chapter 1.2

"Am I gonna have to help her put this thing on?" called Mickey from an adjacent office in the otherwise empty office building. The two women had stepped behind a cracked door for privacy while product testing commenced.

"No, it should be more or less automatic," Eddie responded. "Have you...you know…"

"Yes, she's helped me out of the jeans," Marion replied.

"Well, that's step one. Try activating it?"

"Okay...oh my god!" came Marion's voice from the next room. "This is awesome!"

"Take your shirt off, lemme see the fit!" he heard Mickey insist.

There were some noises clearly indicative of a make-out session, before Marion hissed, "Mickey! He's across the hall!"

"Well, come on in," said Eddie, opening his office door from the comfort of his desk chair with the push of a remote control. "Come on, let me see how I did."

Shyly, Marion poked her head into the doorway before crossing the threshold.

She was truly a vision, tiptoeing her way in, glancing at the ground every once in a while as she got sure of her footing. She had put her shirt back on and tucked it in stylishly--ever glamorous, that Marion--but the pants, comprised of a complex alloy system that conformed to her body all the way up to her mid-spine and connected directly into her neural network, took center stage.

In fleeting instants, she looked up at Eddie with wide, disbelieving eyes. She was Holly Golightly, knocked down but picked back up. "I...I can walk," she said, more to herself than anyone else. "I can walk!"

"Holy shit, I did it," said Eddie, breathlessly.

"You did!" Marion did a little spin in place. "Look at this! You're a genius! And to think...I had grown attached to the chair. Still kind of am. I do think I’ll keep it. But holy shit! This would be so useful, hypothetically, if, there was, say, no elevator..."

"Holy shit is right," said Mickey, following Marion in with lumbering steps. It was a good thing Eddie had thought to widen the doorways on this floor.

Now, if only he had stuck it out with Chimera for another month. Running a business wasn't cheap.

And yet, his motivation lay in generosity. “What do you mean hypothetically? You’re walking out in it.”

“But--!”

“Don’t ‘but' me, Marion. You’ve done so much for me. It's time I returned the favor.”

“You’re too good. Seriously, how were you ever a supervillain?”

Suddenly, his phone pinged.

He had a faceless Twitter account, just to keep track of crime. Oriana had advised him to blacklist his own hashtag. He hadn't, despite some of the less kind things the public had to say. He had to stay in the loop in case Oriana was in trouble, and his hashtag tended to concur with hers.

'Yo #BigTech your girl's on the ropes RN. Corner of 12th and Washington Ave’

The Tweet was accompanied by a picture, and it didn't look good.

She was in trouble.

To think: just last year, he’d been obsessed with provoking the superhero known as Bombshell. When he finally won her attention on the battlefield, the force of her attack had shot him out of the sky. The same technology that now gave Marion the choice to stand on her own two feet kept him upright all the time. After all these months, the layer of flexible alloy under his clothes was barely noticeable, but there was no forgetting the day Bombshell immobilized him.

And yet, it was time to come to her rescue.

"What's up?" asked Mickey.

"I have to go. Someone threw a car on Bombshell."

***

Oriana caught the four-door sedan just before it could crush her. She had it braced against her hands, inches above her frame, on her back on the pavement struggling to push it aside.

Just then, the ground shook. Either an earthquake was coming on, or backup was here.

A blinding flash of blue light seared her vision as a blast of energy knocked the car off of her. Big Tech rushed to her side to offer her a hand up. “Are you okay?”

She coughed as she staggered to her feet, weak but upright thanks to his assistance. Across the battlefield, Ted had started to advance on them with a sadistic glint in his eyes and a maniacal smile. “Hit him!” said Bombshell.

“What, this guy, in the khakis?”

“Yes, hit him before he blows both our heads up!”

“He’s THAT guy?!”

Big Tech didn't need to be told twice. He fired another blast from the reactor in the palm of his armor. Ted went down, but he didn’t stay down.

“So, Big Tech is it?”

BOOM!

Down.

Ted spent maybe a second on his back before he was up and advancing again. “Such a shame. I’ll bet you had such potential before she led you down the path of sin.”

“Dude, what’s a sin is that belt with those shoes.”

BOOM!

“Look at you, bloated with indulgence…”

It was no use. No matter how many times he got hit, he just stitched himself back together and got back up, until suddenly…

He collapsed into a flailing heap on the ground. Bombshell turned to Big Tech and asked, “Have you been working on some sort of seizure ray?”

“That wasn’t me. I thought it was you!” He stepped forward to investigate, but she held out an arm to hold him back.

“He could be faking.”

Steeling herself, she slowly made her way towards Ted’s writhing body until she stood over him. She couldn’t feel him trying to biomanipulate…

“What’s happening to him?” asked Big Tech, coming up behind her.

“He could be ricocheting.”

“Ricocheting?”

� ��It’s when your own powers work against you. It usually happens to influences, but it ain’t undocumented in biomanipulators…never read about seizures being a risk, though.”

“Should we...should we leave him like this?”

“No, he might get up.”

In a moment of insight, Bombshell knew how she could neutralize him.

She’d tried DMT back in college. Her trip guide had told her that it was naturally occuring in the brain.

Kneeling down next to Ted, she placed two fingers near the base of his skull.

He stopped seizing. His eyes widened, pupils dilating, and he went slack.

A fluid ounce of psychadelics straight to the brain ought to keep him down for the count for a good couple of years.

The media descended then; crowds of reporters who had been lying in wait since the fight with Human Hallucinogen finished.

“Bombshell! Fredo Flores here, good to see ya again! Pretty stupid of Ted Greene to think a car would take you out. Or has he forgotten that you hooked up with Two Ton Terminator back in the day!”

“Them was some good times,” Bombshell agreed. No, she had never actually hooked up with Two Ton Terminator, but neither of them ever denied the rumor, each for their own personal reasons. She took it as a means to exaggerate just how much of a pounding her body could withstand, a boost for her ‘don't fuck with me’ factor. Triple T kept the rumor alive for stud points, and she let him have it.

“Tell me, Bombshell,” Fredo went on, “how has your crimefighting career changed since the events last year at the Westpark?”

If only she was in the mood for longer answers. As it stood, she felt nauseous after the fight. “Same shit, just bigger enemies,” she said into the microphone through clenched teeth.

Unfortunately, not all the reporters were as professional as Fredo Flores. Before too long, from every direction came an invasive absolute shitstorm.

“Big Tech, don’t you think the nature of your partnership with Bombshell is more than a little Stockholm? I mean, she did hit you. Why continue to come to her aid?”

“Look, I don’t think either one of us is in the mood to be hounded by the media,” Big Tech responded.

“Hounded? Is that what Bombshell calls it? We’re only asking questions,” the reporter shot back. “Have you considered that controlling your media presence is just another one of the abusive tactics she uses to keep you subjugated to her freakish ends?”

“What? Bombshell doesn’t ‘control' my media presence. She never told me what to say to the press, I just don’t really like you guys!”

“Bombshell, what’s it like, having the nerve to continue to rely on the aid of your own victim?”

“Big Tech, have you gained even more weight?”

Bombshell took the microphone out of the last reporter’s hand. “I cook good, okay, gimme a fucking break,” she spat before throwing it to the ground, though it was unclear whether the gesture was out of irreverence or exhaustion.

“Bombshell!” Another microphone was thrust before her.

“Look, y’all, I’m not feelin’ my best self right now, so Imma need all y’all to step the *** and go the fuck--” Before she could finish her sentence, a chill racked her body, then a heave through her insides, and she bent double, vomiting a not insubstantial amount of blood onto a reporter’s shoes.

“Um, at this time we’re no longer taking questions,” said Big Tech. He wrapped his arms around Bombshell and righted her. Holding her securely, he rocketed them both into the sky.

She’d call Go Fork Yourself later to get her car moved.

***

“Is there anything I can do for you? Do you need water? Another pillow? I can heat you up some of that soup…”

“I’m fine. Really, I’m fine,” said Oriana, curled up in bed, back in plainclothes, as Eddie fretted about her. He’d already made a house call for a check-up and a blood transfusion, and the doctor said she was stable. It had been a bit of a task explaining how she’d gotten so beat up--she had a feeling the doc hadn’t bought her excuse about falling down some stairs--but in the end, he saw to her even with his many questions unanswered. “I’ll recover fast. It’s a biomanipulator thing.”

Eddie took her hand and squeezed it for comfort. “If you’re sure.”

“I still can’t believe how the media harassed you today,” she said. “As if you didn’t save my life. Again. You ever think about blowing this popsicle stand?” she asked. “It’s much better for feedist superheroes over in Australia. Two Ton Terminator's got a great public approval rating.”

“Did you really hook up with that guy?” asked Eddie, the slightest hint of envy coming through in his voice.

“What? No. Absolutely not. He may be a looker, but I hate his politics. Totally in the pocket of big oil and gas. And for all he goes on about ‘miss you, baby’ and ‘cheers to old times’ on social media for publicity, he calls me ‘commie bitch’ in the DMs.”

“This makes me think maybe Australia’s not a good idea.”

“You’re prob’ly right. I just can’t stand the way they talk to you. It’s probably what’s keepin’ me down more than anything.” She reached up to grab his shoulder and pulled him toward her. “I need a morale boost. An orgasm’s the best thing you could give me right now to speed up the healing process.”

He wouldn’t be moved. “Ori, we talked about this.”

Since their union as a couple, she had been insatiable in bed. Barring serious battlefield injury, she jumped on him every day, sometimes twice, but the one yet unfulfilled item on her sexual wishlist was for him to get on top. He was worried he’d crush her. She thought he was being ridiculous.

“Come on! You just seen me take a car!” She probably could have lifted it, too, if he had given her another second. More importantly, she could withstand it.

Next time she got a blood transfusion, she was specifically requesting to get shot up with 300 CC’s of Scarlet Flame. That oughta boost her powers of persuasion.

“You’re too fragile right now.”

She pouted and whined and squirmed, until he lay down next to her and wrapped an arm around her, giving her a light squeeze. Then, she rolled over and snuggled tightly against him, head buried in his chest while she gripped his doughy side. Her breathing slowed and stabilized. How did he always know how to placate her?

“Close your eyes, Ori. Try to get some rest.”

“Fine. But you know what I’ll want when I feel less like dog crap.”

“We’ll talk.”