force her aside, concedes its momentum to her. The remains of the car come to a halt. The driver shoots through the windshield in a fountain of broken glass and goes sailing over Kim's shoulder. He lands twenty yards behind her and then rolls for another ten. There's no more movement after that. Steam hisses from the wreckage blasting Kim's face but she doesn't appear to notice. The front half of the station wagon is unrecognisable, but there's barely a scratch on the back end. Kim smiles.

Carly and Alex come running over towards her. Veronica and Skye stay frozen where they were. Stephanie goes to check on the driver. "Shit, Kim! Are you alright"? Alex yells, terrified.

"Course I am!" laughs Kim. "I'm super."

"Fuck, that was so awesome!" Carly pants. Then she looks around nervously for a moment. "Do you think anyone saw you?"

No other vehicles appear to have stopped and there's nothing coming in either direction down the road right now. Kim knows this as she answers "Other than the guy in the car, nah." With a smug look down at what's left of the station wagon lying all around her, she can't help but add "Relax, I'm too smart and too super to get caught."

At that precise moment, back at Kim's house, the television is still on. And her mother is still watching it. Now though, she's sitting uncomfortably, bolt upright on the edge of the sofa. She has also now been joined by her husband, Kim's father. The programme on screen is not a soap-opera. It is a Channel 8 News Exclusive entitled "Pizza house Massacre". A scrolling message marqueeing along the bottom of the screen proclaims "Exclusive footage shot by Channel 8 viewer, Faroukh Hussein. Viewers may find these images disturbing.") Above that, there's a jerky, zoomed-in shot of the front of a restaurant in town. In the film, two policemen are shooting at a girl in a red bikini. Their bullets seem to have no effect on the target. And then the girl appears to stride forward and shove two cars sideways-on, clean across the road, killing the cops.

"Oh my God!" Kim's mother shrieks. "Is that... Kim?" The man sitting next to her does not reply. His jaw opens and closes several times, but no voice can be heard, save for the anchorman's voice-over. "Right after that the mysterious girl is said to have disappeared. The police are appealing for people to come forward if they have any information regarding her identity. In related news, City Commissioner Frank Holland has described the two slain officers as first-class policemen, vowing to bring their killer to justice."

"Where..." Kim's father is slowly regaining the power of speech "Where is she now?" he asks.

"Er... Jessie's house."

 

Conceptfan, Oct. 2005.

Chapter 7

Kim is not at Jessie's house. She's standing in the middle of the highway near her school, up to her waist in station wagon remains. She reaches down into the wreckage with her right hand, her dainty fingers brushing aside steel and chrome as through they are nothing more substantial than two different types of paper, until she feels she had a good grip of something more solid in there. Her digits are sinking into what's left of the car's engine. She raises her hand, lifting the entire vehicle off her legs with that single, slender arm, making the feat look as taxing as removing a stray page of a newspaper.

A flick of Kim's wrist sends the ex-station wagon spinning in an arc narrowly over the heads of Carly and Alex who both duck. "Fuck! Watch out, Kim!" Alex says, clearly scared by the near collision. The car crashes down exactly on the spot where Veronica and Sky were standing until two seconds ago, when they dived out of the way, screaming in panic. They only just make it to safety. "Jesus! You could have killed me!" Veronica screeches.

"And me!" Skye adds. "Watch out - we're not all invil... invel... we're not all like you! Getting hit by a car could be, you know, tragic."

Kim rolls her eyes. She's about to say something when Stephanie calls from down the road where she's crouched over the unmoving form of the station wagon's driver. "Hey! Hey guys! I... I... think this guy's, like, dead!"

"Oh, shit not again!" says Kim. But it's soon clear that she's not talking about her role in the premature conclusion of yet another life. Her fingers are inside the waist band of her bikini, poking through a large burn hole in the material. It does not require any great intellect to work out that the damage must have occurred when the car crashed into her groin. She pulls her hand out and lets what's left of the panties snap back into position. "Three bikinis fucked in one day." Kim curses. A small area of pubic hair is now visible through the rough appiture. The other girls stare at it in amazement.

"Fuck, Kim." says Carly. "Does that mean that you, like, can't be hurt?"

"Uh-huh." Kim acknowledges. "That what it looks like," she adds with a bit of a giggle.

"Even... like, even... there?" Carly asks, pointing at the flesh revealed by the missing bit of bikini.

"That's nothing." Kim says by way of an answer, walking over towards the resting place of the station wagon. "Wait till you see what I can do with my tits!"

"How did I know THEY'd come into it sooner or later." Veronica mutters, still picking herself up. Kim shoots her an angry glance, but decides to let the comment go for now. She's having a good time, and she's feeling generous.

"Hey, guys?" Stephanie calls up to them. "Did you hear me? I think this guy here is dead!"

"Oh, god. We are in so much trouble..." Veronica begins.

"No-one saw anything!" Alex reminds her. "Leave him, Steph." she yells. Stephanie does not move. Meanwhile Kim has, with great care, removed the top portion of her bikini. Her large breasts stand just as high and proud on her slim body without the bikini's help. A couple of the girls cannot help but gasp at the sight of their perfection.

"Jeez, Kim... you are so STACKED!" Carly observes.

"Don't you think they look TOO big for her body?" Veronica asks no-one in particular, icy jealousy coating her words.

Once again, Kim does not react to Veronica's provocation. "You wanna see what I can do with these beauties?" she asks her audience. No-one says "yes", but no-one says "no" either. No-one says anything at all, in fact. They are all lost for words as Kim sways over to the discarded remains of the station wagon. She moves her upper torso as she walks, making her breasts move as much as possible with every step, showing them off. Kim's chest is so firm that her breasts jiggle only slightly as she walks but it is enough for her purposes. She can tell that Veronica is nearly overcome with nausea from envy.

She reaches the trunk of the vehicle. The undamaged portion of the wreck. She bends over it, letting her magnificent breasts hang over the back of the car and slowly leans forward. There's a groan when her big nipples begin to press down on the metal panel. The steel starts to stretch and bend beneath her, her feminine flesh effortlessly reshaping it. Her breasts buckle the trunk, putting greater and greater strain on the tough metal until eventually, it has to surrender to her superior firmness and her big chest tears right through the steel. She shakes her shoulders, letting her breasts bounce about and widen the hole they have punched. Then she stands up and allows her classmates to inspect the damage.

"Wow." breathes Carly.

"Jesus." Alex says.

"Fuck." mutters Skye.

Even Stephanie has looked up for the driver's corpse. She swallows hard.

"Show-off." Veronica comments. Kim is halfway through the precariously difficult task of putting her bikini back on. If she wasn't concerned that a single false move could leave the garment ruined, she would make Veronica apologise for that remark.

"What else can you do?" Carly enquires, excited.

"Loads of stuff." answers Kim. "I can see and hear stuff a long way away, and I can blow really hard and I can run fast and-"

"-How hard can you blow?" interrupts Carly.

Kim needs no second invitation to show off. She turns her head to the side, pushes out her thick lips and blows a long, steady stream of her warm breath at the stricken station wagon. The air races from her goddess-like lungs and is steered by those lovely lips into a loud hurricane jet that blasts the car with enough force to lift it briefly from the ground and throw it fifteen yards backwards. "Wow!" "Awesome!" "Shit!" "Fuck!" "Jesus..." her classmate's exclamations make Kim proud. She has already stopped blowing, her mouth reshaping into a smug grin by the time the unfortunate vehicle crashes back down. But her exhalation has leant it more than enough momentum to keep it rolling, side-on, right back onto the highway.

There a few seconds' silence, broken by the sound of an approaching car. Its headlamps light up the remains of the station wagon, blocking the highway. A screech of brakes fills the night. The oncoming car spins as it slows, its tyres leaving thick black residue on the road surface. It comes to a halt a matter of inches away from the stricken station wagon. Barely is that drama concluded, when another car comes into view. Again, there's the same high-pitched cry of desperate deceleration. But this time, the driver is not skilled enough to avoid collision. The car smashes into the side of the first vehicle, shunting it into the wrecked station-wagon. Broken glass tinkles as the three cars come to rest.

A huge truck appears in the horizon. The air-horn blasts as it approaches the pile-up and the air-brakes hiss like a thousand furious snakes. Fortunately, the driver was not speeding, and through a combination of his skill and prudence he is able to bring his massive vehicle to a halt without hitting anything. A huge sigh of relief is his only comment. He doesn't want to be crashing his truck. Not with several thousand gallons of gasoline in the giant tank he's hauling...

"Shit, be careful Kim!" Skye says

"You're gonna get us all into trouble" says Stephanie, nervously

"Yeah, leave us out of this." chimes Veronica.

Alex says nothing.

"Wow! Can you blow cold like that?" asks Carly.

"Don't know." Kim answers truthfully. She knows the only way she can find out is by trying. She tilts her head towards the station wagon once again. Taking a deep breath which makes her amazing breasts rise and threaten to burst out of her bikini, she imagines she's blowing on a fresh-from-the-fryer french fry to cool it and begins to exhale. Her breath is immediately visible as a cloud of semi-opaque condensation as it leaves her sexy mouth. The cloud becomes a column that shoots through the air like a laser beam until it reaches the station wagon. Instantly, the whole vehicle turns white. Icicles form on every overhanging surface. Even the air all around it begins to freeze. Kim stretches her lips into a smile. She knows now.

"Cool. Really REALLY cool!" Alex jokes.

"Hey don't do that near me.." Veronica says.

"Maybe we should, like, stop now..." Skye ventures.

"I wanna see more." Carly practically pleads. "How strong are you Kim? Could you, like, pick up that truck."

The girls all look towards the massive machine. It's cab alone is twice as tall as Kim. The long cylindrical body is huge. Each letter of the word "TEXACO" painted on the side of it is as big as she is. Just one of the machine's twelve tyres alone looks far, far too heavy to lift. Even Kim hesitates for a moment. The vast imbalance between her petite - if curvy - form and the enormous tanker lorry makes her doubt her potency. How could she, with her slender arms, overpower something so mighty?

Kim's brief moment of doubt does not pass unobserved. "She can't." says Alex.

"Er.. maybe it's for the best," Skye opines.

Kim is still unsure if she should approach the truck. Then Veronica leaps at the opportunity to make a negative comment. "I knew she couldn't do it. She's NOWHERE NEAR as super as she's telling us!" she proclaims.

"Oh yeah?" Kim challenges. "Oh fucking YEAH?" She marches purposefully towards the tanker. A wave of nervousness washes over her as she comes close to the behemoth. It's so huge. But she has to do this. She has to show that skinny bitch Veronica just how powerful she now is. She looks at the truck and steels herself. She feels the strength in her stunning body. As she girds her spectacular loins she cannot sense any limits. She can do this... she knows she can.

But how to lift something so large? From her considerable experience moving piles of dirty clothes around her bedroom, Kim knows enough of the laws of physics to realise that she needs to seek out the centre of it. She picks a spot one third of the way down the length of the tank, which is just about the middle of the vehicle including the cab. She approaches from the side. There's only going to be one way to set about this task. She must crouch underneath the truck and push upwards. She ducks beneath the mammoth fuel container. With her body folded so that her breasts are resting on her knees, she places her upturned palms flat against the underneath of the vehicle.

She doesn't know what to expect as she experimentally presses her hands upwards. A loud, menacing groan tells her that the truck's frame is being tested by forces neither its designers nor its constructors had ever anticipated. She tries to raise her hands. The groan becomes a brief squeal. Something to her left hisses wildly. The entire gas truck lifts from the road. Smoothly and steadily it rises, like an alien craft. She can feel the liquid sloshing about in the vast tank over her head. She can sense the mass balancing on her relatively tiny palms and yet it doesn't feel heavy. Substantial, yes. Bulky, too. But not heavy.

She continues to push her arms up until they are straight. The wheels of the lorry are now about three feet from the highway. Kim starts the process of unbending her knees. There's a loud clank from roughly the area where the steam sounded a moment ago. Kim tuns to look and sees that the cab of the truck is bent downwards at an angle to the huge tank she is lifting. It seems it wasn't supposed to be picked up in the middle after all. "Too late now" she thinks, continuing to stand ever more upright. After a few seconds, she is completely vertical, the weight of the massive vehicle held comfortably over her head. The cab section is bent at a forty-five degree angle now. It almost looks as if the petrol tanker is bowing its head in shame. Perhaps it’s the shame of being publicly dominated by a sixteen year old girl.

She feels wonderful. She turns her head to see her classmates and sees them all staring at her, amazed. She cannot resist the temptation to emphasise the ease with which she is accomplishing the feat. Slowly, she removes her right hand from the base of the truck overhead. The huge thing pivots slightly now that it is being supported only by her small left palm but Kim manages to keep it balanced. For maximum effect, she places her now spare right hand on her shapely hip. Her keen ears detect the sound of her friends' gasps so she completes the routine by bending her left arm and straightening it out again several times, making the entire truck bounce wildly up and down.

The door to the driver's cab opens and a middle aged man with an ashen face carefully drops out onto the road. He immediately turns, spots the beautiful teenager holding his rig in the air with a single hand and begins to mumble "oh fuck oh god oh fuck oh..."

Kim thinks it might be fun to walk over to her classmates now, holding the truck out on her palm like a waiter bringing a tray to a table in a restaurant. She's quite keen to know what Veronica might want to say to her after she's performed that particular trick. She takes a cautious step, then another before feeling comfortable walking with such an unlikely cargo. By then she's strolling confidently down the road. The stunned truck driver finds himself calling out "Hey! Be careful! That's full of gasoline!"

"Whatever, dude." Kim answers without bothering to look round. She sees her friends whispering to each other, believing that she's out of earshot. She tunes her super-hearing into their conversations.

Stephanie is whispering to Skye "Do you realise, that little slut could do anything? Nobody'll be able to stop her."

"I'm kind of scared of her." Skye admits.

"She, like, has NO regard for OUR safety. Doesn't she realise we're not super?" wonders Stephanie.

Meanwhile, Veronica hisses into Alex's ear "What's so special about her that she gets super-powers?"

"Yeah," agrees Alex, "I wonder who she slept with."

"Such a show off." Veronica criticises. "Doesn't she know it's totally unfeminine to be so strong. Guys won't like it at all. At least, cute guys won't."

"Hey, Veronica!" Kim calls over. "Didn't you think I'd have, like, super-hearing too?" She draws her arm back as if she's preparing to toss the massive gas tanker at Veronica.

"Oh fuck, no!" Veronica cries. Skye screams. Even Carly looks scared.

Kim bursts out laughing. "Made you piss yourselves!" she declares, delightedly.

"I'm out of here." Stephanie announces.

"Me too." says Skye. The two girls take a couple of steps away and then break into a run down the side of the highway.

"Chickenshits!" Kim shouts after them. The remaining three girls stare at Kim as she ambles right over to them, the truck suspended above her head as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Kim, I.. I didn't mean what I said before..." Veronica hurries to greet Kim with words of reconciliation.

"Whatever" says Kim with a shrug that makes her breasts and the gas tanker bounce dramatically.

"Hey!" Carly yells, delighted. "I've just had a totally cool idea. Kim why don't you, like, totally block up the school doors with that thing?"

"Yeah!" agrees Alex. "It might even get us a couple of days off while they pull it out and fix everything up. That'd be so cool!"

"I... I'm not sure you should do that, Kim." Veronica says.

"Oh yeah? Why not? Don't think I can, Ver?" challenges Kim.

"No, no, Kim. I bet you can. I just think it might be dange-"

"-Then shut up." Kim interrupts. No-one is going to spoil her party. Kim fixes her superhuman eyes on the huge double doors of the school entrance. Instantly, the scene becomes as clear to her as if she were standing just ten yards away, instead of her real distance of a hundred yards. She could walk the truck up to the school and carefully wedge it in the doorway. It's not that far away and it's not as though her arm is tiring at all holding dozens of tons of lorry overhead. But, it seems such a chore to walk all the way over there. Especially when there's a quicker way.

Kim has very little experience of using her new strength. But confidence has never been a commodity she has lacked. And now that she can feel so much power surging through her body, her self-assurance has reached an even higher plane. It's as though there's a network of raging rivers of seemingly limitless energy running through her very existence. She is pure power, incarnated in the very human form of a voluptuous sixteen year old brat.

She does not doubt at all now. Does not question her abilities. She knows she has the strength - the power - in her comparatively tiny frame to throw the massive truck as far as the school doors. She does not concern herself with any attempt at gauging the correct amount of force she needs to apply to precisely wedge the tanker in the doorway as Carly originally suggested. Her cursory analysis of the situation leads her to the conclusion that no matter how hard she launches the lorry, it's bound to end up stuck in the entrance. She decides the best course of action will be to throw the truck as hard as she can at the double doors and hope for the best.

"Hey guys!" she calls over to her classmates. "Check this out!".

Kim has to adjust her hands slightly underneath the enormous tank. She wants to release it front-on to the school with the bowing cab leading the way, so she must turn her fantastic body to face her target, with one arm in front of her face and the other behind her head. This does not allow her quite as much purchase as she previously enjoyed, but it is still enough. She draws her arms back, bending her elbows. The entire massive vehicle lurches backwards above her, in direct response to the all-conquering demands of her barely visible but insanely potent muscles. She can feel the terrible potentiality of her slender limbs as they prepare to shoot forwards and launch their cargo. It's awesome!

She straightens her arms and flings them forwards, letting the vast metal tank slip from her palms and then using her fingertips to impart a final massive boost to its already missile-like flight. The truck's trajectory bares more in common with that of a bullet leaving a gun than the traditional arc normally associated with a human being throwing an object. Dozens of tons of steel and fuel in the form of the petrol lorry rocket away from Kim. The tanker neither gains nor loses height as it shoots towards the school entrance. She's put too much into the throw. Even she can see that. Her classmates notice it, but have less than a second to react. It's just enough time for their jaws to flop open. With the benefit of super-speed, Kim can get so much more done. Instead she chooses to bite her bottom lip as if to say "Ooops! Oh well."

Her aim is impeccable. The front of the driver's cab hits the big doors dead centre. The big wooden panels dissolve into a billion matchsticks in an instant, without slowing the vehicle. The tank is slightly larger than the door frame. It knocks concrete and plaster out of its way as the huge metal cylinder follows the cab through the entrance. The floor above, suddenly lacking the support of the load-bearing doorway below, sags. Bricks and stone cascade down onto the top of the passing tank. Meanwhile, debris is starting to build up in the foyer all around the onrushing truck. It crashes through a second wall, setting off an even greater avalanche of concrete from on high. A steel girder snaps and bends downwards, puncturing the roof of the gasoline container and the rough edges of the gash scrape on fallen masonry, creating sparks.

To Veronica, Alex, Carly and Kim it appears as if every light in every room in the building is simultaneously switched on. A split-second later, most of the glass in the building bursts outwards. Then vast, furious tongues of yellow flame spit out of the empty window frames. A Boom! that hurts the ears of everyone except Kim is accompanied by a seismic shaking of the ground. The whole school appears to transform into a dancing, terrifying ball of orange and red flame. The ground shakes for a second time, but this time the noise that goes with it is a more protracted, rumbling sound. Alex screams.

Slowly, the fireball dissipates and retreats downwards into something resembling a more conventional blaze. But there's something wrong. They can all see it through the flickering of flames. The school building has just... gone.

"Shit! I'm out of here!" Alex mutters. She turns and runs. Kim glances at her angrily. She seems to dematerialise into a streak that stretches all the way from where she was standing to a point about a yard in front of Alex. An instant later, the streak is gone and Kim is now standing right in Alex's path. The runner notices the new bikini-clad obstacle just in time and stops, startled.

"Hey!" Kim chastises, while Alex tries to recover herself. "Where d'ya think you're going? Throwing that truck was YOUR idea."

"No way..." puffs Alex, "You threw it, you freak."

"WHAT did you call me?" Kim is genuinely upset.

Alex is genuinely out of her mind. She's seen too much. There are too many extreme emotions pinging around inside her brain. Excitement at the thought of the door that's just been opened to a whole universe of new possibilities conflicts with terror of being implicated in death and destruction or worse, becoming a victim of them. Also present in the mix: jealousy that it should be someone else - someone she knows - who has become the special one. The final ingredient in her volatile mental cocktail is lust. No matter how much Alex tries to repress her inner thoughts, no matter how much effort she usually spends denying them to the outside world, right now she cannot escape the vision of Kim's breasts. She makes one last ditch effort to make the world believe that she does not have any such feelings for Kim. She shouts at her: "I called you a freak, you freaking freak!"

Kim's right hand flashes out. There's a splash of crimson and Alex slumps to the ground. When Veronica and Carly look, there's no sign of Alex's head anywhere. Kim is bending over Alex's decapitated corpse, casually wiping blood off her forearm on her ex-friend's designer jeans.

Veronica glances at her then at Carly who is visibly trembling. Then she runs. Kim looks up at catches Carly's eye. Carly is too scared to run. "You...you killed Alex." she says in a quiet, quivering voice.

"What are you going to do about it?" Kim asks, menacingly. She abandons her cleaning, and stands up, taking a step towards Carly.

"P.. Please, don't hurt me, Kim." Carly whimpers.

 

Conceptfan, Oct. 2005.

Chapter 8

The last transistor is in place. The new diodes, capacitors and other components are also soldered in. Having verified that it is indeed complete, Randolph has placed the modified circuit board to one side. He rubs his sore wrist and his aching fingers, cursing the arthritic pains he has to endure to fulfil his destiny. Still, despite the continual discomfort he is suffering, he cannot resist picking up his one and only Sherman crystal. He holds it out between his thumb and forefinger, turning it in the powerful artificial glow of his work light. It truly is his masterpiece; maybe even the greatest achievement in the entire history of biochemistry.

The crystal looks so dull, so.. ordinary right now, but Randolph knows that it will soon be a very different proposition. Once it has been filled with power - his power, which he so painstakingly and patiently collected for forty years - it will be far too hot to touch and it will glow with his energy. Energy which he will soon be able to reclaim from the foul juvenile enchantress who stole it. Energy which he will then be able to transfer into his own, wholesome body. He will be able to use the power so much more intelligently than any ignorant youngster, so much more appropriately than any female. Yes! When the world sees him wield the might of his discovery, there will be no doubt in anyone's mind that he is responsible for the single greatest scientific accomplishment of all time. In any field.

Back at the highway, Kim finds herself all alone. Her so-called friends have either fled or been killed. Even the survivors from the vehicles caught up in Kim's exhibition have seen more than enough to conclude that the greater the distance they can put between Kim and themselves, the better. Her wonderful eyesight allows her to truly see the colossal extent of the damage inflicted on the formerly imposing school building. Amidst flickering flames, she knows that nothing remains of the four-storey edifice bar a pile of burning and unrecognisable rubble. There's no-one left to show off to, and just about nothing left to show off with. She's done here. She might as well go home. After all, she's got to change. Yet again....

She breaks into a fast but comfortable jog, instantly accelerating to a speed of over nine hundred miles per hour, outrunning the sounds of police sirens approaching from the opposite direction and so never hearing them. Neither is she aware of the helicopter speeding to the scene. If she'd waited a minute, she'd have been able, with her awesome eyes, to read the Channel 8 News logo on the side. But by the time the whirlybird makes it to the smouldering ruins of the J. Edgar Hoover High School, Kim is already standing on the sidewalk in front of her house.

While Kim sighs at the tedious prospect of having to leap over her home in order to get inside without keys for the second time that day, Randolph sighs at the frustration of not being able to remember when - and most pertinently - where he last used his orange electrical extension reel. Was it when he last cut the grass in the back yard? Or when he tried to set up that night-vision camera with motion-detector that was supposed to record any nocturnal activity taking place in the bedroom of the whore next door? The camera failed because the inconsiderate filthy trollop always remembered to close her bedroom curtains at night. But was that before or after he mowed the lawn? He's pretty sure it was after, which means the extension reel must be somewhere here in the garage.

His frustration is heightened by the knowledge that his crystal-charging, power-draining ray is now ready. All he lacks now is a way of powering it at any distance greater than five feet from his workbench. He fails to draw comfort from the irony that once he regains his energy, the degeneration of his memory will no longer be a daily factor in his life. He will also be able to see in much greater detail, something from which he could benefit right now as he casts furiously around the garage, hunting the last piece in his jigsaw. Then again, as he has already fantasised a thousand times before, once he regains the power, he could have an army of servants to find the reel. Oh yes, he can picture it so clearly. His army of filthy, degenerate females - re-educated, of course, to know their place and follow his glorious leadership with unwavering loyalty - ready to spring into action at his whim.

No! He must stop touching himself. Stop allowing himself to be derailed from his straight and noble course by these disgusting thoughts. Thoughts planted in his head by evil, black-magic-practising witches for the very purpose of distracting him. No. He will not let the witches - the females - win. He will keep his hands away from his groin and dedicate his whole mind to the task of finding the extension coil. He will ignore the sensation of his erect penis pressing insistently against the inside of his trouser-fly. He will not be side-tracked!

Kim, on the other hand, is already having to deviate from her plans. There's no point leaping into the back garden now. As far as avoiding her parents goes, it's too late. Her father's seen her hanging about on the sidewalk. He must've been waiting for her or something. Maybe he's pissed about the mess in the back yard. She'll just tell him some bullshit about it not being her fault and he'll buy it. He always does. He'd never accept that his little princess was anything less than perfect. How could she be, he'd think. She's had a perfect childhood. Never wanted for anything. Always had everything she asked for delivered to her. Why wouldn't she be a good person?

She walks confidently up to the front door as her father opens it. He seems to be looking at her strangely as she enters the house, like he's studying her to see if she's really his daughter and not an almost-identical fake. And, most unusually for him, he isn't talking. He hasn't said "How's my princess?" or "Hey, Sunbeam!". She dismisses the odd behaviour as yet another shitty aspect of getting old. She hopes she won't have to go through all that crap now that's she super and all. God! It's like he's getting alkaseltzerheimers or whatever that thing is called when old folks can't remember their own names. He's left the front door open and just walked off into the TV room. She'd better close it. A burglar could come in and steal all her clothes. Then again, she'll have to do it really carefully so as not to smash the door. And anyone seeking to even touch her clothes without her permission is so going to die that it doesn't matter.

"Fuck the door" she concludes, leaving it slightly ajar. She's about to go upstairs to claim the sanctuary of her bedroom when her mother's voice reaches out to her from the T.V. room. "Kimberly? Could you step in here please? Your father and I need to talk to you."

She sighs. It IS going to be about the back yard. She may as well get this over with now so that her parents will leave her alone afterwards...

"Kimberly!" her mother begins the interrogation as she walks in. "Where have you been, dressed like that?"

"I told you, mom. I went to Jessie's house. To study. And, er, do stuff."

"We know that's a lie." her father says. "I spoke to Jessie's dad three times this evening and I know you haven't been there. Now, answer your mother's question. Where have you been?"

"Down by the highway."

"Doing WHAT?" her mom practically shrieks "And with WHO?"

"Hanging with my friends."

"What did you do after school today?" Her father asks.

"Just came home and worked on my tan. What's the problem?"

"Are you sure you didn't go downtown, Kim?" her mother says, softly. "We.. we... your father and I saw some... er... saw some pictures on the television that looked a lot like you."

"On the news." her father adds. "Was that you Kim? Look at me, Kim. Look at me and tell me, was that you in the Pasta place?"

Her mind is racing. She's been on television - how cool is that?! What a shame that she missed it! Maybe her dad taped it. She hopes that some of the other guys from school - the ones that weren't with her earlier tonight - saw it too. She's about to correct her father and tell him it was a Pizza place, not a Pasta place when she realises that displaying such in-depth knowledge of the now-famous restaurant's menu would not be a good move right now. That's because she's got a cast-iron alibi which she doesn't want to compromise. One single, simple line should do it. "I don't know what you're talking about." she announces. That should get the heat off her back.

For some reason, her brilliant plan does not succeed. "Show her, Earl." her mother instructs. "Put the TV on Channel 8. They've been running that clip all night. They're bound to show it again." Her dad obeys. All three of them turn to face the image on the flickering screen. It's not the footage from Luigi's. It's an aerial shot of a building, or rather the ruins of a building, in flames. It looks somehow familiar. The pictures are accompanied by the studio anchorman's voice:

"What you're seeing now are images being captured live from the Channel 8 News 'copter of the fire still burning at the J. Edgar Hoover High School. We've just heard from a fire department official that the entire school building has been totally destroyed, possibly - although this is as yet unconfirmed - by an explosion. Let's go live now to our reporter Ken Clark who's on the scene. Ken, do you have any further information on what might have caused this fire or, indeed, whether or not there was an explosion as the fire department say is likely?"

"Well, Mike, there's been no official word on any of this so far. I can tell you that the damage to the school building, as best that I can see, is pretty total. There's no indication yet of any casualties in the school building, but the local Sheriff has told me that two bodies, believed to be students at J. Edgar Hoover High, have been recovered from beside the highway that runs alongside the school here. The Sheriff did not give any further details, except to say that, given the condition they were found in, identifying the two bodies would take some time. Perhaps significantly, Mike, he refused to rule out a connection between events here and the Pizza-House slayings this afternoon."

"Thanks, Ken. You're watching Channel 8 News with me, Mike Rofoan. Right now, we're going to hear from Marcie Green, who is head of the School Board at the J. Edgar Hoover High. Marcie joins us now by telephone. Marcie, do you have any idea what might have caused such a devastating fire?"

"Ah, good evening, Mike. No, none of us have any clue what could have happened. Our school boasts the third best safety record in this county and the eleventh best in the whole state and we all work hard - parents, teachers and kids - to try and sustain that record. We're all just shocked that this has happened."

"Marcie, we'll continue this interview in just a moment, but right now we're going back to Ken Clark live at the school. Ken, I believe you have tracked down a eyewitness? Is that her with you now?"

"Yes, that's right Mike. This young lady claims to have witnessed everything. Would you please tell the Channel 8 News viewers what started this fire?"

"It was Kim. She did it." The interviewee glances to her left and her right "Am I really on TV?" she suddenly asks.

"You're live on the Channel 8 News." Ken confirms, expertly trying to keep the unrehearsed interview as professional as he can. "Who's Kim? Is she a student at J. Edgar Hoover High?"

"Yeah. She's gotten totally super - superpowers, you know what I mean? She threw a gasoline truck at the school. She's out of control."

"You're so dead, Veronica." Kim says to the girl on the TV screen. Her father switches the television off with the remote control and holds his head in his hands. Her mother falls back into the sofa, shaking her head in shock.

"So," her father says, slowly, the words forming themselves with difficulty, "It was you at the Pasta place... And this explosion at the school - was that you too, Kim?"

Kim neither denies nor admits the charges. Her parents make the correct assumption that, under the circumstances, the lack of a denial is worth as much as the presence of an admission. Her mother bursts into tears.

Just thirty yards away there is evidence of a very much contrasting emotion. In Randolph's garage, it is a moment on a par with Archemedes' legendary bath-bound yell. He has located the extension reel. He puffs and sweats as he stretches to plug its trailing cord into the home-made transformer beneath his workbench, but in his heart now there is nothing but anticipation. Sweet, tingling anticipation. The moment is close. Soon... Soon he will take back that which is his from she that has stolen it. He lifts his beam-generator from its podium, the weight of the contraption straining him almost to his last ounce of strength as he activates the mechanism to open the garage door. Before the door is even two-thirds raised, Randolph has ducked beneath it. He marches, full of righteous intent towards the house next door, leaving a lengthening trail of orange cable in his wake. Can he really see what he thinks he can see? A chink of light on one side of the front door? Yes! The obliging imbeciles have left the door open for him...

"Kim, what have you done?" her mother sobs. "We didn't raise you to be a killer!"

"Relax, Mom." Kim misinterprets the gist of her mother's cry. "I got superpowers. No-one can touch me."

"We can," says her mother. "we're you parents."

Her father drones "I... I have to call the police."

"Oh no you don't." Kim tells him. She becomes a smear before his eyes. He feels a sudden gust of wind that nearly knocks him over and as he stumbles, there's a loud crunching sound to his left. Suddenly, Kim is standing on the other side of the room, the crushed up ruins of two cellphones - his and his wife's and the TV room telephone - falling from her hands. She brushes her hands off theatrically.

"What are you going to do now, Kim?" her mother asks, now unexpectedly calm. "Are you going to kill us?" Kim's father is too shocked to speak, so his wife goes on "What's happened to you, Kim? What's happened to our little girl?"

"I told you," says Kim in a voice that suggests she's getting bored of the line of questioning "I got superpowers. I can do anything."

"Not if I have anything to say about it!" her father suddenly announces.

Kim rolls her eyes. "Well.... you don't, Dad," she retorts.

"What's happened to my baby?" her mother demands to know, tearfully. "How... how did this happen? Where did you get these 'superpowers'?"

"She stole them from me!" shouts Randolph, triumphantly, as he bursts into the room carrying his beam-generator and trailing thick electric flex behind him.

"What the hell's going on?" Kim's father stands up.

"Your slut of a daughter stole my work! She stole my powers!" Randolph answers.

"Don't call her that!" Kim's dad instinctively protects his princess' honour.

"I'll be able to call anyone what I want as soon as I absorb the powers out of that girl with this de-Shermanizer and restore them to their rightful owner - me." Randolph rants. "Just as soon as I press this bu-"

"-No way, dude." Kim interrupts him. Less than a split-second later, the large metal contraption is a series of dozens of pieces of torn and twisted metal and circuitry, scattered on the floor like bizarre confetti.

"No!" screams Randolph. It's not pain that makes him cry. It's something far worse: failure. Failure yet again. Failure, once more, at the hands of the same stupid, immature, degenerate, disrespectful whore. It's so unjust! All his effort, all his genius, destroyed in the blink of an eye. Just as it was so difficult for him to reassemble and reconfigure the beam generator, so it was sublimely easy for the obscene trollop to tear it apart. His labour took hours, she has undone it in microseconds. To build that machine took a mind as powerful as any on the planet, honed by decades of study. To destroy it required nothing but an ill-educated, unintelligent, inexperienced... female. "No! No! No! No!" he screams.

Kim ignores the old man's tantrum. She's just realised something. She shares it with the room, just in case anyone there might be thinking she's not very clever. "And there's not going to be any running off home to build a new one of those. No more zapping for Randy here!" she decrees. She takes a step towards the sexagenarian who backs away, gets his ankle caught in the cable still lying on the floor behind him, and falls backwards. Randolph smacks the carpet with the back of his head and does not move. His eyes are closed. Kim bends towards him.

"Kim! No! What are you doing?" her mother yells.

Kim looks up to tell her mom to shut up, but she never gets to say the words. Her superhuman ears detect the sound of cars - lots of cars - in the road outside. Something's going on out there. She races to the window and pulls the curtain aside. "Shit!" she says "Cops!"

Kim's parents look at one another, their daughter and the elderly man lying unconscious on the floor. Kim looks at her parents, the elderly man and the men piling out of cars, swarming like a plague of insects on the sidewalk in front of the house. A few seconds pass. No-one moves and no-one says anything. Then the silence in the room is broken by an amplified voice carried over a megaphone loudspeaker from outside. "Kim! This is the police! We know you are in there. The house is surrounded. You have thirty seconds to come out with your hands in the air and surrender peacefully!"

Kim has no intention of surrendering to anyone, peacefully or any other way. Why should she? She's never been keen to do what other people told her to do before and, hey, she's super now. What's the point of that if she can't do exactly what she wants? She's about to walk out of the TV room and make her way to the front door to confront the boys in blue, when she has a better idea. Why would a girl need a front door when she's tougher than steel and strong enough to throw a truck? She smiles, placing her hands defiantly and dominantly on her shapely hips and thrusting out her remarkable chest, testing her bikini top to the very edge of its capabilities. Then she strides straight towards the window. She keeps walking as she comes to the wall. It's only bricks and plaster, concrete and bits of steel. Nothing there that she needs to be concerned about.

Her bare foot kicks into and clean through the side of the house, emerging in a small shower of fragments into the front yard. Dozens of startled police aim their guns at the small bit of gorgeous naked female leg sticking out of the wall. Kim has stepped right through the building as if it wasn't there. Enjoying the sight of her body causing so much damage, she continues her stride. The front of her body slams into the wall, pressing into it with a force hundreds of times stronger than any it is intended to withstand. Her stunning breasts, so large and proud on her upper torso, lead the onslaught, smashing and grinding to powder any substance or object that dares to stand in her way. Even her face now is carving through the wall, her beautiful features utterly undamaged as they demolish brick and stone.

Half a second later, an area six foot high by three feet wide of bricks bursts noisily outwards from the front of the building. Pieces of wall fly as far as the nearest police, injuring a couple of them. A cloud of dust fills the yard for a moment. It clears, revealing the startling sight of a beautiful sixteen-year old in a bikini standing, hands on hips, inside a rough hole, almost exactly her size, in the front of the house. She strolls forward through the gap, her nose imperiously in the air as she surveys the ranks of law-enforcers spread out in front of her. Each confident, languid step she takes causes another chunk of displaced concrete or brick to be crushed to dust beneath her bare soles. She doesn't even notice. She just continues to advance, fluid sexy stride after fluid sexy stride.

"Freeze!" The megaphoned yell intrigues Kim just enough for her to turn her head slightly to look at its source.

"No. YOU freeze!" she retorts to the overweight man with the loudspeaker. She pushes those gorgeous red lips out, as though proffering him a kiss. But the lips are just a guide to steer a strong blast of her coldest superbreath. The air her powerful exhalation touches condenses to moisture immediately. The shape of the jet of her breath becomes clearly visible as a conical, white cloud that tapers to a point at the precise centre of her irresistible pout. As she effortlessly blows, the other end of the cloud stretches rapidly away from her until it touches the man with the megraphone.

In the span of a second, Kim's breath turns every molecule of liquid in every cell in the officer's body into ice. She closes her mouth once she has turned him into an completely solid statue, coated in a thick layer of frozen air. Kim smiles at the effectiveness of her lung-power. The cops stare in horror and amazement, but not for long. They know that she killed their colleagues at the Pizza place earlier in the day. Now they have witnessed her taking the life of yet another policeman. Even Kim is not surprised when, almost as one, the men crowded around the front yard open fire on her.

There must be two dozen pistols aimed at her and half a dozen rifles. Not every shot hits her, but the vast majority do. To Kim, facing the onslaught of bullets directly, her hands still on her hips, her lovely eyes wide open, her erotic mouth showing no emotion beyond a defiant, slightly bored sneer, the sensation is rather like lying on a lawn under light drizzle. That's how the continuous stream of impacts feels for her. Like harmless light raindrops, bouncing off her skin.

The lead and steel barrage is insistent, but her body refuses to allow even one of the thousands of bullets to make a mark. They bounce off her forehead, her cheeks, her chin, even her sneer. They ricochet uselessly from her neck and her shoulders, and her perfect abdomen. They peck holes in the heroic fabric of her bikini until there's more hole than material, and what's left falls in tatters from her. Now her remarkable breasts and her inviting groin are on clear display. It's just more flawless flesh for supersonic metal projectiles to rebound away from. Kim leisurely brings her left palm up to her mouth to stifle a pretend yawn. Then her hand returns to her hip and the sneer takes over facial expression duties once more. The useless onslaught continues all the while.

About one in twenty of the shots meant for Kim misses its intended target entirely. These bullets, unlike the ones wasted on the teenage girl's naked body, are able to do actual damage. The windows of the front of the house have all been shattered. The brickwork all around the rough Kim-shaped hole is pockmarked with countless deep holes. Some shots actually deflect of her smooth, flawless skin and ping into the house, chipping more brick, smashing more glass. The increasing tarnishing of the front of the building is the only proof that the police are using real bullets. The way Kim seems so completely unaffected by the unceasing stream of gunfire makes them wonder if their weapons are working at all.

Inside the house, Kim's parents are lying on their stomachs on the shattered-glass-covered floor. The air is thick with dust. Deadly bullets fly over head from time to time through the windows, showing their destructive power by burying themselves deep into the far wall. Kim's mother and father dare not move for fear of being struck by one of these stray shots. From the floor, they look up towards the enormous gap in the wall which their daughter smashed, apparently merely by walking through. They can see her, naked, out in the front yard, absorbing the brunt of the lead and steel assault. Neither of them can believe that this superhuman killer is the same sweet, innocent Kimmie that they have been raising with such care for the past sixteen years.

They watch their precious offspring moving towards the semicircle of police in front of their home until she vanishes from their line of sight. Maybe now would be a good time for them to move. Kim's father gestures to his wife and they both begin to crawl out of the TV room towards the improved sanctuary offered by the back of the house. A bullet whizzes close to Kim's mother's head. Both parents dive back to the ground. They wait a couple of seconds and then recommence their tortuously slow trek. They're just a few yards now from the TV room door. Once they get through there, they should be a lot safer.

As bullets continue to bounce off her completely exposed body, Kim decides she has had enough. She starts to approach the line of police with determination. As she nears, the level of firing diminishes considerably. No officer wants to run the risk of hitting one of his own by accident. Or even, incredible though it seems, seeing one of his own injured - or worse - by a perfectly accurate shot that might ricochet from some part of the girl's fully-visible and utterly desirable anatomy. Now Kim is only being hit on her back and her peach-like rear, and only at a rate of a couple of bullets a second. It doesn't really make any difference to her though. One bullet, ten bullets, a thousand. On her legs, her groin, her backside, her hips, her stomach, her wonderful chest, her arms, her head, her face. They just don't hurt her. They don't even mark her skin.

The arrogant, yet oh-so-sexy, sneer is still fixed on her face as she quickly reaches forward with her hands, grabbing a fistful of police shirt with each. She bends her arms, effortlessly lifting the two men she has selected at random from the ground. They kick at her bare legs, pound her face and her body with their fists and struggle with all their might to prise her petite fingers off their clothes, but their efforts are in vain. They cannot hurt her. They cannot move her digits even a hairsbreadth. They hang, helplessly from her unbreakable grasp, their hands and feet bruising against her silky skin. Other cops try to come to their rescue, attacking Kim's arms and skull with their night-sticks, trying to wound her with the butts of their pistols, the soles of their boots, their teeth - anything. But they are wasting their time. Kim tosses the two men she has captured over her shoulders with a simple movement of her arms.

Inside the house, her parents have almost made it to the door. They can hear how the sound of guns outside has now been replaced by a serious of grunts and shouts. They take this to be a good sign and make a break for the hallway. There's a scream and two large objects rocket into the room through the destroyed windows. One of the objects clips Kim's father, knocking him down onto his face before it continues its flight towards the far wall. The other object passes through the room unhindered. Both objects strike the far wall with a sickening splat. It's only then, amidst the blood and the uniforms, that Kim's mother realises that the two objects are policemen's corpses. She turns away from the horrendous sight and looks down at her husband. Slowly, he picks himself up. She helps him make the last few feet out of the room.

A wave of Kim's lengthy, slender arm sweeps three more men off their feet, sending them spinning thirty feet through the air. They land, awkwardly, on the hard street. None of them move. The others are beginning to scatter. Kim crosses the sidewalk, bending low by a parked squad car. She hooks the fingers of her right hand around the top of the nearest wheel-arch and stands up, the near corner of the car lifting with her, her single arm effortlessly holding its weight. She pulls the car up until she can easily reach her free hand underneath to grab hold of the chassis. Then a simple fluid movement of her arms raises the entire vehicle over her head. Compared with the tanker truck she lifted earlier, the task of hoisting the cop car feels as taxing to her as picking up a sheet of paper.

Kim draws her arms back and releases the vehicle, tossing it at a group of three fleeing officers. The automobile leaves her hands like a missile, obliterating its targets before it even hits the ground. Then it explodes, sending huge chunks of metal in every direction as flames engulf the area. A number of surviving police are cut down by shrapnel and others are burnt by the fireball. A particularly vicious chunk of twisted steel smacks Kim on her navel with a "Clang!" and bounces to the ground, now bearing the imprint of her abdomen. She picks it up, her fingers crushing the metal where she grips it. Using her other hand she carefully squeezes the steel between her palms, oblivious to its metallic groans as she compacts it and smoothes it with her fingers until it is a solid, grapefruit-sized sphere.

There's panic now as the remaining men run for their lives. Kim chucks her new ball underarm. It passes right through the bodies of two policemen without even slowing before punching a hole in the side of a parked car. She does not pause to reflect on either the feat of strength or the carnage. She turns her head in the direction of another man sprinting away and, pouting, blows a short, casual blast of superbreath in his direction. It's enough to create a brief gust of warm, gale-force wind that pushes the runner forward so hard, his feet come off the road and he flies twenty yards down the road, smashing hard into one of his colleagues. The impact kills both men.

Meanwhile, inside the house, Kim's parents are crouched on the floor of the kitchen which overlooks the back yard. They can't see out of the widows because they're too low. But they feel safer here. Much safer. "What are we going to do?" Kim's mother asks. Given the situation they now find themselves in, and the events of the past few hours, it's a massive question.

"I... I don't know." whispers Kim's father by way of a reply. He listens to the sounds of burning fire and the other terrifying noises outside of the house. Noises like the less and less frequent shouts of men, some of them cut short in a way that makes his skin crawl. The sound of a distant car engine. The sound of a car crash, tinkling glass. A scream. Something large and wet hitting a wall.

Kim is finishing off the last of the police. Two of them had been hiding in the front seats of a car parked a little up the road. The sounds her father could hear were the men trying to make a break by starting up the car and flooring the accelerator. Kim simply took off in pursuit, catching up with the speeding automobile in a couple of strides, overtaking it and placing herself right in its path. The front of the vehicle crumpled up against her tiny midsection and the windshield shattered. The occupants were so severely jarred by the impact that only one of them survived. The scream that was audible in the kitchen was this man's last act as Kim reached for him.

Now, the street is silent save for the licking of flames from what little is left of the squad car Kim threw. There are no guns being fired and no cars being driven. There's no-one left to shoot or drive. There are no more runners trying to escape. Uniformed corpses and pieces of bodies litter the sidewalk and the front yard of the house. Crooked and deformed used bullets are scattered all over the lawn. Wrecked automobiles punctuate the horrific scene. The front of the house, with its huge hole and its bullet-marks looks like a scene from a war report on television. Nothing seems to have survived the past five minutes intact or undamaged... except, of course, for Kim herself. There's not so much as a scratch anywhere on her glorious nude body.

She casts her gaze imperiously over the mess. Then she checks the chaos visible inside the house. Her careless glance reveals no sign of any movement. She wonders, for a moment, if her parents are all right. She begins to move with the intention of checking on them and then realises that she really doesn't want another boring lecture from them right now. Perhaps, she's better off avoiding them for now. After all, she has more important things to take care of. She's lost yet another swimsuit. At the rate she's going through them, she's going to need a whole new wardrobe. In fact... She smiles as a rare idea forms itself in her mind. Then she becomes a blur of pink that disappears into the night.

In the kitchen of the house, the silence weighs heavy. With extreme caution, Kim's father stands up. He offers his hand to his wife to help her to her feet. Then, they hear something inside the house. A sound. Terrified, they revert in an instant to their crouching station. It will be quite some time before either of them moves again. They listen to the noises. A splutter. A groan. And then a cough.

The settled dust and plaster in the T.V. room shifts slightly. A pile of broken glass is displaced. A wrinkled, skinny male arm appears from beneath. Then another. Then a grey-haired head. Randolph sits up slowly, shaking the debris from his shoulders and sleeves. He rubs the back of his head and feels the fresh, painful swelling there. His leg hurts as he gingerly stands. He feels nauseous. He reaches out for something to support himself with and finds nothing. The room seems to be spinning. His stomach churns. He doesn't feel steady at all. He sinks to his knees. He retches, once, twice and then vomits for real.

Randolph wipes his mouth and tries to focus his eyes. He can see tiny pieces of his beam-generator distributed all over the floor amongst the brick and glass and plaster and... he turns away in quickly in disgust from the sight of the two exploded bodies on the far wall but it's no good. He's going to be sick again. Once he's done, he picks up one of the little chunks of metal. It's hard to believe that this postage-stamp-sized scrap was once part of a four-foot long, quarter-inch thick steel tube. That disgusting trollop had torn the beam-generator into a thousand similar-sized pieces with her bare hands in a split-second. It should have been him with the strength and speed to perform such a feat.

Why wasn't it him? Why had he hesitated before firing the laser? Why had he given the girl the time she needed to destroy his beautiful creation? Randolph knows why. If only... if only he had activated the beam first, before letting his gaze slowly wander the length of her evilly enchanting body. If only he had resisted the siren-distraction of her obscene curves, the power would be almost his by now. The young whore would have been nothing but a typically pathetic weak, crying female and his crystal would have been full of energy, poised for transfer into him at his whim. Now the laser, the crystal and his dreams are in irreparable pieces on the ground. The girl is unstoppable. As he, Randolph Sherman, should have been unstoppable. It is not right! How can someone so unworthy, so degenerate, so young and ignorant - so female - have his power?

He thinks of the myriad ways in which the juvenile trollop might be misusing his superpowers. How she might be using that indestructible, obscene body of hers, flaunting those oversized, and now bulletproof, breasts. His nausea, the taste of vomit in his mouth - even the carnage all around him - cannot distract his hand from heading towards his groin. Something cool, hard and slightly rounded with edges - lots of edges - presses into his palm as his fingers seek to make their way instinctively, like a salmon heading upriver to spawn, towards his tingling, growing erection. There's something familiar about the object and the dawning recognition starts to gnaw at the edges of his breast-obsessed thoughts. The thing is completely blocking the path of his hand to his lap. He has to shift position.

He sits up and finally catches sight of it. In an instant, his pitch-black despair is partially lifted by a tiny flicker of hope. There, amidst the rubble and glass, apparently still intact, is his Sherman crystal. He picks it up, bringing it close to his eyes to examine it. Miraculously, it is undamaged. He cradles it in his grateful hands as he uneasily climbs back to his feet. Staggering, he makes his way out of the room, and back through the still-open - if now bullet-ridden - front door of his neighbours' house. The scene on the street is terrible. Smashed, overturned, burnt-out cars. Dead policemen everywhere, some of them in more than one place... There are bullets, bent and flattened, carpeting the lawn. A dead man with a megaphone in his hand is still standing on the grass. Randolph realises that the corpse has stayed upright on its feet because it is frozen solid . Drip by drip, it's slowly begging to defrost.

Randolph surveys the evidence of the power of his discovery. He grips the crystal tight in his palm. Someday, this power will be his. To use for better ends, of course. Like punishing and humiliating the delinquent, murdering trollop who caused all this destruction. Making her pay for what she has done here. Making her pay for the suffering that she has caused him. Making all the women pay for that. Pay and pay and pay... in so many different kinds of ways. He slips into his garage and activates the mechanism that closes the big door. As if it were an infant, Randolph carefully places the world's only Sherman crystal on his workbench. He's tired, injured and sick, but he has a lot of work to do. There's no-one there to hear his words, but he cannot help making an announcement: "This is not over."

Five miles away, in the centre of downtown, a six-foot tall by three foot wide hole gapes in the side of a department store. A pile of loose concrete lies at the foot of the hole, just inside the building. From there, a straight and narrow swathe of destruction cuts at an angle right across the shop floor. Displays, counters and racks have been knocked aside and smashed as a path has been cleared, as if by an explorer through thick overgrown jungle, right through the store as far as the bikini section. The swimsuit area remains intact although there are a large number of discarded bathing costumes on the floor. The path of devastation resumes on the other side of the bikini department, ending in an almost identical hole in the opposite wall. On the other side of that hole, standing atop a small pile of smashed brick and plaster on the sidewalk, Kim is trying to decide which of her new bikinis she wants to wear.

 

Conceptfan, Oct. 2005.

Chapter 9

The street is still eerily quiet. The only sounds that can be heard are the crackling of dying flames from the wreckage of a couple of destroyed squad cars and the steady drip, drip, drip of the statue-like frozen policeman outside Kim's family home. No-one is daring to venture out of any of the houses into the warm Californian night. The neighbours have witnessed the chaos and carnage and are hiding inside their homes, terrified for their lives. Kim's parents are still crouched on the kitchen floor. The noises from inside their house have ceased but they are too scared and too shocked to move. Even if they could summon the courage to stand up, neither of them can fathom out what to do. What is the correct course of action for someone who has just witnessed their now-super-powered sixteen-year-old daughter massacring a dozen cops with her bare hands?

Neither of them can understand it. They cannot reconcile the footage they have seen on TV or what they have just witnessed in their own home with the sweet, lovely little girl that they have raised. They know the miserable old man from next door has something to do with it; that he has zapped their darling daughter with some crazy invention that has given her superhuman strength and made her invulnerable to bullets. That much they can - almost - get their heads around. But when... and how... did she become... a killer? What has turned such a good natured, well-brought-up, loved, no, adored, child into a murderer? How can their Kimmie be the same person as the one who had perpetrated cold-blooded massacres at the pasta place and in their own front yard? The only explanation that they can think of is that the mysterious ray must have also transformed their delightful, caring offspring into a psychopath with less than zero concern for the well-being of anyone else. But what can they do now? Sure, they are experts in how to bring up sweet, lovely young women. But they are clueless what to do about one who had been 'zapped' into a superhuman killer.

Unsurprisingly, there is far less uncertainty of thought within the neighbouring house. Randolph's mind is clear. He knows that time is against him. Despite the agony of his bruised head and the nausea that makes any movement a challenge, he realises that it will not be long before the next wave of authorities arrive. There'll be FBI and police and probably military, combing over everything, detaining everyone, asking questions. They'll speak to that disgusting thief's parents, the ones responsible for raising such a degenerate, sluttish whore. And, Randolph is sure, they won't accept their huge - no, overwhelming - share of the blame for what has happened tonight. No, he thinks, the immoral imbeciles will only talk about him. How he told them that the superpowers which their slut daughter has been misusing in such horrific ways were stolen from him. How he tried to get those powers back with his de-Shermaniser ray.

The injustice of it all is what drives him on regardless of the pain and exhaustion he feels. He knows that the authorities will not return what is rightfully his. They will want the power for themselves. But it is his! His creation, his power. It does not belong to the government that betrayed him. The authorities will not understand that he is the biggest victim here, that his life's work has been stolen by an ignorant juvenile delinquent. A stupid, spoilt, delinquent without a shred of moral fibre. Worse, than that, a stupid, spoilt, delinquent, moral-fibre-lacking GIRL. A girl who parades her obscene, ripe body, using her disgusting curves to distract intellectually and morally superior men - even pure, noble geniuses like himself - from their true callings. It makes him sick just to think of the way that young witch flaunts herself, wearing slutty outfits that show off her big, round breasts, her silky flat belly, her smooth thighs, her tight, spherical buttocks...

No! He must not start touching himself now. There is no time. He must take his Sherman crystal, the only one of its kind in the world, his only hope of justice, and he must go before anyone arrives on the scene. He has to take the crystal somewhere safe. Somewhere where he can be left alone to work on a new de-Shermaniser. Somewhere he can use his brilliant, upstanding mind without it being side-tracked by the evil siren-call of whores and the cesspit society which has been so corrupted by female witchcraft. How deeply must the world be under their black magic spell if it consistently fails to recognise his uniquely pure morality! The outrage he feels fuels his movements as he upturns a cardboard box of washing-machine parts, dumping the contents indiscriminately on the garage floor. Then he starts to fill the emptied container with components, hand tools and notebooks - anything that he thinks he might need that will fit in the box.

The Sherman crystal is the greatest achievement in the history of Science, capable of absorbing pure power from the sun itself and, when harnessed to his ray-generator, transferring that power into a living creature. It is not right that he, Randolph Sherman, its sole creator, is a fugitive. He should not have to live in a world that sneers at him, hounds him and seeks to exploit his mighty brain for the gain of others. He should not have to live in a world where females dress in a way that causes their male superiors to surrender their intelligence and their morality. He should be revered, honoured, obeyed. It should be a world where the behaviour and dress of women is determined by him, not people whose minds have been sedated, poisoned and crippled by lust.

Yes. He should have power. Power to command. Power to control. Power to do as he wished at all times. Power that right now, is surging and pulsing within the indecent body of that teenage whore. His power. That he will reclaim. His vastly greater intelligence in alliance with his unbreakable righteousness will find a way to get justice. He will build a new, better, de-Shermaniser ray and he will hatch a plan to use it, a plan that the ignorant bitch will be helpless to stop. And then she will become truly helpless in every sense as he drains the power - his power - from her. She will be weak, becoming nothing but a pathetic, whimpering, girl. She will plead. She will use her siren's arsenal of feminine wiles, desperately trying to divert him from the path of truth, but he will stand firm. He will prevail. He will extract every bit of Sherman energy from her and then...

Then he will finally fill himself with power. It will transform him. His bruises, his aches will vanish. His ageing, decaying body will be restored. He will have strength, fabulous strength. He will be impervious to bullets. He will be unstoppable! No-one will be able to stand in his way. He will make the world in his image: pure and moral. He will punish the degenerates. The women will obey him. They will dress as he decrees, behave as he instructs. They will all follow his orders or face punishment. He will be able to make them do anything! Anything at all...

No! Not now! He stops stroking the bulge in the crotch of his trousers, carefully places the Sherman crystal in his jacket pocket, and then picks up the full cardboard box. He opens the door of the garage, lifting the curtain on a stage littered with carnage, destruction and mortality. He staggers slightly as he walks out into the warm night, the effects of the blow on his head earlier still apparent. He opens the driver's door of his car and gets in awkwardly, placing the box on the passenger seat. Randolph fumbles with the key in the ignition, his recent exertions taking their toll as evidenced by his shaking hands. Eventually, he manages to start the engine. The headlights come on, shining a spotlight on a blood-soaked uniform containing most of the remains of its original owner. The corpse is lying on the side-walk in front of his house. He closes his eyes as he drives over it, the car's suspension only partly effective at smoothing out the bump. Nothing is going to stop him achieving his destiny. He steers onto the road, following a zigzag path between chunks of exploded car until he is clear of the battle-zone, then he takes a right, towards the Interstate.

Seconds later, an unmarked black Escalade arrives at speed at the other end of the street he has just left. The Escalade's brakes screech as the driver has to come to a sudden stop to avoid hitting a piece of burnt, twisted fender. The doors open and four men, dressed in identical black suits, each fitted with identical single white earpieces, climb out. They assemble on the side-walk in front of Kim's house. Two of them peer through the hole in the wall at the front of the building. One examines the frozen officer 'standing' on the lawn, tentatively reaching towards the icy statue before snatching his extended finger away sharply. It's still phenomenally cold. The fourth man is holding some kind of device in his hand which he points at the house while carefully studying a tiny LCD display.

Six miles away, there is another careful study in progress. Kim is staring at her reflection in a shop window. From her freshly-acquired batch of swimwear, she has selected a sky-blue two piece bikini. She is beginning to master the difficult task of manoeuvring tight-fitting garments onto the stunning curves of her glorious body. At her feet lies a discarded pink top-half. The fabric of both of the abandoned top's generous cups has been torn. The cups were not generous enough, and the fabric would not stretch sufficiently to accommodate her magnificently large, firm, round breasts. For a nanosecond, the material tried to compress the fabulous mounds of flesh it was supposed to partially cover. Then it surrendered completely to the indomitable, unyielding perfection of her bosoms, her nipples bursting through the doomed fabric. Symmetrical tears quickly stretched out from the two holes as the material was ripped apart by her superhuman breasts.

That's why the torn pink top is on the ground. Kim ripped its remains from her upper body and dropped it at her feet with a muttered curse before moving on to the sky blue one. She knows her mistake was rushing to secure the clasp behind her back. Even though she can move at speeds so astonishing she cannot even be seen by other people, she has to function as though in slow motion and take the utmost, utmost care to put on a tight bikini. It is a price she has accepted she must pay. She won't allow her glorious body to be seen in anything but the most jaw-dropping, perfect-skin-hugging of outfits. As long as she remembers to be careful and take her time, as long as the manufacturer has been true to the measurements on the label, and as long as the fabric used is of sufficiently high-quality and can stretch wildly without ripping, she can put on the bikini of her choice.

The cool light blue colour of her latest selection provides an interesting contrast with the warm slightly tanned pinkness of her flawless skin. The various sky-toned sections of straining material cling to the sexy roundness of her rear, leaving acres of smooth firm thigh on display. The front of the bottom piece barely covers her pubic region, just about protecting her modesty as it holds on, the waistband underlining the allure of her navel and the unblemished flat plain of her belly.

Above that is her chest. The bikini top bears the honour of holding her big breasts with difficulty. The material is so stretched by her dramatic curves, it follows them precisely. Her prominent nipples crown the centre of each overworked cup whilst the briefness of the outfit means that a vast, deep cleavage is on display, bordered by immaculate, stunning, plunging curves. She looks good. Her reflection, which she is proudly admiring, is proof of that. She's ready now.

But ready for what? She can't go and hang on the highway that runs by school with her friends because, a couple of hours ago, she killed two of them, having already totally destroyed the huge school building. She can't go home either because, after the stuff that happened around school, she then killed a bunch of cops on the street outside her house. And besides, her parents seemed pretty pissed with her even before that because of the people she killed earlier in the day at that stupid Pizza place. She doesn't want another boring lecture from them, and, she thinks, now that she's 'super', she doesn't have to take that crap anymore.

"It, like, totally isn't fair," Kim thinks to herself. "I've got cool super-powers, I look totally amazing, I've got this great new bikini that looks fucking awesome on my bod, and there's no-one I can show off to." She knows the usual gang won't be hanging around the usual place because it's a major crime scene now. She thinks about going to visit one of them at home. "Alex lives near downtown," she starts to think, and then remembers "Oh yeah. I killed her 'cos she called me a freaking freak." A similar problem, she realises, rules out Carly. "Anyway, I don't even know her address," she muses, as though this lacking information was of equal value to the fact that Carly is dead.

"So who's left?" she wonders. "Stephanie?" Kim knows which street Steph and her family live on. "But Stephanie is, like, soooo boring when the other guys aren't there," she reasons. "Skye? She's alright," thinks Kim. Then she recalls Skye telling her that her Dad works for the police. "He might be at home," she considers. "That could be a massive drag, given all the cops I like totally wasted fifteen minutes ago."

"Who else? Veronica! Yes! That jealous skinny bitch will be nearly puking with envy when she sees me in this!" Kim thinks delightedly. "Besides, there was something I wanted to tell Ver," she dimly recalls. "What was it? Something to do with the stupid conversation I was having with my stupid parents when the old perv from next door ran in with his lame-ass ray gun... Something to do with the TV... Oh yeah! Veronica was on TV earlier! That was so cool! No, wait... it wasn't cool... it wasn't cool because Veronica totally narked on me!" She remembers now. Veronica told the Channel 8 news jerk that she (Kim) had gotten superpowers and that she (Kim) had thrown that truck at the school...

"That's why all those cops were outside my house!" Kim finally pieces it all together. "That fucking snitch!" Now, she knows for sure what she's going to do next. She's SO going to Veronica's house...

Meanwhile, back on Kim's street, the four suited men from the black Escalade have concluded their external examinations. They regroup on the lawn in front of the badly damaged family home before entering, in single file, through the Kim-sized hole in the brickwork. They have to lower their heads slightly as they pass through the breech. One of them takes out a small digital camera and takes a few pictures of the shattered electronic circuitry strewn on the carpet and the splattered human remains on the far wall. Then they walk through to the kitchen where Kim's parents are still crouched on the floor.

"Mr. and Mrs. Peterson?" asks the one with the device, his voice deadpan.

"Y- Yes.." stammers Kim's dad.

"Agent Johnson, FBI. These gentlemen are with me. You both need to come with us now."

The Petersons stand and obey without hesitation. They are glad to be given a simple command rather than having to figure out what to do for themselves. Wordlessly, they accompany the quartet back out through the ruins of what was once their beautiful family home. Two of the Agents get into the Escalade along with Kim's parents. The engine fires up and the car pulls away whilst the other two government men head back into the house.

All that is visible of Kim as she runs at supersonic speed is a pink smear with traces of sky-blue that streaks along the road. In the dark, she is even harder to see at these velocities than she is when she runs in daylight. There are very few pedestrians at this hour, almost no-one for her to knock over with displaced air as she rockets by. A ragged-looking grey-haired drunk is sent rolling down the street as she jogs past without bothering to divert from her straightest-possible-line route. She calculates that she is going "pretty fucking fast". The actual speed of her jog is over eight hundred miles an hour. But she's still comfortably able to react in good time when she spots a leaking fire hydrant ahead. It's spraying water all over the street like a fountain, jets pointing every way possible, shooting out right across the whole street on both sides.

She might be dressed in an outfit that was designed expressly for swimming, but there's no way Kim is going to let herself get wet. Apart from the possibility of getting a mark - no matter how temporary - on her bikini, there is also the thought of her hair getting messed up. Looking this good takes time and effort. She stops dead in her tracks, slowing from faster than the speed of sound to stationary in zero seconds flat. If the sudden deceleration and cancelling of momentum places any strains on her beautiful body, she certainly doesn't feel them.

The squirting hydrant is about ten yards in front of her. Jets of water reach out from it on all sides. There's a puddle just a few feet from her pretty bare toes showing the extent of the spray's reach in that direction. She can't just run around it as there is water gushing out right across the street and the side-walks as far as the buildings on either side. The unintentional fountain reaches high into the air as well although Kim is pretty sure she can clear it with a standing jump. She's just about to try when she has a better idea.

She's remembered that cop with the megaphone outside her house. She can deal with the busted hydrant the same way. She doesn't even need to move, something which makes her revised plan even more attractive to her. She merely leans forward a little and pushes out her luscious full lips, forming her mouth into a sexy 'O' shape. Then she blows, carefully. Her breath is so cold, it leaves her lovely mouth as an half-inch-diametered line of opaque white cloud. The line stretches quickly from her. As it touches the spraying water, the liquid becomes ice instantly. In less than a second, all the jets are solid and the hydrant itself is covered in crystals of frozen water and air. It's a hot June night in California, but the street immediately in front of Kim looks like northern Canada in January.

Now she can run under the arches of solid ice without any risk of getting wet. In fact, even allowing for the warm night and the baking dawn-to-dusk sun of tomorrow, it will be days before liquid water is flowing through the hydrant once again. Kim doesn't know or care, but the pipes feeding it beneath the street are frozen solid, inside and out, to a depth of fifteen feet. It's staggering evidence of the power now at her command, but she spares it no more thought as she starts to jog again. It takes her two strides, or less than a twentieth of a second, to accelerate from motionless to her previous, comfortable, cruising-airliner-speed. She's in a hurry to get to that nark Veronica's house.

Kim isn't sprinting flat out, but she isn't exactly taking her time. She streaks through the deserted streets, lit in places by the sporadic overhead sodium glow. To the rest of existence she is only observable as an elongated blur that turns corners with far greater precision than should be possible at such speed. She is a mile away from the suburban home of Mr. and Mrs. Houser and their daughter Veronica, but she is going so fast she will be coming to a perfect stop within touching distance of the front door, not breathing hard, without a single drop of perspiration anywhere on her stunning skin, in five seconds' time.

She has run from downtown to the burbs like a sexy street-level guided missile, only faster and more precisely. But she is about to discover that she has made a wasted journey. Veronica's family were picked up by the government minutes after her brief appearance on the Channel 8 Special News Report and bundled into another black Escalade. Veronica herself has been in government custody since the second the TV cameras turned away from her.

Now, she is miles away, locked in a tiny room with two men in black suits. The only furniture in the room is a chair on which Veronica is sat and a small desk with nothing on it save a plastic cup half-full of water. A bare-bulb dangles on a wire overhead, casting a harsh light. The two Agents are standing. They are tall men and they are not making any attempt to reduce the sense of intimidation they create as they loom over Kim's classmate.

They have been bombarding her with questions for quite some time already. Veronica is tired now. She thinks she has told them everything she knows about what happened but they keep asking her for more information. On one level, she hates the fact that all the questions are about Kim. She can't help the pang of jealousy she feels about that whore being the centre of such big-time attention. On another level, she's quite pleased that Kim is so obviously going to go to jail for, like, ever. Most of all, though, Veronica is scared of the two Agents. She can't get them to stop hassling her like she would do if it was her parents trying to give her the third degree. She's been told she will be charged with accessory to murder and a bunch of other crimes worth fifty years in a federal prison if she does not fully co-operate. She just wants to go home.

But Veronica's home is not the sanctuary she believes it to be right now. Two government men are rummaging around in the Houser's garage when they hear the sound of the front door being destroyed by what sounds like a giant sledgehammer. It is actually Kim's pretty little foot swinging out, her perfect toes hitting the front door, smashing the thick, heavy wood as though it were polystyrene, reducing much of it to matchsticks, mangling and tearing the strong steel hinges, and damaging the well-built door-frame.

The Agents immediately drop what they are doing and run towards the door that leads from garage to kitchen. Kim also runs. She heads upstairs so quickly she leaves smouldering burn-marks in the carpet from the friction created by her lovely bare feet. Needless to report, the heat and friction do not leave marks of any kind on Kim's feet. She throws open the door to Veronica's bedroom so violently the wooden panel is implanted, two inches deep, into the interior wall, surrounded by a network of plaster cracks.

A flick of her dainty-looking toes lifts Veronica's large bed and flips it like a pancake. The heavy bed crashes back to ground, shaking the floor. Kim rips the doors off her classmate's closet and tosses them aside. She already knows that none of flat-chested Veronica's clothes are of any interest to her. A wave of her superhuman slender forearm rips most of her one-time friend's impressive collection of tops and dresses from their hangers, tearing many of the garments and leaving the whole lot in a bundle in the corner of the room.

Downstairs, the government men continue to sprint. They are halfway to the kitchen door now. They hear another thud from the upstairs of the house as they run. That's Kim, kicking in another bedroom door. She can see, not to mention smell, that is is Veronica's brother's bedroom, but she dashes in anyway and smashes up his closet just in case Ver is hiding in there.

The nearest Agent is only two steps away from the kitchen. Kim meanwhile is in the master bedroom. There are two large wardrobes for her to assault, and she makes typically light work of the demolition, her hands flashing at phenomenal speed as she reduces the four closet doors to splinters and then turns thousands of dollars' worth of clothing within to rags. But there is no sign of Veronica.

"Shit!" exclaims Kim, stamping her foot with intentional destructive force.

The two men in suits run out of the garage into the main part of the house just in time to see the sole of Kim's foot burst through the kitchen ceiling in a torrent of dust, plaster, and concrete debris. They draw their weapons as the foot disappears back up through the new hole and race through the kitchen towards the foot of the stairs.

Kim finally realises that Veronica is not in the house. Disappointed, she walks out of Mr. and Mrs. Houser's bedroom and heads to the top of the stairs at a normal, human pace. That's when Kim sees the two Agents for the first time. It's also the first time the Agents see Kim in the flesh. And what flesh it is! They gasp in shock as they notice what she is wearing. Or perhaps more precisely, the way the sky-blue tiny bikini is being worn by her. She is a goddess of sex with her stunning eyes and pouty mouth, her stupendous breasts, tiny waist, curved hips and her long, shapely limbs.

"Who the fuck are you?" demands Kim, placing her hands dominantly on her alluring hips.

"FBI," answers the one whose job description includes doing the talking. Authoritatively, he adds "Miss Peterson, you need to come with us."

Kim isn't surprised he knows her name. Veronica's obviously told them everything. As for this jerk in a suit telling her what she needs to do right now, she sneers "Yeah, like fuck I'm coming with you," and rolls her eyes. She's beginning to grasp the implications of the power she can feel in every cell of her perfect body. And one of those implications is that no-one can tell her what to do anymore.

"We are authorised to use deadly force if necessary," states the vocal member of the duo. The threat is wasted, partly because Kim doesn't bother to try to understand it and partly because 'deadly' force, she already knows, has zero effect on her now. The only danger posed by the two government men and the guns they are pointing at her is that their bullets could damage her beautiful new sky-blue bikini.

"No way is that happening." Kim thinks. She doesn't think about the pair's potential use to her as a source of information about Veronica's whereabouts. She doesn't think about being able to use her amazing super-speed to dodge any bullets that might be fired at her (or at least to ensure any bullets that might be fired at her don't hit the very small percentage of her that is covered by the garment's two pieces). She doesn't think about any of the other countless ways she can use her fantastic new powers to find out about Veronica AND ensure that her outfit remains undamaged. If anything, she forgets about Veronica entirely for a few moments. That's how deep her concern for her clothing runs.

There is no time for either of the government men to pull their trigger. In less than a fraction of an instant, Kim reaches out with her right hand, rips a length of handrail from the stairway and tosses it at the two men. The carved wood smashes through the two torsos, but the muscle and bone it obliterates barely slows it. Kim's throw is so powerful, the length of bannister crashes into a wall fifteen feet behind the now dead men and dissolves into fragments, but not before reducing a layer of plaster and brick to powder. The four gory pieces of bisected body fall, crimson blood erupting like pressurised lava.

Inevitably, a splash of red reaches the top of the stairs. Kim spots it in time and reacts by leaping out of its way. The top of her head smashes through the ceiling into the attic for a few moments. She gets a brief glimpse at the boring piles of boxes stored up there before descending. She lands again on the upper floor of the house, successfully evading the flying blood splatter that discolours the wall beside her, but a shower of dust and plaster pours down on her hair from the freshly-broken ceiling. "Fuck!" she curses, her hands frantically brushing the debris away at super-speed. Little pieces of masonry, flecks of paint and clumps of plasterboard become tiny missiles as she flicks them away, her fingers a blur of movement. The miniature fragments embed themselves in the walls all around her.

Kim sprints down to the ground floor, leaping carefully over the chunks of remains at the foot of the stairs to stand in front of the hall mirror. She bends her neck so she can examine the crown of her head and be absolutely sure that there's no more imperfections in her long, silky brown her. She spends nearly a minute analysing her reflection, which is much, much longer than it took her to wreck the house and kill two men. Finally, she concludes that her hair looks fine. It's only then that she realises she should have asked the jerks in suits if they knew where Veronica is. "Fuck," she thinks. "How am I going to find Veronica now?" And then, she has an idea: maybe Veronica has gone to Stephanie's house. She runs out through the empty doorway, becoming a pink-with-sky-blue-traces blur.

Randolph, too, is on the move. He's in his car, driving as fast as he dares, heading south on the highway. His speed is less than a tenth of Kim's latest run but he's travelling well above the speed limit. He glances down, realises that his velocity is putting him at risk of attracting unwanted police attention, and carefully slows until the needle is just to the left of sixty. He shoots a nervous look into the rear-view mirror to reassure himself that there are no patrol vehicles behind him. The coast is clear. He breathes a sign of relief.

Wincing, he takes his left hand off the wheel to fish a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket. The car swerves slightly as he extracts the square of cloth and several other vehicles sound their horns. He curses the other drivers as he wipes the sweat from his forehead. He veers out-of-lane for a second time as he lifts one buttock to replace the handkerchief. Behind him, a station wagon is forced to brake sharply but he doesn't acknowledge his error. He's much more concerned about the fuel gauge showing less than a quarter of a tank. He's not going to make it to the border without filling up.

Randolph realises that using his credit card will reveal his location to the authorities. He wonders if he has enough cash to pay for gasoline. His wallet is in his right trouser pocket, so he leans to the left in his seat to pull it out, almost colliding with a motorcyclist as he does so. The biker comes within a whisker of losing control of his mount, recovers and gives Randolph the finger. The old man misses the gesture as he is peering into the banknote compartment of his money-pouch where, he is pleased to see at least two twenty dollar bills. Satisfied, he begins the process of putting the wallet back into his trousers, his foot easing off the accelerator as he leans. There's another chorus of angry horns behind him before he notices that he's rapidly decelerating and reapplies his shoe to the pedal.

One of the cars involved in the mass honking accelerates momentarily and pulls up on his outside. The front passenger window opens and a middle-aged man with thick stubble leans across to yell "Get off the road grandpa!"

Randolph is disgusted by the younger man's disgraceful lack of respect. "When I get my power," he resolves, "I will make not shaving a capital offence." But for now, he knows he is unable to deal with the angry motorist. He stares straight ahead as if he hasn't heard. The other car pulls away from him, the driver gesticulating furiously as he speeds ahead. Randolph will not let anything distract him from his mission. He isn't surprised that his genius has enabled him to be one step ahead of the authorities, but he knows he cannot let down his guard if he wishes to maintain that distance. There will be time to punish the millions of wrong-doers later. Right now, he must concentrate fully on the goal of getting his power back from that disgusting thieving whore. And the first step of his plan is to find a gas station so he can buy enough petrol to get to Mexico.

He does not know, but at that very moment, a state-wide alert is being issued by the authorities. Randolph's name and description are being circulated, along with the manufacturer, model, colour and registration number of his car. He is now Priority Number Two for the Bureau. Priority Number One is a certain Kimberley Peterson. The instructions regarding Randolph are that he must be intercepted and apprehended alive.

It is becoming clearer by the minute from the interviews conducted with the Peterson girl's parents and surviving associates, that Sherman is key to the case. They know that he has spent the last three decades repairing TVs and microwave ovens. Of greater note is his earlier record: a brilliant student who was briefly involved in a secret military project in the sixties before apparently abandoning his scientific career. All the witness accounts point to him being responsible, via some device of his invention, for the astonishing abilities being displayed by Priority Number One. If it is true that he has somehow "done" this to her, then there is strong reason to believe he can also "undo" it.

It is also becoming clearer by the minute that confrontation is not a good tactic for dealing with the girl at the centre of it all. It is costing too many lives. Her apparent immunity to weapons means that she cannot be neutralised or threatened. Her incalculable physical power means she cannot be contained or subdued against her will. And she combines both of these terrifying qualities with a lack of empathy so profound that it appears to border on the psychopathic. Until whatever it is wears off, or they can somehow discover a weakness, they must come up with a new plan for Kimberly Peterson. Force has failed so far. It is time to try Psychology.

Kim is completely unaware of the scheming that is now taking place in her honour. She knows the authorities want to arrest her for an ever-growing bunch of stuff, and she also knows that they can't. That's the end of it as far as she is concerned. She's got awesome powers now. Anyone who tries to tell her what to do or tries to threaten her is going to get brushed aside like a matchstick. And anyone who causes her outfit to get even a tiny blemish is going to get totally killed.

She's not thinking about the two Agents she has just murdered or the potential consequences of any of her other recent violent actions. She's going to Stephanie's house in search of Veronica because getting that skinny bitch for snitching is what she's decided she wants to do. She couldn't care less about anybody else. She runs at super-speed, passing a police squad car headed in the opposite direction without even giving it a second glance. She knows the cops inside probably won't see her as she streaks by and that, even if they do, she will be far out of reach before they can react. The squad car is insignificant. What really matters right now is how awesome she's going to look in her sky-blue bikini when she catches up with Steph and Veronica.

 

Conceptfan, Feb. 2015.

Chapter 10

Night still holds Southern California in its dark grasp. Over an hour remains before dawn, but the small community is full of activity. There's the emergency services tending to the wreckage of the J. Edgar Hoover High School. And there are a myriad of black government vehicles speeding around the streets, gathering witnesses and individuals of potential relevance or interest. Like bees going out for nectar and returning their sticky bounty to the hive, the black cars are collecting their cargoes and bringing them to a makeshift operations centre.

The Bureau has set up a series of interview cubicles and temporary offices in a commandeered warehouse. All of the surviving witness to the destruction of the school, and all of their immediate families are there. Kim's parents are there too. And several of her teachers. Arriving now, flanked by two large, inexpressive men in plain black suits, is Mr. Lieberman, the school counselor.

Ten minutes ago, he was woken by government men banging on his front door. Now, bleary-eyed, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt and his tennis trainers, he is being briskly and insistently escorted to a vacant cubicle. The two men who fetched him did not allow him time for the luxuries of coffee, underpants or socks. They bring him into the tiny room, and one of them instructs him to sit.

Lieberman watches the Channel 8 News every night. He knows about the Pizza parlour murders, the devastating explosion at the school, the rumours started on TV of the involvement of one of the pupils, Kimberley Peterson, and the unconfirmed stories of multiple killings outside her home. He knows he has been brought here in connection with the terrible events of the past hours, and he listens in growing shock as he is told the full story as pieced together from camera footage and corroborated witness accounts. It's like the plot of an atrocious science fiction story, but the starkness of the cubicle, the almost-aggressive efficiency of the government men standing over him and the blood-drenched horror of the details they are relating combine to force the counselor to accept that it is a staggering reality.

And now, he is being told that he must play a role in this unfolding nightmare. His training and experience in talking to young adults, especially one particular young adult, is needed. Mr. Lieberman feels overwhelmed by the responsibility. He can recall the six, no... seven previous occasions when he has been required to talk to Kimberley Peterson. About her attitude. About her inappropriate clothing. About her inappropriate behaviour. About her lack of School Spirit. About abstinence. About her attitude again. Most of all, about her attitude.

Those previous discussions had been difficult for him for multiple reasons. He'd found the girl's unwillingness to take advice frustrating and her selfishness exasperating. Her lack of respect for authority or adults in general made his job much more challenging. He has no doubt that this serial disrespect is the result of an upbringing devoid of proper engagement and discipline. The same ineffectual parenting, he is sure, also explains her loose sexual morality. It is something of a paradox to Lieberman that anyone exhibiting such staggering levels of narcissism could also make herself so seemingly easily available.

The counselor has always tried to avoid dwelling on this apparent contradiction in the Peterson girl's personality. It is not an area he feels safe to contemplate, even internally. The pangs of jealousy he feels towards all the boys whom she has let touch her are palpable. He's not a homosexual, and he has decent eyesight. His professional record is unblemished but he wouldn't be a normal human if he wasn't biologically affected by the girl's extraordinary attractiveness. He can recall awkward discussions sat opposite her during which the majority of his brain was occupied in the struggle not to stare at her spectacular chest straining against her inappropriately-tight top or the smooth firm flesh of her thighs emerging beneath the inappropriately-high hemline of her skirt.

No other student makes it so hard for him. In so many ways. And now, if the government agents briefing him are correct, the same girl has somehow acquired superhuman strength - enough to lift and throw a gasoline truck - and invulnerability - enough to be untouched by a hail of bullets. It seems her residual attitude issues have been allied with super-powers and the authorities cannot cope. So they are turning to him, Mr. Lieberman, School counselor.

The Bureau want him to sit down with the Peterson girl. They will find a way to get her to come to their temporary HQ. Quite how they intend to persuade a wilful, arrogant young woman who cannot be physically controlled to go anywhere is not clear. Lieberman's job is to talk to her once she arrives. He has to look her in the face - and only the face, something which is far more easily said than done - to gain her trust. And then he has to convince her to stop killing people. To make her understand that her new powers should not be used for selfish or violent ends. Of course, given her unstoppable strength and remarkable invulnerability, he will have no threat to hold over her and no protection if she decides to harm him.

Lieberman regards the task he has been set to be so close to impossible that the difference is negligible. He has never been able to get through to her in the past and now the odds are stacked a million times less favourably. But the fear of failure pales to nothing in comparison with the fear of becoming yet another of Peterson's growing number of victims. He's terrified what she might do to him if he angers her in some way.

"I.. I'm not sure I'm the right guy for this..." Lieberman expresses his doubts.

"The Bureau disagrees," he is informed. "We think you are the ONLY guy. We're counting on you Mr. Lieberman."

Lieberman is simultaneously flattered and overwhelmed by the weight of trust suddenly placed on his shoulders. The combined boost to his ego and appeal to his sense of duty have the intended result. He swallows hard. "So... when do you think she will be here?" he asks.

Randolph is peering over the top of the steering wheel, scanning the sides of the road ahead with increasing urgency. Occasionally, his eyes flick down to the dashboard indicator that reveals the ever-shrinking amount of fuel that remains in the tank. He needs to find a filling station but all he can see is dark wilderness either side of the road. Finally, he notices a bright light up ahead. He strains to see better. It's some kind of illuminated sign. He hopes it's inviting passing motorists to stop for gas. He's still quite a distance away and the billboard's contents are no more than indiscriminate shapes to his imperfect eyesight but he takes the precaution of changing to the outside lane in preparation, oblivious as he cuts across an RV that has to brake sharply. He ignores the angry blast of the other vehicle's horn as he squints to get a better look at the roadside sign.

It turns out that the billboard is not, as Randolph hopes, advertising the presence of a filling station. He's about to find out that it is actually promoting a television programme. This instant, he is just beginning to realise what the huge advert depicts. He can see it is mostly a picture of a person. Randolph grunts in disapproval as it becomes clear that it is an image of a woman. He feels the rising bile of moral outrage as the closing distance allows him to see that it is a young woman wearing an utterly unacceptable dress. This is exactly the sort of image that he will make illegal when he has the power of the Sherman Crystal. It's disgusting that such a thing can be placed, magnified and lit so visibly by the side of a road.

Randolph continues to stare at the poster, revolted that he must live in a world where pictures of young women in low-cut dresses can be displayed in public. The depraved photographer seems to have made his subject lean forwards towards his lens so that a vast amount of nubile, airbrushed cleavage is displayed to the world. "How dare she!" thinks Randolph, as his right hand slips from the steering wheel and begins massaging his quickly-hardening organ through the fabric of his trousers, his eyes not moving away from the abomination for an instant. "How dare she use her obscene body in this way, casting her evil spell, blunting the intelligence of superiors like me!"

His foot is easing slightly from the accelerator as he subconsciously ensures that the vile poster with its sickening image remains visible for as long as possible. He's also rubbing himself with increasing insistence. He cannot tear his gaze from the gap between the billboard girl's breasts. "She will be punished for this crime," he tells himself as he fumbles, one-handedly, to unfasten the fly of his trousers. "All her kind will be disciplined when I have my power but this indecent harlot will be taken aside for special punishment. She will pay for her exhibitionism. Above all she will pay for distrac-"

Randolph's internal monologue is abruptly interrupted, mid-word. Just as a proud, talented sailor is drawn onto the rocks by the Siren's call, so he, Randolph Sherman, has been hypnotised against his will by an obscene poster and has driven off the side of the road, partially into a ditch. Of course, he already knows it's all the fault of the girl on the billboard and her disgraceful dress and her even more disgraceful body.

The driver's airbag deploys, saving him from dashing his brains out on the steering wheel but he feels no relief as the inflated fabric fills his face. There is only anger and hatred. Most of this he feels towards the girl in the image and all her kind for making him want to touch himself. There are sufficient quantities of anger and hatred for him to apportion a small fraction to himself for yielding to evil temptation. The witches have cast their wicked spell and in a rare, rare moment of weakness, he has, briefly, fallen for it. There will be no moments; there will be no weakness of any kind once he achieves his final triumph over all things female by extracting his power from she that stole it!

The front wheels of his car are in the roadside ditch. The hood is mangled and, with the whole vehicle pivoting on the lip of the trench, the back wheels are suspended above the road. It does not require Randolph's decades of automotive experience to work out that his car is going nowhere. The problem he faces is that, if he remains with it, he is bound to attract attention from passing police patrol vehicles.

He lifts his face from the airbag and sits up. His neck aches terribly. His back is even worse. It stings him with pain as he reaches across to the passenger seat to grab the cardboard box containing his tools and spare components. A sudden panic grips him. He thrusts his left hand into his jacket pocket and carefully extracts the Sherman Crystal. Turning it over in his hand, he finally gets to experience relief. The crystal, the very embodiment of his scientific genius, is intact and undamaged.

Randolph places his crystal back in his pocket and, gingerly, wincing, he gets out of the wrecked car, clutching the box to his chest. He feels nauseous as he walks and he staggers, slightly unbalanced, away from the road and the lights of cars and evil billboards. Before he melts into the unlit wasteland by the side of the road, he cannot resist one final glance up at the poster girl's degenerate cleavage. The glance becomes a stare again. His flies are still open and he soon resumes the touching of a few moments ago. This time, he is not interrupted. Fifteen seconds pass before his seed is spilt onto the dusty ground. Then he stumbles into the night with his box, his crystal, his anger and his shame.

Kim is still looking for Veronica so she can get even with the skinny bitch for ratting her out. Having failed to find her target at home, she's now completed a supersonic jog through the sleeping suburbs to the street where Stephanie, another of her friends, lives. She's thinking that Veronica might be there, but there is a tiny fault in her plan. She hasn't visited Steph's house in several years and, although she has correctly recalled the street name and successfully navigated her way there even as a faster-than-sound streak, she can't remember the house number. To make matters worse, all the houses in the street look the same. So she's standing on the side-walk, turning her gaze one way then the other, vaguely searching for a clue and finding none.

Her thoughts are preoccupied with her quest. She's not making any conscious effort right now with the way she looks. The fact that she appears so breath-takingly sexy is merely the natural consequence of her extraordinary beauty and her minimalist clothing. She's pouting with the disappointment of not knowing which is Stephanie's house, but the effect of that is to make her gorgeous face utterly irresistible. Her hands are planted on her curvaceous hips because of her frustration with the situation, but this just causes her fantastic body with its flat belly and magnificent large round breasts to be majestically displayed. She slowly turns her glorious torso slightly to one side and then the other as if she were showing off her brief, tight, sky-blue two-piece bikini on a catwalk when in reality she's merely swivelling to scan the street with her beautiful bright eyes.

Finally, she notices a tiny flicker at the side of a house down the road. A thin strip of light appears in the small gap along the bottom of a garage door. Someone has switched the lights on inside. She blinks and her superhuman eyesight zooms in on the house. She can see the shadows of feet moving in the light. The rest of the building is dark, but she has no difficulty peering at the windows. She's not sure if the curtains are familiar or not. Only then does her gaze fall on the mailbox by the front gate. It isn't possible for even the most eagle-eyed of normal observers to tell whether there is anything written on the mailbox. Not from Kim's current distance of over a hundred yards. Even with binoculars, ordinary folks wouldn't be able to read the small letters painted on the side. But Kim can see the name written there as clearly as if it were mere inches from her beautiful face. "Why didn't I think of that before!" she thinks, without any trace of self-admonishment. She doesn't really care: the letters on the mailbox match Stephanie's surname and that's all that matters right now.

She blinks, her vision returning to normal and then she becomes a streak of movement, a blur of flawless pink mingled with flashes of light blue from her bikini. The blur becomes solid again, standing in front of the garage door, the light from within bathing her pretty ankles and her flawless feet. Kim bends at the waist, her stunning breasts hanging like the fruit of paradise at the moment of perfect ripeness. She reaches low with her left hand. There's just enough of a gap at the bottom of the door for her to insert her dainty fingers. Then, she stands up again, raising her hand. She puts as much effort into her action as she might have done to pick up a sheet of paper from the ground two days ago. Now, that same effort is enough to deform the aluminium garage door, wadding it up as if it were damp cardboard, not sheet metal. Only the sudden screech of futilely protesting material reveals the true nature of the door's composition. The casual movement of her slender arm exerts massive force, not only crumpling the panel but also snapping the six-inch thick heavy wooden frame above it as if it is nothing more substantial than a matchstick. A number of the surrounding bricks are cracked too.

It takes less than a second for Kim's hand to destroy the garage door and cause considerable damage to the frame and beyond. Now she has revealed the interior of the garage. From the street, it is possible to see the bent and torn hinge mechanism that previously allowed the big door to pivot. Too late now for that. It's also possible to see the two shocked men in black suits standing inside the garage. Kim removes her hand from the compressed remains over head. The metal groans and a trickle of brick dust cascades onto her shoulder but the mangled aluminium stays in place. She brushes the debris from her smooth exposed flesh and then turns to the surprised duo.

"Who the fuck are you?" she asks.

"Agent Thomson, FBI," the taller of the two responds, "and this is Agent Green," he adds, with a nod towards his colleague. "And you must be Kimberly Peterson?"

"Whatever," Kim dismisses both the introductions and the question. "Where's Stephanie? And Veronica?" she demands.

"Your friends took a trip out of state," Thomson lies, keeping to the script that was hastily communicated to him a few minutes ago. "If you like, we can take you to your parents. We're keeping them safe." He uses his considerable experience to add a note of menace to the final sentence.

The vague threat is lost on the scantily-clad teenager. Kim rolls her eyes to show her boredom. Her parents? Those are just about the last people she wants to see right now.

"Fuck that." she sneers.

Agent Thomson assumes that Kim has misunderstood his overly-subtle delivery. He opts for a more obvious approach. "Your Mom and Dad are pretty scared, Kim. They're tired and they need to get cleaned up," he tries to explain.

"So what?" asks Kim. She could not be less interested.

"Well," Thomson continues, optimistically, "if you come with us now and just sort out a few details, we can let them go to a nice hotel where they'll be a lot more comfortable."

"Nah," says Kim, "you keep 'em." She just can't be bothered with going with these jerks and 'sorting out details' - whatever the hell that means. Not if all she's going to gain from the process is another stupid lecture from her stupid parents. She attempts to steer the conversation back on to her terms. "Where did Stephanie and Veronica go?"

"I... swear I don't know. But if you'll come with us now, we can-" Thomson's brief hesitation is enough to betray him.

Kim instinctively wonders if he is being completely straight with her. At super-speed, she walks forward the four paces until she is standing right in front of Agent Thomson. In his eyes, she seems to vanish and reappear in less than an instant, suddenly much closer. He does not have time to react. He stops talking mid-sentence and staggers backwards, half a step, in shock. Kim reaches for him, cupping his chin with her left hand and in a easy, fluid movement, she lifts him from the ground until her arm is fully up-stretched and Thomson's feet are level with her shins. She has to tilt her head back to look at his face which is now nearly two feet higher than hers.

She can see the fear now in his eyes. Sweat is beginning to bead on his forehead. He's trying to swallow but, with his whole body supported by Kim's slender arm under his chin, he can barely manage it. His two hands come up to clasp Kim's dainty wrist. It's not clear if he's trying to dislodge her grip by prising her fingers apart or merely attempting to use the strength in his arms to take some of the weight of his body off his neck. Either way, the girl's small, feminine hand does not move at all. The government man's face turns ever more red and the desperation in his eyes becomes increasingly evident. To Kim, the large muscular man may as well be weightless. She could hold him like this all day if it weren't so boring.

Agent Green has been a mute spectator until now. With his partner's ability to speak now severely compromised, he realises he must break his silence. "Miss Peterson, please be aware that your parents' well-being depends on Agent Thomson not being harmed," he informs her, his own voice anything but steady or authoritative as he observes the demonstration of her amazing strength. It's difficult for any man to be menacing when he is close to being overwhelmed by fear and awe.

Kim turns to look at Green. She takes a couple of steps towards him, carrying Thomson with her like a child might carry a balloon, his legs dangling helplessly in the air as she strides. Agent Green steps back, now visibly trembling with fear. His left heel strikes a heavy box and he loses balance, falling over the box onto his rear. Kim begins to bend towards the stricken Agent. She reaches for Green with her right hand without thinking about the man trapped in her left. Thomson's feet touch the ground and then he's forced to bend his knees as she lowers his body without noticing. Agent Green gasps as he sees Kim's hand approach him and gasps again when he subsequently notices the magnificent sight of her two, large, firm, now pendant breasts. They look as if they might spill from their tiny sky-blue hammocks at any moment. He has never felt more frightened or more aroused.

Most men in Agent Green's position would be paralysed by fear, but he has not been selected for field work by chance. The terror he feels quickens his thoughts. He exhibits remarkable levels of professional focus as he briefly manages to prevent the supremely erotic view from occupying his entire mind in order to rapidly formulate the best idea of his career. He already knows that threatening - or indeed, using - violence against this girl has proven catastrophic for those who have tried it. He now realises that threatening repercussions against her parents is also a failed tactic. He needs another way of getting through to her. But how to reach a deadly, unstoppable, sexy (no... concentrate!) teenager? And then, inspiration strikes him.

"Kimberley!" he blurts, rushing to complete his words before she clasps her hand around his throat, "The Bureau has seized all of your personal property. If you hurt us, we won't be able to stop them destroying it!"

Astonishingly, Agent Green's words have an effect. Kim pauses, her fingertips just inches from his neck. Agent Thomson's chin remains immovably secure in her other palm. Thomson is powerless to move or escape. He stays kneeling at her side in enforced supplication. Agent Green now stares, unable to resist any longer, into the deep, inviting wonder of the young woman's ripe cleavage. He barely has mental capacity for the sensation of relief that she is no longer reaching for him, so entranced is he by her feminine beauty as she freezes mid-lunge.

"What do you mean, 'personal property'?" she enquires. She's pretty sure she knows what the words signify, but she needs to check to be certain.

Green is momentarily stunned by the question. Most of his brain is working on processing the awesome information being passed to it by his eyes, and there's not much left to deal with the data coming from his ears. He knows this is probably the only chance to save himself and his partner and he needs to come up with the perfect reply. One wrong word and they could both be dead.

Kim needs to know urgently what he meant about the Bureau destroying her personal property. She is, perhaps for the first time in years, genuinely concerned. If it means what she thinks it means, she's got to stop it happening. But now the jerk won't tell her. What's wrong with him? She checks his face to see if she can glean any information there and, without realising, discovers the cause of his delayed response.

"Stop staring at my tits, perv," she admonishes, standing up again so that her chest will no longer fill his entire field of vision. This action causes Agent Thomson to be pulled from his knees and entirely off his feet once more. Kim shows her displeasure and impatience by placing her right hand, the one that nearly grabbed Agent Green a few seconds ago, on her hip.

Green is humiliated. He knows her accusation - the staring part, anyway, is undeniably true. As for being a pervert, well, she is a schoolgirl half his age... He makes a point of looking upwards, right into her eyes. Her face is stunning with its sexy, sneering mouth, but it is slightly less mind-melting than her cleavage. Only slightly, but that is enough. His survival plan comes back to the fore of his thoughts. He races to answer her original question about personal property.

"Your clothes, your accessories, your shoes," Agent Green starts to improvise a list, pretty sure he has worked her out now. The shock that appears on the girl's lovely face shows him that he has. Emboldened, he continues, "your CDs, your books, your-"

"What books?" Kim interrupts.

"Shit," thinks Agent Green. "I should've known not to say books... need to get out of this one fast..."

"Erm, the books inside the CDs," he says out loud. "The Bureau treats them separately from the actual discs," he bullshits brilliantly. Then he completes his grand-master's gambit: "Agent Thomson and myself are the only ones who can stop the guys back at HQ destroying all of that, ah, stuff as part of their, um, investigation."

"Fuck," he thinks to himself. "Destroying clothes and CDs as part of an investigation... she'd have to be a complete moron to buy that!" He continues to glare into her beautiful eyes, desperate for her to see that he is not looking at her torso any longer, that he is not actually a pervert.

"How come you're the only ones who can stop them?" she asks, her tone one of genuine curiosity.

It's all Agent Green can do not to audibly sigh with relief. She's actually swallowed that crap! The next lie comes easily and confidently from him: "We head up the Quality Fashion and Music Investigation Department," he claims.

Kim has been wavering between believing the perv in the suit and doubting his words. But it makes sense to her both that her clothes and music from home would fall under the heading of 'Quality' and that an organisation like the FBI would have a department specialising in such crucially important matters.

"You'd better call up the office and tell them not to touch my stuff," Kim announces, "or I'll kill your friend here. And you as well, perv."

Green almost cannot believe that she has accepted his lies as truth. His confidence is growing by the second. If he can convince her that he is in charge of a ridiculously-titled fictitious department, the next part should be relatively easy to sell.

"I can't, Miss Peterson," he says. "Believe me, I would have done that already if I could. It's Departmental Protocol: no communication by phone about clothes or music. If I call in and mention your stuff, they'll assume I'm a... er... a spy and automatically put your things into the incinerator."

"What's that?" Kim demands "Like a kinda washing machine?"

"No," Green says gravely, as if he is telling her of the death of a relative, "It's a big fire that burns them."

She looks horrified. Agent Green is surprised by the strength of the reaction and works fast to stop her doing anything he or his partner would regret. "It's OK," he reassures, "as long as no-one mentions clothes or music on the phone. No one will harm your things as long as Agent Thomson and myself give the order in person back at HQ. But if one of us gets hurt," he looks away from her eyes for just long enough to glance across at his colleague, still dangling helplessly from her up-stretched palm, "then everything will be destroyed automatically. I'm sorry. I wish it wasn't like that but it is."

Amazingly, Kim is completely taken in by the fake note of regret. With huge care, almost as much care as she used to squeeze her magnificent body into the sky-blue bikini that adorns it, she lowers Agent Thomson to the ground and removes her hand from his chin. Thomson rubs his jaw and breathes heavily.

"So, like, are you going to bring all my stuff here?" Kim asks. She's completely forgotten about Stephanie and Veronica and taking revenge and all of that. Something far, far, more important has come up. Her clothes and shoes and CDs are in danger!

"Why don't you come with us to collect it?" Agent Green replies, as if the suggestion has just occurred to him. He deserves an Oscar for his performance, however the girl looks unimpressed with the offer.

"You get to ride in the back of a limo," pipes up Agent Thomson, still rubbing his chin but now finally able to participate again. He's taking his cue from Agent Green, but he comes across more like a wealthy father trying to persuade his spoilt daughter to see a theatre play than the protocol-encumbered joint head of the FBI's Quality Fashion and Music Investigation Department. Part of Thomson is amazed that his colleague's off-script, spur-of-the-moment appeal to the girl's materialism has been so successful. Most of him, however, is just relieved to still be alive. Having now experienced a mere fraction of Kim's strength first hand, he can see how easy it must be for her to take lives.

Agent Green is thinking how ridiculous Thomson sounded offering a superhuman killer a ride in an Esplanade. "At least," thinks Green, "he didn't promise to stop for ice-cream."

Kim is oblivious to either man's thoughts. "What kinda limo?" she asks. "Is there a TV in it?"

Agents Thomson and Green exchange glances.

Randolph's feet hurt. He can barely see the ground he's walking on and he keeps stepping on sharp rocks. Three times now he's almost tripped and spilt the precious contents of his box. Each time that happens, he has to stop, put down the box and check that the Sherman Crystal in still in his coat pocket. He's pretty sure there's a hole in his left shoe. It's certainly full of dust and sand. It's all the fault of that degenerate whore on the poster who tricked him into crashing his car. He knows he has to stay away from the road now, because it is just a matter of time before a passing patrol car sees his abandoned vehicle. They'll run the registration plates through their computer and work out his identity. They will want to take his crystal, his last hope of reclaiming his power. But he will not let that happen. He, Randolph Sherman, is far too clever.

He's too far from the Interstate now to be able to hear the passing cars or see the brief illuminations of their headlights. But he does not need the highway for navigation. In the past hour, a thin crescent moon has appeared over the horizon. He knows if he keeps it on his left, he's heading South. Despite his exhaustion, the pain in his feet and the effort of carrying the box of tools, he will stagger on, using the moon as his guide, until dawn breaks in a couple of hours. Each painful, tired step is bringing him closer to the border. When first light hits, he will be better able to reassess his options. He's on the run. He has lost his car and he's alone in the desert. The energy he spent forty years painstakingly collecting has been stolen by a disgusting exhibitionist trollop. But he still has his Sherman Crystal. He still has hope.

 

Conceptfan, Feb. 2015.

Chapter 11

The vast sheet-metal-clad warehouse on the outskirts of town has been a hive of activity for quite a few hours already. The temporary interview cubicles have been used to extract as much information as possible from all of Kim's friends and her parents, all of which has been fed through to the opposite end of the huge single-storey building. That's where an Operations centre has been set up to co-ordinate the investigation into the extraordinary events of the past day. Now, the whole building is full of movement because, in the past five minutes, there have been two significant developments.

The first development concerns a report from the State Police. A Highway Patrol has discovered the car belonging to the individual known as Priority Number Two. The Bureau believe that Randolph Sherman is in some way responsible for endowing his former neighbour with the superhuman abilities that have made her their Priority Number One. Naturally, they are very keen to find Sherman so he can let them know just what it is he has done to Kimberley Peterson, and, even more urgently, let them know how it can be undone. That's why they issued the bulletin on him and his car, which they believed he was driving. But the vehicle has been found, abandoned in a ditch by the Interstate.

Whoever was driving it at the time, and there will be a delay before forensics can establish that information, was headed South. The team make the logical assumption that Sherman is trying to get to the border. They alert their colleagues in the area. Given his age, they are confident they will soon have him in custody.

The second development is even more significant. There's been another encounter between field Agents and the Peterson girl. However, this time, the meeting did not end with the death of the government men. Somehow, the pair have convinced Kimberley Peterson to accompany them back here, to the Bureau's temporary headquarters. A car has been sent to bring the trio back, although there has been a delay of a few minutes whilst Logistics located a vehicle equipped with a television. That's what the girl said she wanted, and if it means she will stop hurling men to their deaths or tossing tankers into buildings for a while, they are willing to oblige. They already know that a thousand bullets aren't enough to make her pause for even a second. Now they are hoping that a TV screen will prove more effective.

The Bureau's plan is to try and somehow contain or distract Peterson until Sherman can be located and persuaded to reveal how she can be "de-super-powered". Having her as their guest at their centre of Operations is key to this plan. It's where they have lined up her school Counselor to talk with her and try and convince her not to harm anyone else. If he fails, the girl's parents and friends are also in the building. There are a number of roles that they might play in subsequent efforts to control her. And all of that should at least buy enough time for the laser equipment, currently en-route from San Diego, to arrive.

In the meantime, the team are preparing for the meeting between Kimberley Peterson and Mr. Lieberman, the counsellor. A large area has been set aside with chairs and a table, as well as a small sofa. Lieberman is sat at the table, a small glass of water in front of him, although it's now nearly-empty as he keeps taking nervous sips. The process of evacuating all of the girl's friends, their families and Mr. and Mrs. Peterson from the interview booths to an adjacent building has begun. They are expecting Priority Number One to arrive in a little over fifteen minutes. They do not want her to find out that she has been lied to regarding her friends taking a trip out-of-state. Not when they need, more than anything else right now, to gain her trust. That's why there are two men hurriedly preparing a large, official-looking-as-possible sign to hang over the warehouse entrance. The sign bears the Bureau's logo, along with the words "Quality Fashion and Music Investigation Department."

 

"Where the hell is that car?" Agent Green thinks to himself.  HQ messaged him four minutes ago to say it was on its way. Four minutes is a long time to spend in the company of an unstoppable superhuman killer. It does not help that the superhuman killer is exceptionally easy on the eye. She's already rebuked him once for staring at her irresistible breasts and Green is extremely anxious not to give her any further cause for displeasure. He knows she is only a yard from his side, impatiently waiting for the promised limo. From time to time, she paces about, her stunning figure constantly on display as she moves around in her tiny bikini, each step and turn revealing her flawless beauty from a fresh, captivating angle.

He can only risk occasional fleeting glances in her direction, and takes care that each of these brief looks is at her face, and not her body. He's frightened that if he catches sight once more of her stunning chest straining against her immodest sky-blue swimwear, he will be lost in her erotic perfection, unable to tear his gaze away until she notices. He knows she could kill him with a flick of her dainty fingers and that there are two dozen corpses in the mortuary acting as proof that she has no qualms about taking the life of anyone who displeases her.

Agent Thomson is also aware of the precariousness of the situation. His chin is badly bruised where Kim held him off the ground with just one of her pretty hands. He is still shocked by the strength of the slender, feminine arm that supported his considerable weight with such apparent ease. Having experienced her power for himself, he has no trouble believing the witness claims that she hoisted an entire gasoline tanker off the ground and tossed it like a missile. He shudders to think what she will do to him and his colleague if the car is delayed much longer, or worse, if she finds out that they have misled her about representing the FBI's Special Music and Clothes Department or whatever the hell his colleague had said.

Green and Thomson are acutely aware of the fact that, although it has been less than five minutes, the girl is starting to become irritated. Thomson wonders if he should try and make small talk with her but then dismisses the idea. She has killed over twenty people in the past twelve hours, including a number of his colleagues. Somehow, small talk does not seem appropriate. Her back is to him at the moment. He cannot resist the opportunity to study the magnificent spherical curves of her ripe, nubile posterior. But then he hears her tut, and looks away in panic. He's terrified she has noticed his staring. She turns around and places her hands on her hips in a gesture of displeasure. Thomson feels the blood drain from his face.

He is about to blurt out "I wasn't looking at your ass, I swear to god!" but he doesn't get the chance. Kim is exasperated with the wait, and that's why she tutted and put her hands on her hips. She completes the non-verbal complaint with a big, ostentatious sigh. First her chest rises, her large round breasts heaving and threatening to destroy the overworked material of her bikini. Then her luscious lips part, revealing her sexy top teeth. Finally, she exhales, loudly. Her super-powered lungs deliver a gust of warm, fragrant breath through her gorgeous pout. It's just a heavy sigh, she's not actively blowing, but nevertheless her exhalation is strong enough to send Agent Thomson staggering backwards, off balance, for a couple of steps until he falls onto his rear. Kim giggles at the sight. It's so cool being this powerful. She wasn't even trying!

Thomson remains on the floor. He's not sure what to do. He knows that he's been knocked down as the consequence of nothing more than a thoughtless sigh, and not by a deliberate attempt to floor him. The girl's power is mind-boggling. He's starting to think of her less and less as the violent delinquent mentioned in their initial briefing and more and more as a goddess. It's not just her phenomenal strength, or the fact that she is immune to gunfire. It's the way she looks as well. Her perfect skin, her glorious figure, her beautiful face... He feels overcome by sheer awe. Should he ask her permission to stand up? Should he apologise for looking at her rear? Should he not mention that at all, in case she didn't actually notice?

"About fucking time!" Kim announces, out-of-the-blue. Thomson wonders if she is reading his thoughts and his confusion is ramped up another level, but the truth is that her sensitive ears have detected the sound of an approaching car. She walks out of the garage towards the street without even a glance towards the man on the floor or his colleague who is desperately struggling not to be caught looking at her amazing curves as she strolls by.

"Umm... the car will be here very soon I'm sure," says Agent Green, suddenly concerned that she has decided to abandon the wait.

"Duh!" replies Kim, not realising that she's the only one capable of hearing the distant engine. Agent Green is confused, but he busies himself offering a hand to his colleague to help him onto his feet. Now Thomson has a bruised chin and a bruised rear. He moves uncomfortably as he and Green follow the girl out to the side-walk. A further twenty seconds pass before either of them notices the sound of the limo. By then, to their great relief, it is turning the corner into view.

 

A hundred miles away, a compact SUV sits silently and motionlessly in the desert, three miles from the Interstate Highway. At the wheel is a short man with black hair and facial features that show his forty years of life have not been easy. He's scanning the dark horizon, looking for headlamps. An hour ago, he was supposed to meet up with a man he knows only as 'Esteban'. The short man is not overly worried by the delay; it's quite usual for one or other party to be unpunctual for this kind of rendezvous. Maybe Esteban has been held up crossing the border. Or maybe he's been careless and his cargo has been discovered. Shorty notices that the first traces of colour are beginning to appear along the Eastern horizon. He knows that he will have to give up soon, and head back to the Interstate. The cover of night makes it so much less likely that he will be spotted, and he really doesn't want to attract attention. Not while he's driving in the desert with a briefcase containing half a million dollars in cash.

His eye is caught, not by vehicle lights in the distance, but by something darker moving much nearer. He peers into the soon-to-lift night and realises that he can see a man. Can this be his contact? He expected someone much younger. This is an elderly figure, carrying what appears to be a large cardboard box. Has Esteban sent his father, on foot, with the merchandise packed as if it were assorted groceries? Shorty flicks the lever under the steering wheel to make his headlamps flash five times as agreed.

The old man seems startled by the sudden brief bursts of bright light. He drops his box. Shorty opens the door of his SUV and leaps down to the dusty ground, hurrying over to make sure no damage has been done to his precious goods. He walks briskly over to the older man. "I was beginning to think you weren't coming!" he announces, holding out his right hand, offering a shake. He's a little taken aback when the new arrival makes no effort to accept.

"Who are you?" demands the old man as he crouches to tend to the dropped box. Between the very first rays of sun reflecting from low cloud over the horizon and the crescent moon that has now risen a quarter of the way up the sky, there is just enough light for Shorty to make out the contents of the container. There are none of the packets of powder he is expecting to see, but rather a jumble of what looks like workshop tools. He looks at the old man in confusion, just as they are both suddenly lit by the blinding full-beam lights of a near-silent electric jeep.

Shorty and the old man both look in astonishment towards the jeep, shielding their eyes from the glare as their eyes struggle to adjust. A door opens and a tall, lean figure steps out but the bright lamps prevent him being fully visible from their perspective. "I told you to come alone, asshole," shouts the latest arrival. Shorty knows that things have taken a turn for the very, very bad indeed. He realises that this is Esteban. But who the hell is the box guy then? He reaches into his jacket for his pistol and takes three quick steps until he is behind the unknown old man, using him as a shield.

Esteban has a clear view of the two men thanks to the lights of his jeep. He sees the shorter one pull his piece and dart behind the other one. The one in front looks way, way too old for this kind of work. Esteban pulls out his own weapon and points it the pair. "Drop the box, abuelo!" he commands. Shorty starts to sweat. His finger is trembling as it curls around the trigger of his gun. The old man suddenly moves, his head dropping and his knees buckling. Simultaneously, both Shorty and Esteban react to the unexpected movement by firing their weapons.

 

"This is cool!" says Kim, draping her fabulous body over the enormous back seat of the limousine. Agents Thomson and Green sit facing her, their eyes ping-ponging between the roof and the floor as they work to avoid getting caught looking at the awesome sight of the bikini-clad teenage girl. They are both wearing seatbelts in accordance with Bureau protocol. Neither of them dares advise Kim that she should do likewise.

"So, like, where's the TV?" she asks.

"It, ah, flips down from the roof," explains the driver, who introduces himself as Agent Carter. He is being a lot braver than his colleagues when it comes to stealing a look at the glory that is Kim, his eyes flicking from road to rear-view mirror every few seconds. She's too busy taking in the luxury of the car's interior to notice. Agent Thomson hurries to pull down the flap on which the LCD screen is mounted. Unsurprisingly, given that this is a government car, the TV switches on to a 24-hour news channel where there is a financial report in progress.

"What the fuck is this shit?" Kim demands.

Agent Carter's hand appears above his left shoulder, holding a remote control. "Use this to change it," he tells her.

Kim leans forward and snatches the remote from his hand. "Ouch!" cries Carter, the car swerving for a moment. Then he mutters under his breath "Shit, she broke my finger!"

"You should've been more careful," Kim tells him, haughtily. Carter is shocked that she has heard him. He bites his lip to silence his moans of pain,

Green and Thomson are looking away, out of the windows. Neither has the courage to point his eyes anywhere near Kim at the moment. She is oblivious to the three, older men in the car with her as she expertly surfs the TV channels until she finds one that she likes. "Awesome!" she declares. "MTV!"

The throbbing pain in Agent Carter's hand distracts him from thinking about the absurdity of a multiple-murderer choosing which station to watch in the limo that is bringing her in. The track that has been playing on air ends, and another begins. "Oh I freaking LOVE this song!" trills Kim, in genuine delight.

The sound of the pop video on screen begins to get increasingly loud. The green bar superimposed on the image reveals that she is adjusting the TV's volume to its maximum level. The music is uncomfortably boisterous for the three agents, but their passenger doesn't care about them in the slightest. She begins to move her head in time to the tune, tapping her foot, her long, lovely leg moving in ways that neither Green nor Thomson dare to observe for more than a split-second at a time. Kim starts to shake her body with the pounding rhythm. The sexy, fluid jerking of her torso is making her sumptuous chest bounce in a supremely erotic display of femininity. Carter almost crashes the limo as he struggles to pull his gaze from the sight of her magnificent body in the rear-view mirror. Green and Thomson simply do not know what to do with their eyes.

Kim begins to wave her hands in time to the throbbing beat of the song, all the while continuing to bop her head, dip her shoulders and tap her feet. She uses small circular movements with her palms to begin with, but soon she is beginning to employ bigger and bigger gestures, her sleek, flawless arms playing an ever greater role in her captivating dance. "Uh-huh, uh-huh" she sings along to the unimaginative lyrics of the song, briefly adopting a different choreography which involves throwing her shoulders back and thrusting her big breasts. Agent Thomson catches a momentary glimpse of her and catches his breath as his heart begins to pound. He looks away quickly, terrified of losing control of himself.

Kim's dancing changes again as the chorus yields to another verse.   Now she is using her hips, turning her sexy flat belly side to side and moving her glorious superhuman rear.  Each movement of her flawless peach-like buttocks puts a huge strain onto the Escalade's suspension.  The car begins to groan.  It is rocking like a boat now, as Kim, oblivious to the effect of her unthinking movements on either men or machine, transfers massive pressure through the upholstered seat onto the vehicle's chasis with every irresistible swing of her supremely supple hips.  Carter is fighting to keep the car straight on the road, like a sailor battling with the tiller of a boat during a storm.  His broken finger isn't making things any easier.

Finally, the repetitive thump of the bass-line begins to fade. The song is ending. Kim has enjoyed it thoroughly. She salutes the music with a cry of "Wooooo! Yeah!" and punches the air as if she were at a live concert. Her small, dainty fist hits the ceiling of the limo, but the smooth, shapely arm behind it is far, far too strong to be contained by it. With a short, metallic thump, Kim's knuckles pass through the lining and the steel beyond it as though they were thin air. Her wrist and fist emerge into the dawn air above the car, her flawless skin unaffected by the sharp torn metal that now encircles her seemingly-delicate forearm.

"Oops!" she giggles, pulling her arm back down. Agents Carter, Green and Thomson pretend they haven't noticed that a six-inch hole has been punched in the roof. The next song begins. It's not one of Kim's favourites, so she taps her feet and nods her head to the rhythm, but otherwise doesn't show nearly as much enthusiasm. She leaves the volume at the maximum level, however, because, as she sees it, being super means she can. It's not as if anyone is going to make her change the volume. She can remember some of the times her Mom and Dad shouted up the stairs for her to "Turn it down!" She didn't do it then, and she didn't even have superpowers. There's no way she'd do it now.

The blare of the music does not stop until ten minutes later when Carter finally pulls the limousine up in front of the Bureau's commandeered warehouse and removes the keys from the ignition, cutting the power to the television. "We're here," he announces, trying to keep the relief from his voice.

"Aww," Kim pouts. "I was enjoying that song. Put it back on!"

Agent Carter turns around and looks inquisitively at Agent Thomson. With a resigned look, Thomson merely nods. Carter puts the keys back in, and the television sparks back to life, along with the pounding bass of the song. The three government men wait uncomfortably for the track to conclude. Finally it does, Carter pulls out the keys and Green and Thomson simultaneously open the doors. The quiet of the early morning has never been so appreciated.

"Let's go start arranging the safe return of your, er, quality fashion and music," says Agent Green to Kim, as he notices the sign that has been erected above the warehouse door. He's anxious to get her to leave the car before she asks for the TV to be put back on. Green steps out of the limo to add further encouragement. Agent Thomson is less confident in his actions. He doesn't feel he should leave the car until the goddess-girl gives some indication that it is alright to do so.

Kim slides her glorious firm rear along the wide seat towards the door that Agent Green has just stepped through and climbs out with the fluid beauty that is a constant feature of all her movements. Now Thomson gets out, too. They walk in single file. Green leads the way into the building, Kim follows looking slightly bored, and Thomson tails. Agent Carter opens his door and steps out from the driver's seat. He stays with the limo, eyes wide in amazement as he inspects the hole in the vehicle's roof whilst nursing his broken finger.

"Good morning, Miss Peterson," announces a tall, blonde man wearing a black suit identical to all the other agents. "I'm agent Hammer. So glad you could join us!" Hammer holds out a hand for Kim to shake.

"So, like, where's my stuff?" Kim demands. For a second, she considers accepting the handshake and crushing it to spaghetti sauce but she realises that some of the blood might stain her bikini so instead she just ignores the hand.

"There's absolutely no need to concern yourself. We're preparing it all now, Miss Peterson," gushes Agent Hammer. "We just need Agents Green and Thomson here to complete some paperwork and update the database records in the mainframe in accordance with Departmental protocol. It'll only be a few moments... why don't you take a seat through here," Hammer smiles obsequiously as he indicates a door with his unshaken hand, "and we will bring everything to you momentarily."

"You fucking better bring it," scowls Kim and then she adds "Is there a mirror in there?" She's worried her hair might have got a bit messed up during the limo ride, and she wouldn't mind checking that her bikini looks as fantastic as it should.

"I'll have one brought immediately," Agent Hammer promises in the style of a hotel concierge responding to a big-spending guest.

Kim rolls her gorgeous eyes and strolls towards the door previous indicated by Hammer. Intentionally, she pushes it open without turning the handle, breaking the panel and ripping some of its hinges with a loud crash. The remains of the door hang uselessly at an angle as she walks into the room. The first thing she sees is that Lieberman dude from school, the pervy Counselor who's always talking to her about short skirts and responsible behaviour and respecting her body and all that crap. He seems to have jumped up suddenly from behind a big desk when she bust in. He looks shocked. For a couple of seconds he stares at her then his eyes flick briefly up and down before focussing on her face.

Lieberman is still recovering from the shock of her sudden entrance when he has to start recovering from the sight of her dressed only in a minuscule two-piece. The girl is impossibly hot and it is all that he can do not to just gawk, open-mouthed at her sexual perfection. He reminds himself that he has a mission from the government, and summons all his control as he fixes his eyes on hers. "Hi Kim," he says, "please take a seat."

"What the fuck are YOU doing here?" she asks, making no secret of the fact she is anything but happy to see him.

"Don't you think it's time we had a little chat, you know, after everything that's happened?" asks Lieberman. "I thought perhaps you'd like to talk about it with someone you can trust."

"Nah," dismisses Kim with a shrug whose breast-bouncing consequences do not escape Lieberman's notice. "I'm cool."

"But, Kim, you must realise that you're in a lot of trouble right now!"

"Trouble?" asks Kim, genuinely confused. She doesn't feel like she's in trouble. In fact, she feels great.

"The people you've killed, Kim!" Lieberman can't believe he has to remind her.

"Oh, them," replies Kim, clearly bored.

"Kim, we HAVE to talk." Lieberman insists. "What's happened to you, gaining superpowers, it means things are different now," he tries to explain.

"Fuck yeah they're different," says Kim. "I don't have to listen to your crap anymore."

Lieberman knows that she has hit upon the real truth, but he is desperate to convince her otherwise. He is not sure what is worse: failing so quickly in his mission or the thought of such a stunningly beautiful girl leaving his sight. Getting her to face up to her murders hasn't worked so he tries a different tactic. "Kim," he says, trying to infuse his words with gravity, "you have been given a wonderful gift. You have been blessed with extraordinary abilities but with great power comes great responsibility." Ordinarily, he hates cliches, but on this occasion he is making an exception based on his target audience.

The flattering words "wonderful, blessed, extraordinary and great" do make an impression on Kim. Just enough of an impression to stop her walking out, or slapping Lieberman across the room to his death. "I do have great power," she agrees, "but screw the 'responsibility' bit."

"It doesn't work like that," Lieberman tells her. "We're all responsible for our actions. It's just that your actions now, Kim, well... your actions are causing people to die."

"Bummer for them," says Kim without any hint of remorse. She starts to examine her fingernails for imperfections. With every cell of her magnificent body infused with the sun's energy thanks to the unique properties of the Sherman crystal, her fingernails can slice diamonds without sustaining a blemish. They do not really require examination right now, but Kim is keen to show her disinterest in the conversation.

With the girl looking at her pretty fingers, Lieberman cannot resist the opportunity to steal a look along the entire length of her glory. He takes in her delicate ankles and her long, exquisite legs, the flare of her tanned thighs, and her flat taut belly with its deep dark navel. He stares at her glorious large, firm, round breasts and the perfection of the cleavage between them and he drinks in the sight of her pretty neck, her stunning pouty mouth and her cute nose. His methodical scan reaches her beautiful brown eyes just as she looks away from her fingernails and meets his gaze.

"Kim there is so much to talk about! Please, sit down." he practically implores her.

"Like what?" she asks.

"Like what you are going to do with your powers," Lieberman begins.

Kim shrugs. As far as she's concerned, she's going to do whatever she wants with her powers. It's none of this guy's business.

"Have you thought about it, Kim? How you are going to use your powers? What kind of a person you are going to be now?"

"Duh," says Kim, "a super person!"

Lieberman knows he is not getting through to her. But the government are counting on him. Besides, if he keeps her talking long enough, he's bound to get another opportunity to check her out again. He reverts to flattery.

"Kim, the amazing things you can do now, the fantastic power that you have... I can help you to use it... better."

At last she sits down opposite him. Lieberman fights the temptation to flick his gaze downwards to feast upon the glorious sight that is her chest. He might just be gaining her trust and it is imperative that he doesn't blow it.

"What d'you mean 'better'?" asks Kim.

"Well, it's about how you use your powers," he begins. Her eyes narrow slightly in suspicion. "I mean, how you behave with them, how you-" Lieberman continues, carefully constructing his point, but not carefully enough.

Kim has detected a trigger word. "Behave?" she asks. "You want to talk about my behaviour?" she half-demands, half-groans. Her face sets in anger. She's still exceptionally beautiful when she's angry, still devastatingly sexy, but in the context of the Pizza House Slayings, the school building that lies in rubble and the police squadron that she massacred a few hours ago, she is also terrifying.

Realising that he is already beyond the point of no return, Counselor Lieberman surprises himself with the way he can suppress his terror. He knows he is one of the few people - perhaps the only person, he reassures himself with an internal boast - who can reach her through dialogue. He's been here before, so many times, one-on-one with this girl. There's been moments, all-too-brief and never lastingly effective, in the past, when he believed he could get through to her.

The FBI have all-but-admitted to him that his professional training and his previous experience of her stand a greater chance of successfully reining her in than even the military. He just has to get through to her. To make a connection. To find the right words that will make her listen. Listen and think. He must chose his phrasing carefully. And he must get it right. Two dozen people have died. If he cannot convince her of the values of society and community then there will be many more victims. More than likely, starting with him.

He is terrified of what she might do to him... what he knows she could do to him... if the fancy takes her. She's already shown, over and over, a sickening appetite for killing and destroying. He knows that if she chooses to satisfy that appetite with him, there is nothing he can do. He can't defend himself against someone who is apparently strong enough to lift a gas truck. He can't run from someone who can move so fast that she appears as nothing but a pink smear across the landscape.

The only option available to him is dialogue. It is his only hope. And, he realises, he has nothing to lose now. At least there is hope. She seems to be not completely unwilling to listen. After all, they've been in the room, alone, for over a minute now and she hasn't tried to kill him. Yet. That has to be a good sign, doesn't it? He swallows hard.

"Kim," he says, looking her in the eye, resisting the strong urge to glance briefly down at her stupendous breasts, so fabulous displayed by her tiny sky blue bikini top. He keeps the eye-contact, despite all his instincts that are fighting to steer his gaze elsewhere. It is essential that he gains her trust. He will win it through honesty and transparency, looking her in the eye and speaking truths. "People are dead! Because of you!" he reminds her once more. "This is not like all those times before when we discussed your attitude problem and how it would cause problems for you."

Suddenly, she does not look angry anymore. In fact, she's laughing as if she's just thought of something really funny. "Ha!" she says, "Yeah, well, things have changed a little. I don't see how MY attitude's gonna cause ME any problems. It's MY attitude, but it's YOUR problem now." She grins, triumphantly, enormously proud of her word-play. She's pretty sure it's the best comeback of her life to date. "Come to think of it," she beams, "I don't see what's the point of talking to you at all. All MY problems are solved."

Her smile is the most stunning that Lieberman has ever encountered. It affects him profoundly. If he were standing, he would be weak at the knees. He wishes there had been time for him to put on some underpants beneath his jeans. His brain is struggling to keep up with the demands of rapid shifts between terror and lust whilst trying to formulate what to say next.

"That's not quite true, Kim," he informs her. "You're still wanted for multiple murders and -"

"Like anyone's going to be able to arrest me!" she interrupts, still smiling victoriously. She has a valid point.

"And beyond that," Lieberman reaches in desperation for the one topic he knows will grab her interest, the one topic he's been trying to avoid bringing into the room, "things will be very different for you now in ways you might not have considered." Kim throws him a "what-the-fuck-are-you-on-about, asshole?" look but she does not say anything, so he takes the plunge.

"I'm talking about your, um, relationships. Not just with the police and your teachers, but with your friends -"

"They'll be cool," Kim states. "Unless they piss me off."

"That's not what I'm talking about," Lieberman explains uncomfortably. "I mean your, er, relationships with, um, the opposite sex. Boys."

Kim suddenly sits dead straight. The smile on her face relaxes slightly. For once in his boring life, Counselor Lieberman has said something interesting. It's true. She has not considered what it would be like to be with a boy now that she has super-powers. She recalls yesterday afternoon, in the garden, when she had been touching herself while the old freak next door was perving on her. How her fingers made her feel so good. Much better than normal. How her chest tingled so deliciously. And how it still tingles every time she touches it now. She can almost feel it as she just thinks about it. Not only in her breasts, but also between her thighs. She feels horny. The spark of curiosity that Lieberman has ignited begins to smoulder in her mind. What would it be like with a boy, now that she is super? She's pretty sure it would be way better than before. And she is absolutely certain that she would like to find out.

Lieberman is not sure whether he should say anything. Nothing he's ever said to Kim in the past has ever had such a dramatic effect on her. She actually seems to be thinking about his words. She hasn't even answered back! He notices her close her eyes. From the periphery of his vision, he sees her mouth open, sensuously. Her lips and teeth are so sexy. He feels his organ begin to swell in response to the sight. Perhaps bringing up the subject of sex was not so wise after all. Now he is distracted. His gaze flickers downwards for a moment. Just long enough for him to view her breathtaking cleavage. He looks back at her face, but her eyes are still closed. He glances down again. Her nipples are swelling, pushing prominently on the thin material of her bikini. Without the protection of underpants, the sensitive tip of his penis scrapes on the rough material of his jeans as it jumps to attention, stimulating him almost to the point of orgasm. He swallows hard to try and stop himself panting out loud and locks his eyes on her face once more. Her eyes open, looking straight into his. Slowly, she licks her lips. Her left hand comes up to her chest and starts to stroke her breasts through her bikini.

"K- Kim..." splutters Lieberman, hypnotised by the sight of her. She responds by standing. Her free hand grips the edge of the desk that separates them. "Kim! What are you doing?" The desk is made from thick, solid wood and requires two fit men to lift, normally. Kim is able to toss it ten feet into the air and twenty feet to the side with nothing but a casual flick of her tiny wrist. The heavy table smashes down but neither Kim nor Lieberman turns to look. With the desk no longer hiding his lap from her, Kim can see the bulge in his jeans.

"Ha!" she says. "I always knew you were a perv for me." She smiles and takes a step towards him.

"K- Kim..." Lieberman stammers, "we're here to d-d-discuss your, um, situation, we, ah, you, should, er, ah..." It's no good. Everything is out of his control now. The conversation, the girl, his thoughts... even his own body.

Now both of Kim's hands are working her chest. She's cupping and squeezing her two, big mounds, pinching her engorged nipples through her swimsuit top. She feels amazing. Her right hand leaves her breast and caresses its way down her smooth, flat belly. Her fingers slip under the waistband of her lower garment and begin to lightly stroke around the entrance to her womanhood. She doesn't know if it's the effect of super-powers or not, but it really does feel amazing now compared with a few days ago. She lets out an involuntary "Oooooh". Lieberman just sits and stares.

She starts to remove her bikini bottom. She remembers to take care so that she doesn't destroy the garment in the process. Gingerly, she wiggles her hips, slowly lowering the lower portion of her swimsuit using just her right hand, while her left continues to fondle her chest. Finally, she works it down to her ankles. She bends to step out of the leg-holes, offering Lieberman the most spectacular view of her cleavage as she does so. Now he does begin to pant.

"Kim... what... are... you... doing?"

Kim is concentrating on the tricky task of unfastening her top without causing her swollen nipples to tear through the fabric. She succeeds, and pulls the loose top off her breasts, letting it drop on the floor beside her feet. Lieberman gasps loudly at the sight of her in all her naked glory. His heart thumps in his chest. His erection thumps in his jeans. Kim takes the final step until her naked legs are almost touching him as he sits, transfixed. She reaches down, letting her awesome breasts hang just inches from his face as she curls a single finger inside the waistband of his trousers.

The easiest one-digit tug is all it takes for Kim to tear Lieberman's jeans as though they are made from paper. "Meeting with students without any underwear, Counselor?" she observes. "See, you ARE a perv!"

"Kim..." gasps Lieberman. "This... is... highly... inappropriate..." He's completely exposed to her now, and completely erect. She grabs a hold of his sweatshirt with both hands and rips it completely in half vertically so that it falls open like a loose waistcoat. She can see that he is no stranger to the gym.

It might be because he is hypnotised by her beauty and unable to move or it might be that he knows there is no point trying to fight her but he makes no effort to resist as she pulls each half in turn off his arms. And then her hands return to what's left of his jeans. Two more tugs tear the remaining material away, leaving him still sat in his chair, but now as completely nude as she is. "Kim... no... this... this... isn't... right..." he pants as she stands before him, obviously aroused, the physical embodiment of feminine power and beauty.

"You don't seem to be minding, Counselor." Kim observes glancing down at his upstanding penis. "Besides, this was YOUR idea."

"My... idea?... No... No... I... I... just..."

"Didn't you say I needed to find out what it was like to do it now that I'm super? Well, for once I'm following your advice."

She drapes her lovely long arms over his shoulders. The contact makes him tremble with excitement, despite himself.

"Kim... I... we... you..." his protestations are becoming less and less coherent, like a radio station signal fading into static. He makes an attempt to squirm away from her apparently loose embrace.  But those two slender forearms, just resting on his shoulders, suddenly feel like warm, solid steel when he tries to push his body upwards to dislodge them.  He fails to move them even so much as a hairsbredth.  Her shapely smooth long legs prove just as impossible to budge.  He strains to force them back, the prominent muscles in his own far thicker legs expanding as he grunts, but he is wasting his energy. She has him exactly where she wants him, so that is where she is keeping him.

It is not a conscious effort on her part to trap him; she has put her arms and legs where she desires, and he is powerless to do anything about it.  Kim has always thought of Counselor Lieberman as quite cute, for a teacher. In her present mood, that's more than enough. She's decided that she wants to have him. And she is more, so very, very much more, than he can resist.

She moves closer yet, carefully placing her feet either side of his chair so that she is straddling him.  Her slender ankles meet his and simply push them out of the way.  He has to point his feet uncomfortably onto his toes to accomodate her.  She starts to bend her knees, bringing her tingling, hungry sex towards his throbbing member, and her amazing breasts towards his wide-eyed face. She shudders as the very tip of his organ touches the outer edges of her labia. Her chest fills Lieberman's vision and he can no longer hold back. He leans forward and gently kisses her right breast. "Oooh yes!" Kim hisses. Encouraged, and losing himself completely now, he kisses it again. Then he takes her big, pink nipple into his mouth and sucks. She throws her head back and moans.

She is astounded by the sensitivity of her body now. Every touch, every kiss, every lick feels so wonderful. As she lowers herself on to him, and his shaft parts the curtains to her inner core and slowly enters within, her eyes close and her mind fills with brilliant colours. The sensation is amazing, as though every cell of her body is being stimulated at once. She continues to take him in, bending her knees until she has engulfed his entire length. They both groan with pleasure.

 

"Sir, should we... go in?" Agent Ferguson asks. He's with Agents Thomson, Green and Hammer as well as three other F.B.I. men whom we haven't met yet. They are all clustered around a closed-circuit television monitor, in the opposite corner of the warehouse, closely watching the encounter between Kimberley Peterson and her School Counselor. Unsurprisingly, several of them have felt the need to loosen their neck-ties in the past few minutes.

"Does he look like he needs rescuing to you?" replies Hammer, with heavy sarcasm.

"But... he's supposed to be appealing to her conscience! Convincing her to co-operate with us..." Ferguson points out.

"E.T.A. for the laser-weapon from San Diego is one hour twenty-five minutes. We just need him to distract her until it's here," says Hammer. "I'd say she was pretty distracted right now, wouldn't you?"

 

Kim has started to pump her legs, drawing herself almost entirely off him and then lowering herself back onto him over and over. It's wonderful how effortless it all seems now. He's no longer kissing her, but she adores the sensation of his rough, unshaven chin and cheeks scraping against her big, round breasts, so she uses her left hand to hold the back of his head and press his stubble to her chest as she bounces up and down on his lap.  Lieberman tries to move his face back.  She's bending his neck almost painfully and he needs to breathe.  But the small feminine palm resting on the back of his head keeps him immovably in place.  She can feel something beginning to build deep inside her. Something amazing. Keen to help it grow and blossom, she increases the pace of her movements, casually holding his face to her magnificent, jiggling bosoms, utterly unaware that he is fighting increasingly urgently to pull away.

She's getting close now. She arches her back slightly, making him bend further as she keeps his face pressed to her chest.  She wants more... just a tiny bit more.  Her free hand grips the back of his chair and lifts and tilts the furniture and its contents to a slightly more favorable angle for penetration.  It's an effortless manoever for her, but it causes his entire body to move as though he were weightless. Lieberman feels painful pressure on his groin as he is squeezed between the chair and Kim's loins.  She uses her hold on the chair to pull him an extra few millimeters into her with each bend of her knees. All four of the seat's legs are now off the ground.  Lieberman's back has to bend to her rhythmic whims, the strain hurting him more and more, but there is nothing he can do to resist her amazing strength.  He cannot even cry out in protest, as she effortlessly keeps his head jammed against her breasts.

He is scared.  Scared that his spine will crack, or that his pelvis or his hips will break.  Scared that she will suffocate him, or crush his nose with her big bouncing breasts.  But her beauty is much more powerful than his fear.  Her irresistible sexuality and the extremity of the stimulation he experiences each time she thrusts him so deeply in to her overwhelms him.  She feels him become tense inside her and then she feels the hot spray of his seed into the core of her womanhood. She has felt a man's orgasm inside her before, but the feeling as pulse after pulse of warm ejaculation hits is totally different this time. It's incredible! The stimulation pushes her over the edge and her own release comes. Her entire being is filled with ecstasy. Wave after wave after wave of ecstasy.

"Yesssss!" she cries as her orgasms go on and on. She finally stops pumping her legs but the pleasure continues to tear through her, peak following peak. She lets them ride over her, lost in the sheer enjoyment of the myriad sensations. It is several minutes before she regains composure. When she does, she's surprised that she doesn't feel short of breath. Her legs don't even feel tired. In fact, she feels absolutely, totally awesome.

Kim releases the hand holding his head and Lieberman can finally relax his aching neck.   It's not that she is aware of his discomfort or concerned for his well-being.  She lets go of his head simply beacuse she wants to use her fingers to brush a few strands of silky brunette hair from her eyes.  Meanwhile, he gasps for air, moaning in pain with every relieved gulp of desperately-needed oxygen. The massive orgasm he has experienced was almost an incidental occurrence amidst the battering he has received. There were moments when he thought he was about to die. Several of them in fact. He has spent the past few minutes being alternatively smothered then clobbered by Kim's large, superhuman breasts. He is physically exhausted. He looks like a boxer whose trainer should've thrown the towel in much sooner. His face is covered in bruises. He has two black eyes and a cut lip. She has mercilessly pounded his lap with her gloriously firm butt, leaving the flesh of his thighs a rapidly darkening mass of overlapping marks. His back aches terribly.  He feels fortunate... very fortunate to have survived.

Kim's still holding the chair he's sitting in off the floor at a slight angle.  It all feels so light to her that she has pretty much forgotten that she is supporting his weight with just one of her hands. At last she notices his gasping and the marks on his face.  She loves the fact that he looks exhausted while she feels as full of energy as when they started.  Being super is so cool!

She finds herself uttering a sentence that she never before imagined would pass her lips.  "That was great advice!" she declares, looking and sounding completely fresh in complete contrast with Lieberman. "I DID need to find out what it was like now that I'm super. It's totally fucking amazing! Let's do it again!"

 

The sun is up over the horizon. Its heat is the first thing Randolph feels as the fog clears from his head. Its light dazzles him as he tries to open his eyes. He remembers the two strangers in the desert, a gun being pointed at him and then... nothing. He must have fainted. That explains why he's lying on the dusty ground and why his head is spinning. But it does not account for the pain in both his lower legs. He tries to move them and finds he can't. He squints in the early sunshine and lifts his head to see why.

There is a man lying across his legs. Randolph glances along the prostrate body, notes the pistol still in one hand and then sees a congealing pool of brown-red blood surrounding the head. Repulsed, he quickly kicks and pulls his two legs free, dislodging the corpse in the process so that it rolls onto its back and he gets to see the gaping circular wound between the open, lifeless eyes. The shock makes him hurry to get to his feet. His legs are numb where the dead man has been lying, and his first dozen steps are tiny, unsteady stumbles.

The low sun is blinding and it takes him a while to adjust to its glare. Only then does he notice that the jeep is still there. And that, lying in front of it, is the man Randolph remembers with the gun. He still has the gun. He also has a big, bloody hole in the middle of his chest. The old man realises that the two bullets must have passed directly over his head moments after he fell unconscious. He is exceptionally lucky to be alive. He puts his hand into his jacket pocket and feels the reassuring heft of his Sherman crystal. It is still there, still intact. Perhaps fate is on his side, after all.

He's even more convinced that destiny is with him when he completes his search of the two vehicles. In the jeep, he finds a box under the passenger seat containing six different United States passports. None of the photos look much like him, but he selects the one that is the closest. There is also a sports bag containing dozens of packets of white powder which he leaves behind in disgust. The SUV, meanwhile, yields up an unlocked briefcase packed with hundred dollar bills. Randolph knows that this cash will hugely facilitate finding a place to work and getting hold of any new parts he might require.

The keys to the SUV are still in the ignition. He collects his box of parts and climbs in with the briefcase full of money. The engine fires first time. He heads away from the sun and back towards the Interstate. Five minutes later, he is on the highway, heading South. He is back on track. The degenerate whore on the billboard has failed to deflect him from his mission, just as the two criminals in the desert also failed. Soon he will get his power. Soon he will punish all the degenerates and criminals. But first, he must find somewhere to rebuild the de-Shermaniser.

 

Conceptfan, Mar. 2015.