Elle the Enforcer, my favourite creation is adventurous, confident, a force to be reckoned with, respected, feared, rich, beautiful, and female, Think of the best qualities of all the gaming and movie super-heroines, Supergirl, Batgirl,Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel and Black Widow fromThe Avengers, Sonya and Jade from Mortal Kombat, Cammy from Street Fighters, not forgetting Lara Croft, pick and mix them all up and you end up with Elle. She is the epitome of everything I see myself to be in my dreams, but a million miles away from the reality of my life.

When I was younger, while all of my classmates were enjoying the rough and tumble of sports and other energetic outdoor activities, I was the skinny weedy geek locked away in my bedroom staring at my computer screen, initially playing downloaded games or teaching myself how to work with programming apps. I also as a bit of light relief developed a talent working with art format design programs and was soon producing comic style storylines and illustrations. Because of my artistic talent and my full name as Arthur I became generally known as Art the artist, a name which stuck with me at school.

To try to get me to socialise more my parents kept signing me up for various clubs and activities, but either I didn’t take to the activity or was just totally inept at it, that is until I discovered Taekwando. There was something about it that just clicked with me, the combination of the physical training and the mental attitudes and control, just drew me further and further in and I was soon rising up the ranks and managed to achieve red belt at the age of 13, before being regraded into the next age band. However I didn’t have the growth spurt to go with getting older and was being constantly beaten by bigger and stronger opponents, although size was not necessarily a factor in the skills and techniques of Taekwando, and soon began to lose interest

That was the salvation of me, as when word got around that, despite how I looked and sounded, I could handle myself, the bullies who were picking on anybody they thought of as weak weird or vulnerable stayed well clear of me.

As time marched on, rather than spending my on-screen time trying to go up status and difficulty levels in the games that all my classmates were spending all their time on, I started to write my own programs. The early ones were relatively simple, not much above the level of space invaders or frogger, but as I became more adept at coding, they became ever more sophisticated and challenging. I started selling and sharing with my classmates, word-of mouth led to more and more sales and soon I was making a decent income and more importantly getting a better reputation. I decided to branch out and use my artistic talent to create and share my super-heroine Elle, published on my subscription website both as avatar videos and traditional-style comic books and built up quite a substantial following. When I finally left school I was earning more from my website than I would at most other jobs available to someone with my age and limited experience and went into running my website full-time.

Most of my other gaming projects fell by the wayside as I became more and more identified with my ‘Elle The Enforcer’ character.

By day Elle was sophisticated, rich and beautiful socialite Lady Eleanor Cheshire ,a respectable pillar of the local ‘great and good’ set, attending charity lunches, gallery exhibitions, the Opera and ballet performances, very much the genteel art-loving young woman, and often featured in the society columns of the local papers and on TV.

However, there was a totally different hidden side to her character. At night she discarded all the designer clothes, subtle makeup, dressed in a body hugging lilac-and-azure super-heroine body with a flared skater skirt, black tights and knee-high tight boots with a low heel, her long-flying auburn locks, now held in place by a coronet-style headband. She went out onto the dark late-night streets to get to grips with the riff-raff that were blighting her town. She was a martial arts expert and was more than a match for the muggers and street criminals, soon earning the name in the local press of ‘Elle the Enforcer’ and became a local mysterious celebrity. The ‘Daily Chronicle’ was forever reporting her exploits, and while praising her vigilante justice was determined to unmask her and find out her true identity.

My own identity as her creator and author was hidden behind the nom-de-plume that I used for my website and the trading company I had set up via a shell company. I was approached via my company by a magazine publisher who suggested that there was a much bigger market for Elle in published magazine comics and offered me a lucrative contract to produce regular stories for printing and distribution.

It was too good an offer to turn down, particularly when they offered their team of graphic designers to work from my drafts to produce high-quality artwork. I rented office space for a day, along with a postal drop-box and arranged to meet them to agree terms and sign contracts. I was trying to preserve my anonymity as much as possible, the last thing I wanted was media or fan attention, all other contact with them was to be via encrypted email.

Initially the publishing house, Amazing Adventures Ltd (AAL), which published superhero works by several other authors, as well as having their own in-house creative team, were content to put into print the stories that I had previously posted on the website, and soon built up a substantial readership. That however was not enough for them, they were soon chomping at the bit for many more new stories on a regular basis.That gave me a problem in that I originally only had ideas in my head for the few stories I had already posted and whilst being an expert in the mechanics of creating the posts and illustrations, my literary imagination was not nearly as well developed, basically I was suffering from writers block and was desperately in need of fresh ideas.

As Elle was known for fighting crime on the streets, usually in the late evening, I started going for walks around the neighbourhood and downtown to get a better feel for what was going on that could be turned into a story. Without getting involved or too close to the action I began to notice the petty crime, carjacking, mugging, armed raids on 24hr stores, molestation of women, intimidation, and the violence of the pimps towards their working-girls. During the daytime ours was a respectable neighbourhood, but after dark it was another world that most of us didn't know about nor care about.

I usually reluctantly kept out of what was going on as I was touring around, and just recorded in my mind things that could be turned into new story instalments, but that was to change one balmy summer evening. After a tiring day hunched over my computers immersed in Elle’s world I needed some fresh air to relax me and bring me back into the real world. I changed out of the sweaty clothes that I had worn all day, put on a vest top, shorts, and sneakers, took the band off my ponytail to let my shoulder-length hair just hang free and went out for a stroll in the local park.

An elderly woman was shuffling along the path about 50 yards away from me grocery bags in each hand, when suddenly she was pushed to the ground and her shoulder bag snatched from her, by a big man wearing a hoodie as a disguise. As the thief ran in my direction I raced towards him and took a flying kick at him, remembering my Taekwando training a few years ago, hitting him squarely in the midriff winding him, leaving him rolling in agony on the ground. Two passer-by men came over and I told them to hold onto him and call the police while I went to help the lady recover and give her back her bag. Once I knew that she was going to be alright and helped repack her shopping which had spilled out of the bags, I decided to make myself scarce, I didn't want to get involved with the police or the press, and there were enough witnesses to relate what had happened.

The following day, I was shocked to see the front page spread of the Gazette, the local news sheet, with the headline ‘Who is the mystery girl’ and a full report of the attack on the elderly Lady, who happened to be the mother of the town mayor., This gave them the opportunity to have a dig at the mayor over the failure of the police to tackle street crime. There followed a detailed description of the mystery girl dressed in summer sports gear, with long flowing hair who had attacked and disabled the thief, but had then disappeared. The mayor and the police appealed for her to come forward to receive their thanks. Apparently the thief was well known to police as a petty criminal from a family of persistent troublemakers, but never had enough proof to charge him until now. There was even a photo from someone’s cellphone of the mystery lady running away, her hair flowing behind her.

I was dumbstruck. Although I knew that my hair was overlong and I still had the skinny weedy frame that hadn’t developed much since my early teens, I couldn’t believe that I had been mistaken for a girl. Thinking back, one of the men who helped control the thief had congratulated me ”That was brilliant Darling, a slight thing like you taking down someone nearly twice your size.” and the elderly lady had burst into tears saying ”Thank you so much Dear, you’re lucky you can defend yourself against all these men.” They had all obviously got confused in the excitement and recorded their first impressions, long hair, slight build, bare legs, messages from their eyes that the brain interpreted as ‘Girl”

It was a hot local story and the Gazette ran with it for a week trying to find the shy heroine, until they ran out of fresh ideas to keep the story going. I just kept off the streets for a few days until I felt that their was little chance of anyone relating me to her.

Heavily fictionalised, with locations and victim details changed and with Elle cast as the mystery woman, I sent off the next instalment to AAL for them to edit print and publish. Whilst they were happy with the story it was suggested that Elle’s characterisation was a bit week and it would be better if I could write from a more female perspective, including more personal details and descriptions.

I had read somewhere that other male authors, writing about female characters or under a female pseudonym, had been more successful in describing the actions and emotions of their characters if they personally related more to females. Some just used lipstick or nail polish so that the constant taste on the lips or the flash of colour of the nails as they typed reminded them to think in a more feminine mode, others went a lot further and dressed fully in female clothes with full makeup, but there seemed to be an agreement that whatever level they chose, it helped them to relate to their characters and improved the quality of their writing.

It seemed a weird idea but to try to get some inspiration I was prepared to give it a try. At first it was just lipstick, later adding nail polish, later still full makeup. Although it did improve the quality of my writing, it did little to provide inspiration for storylines, and I decided that I needed to go out on the streets again to see what was going on. Night was beginning to drop and it looked like rain was on its way so I just threw on a raincoat coat over my vest top and shorts, leaving the cleaning off of my makeup until I got back and got ready for bed.

I noticed that I was getting a lot of strange looks from passers by, usually from the men and ignored by any women, until I noticed my reflection in a shop window, With my belted raincoat down to my knees, bare calves, and with my ponytail hanging over the collar, I did a double take to make sure that there wasn’t a woman standing next to me, and twigged that the looks I was getting from men were admiration for the woman they saw and not querying whether I was a man in a skirt.

I was dragged from my daydreaming by the screams of a woman just around the corner and rushed to see what was the problem. A big burly man had a young woman backed up against a wall fondling her breasts with one hand, the other working its way up her skirt. From her screaming it was obvious that this was an unwelcome sexual assault rather than a consensual sexual liaison so I ran behind the man, wrapped my arm around his neck and pulled him away from her as he was trying to catch his breath. He struggled free and rushed at me but I was easily able to sidestep him and crack his head against the wall which just infuriated him even more. He lunged at me again raging. “You interfering bitch, when I have finished with her, you will be next.” But this time I was more ready for him and used his momentum to thrust him forward to hit the wall with his head again, there was an almighty crack and he slumped to the ground unconscious.

I helped the young woman to calm down and borrowed her phone ring for the police and an ambulance and stayed with her until I heard the sirens and saw the approaching blue lights before leaving the scene, I didn’t want to have to explain why I was wearing full makeup and walking the streets looking like a woman.

By the time the emergency services arrived there was a crowd of onlookers at the end of the street trying to see what was going on. I waited among them long enough before leaving for home to see the girl being taken of in a police car and the still immobile thug in an ambulance speeding off with the blues and twos going, obviously he was in a lot more serious condition than the victim.

The next day the Gazette was at it again ‘Has the Mystery Heroine struck again.’ combining the stories of the attack in the park and last night’s attempted rape, both being stopped by unknown heroines whose descriptions bore remarkable similarities to each other. They also quoted an email from one of their readers, ‘Have we found our own ‘Elle the Avenger’, visit her website and stories on [email protected].

I immediately checked the website and the site had more hits in one day than I normally got in a month, a lot of them subscribing to the stories. I don’t know who had alerted the Gazette, but I had a lot to thank them for, the money was starting to surge into my bank accounts. That got me thinking that if Elle, or rather me simulating Elle, made more appearances and took down a few more villains, that the extra publicity would allow me to ease up on the creative work and live off the royalties of stories developed from my original character, but with all the creative work done by the publishers’s in-house staff.

To enhance the stories any witnesses to my crime-busting exploits would report, I thought that it would be even better I wore a costume similar to that of my Elle. I looked in various fancy dress shops, but all the costumes were really for indoor parties, usually quite flimsy materials based on well known comic characters, such as Supergirl. Batgirl, Wonder Woman, and suchlike, and not really suitable for roaming the nighttime streets fighting crime. I looked in some dance-wear shops and although they provided some ideas, I was not confident enough to overcome the embarrassment of being watched by the sales assistants flicking through racks of female clothes, so fell back on my comfort zone of the internet.

When my costume items arrived couple of days later, a half-sleeved high-collar leotard in Elle’s colours of lilac with pale blue chevron stripes, and a scarlet skater skirt with black trim, I could hardly wait to try on the outfit and have a long look at my new image as Elle. However the tight clothes made it obvious that I did not have a female figure., so I had a further round of online shopping which provided C-cup breast forms and a very tight waist cincher which made me look a lot more realistic. The first time I fixed on the breasts and the full outfit, complete with high-denier neutral tights and laced up leather below-the-knee boots, I couldn’t believe how close I looked to my heroine Elle. It got even better when I applied full-makeup and brushed out my hair into a loose hanging style.

I spent the rest of that day in costume as Elle working on my stories and actually found that my visualisation and characterisation of Elle came a lot easier and the story I had been struggling with was finished a lot more quickly that it otherwise would have been. It took a few more days wearing the costume and the figure enhancements before I felt confident enough to make my first outing as Elle, but between that and immersing myself in Elle’s character when working on the stories, I was beginning to get comfortable in the clothes and my female personality.

I put on a light cotton knee length coat to hide the costume and went out looking for things which should not be happening in our respectable neighbourhood and was about to go back home after an uneventful trip when I heard a gunshot inside a local 24/7 wine and beer store. I warily looked in the window and saw two tall stocky men wearing face masks with semi-automatic pistols threatening the storekeeper to hand over cash from the open till.

I took off my coat dropped it and my bag to the ground and burst into the store displaying the full Elle image. Before the first of the gunmen turned around to see what the noise was, caught sight of the feminine vision rushing towards him and realised what was happening, I already had landed a high kick between his shoulder blades which crushed him against the counter dropping his pistol as he fell. The second guy was totally shocked at what had happened to his accomplice and fled the store before I turned on him, not believing that a scantily-clad small woman had disabled and disarmed his accomplice.

I shouted at the storekeeper to give me some cuffs, rope or cable ties, anything to truss up the thief before he came to his senses and fought back. While I was tying him up the storekeeper pressed his panic alarm to call the police, and knowing things were now under control I made a hasty exit, put on my coat and picked up my bag, flicked out my hair over its collar and calmly walked off down the street turning the corner just as a police cruiser came to a screeching halt outside the store and the two patrolmen rushed in.

Back home the adrenaline was still pumping around my body from the excitement and the activity., I couldn’t remember the last time that I was so excited and proud of anything I had done. Avatar Elle never had that problem of switching off after one of her encounters she just calmly removed the costume, pulled on a skirt and blouse and settled down into her alter-ego as Lady Eleanor. Relaxing with a glass of dry white wine, she calmly reviewed whether she could have done things differently and how to change things next time. I changed into a t-shirt and sweat pants, not bothering to remove the breast forms or cincher, savouring the moment of my first full encounter as Elle. I felt that my feminine alter-ego deserved a bit more time to enjoy her success, and when I had relaxed a little I was back online ordering some more clothes so that in future after an outing as Elle, I could change and relax just as Lady Eleanor did, in my new identity as Eloise Somerset, a name far enough away not to be linked to Lady Eleanor, but close enough to pay homage to the character who had led me to my financial success .

In the morning the local TV station chat shows were full of reports of Elle’s disarming and disabling of the gunman, showing a grainy video of the action recorded on the wine shop’s CCTV. Even after they had tried to sharpen up the image it was still not good enough to recognise me as anything other than an athletic young woman in a super-heroine type costume. The airwaves, social media and the Gazette were awash for the next few days with opinions and reports of what I had done, and in most cases I was referred to as ‘the real-life Elle the Avenger’, the local heroine trying to clear up some of the mess that the police were unable or unwilling to deal with.

Over the next few weeks this continued, I did not go out as Elle every night, but whenever I did I always seemed to find criminals doing things that they shouldn’t, deal with them, usually with them ending up in hospital with minor injuries, before returning home and changing into my new clothes, usually a cotton shift dress and heels, to relax. Between my time working on my computer made up and dressed in leggings casual cotton tops and sneakers , going out on the streets in costume as Elle, and afterwards relaxing with a glass of wine in my more formal dresses or skirts as Eloise I was gradually spending more and more time as a female than I was as Art. I was becoming more and more comfortable in those roles, having got used to the feel and fit of the clothes and the constant sensations of the movement of the breast forms which were now rarely removed. After years of being ‘Art the geek’ I was now enjoying my life a lot more as confident attractive and more sophisticated Eloise and Elle.

Soon, due to the success that I had cleaning up the streets in our town, the constant publicity from the press and TV, my stories, both on my website and in print from AAL, my bank account was now substantial. My accountant advised me that the most tax-efficient shelter for my wealth was in property and that my small one-bedroom apartment should be sold off and replaced with something more suited to a new more upmarket lifestyle.

I also felt that the press were hot on my heels to discover my identity, the police were trying to trace me as they were not too keen on my often violent vigilante justice, and some of the criminal gangs were determined to put a stop to my activities. It was best that I fade into the background and lie low for a while.

I ended up in a Jacobean period manor house with half-timbered façades and tall Tudor-style brick chimneys, set in 50 acres of gardens and woodland, the type of property that I could never imagine in my wildest dreams imagine myself calling home . In keeping with the prestige this property carried. I moved in there and became Eloise full-time, known to my housekeeper, gardener and the local villagers behind my back, as ‘Lady Eloise’.

After Elle suddenly disappeared from the streets the crime rate started to increase again, the police seemingly unable to keep on top fit all, and every now and again Elle was needed out on the streets to remind everyone that they needed to behave of face her wrath. A bonus was that it gave me inspiration for more stories, keeping the royalties flowing in.

I was gradually accepted into the local social set and became more and more similar to the character of Lady Eleanor, learning to appreciate fine art, opera and ballet, a totally different lifestyle to how I had been brought up. I came to the conclusion that this was how I wanted my lifestyle to continue and took steps to put me on the road to full womanhood, taking hormones to make the first noticeable changes to my body shape, followed by an intense course of surgery for full gender re-assignment and for minor facial feminisation reconstruction and vocal modification. I was now permanently and unmistakably Eloise, a proud woman.

As I gained new experiences and started to see things through female eyes, I eventually dropped my involvement with AAL and Elle. I continued to write, but as Eloise Somerset developed a new readership for my historical novels usually with romantic undertones with a new publisher. Art was soon forgotten and a distant memory, ‘Lady Eloise’ was here to stay.

The end.