My Super Secret Life…. Diamond.
*(This takes place between chapters 11 and 12.)
Paradise City, Orange-town, 4:22 PM
It’s after school and I’m coming out of my favorite comic shop having my chocolate milk and make my way to Galaxy dog so I can do my usual, escape from my life with food and the pages of my favorite comics. I know, super geeky but even in this day and age there’s tones of us.
Us being the overweight losers that life passes by. It’s not fair in the slightest. I’m smart, no genius but I’ve got good enough marks on stuff I’m scholarshipped to one of the best schools in the city.
I can’t transfer out because my folks would kill me. Why would I want to transfer out?
The answer to that comes from me getting hit by several milkshakes as two cars full of the elite kids throw stuff at me laughter and yells from the guys and giggles a squeals from the girls.
“You shoulda moved fat ass!”… “Freak!”…. “Geek!”…. “Loser!” Some of the guys.
“Eeeew stop being gross!”….. “You’re fucking disgusting!”….and of course they carouse “Loser!” with the jock guys.
It hurts really, I mean getting bullied and picked on hurts. Being this way hurts, you get shunned by a lot of people when you’re like me. Yeah I could diet and exercise and I’ve tried, but it’s too hard to do sometimes when you try to work out and stuff and run or bike or swim hearing the jeers from the people who bitch at me for not being just like them…It’s really hard to be motivated when you hear stuff like “Earthquake.” and “You’re crushing the frame.” and “Whale.” And honestly I’m not strong enough to work through it and work through the heartbreak.
Add that to the stares you get, the looks from the pretty people. Did you know when you’re like this there’s some people that actually avoid you, move as far away from you on the sidewalk as they can from you. And not one bit of food you buy healthy or not matters because whatever you buy they still look at it then at you and judge.
Oh there’s cures, yeah cures for being fat and stuff, nano-tech treatments and even gene-treatments if you can afford either of them. They cost in the I’ll never be able to afford it category.
So yeah that’s the great joy of being Terry St. James.
I get inside and start getting cleaned up then go and get my junk food to drown myself in. I’m right in the depths of hating myself and then losing myself in the food and the fantasy of the comics to take me away from what’s been my life so far. I just sit in my corner and mope.
I leave and go home and my folks aren’t home either so I just go to my basement bedroom safe haven and put on some music and cry.
***
School sucks and my week is pretty much me hiding and living with the rest of the freaks and geeks. We try to be sort of elitist in our own right doing that disdain thing from the safety of numbers towards the popular kids and the cheer leaders and the jocks. I swear we’re here though just to put their academic scores up.
I’m watching them as the guys go over what was on the TV and the computer feeds and forums. Movies and sci-fiction and fantasy stuff.
They’ve got these lives that are just so fucking perfect really. Money, good looks, popularity.
It’s pretty easy to hate them all.
I hate them as much as I hate myself.
***
I’m going through the books in the back of the library. They’re a rare thing really comparatively, expensive too. Ninety percent of everything is downloaded now anyways but print’s never gone out of style. I love books even though I can barely afford the few used paperbacks that I’ve gotten.
But despite my love of books people use the stacks for all sorts of stuff. Like this drug deal…I hear one of the jocks talking to this black kid I don’t know, actually I can see them and it’s Jake Stevens but the other kid is in these weird clothes a leather coat and a really large hood but high quality everything else.
Jake says. “You got the stuff?”
“No, not with me. The money comes first.”
“What’s gonna keep you from just booking with my money.”
“My boss. They are very particular about things being on the level Mr. Stevens.”
“Yeah whatever, so this stuff the real deal?”
“Yeah, A.O.-100, will alter your genes to produce a scale of change in you that by-passes the genetic governors.”
“Yeah, yeah it’s super juice. It won’t get detected on scans?”
“No…they won’t detect it on scans and you’ll keep improving as your genes get perfected.”
“Awesome, so where’s the stuff.”
“The money first.”
“Here, here’s the fifty grand down payment.”
“You do know you are on the hook for the rest.”
“Yeah when I’m bringing in inter-colonial baseball star funds I’ll be able to pay the ten million off no problem.”
I’m thinking holy…fuck! Ten million! But if this stuff’s real….then it might just…
“Well that’s good then, you should be able to get me some tickets once you’re famous then.”
“Sure dude no problem. So where is it.”
“Here in the books, It’s in Bennett’s Genetic Theory.”
I get up from where I’ve been kneeling and slip away and find the book. I catch sight of the hooded black guy leaving and I can hear Jake mumbling and grumbling trying to find the book of course looking under B instead of the sciences section. I get to the book first and find a small black case like a pen stuffed into the spine. I open it seeing a needle full of a strange fluid. I close it back up and hide from Jake and anyone else who might see me and I make my way out of there seeing Jake talking to the librarian because he can’t find the book.
I leave and catch a glimpse of the black kid on a skate board and he’s cruising off the campus going pretty fast…I also notice he’s never put a foot down to move the board?
He reaches out like he does it all the time and snags the back of a hover truck and get whisked away really quickly. That’s not normal, he’d have to be enhanced to do that. This needle has to be the real deal. Jake might have been going to use it to boost himself to become an even bigger jock but this might just make all the shit I’m going through.
I know, I know it’s dangerous.
It’s stupid.
And I’m pretty weak for even doing this.
But…
I’m just so tired?
I’m so tired that I’m not even sure I’d care if this A.O.-100 stuff kills me or not.
I leave campus and skip the rest of my classes heading home. Just to keep them or anyone from finding out I stop at a gas station and use the men’s room and sit in one of the stalls and stare at the syringe.
Jake was in the hole for ten million for this. It has to work, it has to be the real thing.
My hands are shaking as I think about doing it.
I can’t.
God I want to but I can’t…I’m too scared.
I put the needle back in it’s thing and I head out to the main part of the garage and over to the pay-phone. I press the police button, I wait and there’s a lady cop that comes on the line and the small screen.
“PCPD what’s the nature of your call?”
“Hello, I’d like to turn in some evidence….uhm…of….uhm a drug buy…”
“Please stay where you are at sir we’re sending officers to meet you there.”
“Uhm okay…”
“Sir of what nature is the evidence?”
“I…I…uhm got the drugs, uhm drug?”
“It’s just one unit of the drugs sir?”
“Uhm yes, something called A.O.-100.”
“Alright sir I’m forwarding the information to….” her voice drifts off for a few seconds. Then she comes back. “Our officers please stay on the line with me.”
“Uhm Okay.”
I stay on the line with her and three police cars show up and the cops come in looking for me. It’s only seconds before I’m bustled into one of their Aero-cruisers and me and the needle are whisked away to The Octagon.
I know, but I’m not under arrest but being brought in for questioning. I’m just blown away at the tech and the cruisers. Their like a standard ground car only the wheels pull in and cover up and a combination of micro-jets and thruster along with a mag-lift carriage lets them reach a ceiling of about five kilometers and reach speeds of up to five hundred KPMG. I’m a geek and these things blow me away. The standard Aero-car is rated for about half the ceiling and speeds.
The Police Aero-cruisers are the closet thing I think I’d ever see to a military craft and I enjoy every second of the ride even really getting excited when the do a few small police formation moves to impress the kid.
We get to the Octagon which I should explain is the PCPD total city wide headquarters along with Aero-EMT and Fire and the central courthouse. It’s like twelve floors high and three sub levels deep and was created off of the idea of some military structure from ancient earth. It’s almost temple like with steps all the way around it and these huge lady justice statues at each corner of the Octagon.
There’s green spaces and parking lots all around the building but from the Octagons western face there is this huge green space and a reflecting pool that goes westward from the end of the parking lot and at the other side of that park rising up with no other high rises for an entire two kilometers is The Tower.
I mean I see these things on the bus sort of but from the air, to be here is just…I’m having such a fan boy moment.
Right up until we’re landing and heading inside and who do we pass in the hall!…Overdrive and the newest guy Titan! It’s so cool! They’re both really big guys, Overdrive’s over six foot and built and big but Titan’s over seven feet tall and if you can have lean muscle on a guy like him that’s it. I catch a glimpse of his eyes and they’re gold or bronze with almost a shimmer of yellow glow beneath them…he’s sporting a new look, sort of. Leather pants and bell bottom boots, leather ring fighter gloves without the fingers and heavy wrist wraps but for a shirt or tunic or whatever he’s just wearing a big baggy black zip up hoody and bare chest underneath. No mask either, like he doesn’t care who knows what he looks like and he’s his own man.
Yes, I know fan boy much, I know but he took down some major psycho on live TV with a boot to the stones.
I mean he saved some of the PC Champions butts.
It completely offsets the interview and me being nervous and even more nervous as Dad and Mom are called in from work to be here with me. I’m lucky as their not upset dad actually smiles and passes me a Shooting Star (Soda similar to Mt. Dew.) “How you holding out Terry?”
“I’m okay Dad. I just, the whole thing just rubbed me the wrong way and I couldn’t let Jake and that other guy get away with it.”
“Well, it never hurts to do the right thing and if the sports teams are dosing then there might be faculty involved, I thin k it was smart to call the police. I’m sure we can get a note for you to give to the office for cutting if they’re going to do the same for me and your Mom.”
Overdrive’s there with the police conducting the interview and I tell them everything that I heard and worked with the sketch artist to do up a drawing of the black kid. I think Overdrive knew who he was but he didn’t say much.
It was a little weird but cool at the same time and while I was waiting and the police were talking to Mom and Dad I overheard Titan talking to Overdrive about Jake. He knew a lot about Jake. Too much…Oh…Oh…holy crap…Titan goes to my school! It’s the only way he could know so much about Jake. I temper my freak out with a smile on my face as I hear Titan say.
“He’s a major jerk off, one of those I play sports so I’m a winner types. He struts like his dick’s the size of the baseball bat. I can see him juicing if he thought he could get away with it.”
There’s a definite rush when one of the cities Supers thinks one of my tormentors is as much a piece of shit as I do. You really can’t buy that kind of validation.
I have to sign witness statements as well as a non-disclosure thing but hey that’s cool.
The day still climbed even more when we went for supper as a reward for me being a stand up guy and stuff at Super-chicken and I went home happy for a change. It was likely the coolest day of my life.
***
Jake’s fall from grace didn’t happen. There was only my testimony on the exchange but they were investigating, sort of. The entire Athletics Department was called in for drug and DNA testing.
It was really freaking glorious to see those on high taken down a few pegs and there was a lot of freaking out and a lot of fancy lawyers and rich parents freaking out and everything. About a dozen different kids got cut from various teams for gene-tweaking.
It wasn’t the drug stuff but Vishanti Bio-tech. See the Vishanti are one of the alien races that have made contact with mankind. They’re lightly grey skinned Hindu aliens sometimes blue toned that had visited Earth’s India in the ancient past and gave them the starts of their culture.
Anyway, the Vish are really advanced in medicine and stuff like Bio-medical stuff, cloned organs and regrown limbs and cybernetics. They’re also big time merchants and offer augmentation to a point by gene-tweaking people. Nothing major because of some kind of galactic laws and colonial laws but it’s as forbidden as shit when in comes to sports.
Turns out that a lot of the kids with wealthy parents got tweaked to help them out in sports. It’s not detectable unless you’re looking for it very specifically.
Yeah a whole lot of us underdog types are reveling in how the mighty have fallen.
It was a really good day.
***
I’m getting home off the bus when I see the black kid just down the street on his board. I try to run to catch the bus to get back on it and I’m too fat, too out of shape to catch it so I run…I run down the alley closest and keep running.
I know stupid, I should’ve kept to the main streets where there were witnesses. I shouldn’t have run. I mean at the time, It might have just been coincidence. I saw him behind me once, then I though I lost him. Then I fell; my left leg wouldn’t work because there was a long nasty looking knife through my thigh, through the bone and then he was there standing over me.
“Normally I’d kill you and you’re entire family but since there really isn’t a point in killing a baker and his wife I’ll cut you some slack Terry.”
Oh fuck he knows my name…
“Normally, you’d just be a small fish and not worth my time but Terry, Terry, Terry, you cost me a lot of money, and you cost my boss a lot of money and even more.”
He kicks me in the guts, oh god it hurts. He does it over and over again I try curling into a ball and he works my back over, my lower back. I trying to cry, trying to scream in pain, there’s a flick sound and a blade pop’s out of his boot.
I’m too fucked up to run and….
No one should ever get to smell their own blood that much, no one should ever get to smell their own intestines and the stuff that’s in them. I lose consciousness….
***
“Take the body and dump it.”
“Where.”
“Take him to the pit.”
“Gotcha…. Fuck Damian you couldn’t leave him a little less fucking squishy?”
“Just do it. And don’t get caught.”
“I can avoid the cops.”
“It’s not just the cops you’ve got to worry about. The Alchemist is what you’ve got to watch out for.”
“He’s not going to care if I dump this shlubb off in his hole.”
“No, likely won’t David but he’s always looking for new test animals.”
“Oh….fuck, gotcha.”
I remember hearing that exchange, Damian…the guy that killed me is called Damian.
***
There’s light.
Bright lights.
Ow.
They hurt and kind of makes me feel like a Mogwai.
I try to move but can’t, I sort of try to move around a bit and I can’t. I’m too hurt, there’s too many tubes in me.
Then there’s a guy in goggles and a mask, a surgical mask leaning over me… there’s a moment I’m staring and things come into focus and he…he…he’s got four arms and all of them have things in them.
I faint, or get knocked out…. I here this. “Good well now we shall begin.”
***
More voices.
“Do we know what the hell is going on with him?” I think that’s Overdrives voice.
“No, we have no idea what the hell the Alchemist did to him besides patch him up.” This voice is a woman’s.
“He’s not human anymore is he.”
“As far as we can tell yes but there’s new organs that we don’t have a clue to what they are inside Terry right now and they’re spreading these new cells throughout his body.”
“Is he contagious?”
“No, they’re tuned to his bodies specific bio-electrical energy, the die off and become inert outside his body.”
“He’s repairing really fast.”
“Their repairing everything as they’re taking over the cells in his body.”
“Like Nanites then?”
“Like carbon crystal ones then.”
“Like…?”
“Like exactly like I said.”
“Is he going to get changed into whatever these cells are from?”
“We’ll have no way of knowing that, they might stop once he’s healed up or repaired in this case.”
“Can his parents see him?”
“Yes, like I said these other cells die off without his energy to sustain them. It’s why he’s no it a bio-hazard field any more.”
“Good, I’ll let them know the good news what little there is.”
“Drive, you got to rein him in.” ……….This was Titan’s voice.
“Who Ty?”
“Shroud, don’t tell me this wasn’t his idea.”
“Titan…”
“No, I saw the sketch the kid did. That might be some teenager but that’s Trask’s gear. Shroud knew, you all knew and staked this kid out there like a goat.”
“We had a detail on Terry, we didn’t know if this kid had any real connection to Trask.”
“That’s weak Drive, weak.”
“Titan, you don’t get to start lecturing us about stuff you don’t know anything about. A call was made. Trask has a lot to answer for. I didn’t like it but it was a shot we had to take in case this guy led us to Trask.”
“Whatever…”
I cough trying to talk and break up the argument. The woman’s voice is closer to me now. “Gentlemen, you’re disturbing my patient.”
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…or the one.” I kind of croak out.
I hear Titan. “You’re lucky Drive, we all are he can pray or whatever.” I can’t help the weezy laugh that’s coming out of me.
I hear her. “It’s a character quote Titan, though it was nearly a religion at one point.”
“Uhm okay. Terry?, Terry can you here me?”
I nod.
“I’m glad you made it through, just rest okay? Let Dr. Burke take care of you.”
I can’t see him but give a thumbs up.
I hear them both leave and they’re bickering down the hall. I sign and it hurts, the more awake I’m getting the more it hurts.
“How’s your pain Terry?”
“Oh…it’s fine, I’m the one that sucks.”
“Well you’re keeping your spirits up.”
“I’m fucking high and in shock doc.”
She laughs. “Well let’s not have you over doing it and stuff, I’m giving you a mild sedative and you can try to sleep through it.”
I give her the thumbs up.
I don’t even feel the needle as I drift away.
***
Weird dreams….
Camera flashes in the dark of my head.
“Clear!”
Oh…
That’s not good.
“Hold her down!”
“Give me the adrenaline!”
“Shit the needle broke!”
Her…
I can feel people grabbing me.
Her…
There’s a hand on my boob.
Not Moob, not a fat boy breast but a boob, a breast, my breast…there’s a very freaking me out inadvertent squeeze.
“Ow!!! Jesus! Get off of me!”
I’m awake and I’m up and free of the bed in a torn Johnny shirt and It looks like I threw everyone around the room.
I’m panting and I see Mom in the doorway looking freaked. “Terri, please Terri, stop you’re safe…No one’s going to hurt you. You’re safe.”
I stare at her and the catch myself in the mirror, I look like me if I had a sister weight and all…the only difference is that my hair it’s almost blue or blue with lots of white in it. And my eyes are both grey almost silvery like human eyes if they were made of glass?
I’m a girl…
I didn’t ever get the whole Super thing…and turned into some hottie, no I’m as overweight as ever…
It feels so much worse than it did before it’s like one more hard kick to everything that’s happened before. I know I shouldn’t be thinking overweight girl’s worse than an overweight guy but I live in the real world and yeah…it’s worse, much worse and…and… and I don’t faint but fall back on my bed and it breaks, I just broke a hospital bed…
I burst into the worst tears of my life…
I feel my Mom hold me and I lose it even more and do that off your nut screaming crying into her lap.
My Super Secret Life…Diamond-2
Chapter 2
*This starts along the time of chapters 13-14.*
I’m waking up after being really spaced out…again. I hate this, I hate freaking out and acting like I’m a fucking psycho but getting turned into a girl by a four armed mad scientist….and as bad as it was it was worse, I was a fat chick.
I hate saying it, I hate thinking it’s so bad but I was already fat, fat and lower middle class so there was really shit I could do about it. Yeah, yeah I know exercise and diet.
Fuck off.
Easier said that done, some of us don’t have don’t give a shit genes. No a lot of us fat kids are fat because of something in out head, something emotional that got us started and when you’re fat and you try to go to a gym to work out there’s judgments. Oh there is and the staff at these places are just so condescending and arrogant…
My mom went to one of those supposed all women no-judgment places and it was bullshit. It was still a place where the staff was some skinny bitch who’d never really had a problem with her weight. I remember she came home crying and she’d quit the place after a week.
And public work outs? Walking it off? Jogging?
I live in the real world and when the assholes drive by and they just won’t stop and then there’s just the people…Skinny people can’t get what it’s like when people stare at you and judge, or they’ll move duck into a building somewhere or a store so they won’t be seen being close to you. Or they look at you while passing you on the street or in the halls at school and they turn their heads so they don’t make eye contact!
And that was my life before this!
Now I’m a girl, just as fat as I ever was only being a fat girl is ten times as bad as a fat guy. And if life wasn’t cruel enough? My body is like freak-twisted up and super dense…I’m a fat teenaged girl that looks a three hundred pound fat cow and I actually weigh in at seven hundred pounds….seven hundred pounds.
So just thinking of it made me want to kill myself. So I’ve literally tried to do that.
Twice.
Hence why I’m locked up in a psyche ward. And drugged pretty heavily too. They’re calling it a psychotic break or something. The shitty thing was as much as I cut on myself there in the hospital I kept getting fixed. There’s these living crystal nanites running through my body and not only that but they’ve been changing it. Like they’re following a program.
The thing is I never asked to be a girl. But it’s damned hard to off yourself when you’re skin and flesh is as tough as layered nylon and you keep healing whatever damage has been done.
Turns out that my blood looks like my eyes now, well sort of it’s this almost silvery sheened water or glass. Actually it’ll harden and morph itself into crystal after awhile unless it’s on my body then it just reabsorbs through my skin.
My folks are there or still here because I might still be in the same hospital I don’t remember getting taken elsewhere but I don’t remember much past the point of….?
………………………….
………………………….
Oh… Oh shit…I…
I broke out, I tried running and got into it with three hospital guards and I…I...I took a taser to an open flowing bottle of oxygen.
I’m even remembering Mrs. Champion hitting my with one of those super strength punches. That’s when my lights went out. I’ve hurt a lot of people during my freak out. Dangerous Mutant.
I cry a little or try too what ever I’m on has me way too level, part of me really wants to lose it and cry but part of me just can’t it’s like intellectually even without the whole girly thing going on I should be able to tell when something is that fucked up but I’m feeling calm, too calm and level.
I must be on some pretty strong drugs to feel this way. I can get why people on meds go off them if it’s like this. The world feels muted somehow like it’s been bubble-wrapped.
Mom’s still there. We’re not rich enough for Dad not to have to be at work, plus I’m not really his son anymore so….so why should he…
And I want to cry, I do but I’m just too drugged out of it to.
“It’s okay Terri, we’ll get through this, it’ll be okay.”
“Mom…?”
“Yes honey?”
“Why are you saying my name differently?”
“Huh?”
“You raise your pitch at the end of my name now.”
“I do?”
“Yeah….like a girls name, like Terry but with an I.”
“Oh…I didn’t realize…do you mind?”
“Yeah…It…just feels like another part of me’s getting taken away Mom.”
“Oh Terry, I’m sorry.”
“Thanks Mom…that’s better now.”
………………………………..............Sleep comes easy with the meds otherwise the noises would keep me up. The hospital sounds are bad enough but it’s like there’s time I can hear so much…like people talking down the hall, Mom’s heartbeat.
I’m not sure if this is part of me being changed or me just losing it.
But I swear I hear scratching sounds outside the wall, like outside on the wall of the outside of the hospital.
The sound of…something? Sliding…footsteps next room over, really quiet footfalls, four, not five of them?
The sounds of guns cocking? I sit up “Mom?” I see one of my guards outside of my room twitch and fall…there was a loud Pfft like an airhose going off.
“Mmm Honey…” She had fell asleep.
The footfall become people, and there’s five of them coming through my door guns…silencers…in ninja like stuff. The guns come up…”Mom!”
I shove her and the chair she’s in to the floor as they start shooting me.
The bullets hit and they should’ve killed me right? I tasted my own blood and after what happened before with that Damian did to me.
Something snapped inside, blew right through the drugs and I felt the most terrible heat searing me all over and this stuff oozed out from my skin but felt like I was frying in the stuff.
I’m sure I screamed as the stuff wrapped around me and turned hard. The next three rounds pancaked against the skin. I grabbed the cot and swung it like a bat. It weighed nothing?
I fought, okay I’m not good at this stuff being the one bullied all the time…you’d thing I could fight but I guess if I could I wouldn’t have been such a target. They shoot at me and use martial kung fu and stuff and it just doesn’t hurt?
I lash out grabbing and throwing them like dolls, punching…I see Mom get out of the room running and screaming for help.
I drop the last guy and I hear.
“Terry, Terry, you’re a disappointment. Here I thought, you had the decency to stay dead but…I see I have to thank the four armed freak for you’re reincarnation.”
I spin. “DAMIAN!!!”
He was crouched in the windowsill hooded cloak, cammo shirt and fatigues over some kind of black body stocking he’s got a brown leather face mask like this ancient goalie mask or from those horror stories.
I grabbed the bed and throw it at him. He…
Holy fuck he’s fast, he sidesteps it even before it gets to hit and throws these unfolding throwing star things that chip away at me even as I try to cover myself. Then he actually steps on the bed and runs up it and kicks me in the face before the bed even smashed it’s way out of the windows.
I sort of felt the kick but it’s so well done it knocks me ass over end and through the door to my room.
“Oh Terry, That’s really effective armor you’ve grown.” He’s crouched doing this twirly thing with a chip of my skin back and forth between the fingers of his hand. I roll sorta turtle like and get to my feet. Then his eye’s glow.
It feels like there was an impact against my head. I jump him but he’s to fast, too hard to get a bead on and he’s trying to hit me, beat on me and I’m trying to connect but every time I get close he’s able to throw me…yeah weight and all. Shattering the tiles on the floor and the floor. This time I get up and there’s something beeping on my chest. I look down in time to see three silvery disc devices and then they make a flatline sound.
“Ohshit…”
The explosion hurts, hurts like nothing I’ve ever felt and I’m blown down the hall and scream, there’s blood and shards and I smell burned….burned me…It hurts, oh god it hurts so bad.
“Hmm….still going…you just don’t stop do you?”
(Cough) “Can’t….(Cough)…keep a good girl down.” I feel my lungs clearing and more of that searing
“Hmm, yes healing factor is a pain in the ass to deal with.”
“Tell me about it, try killing yourself while having it.”
I feel a little different, like a second wind or something or when you’re playing sports long enough into the game it’s like you head and body are like OK we get it now.
“Pity, that’d have made my day easier…” He looks to the downed men. “And a lot less expensive.”
“Well I am a girl, we’re supposed to cost guys money.”
I throw a fallen fire extinguisher at he and he dodges it and I try to tackle him only to have him flip over me. I grab for his cloak and get a grip on it and swing it smashing him into a pop machine crumpling it.
I pull hard yanking him to me but fall backward his cloak detached. He pops up and there’s a wild stare there for a minute and he ducks into a roll as Shroud phase jumps out of the floor black cloak billowing like…well like a ghost or a wraith of sorts.
They’re on each other very fast, scary fast both producing these telescopic staffs and they fight as a fast blur and they fight like something out of a sci-fi or kung-fu movie. Sparks actually fly from the alloy staves and It’s just so…
I’d jump in but I’d just get in the way.
Shroud some how is becoming immaterial during some of Damian’s blows, he’s scoring more and more hits of his own. I get to see Damian get hit three times getting staggered he stumbles back and he throws something.
Three more of those explosive disks.
Shroud phases and they go right through them. They go rolling towards the nurses station…towards the nurses and where some of the patients, security guards.
I gotta.
I run, as fast as I can and gather them up they’re beeping faster and faster…where? The ladies room. I run inside and look around… There’s no one here. “Good…”
“Please let everyone live through this…”
I curl around the bombs and then there’s the explosion and pain and heat…fire, real fire then darkness.
……………………………….............. “Terry…”
“Terry…are you still there, still with us?”
I open my eyes. “Gah…th..thirsty.” Everything’s painfully bright. I see Mom and Dad. Mom holds a straw to my lips. “Just little sips honey.”
Oh water’s never tasted this good.
“Is everyone okay…?”
“Yes, a few injuries but you saved so many honey you’re a hero.”
I reach up check cupping a breast, god they’re big, or they feel that way to me. “No…it’s heroine…unless something grew back?”
“Uhm…no honey, you’re still a girl.”
I look around then try to push myself up. “Easy Pumpkin, here let’s use the buttons.” Dad say’s.
They push me up with the buttons and I can hear the servos are pretty loud. I’m not hearing the hospital sounds, not like before and the room is huge with furniture like one of those rooms where the patient’s waiting to die. “Where am I?”
“The Tower, we were moved here after getting asked to leave the hospital.”
“Asked to leave…oh…Damian.”
“Yes but he’s in custody, that Shroud fellow caught him.” Dad says.
I nod but frown. He was the first one there, he must have known…like last time…and then the bombs…he’s a hero right? He just didn’t care?
I get through the water and look at them. They look so worried, so tired. I’ve never seen Mom looking so haggard, there’s dark circles under both of their eyes. “How long have I been out?”
“Three days honey.” Mom says.
“We…we weren’t allowed to see you the first twenty eight hours.” Dad says. He takes my hand and holds it and kisses it. I feel this wave of warm, teary, something…I want to cry but in a good way.
We just sort of sit there like a family and stuff and…it’s good. It feels good. I get up to go pee. “Honey, maybe you shouldn’t we can use the bedpan.”
“I’m okay mom, I promise I’ll be easier on this bathroom.”
I set my feet on the floor and start walking to the bathroom with her help and my panties slide off me and down around my ankles. “What the…Mom?”
“Honey you lost weight since you’ve been out of it.”
“How much weight?”
“About three hundred pounds”
“So I’m about…?”
“Five hundred and ten pounds.”
“I need to see, this is all messed up.”
It’s a nice bathroom and everything, and I pee, wipe get told again by mom how too (Eye-roll.) get told I haven’t been a girl long enough for me to roll my eyes at my mother. Then the mirror.
I look…
Okay, I’m kind of tall for the girl range at five eight but I’m not fat, fat I’m….God my boobs are huge…and I pull off the Johnny shirt and stare, yeah big boobs and a muffin top wide hips…I look some where around between one hundred and eighty and two hundred pounds…before I looked to close to twice that.
“How…?”
“Dr. Burke said that the things those bio-nano things fed off of you to heal you and have been altering fixing stuff….I guess.”
“Am I going to get smaller?”
“I don’t know but she said you’ve stabilized.”
I look in the mirror, I look well, still really off with the hair and the eyes and matching uhm…you know but I’ve got shoulders to go with the hips and the boobs, I kind look pretty not like ravishingly gorgeous but…kinda the big cute mutant/or rather mutated girl.
I’m cupping my breasts. Staring in the mirror.
“What do I do now Mom?”
My Super Secret Life…Diamond-3.
Chapter 3
My Mom looks at me and sighs. “Honestly honey I don’t know. I suppose we play it by ear with these folks and see what their doctors can tell us.”
“Okay, I guess there not a lot of choice in the matter is there huh.”
“It really doesn’t look like it.”
I stare at my new self in the mirror and cup my breasts again. God that feels so weird, I mean like really. I’m sort of looking in the mirror and touch checking myself out. Not getting sexual but it really didn’t take much before this tightening feeling sort of happened and my nipples got hard. Literally…it sort of felt like getting wood and there’s that stiffy feeling going on.
“Y’know Mom some things really do translate over from boy to girl.”
She looks confused. “Like what honey?”
“My boobs…they’re kind of a translation to my former equipment. I mean guys get a stiffy pretty easy and often at the wrong times and from what I know about girls and stuff this nipple thing does too.”
She’s nodding but I think this is the first time she’s getting the guys side of stuff. It’s the 27th century and the genders still mystify and confuse each other.
“And the way it feels it sort of the same.”
“So you’re horny?”
“Mom! no…a guy getting a stiffy doesn’t always mean that he’s ready or even wanting to go off and hump the furniture. Sure it’s really easy to get into the sex thoughts and stuff like that but it’s kinda the same. And then there’s the balls thing.”
“Balls thing?”
“Uh-huh, scratching, and adjusting and stuff. Well girl do it with their boobs and their bra’s all the time. The one thing that it’s got over the guy thing is it’s sort of more acceptable to adjust your bra.”
“Oh…well I guess you learn stuff everyday.”
I nod and heft my breasts again, they actually don’t move as much as I thought they would. “I thought they’d be softer?”
“I asked Dr. Burke that because uhm…lying down you down really flatten like natural boobs do you sit still high and firm like implants do and she said that it’s due to your increased density.”
“Right…because I don’t look like I weight five hundred pounds.”
I look at them again. “Jeeze what size am I?”
“I’m not sure honey we haven’t had a chance to measure you or anything but I have a few things that might help hang on.”
I’m still being ms. body inspector while she’s gone and I think the nicest thing is the way that my skin feels soft and smooth to the touch and I realize that there’s no body hair there at all. My butt seems really decent but the shape…I’m so not used to that and the best thing out of all of this is my face. My eyes are different and my hair’s that funky burnished steel color and really, really long but my acne’s completely gone and the scars from it too. I have a completely perfect complexion on a pretty but not beautiful face and that’s actually enough to make me kinda sorta happy.
I lost my guyhood for this and my whole life’s been thrust into one of those VG comix but my old life wasn’t all that great.
Mom comes back with these shopping bags and it’s strange that I can here her moving so well. I can even hear dad in the kitchenette thing? I think I have super hearing or something.
She takes out what’s a grey plain sports bra that’s big but it doesn’t look like its fit and matching panties. The panties are easy and it feels really odd the way the fit so snug to my…sex…I’m just going to go with that for now. But it’s how high they ride up on my hips that feels weird. I’ll try them for now but I’ll go for those cotton girls boxer briefs if it’s too weird. The bra actually got us laughing together. Two reasonable big girls trying to get this stretchy bra over my huge breasts was a challenge and after some liberal adjusting we get it right.
Apparently my mother has never owned a sports bra and with my big shoulders and boobs just pulling it over didn’t work that well and I had to go one arm in first then the other and forget that trying to step into it thing. But it was the first time I’d had a mother/daughter giggle with her.
Yeah I giggled, it was one of those girly things but it was…it’s just like everything else the way I laugh has changed still a lot freaky and yet it was kind of cool getting to do that and be conscious of the fact.
It does help that both my parents love me and I honestly love them, we actually get along as a family unlike way to many others.
But once we know the stuff fits I’m right back out of it and into the shower because I feel groudy after so long and It was awesome…okay it was really weird feeling the way the water washed over my body and went this way and that way and I made sure I cleaned my uhm…yeah but it just really felt good…it’s like my body couldn’t get enough of that hot water and there was still a mixed blessing doing this too. I cupped my boobs together with my arms just to see how much water I could trap in my cleavage and…it was such a boy thing to do but I couldn’t help but to find it hilarious and so did mom when I told her what was so funny in the shower.
The bad? My hair, holy crap. I knew but didn’t know that hair get’s longer when it’s wet and mine ended up touching the backs of my knees. And talk about a pain in the ass to wash.
My bitching about it gets mom to get a pair of scissors out and give me a trim. The first snip attempt and they break. It turns out my hair is really tough.
And I’m strong; I know that from the fight with Damian and the way I just swung stuff and people around. The cool thing about that it that I’m not a bit affected by the weight of my hair.
I mean just for a test in the bathroom I got Mom to rest her bum on my forearm and I picked her up and it wasn’t really that much weight to me…like a heavy wrist watch. I carried her out like that to the main part of the quarters.
“Hey Dad check this out?”
He looks and stares a bit then nods as he’s setting out food on a small table. “Good, great even just think of all the chores I can get you to help me with.”
I rolled my eyes.
He say’s. “You haven’t been a girl long enough to roll your eyes at me young lady.”
I look at him. Blink, blink, blink. “But…Daddy!”
He has this look on his face that is just priceless.
That sets me and mom off to giggling again. And he’s shaking his head in good humored defeat.
Breakfast has me a little freaked because I’m scared of putting on the weight and it’s different being a girl y’know. I mean I don’t know yet but like everybody knows that and…sigh…I can’t help it I come from a family of big eaters and we live and we work around food and stuff. I eat like they do…actually once I’m started I’m starving and Mom’s trying to school me in how to eat like a girl and at the same time it’s eating, not picking that she’s showing me it’s all in how you do things.
Those girls that just pick at their food just irritate the heck out of her.
After breakfast I’ve got an appointment with Dr. Burke at the labs and Mrs. Champion’s there as well and I’ll tell you something it’s more that weird to see the city’s premier superwoman dressed not in her trademark colors but a skirt and leggings and a long sweater with a belt with ballet flats.
First is the physical and that was a bit rough. It takes a heavy gauge needle to puncture my skin for blood tests and apparently it’s like trying to get through leather. And…it hurts. But my blood is blue and it’s not really co-operating either. It flows out and then it’ll stop and pull itself back into my body.
When they yank it out to keep a sample it very quickly turns itself into crystal. Like in about twelve seconds. So it takes some more tries and putting the stuff under a high tech microscope and recording what’s going on.
Then there’s the fact that I’m sensitive to vibrations and I’m allergic to the ultrasound stuff so much it makes me sick and it hurts and there’s a wave of that heat and I armor up.
They end up using a PET and a CAT scanner and a few other ones that use different kinds of energy/radiation that show what’s going on with me inside and out.
Okay…what we can tell as far as we can tell that there’s a new organ inside of me built in through my spine this has sheathed all of my nervous system in it’s own tendrils to invade the rest of my body and it’s all throughout every thing inside of me now using and changing my body changing it into the perfect host environment.
Its living crystal bio-nanites and they are in every part of my body from my bones to my blood to my brains. Parvati was there doing some mystical checks and it’s not a sentient life for this thing grown to my spine. It’s not from new haven and it was some kind of other organism at one point re-engineered by this Alchemist guy to be a new organ. It’s nothing mystical she’s sure of that and as far as she could tell it’s native to this plane of existence.
I should be more freaked but with my earlier trauma honestly I’m all out of freaked and being a geek and a comic book nerd I get off a bit on this who powers testing thing going on and it’s neat to work with Parvati.
She’s a sorceress supreme, like Dr. Strange but if he was a Hindu supermodel with a hint of a British accent. She also the teams trick cyclist? I had to look that up after she told me that. Apparently it means she’s a shrink and Mom loves her because she’s apparently been to earth and lived in England and mom so wants to know about all of that stuff.
I think Mom would love to be able to do a proper “Tea” service at our bakery, the only people that do those are at the big hotels in the rich areas of town. I’m from a lower middle class area and that might go over well as something different if it’s not to expensive.
Me…? I think now that I’m like this I really should learn some of that female deportment. Y’know I honestly think that part of why Parvati’s so attractive is the way that she behaves. I’m a girl now and I kind of want the respect it’ll give me. I think I need it, I won’t get to coast on my looks like the ravishing girls….Sunny Harper I’m not.
Powers testing came next and I’m a brick, that’s a heavy combat type of super. Most of this is done in this great gym. I’ve never seen equipment like this. I mean I recognize all the types of things they are but like the treadmill they get me on it’s a metal woven track and plates and the entire things the size of a full sized truck.
“Is this to keep me from crashing through it?” I’m joking but I’m not.
Dr. Burke just smiles as she’s tapping away at her data pad. “No everything’s like this, take Titan or Champion when they run hard their legs are hitting the ground with all that enhanced strength. It all has to be durable enough to take it.”
I’m so not going to break any land speed records anytime soon. Mrs. Champion actually takes me aside and teaches me how to run.
How to run? Yep. With the changes it’s something I didn’t have a clue. Like that arms tight to your sides and bent thing you see women sometime do it’s to work with the bounce and sway. And I should move my shoulders with it in time with the sway of my hips to get these down to a smooth flow. Still the best I can get is about twelve Kmph but I moved easier once I’m shown what to do.
My endurance is iffy for a superhuman. Then again really I’m more than out of shape. Nope no massive super easy this is no problem doing stuff for me. After an hour and eleven minutes I’m sweat soaked and gasping for air.
My hand eyes is faster though, a lot faster and they figure the stuff in me has boosted my nerve conduction. I can juggle four balls without losing them and that’s something I couldn’t do before. I’m also not anywhere near as clumsy as I was before, that’s nice.
Weights, wow I’m definitely a brick. My bench weight is twelve hundred and fifty three pounds. Why such a number? All the universal machines use electromagnetics to do all the resistance work I guess with the real heavies you’d need this instead of free weights. They rated me right up there with a full body conversion combat cyborg. I can punch with enough force to break bricks which to me is hella cool.
I’m right about my hearing, the crystals are in through all those tiny little bones in my ears and I can hear right up there with the best audio optic in but upper and lower ranges as well. My eyesight’s also better about twenty percent over human standard and I can see in the dark. The stuff’s in my eyes too and absorbs more light than normal.
The cool thing is my vibrational senses. I can sort of feel motion around be in a rough way on my skin, it’s not precise but I can feel where someone is around me when blindfolded up to like a dozen feet if they’re moving. A tennis ball…not so much.
Armored up is another thing.
First is learning how to armor up which means since I’m not angry then using the damned ultrasound stuff on me to provoke the reaction. Parvati ends up putting me into a memory trance to focus me on the feelings that come with the armoring up.
That was so weird…
It comes out of my pores and where my body hair follicles were and are like these spikes or needles that then break apart like an unraveling fiber optic cable then they interweave all together and harden in literally just over a second.
There was a ancient snuff cult classic mutant movie called the X-men and the shape changer from that Mystique…it looks like that, this spiky ripple all over me that smoothes and coats me in crystal. Super dense protein enhance carbon fiber armor…it’s actually tougher than industrial diamonds. I get to see my changes in slow motion while tranced out.
I look better like this in a way, like me out of molded glass but I’m pulled in, tightened up like in a form fitting tight body suit. Nothing bounces and everything’s enhanced…the armors mesh moves from what we can tell like the fibers imitating muscles and it’s not restricted to flesh limits. It’s literally like I grow an exo-suit.
I’m fast like this about three times my ground speed and I’m twenty times stronger, twenty times…I can bench nearly flat out twenty five thousand pounds…and Parvati takes Mom off for a cuppa while I get put through the dangerous testing…
That’s a good idea since I’m not sure how mom would take me getting shot at. Normal rounds I barely feel, tasers do nothing to me at all and shotguns are net to useless and only armor piercing stuff will even get to damage the surface of the armor. A full clip of AP rounds from a submachine gun spider webs my armor for a few minutes.
It turns out my armor heals itself too. Big military rounds are effective and so are vibrosonic blades and weapons they cut my armor really decently. Sonics though…it really messes with my armor shattering it if a condensed beam or weakening it a lot if a full body exposure.
Other energy attacks I’m resistant to like a super heavy armor, except I’m extra laser resistant because I’m refractive and electrical attacks I’m insulated and I apparently pull in some of the energy too. I’m really resistant to fire and cold, good for a water depth pressure of seven kilometers! And I’m space worthy…!
I even take a couple of hits from Mrs. Champion and I’m not pancaked, she shatters armor where she hits but she’s halfway invulnerable too and five times my strength….my armored strength. Yeah like I’ve said she’s superwoman.
I’m drinking what must be a gallon of water and looking at Mrs. Champion. “I’m too dangerous to be left unchecked aren’t I?”
“Yes, but I’m glad that you’re the one to recognize it Terry.”
“I’m also not sure how stable I am up here.” and tap my head. “I mean I’m good now but…I know, I need help.”
“We all need help Terry, everything about this life having powers is so far outside the normal. I was a mild mannered average teen before I was changed.”
“Changed?”
“I had a blood transfusion by Steven before he knew about his powers and the stuff that was changing him started changing me.”
“Oh how…if I can ask?”
“Steven was exposed to an off world virus that nearly killed him when he was working in a shuttle port. It was just something brought in unlabeled trying to get past bio-quarantine and they gave him and the other a last ditch synthetic blood transfusion trying to boost his immune system and it saved him…just him. The anti-bodies didn’t break down and they created a kind of third blood cell that gives us our powers.”
“So…”
“I was infected by the anti-bodies.”
“Oh, so he’s blood contagious?”
“Yes..it’s dangerous to be infected by his blood because not everyone reacts in the same way to it.”
“But you too look so much alike. The eyes and the hair. They’re both silver.”
“A side effect for all the affected.”
“Oh…”
“So, there’s been a lot that’s happened and I’d like to keep you and your family here while you train and decide what you want to do.”
“Do?”
“Join up maybe.”
“Join? Me?”
“As a Junior Member, the thing is you and Titan are from the city, it’s a great thing that you two know the city so well. It means a lot to a team like ours that we have home grown heroes.”
“Is there a lot of us junior members?”
“A few but not enough for the growing numbers of malcontents…it’s like every super that develops there’s so many that see it as a way to earn a cheap buck, get revenge, get power and…really there’s not enough of us Terry and ….” she pinches at the bridge of her nose.
“We lose too many because we won’t cross some of those line. Others we lose because it’s draining Terry. Honestly Terry what you did, with those plasmite grenades…it says so much about the kind of woman…the kind of person you are.”
I’m not used to that. Getting praise from someone whose’s not family. And this personal heart to heart with a woman the little girls all over this city want to grown up to be. I kill the rest of my water.
“I’m in but I’m going to need help…there’s so much I need to know, want to know….uhm…”
“Elizabeth but I go by Liz.” She extends her hand and we shake. “We owe you for a lot Terry with everything that’s happened, We’ll help you any way we can.”
I head off to the showers because I really need one and was peeling out of things as I rounded the corner and there’s this guy there. Oh shit wrong door…I use the one marked with a skirt now dummy.
He’s…
You know those martial artist guys you see when they take off their shirts and everything is all like super defined muscle. This was what I was seeing. He’s six foot even and one hundred and seventy pounds of just living sculpture he radiates male, powerful and danger.
And he’s naked and he’s pulling on this mask.
It’s Shroud.
Oh fuck.
“Oh fuck…sorry…”
He spins as fast as anything and stares at me with these green eyes like I’ve never seen the shade of before. Dark emerald green mixed with silver notes that makes them very unique.
“I got the wrong door…sorry…”
I turn and start to get out of there as fast as I can. I’m almost to the door when he’s got me by the wrist and I get spun around. I armor up. He’s staring at me.
“I did you wrong Terry, everyone’s said it, and….and I’ve been trying to think how to make it up to you…but…but…I suck with people, I…”
He backs away and stares at me for a minute then he pulls the mask off. The mask he wears ever here in The Tower. He’s really good looking, blonde, short hair but with some wavy curls in it. He extends his hand. “Nickolas…Nickolas Trask…” we shake hands very briefly then he pulls the mask back on and he leaves quickly almost angry.
Not angry, but scared.
I know his secret identity.
That’s…It’s huge.
My Super Secret Life…Diamond-4
Chapter 4
It took me awhile to get out of the showers. Just to get myself moving not getting a shower, least not in public. I’m not ready for that really after my encounter with…Nickolas…or Shroud.
I get to the quarters we’ve been assigned. It’s a condo really and a lot nicer than our place at home. Heck my room alone has a huge bed specially built for my density but there’s a media nook/office spot and a full bathroom with those fancy whirlpool tubs and a separate shower. Plus a closet that’s almost another room.
That’s my bedroom. And since it’s my quarters I have the master bedroom and my parents have the guest room downstairs. Yeah downstairs in my place…it sounds too cool right? Well I can’t really go home. There’s being this whole junior champion thing but also just me, my weight and stuff home would not really support me.
Five hundred pounds wouldn’t hurt downstairs in the bakery but upstairs is just wood, I mean perfectly nice and decently built but plywood and sheet rock and normal building materials. I’d forget myself and lean on a wall to brace myself and I’d go right through or something. Me plopping into a seat or a couch or a bed…I’d be downstairs pretty fast.
So…I’m moving out. Into here a few years early.
There’s still a lot of stuff to go through yet with all of this.
I get into the bathroom and run a bath and just because I’m a girl now I suppose. I don’t do the bubble bath thing instead opting for my first whirlpool bath. Oh yeah it feels good and it’s so…I can feel the bubbles going over my vee and it just feels so strange and the effect of breasts in a bath is just…so odd.
I nearly fall asleep after the feelings settle into me getting used to them. Drying’s a trip, too still. My hair squeaks, I know sometimes normal hair can squeak but mine has this other quality to it that just gives it that sort of glassy squeak. And it’s a lot of hair to deal with. I know I could get it cut but I don’t want to. I’ve always loved long hair on a girl and I’ve got great hair even if it’s and odd color now and I need the extra distraction from my size and the Fantastic Fours.
It’s an old comic team reference, I’m a super geek and with 44-FF breasts…yeah….yeah…Huge boobs, stunning can’t see my feet boobs. I mean I’ve got the shoulders to sort of handle them and my powers offset them in terms of weight and everything but…Hell…I make Powergirl look flat chested. That’s another comic book reference. You’d think that we have all new stuff and we do comic wise but to a comic geek there’s no such thing as a hero/villain we don’t know or have the action figure stuff and posters and movies for stuff non-geeks have ever heard of.
I dry off and slip into my bed naked. Another first for me with synthetic silk/cotton sheets but there’s this part of me that’s still Terry and I want to do the naked girl in bed thing even if I’m the girl.
It takes awhile to get to sleep…well not even sleep…I reach for the bottle of hand cream and apply some to my breasts…just something slippery. I start trying different things until I get aroused, until I get to this omigod! Goodness, breathing hard as I squeeze my breasts and sort of pull that squeeze over my nipples and that other bit pulling on them…My mind doesn’t go to the jerking off image or milking image…well sort off…I’m picturing someone’s mouth there real easily.
There’s warm build up of heat between my legs and this slick wetness happening, it’s like a guy having pre-cum. It’s not that different, my clitty sort of feels like a hard on and I slip and experimental hand down which has to sneak around a breast and over my hip to my slit.
It’s sensitive and honestly It could be better…if I had any clue to what I was doing but oh it felt good, like just sort of playing with your head if you’re a guy but all self slippery helps a lot and I can feel it building I keep going until.
Oh…it feels so much more full body than it used to. It’s like my orgasm comes from the full reaches of my body….like as my body tenses it’s squeezing out my orgasm like a sponge and afterward my body goes back to “shape” and want’s me to squeeze me again.
My breasts get ever more sensitive and are other pleasure spikes that are almost as good and they send signals that I swear that these feelings go and make my clitty twitch under my fingers.
My brain…there’s something not guy in my brain that wants more.
It really changes when I sink my fingers into myself instead of just rubbing. My little girl-pearl is still getting attention but there’s this…there’s an ache inside down there that feels like it’s getting this intense relief of my fingers inside of me and as my pussy tightens around then it’s like being able to squeeze things in your hands when your in pain…there’s this feeling of deep relief…and sensation with all those nerves and I lose myself in the feelings…let the intense sensations wash over me.
And at some point that fantasy of someone sucking on my nipples making love to my breasts becomes a person, and my fingers are replaced by a cock and I don’t care…I want more, more, more until I roll over push my breasts into the bed hard as my “sponge” get’s squeezed hard enough to squirt and I cry out into my pillows.
“Uugnhh!!!, fuck! Nick!”
I’m dazed and panting nearly drooling an just sink into heavy breathing and sleep. The sex and the exercise. And my brains sink into these dreams….Nickolas, the things he said, the intense looks, the body…my now female brain is just saying yes to that and after my last little self performance I can’t say that I’d say no.
Oh wow…oh…I’m a straight girl. I had a fantasy and it wasn’t a lesbian one. I fantasized about a guy.
Nick, Nickolas, Shroud.
Oh god do I have a thing for the bad boys?
Sexy, very sexy dreams full of lots of me and Nick and Diamond and Shroud and yeah I’m not going to go all nuts over him and I’ve seen too many girls as a boy at school going out with complete dickheads and couldn’t get why.
But…
Such a nice change from the nightmares.
Morning comes and I get up and have a really quick shower and head to the gym. It’s still early but I need to learn how to be the girl I am that I am. I feel really good though and I start with some stretches then play with the gym’s control desk and there’s a holo projection that helps instruct me through some Pilates and how to use the weights and I even run on the treadmill. I don’t know, I’m still sort of Y’know about my weight so I do sit-ups or crunches until they hurt…actually until I fall back hurting and panting on the mats.
“That should be done in smaller sets.”
I look up to see Sunny Harper there in her workout clothes. Tall, long legs, great breasts and she’s just perfect…and…this close to her I thought that…before I’d be…all stunned and turned on and I mean this is Sunny Harper. The girl in school most likely to become Miss New Haven.
Nothing….well nothing other than kind of feeling really self conscious in front of this super-alpha female.
“Uhm…yeah…I suppose.” I’m panting and sweating.
“It’s a lot easier on the body than pushing things like that.”
“Okay, I guess you work out a lot cheerleading and stuff.”
“Yeah but I’m off the squad.”
“Really? Why?”
“I’m enhanced, so ethically I can’t compete.”
“Compete it’s cheerleading, you look hot and yell our chants and stuff.”
She looks at me raising an eyebrow. “Oh really? Okay Terry you want to put your money where your mouth is?”
I’m not the shlubb I was, so I look at her. “Sure.”
I was all set to show her that I wasn’t going to be the push over girl with her that I was when confronted by the jock set.
Turns out that Sunny is so not the girl I thought she’d be.
You gotta be better inside and out to be here I guess.
We run and she plays tunes. “Get your feet hitting the track to the beats Terry, full lungs long deep breaths control your breathing, don’t pant you gotta forget that you’re running once you get the beat, it’s the breathing that’s the bigger part!”
It takes me awhile but I get it, or I’m starting to get it. Sunny is singing along with the tunes and I’ll say this, she’s not too dainty to not get sweaty.
Pilates is next and calisthenics Sunny exercises parts of me that I never knew I had. But there’s some coolness too. She shows me some tumbling stuff, I suck at it and I’ve just don’t have the right center of gravity.
But, I learn to pivot better, and to pirouette. I actually use my boobs. Hey! I’m serious and I thought that Sunny was nuts and making fun of me but they are a huge part of my body mass. So…I basically twist my torso a bit more at the start and unwind as I turn but lead with my body weight that chest centric.
It took me a few times to get it but. I do get it.
“Look Terry, you’re new to this. And honestly those are really, really big assets to deal with. So we have to teach you to use them rather than adjust to things. You’re way stronger than you weigh Terry you’ve got to get used to that too. Throw yourself into the spin.”
She’s right like learning to run correctly it’s everything. I have to live with these.
“God Sunny….(panting)…I want to get this, I was just this…Y’know before and now I’m…”
I grab my breasts for emphasis. “I don’t want to look like a bimbo or an airhead or be all clumsy because of this, these. I want to be graceful and stuff.”
She’s lying beside me on the mats.
“I’ll help…I’m kind of saddled with some free time being on suspension and…breaking up with Matt.”
“What?!” Holy shit…they were like the perfect couple, the entire high-school cliché. “What happened?”
“I cheated and I never fessed up to it and one night standed the girl that I cheated on them with.”
“Wait, you’re bi?”
“Uhm, I’d prefer to check the It’s complicated box on that one.” she covers her face with both hands.
“I’m straight…”
“Terry in your head straight or bio-straight?”
“Both I think, I think my biology is rewired right into my brain being female now.”
“Pink thoughts?”
“Ugh, no I hate pink.”
“Yeah, I could tell. Your definitely a Sky and a Winter.”
“Okay I get what you just said Sunny but I don’t got a clue to what it means.”
“I’ll show you when we go shopping.”
“Shopping?”
“Oh yeah you need a whole new set of everything.”
“Oh.”
“So…into guys now?”
“Yep or at least when I’m alone I guess…as to the real thing? I’ve never been with anyone Sunny, never talked with someone I might like or might like me back even.”
“Not into girls at all then?”
“Not really.”
“Were you?”
“Yes!”
“Huh…hard on the head?”
“Yeah, no…I’m so inexperienced that it’s right at where even if I was a guy I’d be just as clueless. At least “getting to know myself” has kind of burst that cherry on being a girl…but It’s like being in a dark room and fig ringing out Hey! I’m a girl!…but I’m still just sort of sitting in the dark.”
“Hey I’ll help as much as I can.”
“Thanks, Sunny it means a lot.”
“Yeah, besides it’ll help me think of what to do with the stuff in my life.”
“Hey Sunny?”
“Yeah Terry?”
“Regardless of things, you’ve been really cool. You just need a friend I’ll be there.”
“Thanks Terry. I see you in an hour?”
“Uhm Yeah sure.”
She does a kip-up or kick up one or the other and saunters away in that wiggle effortless sway. Nope I’m not even trying that trick but I want that…
I want to shine this time around.
Like a Diamond.
My Super Secret Life… Diamond 5
Chapter 5
It is so unreal going shopping with Sunny and Mom. I mean I’ve never seen my Mom remade like this at all and after getting kissed by Dad like she had been she’s very much back to being or feeling like the girl that she was before me and marriage and work and bills and stuff.
It’s a strange thing when Sunny get’s us some bottles of water and some energy shakes in a can to take with us.
“Why are we?”
Mom laughs. “Oh Terry I think we’re shopping with a professional.”
Sunny nods. “It’s just to keep us going a spree like this you need to keep your energy up and to stay hydrated.”
Then we’re heading into the place that I’ve always feared to tread the Oasis-Grande Galleria. I mean there’s lots of malls around Paradise City but this is “The” mall it’s right in the zone between the casino zones and the ultra rich district of the city where my school is at and what’s Sunny’s home turf.
The place is where everyone who’s cool goes shopping and where guys like I used to be would like to go and see what we’d want to see like everyone else but it’s also where the vicious packs of the cool kids roam and would hunt the people like me for sport.
I’m really scared actually.
The last time that I set foot in here I was bothered, bugged and teased into leaving but not before I got dumped buy guys on the lacrosse team into one of the fountains and got lots and lots of Whale jokes aimed at me.
And other jokes.
Those big baggy concealing t-shirts don’t hide your moobs when it’s wet. There are way too many bad memories of then for me and I’m scared to death of a repeat performance here.
But Sunny is so damned fearless or rather fearsome as she begins to look over the places her and she takes out her smart-phone and she’s doing something…?
Okay, here’s where my reality takes another swerve. I know Sunny’s smart, she’s altered and stuff but I see her going through the mall directory locking in a search engine to go through the site for the stores in the mall that we’re going to be interested in and to look for the things that are on sale plus to collect the digital coupons?
“Wow…that kind of cool and really smart.” I’m looking over her shoulder and actually having a hard time keeping up with what she’s doing.
“Hmm? Oh yeah sort of I’m not sure who came up with the idea but everyone does it.” She gestures at several groups of girls that have their phones out. And That’s when it hits me with the swerve. Smart is kind of as pertains to your experience. I can out-comic-trivia any of these girls but they have this stuff down.
So maybe the whole perception that I’ve got about these girls isn’t anymore right than the ones they had about me?
The rest is like she’s taken the stuff the cops must be teaching her at The Tower and she’s taking us through the shops in the mall like she’s SWAT or is the Swatch?
I’m nervous at first and like I said even scared but it kind of starts to fade as I start having fun. No I didn’t become female and get the shopping gene but a lot of this is a free shopping spree and that’s always cool then there’s me just actually being all superficial and liking it.
I’m a girl, that’s not going to get cured.
I used to be severely comeliness challenged, and teased and kind of a social pariah.
I’m not Sunny stunning but I think I really am looking good, pretty even and maybe attractive. So when I’m trying on all these things that change my look, but still make me look good.
It’s fun for me. It’s a lot more fun too when I see my Mom buying things for herself that we or she couldn’t afford at all y’know. I hear her say. “Oh my god I’ve always wanted to have one of these a lot.”
Y’know too Sunny…Sunny’s awesome because it goes right into the cart and Mom’ll say.
“Sunny, we can’t. I can’t justify needing this.”
And she’ll say something like. “You need this to set an example of social skills such as attire for you son…oh…you have a daughter…hmmm, who’s fault was that? Seriously they say one word tell me. This is handled.”
It’s like she’s almost playing big sister to both of us.
Very cool.
There’s a challenge though in a lot of clothes in finding shops that carry stuff to fit me and the fantastic-fours…. Yeah 44 FF’s are a challenge in a lot of varieties of stuff.
But I look good in sweaters, and if I can wear and open shirt with a tank top or chemise kind of thing I look really good. I love my sharktail hoodie because of my inner geek really it looks good on me and it sorta has this hooded robe like effect.
Zip front track suits wit yoga pants are cool and comfy and I can wear things that are pretty too. No, I’m not brainwashed about pretty stuff every guy out there sees things that are pretty even if he’d never say the words. I have a this great track suit with the zip jacket top that’s this almost matching my hair shade but has these white printed flowers all over it and it still looks pretty and it’s really girly but it also looks great on me.
The tee-shirts are easy and Sunny actually takes my to the guys section too because some of the edgy stuff they have in shirt designs are great. We buy some great band t-shirts too and even a couple of guys formal shirts because on of those over my cut offs and my bikini will look killer laid back for going to the beach.
My biggest thing that I found hard was nice tops and blouses the non-formal kind and Sunny says that if I’m going formal and not in a dress then I’m best to get something tailored.
Skirts, skirts aren’t that bad actually except for the longer clinging stretchy ones that sort of force your legs together and you have to walk weird. I’m not all that freaked at wearing a short skirt either though they’re a lot like wearing shorts really but you have uhm…more air and have to be more careful.
Actually here in Paradise City we’re a really warm place in the summertime and I can see these being something that I’d wear. I made sense to Sunny and Mom was surprised and vetoed a couple of the one I was looking at as well as Sunny under the grounds of too skanky.
I’m still sort of seeing and shopping with a guy’s eye. I’m going with their judgement because I really don’t want to be a skanky looking girl.
Dresses…I like dresses for the same reason as the skirts and more…if you find a dress that you really like and you are comfortable with and feel pretty when you look in the mirror the dress really tends to make you feel that way the entire time that you’re wearing it.
I really like the look and feel of wearing a peasant dress, the off the shoulders thing and the way it looks with my breasts and there just something kind of soulfully me that comes out when I wear it…I bought like five of them.
I also like drape necked dresses, and these ones called a “New Pagoda dress” that has this sleeveless top but it folds over in the top like a martial arts jacket with a v-neck to it and they come in lots of oriental styles.
I like them because they’re all sexy, girly kung fu like and that pleases my inner geek-girl and they’re really light and comfortable and made my boobs look awesome. I’ve got this grey one trimmed with just white that with my hair makes me look like I’m one of those non-oriental hot anime babes.
I also get a black one and a white one because they look actually good as formal wear.
I get three LBD’s or little black dresses and some tank dresses and a navy blue grey crocheted knit that had this hood and it clung to me and made me look kinda good.
Leggings and jeggings these too I own a lot of now too. it seems like an awful lot of stuff doesn’t it but this is me catching up on years of things and it’s me learning the language of dressing to match my mood and what I want to say about myself too.
I hadn’t really had any idea of just what this all meant when you’re a girl and it’s fascinating too. I mean there’s something about all of this that makes this sense a sort of logic as to why. I think it is my newly wired brain and everything but there’s a lot of stuff my Mom never got to learn from her own childhood and we’re both soaking the femiculture up like we’ve just got out of the male wastelands.
But it’s the lingerie shopping that’s strange and exciting and intimidating. We don’t find much in the regular shops for me so we go to some exclusive places. They have my sizes and more in places like Fredericks.
P.C. is not just home to Hollywood interstellar but it’s home to Vishanti bio-Tech and cyber surgeries and the sex entertainment industry more than anywhere else on new haven so there’s a lot of modified people going around with measurements like mine in some places here.
It was really….uhm…at Starvixens a serious boudoir shop for all things sexy and frilly and lacy. The girl there Stacy…it was the name on her tag measured me and was staring at me a lot with her big blue eyes. And I suppose I was looking at the beautiful girls that worked there the way that I used too and that sort of started the whole thing…Well this Stacy was really friendly and took me by my fingers to the changing room.
“You’re really lucky Terry, you a very beautiful girl.”
“I am?” Gulp.
“Oh gosh yes you have this really exotic look to you and just amazing curves….” Her hands slid up my side in the changing room making me feel all shivery. “And you have beautiful breasts.”
“I do?” Double gulp.
“Oh yes you do may I?”
“May you?”
She dropped my bra on the dressing room floor and she took one of my nipples into my mouth and it made my eyes roll back…hot wet and so…her thumb and fore finger sort of clamped on my other one and she was doing these little motions that was like she was stroking my nipple off or like somehow hand suckling it.
I swear part of my brain was melting but at the same time there was this feeling inside of…off…there was something just not really right about this and the more it went on the more I was feeling it, and it wasn’t what I wanted…I don’t know but it just wasn’t…
“Stacy…Stacy please…stop…”
She stops and she looks at me and she looks sexy but she sort of doesn’t too. It’s just literally uncomfortable like this like I have the bad shivers.
“Stop? You don’t like this…”
“Nn…nn…no…” It took me a bit to find the words to fit everything… “No…god, Stacy you’re beautiful and I’m really, really honoured that you’re hitting on me but…I’m…I’m…not gay…I thought I might even be like Bi or something but this…this is just…”
“Creeping you out?”
“Yes…” I wince. “I’m so sorry…god Stacy I…I’m straight.”
“Hey its okay, you really didn’t know?”
“No…I mean you’re beautiful but you’re just really not…”
“Hey its okay I’m sorry too.”
“Can you still show me the lingerie?”
“And miss a commission?”
It’s all sorts of awkward and stuff but we do get through the sort of fucked up social speed bump that we both had made and are oddly sort of acting like friends. Stacy gets me to buy a lot but she runs it through with her employee discount number.
I smile and look at mom and Sunny as we head to the car. “Well…that was…interesting.”
Sunny looks ay me, raises her eyebrows.
“Stacy came onto me in the changing rooms.”
Mom’s eyes get big. “Terry honey are you a lesbian…can you be a lesbian if you started out as a boy? Sunny how does that work?”
Sunny looks at me. “So like we talked about earlier?”
I nod and sigh. “Yep, I mean I was heading here into the temple of temples for all things girly and slinky and there was bound to be hot girls here and I was really trying to get there in the old me with girls headspace and even with one of the hottest one’s in the store making out with me all I was getting was slowly but surely these signals inside going uh-uh no way.”
“So it’s definitely you and guys then.”
“Looks like.” I hug myself a little then relax. “Well it’s not the end of the world though.”
Mom looks at me. “Terry?”
“Mom, I never really had that much of a real life frame of reference to begin with. I’ve kinda been dealing with this in my head awhile now. If it was a girl or a guy that I was going to be with then it’d still be all new to me. Now at least I know…besides?”
“Besides?”
“Yeah, there’s all that girl stuff that you can teach me about being a girl and liking guys and stuff.”
“Oh…” She brightens up at that. “Oh dear I wonder how your father will take this?”
“I guess I’ll just have to meet a nice boy when I want to bring one home.”
The look on her face sets me and Sunny off giggling. She joins in after a few seconds.
Sunny looks at me. “So what else do you really need?”
“Toys.”
“Toys?”
“Yeah, uhm…I’d kind of want to get something uhm adult like.”
“Oh…”
Then Mom pipes up. “I know a place.”
“Mom!”
“What? We work hard Terry there’s sometimes when you’re…there’s sometimes I…”
She’s blushing but we are all giggling and laughing as we get into the car and sunny follows Mom’s directions.
…………………………………. Ow My Gawd.
I had now idea.
I have never been into a “sensual therapy” shop in my life and while I’ve watched porn online and in mags and there’s lots of ads and stuff…
It’s as fascinating as much as somethings are just Eeew.
And yes, I’m over fifteen and can be in here with my parent or guardian signing a waver and them taking a copy of our Id’s.
Sunny flashed her badge.
That’s so funny I lost it once we were well down the aisles. I mean who uses a police I.D. to get into a sex shop.
Well apparently Sunny Harper does.
It’s an experience and I do get a few things, a small toy that fits like a thimble over my fingers, a slim wand, a jelly one, and a bigger one that’s uhm very realistic.
I was actually kinda sort of attracted to the idea of that one…Mom looked at me with this look. I looked back and sort of gestured at myself… “Mom…I’m a very big girl…”
Okay that set us off giggling again. Oh and one thing I’m Never…ever…buying one of those tongue on a stick things…Eeew!
We actually all bought a few things but Sunny wracked up the most in the book section. And not like the ones I bought like the Kama —sutra but these books on gender and sexuality and these ones about sex but from the guy’s side of things and sex addiction and a lot of stuff on being VG. These aren’t smutty stuff either but really like university level sexual studies and psyche stuff.
Given what I think is going on in her life good call Sunny get some education in these things under your hat.
…………………………………My last stop, our last stop is at The Fortress of Solitude. It’s this mega store for comic geeks and gamers and this is where I spend most of my personal money.
Hey just because I’m a girl now that doesn’t mean I can’t love video games or my comics and I even can buy things I’ve really wanted. But also…I can’t help but to buy a lot of the girl oriented stuff too.
Hey, there’s a lot of great role-models out there y’know for girls as comic book heroines. I’m going to read these all over again or mostly for the first time with a whole new set of eyes. I'm getting stares from the guys here at the place. I don't look like the average gamer...geek girl that comes in here and neither does Sunny. I am shopping and explaining a lot of this stuff to Sunny who does seem interested.
But…oh wow...am I causing that reaction?
There's a whole lots of the guys there that are sporting hardness.
I sort of not look but look?
There is this kind of feeling though like sort of the one I had in my head when I'd watch well...boobs.
Yep...het.
I slip out to the car and get one of my pairs of tight black legging and a mini skirt and stuff it into my purse then go back into the store.
I bought the shirt, it’s Lycra and pretty big but I tuck it in and get my girls adjusted so they’re riding just right and I walk out of the bathroom proudly wearing my Supergirl 2424 year shirt when she was wearing the classic Superboy version of the black top, black mini-skirt, black leggings and flats.
It’s very, very cool to see the stares as I walk out with the great big S on my chest.
"Okay now this is pretty cool."
My Super Secret Life…Diamond 6.
Chapter 6
The last two days were really busy really in just getting settled down and unpacked into my condo here in The Tower and getting things the way that I like them and getting tips from some of the female members and staff here at The Tower.
Mom had actually the great idea of me having a housewarming shower here in a sort of open house sort of way here for the people here that worked in the building and the other members on the team.
I actually worked quite hard with the Parvati when she had the time to spare with me. She’s Indian and like some of the stereotypes she’s had that whole English/Education and she even has the accent stuff to prove it. She even went to university there at this place called Cambridge?
Point is she knows all these things and manners like how to walk but not just walk but glide and there’s this whole thing with the book on my head that I still can’t do right at all but am getting better at. Sitting, standing smoothing my clothes without looking like I’m doing that stuff like sliding into sit at places, table manners.
I need a whole lot of practice at the stuff she’s showing me and really it’s only the tip of the iceberg and my mom’s there with me and honestly is just as bad as I am with this stuff but she wasn’t ever taught this stuff either.
It’s not that we never had manners but in the real world unless you’re from someplace fancy it’s not something really taught because people are too busy living or they just don’t acre or just don’t know how.
I’m a girl now and while not a stunningly make you drool, knock out I want people to remember me for who I am and how I acted rather than how I looked filling out my costume.
And Sunny didn’t show because she had her ass beat really hard by this blaster/brick called Vector.
Uh…yeah I kind of figured out that Sunny and Titan are the same people…uhm persons. The hows and the whys I don’t know but living here in The Tower it wasn’t too hard to figure out. Titan got really badly hurt and had bitten off more than he could chew and Sunny hasn’t been around or answering her phone or her texts either.
Which had me worried and had me thinking because her ex-boyfriend Matt had just come out all over his public blog accounts and stuff and it got passed on like wildfire. And it’s just NOT Sunny to leave someone high and dry like that. Well it happened because Sunny was in The Tower infirmary as Titan.
I know it’s sucked for Matt and I know it really sucked for me too because really Sunny’s my best friend. I stayed for awhile and there was a bit of a thing with Champion and security and me going to see Sunny. But I did that girl thing where I crossed my arms under my breasts and leaned on one hip and looked at Champion and he let me through with a sigh.
“Terri, this is hush, hush…Sunny’s powers to shift make her more than a secret identity.”
“Because of who the turn into right?”
“Yes, I don’t mean to be insulting.”
“No, I get it. I’m still a kid and you have to make sure. Look sir she’s my best friend. I just want to sit with her.”
“Good…and Terri?”
“Yes sir?”
“Maybe you can fill Titan in on some of the things about being a guy now and then?”
“Yes sir I’ll try to offer my two cents.”
I sit with Titan and he’s in a sort of coma. It’s more the lights are on but no body is home according to the experts. Like he should be up and around but he’s not there to be up and around or if he is…none of the psionics on staff can reach him.
His Dad comes in and stays for awhile before going back to work and he’s actually down here in the medical area enough that he takes his coffee breaks here too. I give him the room to talk to his son and he does even if he’s explaining research to him while Titan’s out of it.
The thing is him doing that in that brainy kind of manic way when he gets going is like Sunny when we were getting made over and shopping. There’s that same light and stuff in her eyes as he does.
Kind of like me with my comics and my sci-fiction movies. My favourites are still the 24th century version of Sliders the cartoon/amine and the comic series.
Actually I get Titan some comics to read. Sunny was never into this stuff so I actually go online and I go to Comic-Mythos and I run a search on the whole stuff about fathers and sons and power and responsibility and The Marvel Amulet series where a girl finds this amulet made by the majik guy behind Shazam and she becomes Captain Marvel the old DC comics hero and she has to deal with being that. It’s a very Titan like story that came about when the comic crash happened and the big names of the companies folded and comics kind of died out for awhile.
See I’m a geekette.
It’s funny when mankind started hitting the stars comics came back like those dime store westerns that the people used to buy in the eastern cities back in the Wild West colony days on earth.
And they exploded when the metahumans started showing up more.
Anyway I download the issues to my data card and just go to Kinkos and get them to print off blanks.
A comic blank now a days is for the readers. You can get almost anything online. But…they’re e-issues. You can go and get stuff printed out and that’s one of the things about the copy places is they can print you off and build/bind now anything from comics to magazines to novels. But they are blanks.
Anything original now has special watermarks and comes from the publishers and are automatically worth a lot more and cost a lot.
Bookstores even used ones are like a new form of antique store when it comes to originals versus blanks. No…despite the computer age and all the advances we’ve never gotten rid of books, hand held print can’t be killed.
I leave a bunch of them for when he wakes up and I head off to do other things. Like hitting the gym and working out. I even score some time with Nick after this Op. that the main heroes pulled to capture Vector.
He was in his mask and these tight…oh tight in the right places work out shorts and he schooled me awhile in self defence stuff. That was…I know we have that history and he’s a bad boy but damn…I can’t help but like guys more and more and this was like up close mat training with Batman…and Nick has this sculpted body that is just…
I was so feeling my teen girl hormones after that hour long session.
After a very long shower and a little appreciation for modern plumbing in the way of adjustable shower heads I went to my room and got online and got a hold of Matt.
[Hey…Matt, you don’t know me I’m Terry and I’m a friend of Sunny’s.]
[…Hey back, what kind of friend?]
[New friend, I just wanted you to know that she meant to get a hold of you but she’s been kind of sick.]
[I know. Saw the News.]
[Pardon?}
[I know.]
[Oh…]
[Bad?]
[Yeah.]
[Can I see her?]
[I can ask. BRB.]
I call the head office and get Liz…Mrs. Champion. “I was talking to Matt…uhm Sunny’s ex and he knows.”
“Yes Alexis has spent the night here and she…Matt has signed all the forms and stuff to be cleared.”
“Oh…cool, uhm he want’s to visit Sunny would this be okay?”
“Sure come and get a visitor pass and sign for it and I’ll get his pass reactivated.”
“Okay I need to go to school anyway and get some stuff and get some things for the others too.”
“Like?”
“My stuff and Sunny’s homework and the notes plus someone should get the stuff that Shane and that Kyle guy have missed since things happened right?”
“Right, great call terry that’s team player stuff I like to see.”
I blush at the praise but say. “Sunny’s my friend and Shane’s Sunny’s friend and I never really had a social group before…I’ve always wanted to actually have friends that I could do things for.”
“Well it’s a great start. I’ll see you when you get here.”
I get back online with Matt. [I’ll meet you at school? I have some errands to do there.]
[Sure there wasn’t a problem?]
[Nope you’re cool.]
[Thanks Terry I’ve been worried.]
[I know. I’ll see you soon.]
I hang up and get dressed nothing fancy actually low key, jeans and sketchers, a black scoop necked t-shirt that shows off my fantastic fours and a PCPD hoody with a zip front and after getting some paperwork from the office for the school and Matt’s pass I bum a ride to school from my Dad.
I went to the office first and it hasn’t been that long since I’ve been in school here everything has changed and I’m getting some really serious stares.
So…I through just a bit more sway, glide, bounce to how I move and yeah I’m petty enough to enjoy the jealous hating me for breathing looks from the stuck up girls that used to look down on me and instigate and egg the assholes on in tormenting me.
I move past the assholes in question like they’re useless and beneath me. I didn’t really have close friends here but there were some fellow geeks and them…I save some of my smiles for them….even give them some second glances.
Then I hit the office and present my changeover papers and notes for Sunny and the others and start to get the stuff they missed downloaded. I’m getting some iffy looks from the admins and stuff. There’s that little troll guy there that looks like he hates me for being a freak but at the same time he’s staring at me. Well parts of me. I’m not going back to school here. Liz said she wanted to talk to me later about school and I think I know what about and honestly.
I wouldn’t say no to going there even if I’d miss my family. But I know I’m green as heck and this has a lot of appeal to a geekette like me. No I’m getting my school records and then cleaning out my locker.
I know that admin guy was almost itching to do or say something but these are pretty official papers I gave them so he’s been hovering and trying to be intimidating while perving on me.
Bleech…
I get my stuff and go looking for Matt and instead I see Alexis. Nice black dress but not a club style, leggings and heels and she looks good. She passes only in this way that…you know she’s a guy…she’s not enhancing her bust or hiding her shoulders but her drag is that sexy, normal and down to earth she screams well…she.
I go over and hug them lightly. “Damn Alexis you look great.”
“Thanks, I’ve been trying just to be me but the haters aren’t letting up that much and well I’m kinda out more than I would be in protest.”
She gestures to her locker covered in marker notes saying Queen, queer, poof, fag, slut, freak and other niceness. I hug her again. “You okay?”
“Yes, no…I’ve got a mix of groups that are with me in being me or hate me for it too.”
“God that sucks but trust me I get the being hated part.”
“Yeah the mutant thing.”
“No way before that. I should get going I’ve got to clear out my locker and get stuff for Sunny and Shane and Kyle.”
“Need a hand?”
I was going to say not really but there’s this look in her eyes like she doesn’t want to be alone. See this is a private school, money kids or scholarship kids. I was a scholarship kid and so’s Matt. His folks have cash but it takes a lot to get in here and they’re not rich, well off but not rich. I think Matt’s dad sells cars for a living.
“Sure, besides the locals might take offense even more for you hanging around a mutie.”
“You can’t really tell.”
“I give Alexis the Spock brow. “Uh-huh like the hair and the eyes are enough of a give away.” I gesture at my chest. “These tip the scales.”
“Yeah okay sorta of yeah.” Alexis has this smile that’s totally different than Matt’s I’ve seen enough pictures of him to know that. It’s kind of curious.
We hit the lockers of the others first and get the stuff I think that they’re going to need and then I get some spare clothes from Shane’s room and Kyle’s room in the dorms and then I go to clean out my stuff and Alexis and I talk about clothes and bands and books and make-up and I tell her about my shopping trip and how much I don’t know and ask her how she learned and stuff and it’s so different.
Alexis said it was just there, this need to learn and know about girl stuff like she was a GG which apparently means genetic girl? And that she had just those same innate needs to be a girl growing up in exactly the same stages as the rest of the girls her age but at the same time she was a boy and when she was in boy mode she was okay with being a boy until there was just something that triggered her need to be her like something moving or sad or just something that was really pretty and girly that it even caught matt’s attention.
It’s all very schizophrenic to me but at the same time I can see it as it’s not like another personality and stuff. It’s varied gendered.
“Wow and I though that I had problems.”
I’m cleaning out my stuff when I here.
“Holy fuck would you look at the titties on that one. Oh baby shake that ass for me.”
I look and it’s Jake and a couple of guys that he hangs with.
Alexis looks at him and in a quite good bitchy tone says. “Jake go fuck off.”
“Shaddup faggot…look guys it’s Matt-lexis the football teams cocksucking whore-boy.”
“It’s less disgusting than what you baseball players do with the bats and stuff…oh…wait you’re not on the team anymore…you got booted for doping.”
He was fast. Jake snapped a hand out and caught Alexis right on her right cheek sending her sprawling. He was going to do more but I get in the way. “Jake stop it just walk away.”
He stares at me and he stares at my breasts and grins and grabs my breasts. I bring my arms up and under like Nick showed me and just use some of my strength a shove him a few feet back.
He staggers and frowns. He gets those rolling shoulders and like he’s ready to fight. “Oh you think you’re some kind of tough bitch huh? You need some schooling whore you and the fag.”
I’m ready to fight or try to and Alexis has her hand on my shoulder. “No…this is my problem…hold these?”
It’s almost funny as she passes me her shoes and her hose and purse. She took off her hose so she wouldn’t wreck them in the fight. I actually sort of have this odd kind of fan girl go sister moment as Alexis is squaring off boxing like with Jake and she’s in a dress and make up.
It happens in these fast little bursts, of Alexis dodging a few hits and then blocking and striking back with what I think are fast jabs. There’s a few onlookers gathering and Jake’s getting more and more pissed as this girl/boy/girl barefoot in a dress is beating him like a snare drum.
And Jake doesn’t have the brains to keep calm and not lose his shit which makes him sloppy and gives Alexis openings and she opens up his lip and cuts hit above the eye and he staggers back and gesture at his buddies and I step in fast and just sort of shove them a bit and not even with my full strength and sent them sprawling on the grass. “Uh-uh, stay right there guys.” They’re staring at me stunned. And Alexis hit’s Jake a couple of more times staggering him back and says. “Thanks Terry.”
Jake looks at me again, then at my locker. “Lardass?!.....you fucking rat! you fucking god damned freak!”
He rolls and he grabs a bat from his gym bag on the ground and he completely ignores Alexis and swings at my head with a two handed swing and a scream of rage.
I don’t even move. I’m a lot tougher and denser and I block the shot with my forearm and stare him down as the bat explodes into splinters against my arm.
Jake staggers back away from me….scared, really scared and the he turns and takes off running with his two buddies.
I sigh and dust myself off and the spectators are backing off talking and whispering freaks, mutie, call the cops. They get really clear of me and Alexis. I look at her. “You okay?”
“Uh…yeah a bit too glowing at the moment and could use the ladies room to freshen up but somehow that’s not going to be an option.”
Campus PD show up and I call The tower and explain everything to Liz as Alexis is doing the same with the campus PD and they look like they want to give both of us shit and arrest us but the rent-a-cop in charge is looking at my hoodie and I smile and pass him the phone. He screws his face into this huh? Confused look. “Mrs. Champion would like to speak with you.”
He then looks like he filled his police cargos.
There’s a bit of talking and a lot of yes ma’am and no ma’am and I understand ma’ams be fore he gives me back the phone and gets on his radio. My ear squeals a bit and then I can hear…the radio call.
Cool.
“Look Levinsky I don’t care what the little asshole says, I just got reamed by Mrs. Champion who knows that the admin has a problem with the freak kids. Yeah I hate em too but she’s got ways of knowing if the stuff on the cameras gets fudged or erased…I’m not going away for them. This is hate crime shit and Homeworld security stuff.”
They back and forth it and it sucked that he was such a douche and racist but at least he was scared enough not to lose his job over this stuff. I’ll tell Liz about this though because this place is pretty full of this crap I think.
It’s my first experience with personal mutant racism and fear and it wasn’t fun. I see some of the hater kids on the phone and honestly that’s not likely a good sign.
“Hey Alexis we should go. I’ll get us a drive.”
“I’ve got my car here we can take that.”
The rent a cops let us go and we head to the parking lot and I look to see Liz showing up with that sonic boom this and she’s in full gear and heading down to likely talk to the Admins because she’s landing by the main offices.
I hear the squeal of tires and the gunning of a big engine and look up to see Jake in his big 4X4 truck and I shove Alexis out of the way before he hits me. I go up and over the truck and I hear him screaming like he lost his mind.
“Die fatass! Die! You ruined my life you fucking freak!”
I hurt both from the hit and the landing and he spins the truck around to come at me again and Liz is on her way. But he’s too fast and he’s too close for her to do anything but be a witness. I shift…My body heating up as the hot liquid bio-nanites cover me in a flash and I hit the front of the truck with both hands in a double axe handle swing.
I wasn’t thinking…it happened so fast. I should have caught the truck.
Instead my hit drives the front of it into the ground so hard and fast that even if I crushed the engine block and drove all the stuff into the ground there was still all that force coming forward and it makes that spot I hit a fulcrum and it flips up and over me…and flipped over once more before coming to a stop.
Jake’s hanging out the window covered in blood making these horrible sounds.
Liz is there now and she looks at me. “Go…take Alexis and go and get to The Tower we’ll take care of stuff there. This might turn really ugly Terry. I’ll cover things here and get the right people here to investigate things…get a hold of the others and tell them what happened.”
We get into Alexis’s car and we take off and are passed by EMT’s and aero-police cars and stuff and it takes me awhile to realize that I’m still in Diamond state and that I’m shaking and Alexis looks at me every time we hit a bump and my weight makes the car scrape on my side.
“You going to be okay Terry?”
“No…oh…so not okay…I think I might have killed him.”
“He tried to kill you first.”
“I’ve got powers though.”
“Doesn’t matter…”
“It does…doesn’t it?”
I unshift and I feel dizzy and start coughing up blood.
“Shit! Terry, shit!”
“I’m okay…”
“Like fuck!”
“Healing factor….”
I hold up my left arm where he hit me with the truck when I was unarmored and it’s good and broken and it’s moving…there’s heat and pain and odd sounds but we both watch it set itself and the cuts seal then vanish.
Alexis blinks. “Okay…lets get to The Tower before we get targeted by some other assholes that want a piece of you or me.”
We’re almost good until almost there and the last three KM to The Tower there are media Aero-vans following us and trying to snap as many photos as the can before the security details for The Tower turn them away.
We get parked and I’m not sure when I picked stuff back up but I look at Alexis and pass her, her things. “Uhm here’s your panty hose.”
We stare at each other and it’s that weird we start to laugh.
What are you gonna do right?
My Super Secret Life…Diamond-7.
Chapter 7
It’s been a couple days since the Jakeisode.
It was a bit upsetting at fist but sitting with Parvati while doing my practices and talking about stuff like dealing with being a woman, and being aware of sexism and the whole meta backlash thing and the other complex stuff about being a woman and Mom’s there too which brings two lifetimes of real life experience and dealing with things like…well Jake.
Women deal with guys like him all the time in various ways and varying degrees. I’m really taking these things to heart actually because there’s a huge parallel between the feelings you have as a woman and the stuff you deal with and the things you deal with as an overweight outcast.
I cried over it, I soaked in their support and honestly I like being me now and I like being a girl. There’s a definite change in me wired in by whatever The Alchemist’s symbiotic thing has wrought in me. All the still ongoing tests and stuff say my brain is definitely female now. And maybe the change has helped me make peace with it all.
I really enjoy my training too, not just the working out and stuff but my other training too over the last few days. Sitting, walking, learning how to move and hold myself and make and serve tea. And learning about make up and clothes. I’ve actually been really busy just adjusting to being me.
Today I’m taking some time to just relax and be me.
I get my things and I head down to my new pride and joy. I have an Anti-grav black VW-Bug all set up for weight compensation and with a hardtop convertible package and it’s girl and not at the same time. It’s a hover model so no big ceiling just about two feet but it’s very cool really.
And courtesy of the contract I just signed with The Champions. Yep I’m official and I’m getting a full ride to a college degree here and getting paid a small salary too. More once I’m officially on the team since I’m a reserve member but I’m living rent free, and a lot of my regular future life is secure.
So me time now.
I’ve my bikini with me and all the stuff a girl needs to head out to the beach and I sort of wish there was someone to go with me but Alexis is out with Tyler on a big date and Shane’s been busy with Kyle and when not with him she’s been training or spending time with the Champions.
So I’m sort of flying solo.
It’s a bit unnerving going to the beach as a girl alone but I’m going to Dallas beach which Tyler recommended and it’s a protected pay-beach. Valet parking, life guards beach security but really decent if you want to just have a good time at the beach without the assholes that come with it.
It sounds all elitist but when I get there it’s busy and packed. The guy takes my car and I thumbprint scan in and I get the private lot for the day. He calls a girl in a bathing suit uniform over and then it’s me heading across this lawn like bit of park and food court until I hit the beach and it’s actually amazing…they have the regular beach but there’s a whole landscaped section of these small grassy dunes with sand in the centre of them and these are the private areas. Okay it’s expensive like eighty bucks for this spot for the day but wow getting my beach blanket set out and my radio, towels and other stuff…it’s all mine and at the top of each spot there’s a little changing booth/bathroom stall unit.
Okay it’s like a really advanced porta john but it’s really clean and smells clean and decorated like it’s for the beach. This is expensive like I said but to have this to myself? It’s so worth it. Besides I can tan in peace and with or without clothes if I want. I want to actually do some girl-sun worshipping before I’m in Ark City and Halo.
Though I’m not sure about stuff up there I’m actually interested in all the things that I’ve heard and I want to see snow. I know we have mountains relatively close by here but I’ve never been able to go to any of the ski places.
I get myself changed into my bikini and I’m going with a classic cut French style. It’s a nice sort of black with these embedded metallic sparkles and yes I like black and sort of the super hero like shiny stuff too.
I like the look and I pony tail my hair and after a lot of sunscreen I head out and I go for a walk and just enjoy myself as I just wander the beach just walking even through the public spots and I get watched and stared at and there’s a lot of the looks that are the jealous sort of ones and there’s some that are lusty looks as I just walk and de-stress.
I know I’m getting more “Me” as I actually like the feelings of getting seen, being invisible really wasn’t fun and while I’m not going to be one of the girls I hated because they abused their gift of good looks I’m taking it in as part of being a girl. The way my hips move feels natural and the sway of my bottom and the bounce sway of my breasts it all feels just right.
It feels good to feel sexy…just not being egotistical about it but It does even if I’m not ready to get into things with anyone right now.
It go for a swim once I’m back close to my spot and well despite the fantastic fours…I don’t float. I sink like a stone. I can swim if I tread water really hard using my enhanced strength. But I can hold my breath a good long time and I get to see stuff under the water in a really cool way and hearing…wow hearing things with my upper and low ranges is…I can hear not just like some distant dolphin sounds but buoy pings and then tune into the sub-sonic com channels the P’hari use?
Wow…it’s way busier down here than anyone thinks, or the regular people think. The P’hari are one of the big races here that New Haven has treaties with like the Vishanti. They’re tall well long legged and humanoid with like a varied amount of supple fins on their head and ears that are also their gill areas too and are finlike they have a sort of nasal bump and really thin lips but their pretty human after all of that.
They are here in big numbers really with undersea bases and cities and such and are masters at sea-farming. They raise these gardens and schools of fish that feed millions of people everyday. Not super tech in a way like the Vishanti or Avari but they’re really good at what they do…farming, growing coral like it’s a crop, and water clean up. They have dabbled in medicines too like there are these saline/water fluid mixes that are really body specific and work in people a lot better and other stuff.
I swim up every once in awhile to make sure people think I’m not drowning and head in after awhile and wash off the salt and head into my spot and tan.
I fall deeply asleep in the sunshine just…wow it feels so good …the heat running through my veins and my bones and just all melty and stuff. I wake up and no tan…well there’s a bit of one and it fades away to my very white complexion. “Frakkin healing factor.”
I head up the beach to the food court and I’m feeling hungry so I get some stuff there actually trying a few new things. I’ve never has seviche before and it’s good like a kind of seafood salsa with a side of noodle sized cut kelp on the side. A mango slush and I’m back to my spot and end up sipping at it while listening to the radios and reading. I’m reading more girl stuff, several romance novels the cheap ones, and some magazines about fashion and just well femi-culture stuff like Vogue and stuff but also like some of the Good Housekeeping stuff.
I’m not studying really but more like making up for lost time. I get really into some of the romance books sort of putting myself in the girl’s part and getting into the scene of lovemaking…god I get teamed up too and thankfully since I’m tougher than the standard girl I roll onto my chest and press my aching boobs into my beach blanket.
I’m still a teenager and have all the hormones going on and after ripping through the first book I’m more than ready for another swim.
I’m cooling my need off in the water for awhile then get my things and head to get my car. And there’s all these people together either dating or married and stuff and I’m kind of feeling left out seeing how happy everyone is and everything together.
“Not that I’d have an idea of how to really be with anyone or anything even if I met someone.”
I get my car and drive around after using my debit card to pay for the stuff at the beach and tip the valet guy five dollars. I’m driving and really trying to not go into a drive thru and just…It’s like this hurt that kind of sinks into that craving rush you get when you ear something good.
That something you like’s rush is what you use to replace the empty spot inside that I’m trying to fill.
I know all of this and yet.
Yeah…I’m pulled off in a spot by myself trying to kill the lonely hurt and the guilty from even doing this with a bunch of fries and a shake and a bucket of fried chicken…
I feel so sick with myself for doing this afterwards….I can’t take it anymore and crawl into the backseat and curl up and cry.
Dammit, just dammit.
My Super Secret Life…Diamond-8.
Chapter 8
And there’s all these people together either dating or married and stuff and I’m kind of feeling left out seeing how happy everyone is and everything together.
“Not that I’d have an idea of how to really be with anyone or anything even if I met someone.”
Yes…yes I’m talking to myself because you do that when you’re alone so much.
Alone, in a new life and way different body and things it’s still the same…hurt and lonely and that makes me feel all fat and ugly and what’s the point and that’s when it hits me.
I get my car and drive around after using my debit card to pay for the stuff at the beach and tip the valet guy five dollars. I’m driving and really trying to not go into a drive thru and just…It’s like this hurt that kind of sinks into that craving rush you get when you ear something good.
That something you like’s rush is what you use to replace the empty spot inside that I’m trying to fill.
I know all of this and yet.
Yeah…I’m pulled off in a spot by myself trying to kill the lonely hurt and the guilty from even doing this with a bunch of fries and a shake and a bucket of fried chicken…
I feel so sick with myself for doing this afterwards….I can’t take it anymore and crawl into the backseat and curl up and cry.
Dammit, just dammit.
I crawl out of the car after ten minutes and make my way to the dumpster.
Well guess what?
It turns out that if you’re upset enough healing factor doesn’t keep you from losing your lunch.
And don’t throw up in dumpsters…just…yeah by the time that my stuff mixed in with the stuff already there I was just…
Sick with myself and with what I’d been looking at.
I head to my car and I get in and I drive to the closest gas station. I know it’s H-gel but Hydrogen’s a gas so the name just stuck.
I go in and I but one of those little travel packs and I use the restroom and brush my teeth and use the mouth wash and wipe off my face. Good thing that I wasn’t wearing any make-up I’m still not all that skilled at it and I’d just likely make a mess.
I get a big bottle of water and fill the tank on the car up and I go for a drive. I haven’t had the chance to do that very much since having a car’s new to me and it’s actually fun…well fun enough that it’s picking my mood up a lot and I take a few turns and I head to Orange town my old neighborhood until recently.
It’s so strange being back and with me being so completely different it feels like I’ve been gone away a long time even though I haven’t. I drive past the house and the bakery and see that it’s still going. I can see Candace Leven one of the girls from my school there who should be graduating this year there and a couple of other people working it instead of me.
It’s actually pretty busy here and Mom’s behind the cash and just behind the cash instead of doing a hundred other things. I’d stop in but right now that’s still too close to food given me eating and barfing jag that happened.
I’m getting a few looks as I drive around and it’s more from the cute car and the way that I look than people recognizing me.
Jake outed me and stuff but I haven’t really been news hounded since the whole start of things with The Champions doing press control and stuff. I head by my old comic shop and stop and go in.
Okay I might have changed but I haven’t changed that much and I love having money too, no not like rich though that might be cool too but like what I have a decent paying job and I’m not girl enough to spend in all on my wardrobe and stuff so.
I’m looking at stuff.
DVD boxed sets and panel by panel j-peg collections…those are cool actually because it’s a years worth of issues, no ads and you can download it and there’s really good graphic art. I get of course some real comics too and I buy the manga series Shinobi Gardens for Shayne and I get more super hero logo tees.
I’m getting stared at by Gary the guy that runs the place. And of course most of the guys that frequent the place too and the odd girl there’s always a few every once in awhile. He’s still looking at me and well at my chest as he’s ringing things through.
“Gary…you keep looking and I might have to charge you a fee.”
“Huh? What? I’m sorry….” He turns really red and I smile. While not my type Gary has this balding cute thing going on with the extra weight but it fits, like Friar Tuck I can see where his wife thought him cute enough to marry.
That’s one of the things about changing is my brain changed too…I sort of still watch girls and I think I might always just from being a guy for all my life and liking girls…the attraction is way, way down though. But with everything that was done to me I’m female and I’m straight or mostly straight and I’m seeing people differently now. I’m not as freaked by that as people think I should be…changing my sexual mental preferences for the most part would freak people out but me.
I wasn’t with anyone anyway ever and I was getting to the point of anyone paying that kind of attention to me would have been considered. So I find the way I’m seeing people differently actually interesting.
He stops as he’s bagging my comics. “Miss how’d you know my name?’
“Gary it’s me Terry.”
The whole shop went quiet.
Then there was like a burst of questions and I’m being open and I’m telling them what happened and the stuff that went down with that Damian guy trying to take me out and the whole self entitled jocks at my school running a drug thing and Jake and what he tried to do.
It’s a gamer and geek thing phones are turned off except to call a few more people over and Gary asks me first and when they’re here he closes the store for all of us as we talk and talk and answer questions or the ones that I can.
I even diamond up a few times.
No press, nothing assholish they’re fans of the genre and they’re friends and there’s this whole sort of classy gamer, nerd, geek closeness thing going on and I might be the attraction sort of but we kind of end up breaking out some of the boxed sets and we play some table top miniature games and then settle into playing a table top RPG called Shingami…it’s based off of this really ancient old Japanese classic anime and manga called Bleach. We’re even playing characters from the shows…we have to rescue Ichigo from the invading Norse Valkyries led by Freya who wants him for something dire.
It’s a lot of fun especially when I’m trotting out the bits of Japanese that Shayne’s taught me.
There’s a couple of new people there that I don’t know including a kid in skater clothes but now board or inlines called Alex. He’s actually one of those outcasts to here more for what’s on the inside because his outside is pretty awesome.
He actually has us all laughing a few times and he’s almost sort of playing himself by the description of his character and he can RP it’s like he’s LARPing stuff most of the game and for a good looking guy he’s full of all this geeklore and like social common knowledge.
And Gary’s a pretty good GM too. I thank them and give hugs out and say that this was fun and we should all do this again sometime.
It’s midnight and passed when we’re finally out from the game and it was kind of awesome to just let stuff go and play and be with friends well I was sort of too shy to really get to know them that well before but tonight it was cool it was different.
I never played a one shot rpg game before either.
I see Alex walking and I pull up. “Hey you want a lift home?’
“Sure.”
He gets in the passenger side and he’s smiling at me and he’s so cute…and wow…I’m sitting really close to him too.
My car suddenly feels really small.
My Super Secret Life…Diamond-9.
Chapter 9
*Previously…………
It’s midnight and passed when we’re finally out from the game and it was kind of awesome to just let stuff go and play and be with friends well I was sort of too shy to really get to know them that well before but tonight it was cool it was different.
I never played a one shot RPG game before either.
I see Alex walking and I pull up. “Hey you want a lift home?’
“Sure.”
He gets in the passenger side and he’s smiling at me and he’s so cute…and wow…I’m sitting really close to him too.
My car suddenly feels really small.
*And Now…………
Oh…
Oh wow, I mean it’s kind of one of those things that kind of freaky and in the reverse way happening to me all of a sudden. I’m in a car with a guy and he’s cute, really cute and it’s sort of on that whole thing with the teen boy with the hot girl suddenly in his car that he shouldn’t be even near socially.
“Terri?’
I blink. “Sorry I just got lost thinking.”
“About what?”
“Uhm…”
“Me?”
“Uhm…”
He smiles but he ducks his head and he blushes a little. Okay I didn’t know that cool kids blushed.
I look at him and I try a smile. “I was just thinking how reversed this is.”
“Reversed?”
“I’m still this strange geeky person in my head and now everything I am’s kind of changed and stuff and I’m finding myself in a car which I’d never have had before this and sitting here with a school hottie.”
“Me?”
“Uhm yeah…”
“A hottie?”
“Uhm yeah….dur…”
He laughs at the dur and he looks at me. “So…you like boys now?”
“Yeah…I’m still sort of flipping that over and over in my head because of what I am my biological preference is the same way sort of like straight…It’s very weird knowing who I was in my head and stuff and seeing some very pretty girls and women in some very revealing stuff and it does nothing…but guys are kind of…oh…wait…yay?”
“Cool.”
“Cool?”
“Yeah, since learning what I’ve learned about you tonight it’s pretty cool that a girl that I like is really pretty and has her own car and a job and she’s into gaming and comics and stuff that I like.”
“Wait…wait what? I’m a girl that you like?”
“Uhm…dur that’s what I said.”
He’s smiling at me and wow…oh I like his eyes and he’s got these dimples and I feel all yay and fluttery in my stomach but in this breathless better than a roller coaster kind of thing.
“Wow…just my luck I meet a guy like you and I’m going to Halo academy.”
“Ark City’s only a fourteen hour drive.”
“Okay…?”
“Terri.”
“Yes?”
“Go out with me tonight?”
“But it’s late…”
“You have a curfew?”
“No…not really.”
“Me neither, I like you and you like me so I want to ask you out on a date.”
“Isn’t this kind of fast?”
“It’s a date not sex and you’re going away I don’t want to waste time.”
“Oh…okay…so where to?”
“Rainbow Park?”
“Where?”
“North Jackson shipyards.”
“I don’t know where that is either Alex.” I’m biting my lip. “Sorry it’s a big city and I’ve never really gone outside of here much until I got into the prep school and The Tower.”
“Hey it’s cool not a lot of people outside the crews.”
“The crews? Like gangs?”
“No well sorta like motorcycle clubs but more like air-boarders.”
“Don’t you mean hover boarding?”
“Nope. Okay head towards The Tower the best way to explain it is to show you.”
“Okay…”
I’m a bit nervous but I drive and follow his directions and we hit the main high ways and after we get close I think I know where they’re going. Jackson Valley industrial park. Way back it used to be one of those places where they made stuff here in Paradise City. Oh they still do sort of but this was when we made space ships and shuttles and cargo containers and stuff until The Federation made their bid for occupation here. The Shipyards were bombed out and stuff and the company that owned it moved what they could salvage elsewhere because it was too expensive to rebuild here.
With Alex showing me the way it seems like I’m right and we pull into this parking garage with people sort of there as look outs at the entrance and people have their cars parked here and their bikes but there’s a lot of street wheels here too.
It’s packed with close to several hundred teens here and the parking garage goes out all the way to over look these dry dock cradles that were for the ships being built here and they’re…well it’s nuts but they’re pretty much all those half-pipes but they’re a couple of hundred yards long and they’re at least forty feet to the bottom on the average but it’s all colored with graffiti and these tags and art and it’s a riot of color.
Like a rainbow…sort of…
There’s so much here too as we walk kids with skate stuff and there’s short boards and long ones and wheels and hover boards and in lines and every thing in between but there’s kids here and adults too but those on the fringe of society types or gangers or ex-ganger types mixed with barrio types and hippies it’s a massive kind of total free mall here and I get what he means but crews. Like teams more than gangs but they’re still sort of gang like too and there’s as many different crews here as you can think of.
I’m kind of blown away.
“I didn’t even know that this place existed?’
“It doesn’t not officially.”
“No kidding this has to be super illegal.”
He looks at me. “Alex I’m going to be a cop.”
“Yeah just don’t say that stuff too loud we could get into serious trouble.”
“Okay…dangerous here?”
“No, and yes. I mean you step seriously out of line yeah and most beefs are handled one on one or between crews and usually in duels like races or stunt offs but there are armed crews here and gangers and this is home to The UTR crew.”
“UTR crew?’
“It’s the meta underground here for Paradise City. It’s an off set group from the Underground Railroad itself and UTR stands for Under the Rainbow.”
“Whoa…” Okay I’ve never heard of this place or these people and Freaktown in Ark City’s kind of famous and they have Anthrosapiens up there living and working in public while we don’t. You don’t see the whole mutant morlocky underground sort of thing here in Paradise City. More Aliens sure this is Vishanti central for the planet and the P’hari are here too down along the bigger urbanized parts of the waterfront but this.
And as we’re getting in deeper to the place that’s when I’m seeing the Anthros here too. I look at Alex. “I’ll keep my mouth closed for sure.”
“Good.”
“So food or dancing?”
“Well given the whole chickensode I’m going to ask if we can just watch? I have no idea how to dance.”
“Perfect time to learn.”
Alex leads me to concrete stairs leading down to one of the broken up ship cradles and it’s only too bomb busted to not be skateable and there’s huge chunks of rubble in here that have been urbanized with paint and art and stuff and we get though that stuff into the center of the cradle and there’s a crowd of people dancing and there’s this huge chunk of concrete in the middle being used as a stage and there’s some heavy beat street hip-hop singing going on and it’s…
It’s enthralling and thumping and I can feel the music and the beat and Alex moves beside me with the beats and soon we’re dancing like the other kids in the crowd.
Yeah I might stick out but no more than the panther looking guy in the leatherboi biker sex worker looking clothes or the pale girl with vines and little leaves for her hair that looked like dreadlocks.
Okay…okay yeah…
My Super Secret Life…Diamond-10.
Chapter 10
The music’s loud and there’s all these people and I’m getting it. The bump and grind sort of stuff…moving hips and as a girl there’s this side to side thing I’m picking up. It’s like swaying as I walk but more, different and it really helps that I’m getting help from some of the other kids there.
It’s happening here than at my old school…even with this meta/anthro? Avari alien…a girl with blue eyes and white sort of spiked hair that’s actually feathers with her hands on my hips and smiling at me and shouting over the blasting music. “Like this!”
It’s not sexual but just she’s actually will just to show me.
If some idiots would get over stuff like her really sharp looking nails and the hair she’d be a knock out, heck she is a knock out just not brainwashed into thinking she’s better than everyone else.
“I’m Terry!”
“Juno!”
“Nice to meet you!”
“You too, I like your planet!”
Okay well that answers that one I guess. Avari one of the big three here and a humanoid race but based off of bird evolution instead of mammalian. Just sort of a different branch than us. Not as bio-tech as the Vishanti they are masters of other technologies like solar tech with amazing collection and battery stuff and anti-gravity tech too. I actually don’t know a whole lot more than that and the fact like the Vishanti they have an embassy city but that’s on the other side of the planet.
“Thanks but I’ve barely seen any of it!”
“Neither have I but that’s why I’m here!”
“Really?”
“Family vacation!”
“Oh so how do you like the city!?”
“It’s awesome!”
We kind of keep going and I’m getting more and more then hang of dancing and I get back over to Alex and I dance with him some more.
I get why girls like to dance.
It’s fun but it’s flirty, you’re kind of not expected but more allowed to flaunt it and stuff. Cut loose, and I’m having fun…its right there on the edge of naughty and it’s that naughty it’s just this side of foreplay.
Oh yeah foreplay…
I’m dancing with Alex and while I’m still learning as I go I’m not a total spazz at it and he’s dancing all guy hot and…I don’t know before I was changed I’d be sitting on the sidelines if I was lucky and thinking that he’s being pushy but like this he’s dancing as close as he can without really touching and what touches do happen are these electric little grazes.
I’m getting really hot and excited in a fun way and a sexual way. God he can move too…he has his jacket off someplace and he’s just down to a tank top/muscle shirt and it moves around on his torso revealing great pecks and abs.
He has a six pack and I keep wanting to touch it.
I’m definitely into guys and it’s so freak but not freaky. Terry the guy barely had this kind of chance but now. Now I’m in a situation where I’m getting attracted to someone and he is attracted to me too.
It’s way more than nice.
And yes I looked, he’s definitely attracted to me.
I swear we must have danced for like an hour before he calls for a break. “Terry! I need a breather!”
He’s sweat damp and I’m…well I’m not normal so as warm as I am from dancing it’s a nice flush that might be more sexual than anything else like endurance wise.
“Let’s take a break!” I shout back at him and he nods and takes my have and he pulls me along.
Actually I just stand there and bite my lower lip when he does that first tug and can’t budge me. I chuckle and go with him and he’s smiling and looking at me.
“Ha, ha, funny I totally forgot you’re super dense.”
“Hey it’s the first time I’ve ever really joked with it before.”
“Well it was actually kind of funny.”
“Really?” I brighten, actually I know how I look even if I’m still adjusting to it but if I can actually be funny as well as good looking I’m kind of interested in that.
You can be super good looking even on the breath taking meta scales and once people are used to that and get to know you you’d better be more than just a pretty face strapped to deadwood personality.
“Yes really.” He slips an arm around me and heads me off to this row of like street food vendors and stuff like mini-carts all made to do different things here.
“Okay I’m actually hungry now.”
“Good, you don’t need to freak out over food.”
“Well yes and no…the chicken thing was me binging like the old me and me getting sick was me now freaking out about it even if my healing factor would have me okay with it.”
“Like I said you don’t need to freak out over food.”
I look at him. “Honestly Alex I’m still pretty screwed up, I’ve got tons of issues with who I was to who I…”
He cuts me off by tilting my chin up and kissing me.
Deeply…my whole body tingled and I flickered in and out of diamond state getting looks from the people around us. He breaks the kiss and I’m a little breathless…my first…oh…
“Terry, I like you. I all cards on the table just like you I think you’re nice and smart and funny and really beautiful.”
I swallow. “You do?”
“Yes and I’m not the only one who’s interested not by the looks that you’ve been getting.”
“Really? I..I thought it was the boobs.”
“It’s not just the boobs.”
The guy with the food cart right in front of us chimes in. “It’s the boobs for me.”
We both laugh okay all three of us laugh and I can tell when it’s a teasing joke and I’m not going to get bent out of shape and Alex orders us two from him which turns out to be pretzels and it’s kind of neat to see the guy slice off a bit and then pull and twist it there in from of you and then do the dip there in the water and then instead of baked he deep fries them and rolls them in stuff of your choice.
Alex and I both go with sea salt and pepper with toasted sesame seeds.
I know it’s not the same as a baked pretzel but it’s still really good and we go walking and trying a few other things.
Okay this part is really cool and as much as I’m not fat Terry I’m still me and I still know my food and Paradise City has three main ethnics here. Asian with mostly Korean and Chinese, South-Central American and Hindu-Vishanti and add in smatterings of True Mexican and Caribbean and you can just imagine all of the little food stands here. Add in the P’hari being a close factor too with all their stuff and you have all this great street vendor food with about one in four being something fish based.
We run into Juno who invites us over to where her and her family is sitting and it’s her and her three brothers and two sisters and there’s like ten cousins.
“Wow, you all come on this vacation?”
She nods as she’s slurping noodles. “Yes, no adults. We get together as a big group and we can all watch out for each other and pool money and stuff.”
Alex nods. “Very cool idea.”
She shrugs. “Cultural, a little like your Homish?”
“Amish.” I say it’s with an A not an H.
“Oh…okay I’m still learning American.”
Alex nods. “It’s okay I didn’t know that either actually.”
We sit and talk about the place and here with Alex playing sort of the Street smart tour guide for us and we’re sharing foods too. Which was cool they bought a medium of most things here and are passing them around to share so we all get a taste of the stuff.
It turns out they love noodles. They never invented pasta of any kind on their world and they like the asian noodles even better than the pasta. Me I like biriyani? It’s this hindi kind of mixed up stuff and spicy but there’s just a lot in it and I think I like that, and there’s a steamed sweet bun with Korean BBQ pork belly and these veggies and herbs that like super good. No…like amazing and it’s actually the whole thing and not just the pork that does it for me.
And Alex and I introduce them all to onion rings. Which they all like and stuff. Though they have this definite alien thing with condiments.
They’ll fill a whole tray and coat them in lethal amounts of like ketchup or mustard.
And Alex and I both discover that cheap old plum sauce for like eggrolls is good on onion rings and that a curry sauce instead of ketchup is good on fries.
I don’t like haggis.
LOL…
There was actually a fry stand-cart that was doing haggis in a wrap of veggie protein wrap like an eggroll and we had to try it. The sign said… IF IT”S NOT SCOTTISH…IT”S CRAP!
Yes, that’s what it honestly said and there was this Chinese guy running it with a beard and he even had his lineage thingy there on the side of it.
But it was still yucky. Then again I don’t like liver and Juno at the rest of it and proclaimed that it had a lot of crack?
Apparently where she comes from having a lot of crack means like cracking like a firework? Like full of good spirit or something.
We exchanged numbers and e-mails and stuff and Alex and I left and I drove him home.
I’d sort of always envisioned walking my date to their door but I never thought it’d be me doing this with a guy.
He lives in a duplex in just a sort of semi normal lower middle class neighborhood like most of the people I know and it’s kind of nice that it’s like that.
He set’s his stuff down and unlocks the door and then he walks me back to my car and leans me against my driver’s side door.
Another kiss.
I kiss back this time and I can feel the little catch in his breathing and that’s kind of yay.
We kiss a few more times…I break it.
“Wow…we’re going pretty fast.”
“Yes, definitely…all according to plan.”
“Plan?” I give him the eyebrow.
“Terry I know a good thing when I see her and I meant it I’m interested and you’re shipping off to school. I want to get my chance in and leave you with this big impression before you meet other guys up there.”
“Oh…Really?”
He gives me this nice look, sweet and like he wants to hold me close. “Terry yes really you’re going to have to stop questioning your self okay?”
“I told you I was screwed up.”
“Yes and I like your quirks they make me feel all on par and stuff.”
“On par?”
“Yes, you’re a very daunting woman to go out with y’know?”
“I am?”
“Beautiful, funny, and smart….definitely daunting.” He smiles and gives me another light kiss.
“Good thing you’re brave then?”
“Mmm…good thing.”
I kiss him this time lightly but in doing so I’m pressed against him and wow…there is definitely something to be said about that whole guy solid thing when my breasts are pressed against his chest. Yes my nipples are really hard and I don’t care if he can feel them…okay maybe I want him to.
I break the kiss. “I should go…work and lots of stuff to do.”
“Okay…you’ll call me?”
“Okay…me calling you?”
“Just might be easier y’know with everything you’ve got going on.”
“Okay…goodnight?”
“Goodnight…and Terry.”
“Hmm…?”
“I had a lot of fun, at the shop and out there tonight.”
“Me too.”
He leaves and I watch him go into his place and we share a wave before he goes inside and I slip into my car and I drive home to The Tower and I’m smiling the whole time.
It’s like four in the morning by the time I get back to my place and I’m hugging myself in the elevator the whole time and I put my things from the trip on my bed and I head to the shower.
It’s a long shower and the adjustable shower head is really, really brilliant and very needed…
(Blush)
After that it’s dawn and I’m getting my things sorted out and a load of laundry on since mom insisted on me having my own washer and dryer since it’s a pretty personal thing laundry and all that for a girl and I settle in listening to some tunes and putting my comics and stuff in order and still assembling my geek collection when I get this call.
“Hello?”
“Diamond? It’s Parvati we need you as an auxiliary member we have a situation downtown.”
“Sure what’s going on?”
“Armored car robbery, we’re in a jam with things and we’ve already got a fatality.”
“Shit, okay I’ll get ready.”
“Good meet up with Bonsai and Nazareth at hangar seven.”
Bonsai is Shayne is Nazareth Kyle?
“Alright ASAP?”
“Yes.” Paravati’s cut off by the sounds of gunfire.
I head to my gear closet and I get into my suit. I wear the wetsuit like k-flex. It’s like flexible Kevlar and I wear a semi dark grey metallic color a lot like the suit worn by the Star-Trek Borg character called Seven of Nine. Except mine has with it a shoulder kit harness like you’d wear for SWAT except no guns just another pouch each with cuffs and I have black calf high wrestling boots and matching gloves. I pony tail my hair and get my blue lensed shooting glasses on with my head set and snap my police styled web-belt into place. See actual super heroes carry gear, we have cuffs and tape and zip ties and all those things that we might need including pens and notepads and stuff. Heck in my web belt I have a bunch of evidence bags and gloves and even some crime scene tape just in case.
I run to meet them at the hangar and it’s several members of PCPD SWAT and Kyle in gear for the first time and Shayne in her new age ninja gear. We load in and the corporal stats to fill us in on the situation.
“A group of meta powered anthrosapiens has committed armed robbery on one of the armored casino cars and Titan and Champion are in pursuit of we think two suspects through the metro tunnels we have three suspects downed at the scene and lady champion was working on another pair when she was ambushed and the three down are released and raising hell…we have the other Champions on scene to work the fight and crowd control.”
There’s a live feel holo showing us what the scene looks like from a birds eye view.
He points out this Rhino duking it out with Overdrive. “Diamond you’re to back up Overdrive this guy’s got a very tough hide and ‘Drive’s just not getting through it and he’s not up to taking too many hits from this guy. Titan’s already rang his bell pretty good so you might have an advantage.”
Shayne’s staring at him. “I thought that he and the two silverbacks were down?”
“There’s two lizards with them they were cloaked out with some sort of natural chameleon effect, that’s up to you Bonsai and you too Nazareth we need you airborne and if you see one of them call it out and if you have a shot you take it.”
“We’ll give Lady Champion back up and try to take the rest along with Chrome and Ricochet.”
We fly over several blocks crosswise and it’s just moment’s before we’re there and we dip down low and fast in like this almost military hot LZ drop thing and I jump out mouth dry and nervous but I run towards where I can see Overdrive zipping around this big, really big anthro rhino and trying to zip back in and throw hard super speed punches.
He looks tired you can only do so much at super speeds before you need a break and at least some recovery time.
The rhino see’s me coming and it grins…he’s got sharp teeth?
Okay…definitely a mutation.
He spits a glob of something eww on the pavement. “Ello Poppet come to play hav’s ye.”
I shift to Diamond for and stalk right into fighting range. “Damned skippy, pucker up buttercup.”
And I swing.
My Super Secret Life…Diamond-11.
Chapter 11
*Before…
The rhino sees me coming and it grins…he’s got sharp teeth?
Okay…definitely a mutation.
He spits a glob of something eww on the pavement. “Ello Poppet come to play hav’s ye.”
I shift to Diamond for and stalk right into fighting range. “Damned skippy, pucker up buttercup.”
And I swing.
*And Now…
And he blocks it.
And he counter swings which is way faster than I thought and I was going to go for that catch his arm and thrown him thing and instead I get punched in the face.
It staggers me and it hurts sort of and not? It’s like…well it’s like I’m armored and the biggest thing is his strength versus my mass and the wobble camera effect. I stagger back a few feet and plant my feet and stop and shake it off.
“Crimey you’re a tough piece o’ trim now ain’t ye?”
“Hard as Diamond.”
He laughs. “Diamond more like Crystaal y’know like the stripper booze.”
“Well then you want to dance then big boy?”
Yeah it’s a hero line, the classic trash talking and stuff and I guess it might be me having read and collected comics all my life but it’s coming really easy sort of despite my usual shyness.
He comes at me and he takes a swing and he’s fast but he swings wide from the side and I step into it and take the brunt of the force on my shoulder and the side and plant my opposite foot to not get sent flying and I drive a fist into his stomach.
Lots of resistance there but I hear him grunt and he grabs me with the arm that hit me but he loses his grip because it’s like holding moving glass and I drive another fist into him and then another right after that underneath the grabby arm and in the soft stuff under there.
He’s grunting and he hammers down on me with the other arm onto my shoulder and collar bone area and it drops me to a knee and shatters bits of armor crystal off of me and I take a page from the dirty book and I punch him in the crotch.
“Hff…fuck….” He pain groans and exhales and I stand fast and swing with an uppercut and I’d have likely missed if his head wasn’t so big and stuff and I really try and put everything that I have into it and I send him flying off his feet and sailing through the air until he crashes onto a car and he flattens it and shatters out all of the windows.
I know, I know just from stuff I know that this won’t do much but slow him down and I do a strength jump and leap like twenty feet up and all the way over to him and land on top and straddle him and start punching like some of the assholes did to me in middle school with fast jab hits but as hard as I can too with rights and lefts.
I get about seven in when he chomps down on my arm and my wrist and there’s a pretty funky sound of his teeth on my diamond shell and the vibrations too are all kind of ick.
But it’s a grip and he uses that and having a hold on me to roll us off of the car and onto the pavement with a crash and he tries to roll over on top of me and I keep pushing it the other way with a hand or a foot or just trying to grab and roll.
Now it all goes pretty fast because we’re both pretty strong and with the force we can exert past our weight we sort of are all over the place with the force that we’re outputting and we’re driving punches into each other hard and pushing each other into obstacles like cars and garbage cans and lamp posts whatever is hand to try and get us off of the other or get an advantage.
He’s trying really hard to get a wrestling hold on me and I’d been in a lot more trouble if I wasn’t so slippery. He gets really pissed though and rolls me hard and fast into someone’s half ton and we cave in the fender panel with my face…he plants his feet and adjusts holding me by pinning me to the truck and then he starts to drive fist after fist into my back and I can hear and feel stuff shattering off my armor skin and feel the impacts getting harder and harder on me and I fight…I rape fight and that’s kick and elbow and punch and gouge and everything I can do to get hit off of me which does work enough he back off and gets to his feet and as I’m getting up he haymakers me and snaps my head sideways pretty hard and shatter’s the head armor and I feel real pain, and a lot of it and I can taste blood too as he cranked me in the jaw/mouth.
It hurt and I’m right there where I usually get when I’m getting beat on and that’s that line between raging and crying and before it’d be raging but it was always more than one on one with guys like Jake and his assholes.
And I’m damned tired of crying so I turn me head back and stare at him and I sort of have this feral grin starting when it kind of hits that he’s alone, he’s not going to be able to jump me with school bully rules….and I can feel my tooth pull back into place and the blood and the cut all heal and get reabsorbed into my body.
I stomp towards him and my armor skin reforms over my face and I step right into his punches letting them hit and just taking it and I let it out.
I let out all the stuff that I’ve been holding in with all of the bullies and people like Jake and Damian and just all the bullshit of what my life had been like and here’s the perfect place a super strong super tough meta-anthro with a bad attitude and we start trading blows and I don’t even care how much he’s hurting me with some of the hits because I let my healing factor take over for me when he gets through my armor.
He’s getting snarlier and snarlier and swearing as he’s hitting me and I’m not really doing much of that but I am yelling in that angry and getting it out kind of way as I keep pounding away at him and I’m kind of used to being hurt by bullies but my healing factor makes the pain fade and that’s good…really good and it’s letting me get this huge mad on and I start to ignore everything and treat this guy like a boxing bag.
It’s almost a surprise when his blows stop coming and he wheezes and he’s staggering back all unsteady and he’s holding his ribs and he lets out this wheezy. “Oi……poppet…n’fairs…”
And I take the opportunity to haul back and drive my fist in his face and lay him out cold.
I lean over and I check too…and lift an arm that goes all floppy and stuff and I look up at Kai and Mrs. Champion and Parvati who’s gone from protecting the lookey-loos to doing some sort of magic stuff and tying up our baddies in weird glowing ribbons with like symbols and numbers and stuff on them.
I’m actually uncrystalizing and trying to catch my breath and give everyone the thumbs up for a second and then I’m back to panting.
Powers or not holy heck I’ve never fought before not like a real fight and I’ve never actually worked so hard in all of my life.
I’m kind of surprised too when the camera flashes start happening and then there’s the cheering?
I think I’m too much in awe to be blushing like I should be doing and all the regular police are doing their thing and the whole crowd control stuff and they’re also doing all of the arresting and stuff with the reading them their rights.
I mean Kai and I are kinda of not legal for it but Mrs. Champion isn’t either and neither is Parvati.
We actually just sort of gather together around all the unconscious meta-animals and sort of wait a few minutes for the aero-cruisers and armored aero-transport get here and are landing and the prisoners are getting put away and Mrs. Champion looks at me. “C’mon we’re going with that ride.”
“Really? Me?”
“Yeah you you’re one of our heavies and it’ll look good too. The public likes it when we reassure them that we’ll keep an eye on people like them.”
“Okay…uhm…cool.”
She nods. “Now armor up as we’re getting in and give the press a little wave as we get in.”
“Really?”
“Yup, image helps, when they see Diamond on the streets and in action they’ll think of this stuff, they’ll think of you as a police officer and hopefully enough to listen to you when you need to get something done or give orders.”
I armor up and there’s more flashes from the cameras and I climb on board in the back and I wave just the once so friendly but not like I’m waving like some newb…okay yes I am a newb but still.
Mrs. Champion gets in with me and we lift off headed for where ever we actually take people like them.
And now I think I get to see the other side of the hero work thing.
My Super Secret Life…Diamond-12.
Chapter 12
*Before…
We actually just sort of gather together around all the unconscious meta-animals and sort of wait a few minutes for the aero-cruisers and armored aero-transport get here and are landing and the prisoners are getting put away and Mrs. Champion looks at me. “C’mon we’re going with that ride.”
“Really? Me?”
“Yeah you you’re one of our heavies and it’ll look good too. The public likes it when we reassure them that we’ll keep an eye on people like them.”
“Okay…uhm…cool.”
She nods. “Now armor up as we’re getting in and give the press a little wave as we get in.”
“Really?”
“Yup, image helps, when they see Diamond on the streets and in action they’ll think of this stuff, they’ll think of you as a police officer and hopefully enough to listen to you when you need to get something done or give orders.”
I armor up and there’s more flashes from the cameras and I climb on board in the back and I wave just the once so friendly but not like I’m waving like some newb…okay yes I am a newb but still.
Mrs. Champion gets in with me and we lift off headed for where ever we actually take people like them.
And now I think I get to see the other side of the hero work thing.
*And Now…
It’s sort of surreal in the extreme there’s people that are waving at us and then camera flashes and there’s even a few cheers as we’re lifting off and then we’re headed to The Tower in a convoy together and it’s still pretty damned neat to be in an aero-vehicle in the first place but now we’re in like a group of them and they’re police styled and all tricked out and we’re flying in formation.
As a hero geek…well geekette and a comic book fan myself to be doing this is seriously cool.
We’re in a short flight even and there’s something that happened further back with Titan and his capture and I see him sprayed with something that is reddish and it smells seriously spicy like some kind of like pepper juice or something and the woman that’s with him looks decidedly non-plussed as he’s getting her into the system.
I’m watching Mrs. Champion doing her thing and I’m trying to pick up the things she’s doing like arrest wise but there’s really a lot to it and it’s a lot more legalese than anything I’ve read about.
Then I see Shroud there and I thought that he was up in Ark City with things that were going on there?
Oh and then the girl that Titan was bringing in for processing actually pipes up to Shroud and calls him her brother.
I swear I can feel the tension suddenly there between them and he moved so fast that he was right up on her and I heard something said but I have no clue what it was and then Titan’s in between them.
“Back off Shroud.”
“Not your business boy.”
“She’s my business as she’s my collar, you’re Not a vigilante.”
They have a standoff this whole sort of Golden blonde Hercules type facing off against Batman and like no offense Titan but there’s a reason why there’s still a version of the Batman Universe in comics still.
Shroud’s basically Batman with meta-powers.
Shroud turns first but he turns on Mrs. Champion. “Get her secured as secured as we have she’s not going anywhere understand me, nowhere!”
He seems really, really pissed off and upset because he actually yelled that at Mrs. Champion and he’s walking out shooting Titian a look and her a look and well her, this girl in question is sort of just there weaving from foot to foot her hands bound and her mouth with this stain of the red stuff she spit out at Titan and she has these odd not normal green eyes and blonde hair but she has this feral grin on her face and she really, really looks like she just enjoyed that.
We get put through processing and that’s seriously rough stuff as when some of our arrests get frisky as they wake up and struggle and then there’s the demands for the lawyers and then the cells and they bring in Exo-SWAT to take over for us.
Exo-SWAT is just that you have officers in exo-robotic frames and that’s in two stages one a riot suit of armor with heavy power assist and then there’s the big guys that are called Sluggers because they’re big and armored with like serious robotics they’re like fourteen hundred pound eight foot tall power armors. One Slugger can flip cars over two can do a big utility van and four can flip a bus.
Why don’t we use them all the time? They cost millions each and when you have The Champions and Meta’s like us them it’s sort of better to have them as back up if we need them or to pinch hit in case we’re doing something else.
And as good as those power armor and suits are they’d take a huge beating from someone like the big rhino guy and one on one he might have one easily he was that strong.
So people like us. Like me handle these things once we’re like sanctioned to do it.
I make my way over to Kai who’s drinking something hot and she looks decidedly uncomfortable and so does Kyle her boyfriend with that black winged dark elf thing he has going on and he’s making people around him pretty uncomfortable too.
People are people I guess and most of them are used to Meta’s that look pretty close to baseline. Especially down here in Paradise City we have our different people but really, really we prefer our not-normals to look as normal as possible.
And this isn’t Ark City with the fabled and storied things we’ve all heard about in that place called Freaktown and where the real heavy duty freaks tend to come out at.
I get myself a coffee from the table that they have there and it smells waaay too old for me or strong or both so it’s three sugars and two creamers and I stand with my team mates and I look over and down at Kai.
“You okay?”
“Maybe, this is disturbing for me.”
“Why?” I’m actually interested since her life’s still sort of a mystery yet really.
“I don’t like cops.”
“We are cops.”
“No…..we’re supers, we’re either lucky or cursed to protect people. The cops, the cops they protect the status quo.”
“But we work with the cops.”
She’s sipping what smells like tea and she looks like she’s chewing on it all.
“I’m all for protecting people it’s just I’ve had bad experiences with the police.”
“Oh...well okay I guess so are you going to be okay?”
Kai looks at me and then at Kyle who is drinking a coffee and he has this look like he’s decidedly trying to act like none of the stares and looks from the regular people are getting to him only it is.
I know that look.
I used to wear it all the time when I was the old me and people would be like making fun of me and everything. That determined to not let the shitty things they’re doing or thinking show.
She took another drink. “Yeah but I would like to get out of here and maybe back to our quarters over at The Tower itself instead of here.”
I nod.
Kai’s such a puzzle, sometimes she seems so street and other times it’s like she’s all Japanese and Zen and reserved. I can’t really get a bead on her since it seems to like come and go at will too. I mean the way she’s talking right now and the tea she’s drinking it’s all her but at the same time it’s oddly not like matching.
“I’ll go ask Mrs. Champion if we’re clear to bail for home and get cleaned up.”
I head over and she’s talking with some of the officers and she’s going over things and I wait since it seems important and I think that one of the people that’s there is someone in the district attorney’s office and there’s two cloned fellas in men-in-black suits…my guess is homeworld security.
There’s big time charges going down here with the property damage and then there’s the actual crime and the injuries and there’s a man dead over this, over a robbery.
And then there’s Mongo who Champion has brought in but with this whole huge sort of cage sort of containment unit I’ve never seen before until this and it’s like a huge thick metal cylinder that is actually hovering inside an anti-gravity frame.
I guess it bleeds off some of the force from the big gorilla or something.
I can see him on the screen too… in that cage thing and he’s very much like the story of Mighty Joe Young combined with the very worst of the worst from Planet of The Apes.
I’m waiting for her to have time for me so I put on the sound on the screens for his cage and hear him talking in this deep, deep thick voice, not angry or snarling but almost calm.
“Humans and cages, humans and cages you all think that’s the solution…take and rape and twist and bend and turn us into instruments of your will. This battle was just a skirmish you bald creatures, you pathetic little creature…you’ll soon see what the power of nature will be when it’s awakened…oh you’ll all see.”
The few of us that are watching him see him lean and glare directly into the camera like he knows where it is and that’s a little disturbing and his calm is very disturbing and I can’t keep the feed going because he’s like creeping me out and things.
When I power off the screen Mrs. Champion’s looking at me and I ask… “Are we done here, because Bonsai and Lazerus and I were wondering if we could go back to The main part of The Tower.”
It’s a little weird to even be doing this actually. Like asking her like she’s a parent or something when she’s one of the mightiest heroines on New Haven.
“Sure go ahead you need to right reports ASAP but you might as well do that with a fresh change of clothes and being showered and everything, you’ll find the reports there on your account in the system labeled under the file folder for police reports there’s another one for our own files too.”
I nod and try a smile in my armored for. “Homework cool beans.”
She grins. “Take Titan with you and make sure he gets checked out by medical.”
“Will do Boss Lady.”
“Thanks Diamond.”
I’m sort of smiling as I head off to the others and Ty’s the hardest to find because he’s still sort of stewing about Shroud I think and about ‘the girl’ and about mongo who he’s watching on a tablet and glaring at.
I go over to him and slide closer. “You got to breathe, you’re getting way too worked up and into angry guy mode.”
He stares at me and I stare back. “Ty I’ve been there remember, I might not have been able to be like that like angry to the assholes that made my life a living hell like most of the time but I know the anger and how it can grab you…hell it might be even worse with the power up you got…just chill out.”
We keep staring and I stop and I step up and I give him a hug.
He tenses and then he slowly shakes. “They murdered a guy Diamond, they murdered a guy and she fired into a crowd of people like it didn’t matter and then there was just so much blood and people hurt and screaming and…”
I unarmor and hug him pretty tight and he can take it actually because he’s like boosted tough so maybe he feels it like more or something.
“Come on with the rest of us and we can all go and hang out and do these reports together and we can cry and stuff and talk about stuff…and there’s chocolate back at quarters and stuff.”
He says it but it’s pretty much Sunny. “Chocolate…yeah I could use some serious chocolate therapy right now.”
He turns off the tablet and leaves it at the counter he was closest to and we meet up with the others and we walk out and there’s reporters there with cameras still and photogs and Kyle snaps out his wings and takes off with Kai and Ty looks at me and we jump well he jumps and I’m like strong enough the force of it doesn’t like hurt me and he’s sort of able to do these hulk like jumps and stuff though like not quite as far as the stuff in the comics but we’re out of there and it’s kind of cool.
Actually it’s very cool as I shift myself around to his back at like jump three and he sort of is like piggy backing me in this really amazing way.
I can’t help but laugh some. “Okay this, this is pretty effing cool.”
“Really, let me try this…”
I’m not sure what he did and there was this entirely odd sensation when we landed like that feeling of sorta drop as like an elevator goes up and then there’s this spring back and we blast off and we go full hulk bounce this time like twenty or thirty stories high and lots of horizontal space too and we pass Kyle and Kai and I let out a “Whoo-hoo!”
Okay life’s really complicated but right now it’s not so bad, and we’re together and with friends.