Combined with her other 2 jobs meager income, it looked like Max would actually have enough money to pay off her loans, even with her new expenses considered, by the time the school year ended. She just wished she could have gotten 2 more hours out of the school. But that would have made them suspicious of her true motives. After all, the kids at the school preferred to not do any work. They had been spoiled by having staff to attend to their every need for them and didn't understand the need to work more than was required of them by law, which was merely 8 hours a day.
She scoffed at mere thought of anyone thinking like that. If they had been through what she had been through just to get enough money to go to school, they'd quickly change their attitude and get right to work at a steady 10 hour a day job.
She finally arrived at the administration building. It was by far the grandest building on the overly large campus. Her office was on the third of the buildings 5 floors. But the building didn't have an elevator, so she had to walk up the stairs to get to her office.
Thankfully the office was adjacent to the office of the student government president rather than in the same room, so Max wouldn't have to deal with the man except when he needed her, which made her eternally glad. She hated the asshole with a passion because of his attitude towards women and would likely have ended up beating him half to death if she had to stay in the same room as him.
She entered the room and found, to her horror, the president sitting on her desk. He was reading a book of some kind but quickly closed it when Max entered. She closed the door behind her and smiled as politely as she could as the man just stared at her with a frown.
"There you are. I'm glad you're here. I need some coffee. And I need these papers copied 2215 times." the man said as he held up a small stack of papers.
"What is it?" Max asked.
"It's the new safety instruction manual for the students. Don't worry, even a woman could understand the writing." he said as he handed Max the papers. Max barely managed to conceal her scowl as he walked past her and out of the office.
"Have my coffee ready when I get back."
##########
"Amazing, you made the coffee perfectly. I was afraid the instructions would be too complicated." Max's boss said after he took a sip. "Thanks babe."
He began to walk towards his office as Max scowled at his back. But as he opened the door he stopped and turned around.
"By the way, you can go home after your first 4 hours today." He said.
"Why?" Max asked.
"You don't need the extra time. It'll overwork you."
"I'll be fine, I promise." Max said with as polite a smile as she could manage.
"Nah, you won't. Women can't handle real work. Go on home after your 4 hours are up." the man said with a frown.
"Will I still get paid for 8 hours?" Max asked.
"No. If you don't do the work you don't get the pay."
"Then I'll stay the 8 hours as dictated by my employer, the school." Max said with a poker face.
"No you won't. You're my secretary, you'll do what I say." the man replied with a slight scowl.
"With all due respect, that's not up to you."
"It is now. I know it's hard for you to understand, but I'm in charge here. And my word is the law."
"And yet you aren't the one who hired me. You asked the school for a secretary to ease your workload but agreed to let them hire one for you. You have no say in my hiring or my firing. And you also have no say in my hours."
"I know it must be hard to understand logic, being a woman, but I'm telling you I'm the one in charge here." the man as he rubbed his forehead in frustration. "If you won't take the hours I give you then you're fired."
"I don't think so." Max said with a glare. "I think it's you who has trouble with logic. I was hired by someone who is not you and merely assigned to you. Those people dictate the terms and conditions of my work. If you don't like it you can always resign and the school can elect someone who does."
"I will not be resigning. But with that outburst of attitude you're officially fired. I will not tolerate subordinance. Especially not from a weak willed woman. You're a secretary, a position held by those who are subservient to the real men of the world. You have to obey our every whim. Now get out of my sight before I have you dragged out of here."
"I think I'll be staying. Though if you feel like threatening me I can go ahead and report this little conversation to the school board. They'd be really interested in knowing you're threatening other students wouldn't they? Especially after that other incident." Max stood while talking, completely forgetting the 'rich and educated young lady' routine she'd been putting on since the day she started at the school. The man before her had pushed her buttons with his anti-female rants too many times and she wasn't going to let him think he had control any longer.
"I dare you to try. I'll have your ass over a fire so fast you'll be reeling from the thought."
"I'd like to see you try."
"Are you daring me? My father is a member of the school board. I'll just have to talk to him about our conversation. We'll just see what he says about your little outburst."
"Oh wow. You're such a wimp you have to go to your father. Did he teach you to be a crybaby or does that come naturally?" Max asked with mock surprise. "Listen, it's you who's out of line. It's not your decision in the end. And my being a woman has nothing to do with it. You're just a sexist little papa's boy who's in over his head and thinks that he should own the world simply because his father is a rich piece of golden shit."
"Now you listen here bitch, my father is a respected member of this community. He raised me when my mother abandoned me. He's the one who taught me to be what I am. And I'll tolerate no disrespect of him. If you continue I'll come over there and teach you a lesson the hard way." the man threatened.
"Go ahead and try. How do you think the school board will react when a big bad man like you beats up a helpless little girl like me?" Max asked. "After the man who broke into my dorm room last week they'll be overly eager to put your ass in a jail cell just to prove they tolerate no gender based violence."
The man sclowled deeply and began walking towards Max. Max feigned fear but when the man got close she let him grab her neck. As she did she was vaguely aware that part of her didn't want to do what she was about to do. She didn't really care though. She was tired of the people in her life who'd hurt her. She wanted payback and she was going to start getting it.
As he began to squeeze Max's neck she laughed. The attempt was laughably weak thanks to Max's new super powers. She grabbed his arms and effortlessly crushed them with one hand each. The mans scream was surprisingly silent, alerting no one to the scuffle going on behind the door to the office.
Max was prepared to let it stop there but the man, in a state of shock, brought his head up into her stomach. She staggered back from the surprise and grabbed his head. She shoved him into the ground face first, cracking his spine and killing him instantly.
Distantly she was aware of another part of her trying to take control. Suddenly that part of her managed to break through. Max ended up screaming in terror at the sight before her but before anything else happened she reigned in that distant part of her retook control of her body. After that, she looked down at the body in front of her and smiled cruelly. She now understood why she had her super powers, and she was going to fulfill that purpose.
Chapter 7:
Training
Max sat calmly in the chair at the police station. She was in the interrogation room and the detectives were pestering her with questions about the man she killed. Of course, they didn't know that she had killed him. They thought she was just a person who had stumbled upon his body.
And she was playing the part perfectly. Tears were streaming down her face to add to the performance and the officers were buying every bit of it.
"Is this your full statement?" The officer asked. Max nodded and let a few more tears run from her eyes
for dramatic effect.
"Very well. We need you to sign this slip of paper confirming that the recording we have here of this interview is your full statement. It's just a bit of legal shit that we have to worry about. Sign right here." The officer said, pointing to a line as she signed. Max shakily signed the line, making her signature illegible.
Max had claimed that she'd walked into the room to find the body on the floor and the police had believed her. This interrogation was a formality for them to have an official account of her version of the story. Then she'd be able to leave and begin preparations for training her newfound super powers.
It only took a few more minutes and a very intense ride in a police car back to the school for Max to finally be done with the police. They dropped her off right out in front of the school where a security guard was waiting. He escorted Max to her dorm room.
Since the student governments president had been found dead the school board had threatened to shut down the school again. They'd already pulled a fourth of the funding for the school and pushed it into security guards themselves via an old charter rule allowing the school board to take over the schools funding in cases of emergency. The guards were posted at every building as well as the school parking lot and all students arriving after a day out on the town were to be escorted by at least one security guard back to their dorm rooms. They'd also made the curfew stricter and required that all students be in the dorm hall before sunset. Additionally the guards would patrol at random times and check to make sure no student was trying to sneak out.
That bothered Max slightly because she still had a job to take care of. One that required her to be off campus until midnight. With her new powers it was unlikely she'd be hindered in any way, but it was still possible.
She entered her dorm room and booted up her computer. She scowled through the entire 5 minute bootup process and then logged in before going about browsing the local sale ads. She would need some supplies to help her out with her training for her powers. But she couldn't afford to spend too much on the equipment she needed. So she was buying all of it used, assuming everything she needed could be found in the local or online sales ads.
##########
Max smiled at the equipment before her. She'd found a good bit of training equipment for really cheap on the local ads. The only problem had been that she had to drag it all the way back to the factory without any help, which had taken hours. It was now midnight and she was just finishing setting it all up.
Max desperately wished she could start her training tonight but she wanted to have a proper training plan, so she left after setting it all up and spent the rest of the night deciding on how best to train and test her new powers. It took a considerable amount of time since her powers were new territory and everything she'd found was only theoretical at best. Still, around sunrise she had a solid plan and would be implementing it the following weekend.
##########
Max opened the side door to her secret lair and stepped inside eagerly. She was ready to begin her training and had decided to begin by testing her limits. Her first test was a test of strength. She'd managed to get hold of a full free weight set to test her strength with and she fully intended to use it until it broke.
To that end she'd set up the bench press. Starting with just a bar, a total weight of 45 pounds, she kept moving up the weight until she began to struggle. However that took a while. She ended up at over 450 pounds before she couldn't lift the weight anymore. Certainly a personal record for her, but not a world record by any means.
After that she moved on to other exercises and followed the same procedure until she had a baseline for her training program. She'd managed to set world records in some areas, such as 2 thousand pullups and 5 times as many pushups, but her weight bearing exercises had been stuck at less than record breaking no matter how hard she'd pushed.
Even so, she wasn't sure if she would continue gaining powers or not. So she would act on the idea that they would continue growing and train every day. Which she did. After finding her limits she began training in earnest, redoing all the exercises she'd already done. After a long training session that lasted for 6 hours she finally finished with a sprint back to campus. She would return every night to train after her job at the grocery store and continue to improve her skills until she felt she was ready.
##########
Max smiled as she held up the weight over her head. While holding the weight she looked at herself in a mirror and smiled a bit. After only a months training she'd managed to set a new record in every single exercise on her training schedule. She finally felt she was ready and decided to head on back to campus early and begin buying her new outfit that she would need.
Searching around online, Max found some cheap but new pieces to use. She ordered a pair of thick leggings, some black combat boots, a tight fitting corset, a tight fitting long sleeve compression shirt, a pair of elbow gloves, and a pair of thin black sunglasses. The order came out to around 300 dollars, a considerable amount for her tiny budget. But her income took care of it somewhat well. She'd kept her job as a secretary, though she was now working for the student government as a whole rather than one person.
It took a whole week for her order to finally arrive, but when it did she tried everything on immediately. She found that all of it fit perfectly, except for the shirt. Since it was a womens shirt the bust was larger than the waist, and her tiny breasts couldn't fully fill it in even with the corset pushing them up and out. It was something Max would have to live with though because she had already ordered it without considering that factor.
After that she finally enacted her plan and began her search on the computer and the governments public sex offender registry. She found almost a dozen registered offenders in her area who were now out on parole. Selecting the nearest one, Max left her dorm room that night. She managed to cover the distance at an astonishing 50 miles per hour, another new record both for her and the world.
Chapter 8:
Death
Max arrived at her destination, a non-descript house that was sitting suspiciously close to an elementary school in the next state over. Registered sex offenders weren't supposed to live that close to young children, regardless of their actual offense. So the fact that his address was listed as here made Max scowl hard.
She needed to find a way into the place without tripping any potential alarms that might be there. That would be hard considering the house was situated dangeroulsy close to 2 other houses and was well lit.
She stalked around for half an hour before finding a place to enter. There was a window on the next house over on the second floor that lined up with a window on the house she needed to get in to. And both windows were open. The next house had an unlit side with a generously wide alley and a window on the second floor that was directly over a car.
Max silently sprinted across the well lit street, managing to stay undetected. She slid her body on top of the car slowly to insure that she didn't set off the alarm accidentally. After she made it to the top she reached up but could just barely reach the window. She pulled herself slowly up to the window and peeked her eyes over and through the window.
It seemed Max had really lucked out. The window lead to a hallway with stairs on the right. On the other side was the exact window she needed to access. She carefully looked around but saw no one. Just to be sure she peeked over the rim of her sunglasses, which allowed her to see better. Though she didn't really need to take them off. Her sight was just one of the things that had improved drastically when she gained her powers, to the point where she could see perfectly well even in a dark alley at night while wearing sunglasses.
Still she saw no one around still and decided to test the window and found that it was unlocked. Max slid the window open quite easily and with no noise. She quietly slipped in, making the minimum crack necessary in the window to fit through and gently landed on the floor. It creaked a little under her weight and she tensed up. After
nearly five minutes no one showed up and she quietly crept across the floor.
Parts of the floor creaked beneath her miniscule weight and she tensed up many times. But so far no one had come to investigate. When she reached the first door on her left she stopped and focused her senses. She couldn't sense any living thing inside the door, but decided not to play on the assumption that no one was there. She hadn't been able to properly test her ability to sense living things and wasn't ready to rely on it just yet.
So she crept on slowly, eventually reaching the window without anyone finding her. She climbed out and crossed the houses carefully. She made it inside the other one without being noticed, which was a mild surprise. She hadn't bothered to check if anyone was watching because the alley she passed over was well lit and she didn't want to be exposed for too long. She figured if anyone had noticed her she could quickly incapacitate them and continue on with her mission.
She looked around, find the room she was in was very dark. There was only one window, which she crouched to the side of while inspecting the room. It was a very empty and non-descript wooden room. There was nothing at all in the room except a poster for a concert of some kind on the door.
Max moved across the room slowly and found that the wood once again creaked a little under her weight. Cursing her luck, she continued along slowly while extending her sense out to see if anyone was about to enter the room.
Once Max reached the door she opened it slowly and, to her relief, it made absolutely no noise. On the other side of the door Max found a set of stairs to her immediate left and a door just across the hall. Straining her ears, she picked up some minor noises from underneath the door. Max layed flat on her stomach in the hallway to peer under the door but the room curved back to the left and she couldn't see much of anything inside it.
Chronicles of the Supers (Book 1): Born From Darkness (The Story of Max) Page 5
