Lars screamed in agony before he was reduced to ashes as well.
Lying in a pile of trash, I remained stiff. My heart raced. I barely caught my breath.
My savior, on the other hand, casually removed a pair of glasses from his blazer and put them on. He surveyed the area to make sure all was clear.
“Brecken to Ebony,” he said, pressing a tiny device in his right ear. “Targets have been neutralized. I’ll be in shortly. Brecken out.” He adjusted his glasses. “This is the last time I go hunting when my bike is in the shop,” he said. “Hopefully this is the last time I visit this godforsaken town. You should get home, Nora.”
My eyes widened in shock, “How do you know my name?”
He tossed my wallet next to me. “You left that on the bus. That’s why I was trying to stop you.”
“Were those…”
“Yes. Been hunting those two all week. They’ve been racking up quite the body count all around town, or rather had been.”
“What are you?”
“Not a lowlife.”
“I thought…”
“Oh, I know exactly what you thought,” he said evenly. “You made yourself loud and clear on the bus. And you wonder why your daughter wants nothing to do with you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, most gay kids turn out to be pretty awesome. We often go on to do some amazing things. A few of us become wizards and battle demons. Even though it occasionally means saving the lives of other monsters.”
“You have no right talking to me that way,” I snapped. “Just where do you get…”
Brecken had vanished. There was no sign of him anywhere. I would’ve almost thought I imagined the whole thing if it wasn’t for the strewn dumpster, the two mounds of ashes and my soiled clothes. It had not been the best week, though suddenly all of my problems didn’t seem to matter. With broken high heels in hand and reeking of garbage, I limped for home.
BLUE SPARK vs. THE GENTLE GIANTESS
S. J. Fujimoto
The bicep rose slowly, small but solid and tough. Fingers clenched, tensing the arm further and forcing the bicep to rise. Having reached the limits of what the body could do naturally, the nanomachines powered up and rushed in. Blue light shined under the skin, energy rushing through veins. The arm quivered, creaking as the bicep bulged out dramatically, rising like an ebony mountain. The rest of the arm followed, muscles expanding like balloons, electric blue veins pumping intense buzzing power. Every muscle was swelling, arcs of electricity dancing up and down the fantastic body.
“Aw yeah…”
No matter how many times Susan Wright enlarged her muscles it still amazed her. Standing before a full-length mirror in a gray sports bra and black trunks, the 23-year-old SCAR agent willed her body into going from athletically slim to utterly ripped in seconds. Heart pounding and sweat beading on her forehead, the transformation ended and she admired her enhanced figure. All that was missing was her costume.
“Suit On!” she commanded and lit up with bright blue light. The nanomachines spun through her system, weaving around her body. When the light faded, Susan stood tall and proud in an electric blue costume that showed off her musculature, a power symbol in white emblazoned on her ample chest. A blue mask covered her eyes and cheeks while her hair and eyes turned the same color, her once neat hair now wild and spiky.
Flexing her arms, she flashed a dazzling white grin. “Now this is a superheroine,” she said.
“Very impressive, Wright,” said Colonel Wood. Susan glimpsed her superior approaching in the mirror and turned to face her with a salute. Wood returned the gesture smartly.
Colonel Nia Wood was a short but sturdily-built middle-aged Black British, looking sharp in her blue uniform with the official badge on her left shoulder, a white jagged lightning bolt in a black circle with SCAR emblazoned below. She looked somewhat youthful for her rank but boasted several battle scars across her face.
“Colonel.”
Wood inspected Susan. “It’s all rather strange to me, but if your ‘superheroics’ bring in more funding and recruits for SCAR then I’m on board with it,” she said.
Susan grinned and planted her hands on her steely hips. “Hey, what can I say? The public notices when a super-powered sister in a cool costume comes charging in to stop supremum bad guys.”
“Especially when those suprema are also costumed,” said Wood. The colonel allowed herself a smirk. “When I founded SCAR, the UN treated us as a bit of a joke, but now that we’re seeing ‘super criminals’ plundering bank vaults, they understand I was right all along.”
She turned to leave. “Keep up the good work, Corporal Wright. Or should I say Blue Spark?”
Flexing her arms for the mirror again, Susan felt a sudden rush of energy and sparkled with blue electricity. She looked fabulous, invincible even. No wonder the media ate her up whenever she put in an appearance as Blue Spark. Speaking of which…
Susan dug her smartphone from her gym bag and opened AllGallery in the Internet browser, her favorite online art community. As usual for the Maidens of Muscle group, the updates focused mostly on fanart to Blue Spark. It was a little surreal to see herself in all kinds of styles, from photorealistic paintings to colorful comic book art. In all of them, the Blue Spark was either posing coolly or stopping bad guys. Some made her even more muscular, and a few daring ones depicted her in varying degrees of undress; heated debates raged across the Web on the appropriateness of this. It was kind of freaky but Susan figured she was already a sex symbol to them, and she couldn’t really complain since the media often criticized how “unfeminine” her muscles looked and that she would look better slimmed down. Forget that; she was proud of her muscles and loved the fandom that appreciated her.
She tapped the next thumbnail and the screen filled with a lurid digital 3D image of her breaking a burly boxer’s spine across her knee, his eyes bulging grotesquely, his mouth twisted into an agonized scream. She was modeled with a sadistic grin as she killed the man. Susan blinked; disquieted by the joy her depiction seemed to get out of the brutal beat down. It was a very skillful work too, which made it worse. The artist had put a lot of effort into it, putting in details like graffiti on an alley wall in the background and trash-filled puddles at her feet. A sordidness practically oozed from the screen, and Susan had to grimace. Sometimes killing was unavoidable but she never enjoyed the act and a significant threat was needed before she would even consider lethal force as an option.
Morbidly curious, she checked the comments.
Love her expression here. Classic!
Now THAT’S how a woman shows whos boss!
HOTNESS!!!
Dude, your my favorite artist EVAR
“OK, not what I was expecting…” she muttered. Searching related pictures, she found similar works where she was crushing men to death between her legs or punching them hard enough to shatter ribs. Eroticized killing and injuring done in loving detail, and she was at the center of it. Ugh…
One picture she stumbled upon was different, if still objectionable. An extra buff and powerful version of Blue Spark stood triumphantly glowing on a sunny beach, towering over a trio of cowering men bathed in the same glow. Two were extremely skinny and draped in oversized fitness outfits. The third was much more muscular but only on his left side; he was staring in shock as his right arm appeared to wither away to skin and bones. The artist, TheDrainiac, had written about the picture:
Hey guys! Here’s another strength-drain pic, this time with real life superheroine Blue Spark! These jocks thought they could hit on her but she taught them a lesson they’ll NEVER forget!
Susan sighed. While she had a number of powers, several of which were still unknown to her, she doubted she had anything like strength draining, and even if she did, she wouldn’t be comfortable with using it no matter how much she liked to expand her muscles; draining someone’s strength, even a criminal’s, simply wasn’t moral.
The comments didn’t
find anything wrong with it though.
And our favorite jungle goddess gets even BIGGER!
I love the size difference so funny
More bluespark please
Jungle goddess? Oh god, she had racist fetishists drooling over her.
Susan was about to close her browser in disgust when her eye fell on one last comment:
I’m literally queasy seeing this garbage. I hate strength-drain enough when it’s done with fictional characters, but to drag the good name of Blue Spark into this is unforgivable. How dare you degrade this woman, who uses her incredible strength and power to defend the innocent, for the sake of your fetish “art”? If I could I would delete every piece of foul trash you posted and smash your computer so you’d never stink up this site again. I’m serious.
Susan raised an amused eyebrow. “Whoa man. Talk about going too far in the opposite direction.” The username of the poster was TGG09. Checking TGG09’s gallery, Susan found a lot of sweet digital art of a hugely muscled blond white woman giving flowers and cuddling gently with smaller men. TGG09’s journal was anything but sweet though, consisting of endless angry rants about how cruel the world was, frequently linking to trashy tabloid news articles on murder. The art was really quite nice after all the S&M, but the artist needed a hug.
Susan closed the browser with some relief and soon was taking a hot shower. Slimming back down to her normal size, she changed into her blue SCAR uniform and beret and prepared for the rest of her day. Maybe it was time to post a gentle request to her fans to not draw her killing people.
***
The stylus moved down the tablet perfectly, as if Doug’s hand was guided by an unseen force. Simple lines merged together to form the outline of his next scene. It was one of those exquisite moments where his art was the only thing in existence; he was merely the vessel for the art, the tool of its creation, something every artistic being entered while in the midst of a creative day.
Suddenly Doug’s zone came crashing around him, his stylus slipping and running a long line right through the center of the picture, as what sounded like a cannonball slammed into his living room. Clutching his narrow chest in shock, Doug cautiously left his office and peeked into the living room. His apartment door had been torn off the hinges and hurled into the kitchen. He gaped stupidly at the sight, trying to come up with an explanation for what he was looking at, when a huge figure stepped from the kitchen. Doug stared at the giant and his knees went weak, stumbling back a step.
It was a woman, one whose shoulders were level to his head, and Doug wasn’t a short man. Her hair was a pale blond and her eyes a steel gray. She wore a brown LCPD uniform that was tight on her even though it was larger than the largest men’s size. She was beyond any bodybuilder for sheer vastness of muscle, the image of his most wild fantasies come to life.
Doug raised his trembling hands, hardly believing what he was seeing was real. “M-ms….?”
She looked down at him with utter contempt, disgust even. “So you’re Doug Loew,” she sneered.
“You…know my work?” he managed to stammer.
“Unfortunately,” the woman spat. She was so muscular that her frame blocked the doorway, but Doug could hear people leaving their apartments to see what was going on. She approached him slowly, her footsteps shaking small objects around the apartment.
Doug backed away down the corridor, his awe beginning to turn into fear. “Hey! Hey, wait…!”
He backed up into the office. She ducked to enter and blocked the door. Slowly, deliberately, she cracked her knuckles. Doug paled as he began to contemplate that this was his final night alive.
With sudden savage fury she grasped his computer’s CPU and crumpled it in one hand like a used tissue. Smoke and sparks popped from the ruined machine and Doug threw his hands over his face protectively, watching through his fingers in stunned horror.
She tore the monitor off and smashed it against the wall, then knocked his tablet to the floor and flattened it under her bootheel. Thousands of dollars worth of computer and art equipment gone in seconds. Doug let out a despairing sob as she grabbed the front of his T-shirt with a fist almost the size of his head and raised him to her eye level. He tried to beg for his life but couldn’t find the words.
“Quit your whining!” she ordered. “I’m not gonna kill you! I’m just gonna throw your ass in my own little prison. It’s more than you deserve for making the world an uglier place!”
Carrying him with a surprisingly light touch, she smashed the window open and punched a good section of the wall out too. Some of the curious tenants and a concerned police officer came into the office in time to catch the woman getting ready to leave, Doug tucked under her massive arm. “Don’t worry!” she bellowed at the frightened tenants. “There’s a new heroine in town to keep you safe, the Gentle Giantess!”
She launched herself from the hole, her mighty leap carrying her far into the night-shrouded city, Doug screaming all the while.
***
Her uniform neatly pressed, Susan strolled into the meeting hall for the superpowered agents. As usual, it was just her and Wood. One day soon, hopefully, they would have more people interested in using superpowers for protecting the world.
“Good morning, Wright,” said Wood, reading a tablet. As always she wore heavy brown gloves. They really stood out when she held her tablet.
“Good morning, ma’am.” Susan got a plate with scrambled eggs, sausages, and orange slices, taking a seat across from Wood.
“Check the news yet?” Wood asked.
“No ma’am.”
Wood slid the tablet toward her. “Take a gander. Looks like we have an assignment for you.”
“Cool.” Susan peered at the article, chewing her sausages. There was a photo of a white male with neatly trimmed brown hair, a beard, and a mustache, his plastic glasses almost comically oversized and with a big goofy grin.
ANIMATOR KIDNAPPED BY NEW SUPREMUM
Doug Loew, 35, was carried away into the night by an unknown supremum attacker.
Susan frowned as she read the rest. “‘The Gentle Giantess’, huh?” It looked like yet another case of a rogue supremum. It seemed getting superpowers out of nowhere caused people to go a little wild. She moved to the eyewitness descriptions. An extremely muscular woman? Great; the only other buff woman out there and she’s a kidnapper. The public’s view of muscular women was bad enough already; Susan really didn’t need this.
“Witnesses say she claimed to be a superheroine, but her actions don’t point to that,” Wood commented.
“Might be a vigilante,” suggested Susan. “The witnesses and coworkers say Loew’s an upstanding guy, but it’s possible he wronged her and when she became a supremum she saw her chance to avenge herself.”
Wood nodded. “She made a point to destroy his computer and tablet. What do you make of that?”
Susan considered it. “Maybe he had kiddie porn or nude photos of her and she wanted to destroy it; but if he did, she just destroyed the evidence. Wouldn’t she rather have him turned over to law enforcement?”
“Or he knew something about her that she didn’t want to get out.” Wood paused and frowned, steepling her fingers under her chin. “Do you recall there was another kidnapping involving an assailant with super strength a little earlier?”
“Oh yeah,” said Susan, snapping her fingers. “That producer guy who vanished and had a huge hole torn into his house.”
“Ed David,” Wood said as she switched to a news article about the David story. “Big time sitcom producer. Someone extremely strong tore his house apart and abducted him. Still working on the case, but if the kidnapper was also this Giantess then we might be able to get some insight into her.”
“A sitcom producer and an animator…” Susan thought about it but drew a blank. It didn’t make sense; who would want to kidnap these two? David’s kidnapping was logical since he was wealthy and could be ransomed, but Loew was just an ordinary guy from what they coul
d tell. And that was assuming they were captured by the same person; super strength wasn’t too unusual amongst suprema.
Wood stood up and brushed her uniform off. “Our people are investigating. Go take a look at it.”
“Can do! Suit On!”
Electricity crackled and Susan transformed into Blue Spark. She flashed a cocky smile. “I’ll go assist the investigators in case the cops are harassing them. Gimme a call if there are any emergencies nearby that need solving.”
***
The Las Costas Police Department tended to be reluctant to work with SCAR – a United Nations organization that employed a black woman with superpowers – so sometimes they needed some persuasion to cooperate. Blue Spark just stood in Loew’s ruined office, massive arms folded, as SCAR investigators and cops looked for clues and questioned the other tenants. She stayed quiet and her enhanced hearing picked up on the conversations around her. The cops paid her a wide berth but they quietly shared their findings with SCAR.
One cop, a wiry white guy, stumbled past her. She glimpsed his face for only a second, but it was enough to see his eyes narrow, his lips curl just a little. Her eyes narrowed back. Even if he couldn’t do anything to her, the guy brought back bad memories.
A SCAR investigator, Hank Ramírez, leafed through a portfolio of animations cels. Blue walked over to take a quick look with him. Not much to see, just various cutesy animal characters.
“Hey, I know these guys,” Hank chuckled. “My kids watch some of these shows.”
Some of them were so wacky that Blue had to smile. This Loew guy was really good. Hopefully he was all right.
Hank flipped to the last cel and paused, his brow furrowing. “OK,” he said, “either there was a really big mix-up or Loew was making more than cartoons.”
He pulled out a picture tucked behind the last cel and handed it to Blue. Her eyes widened in astonishment. It was the AllGallery illustration of her draining strength from the beach guys.
Black Power- The Superhero Anthology Page 11
