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This has been a long time coming to be re-posted. Mostly waiting on the so-called creator here to finish writing for it. Drawn by the incredible and coloured by !!!

Coloured with Krita krita.org

Story by
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On another bright and particularly warm March afternoon, Eric had all the pleasure of dodging collapsing girder beams, and being caked in the filthy cloud of dirt and debris that came courtesy of another partially sundered office building in downtown Horizon City.
Aside from a panicked series of yelps and pants kicked up every time he stepped on a shattered hunk of concrete, reminder enough that what was unfolding was very real, and had come quickly enough to at least provoke his better instincts to flee. He hadn’t even planned on skipping an extra class half-way through the school day; instead long faded notions of snacking on pork dumplings at his favorite food truck had him wandering down busy city streets, the worst thought of danger was maybe missing his bus back over the Rosewater bridge.
“Holy crap-..!”
One slab of the sidewalk opened up in a deep crevice in front of him, forcing the young man to stop on his heels, moments before he was lifted off right off them. The concussive force of a large pressure wave had thrown him head over heels, back onto the middle of the street.
The pain of scraped skin, needling cuts across his fingers from sliding through shattered glass and rock kept Eric alert, yet paralyzed with indecision. The bow wave of pandemonium was finally clearing the block, meaning the heavy din of screams and sirens was beginning to fade.
Only this left Eric well enough alone, flipping around on his back.. What he saw let his eyes widen in terrific shock. A hulking, misshapen figure emerged from the hovering plumes of ash and smoke, Even from this considerable distance, radiant heat distorted the air, pricked along Eric’s exposed skin like a net of hot needles. A massive, crag-faced, muscle-bound jolly green giant of a man, covered in head to toe with all manner of mechanical implants with radiant blue power cores. This could only match the description of one well-known super villain.
“M-M-M.. Meltdown!”
Eric slapped his hand over his mouth at first, but the damage was already done. Twin, beady red eyes took focus on the teenager cowering on the ruined street; accompanied by a dismissive, snarl that roiled along cracked, scar-ridden lips. While Eric did not pose anywhere near a threat, to the giant man experiencing a constant, excruciating rage, satiating that anger was going to take more than a stress ball and half-off coupons at the nearest spa. In fact, as Eric desperately scraped along the ground to make up a modicum of distance; Meltdown wrenched his fingers cleanly through the cabin of a previously t-boned classic ‘70s Camaro. The heavy metal construction lent nothing in resistance, nearly 4,000 pounds hurled with the clean technique of a javelin thrower toward the hapless teen.
Barely enough time to shield his face, one faint whimper before the beckoning end..
-THWUm-CRRRRRRKKK!-
A pressurized wave of air tousled his hair, ruffling his clothes.. There was darkness, but from a broadly-cast shadow that blocked out the sun. Squinting eyes cracked open to try and make out details.. A tightly-packed collection of spheres and mounds, accompanied by that same undercarriage that spelled his doom, now creaking gently as it was propped up by a pair of steady hands.
“Gotcha!!”
Came an enthused, and distinctly female voice from within that imposing silhouette. Eric next found his eyes adjusting to layer upon layer of colours; a sharp blue-teal mix with interspersing lines of gold, faintly bronzed, glossy flesh, short crimson-frayed brush of hair and a smudge of bright, lime-green that coated her face.. “Wait, what..!” That last note struck Eric with an almost dumbfounded expression, set in stone moreover when she came into full, impressive detail.
She was simply a titan of a woman, distinctly built with enough sculpted muscle to put any bodybuilder to shame, let alone the average person off the street. Concealing swathes of those bulging muscle groups, her outfit seemed a strange hybrid, a casual/modern fit for comfort, but the uniform colour scheme and tight, trim cut that would fit a storybook fantasy trope or traditional superhero outfit. ‘Well, maybe not enough spandex for qualify?’ Only the strangest thoughts crossed Eric’s mind at this point, even as the strange woman had let one hand drift low and wave in front of his eyes, noting just how blanked out he’d become. She continued balancing the car above her head, even with a single hand gradually depressing through the muffler and into the flooring, the subtle tear of metal knocking Eric back to his senses.
“Are you with him?!.. You.. You..”
The first weirdo strung up with christmas-tree lights in his skin was one thing, but it was another to behold her strange green countenance. This was doubly reinforced as they finally locked eyes in recognition for the first time, she cast out a brilliantly white, and devilishly large smile that raised the hairs on Eric’s body. “Alien! Mutant! C-C-Circus clown!...” That last one made her flinch, a distinct twinge of disappointment turned her expression much more adorable than was necessary.
“That one stung a lot more than you realize..!”
Her announcement was indignant, crossing arms just beneath her pronounced, impeccably orb-like breasts, tilting her upper torso down so that she could get near face-to-face with Eric! The distance prompted an awkward, and bashful quieting of his protests.
“The names Simone buddy! Though I think they called me She-Mask last time on the radio.” Her voice was confident and lively despite perturbed undertones, the car still hanging dreadfully close to his head. “And it just so happens that you seem to be in need of my services!”
She tossed the Camaro with the same grace and care one might do with bargain shopping bags, barely missing Eric and coming to a frightful crash only a few spare few away. He cowered as a hubcap came loose, rolling ignominiously to a whimpered end further down the street.
Heavy-set footfalls steadily rose in volume, echoing loudly throughout the area, each step scraping off the surface layer of asphalt. Meltdown was still advancing toward the action ahead, but any momentary confusion from the lack of a wet, pulping noise only infuriated him more. All over his body, the implanted cores that formed the nexus of his power hissed as steam escaped through rubber gaskets, further cementing the image of a runaway train steadily gaining speed.
Simone slapped her palms together, sniffing the air and wobbling on her heels, as if taking in the relaxing atmosphere before settling in a round of golf. Eric felt a twinge of obligation in pointing out the obvious threat, but if this strange, huge woman was going to draw attention away from him, now was a time as good as any to book it.
“Y-yeah.. You’ve got this right? I’ll call the.. the.. National Guard..! AHHH!”
Eric’s voice warbled and yelped amid the chaos from another crashing hunk of asphalt raining just over his head, sent off from an errant kick from the oncoming radioactive giant. Off and near tripping over his own shoelaces, Eric took off toward the nearest blind corner he could find.
Simone had only finished dusting off her hands, opening her eyes to the scene once again, a sudden sense of deja vu reintroducing herself to the situation. Noticing a distinct absence, she cast a momentary glance behind her.
“Oh, it probably won’t be necessary, but thanks!” She called out just as Eric left her line of sight, before returning her steely gaze back to Meltdown.
Only a couple hundred feet away and closing in on her with a quickening pace, now leaving craterous impacts with every stomp of his feet.
“All for the better I’d wager, now how do I take care of you!” Simone’s voice rang out like a clarion call, as if addressing some wider audience.
Letting her arms extend at either side, raised up and open to the air, there was a distinct crackling of static. The light around her body abruptly dimmed as faint green wisps leaked from her hands, before erupted into twin, swirling, smoky clouds, punctuated by violent flashes of neon-green lightning! Hovering above her palms, these twin rifts fluctuated about a foot wide, before luminous objects rose in steady, sequential manner, forming a half-moon ring around Simone. It wasn’t long before they lost their viscous, formless shapes, turning into an assemblage of fantastic and iconic looking firearms, blades and glowing, sci-fi inspired weaponry!
Simone flicked through the floating gallery like she was selecting from her inventory menu, the same glowing green energies projecting detailed script and arbitrary point values floating from loose, green angular lines labeling the various dimensions of each artifact.
“Let’s see.. +5 Holy Avenger? Portal Gun? Alien Blaster? Buster Sword?.. Doom 2 Super Shotgun?.. OooOooO! How about a laser-sighted, master-crafted, supercharged combi-botgu-huuUUUUHN!”
In the midst of admiring the overwrought, ornate and implausibly huge firearm in her hands, a large, bare-knuckled fist had plunged through and shattered the incandescent displays in a billowing cloud of green mist, impacting upon the side of her jaw, contorting her head with rippling waves of force that reverberated visibly throughout her whole form, before being launched like a push pin from a rubber band. The concussive wave from the strike rent and rearranged the standing street signs parallel with the ground, while the jolted impact of her body against the nearest building broke away an enormous, car-sized cross section of the stone facade. However, instead of smashing through the building, her body compressed and squashed against the shattered wall like a deflated rubber basketball. A timpani-like, elastic bass -Bwwwnnnggg!- sound punctuated the air, a hanging moment before kinetic energy rebounded her right back toward the sidewalk, plunged head first through a 4-inch concrete slab!
A large, crumbling divot had been cut through street, burying Simone ostrich-like up to her shoulders, legs dangling and stuck out perpendicular from the ground, before pulling her head free from the tangle of asphalt and twisted steel mesh reinforcements. Her eyes rolled about like two pinballs rebounding in her sockets, and a flock of rainbow-coloured, tropical finches were chirping happily in a wobbling, off-tilt orbit around her head.
“Hh-ukk.. Pttffb!” Simone spit out a mouthful of gravel, brushing her hand up over her head to scatter the impromptu flock. Besides the loose dusting across her hair, she rose to her feet as if nothing had happened, instead taking a sharp breath to shout amid brushing off her clothes. “Have you even read a shonen jump!?.. You’re supposed to let me finish arming up before we get to the fun-.. HEY!!”
Despite the heightened tone, the lady doth protest in vain. Another savage hook struck her midsection, the impact against her prominent sides dimpled the sculpted flesh on contact, then yielded entirely to the large fist. Layer upon layer of skin and muscle collapsed like a thin veneer of plastic wrap covering a gel-like rubber, submerging Meltdown’s hand deeper and deeper into Simone’s torso. Bulging, rounded eyes bounded from her sockets formed her first shocked reaction, before evolving wild take, as her mouth bellowed wide as a trash can, tongue flapping like a wet rag in the wash as the rush of air escaped her lungs. “G-uhhhhhAAHHH!”
The sequence crawled at a snail’s pace. All weight of movement ceased as Meltdown watched his fist slowly distend through her body, stretching out her back in a rubbery limb-like column, until the elastic resistance unfurled, launching Simone up into the air in a straight vertical line! A rush of wind kicked up dust all around Meltdown’s legs, the muscle-bound woman turning into a faint blurry speck as she sailed well past the tallest skyscrapers!
“Fresh meat..” He sputtered on those words, chuckling darkly to himself.
Despite Meltdown’s frenzied mind processed the surroundings in smouldering shades of rage, the satisfaction with finishing off another opponent settled his disposition. The police had been routed from the downtown area, and no sign of any other super-freaks putting up roadblocks. Raising his guttural voice to boom over the empty streets, a clarion call for more violence.
“FIGHT’S ON WORMS!...” His voice trailed off, laboured breaths filling the gap of silence, before bellowing out again. “WHO ELSE CAN STOP ME?!” The echo punctuated the area with a resounding echo. Veins along Meltdown’s body visibly throbbed with frustration, while the myriad of reactors that pockmarked his body started to glow more luminous, the flesh surrounding the implants sizzled and shifted a pinkish-red. Self-reflection on what this was doing to his health was a afterthought, only the thrill of conquest satiated his appetite.
“Don’t count me out just yet lughead!” That familiar, female voice drifted in from above.
Shade flooded over his view, blocking out the sun as he turned his head to glance upward. There, floating down by means of a large, green rectangular parachute, complete with the scolding image of Simone’s face blowing a raspberry! As she rapidly descended past the skyline, she detached the chute, dropping to the ground a few stories high, landing as calmly as an olympic gymnast as she absorbed the recoil without any hint of exertion.
Whether too enraged or foolhardy, Meltdown refused to accept what he was witnessing, clenching his fists tightly enough to dig blistering cuts into his palms, the rest of his skin turning the same tomato shade of red as his wrath proved unquenchable. Before he could raise his voice to challenge her, the loose remains of her parachute collapsed right over top of him, leaving the stunned supervillain enveloped within the tangled mess.
“This won’t HOLD... ME!!”
Strong as he was, Meltdown wasn’t agile enough to take hold of all the shifting nylon flaps in one fell swoop, struggling as the chaotic mess contorted, wrapping tight around every limb and burying the giant within the morass.
Simone took her time in unhooking the myriad straps of her harness only a few arm lengths away from the struggling brute, a pair of amber-tinted aviators highlighting her rather smug expression, a barely-concealed reveling in the misfortune her opponent found himself in. It was only moments later that smoke began billowing from the downed chute, before it burst into a yellow-orange fireball!
As the material covering Meltdown incinerated into ash, Simone could see just how easily Meltdown was taunted, those implanted power cores now glowing brightly enough to cast a luminous white-blue sheen across his skin. This was matched with a unhealthy set of neon-blue veins as a combination of amped-up adrenaline and boiling frustration set Meltdown into overdrive, gritting his teeth as any untouched surface around him sizzled from his scorching, radioactive emanations.
“You know, I was feeling the humidity before...” Simone said with more than a hint of exhaustion. Stripping away her glasses as comically voluminous streams of sweat poured from her forehead, evaporating as soon as they touched ground. As if it weren’t enough proof, she reached behind her back to produce a boxy-looking geiger counter. It immediately crackled to life as if caught in a feedback loop, it’s glass display shattered and a shower of hot sparks signaled its catastrophic deterioration.
As Simone let the dissolving pieces crumble from her hands, Meltdown had lurched forward, tilting his body sideways as he geared up for another hook. Simone watched carefully as sickly blue energies from his fist cast off long trails of loose particles, held suspended in the air before erupting with brilliance. Between the space of milliseconds, she made her move decisively. Weaving underneath the punch so quickly that while her body sank, her head kept frozen in place, neck stretched to fill the void, before retracting back down like a pull cord on a vacuum cleaner, missing the impact by a hairs length.
Before Meltdown could register this failure, Simone sprung forward from her kneeled position, planting a mighty punch right into his side!
The street splintered beneath her in long, vein-like cracks. The thunderous sound akin to a cannonshot, as the impact lift Meltdown right off of his feet, a cascading wave of over pressure blew away a ring of debris cleanly off the road around them.
Meltdown gagged on his tongue as his landed flat on his back not too far away, his reaction blanked from the sheer incredulity of it all. The sheer force involved had left a pancake-shaped, bright red bruise plastered against his pale skin.
“I’m not falling for the same trick again.” Simone said, rising to a stand while keeping her hands propped up in a boxing posture. “You want to keep throwing cheap shots? I’ll give you twice back and more, toaster-oven!”
Meltdown grimaced, flaring pain cut through his dulled senses, unimaginable in his position. “Quit.. Playing.. AROUND!” He shouted, rushing back toward Simone, wildly swinging his arms with increasing desperation of making contact.
Simone held her ground, alert as she parried away a set of jabs with fluid slaps against his wrists, dipping her head under another ham-handed crossover. She fed the lumbering brawler another blow to the untouched side of his torso before bounding around behind Meltdown once more, letting him sag down, clutching his stomach. “You looked like you were going to be a real challenge though! Why not make this a game?”
Meltdown wrenched his head around to bark out a few proper expletives, but was instead met with the side of Simone’s shoe smashing him off his feet once more, splitting an abandoned car clean down the middle and tumbling cleanly through the plate-glass window of a clothing store front. Simone held her leg up, wobbling around waist level as she admired her technique.
“Audience is getting restless..! You really gonna keep holding this up?” Simone called out loud. “You’re melting down alright! I’ve never seen such a weakling lose his cool so easily!”
The storefront exploded outward, causing most of the building to crumble in around it. Meltdown made his best impression of a charging bull, steam pouring from every implant, howling in frustration while he raced toward Simone, arms outstretched as if ready to bodyslam this insolent woman through the earth’s core.
It wasn’t meant to be.
Simone slid her left foot back, bracing for impact. Catching Meltdown’s frenzied hands before they could curl around her throat in one deft maneuver, halting Meltdown’s bullrush flat in his tracks. Another riptide tore open the ground beneath them, sending concrete spears tearing through the distorted earth, accompanied with a deafening roar of the ruptured water main underneath them.
Meltdown bristled and howled, over-inflated, searing muscle bulged and strained in grotesque, vascular-bloated slabs, managing only to claim parity with his opponent. The two of them stood firm, grappling like a pair of pro wrestlers, jockeying for an advantage, as the resulting wave of buckling earth expanded into the nearest collection of buildings, sending more precariously-held exteriors collapsing into craters around them.
“You know, the starting position is pretty comfortable..” Simone said.
Meltdown wheezed and stammered. The shimmering blue lights had reached a brightness that was almost painful to look at, smoke and sparks sizzling as he gutted down and threw in all of his strength. Simone conducted herself forcefully in defense, priming her impressive body without budging back an inch. She exerted some visible effort, her arms pulsing with added size as she held him back, but none of this effort fed into her composed, cheerful voice.
“But I hoping for more of a challenge! I mean, what.. Probably a clean thousand tons when you’ve blown a few gaskets? Blow your volcano top? Split a few 235-atoms..” Her whole demeanor had changed, swirling her head and shoulders with dramatic flair, her pitch rising with a bubbly, cartoonish candor while her eyes widened and bulged with excitement! “SPEAKING OF WHICH-!”
Simone tightened her grip, pinching the webbing between Meltdown’s fingers. The sting of pain went from nuisance to mind-numbing in the space of milliseconds, punctuated by the artificial ‘pop’ of someone cracking his joints for him. “DON’T EVEN Dar-..RrrrraahhhHHH!!”
Meltdown screamed out loud, as unfamiliar a feeling as the impotency of his own fantastic strength. No matter what will evoked from his endless well of rage, he felt like he was trying to fight back against a mountain weighed against his hands, helpless to contain it. Meltdown crumbled under the pressure, forced down to a knee as Simone pressed her advantage. It felt like being normal again, being human again, not even a couple weeks removed. This moment’s recognition stirred a more disturbing revelation. Heat that scoured his flesh against the nuclear-powered implants was growing with intensity despite any conscious effort to stop.
Simone let go of Meltdown’s hands, letting him stumble to his forearms dejectedly. “PERFECT! the patient is ready for.. Uhm.. I mean, let’s get this wreck on the shop floor..? Forget it.. LET’S DO A LITTLE REMODELING!” Increasingly manic and proud of it was a light way to describe her disposition. Standing triumphantly over the bewildered giant, she pivoted on her left heel, before spinning herself in place like a top! The hundreds of revolutions blended together in a dizzying blur of blue and yellow.. Before she re-emerged in similarly coloured overalls, with a big bright red/white ‘Simone’ tag over her chest, handkerchief hanging loose from her back pocket and a socket wrench in her hand.
Simone clambered on top of Meltdown, stepping over his back to some humiliation as she bent over to inspect one of the near-incandescent, hissing “batteries” that lined part of his spinal column, before hopping down and switching sides, casting a curious eye to appreciate the design. “Hmmmm..! Oh, this is a tricky one! What kind of backdoor, strung-out nuke farmer does your mod work huh?..” She slapped a hand across Meltdown’s back, causing the him to whimper with distress, complacent as a big, scolded dog. “Son, as yer mechanic, I Ree-gret to inform you that you’re probably.. Oh, ‘bout some minutes away from living out a.. What-chu-say.. ‘spectacular cascading failure when the sealant holding your fuel cells in checks ruptures and reacts catastrophically to the open air.’” She deadpanned with a midwestern, elderly twang, broken only by her rather technically-laced quotation. “But I’llllll do ya a favour and give this he-yoor engin’ a fix, you can worry about the bill tomorrah!..!”
She hooked the wrench onto the nearest implant over his upper right shoulder, pumping her arm for a few steady moments as she yanked the first power cell out. Meltdown cried out in agony. The barely stabilized cell was removed from its housing, its residual incandescent light was now bleeding even more brightly, intensely than before, bleeding through his veins from head to toe now. Given how quickly he was destabilizing, there was little time to Simone snapped her thumb, flipping the first vial far into the sky to vanish into the sunlight!
Simone cracked her knuckles before unleashing her deftly handled uninstallation. Hitting super-human speeds, a clinical staccato popping came with each fuel cell violently wrenched out from their injection ports, spewing steam and sparks in equal measure. A dozen or more containers sent tumbling into the air in rapid succession, the last, centered along his back, saved for Simone’s careful grip.
“Take two aspirin, vent the intake lines, reboot the CPU, andddd.. Make sure to put the lime in the coconut before ‘ya call me in.. the.. MORNING!”
Simone yanked out the last vial. The relief from radioactive heat, lancing pain that travelled through every nerve ending allowed a moment’s respite. His body twitching from the residual electric charge, Meltdown breathed out a series of slurred consonants, “Scnnnhmm-ninii...” Before slouching off his knees, collapsing into a passed out heap at Simone’s feet.
Up in the air above, the vials made their precarious drop toward the ground. A faint glitter-flash of embossed writing along the inner edges, ‘NEVER TO BE REMOVED’. Unstable molten fuel sloshed end to end in each, innocuous cylinder, while Simone nonchalantly scratched underneath her chin, watching them tumble toward her like falling daggers.
“Let’s see, a few choice grams of Neptunium suspended in a liquid base, kept stable via a boron-dysprosium filter and siphoning off the excess electricity through his body.. I’d say, 2.407…” She closed an eye, counting backward on her fingers. “...Three.. Three? Yeah, three kilotons a piece, give or take.”
That vital tidbit of information parsed might cause one to pre-emptively tuck their head between their legs and kiss the world goodbye. Simone took a slightly different tact. In one swift movement, she pinched her fingers into her chin, yanking on her jaw like swinging open a kitchen drawer, providing a cavernous repository. -GULLK! GULP! GULP! GUULPK!- Quick-stepping to catch each and every vial, they slid in and down her gullet faster than a line of shots at the bar, the very real and bulky glass and metal found no resistance, distending her throat in cartoonish fashion before slamming her jaw closed with the final morsel.
Dead silence followed shortly after, broken only by the crinkling of broken glass as it was buffeted by the wind. One palm kept shut over her mouth, cheeks puffed up with baseball-sized pockets of air, Simone could feel the gurgling concoction within her stomach starting to digest in volatile fashion.. “Uurrrpp!” She let out a quiet belch, her voice squished and high-pitched while she kept her throat clenched. “HIGHly-combuSStible.. De-Kaying core.. Or.. My.. Morning brEAKfast.. BurrrrrrRrRrito..?”
Her washboard abs trembled and twitched, before utterly losing all sense of stout and steely, defined musculature, instead exploding outward as violently as an oversized airbag, the sheer pressure stretched out her skin taut and bulbous, easily pushing her torso wider than she was tall. Both hands now clamped tight against her mouth to contain the incredible forces now roiling inside her body. Steam poured out her ears like a piping hot tea kettle, her bright green features swapped the richly green palette for a more blistering volcanic red, while her bright blue eyes briefly glowed the same twinkling sheen of those familiar radioactive energies. The rest of her body seized still, visibly swelling and contracting in the concerted effort to hold the explosion steady. A critical rupture seemed perilously close, even the slightest brush of her ballooned out midsection against the ground provoked a diabolical growl of tension from her trembling stomach!
Agonizing seconds left Simone trapped by the savage, unyielding masses contained within her body. Those intermittent, alien-like noises alternating in pitch with every pulse of activity, a steady crescendoing snare drum that refused to be silenced. Despite the terrifying vibrations in her body, Simone managed to swallow back the protruding lump of overpressure down her throat, shutting her eyes closed as she reflexively tried to pull it all back in, as if trying to contain a nasty bout of hiccups. Resolving the issue came in one, swooping rush. All at once, the sphere-like mass contracted and shot back into her torso forcefully enough that her lower back stretched out like a cannonball shot into stretched canvas. Just as quickly did it rebound back out her stomach, shrinking with each sway back and forth throughout her torso until finally absorbed into her body, leaving Simone back at her original proportions.
At first Simone’s breath was calm and pronounced, savouring the preceding feat of gastronomical endurance as if finishing off a long yoga pose. Even her outfit showed no hint of the rubbery strain it had been subjected to. She flashed a thumbs up at the prone, passed out form of Meltdown.
“She’s got the brawn! She’s got the brains! And she’s way above you-.. AAAUUUrrRRRrrrppp!”
Whether willpower, Simone’s unique physiology or a seeming act of holy grace, what might have been a city-shattering explosion instead produced an inconsiderate, wet burp that seemed summoned from the depths of the grand canyon. A look of embarrassment crawled over her features as she waved a hand in front of her mouth.
“Ugh, I really should check with my doctor about acid reflux.” Simone said aloud, eyes darting about the wreckage before locking back on the downed supervillain. “And.. Well, considering the state you find yourself in, I should probably talk to my psychiatrist about these running commentaries to myself! Ehhheh-hahahahahaHAH!”
Her tone had turned from simply exuberant to almost maniacal, giddy with joy at her accomplishment. Another way to show off one’s pride in accomplishment however, came as a serious round of impromptu pop-locking, which looked strangely obscene amid the wreckage of a major city artery that looked like it had been through a few years of high intensity warfare. Not a crowd gathered, nor a camera crew in sight to bear witness to their mystery saviour kicking up a storm with a series of slick pivots, and robotic arm jerks.
“Then again…” Simone said, tilting at a near 45 degree angle on her left flank, drooping her head forward with her arms held criss-cross off the right. As she froze her pose, the glass case of a lone street lamp cover detached from its tenuous grip and -clinked!- as it broke into pieces, the lone echoing noise making Simone wince and return to a proper stance. “Mmmmaaayyybe it’s time to make my exit.”
On that word, Simone took off from the scene like greased lightning. She’d become a barely visible blur of motion, circuitously bound off every overturned car, archway of fallen debris or mound of rubble that lay down the path of destruction first cut through by Meltdown. Only a few blocks away did the sounds of life begin flood her ears once again. Emergency sirens providing a constant background wail; the push and pull of gawking crowds held along a large perimeter fence of barricades. Simone came screeching to a halt as it all came into view, ducking into the closest blind alley she could spot, using the thin line of shadow to cling up against, her back to the wall as she peeked back out around the corner.
Just a short distance away, nearly hidden behind the large HCN news van, Eric tried to take one question at a time, despite the barrage of voices and microphones being shoved in his face.
“...Many city blocks destroyed… Military experiment gone loose… Growing appearance of super-beings in other major cities…” The fundamental details were being endlessly looped and repeated, nothing that Eric would have been prepared to answer. Only when the conversation needed a flair of human detail did the camera lenses turn back his way.
“Sirrrrrrr-... One moment, sir! Hank Walkins, Horizon City News. Eyewitness reports have been growing like wildfire up the last few weeks, strange and unusual encounters multiplying. Can you corroborate the details of who you saw? The supposed ‘She-Mask?’” A bespectacled, nasally reporter asked in rapid fire succession.
“Yes.. Yes, exactly like you said, the other reports about her, blue outfit, red hair, built like an amazon, and.. A Brighter green shade than I would have imagined, looked like someone playing with film school make-up... She-Mask though? I don’t get it though, was there like a male Mas-...” Eric said with genuine curiosity, but was quickly overtaken with a charming young brunette pushing out her smartphone under Eric’s chin while jumping into the frame with him
“This is Emily, co-editor of Scene Stripe magazine for Horizon University here with the only witness on site!” She said with an unusual cheerful spaciness. “Soooo.. Like, Dude! What was she like? Ms. Olympia with a cleansing mask..! Everyone else she’s big, green and mean like the Hulk! Not like the other.. Hulk guy. So what I’m trying to say.. Superheroes are live and in play, are we looking toward a real Dawn of Justice?”
“... Wait, are you doing a promotion with Warner Bros…?” Eric said, completely nonplussed. His idle speculation only feeding a rumour-hungry public, mystified by these new and increasingly bombastic events.
Having listened intently to the few vain words of compliment and derision, slinked her way deeper down the alley. It might have been a head rush alone to hear your own name getting thrown about with such wonderment, but the sheer audacity of the performance had left the still beaming smile stretched in a permanent, wild-stricken madness. “Eheheeeee..! Ahahah-..Gh-..AHahahHAHA!” Simone could barely contain her emotions, looking down at her large, trembling hands as she tried to process it. Unadulterated bliss that exposed itself in frenetic, unhinged laughter.
Simone slid into an alcove, noise from the surrounding city starting to dim as she tumbled further into self-reflection. “I-.. I-nhhanhahaha!.. I couldn’t be stopped.. Hehehehe!.. I’m tremendous, I’m stupendous! I’m making julienne fries! I mean, what can’t I do now?!” Simone announced out loud, letting the question hang. “Y-you know, without being myself... Again…”
The bare thought lingered, as the faintly held recognition started to make itself known. A great wave of anguish, and fatigue quickly gnawed its way into her awareness. Her taut, sculpted facial features were beginning to shrivel and solidify, tiny crevices and pockets appearing web-like, stemming from the back of her head. There did not appear to be much physical discomfort, but the growing trepidation of claustrophobia as Simone reached around to grab onto the nearly invisible seam that cut down the back of her head.
“I know I want this.. I want to be.. You... But I don’t want to go away.. D-don’t put me away too long.. Please!” Her fingers plunged into the thick coating of green skin, yanking and stretching in thick, gooey-strands, until a split in the seam formed, causing a rupture of green smoke, spewing hazily from the opening. “UUUghhhnnnn!” Simone let out an yawning groan of exerted effort, tensing those massive arms as hard as she could. The green, skin-like coating almost refused to budge, clinging with tiny-lamprey like columns that stuck greedily to her skin, yielding only few choice centimetres with every tug. Those same hairline crevices started to resemble the riveted texture of wood grain, growing more protruded and thick with the excess rear material pulled and compressed toward the front.
The mask’s artificial nature finally became apparent, deep sunken sockets squinched down upon her bulbous, cartoon eyes, while the budding protrusion of copper dimples running as a vertical noseguard, morphing and shaping itself rectangular as it was was being agonizingly peeled from her skin. “AaauughhNrrrrahh! Just.. Just get off! S-scene change!” Simone’s voice warbled in pitch, forming two distinct tones run parallel with each other, clashing in intensity. Simone’s clothing began to evaporate into the same, opaque emerald smoke as before, swirling to hide bare skin left by smouldering patches of fabric. Her carefully sculpted musculature hissed and stirred, visibly deflating to match her rapidly shrinking height. Arcing bolts of electricity danced erratically throughout her shapeless body and against the building behind her, leaving glowing red scorch marks of expended energy. Only her thinned, bare forearms were visible now, tugging away at the mask still hanging on in long, taffy-like threads to her skin, stretching out her face like a melting wax figure.
“UuunnAaaaaaaaaaahhh..” The last bands of rubber snapped from Simone’s features, disappearing into the dull wooden features of the ancient green mask. Her rosy pink flesh restored, the new sense of weight and limitations came as a sledgehammer blow, with the young woman now collapsing onto her rear, dropping the mask at her side. She panted for air, burying her head against her forearm as the positively inhuman energies abated, a twisted mixture of pure exhilaration combined with a high-intensity workout. With her spare hand, Simone inspected her body. The same scrawny limbs, aching ligaments and slight muffin top that she was accustomed too, covered under baggy cargo pants and a blue fleece hoodie.
Any outward sign of the massive superhero, aside from the crimson-dyed hair style and similar shade of colour in clothing. Finding a calming breath once more, Simone rose to her wobbly feet and squinted her eyes amid the decaying orange sunlight. “Oookay, was that better or worse than last time? I can’t even…”
She winced and held up her forehead, even her most vivid memories stirring through a deep fog inside of her mind. As she tilted her head toward the ground, the vacant eyes of the mask offered no sympathetic reflection, or judging stare; just an strange, doubtful sensation to linger in the back of Simone’s mind.
She reached down to fish her fingers through the mouth of the mask, stuffing its awkward shape underneath her hoodie while making her way out the other end of the alley. Even away from the heavy media presence, the streets were packed with the bewildered, excited and horrified public.
“The ‘phee-nom-enun’ is gettin’ worse! I’m starting to think I’m dreaming.” A group of middle-aged, dumpy smokers confided their anxieties just outside their building.
“How are these super freaks are running around, destroying whole cities and we can’t even stop them?!” An overweight, exhaustive office worker berated a nearby street cop, who was at a loss of how to calm this guy down, let alone provide an answer that would satisfy either of them.
“Why did we get the green weirdo? Merridinae has their own Justice League!” A group of young girls digested every hint of gossip and blurry image posted on social media. #phenom , of course.
Simone felt a brief hint of relief, her anonymity secured only on the thinnest of margins. Not surprising that it paled in comparison to the thought of being -her-, being wanted in countless ways. Simone shuddered with conflicted guilt, doing all the best to try and ignore her changing reality as she disappeared through the crowds.
“Dreams do come true…”
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Description
This has been a long time coming to be re-posted. Mostly waiting on the so-called creator here to finish writing for it. Drawn by the incredible and coloured by !!!

Coloured with Krita krita.org

Story by
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On another bright and particularly warm March afternoon, Eric had all the pleasure of dodging collapsing girder beams, and being caked in the filthy cloud of dirt and debris that came courtesy of another partially sundered office building in downtown Horizon City.
Aside from a panicked series of yelps and pants kicked up every time he stepped on a shattered hunk of concrete, reminder enough that what was unfolding was very real, and had come quickly enough to at least provoke his better instincts to flee. He hadn’t even planned on skipping an extra class half-way through the school day; instead long faded notions of snacking on pork dumplings at his favorite food truck had him wandering down busy city streets, the worst thought of danger was maybe missing his bus back over the Rosewater bridge.
“Holy crap-..!”
One slab of the sidewalk opened up in a deep crevice in front of him, forcing the young man to stop on his heels, moments before he was lifted off right off them. The concussive force of a large pressure wave had thrown him head over heels, back onto the middle of the street.
The pain of scraped skin, needling cuts across his fingers from sliding through shattered glass and rock kept Eric alert, yet paralyzed with indecision. The bow wave of pandemonium was finally clearing the block, meaning the heavy din of screams and sirens was beginning to fade.
Only this left Eric well enough alone, flipping around on his back.. What he saw let his eyes widen in terrific shock. A hulking, misshapen figure emerged from the hovering plumes of ash and smoke, Even from this considerable distance, radiant heat distorted the air, pricked along Eric’s exposed skin like a net of hot needles. A massive, crag-faced, muscle-bound jolly green giant of a man, covered in head to toe with all manner of mechanical implants with radiant blue power cores. This could only match the description of one well-known super villain.
“M-M-M.. Meltdown!”
Eric slapped his hand over his mouth at first, but the damage was already done. Twin, beady red eyes took focus on the teenager cowering on the ruined street; accompanied by a dismissive, snarl that roiled along cracked, scar-ridden lips. While Eric did not pose anywhere near a threat, to the giant man experiencing a constant, excruciating rage, satiating that anger was going to take more than a stress ball and half-off coupons at the nearest spa. In fact, as Eric desperately scraped along the ground to make up a modicum of distance; Meltdown wrenched his fingers cleanly through the cabin of a previously t-boned classic ‘70s Camaro. The heavy metal construction lent nothing in resistance, nearly 4,000 pounds hurled with the clean technique of a javelin thrower toward the hapless teen.
Barely enough time to shield his face, one faint whimper before the beckoning end..
-THWUm-CRRRRRRKKK!-
A pressurized wave of air tousled his hair, ruffling his clothes.. There was darkness, but from a broadly-cast shadow that blocked out the sun. Squinting eyes cracked open to try and make out details.. A tightly-packed collection of spheres and mounds, accompanied by that same undercarriage that spelled his doom, now creaking gently as it was propped up by a pair of steady hands.
“Gotcha!!”
Came an enthused, and distinctly female voice from within that imposing silhouette. Eric next found his eyes adjusting to layer upon layer of colours; a sharp blue-teal mix with interspersing lines of gold, faintly bronzed, glossy flesh, short crimson-frayed brush of hair and a smudge of bright, lime-green that coated her face.. “Wait, what..!” That last note struck Eric with an almost dumbfounded expression, set in stone moreover when she came into full, impressive detail.
She was simply a titan of a woman, distinctly built with enough sculpted muscle to put any bodybuilder to shame, let alone the average person off the street. Concealing swathes of those bulging muscle groups, her outfit seemed a strange hybrid, a casual/modern fit for comfort, but the uniform colour scheme and tight, trim cut that would fit a storybook fantasy trope or traditional superhero outfit. ‘Well, maybe not enough spandex for qualify?’ Only the strangest thoughts crossed Eric’s mind at this point, even as the strange woman had let one hand drift low and wave in front of his eyes, noting just how blanked out he’d become. She continued balancing the car above her head, even with a single hand gradually depressing through the muffler and into the flooring, the subtle tear of metal knocking Eric back to his senses.
“Are you with him?!.. You.. You..”
The first weirdo strung up with christmas-tree lights in his skin was one thing, but it was another to behold her strange green countenance. This was doubly reinforced as they finally locked eyes in recognition for the first time, she cast out a brilliantly white, and devilishly large smile that raised the hairs on Eric’s body. “Alien! Mutant! C-C-Circus clown!...” That last one made her flinch, a distinct twinge of disappointment turned her expression much more adorable than was necessary.
“That one stung a lot more than you realize..!”
Her announcement was indignant, crossing arms just beneath her pronounced, impeccably orb-like breasts, tilting her upper torso down so that she could get near face-to-face with Eric! The distance prompted an awkward, and bashful quieting of his protests.
“The names Simone buddy! Though I think they called me She-Mask last time on the radio.” Her voice was confident and lively despite perturbed undertones, the car still hanging dreadfully close to his head. “And it just so happens that you seem to be in need of my services!”
She tossed the Camaro with the same grace and care one might do with bargain shopping bags, barely missing Eric and coming to a frightful crash only a few spare few away. He cowered as a hubcap came loose, rolling ignominiously to a whimpered end further down the street.
Heavy-set footfalls steadily rose in volume, echoing loudly throughout the area, each step scraping off the surface layer of asphalt. Meltdown was still advancing toward the action ahead, but any momentary confusion from the lack of a wet, pulping noise only infuriated him more. All over his body, the implanted cores that formed the nexus of his power hissed as steam escaped through rubber gaskets, further cementing the image of a runaway train steadily gaining speed.
Simone slapped her palms together, sniffing the air and wobbling on her heels, as if taking in the relaxing atmosphere before settling in a round of golf. Eric felt a twinge of obligation in pointing out the obvious threat, but if this strange, huge woman was going to draw attention away from him, now was a time as good as any to book it.
“Y-yeah.. You’ve got this right? I’ll call the.. the.. National Guard..! AHHH!”
Eric’s voice warbled and yelped amid the chaos from another crashing hunk of asphalt raining just over his head, sent off from an errant kick from the oncoming radioactive giant. Off and near tripping over his own shoelaces, Eric took off toward the nearest blind corner he could find.
Simone had only finished dusting off her hands, opening her eyes to the scene once again, a sudden sense of deja vu reintroducing herself to the situation. Noticing a distinct absence, she cast a momentary glance behind her.
“Oh, it probably won’t be necessary, but thanks!” She called out just as Eric left her line of sight, before returning her steely gaze back to Meltdown.
Only a couple hundred feet away and closing in on her with a quickening pace, now leaving craterous impacts with every stomp of his feet.
“All for the better I’d wager, now how do I take care of you!” Simone’s voice rang out like a clarion call, as if addressing some wider audience.
Letting her arms extend at either side, raised up and open to the air, there was a distinct crackling of static. The light around her body abruptly dimmed as faint green wisps leaked from her hands, before erupted into twin, swirling, smoky clouds, punctuated by violent flashes of neon-green lightning! Hovering above her palms, these twin rifts fluctuated about a foot wide, before luminous objects rose in steady, sequential manner, forming a half-moon ring around Simone. It wasn’t long before they lost their viscous, formless shapes, turning into an assemblage of fantastic and iconic looking firearms, blades and glowing, sci-fi inspired weaponry!
Simone flicked through the floating gallery like she was selecting from her inventory menu, the same glowing green energies projecting detailed script and arbitrary point values floating from loose, green angular lines labeling the various dimensions of each artifact.
“Let’s see.. +5 Holy Avenger? Portal Gun? Alien Blaster? Buster Sword?.. Doom 2 Super Shotgun?.. OooOooO! How about a laser-sighted, master-crafted, supercharged combi-botgu-huuUUUUHN!”
In the midst of admiring the overwrought, ornate and implausibly huge firearm in her hands, a large, bare-knuckled fist had plunged through and shattered the incandescent displays in a billowing cloud of green mist, impacting upon the side of her jaw, contorting her head with rippling waves of force that reverberated visibly throughout her whole form, before being launched like a push pin from a rubber band. The concussive wave from the strike rent and rearranged the standing street signs parallel with the ground, while the jolted impact of her body against the nearest building broke away an enormous, car-sized cross section of the stone facade. However, instead of smashing through the building, her body compressed and squashed against the shattered wall like a deflated rubber basketball. A timpani-like, elastic bass -Bwwwnnnggg!- sound punctuated the air, a hanging moment before kinetic energy rebounded her right back toward the sidewalk, plunged head first through a 4-inch concrete slab!
A large, crumbling divot had been cut through street, burying Simone ostrich-like up to her shoulders, legs dangling and stuck out perpendicular from the ground, before pulling her head free from the tangle of asphalt and twisted steel mesh reinforcements. Her eyes rolled about like two pinballs rebounding in her sockets, and a flock of rainbow-coloured, tropical finches were chirping happily in a wobbling, off-tilt orbit around her head.
“Hh-ukk.. Pttffb!” Simone spit out a mouthful of gravel, brushing her hand up over her head to scatter the impromptu flock. Besides the loose dusting across her hair, she rose to her feet as if nothing had happened, instead taking a sharp breath to shout amid brushing off her clothes. “Have you even read a shonen jump!?.. You’re supposed to let me finish arming up before we get to the fun-.. HEY!!”
Despite the heightened tone, the lady doth protest in vain. Another savage hook struck her midsection, the impact against her prominent sides dimpled the sculpted flesh on contact, then yielded entirely to the large fist. Layer upon layer of skin and muscle collapsed like a thin veneer of plastic wrap covering a gel-like rubber, submerging Meltdown’s hand deeper and deeper into Simone’s torso. Bulging, rounded eyes bounded from her sockets formed her first shocked reaction, before evolving wild take, as her mouth bellowed wide as a trash can, tongue flapping like a wet rag in the wash as the rush of air escaped her lungs. “G-uhhhhhAAHHH!”
The sequence crawled at a snail’s pace. All weight of movement ceased as Meltdown watched his fist slowly distend through her body, stretching out her back in a rubbery limb-like column, until the elastic resistance unfurled, launching Simone up into the air in a straight vertical line! A rush of wind kicked up dust all around Meltdown’s legs, the muscle-bound woman turning into a faint blurry speck as she sailed well past the tallest skyscrapers!
“Fresh meat..” He sputtered on those words, chuckling darkly to himself.
Despite Meltdown’s frenzied mind processed the surroundings in smouldering shades of rage, the satisfaction with finishing off another opponent settled his disposition. The police had been routed from the downtown area, and no sign of any other super-freaks putting up roadblocks. Raising his guttural voice to boom over the empty streets, a clarion call for more violence.
“FIGHT’S ON WORMS!...” His voice trailed off, laboured breaths filling the gap of silence, before bellowing out again. “WHO ELSE CAN STOP ME?!” The echo punctuated the area with a resounding echo. Veins along Meltdown’s body visibly throbbed with frustration, while the myriad of reactors that pockmarked his body started to glow more luminous, the flesh surrounding the implants sizzled and shifted a pinkish-red. Self-reflection on what this was doing to his health was a afterthought, only the thrill of conquest satiated his appetite.
“Don’t count me out just yet lughead!” That familiar, female voice drifted in from above.
Shade flooded over his view, blocking out the sun as he turned his head to glance upward. There, floating down by means of a large, green rectangular parachute, complete with the scolding image of Simone’s face blowing a raspberry! As she rapidly descended past the skyline, she detached the chute, dropping to the ground a few stories high, landing as calmly as an olympic gymnast as she absorbed the recoil without any hint of exertion.
Whether too enraged or foolhardy, Meltdown refused to accept what he was witnessing, clenching his fists tightly enough to dig blistering cuts into his palms, the rest of his skin turning the same tomato shade of red as his wrath proved unquenchable. Before he could raise his voice to challenge her, the loose remains of her parachute collapsed right over top of him, leaving the stunned supervillain enveloped within the tangled mess.
“This won’t HOLD... ME!!”
Strong as he was, Meltdown wasn’t agile enough to take hold of all the shifting nylon flaps in one fell swoop, struggling as the chaotic mess contorted, wrapping tight around every limb and burying the giant within the morass.
Simone took her time in unhooking the myriad straps of her harness only a few arm lengths away from the struggling brute, a pair of amber-tinted aviators highlighting her rather smug expression, a barely-concealed reveling in the misfortune her opponent found himself in. It was only moments later that smoke began billowing from the downed chute, before it burst into a yellow-orange fireball!
As the material covering Meltdown incinerated into ash, Simone could see just how easily Meltdown was taunted, those implanted power cores now glowing brightly enough to cast a luminous white-blue sheen across his skin. This was matched with a unhealthy set of neon-blue veins as a combination of amped-up adrenaline and boiling frustration set Meltdown into overdrive, gritting his teeth as any untouched surface around him sizzled from his scorching, radioactive emanations.
“You know, I was feeling the humidity before...” Simone said with more than a hint of exhaustion. Stripping away her glasses as comically voluminous streams of sweat poured from her forehead, evaporating as soon as they touched ground. As if it weren’t enough proof, she reached behind her back to produce a boxy-looking geiger counter. It immediately crackled to life as if caught in a feedback loop, it’s glass display shattered and a shower of hot sparks signaled its catastrophic deterioration.
As Simone let the dissolving pieces crumble from her hands, Meltdown had lurched forward, tilting his body sideways as he geared up for another hook. Simone watched carefully as sickly blue energies from his fist cast off long trails of loose particles, held suspended in the air before erupting with brilliance. Between the space of milliseconds, she made her move decisively. Weaving underneath the punch so quickly that while her body sank, her head kept frozen in place, neck stretched to fill the void, before retracting back down like a pull cord on a vacuum cleaner, missing the impact by a hairs length.
Before Meltdown could register this failure, Simone sprung forward from her kneeled position, planting a mighty punch right into his side!
The street splintered beneath her in long, vein-like cracks. The thunderous sound akin to a cannonshot, as the impact lift Meltdown right off of his feet, a cascading wave of over pressure blew away a ring of debris cleanly off the road around them.
Meltdown gagged on his tongue as his landed flat on his back not too far away, his reaction blanked from the sheer incredulity of it all. The sheer force involved had left a pancake-shaped, bright red bruise plastered against his pale skin.
“I’m not falling for the same trick again.” Simone said, rising to a stand while keeping her hands propped up in a boxing posture. “You want to keep throwing cheap shots? I’ll give you twice back and more, toaster-oven!”
Meltdown grimaced, flaring pain cut through his dulled senses, unimaginable in his position. “Quit.. Playing.. AROUND!” He shouted, rushing back toward Simone, wildly swinging his arms with increasing desperation of making contact.
Simone held her ground, alert as she parried away a set of jabs with fluid slaps against his wrists, dipping her head under another ham-handed crossover. She fed the lumbering brawler another blow to the untouched side of his torso before bounding around behind Meltdown once more, letting him sag down, clutching his stomach. “You looked like you were going to be a real challenge though! Why not make this a game?”
Meltdown wrenched his head around to bark out a few proper expletives, but was instead met with the side of Simone’s shoe smashing him off his feet once more, splitting an abandoned car clean down the middle and tumbling cleanly through the plate-glass window of a clothing store front. Simone held her leg up, wobbling around waist level as she admired her technique.
“Audience is getting restless..! You really gonna keep holding this up?” Simone called out loud. “You’re melting down alright! I’ve never seen such a weakling lose his cool so easily!”
The storefront exploded outward, causing most of the building to crumble in around it. Meltdown made his best impression of a charging bull, steam pouring from every implant, howling in frustration while he raced toward Simone, arms outstretched as if ready to bodyslam this insolent woman through the earth’s core.
It wasn’t meant to be.
Simone slid her left foot back, bracing for impact. Catching Meltdown’s frenzied hands before they could curl around her throat in one deft maneuver, halting Meltdown’s bullrush flat in his tracks. Another riptide tore open the ground beneath them, sending concrete spears tearing through the distorted earth, accompanied with a deafening roar of the ruptured water main underneath them.
Meltdown bristled and howled, over-inflated, searing muscle bulged and strained in grotesque, vascular-bloated slabs, managing only to claim parity with his opponent. The two of them stood firm, grappling like a pair of pro wrestlers, jockeying for an advantage, as the resulting wave of buckling earth expanded into the nearest collection of buildings, sending more precariously-held exteriors collapsing into craters around them.
“You know, the starting position is pretty comfortable..” Simone said.
Meltdown wheezed and stammered. The shimmering blue lights had reached a brightness that was almost painful to look at, smoke and sparks sizzling as he gutted down and threw in all of his strength. Simone conducted herself forcefully in defense, priming her impressive body without budging back an inch. She exerted some visible effort, her arms pulsing with added size as she held him back, but none of this effort fed into her composed, cheerful voice.
“But I hoping for more of a challenge! I mean, what.. Probably a clean thousand tons when you’ve blown a few gaskets? Blow your volcano top? Split a few 235-atoms..” Her whole demeanor had changed, swirling her head and shoulders with dramatic flair, her pitch rising with a bubbly, cartoonish candor while her eyes widened and bulged with excitement! “SPEAKING OF WHICH-!”
Simone tightened her grip, pinching the webbing between Meltdown’s fingers. The sting of pain went from nuisance to mind-numbing in the space of milliseconds, punctuated by the artificial ‘pop’ of someone cracking his joints for him. “DON’T EVEN Dar-..RrrrraahhhHHH!!”
Meltdown screamed out loud, as unfamiliar a feeling as the impotency of his own fantastic strength. No matter what will evoked from his endless well of rage, he felt like he was trying to fight back against a mountain weighed against his hands, helpless to contain it. Meltdown crumbled under the pressure, forced down to a knee as Simone pressed her advantage. It felt like being normal again, being human again, not even a couple weeks removed. This moment’s recognition stirred a more disturbing revelation. Heat that scoured his flesh against the nuclear-powered implants was growing with intensity despite any conscious effort to stop.
Simone let go of Meltdown’s hands, letting him stumble to his forearms dejectedly. “PERFECT! the patient is ready for.. Uhm.. I mean, let’s get this wreck on the shop floor..? Forget it.. LET’S DO A LITTLE REMODELING!” Increasingly manic and proud of it was a light way to describe her disposition. Standing triumphantly over the bewildered giant, she pivoted on her left heel, before spinning herself in place like a top! The hundreds of revolutions blended together in a dizzying blur of blue and yellow.. Before she re-emerged in similarly coloured overalls, with a big bright red/white ‘Simone’ tag over her chest, handkerchief hanging loose from her back pocket and a socket wrench in her hand.
Simone clambered on top of Meltdown, stepping over his back to some humiliation as she bent over to inspect one of the near-incandescent, hissing “batteries” that lined part of his spinal column, before hopping down and switching sides, casting a curious eye to appreciate the design. “Hmmmm..! Oh, this is a tricky one! What kind of backdoor, strung-out nuke farmer does your mod work huh?..” She slapped a hand across Meltdown’s back, causing the him to whimper with distress, complacent as a big, scolded dog. “Son, as yer mechanic, I Ree-gret to inform you that you’re probably.. Oh, ‘bout some minutes away from living out a.. What-chu-say.. ‘spectacular cascading failure when the sealant holding your fuel cells in checks ruptures and reacts catastrophically to the open air.’” She deadpanned with a midwestern, elderly twang, broken only by her rather technically-laced quotation. “But I’llllll do ya a favour and give this he-yoor engin’ a fix, you can worry about the bill tomorrah!..!”
She hooked the wrench onto the nearest implant over his upper right shoulder, pumping her arm for a few steady moments as she yanked the first power cell out. Meltdown cried out in agony. The barely stabilized cell was removed from its housing, its residual incandescent light was now bleeding even more brightly, intensely than before, bleeding through his veins from head to toe now. Given how quickly he was destabilizing, there was little time to Simone snapped her thumb, flipping the first vial far into the sky to vanish into the sunlight!
Simone cracked her knuckles before unleashing her deftly handled uninstallation. Hitting super-human speeds, a clinical staccato popping came with each fuel cell violently wrenched out from their injection ports, spewing steam and sparks in equal measure. A dozen or more containers sent tumbling into the air in rapid succession, the last, centered along his back, saved for Simone’s careful grip.
“Take two aspirin, vent the intake lines, reboot the CPU, andddd.. Make sure to put the lime in the coconut before ‘ya call me in.. the.. MORNING!”
Simone yanked out the last vial. The relief from radioactive heat, lancing pain that travelled through every nerve ending allowed a moment’s respite. His body twitching from the residual electric charge, Meltdown breathed out a series of slurred consonants, “Scnnnhmm-ninii...” Before slouching off his knees, collapsing into a passed out heap at Simone’s feet.
Up in the air above, the vials made their precarious drop toward the ground. A faint glitter-flash of embossed writing along the inner edges, ‘NEVER TO BE REMOVED’. Unstable molten fuel sloshed end to end in each, innocuous cylinder, while Simone nonchalantly scratched underneath her chin, watching them tumble toward her like falling daggers.
“Let’s see, a few choice grams of Neptunium suspended in a liquid base, kept stable via a boron-dysprosium filter and siphoning off the excess electricity through his body.. I’d say, 2.407…” She closed an eye, counting backward on her fingers. “...Three.. Three? Yeah, three kilotons a piece, give or take.”
That vital tidbit of information parsed might cause one to pre-emptively tuck their head between their legs and kiss the world goodbye. Simone took a slightly different tact. In one swift movement, she pinched her fingers into her chin, yanking on her jaw like swinging open a kitchen drawer, providing a cavernous repository. -GULLK! GULP! GULP! GUULPK!- Quick-stepping to catch each and every vial, they slid in and down her gullet faster than a line of shots at the bar, the very real and bulky glass and metal found no resistance, distending her throat in cartoonish fashion before slamming her jaw closed with the final morsel.
Dead silence followed shortly after, broken only by the crinkling of broken glass as it was buffeted by the wind. One palm kept shut over her mouth, cheeks puffed up with baseball-sized pockets of air, Simone could feel the gurgling concoction within her stomach starting to digest in volatile fashion.. “Uurrrpp!” She let out a quiet belch, her voice squished and high-pitched while she kept her throat clenched. “HIGHly-combuSStible.. De-Kaying core.. Or.. My.. Morning brEAKfast.. BurrrrrrRrRrito..?”
Her washboard abs trembled and twitched, before utterly losing all sense of stout and steely, defined musculature, instead exploding outward as violently as an oversized airbag, the sheer pressure stretched out her skin taut and bulbous, easily pushing her torso wider than she was tall. Both hands now clamped tight against her mouth to contain the incredible forces now roiling inside her body. Steam poured out her ears like a piping hot tea kettle, her bright green features swapped the richly green palette for a more blistering volcanic red, while her bright blue eyes briefly glowed the same twinkling sheen of those familiar radioactive energies. The rest of her body seized still, visibly swelling and contracting in the concerted effort to hold the explosion steady. A critical rupture seemed perilously close, even the slightest brush of her ballooned out midsection against the ground provoked a diabolical growl of tension from her trembling stomach!
Agonizing seconds left Simone trapped by the savage, unyielding masses contained within her body. Those intermittent, alien-like noises alternating in pitch with every pulse of activity, a steady crescendoing snare drum that refused to be silenced. Despite the terrifying vibrations in her body, Simone managed to swallow back the protruding lump of overpressure down her throat, shutting her eyes closed as she reflexively tried to pull it all back in, as if trying to contain a nasty bout of hiccups. Resolving the issue came in one, swooping rush. All at once, the sphere-like mass contracted and shot back into her torso forcefully enough that her lower back stretched out like a cannonball shot into stretched canvas. Just as quickly did it rebound back out her stomach, shrinking with each sway back and forth throughout her torso until finally absorbed into her body, leaving Simone back at her original proportions.
At first Simone’s breath was calm and pronounced, savouring the preceding feat of gastronomical endurance as if finishing off a long yoga pose. Even her outfit showed no hint of the rubbery strain it had been subjected to. She flashed a thumbs up at the prone, passed out form of Meltdown.
“She’s got the brawn! She’s got the brains! And she’s way above you-.. AAAUUUrrRRRrrrppp!”
Whether willpower, Simone’s unique physiology or a seeming act of holy grace, what might have been a city-shattering explosion instead produced an inconsiderate, wet burp that seemed summoned from the depths of the grand canyon. A look of embarrassment crawled over her features as she waved a hand in front of her mouth.
“Ugh, I really should check with my doctor about acid reflux.” Simone said aloud, eyes darting about the wreckage before locking back on the downed supervillain. “And.. Well, considering the state you find yourself in, I should probably talk to my psychiatrist about these running commentaries to myself! Ehhheh-hahahahahaHAH!”
Her tone had turned from simply exuberant to almost maniacal, giddy with joy at her accomplishment. Another way to show off one’s pride in accomplishment however, came as a serious round of impromptu pop-locking, which looked strangely obscene amid the wreckage of a major city artery that looked like it had been through a few years of high intensity warfare. Not a crowd gathered, nor a camera crew in sight to bear witness to their mystery saviour kicking up a storm with a series of slick pivots, and robotic arm jerks.
“Then again…” Simone said, tilting at a near 45 degree angle on her left flank, drooping her head forward with her arms held criss-cross off the right. As she froze her pose, the glass case of a lone street lamp cover detached from its tenuous grip and -clinked!- as it broke into pieces, the lone echoing noise making Simone wince and return to a proper stance. “Mmmmaaayyybe it’s time to make my exit.”
On that word, Simone took off from the scene like greased lightning. She’d become a barely visible blur of motion, circuitously bound off every overturned car, archway of fallen debris or mound of rubble that lay down the path of destruction first cut through by Meltdown. Only a few blocks away did the sounds of life begin flood her ears once again. Emergency sirens providing a constant background wail; the push and pull of gawking crowds held along a large perimeter fence of barricades. Simone came screeching to a halt as it all came into view, ducking into the closest blind alley she could spot, using the thin line of shadow to cling up against, her back to the wall as she peeked back out around the corner.
Just a short distance away, nearly hidden behind the large HCN news van, Eric tried to take one question at a time, despite the barrage of voices and microphones being shoved in his face.
“...Many city blocks destroyed… Military experiment gone loose… Growing appearance of super-beings in other major cities…” The fundamental details were being endlessly looped and repeated, nothing that Eric would have been prepared to answer. Only when the conversation needed a flair of human detail did the camera lenses turn back his way.
“Sirrrrrrr-... One moment, sir! Hank Walkins, Horizon City News. Eyewitness reports have been growing like wildfire up the last few weeks, strange and unusual encounters multiplying. Can you corroborate the details of who you saw? The supposed ‘She-Mask?’” A bespectacled, nasally reporter asked in rapid fire succession.
“Yes.. Yes, exactly like you said, the other reports about her, blue outfit, red hair, built like an amazon, and.. A Brighter green shade than I would have imagined, looked like someone playing with film school make-up... She-Mask though? I don’t get it though, was there like a male Mas-...” Eric said with genuine curiosity, but was quickly overtaken with a charming young brunette pushing out her smartphone under Eric’s chin while jumping into the frame with him
“This is Emily, co-editor of Scene Stripe magazine for Horizon University here with the only witness on site!” She said with an unusual cheerful spaciness. “Soooo.. Like, Dude! What was she like? Ms. Olympia with a cleansing mask..! Everyone else she’s big, green and mean like the Hulk! Not like the other.. Hulk guy. So what I’m trying to say.. Superheroes are live and in play, are we looking toward a real Dawn of Justice?”
“... Wait, are you doing a promotion with Warner Bros…?” Eric said, completely nonplussed. His idle speculation only feeding a rumour-hungry public, mystified by these new and increasingly bombastic events.
Having listened intently to the few vain words of compliment and derision, slinked her way deeper down the alley. It might have been a head rush alone to hear your own name getting thrown about with such wonderment, but the sheer audacity of the performance had left the still beaming smile stretched in a permanent, wild-stricken madness. “Eheheeeee..! Ahahah-..Gh-..AHahahHAHA!” Simone could barely contain her emotions, looking down at her large, trembling hands as she tried to process it. Unadulterated bliss that exposed itself in frenetic, unhinged laughter.
Simone slid into an alcove, noise from the surrounding city starting to dim as she tumbled further into self-reflection. “I-.. I-nhhanhahaha!.. I couldn’t be stopped.. Hehehehe!.. I’m tremendous, I’m stupendous! I’m making julienne fries! I mean, what can’t I do now?!” Simone announced out loud, letting the question hang. “Y-you know, without being myself... Again…”
The bare thought lingered, as the faintly held recognition started to make itself known. A great wave of anguish, and fatigue quickly gnawed its way into her awareness. Her taut, sculpted facial features were beginning to shrivel and solidify, tiny crevices and pockets appearing web-like, stemming from the back of her head. There did not appear to be much physical discomfort, but the growing trepidation of claustrophobia as Simone reached around to grab onto the nearly invisible seam that cut down the back of her head.
“I know I want this.. I want to be.. You... But I don’t want to go away.. D-don’t put me away too long.. Please!” Her fingers plunged into the thick coating of green skin, yanking and stretching in thick, gooey-strands, until a split in the seam formed, causing a rupture of green smoke, spewing hazily from the opening. “UUUghhhnnnn!” Simone let out an yawning groan of exerted effort, tensing those massive arms as hard as she could. The green, skin-like coating almost refused to budge, clinging with tiny-lamprey like columns that stuck greedily to her skin, yielding only few choice centimetres with every tug. Those same hairline crevices started to resemble the riveted texture of wood grain, growing more protruded and thick with the excess rear material pulled and compressed toward the front.
The mask’s artificial nature finally became apparent, deep sunken sockets squinched down upon her bulbous, cartoon eyes, while the budding protrusion of copper dimples running as a vertical noseguard, morphing and shaping itself rectangular as it was was being agonizingly peeled from her skin. “AaauughhNrrrrahh! Just.. Just get off! S-scene change!” Simone’s voice warbled in pitch, forming two distinct tones run parallel with each other, clashing in intensity. Simone’s clothing began to evaporate into the same, opaque emerald smoke as before, swirling to hide bare skin left by smouldering patches of fabric. Her carefully sculpted musculature hissed and stirred, visibly deflating to match her rapidly shrinking height. Arcing bolts of electricity danced erratically throughout her shapeless body and against the building behind her, leaving glowing red scorch marks of expended energy. Only her thinned, bare forearms were visible now, tugging away at the mask still hanging on in long, taffy-like threads to her skin, stretching out her face like a melting wax figure.
“UuunnAaaaaaaaaaahhh..” The last bands of rubber snapped from Simone’s features, disappearing into the dull wooden features of the ancient green mask. Her rosy pink flesh restored, the new sense of weight and limitations came as a sledgehammer blow, with the young woman now collapsing onto her rear, dropping the mask at her side. She panted for air, burying her head against her forearm as the positively inhuman energies abated, a twisted mixture of pure exhilaration combined with a high-intensity workout. With her spare hand, Simone inspected her body. The same scrawny limbs, aching ligaments and slight muffin top that she was accustomed too, covered under baggy cargo pants and a blue fleece hoodie.
Any outward sign of the massive superhero, aside from the crimson-dyed hair style and similar shade of colour in clothing. Finding a calming breath once more, Simone rose to her wobbly feet and squinted her eyes amid the decaying orange sunlight. “Oookay, was that better or worse than last time? I can’t even…”
She winced and held up her forehead, even her most vivid memories stirring through a deep fog inside of her mind. As she tilted her head toward the ground, the vacant eyes of the mask offered no sympathetic reflection, or judging stare; just an strange, doubtful sensation to linger in the back of Simone’s mind.
She reached down to fish her fingers through the mouth of the mask, stuffing its awkward shape underneath her hoodie while making her way out the other end of the alley. Even away from the heavy media presence, the streets were packed with the bewildered, excited and horrified public.
“The ‘phee-nom-enun’ is gettin’ worse! I’m starting to think I’m dreaming.” A group of middle-aged, dumpy smokers confided their anxieties just outside their building.
“How are these super freaks are running around, destroying whole cities and we can’t even stop them?!” An overweight, exhaustive office worker berated a nearby street cop, who was at a loss of how to calm this guy down, let alone provide an answer that would satisfy either of them.
“Why did we get the green weirdo? Merridinae has their own Justice League!” A group of young girls digested every hint of gossip and blurry image posted on social media. #phenom , of course.
Simone felt a brief hint of relief, her anonymity secured only on the thinnest of margins. Not surprising that it paled in comparison to the thought of being -her-, being wanted in countless ways. Simone shuddered with conflicted guilt, doing all the best to try and ignore her changing reality as she disappeared through the crowds.
“Dreams do come true…”
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