Of Masks and Marvels
By Bek D Corbin
edited by Steve Zink
Chapter Twenty Six
As weird as it sounds, what was
going through my mind was a version of one of those old ‘True Romance’ comics,
with Ted and Della smootching in the background. In the foreground was a Roy
Lichtenstein version of me biting my knuckle as a tear drops artistically from
my masked eye. In the thought bubble was, “Oh, Ted! How could you? *Sob!*”
Yeah, I know there usually is more, hinting at the plot (such as it was) of the
story inside, but hey, gimme a break! I was upset!
I was upset.
Oh God, I AM turning into a
woman. I think that being upset is a valid reason for turning my brain off.
But, on that note, let me say
that being upset as a woman is vastly different from being upset as a man. When
a guy gets pissed, his world narrows down to this thin little window that’s
filled with what he’s pissed at or about. When a woman gets pissed, it’s almost
exactly the opposite; everything happens, all at once. I was pissed at Ted,
jealous of Della, angry at being played for a fool, embarrassed, disappointed,
insulted and a whole tossed salad of other stuff. I was going in all different
directions at once, but not going anywhere at all, and wearing myself out in
the process.
I wanted to do so many things! I wanted to throw
myself at Ted and beg him not to leave me! I wanted to throw myself at Della
and rip her a new one, for coming between Ted and me. I wanted to break down
and cry. I wanted to lay the entire resort to waste, and kill everyone. I
wanted to run away, and crawl under my bed with my wubbie.
Instead, I just stood there.
Man, being this emotional is exhausting!
I watched them for a minute that seemed like an
eternity.
Della pulled herself away from Ted, turned and
walked a few paces. She spread the rig on her back, which acted as some sort of
framework for the iridescent ‘wings’ that formed, and she flew off in the
general direction of the hotel.
I steeled myself, then marched up to the green.
“Okay, Lover-boy, exactly what the HELL was THAT?” I folded my arms across my
chest and glowered at him.
Ted started, and pointed confusedly at where the
Blue Angel had been. “That?” He collected his composure a bit, and shrugged. “I
guess you could say that it was rozbiluto.”
“Roz Billuto? I thought that her name was
Della.”
“Rozbiluto,” Ted said with an amused look that
was really ticking me off, “is a Russian word. There isn’t really an equivalent
for it in English. It isn’t love, but it’s sort of what’s left, after love has
faded. It’s the ember that warms, but doesn’t have the real fire of love. It’s
an echo that has the sound, but none of the meaning of the word. It’s what you
feel for an old girlfriend, when you’ve both moved on.”
“Oh? Am I supposed to believe that- *mrmphf!*”
Ted cut me off in mid-bitch by sweeping me up in his arms and kissing me
deeply. I struggled briefly, but gave up and snuggled into the kiss. I mean, he
was kissing me, not Della, so who was I to complain?
I mean, if nothing else, it kept me from going
off in all directions. Unfortunately, the direction that it was sweeping me to
was flat on my back, with Ted right on top of me. And I only say
‘unfortunate’, because I was seriously NOT in the frame of mind to be thinking
about a certain *ahem!* ‘physical condition’ - such as my technical
maleness - and the very embarrassing repercussions of where we were headed.
Ted was kissing me, and he had his gloves off.
He was running his bare hands all over me, and I was digging it with everything
that I had. He slipped a hand under my bodice cup and was cradling my breast
with a gentle grip. I’ve pleasured myself many times since I’ve grown them,
fondling my own breasts, but having another hand on them is so much better.
I ran a loving hand down Ted’s flank and felt
the hardness between his legs.
And the Size.
Wow! I knew that the body shaping aspect of The
Power wasn’t just limited to growing big muscles, but... Wow!
Oh God, I wanted Ted so badly just then! I
wanted him inside me...
Only I didn’t have any real place to put him. I
had nowhere up front, and the back door just wasn’t ready for something of that
size. I’d been so busy carefully NOT thinking about it, that I’d never really
prepared myself for it. And to finesse something like that inside, would take a
LOT of preparation.
Dammit, I had to break this off, before it got
Film Noir. But I couldn’t just leave Ted hanging. Hell, I would have a hard
enough time forgiving myself for leaving ME hanging!
I pulled my mouth from Ted’s and said, “Ted!
Ted, before we go any further.” He mashed his mouth against mine again. ‘Ted!
This is important! While I can still control myself!”
He pulled back, panting heavily. “What? I’m not
going-”
I shushed him with on fingertip on his lips.
“No, You’re not. God, I want you so badly. But I can’t give myself to you.” He
started, and I shushed him again. “And NO, it’s not you. It’s Me. I’m ready and
willing, but I’m not able. You see-”
Okay, Maxine, think quick! You’re supposed to be
able to think clearly in a crisis! Come up with something!
“Well, Ted, you know how some women when they
climax, they cry, or scream, or break into song, or even spurt milk?”
He nodded, heroically listening, despite his
hormones.
“Well...I...uhm...I...jolt..."
“Jolt?”
I ran an electrical spark across two fingers.
“Jolt.”
“Even...?”
“Especially there. You would not believe the
number of *ahem!* ‘vibrators’ that I’ve ruined.”
I felt him start to wilt. Hey, the prospect of having
your tube steak grilled will do that to a guy! “But don’t worry, there’s no way
that I’m going to just send you home.” I kissed him deeply and stroked him. It
took a bit - remember, ‘jolt?’ - but he responded.
I pulled his trunks down and let him free. As I
stroked his increasingly hard member, I pulled my mouth free. “Do you know how
wonderful you are, Ted?” I whispered huskily. “You are so strong, so powerful,
so passionate. I know you want to take me, and you’re strong enough to do that,
but you were willing to wait. God, that is SO sexy! I want you so much, I can
only imagine how much you want me. I’m working on a solution...” I kept on
working his member, as I alternated kissing him deeply, rubbing myself against
him, and telling him how wonderful he was - which, I admit was getting ME as
worked up as it was him! The better part of an hour later, he ejaculated onto
my gloved hand. Which may not have been a testament for my technique, but
definitely promised great things for after I got my *ahem!* ‘problem’
taken care of.
We got up, and as Ted pulled up his pants, I
stammered a few apologies about ‘second best’. Ted just pulled the half-mask
that he wears under his helmet down, and reached over to pull mine off. I
released the electromagnetic bond, letting him take my mask off. It was a
surprisingly intimate gesture. He gave me an amused look, and picked me up in
his arms. Without a word, he shot straight up, until we were well over the
clouds. We shared looking at the tops of the moonlit clouds for a moment, and
then Ted looked at me, cradled in his arms. “You know something, Max? You try
too hard. You want to give everything that you possibly can. And that’s a good
thing. But you don’t appreciate all that you already do,” he ran a finger
across my cheek, “you’re worth waiting for, Max. The best things in life always
are.”
Now, I ask you - how could you NOT throw your
arms around him and kiss him within an inch of his life?
*****
We floated there, locked in each other’s arms,
dancing over the tops of the clouds, for I don’t know how long. Finally,
regretfully, we said ‘I love you’ to each other, separated and dropped down
through the clouds on our own. It was such a good exit that I didn’t have the
heart to ruin it by looking for Ted on the way down to the hotel.
I didn’t need electromagnetics to float down the
hall, as I returned to our room. If this is what being in love is like for
women, then I gotta invest in Romance Novels. In a lovely rose-tinted emotional
haze, I stripped out of my costume and headed for the shower. The shower took
on a whole new aspect, as I soaped myself up, imagining that my hands were
Ted’s hands, roving all over me.
Unfortunately, there was a downside to all of
this emotional euphoria. I’d made sure of Ted’s physical needs, but I wasn’t
really in a position to do anything about mine. My body was all revved up, with
nowhere to go. As I settled into my bed, I felt something under my pillow. I
reached under the pillow and pulled out a lumpy manila envelope marked ‘Max’.
I opened the envelope and inside where a large
plastic vibrator, a tube of lubricant and a note. The note said, “I figured
that you were finally ready, and might need this before the night was out.
(signed) Amy.”
I held up the large plastic cylinder and
mentally compared it to Ted. Well, it was a step in the right direction!
*****
Y’know, to this day, I have NO IDEA of when Hex
put that there?
*****
I woke up the next morning to the sound of the
shower. I was just getting the covers off and getting the sand out of my eyes,
when Amy came out of the bathroom. “Good Morning!” she sang at me. “Well, you
look like YOU had a good night last night!”
“And you’re looking pretty chipper yourself!” I
shot back.
“Yeah, well, I know that at least _I_ got my
ashes hauled. But from the smile that was on your face...”
“Your present was vastly appreciated.”
Amy settled on her bed and leered at me. “And
how did the rest of the evening go?”
Oh, she wanted details. And I was feeling so
good, that I gave them to her. In graphic detail. Amy grinned. “ooohhh!
And Ted?”
I held up the dildo. “ ‘Big Chuck’ here is a
pale comparison.” I gave her a wry glance. Hey, two could play at this game.
“And, so, how was the Thaumaturge?”
Amy shot me a wicked grin. “Oh, it was just...magical...”
I swatted her with a pillow in retaliation, and
we got into a Class A pillow fight. After we vented for a bit, the fight
dissolved in a flurry of giggles. That out of the way, Hex called down for a
breakfast from Room Service. Then she asked me to tell her all about it, from
the very beginning.
I did, and included the parts about TurboCharger
and the Blue Angel. She was appreciative about TC - she said that it never hurt
to have a ‘wide range of interests’ - but her good mood seemed to fade a bit
when I told her about Della.
“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, that’s something that Della
would do.”
“Talk with Ted, and see if there’s any sparks
left?”
Amy sighed. “Oh, that too. But I was talking
more about meeting him on the golf course, when she had to know that he was
going to be meeting with you.”
“What?” I raised an eyebrow. “You mean, she was
trying to come between Ted and me? Why? She-”
Amy gave a rueful laugh. “Oh, not that. Max,
Della has a lot of absolutely sterling qualities, but she is an utter,
unrepentant drama queen!”
“Come again?”
“Max, while all say that we do the whole
superhero thing out of a love of Justice, the truth is we all have our ulterior
motives - you do it to compensate for that inferiority complex of yours. I do
it as a way of balancing out my way of making my living. Ted does it seeking
redemption. Twist does it out of a love of danger. Diego does it because he has
a triple scoop of the ‘big kid’ in him. God alone knows what goes through
Brenda’s head. And Della? She thrives on the drama of it all.”
“So, you think that she deliberately-”
“Deliberately? No, not in the usual sense of the
word. I doubt that Della consciously thinks these things out. As a matter of
fact, I know that when she thinks about it, she wonders why all the melodrama
keeps coming up to slap her in the face. But, she keeps doing things in such a
way that creates tense situations. When she was with us, we kept getting in
loggerhead situations with the Cops. She started up that weird three-way
situation with Ted and Brenda, despite the fact that Ted and Brenda were trying
to sort out how they felt about each other. And, she handled it in such a way
that neither Ted nor Brenda could really get a clear idea of what she was
about. And then, Jack came along, and she had TWO romantic triangles going at
once. And when the stress of all this got too much for her, she left in the
most dramatic way possible, which almost demanded that one of them follow her
to Seattle.”
“That sounds pretty-” I tried to get in
edgewise.
“Premeditated? Calculated? Not really.” Amy was
on a roll, and there was no stopping her. “The Unconscious doesn’t really work
that way. No, Della dealt with the situation in the way that she felt best, as
she saw the way things were. The thing is, the Unconscious doesn’t spell things
out - you, of all people, should know that. Instead, it colors how you see
things, how you feel about situations and people, and it highlights certain
options, while blinding you to others. The Unconscious is like a stage
magician, guiding what you see and when you see it. But, like a stage magician,
once you know its tricks, and what it’s trying to pull, you can see the cards
up its sleeves and the trap door.”
“And Amy’s ‘stage magician’ wants to create all
those ‘High Drama’ situations?”
Amy shrugged. “My guess is that it’s some kind
of validation. Past that, it isn’t really any of my business.”
“Well then, what was that business on the golf
course all about, then?”
Amy put off answering as the breakfasts came,
but continued over French Toast. “I don’t really know. Maybe she feels that
she’s fading into the background, with all these superheroes around. Or, maybe
she’s worried that Jack feels too secure, and wants to scare up a little
interest. Or, maybe she just wants a quick, no-frills drama fix, and she’s
expecting you to confront her today, so there’ll be a big scene, complete with
passionate reconciliation.”
I shook my head, trying to clear my mind of all
this nonsense. Then I looked Heavenward. “When did my life become a Soap
Opera?”
Amy grinned. “Hey, don’t sweat it! If you make
your bones on a soap, eventually they give you a tryout on a SitCom or Cop Show!"
“So, do you think that she’ll try anything, if I
don’t rise to her bait?”
“I doubt it - but make sure that you stay away
from Jack. He’s not averse to a little High Drama himself.”
“And, it would give her an excuse to stir
something up.” I gave out a gusty sigh. Then I looked at Amy. “Well, enough
about me.” I gave her a big grin. “So, tell me about YOUR night!”
She leaned back and grinned. “It was just what
the doctor ordered. One of the downsides of being a telepath is that even when
you don’t want to, you tend to know more about your romantic partners than is
really healthy. Unless it’s True Love, too much information can be HELL on an
affair. But, like this, I can get the lovin’ I need, without all the
entanglements.” She snapped her fingers. “That reminds me! I have to arrange an
appointment with The Doctor!”
“Who?”
“No, he got canceled, years ago. Finally.”
“Very funny; now, who are you talking about?”
“The Doctor. The Word is that he’s a *ahem!*
‘retired’ superhero who’s a licensed physician. He’s one of the foremost
experts in The Power and how it affects our bodies. And, more to the point, how
it can screw up our bodies. He comes to all the Cons, in case anyone needs an
examination or a preliminary medical opinion, without dragging a doctor who
isn’t ‘in the loop’ unnecessarily. I want him to take a look at you, and see
what he can do about finishing up your journey to the Pink Side.” Amy screwed
up her face dramatically and said in a ‘Darth Vader’ voice, “Come over to the
Pink Side, Max. It is your destiny!”
“Is this the point where you tell me that you’re
my mother?”
Amy clocked me with a pillow, and we went at
another round of it.
*****
We passed the next few hours in pleasant girl
talk. The workshops wouldn’t start until nearly Ten. Amy and I weren’t the only
ones who’d had late nights. Apparently the hallways between Five and Seven in
the morning were a caped version of the ‘French Bedroom Farce Sneak’.
I went downstairs at about Nine. This was the
part of the day when there wasn’t anything scheduled. Those who needed the
extra sleep could get it, and the others could mix freely. It was strictly
civvies, and no masks. Any of the hotel staff who was carrying a camera did so
at the risk of their own lives. Since it was casual, I was wearing a denim
skirt and a white polo shirt.
Do NOT ask me why I thought that that was worth
mentioning.
I got a cup of coffee and wandered around for a
bit. Except for the fact that everyone there was suspiciously trim and
athletic, it could have been any other group of conventioneers. Still, there
was a definite air of authority and dynamism that sort of dispelled the
possibility that it might be some sort of casting call for a soap opera.
I was walking around, looking to get into one of
the conversations, but most of the people there already seemed to know each
other. Sort of defeats the whole idea of getting together to get to know new
people, if you ask me.
I was listening in on a group talking about
carnivorous sewer blobs, when I heard, “Hey! L.L.!’
Well, unless Lois Lane is doing a special guest
appearance - hey, at this Con, it could happen! - I guessed that someone was
looking for me. I turned around and looked for the caller.
I spotted a rather nice looking guy who was
looking over the lobby, so I went up to him. “Yes? You want something?”
“Excuse me?”
“You called for me? ‘L.L.’? Lady Lightning,
that’s me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I meant Lady LIBERTY!” He pointed
at the tall woman with long curling black hair, who’d come up on my blind side.
Okay, I admit it - I’m not proud of it, but I
admit it - I did a total fan-nerd geek-out. But gimme a break, Lady Liberty is
HUGE - and I don’t mean that she grows to ten stories possibly, with
proportionate strength! Though, she does that, too. She’s one of the major
heroes in America’s first city. Heck, she not only has an action figure, but
one with a Kung Fu grip!
I don’t have an action figure. I don’t even have
a line of crummy Tee-shirts!
I totally spazzed out. Lady Liberty was looking
at me like ‘where’s Security?’ I realized what I was doing, and I made it even
worse. I desperately tried to get my foot out of my mouth and make a good
impression, but Lady Liberty was obviously looking for a way to disengage
herself from a drooling fan-geek. I started blithering. I don’t really remember
exactly what I said-
-no, I remember, I’m just working very hard at
forgetting it.
Then the guy who called Lady Liberty seemed to
recognize my name. “Excuse me, did you say, ‘Lady Lightning’?”
“ah, Yeah - it wasn’t MY idea, the newspapers
seem to be really big on the whole ‘LL’ thing - Lady Liberty, Lady Lightning,
Lois Lane, Lex Luth-”
“Aren’t you the Lady Lightning with AEGIS?”
“ah, Yeah. I’m the rookie member.” I gave a
rueful look at Lady Liberty. “As is all too obvious. Hey, I’m sorry about the
whole-”
“Aren’t you the one who’s been dealing with the
Symbiont Syndicate for the last few months?”
I raised both eyebrows. “You mean that name
TOOK? Geez, alliteration really is all the rage!”
“Yeah, so what?” Lady Liberty snorted. “The
Syndicate has been making strikes all over the country-”
“Libby,” the guy cut in, “this is the Lady
Lightning that the boards say is the one who’s been kicking the ass of a
certain flaming pain in the ass from Hungary.”
Libby stopped dead in her tracks and looked at
me incredulously. “What? You mean that YOU have fought She-Devil?”
“More often that I personally care to think
about,” I returned, not knowing where this was going.
“You fought her and WON?”
It was my turn to give her a look. “You make it
sound like that’s hard. Okay, she’s tough, but someone like you, your only
problem would be scraping her off the bottom of your boots.”
“You’ve beaten her?” Lady Liberty took me by the
shoulders and shook me. “HOW?”
I looked at the guy. “I take it that you two
have crossed paths with the Pest from Budapest?”
The guy - I found out later that he was Reverb,
without the speaker costume - nodded. “Yeah. She, Berserker and that Nazghul
character blew into the Big Apple, and kinda handed us our asses.”
I barely restrained a grimace. <eeewww…>
“Nazghul, now, HE’S nasty! But She-Devil?”
“HOW DID YOU BEAT HER?” Lady Liberty grated.
“I just punched her. Okay, I usually go for the
face shots with ol’ Shiela - besides being the most lightly armored spot on her
body, it has the added advantage of shutting her up! God, does
that woman ever STOP TALKING?”
“You PUNCHED her?” Libby was aghast. “You went
up against THAT and PUNCHED it?”
“aaahhh...yeah.”
Lady Liberty was still scraping her jaw off the
carpet when Amy walked up and told me that I had an appointment with The
Doctor.
*****
Amy pulled me away from a still croggled Lady
Liberty and took me up to one of the Hospitality Suites. The suite was full of
top of the line equipment - hey, I pride myself on being a Tech Geek, and I
could identify half of that stuff! But even with all the technological glory
crammed into that room, The Doctor himself sort of dominated it. Under the lab
coat, he had a professional wrestler’s build, and there was something about his
face that suggested that here was a man who was used to using his brain more
than his brawn. I wondered which hero he’d been, and why he retired. And then I
saw the cybernetic hand. Then I noticed that he favored his right foot, and
took a wild guess as to why he had to retire.
He gave me a comforting look. “Okay, just to get
it out of the way, Amy told me about your condition. You’re the first case of
Male-to-Female transformation that I’ve dealt with, but if it means anything to
you, now that I think about it, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you weren’t
the first one.”
“Oh?” I sat down on the examination table. “Any
clues, or would that be violating Patient Confidentiality?”
“More to the point, it would be wild guesses.
Still, these persons did go on to lead long and useful careers - well, at least
the heroic ones did.”
I looked at him quizzically. “Supervillain sex
changes?”
“Think about some of the supervillainesses down
the years - red hot super-babes who really seemed to have a grudge against guys
at the beginning, and eventually became real man-eaters as they got used to it.
So, Maxine, how do you feel about your rather radical change in physique?”
I took a long breath. “Okay, it was hard at
first, and I spent a lot of time in denial. But, I had a lot of support and I
managed to come around.”
“So, you’re looking forward to becoming female?”
I shrugged. “It’s not that I’m glad that I’m no
longer male, it’s more like I realize that there are a lot of good things about
being female, and I wanna be able to enjoy them.”
“So, you got someone in mind?”
I paused, looked at him, and decided to chuck
that last little bit of Male Ego. “Yep. I got a guy who makes me wanna do all
the stuff that guys aren’t supposed to do with other guys. And I’m tired of
giving him phony excuses.” I looked at The Doctor, and he looked at me, and the
roof didn’t cave in. There! That feels a lot better!
“And exactly what do you want from me?”
“Well, I guess, I want to know what’s going on
with my body! It’s changing, I know that. But, how far will it change? Will I
become a fully functioning woman, all on my own, or will I have to have some
kind of surgery to make it happen? Is having children an issue? How fast is
this going to happen? Are there things that I should or shouldn’t do? Doc, I’ve
been stumbling through all of this pretty much in the dark, largely because I
didn’t have anyone to ask - I’d like to make some informed
decisions for a change!”
He nodded, and began asking a lot of rather
disjointed questions. I told him about my over-taxing my powers and recharging
by hugging electrical appliances, about bleeding pink after a really bad fight,
and about Amy’s little trip to the High School inside my head.
He asked me to undress. “I have a nurse, if you
want...”
“No! No, I’m fine as is...” Y’know, undressing
in front of a stranger is even weirder as a girl than as it is as a guy?
Then he had me lay down, and ran a series of
sensor suites over me. He conducted a more ‘hands on’ examination with that
cybernetic hand of his, which he used to probe my mouth, nose, and *ahem!*
‘other’ orifices.
When that was over, he had me dress. “Okay, Max,
I can’t give you anything major, right off the bat, but I can make a few
educated guesses.
“First and foremost, my guess is that you ARE
turning into a woman. I took several cell samples, and I’m betting that while a
few of them still have XY chromosomes, there are a bunch of XX in there as
well. The sonogram indicates that there’s a viable development in your
abdominal cavity that’s the right shape and placement for a developing uterus.”
“Really?” I asked brightly. Y’know, a year ago,
if you had told me that I’d be ecstatic about growing a uterus, I’d have said
that you were crazy. “How far along is it? How soon?”
“Patience, patience. It’s still developing.
Indeed, it’s remarkable that it’s as large as it is. While we all have vestigal
traces of the primary sex organs of the opposite gender, they’re usually very
small - half of a pea small. And we’re not talking about a big pea, either. So,
the fact that it’s as big as it is, and apparently viable, is very
encouraging.”
That ‘apparently viable’ bit worried me. “You
ARE sure that it’s viable, aren’t you? It’s not something --cancerous, is it?”
“Oh, I’m sure that it’s not cancerous - cancer
tissue has a very unique sonogram signature.”
“So, by ‘viable’, do you mean that I have visits
from ‘Cousin Flo’ in my future?”
“Possibly.”
“And...eventually...?” I mimed cradling a baby
in my arms.
“Too soon to be sure.”
“So...is there any way that I can speed this up,
or slow it down, or whatever?”
“Well, I don’t have all the numbers from the
tests crunched yet, but I’d say there’s one way to speed it up - but I wouldn’t
recommend it.”
I urged him to say it with my expression.
“You can get the crap kicked out of you.”
“Say WHAT?”
“Well, this is just an educated guess, but the
‘pink’ in your urine that you describe sounds a lot like blood - laced with a
LOT of white blood cells. My guess is that every time that you take a pounding,
your body heals itself, following the pattern set by that template inside your
head. Your body is healing itself in that direction constantly, but at a slower
rate. Ironically, the more damage that you take, the healthier you’ll get, since
from what you tell me, your image of this ‘perfect woman’ includes that she’s
absolutely glowing with health. Oh, and one more little thing - how tall were
you when all of this started?”
“ah, I was five-eight and change.”
“How short did you get when you were
‘contracting’?”
“Five-six.”
“And how tall are you now?”
“Five-ten.”
“While this is from data that I haven’t correlated with the other
information that I got from my tests, what I’m seeing is that while your bones
have indeed gotten denser, they’re still growing, like the bones of an
eight-year-old.”
“Well, that explains my sudden urge to climb
trees and go skateboarding. And where, pray tell, is this going?”
He sighed. People do that a lot when I try to
get all ‘Gilmore Girls’. I gotta start watching more ‘Desperate Housewives’. Or
would that only make things worse? “I think you’re going to grow at least
another inch and a half, maybe three inches.”
Six foot one? I’ve always wanted to be tall and
imposing - but wouldn’t that mean that I couldn’t wear all my heels? And why
does that upset me? “Does getting tall happen a lot in your line of work?”
“As a matter of fact, yes! As you look around at
this convention, I think you’ll find that by and large, the people here are
either tall or short, but not ‘average’. There is some thought that The Power
does run along archetypal lines, making the person’s body what they think it
should be like - which would explain the Neanderthal appearance of some
bricks.”
“Thought?” I cocked an eyebrow. “You mean that
there are people out there researching The Power?”
“Oh Yes, most definitely!” He gave me a
reassuring look. “And some of them are even doing it in legal and ethical
ways."
Eeewww... “Which implies that most of them are
doing it in illegal and unethical ways, which sounds way too much like people
that I already know.”
He nodded sagely. “Oh Yes, I’m afraid that most
of the more vicious members of the Criminal Scientist community are very
committed to finding the secret of The Power.”
“As opposed to just being committed, like all
the other froot-loops?”
“Oh, ‘Mad Scientists’ may seem comical at times,
but they can be utterly ruthless, Maxine. You have to understand, that the lower
they sink in order to do their sick experiments, the more they NEED to find the
secret of The Power, in order to justify their crimes. In their minds, the
secret of what we do will vindicate everything they do; if they stop after
causing so much pain and misery, after finding nothing, THEN they are damned.
As long as there’s a chance of finding the secret, they have a chance at
redemption.”
”Oooggg...obsessive nutjobs with
high tech. There’s an uplifting notion to start the day with.”
“Just something to remind you of exactly WHY we
put on the silly suits in the first place.” Then there was a knock at the door,
and The Doctor let Amy in, who was wearing her Ms. Hex togs and carrying a
clothes bag.
“So!” she said cheerfully as she handed me the
clothes bag, “What’s the prognosis? Everything working okay?”
“Yeah,” I grumped, “everything’s fine and The
Doctor prescribed getting the crap beaten out of me once a day, twice on
Sunday.”
“Talk to Brenda - she could stand to vent some
of that hostility,” Amy said as she helped me get dressed in my ‘Lady
Lightning’ outfit.
I grimaced. “Well, you know what they say - no
pain, no gain! Still, patience IS a virtue...”
As I finished up, The Doctor came in. “Ah, good,
Ms. Hex, we need to set up an appointment for her next examination.”
“NEXT examination?”
“Of course! You will of course be vitally
interested in the progress that your body is making, and you’ll want to discuss
the results of your tests, once all the data’s been thrown in a pot and boiled.
And, I confess, I’m more that a trifle interested in seeing where all this is
going. You’re the first complete Male to Female sex transformation resulting
from the influence of The Power that I’ve even heard of, so I’m going to want
to make several, very thorough examinations of you over a long period of time.
If nothing else, if anything does go wrong, we’ll want to spot it as soon as
possible, so that we’ll have time to figure out a treatment. And, what the
hell, it’s not like looking at you naked is a chore...”
I gave him a friendly swat on the shoulder, and
gave him a thank-you kiss on the cheek. As we walked out, I checked Amy out in
her Ms. Hex kit. “So, casual dress time is over?”
“Well, more to the point, this is the time in
the schedule when the workshops start, and unless you want to go spreading your
secret ID all over the place, it’s best if we do those in our ‘professional’
personas. So, just in case someone wants to find you, what are your plans?”
I pulled out my agenda. “Well, first of all,
there’s the Electromagnetics workshop.”
“What, didn’t you get enough of those people
last night?”
I pulled myself up into a proper huff. “THAT was
just polite socializing. THIS is heavy-duty, brass knuckles,
don’t-leave-home-without-your-calculator PHYSICS!” By the time I was finished,
I’d worked myself up into a bit of a lather. Hey, high-frequency computations
do that to some girls.
Amy shook her head. “Gawd, you are SUCH a geek!”
“I notice you never say that when the lights go
out, all of a sudden.”
“Of course not! At least not to your face.”
I gave her a warning look. “Then lunch and some
more socializing, and then the Villain Forum from One to Five. Then, I’m open
for anything.”
Hex gave me one of those smiles. “Nice of you to
put it that way! At Six, there’s a workshop that you might want to drop in on.”
She pointed at the schedule.
“‘Super-Romance Workshop with Doctor Afrodite’?”
I read. For lack of anything more sensical, I said, “Isn’t ‘Aphrodite’ spelled
with a Pee-Aitch, not an Ef?”
“Not the way she does it.” Hex patted me on the
shoulder. “Just do yourself a favor, pull your head out of the circuit boards,
and check this out.” Humpf! Humanities Major...
I parted company with Hex, and went off to join
my fellow Tech Ne --- er... Technology Enthusiasts.
I stepped into an empty elevator, when suddenly,
it wasn’t empty anymore. Suddenly, there was Fast Track gazing at me intently.
At least, I think it was intently - hard to tell through that windshield faceplate
of his. “So, do you know what happened last night?”
“It got dark?” I said ingenuously.
“No, Della snuck out without telling me. I think
she arranged to meet with Ted.”
“Oh, I know that they did,” I replied, my arms
folded across my chest.
“How?”
“Simple, I saw them.”
“HAH! I KNEW there was something going on there!”
“er, Jack, is it? Jack, even _I_ knew that there
was something going on, and I’m not exactly famed far and wide for my keep
perception in personal matters.”
Jack paced across the elevator at the sedate
rate of maybe 150 MPH. “So, do you have any idea of where they went, what they
did?”
“ah, Yeah - Ninth Green of the golf course.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Simple - I was there.”
“You were THERE?”
“Ya. Ted and I had a date to meet on the green
for a little nunna yer damm bizness, and Del beat me there.”
“Hah! So she WAS sniffing around after that big dumb-”
“Y’know, twinkletoes, you ARE talking about my
main squeeze here.”
“I can just imagine-”
“Hey, dude, I was THERE, it was-”
“If that refugee from a King Arthur movie thinks
that I’m gonna-”
“They HUGGED!”
“There is NO WAY that I’m just gonna stand still
and-” the elevator doors opened, and he shot out into the hall.
Well, THAT was surreal! I pulled my cape around
me and headed off for my Electromagnetics workshop. But, as I was checking my
schedule, I heard from one of the conference rooms, “Excuse me! Miss? You in
the black cape!”
Black Cape? I stopped and blinked in confusion
into the room. There were about twelve or so Supers in tastefully coordinated
outfits, seated in chairs facing several easels with rough drawings. “Yes?” I
asked, making no secret of my confusion.
“I was wondering if I could ask you a few
questions about your outfit.” The speaker was a trim man wearing an open black
frock coat over a swirling, polychromatic bodysuit with a half mask and visor
that showed off a stiff brush of fair hair.
“aaahhh...Sure!”
“Tell me, why did you choose to include a cape
in the design of your costume?”
“Well, to be honest, my first version didn’t
have a cape; it was sort of forced on me.”
“Hah!” Frock Coat gloated triumphantly. “In
other words, you just tacked that thing on, because it was EXPECTED of you, no
matter how much the fool thing got in the way, or how much of a danger it put
you in!”
I looked at the lobby card beside the door:
‘Costume Design Forum’. Oh god, I’ve fallen into the hands of the Fashion
Nazis! I noticed that Frock Coat was gloating almost directly at a distinct
minority of Supers who were sort of off by them selves, and rather pointedly
wearing capes. My guess was that I’d stumbled into the middle of an on-going
Cape/No Cape debate. Well, since I’d put my foot in it anyway, I might as well
do it right. “Let me guess - you all saw ‘The Incredibles’? Well, there IS
something that Edna Mole overlooked-” I held out my cape, “-this cape has saved
my life on more than one occasion. It’s lined with alloy steel chainmail, which
not only provided the protection that kept my spine from getting sliced open
once, but it helps me recharge my energy from ambient radio waves, and it helps
me fly. The exterior is flame retardant, and the interior is heat reflective.
And, since I’m rather susceptible to extreme heat, which by some perverse whim
of the Universe, happens to be the main weapon of my Arch-Nemesis, She-Devil, I
NEED all that protection. So, while I prefer to stay out of fashion debates, on
this one, Lady Lightning has to vote a big YES on capes.” I flourished my cape
and went into a stylish pose. “Capes - Functional AND Stylish.” And with that,
I got while the getting was good.
*****
The Electromagnetics workshop was the sort of
thing that I came here for in the first place. There were about eleven others,
all of us able to project electricity, or magnetism, or both. Most of us had
some form of formal training in Electrical Engineering, but the really interesting
ones were the ones that did it entirely intuitively. I mean, the things that
you can do when you don’t know that you can’t do it! I picked up a lot of
really good tricks: how to charge a cloud of sedative gas and disperse it, how
to tell the difference between grades of iron and steel from their magnetic
resonance, how to rust steel by charging it so that it oxidizes more quickly,
and stuff like that. I showed off the ‘foxfire’ trick that I used to drop
Berserker that first time, and the ‘exploding water’ trick that I used to get
out of that water trap that She-Devil stuck me in. I paid a lot of attention to
Override as she demonstrated her computer control, but I just don’t have the
exact feel or the fine touch for controlling electrical devices. Bummer. Still,
I did learn how to confuse most commercial computer chips with overlapping
fields of magnetism, that’s got to be good for something. But, with my luck,
I’ll just screw up the TV with it.
After this, the software types started nattering
about ‘digital /synaptic correspondences’ that I just had no background for
understanding. I mean, I could hold my own in computer programming, but these
guys were talking stuff that was WAY beyond C++. Seeing that this was pretty
much what they were gonna be talking about from this point on, I eased out of
the door. It was a little early for Lunch, but getting in line early seemed
like a good idea - the image of squabbling with a half-ton man-shaped mass of
granite over the last piece of lemon sponge cake popped into my head.
Then, as I was out the door, suddenly an arm
came from behind me and pulled me along. “oooh! Ted! What are you up t-
TurboCharger!”
He grinned at me, his visor pulled up. “So, ah,
how did your date last night turn out?”
“Quite nicely!” I said firmly as I disentangled
myself from his grip. “And yourself? Was she game? What did you set? Was it a
match?”
The smile never left his face. “It was all
right, but I’m afraid that she suffered from invidious comparison with my
previous encounter.”
Y’know, there is something very...exhilarating...about
having that much appreciative male attention directed right at you? But, hey,
I’d made a commitment of sorts last night, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to
muck it up by cheating on Ted already. “Hey, TC? Remember last night? I told
you that I was already involved with someone? Nothing’s changed in the last
twelve hours.”
“Oh, that’s what YOU think!” he smirked back at
me. “The Word is, that before you showed up for your rendezvous last night, the
guy that you’re being oh-so-loyal to had a nice little preliminary bout with an
old girlfriend.”
Hunh! Who’da thunk superheroes were such
gossips? I looked right back at him. “I know all about it. Blue Angel met
Justiciar on the ninth green. They resolved a few old issues, and that was
that.”
“Oh?” The smirk didn’t go away. “Is that what
happened? Is that what really happened?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?” The smirk was beginning to
piss me off.
“I know, because I was there. I SAW what
happened, and we talked about it.”
TC leaned in, and wrapped an arm around me.
“Maybe. But I still think that a woman as beautiful as you shouldn’t have to
put up with crap like that. Does Justiciar really appreciate what he has? Such
beauty? Such Grace? Such loyalty?”
“Hey,” I chuckled, “this is a superhero
convention! The place is crawling with beautiful women!” I gave
him a knowing grin. “Why don’t you try this on Override? You seemed to like the
way her baud downloaded, last night. If you hurry, you might catch her before
they really get into a closed loop about security protocols. Or are you afraid
that she’ll kick your ascii?”
The smirk didn’t go away. TurboCharger ran an
appreciative finger across my cheek. “Oh yes, there are a lot of very
attractive women here - but you? You have something special. It’s like you
don’t really understand how magnificent you are, and you don’t expect anything
for it.”
Y’know something? I didn’t get the impression
that he was trying to zoom me. He really meant it. He was willing to risk
getting his ass whupped by Ted, in order to get close to me. I wavered for a
second. “Gee, thanks, TC...but I’m gonna pass.” Still, I gave him a kiss on the
cheek before I walked away.
Am I really THAT good looking? I don’t know HOW
to be beautiful! I mean, I know that I’m good looking...but beautiful?
I went up to the room, to change for lunch, and
found Amy changing. “What’s this? Is the Thaumaturge coming back for seconds?”
“Nope, just changing for a dip in the pool
before lunch.”
Don’t ask me why, but it seemed like a good idea
at the time. I changed into the one-piece that Amy had gotten for me. It was
black, with a single arcing yellow lightning bolt across the chest. Yep, Hex
was right - an obvious ‘nah, we’re not infringing any copyrights!’ job.
We pulled on bathrobes and headed down to the
pool. The pool was a scene out of a 1950’s movie, with a bunch of extremely
healthy, very attractive men and women frolicking decorously in and around the
water. About ten feet away from the pool, I just hadda make an entrance, so I
shed my robe and slippers, ran ten steps and made an electro-charged high jump
into the air. I arced about ten feet over the pool, and came down in a perfect
dive into the pool.
Or, at least I WOULD have.
There was shriek and a loud “Oh My GOD!” Out of
pure reflex, I broke out of my dive and glanced around to see what was going
on. Unfortunately, I was still coming down, and there was nothing to
magnetically repel against, so I hit the water hard.
I came back to the surface, and looked around
hurriedly. But all the people around the pool were gawking at me with looks of
horror. Confused, I checked myself, and nothing was wrong.
Then it hit me - water and electricity. “Oh,
GIVE ME A BREAK!” I snarled at them, “How do you think I take a BATH?”
There was a generalized, "D’oh!" Then
poolside frolics resumed as before. As the ‘new kid’, there was some good
natured kidding about my ‘face fault’ into the water, which I returned with a
few deft prods at their collective spazz-out. There was some horseplay, and I
noticed that instead of doing the simple ‘shove into the water’ bit, that the
guys were going out of their way to do the ‘pick up and toss into the water’
bit.
Gee, y’think that maybe TurboCharger wasn’t just
buttering me up?
After about an hour or so of this, Hex waved to
me from the poolside tables. Lunch time! I climbed out of the water, and
accepted a towel - and a touch of drying off assistance - from a guy whose name
I didn’t catch. Then, towel draped around my waist like a long skirt, I made my
way over to the table.
As I walked up, Amy was giving me this
semi-surprised look. “What’s up, Hex?” I asked.
“You were doing the Pussycat Strut!”
“The Pussycat Strut?”
“Sure, you know-” she pointed at a bikini’d
blonde who was walking past a row of guys, her head high, back arched, in that
sort of trot that she knew that the guys were watching, and she was working it
a little. “The prance that women do, when they’ve just had their sense of their
own beauty confirmed. Honey, if you had a tail, it would be up in the air a
mile now!”
“Really?”
“You’re not weirded out by that?” Amy asked, one
eyebrow high.
“No, and as a matter of fact, I’m sort of
digging on the fact that I’m not beating myself up over it!”
“Good Girl!” With that, we dug into our lunches.
One of the great things about Superhero conventions is that it’s generally
understood that we all have pretty high caloric requirements, to power all
those superpowers, so there’s no shame in really digging in. Thank god, none of
that ‘pick at a salad like a bird’ nonsense.
“Still, this does open up a new kettle of fish.”
“Nah, I ordered the chicken.”
“I mean, that while it is all for the
best that you’ve wrapped your head around the fact that you are not only female
but a looker, you are not used to being attractive. From what I gather from
your general sense of yourself, I’ll bet that you weren’t exactly ugly, but
probably the type that sort of blends into the background. Now, when a woman
goes from ugly duckling to swan, it can play some nasty games with her head.”
“And since I’m still getting used to the fact that I’m suddenly as
good as female-”