chapter 2.1

"Welcome back to another episode of Nail Me To The Cross, where you'll find only the most controversial voices in the world of crimefighting, and I don't mean 'controversial' as in 'I slept with the Russian prime minister's cousin'--seriously, if you've slept with the Russian prime minister's cousin, there's not much I can do for ya, hon. I'm talking about the stories the US Government doesn't want you to hear. Just a reminder, all episodes of the show are available to download as podcasts, so if you missed one, be sure to check the links at the top of the page. Anyway, let's get this ball rolling, shall we? I'm Martika Mitchell, and I'm here today with Water Woman. Now, that's quite a shtick--Water Woman! How have I never heard of you?"

Ingrid Zales gazed across the recording studio at Martika, a brown-skinned, curly-haired, voluptuous woman who until today, she had only met in online chat rooms under codenames. Ingrid had been in a desperate dilemma when a stranger had come to her offering a solution that seemed too good to be true. At first, she was skeptical, but now that she'd met her promised savior face to face, she was starting to believe that salvation was possible.

In real life, Martika was stunning. Dressed in a purple satin wrap dress that put her every curve on display, she emanated confidence as much as she did radiance.

The chubby blonde in the hot seat was relieved there were unlikely to be any fatphobic questions in this interview.

"Well, you see, Martika, the persona I have registered with the government isn't one they use in televised crimefighting. Apparently, I haven't got the body for TV. For my assignment, I don't even have to wear a costume."

"And what is your assignment?"

Ingrid cleared her throat. "Waterboarding detainees at Guantanamo Bay."

It was dirty work. Every day on Uncle Sam's payroll chipped away at a little more of Ingrid's soul. But now she knew there was a way out.

"I'm actually in such violation of my contract," Ingrid confessed, live, on air. "I've left my post, I'm spilling government secrets…"

"Oh my! Aren't you scared?"

"Oh, I'm not worried about me. I'm under protection," said Ingrid with a conspiratory wink at the hostess.

***

XOXOScarletFlame: good for you #WaterWoman!

BombshellOfficial: @XOXOScarletFlame girl you better be next!

***

"Welcome back, folks! We're here live today with the dazzling Scarlet Flame! S, how are you feeling?"

Natalie Lafayette ran her fingers against the soft velvet of Martika's couch cushion. This woman had money, if the decor of the studio--and the quality of the wine she'd been served before they started airing--were any indicators.

"Out of place," she admitted, both from the finery and nature of Nail Me To The Cross. (Oh, the feds liked to dress her up all fancy to fight crime, in red satin that left little to the imagination, but they paid her beans. She lived in a shoebox apartment and was $35,000 in credit card debt.)

"I thought the show was supposed to be controversial."

"And some would say that your apolitical public stance is a controversy in and of itself. In fact, and stop me if I'm wrong: there used to be quite a decisive divide among citizens of the northwest coast: there were people who didn't like Bombshell for being too outspoken, and people who didn't like you for the opposite reason."

"You're right, Martika. And I think that's why our friendship is so important to the public. Deviants fighting Deviants is never the answer. In the end, I think we've shown them they can't pit us against each other, and if you stand with one of us, you have to stand with both of us."

"Beautiful. Just beautiful. But back to your public stance on the issues affecting the country...or lack thereof…"

"Well, here's the thing: my contract says I'm not allowed to talk about politics. But nowhere does it say I can't SAY I'm not allowed to talk about it."

Oh lord...had she really just said that?

She'd been spending too much time with Bombshell lately.

"Why do you think that is?" asked Martika. Natalie helped herself to more wine.

"Oh, it's entirely related to my powers. There are a lot of things I think about America, that I'm forbidden to express, not that my compulsion works, say, over the radio. But I have you in the room. If I, say, told you to work toward some, here unspecified, social change, you'd have no choice but to do it, and you have the influence to pull it off. If I was allowed to speak uncensored, people in power would lose some of that power and...well...this is where my gag order kicks in.

"But nowhere in the contract does it say I can't talk about how I feel about my own life, as long as I don't bring politics into it. So, here it goes, are you all ready for some 'I' messages?

"I believe my employers have treated me like dog shit for all these years because they're afraid of me.

"I would have been better off if I had never signed that contract, but they promised me free college and, well, I was naive.

"They may have me bent over a barrel, and that's my own fault for trusting mundanes with my crimefighting career, but mon Dieu, they do not deserve me.

"And Maman, if you're listening...why did we ever have to leave Canada?"

***

BombshellOfficial: hello 911? I just witnessed a murder. Yaaaaas #ScarletFlame

***

"Now, tell me, Fireball, what are your powers again?"

Jimmy Ngo's world spun in a blur of color and sound around his head. Swaying on Martika's couch, he took another swig from his flask. Struggled to remember the question. Powers. Right. "Strength...flying...and I can breathe fire but only when I'm--hic--plotally tastered."

"Is...is that tequila?"

"My contract says I needa stay fight ready."

He couldn't remember a day when his face wasn't numb since before he was nineteen.

"So you need to stay drunk?"

"Wha'f they need me to do a thing?"

"By they, you mean the US government?"

"Yeah, thems guys."

"And what do you do for the government?"

"They pour a fifth down my throat, drop me off somewhere, and two days later, the--" He surprised himself with a loud belch and took another gulp of tequila--"gas prices go down."

"Oh, my. Are you worried about your health?"

"Sometimes when I just wake up my right side'll hurt real bad. Righthere." He put his hand to his side over where his ribs would be if not for a substantial layer of fat.

"Oh. That's. Um. Okay, how about a speed round? What's your dream vacation?"

"I just wanna stay home for more'n a week, man."

"Personal hero?"

"Kurt Cobain."

"Why Kurt Cobain?"

"Cause he had the balls to do it."

Martika paused for a second. "Okay, how about this: an embarrassing funny memory?"

Oh, he'd had plenty of embarrassment in too few years, starting with the day his parents had him tested for superpowers, only to have him index in at a pathetic 7.5. The disappointed looks on their faces…

But he decided to go with something juicier. "Well I don't remember, but they told me I threw up on Bombshell."

"When was this?"

"Right on her chest. Oh, y'said when, not why. At her house warming party. Blacked out and woke up with my head'n 'er water fountain."

"As in, an ornamental fountain?"

"Nah, th'one in the master bathroom. Ya gotta be on all fours to use it. Wait. Does Bombshell got a dog?"

"I...I believe the term now is 'primary bathroom,' but, uh, Fireball..."

Jimmy felt the pull at the back of his throat just before he lurched forward and vomited all over the mic and the floor.

"Dante!" Martika called to the sound guy. "Can we get him another mic?"

Jimmy's head spun before he collapsed forward directly into the pool of vomit.

Lights out.

***

BombshellOfficial: @FireballUSA that wasn't a fountain. please tell me you didn't drink out of that

FireballUSA: @BombshellOfficial I was so hungover tho

XOXOScarletFlame: Nobody tell @FireballUSA

BombshellOfficial: @XOXOScarletFlame like you haven't washed your hands in it

XOXOScarletFlame: look @BombshellOfficial not all of us have a rich aunt to send us to Europe so we can learn about fancy sinks just for your ass. Check your privilege

***

Later on, Martika walked into the editing room, she found her sound guy and boyfriend of many years drying his eyes on his sleeve. "That poor kid. I think that was our saddest episode yet," said Dante.

"What about the crying ex-Marine?" Martika pointed out.

"Technically, that wasn't an episode, since we couldn't air it."

"Oh, yeah." Her guest on that occasion had been unable to stop sobbing long enough to say one coherent word about whatever horrors the Heroics Division had subjected him to. "We'll help him, though, Dante, we will." She gave his shoulder a squeeze. "We'll help every Deviant escape from abuse like this. In the meantime...I worry about our ratings. People think the show is too depressing."

In the corner of the room, a small television set was playing the Channel 5 News coverage of Big Tech coming to Bombshell's rescue in the middle of the biomanipulator battle of the ages.

"You're right, babydoll," said Dante. "We could use a fun episode."

***

"Bill...bill ...bill…" Oriana tossed each letter onto the coffee table as she paced the living room, sorting the mail while Eddie worked on design schematics on his laptop on the couch. She was still out of it from yesterday's fight, but she was at least well enough to walk to the mailbox. "Junk...junk…" These letters she threw irreverently over her shoulder, letting them hit the floor.

"Ori…" Eddie said expectantly.

"Tripping hazard. Right." It was an old habit leftover from her days living alone in a sad shoebox apartment with a broken heater. Flushing guiltily, she bent down to pick up the junk mail and set it on the table before going through the rest of the stack. "Bill…bill...oh, this reminds me!" She strolled into the kitchen, snatched a letter off the island countertop, and returned to the living room. "This came in the Bombshell PO box the other day from the Last Wish Foundation. I was gonna bring it up, but then we started dinner and I got distracted--"

"Another kid with cancer wants to meet Bombshell?"

She held the letter out to him. "He wants to meet Big Tech. Man, you really need your own PO box."

Eddie blinked, dumbfounded, and skimmed the letter. "Why does he want to meet me? You've been doing this way longer, saved way more people."

"It's probably some big kid. These kids're too young to catch whiff of the taboo side of folks on the super scene like you and me. All the fetish shit, the media smear campaign, the drama, that all goes over their lil heads. They just see someone who looks like them saving the day, and that's their hero now. Ask me, you should go meet him." She returned to the pile of mail from the mailbox. "Bill...my copy of this month's Kitchen and Bar Magazine...oh! My tax return! Finally!" She tore the envelope open and examined the document within. "Huh...that's strange, they gave me the kickback for neutralizing Forklifter. That was mostly you. Did you file?"

He gaped. "You can get tax benefits for being a superhero?"

"You mean you didn't file your Big Tech expenses?!" exclaimed Oriana. "You could be adding so much to your refund. It's not a problem, though, you can just tack last year's onto this year's. Look how I did mine."

She retrieved her laptop from the other room and opened it up. "You file your superhero stuff in February: expenses, number of civilians saved, estimated property damage--and then the IRS generates you a code. It's not even tied to your identity, just a dollar amount; the IRS only cares about the numbers. Anyway, there's a convenient box where you put your code when you file, here, I'll show you, it's under 'taxes'. Oh, the document on the desktop, not the folder, NOT THE FOLDER!!"

But of course, Eddie had already clicked on the folder.

She braced herself for his shock as her secret stash of smut expanded to fill the screen: belly stuffing videos dating back to the early 2010s, solo, assisted, and mutual feedings, and that wasn't even the tip of the iceberg. There were inflation clips, too; water enemas, restrained forced funnel feedings, slob fetish videos, and of course, all of her body cam footage. She had almost a terabyte of material altogether. Never in the history of the digital age had there been a more extensive smut collection featuring no genitalia whatsoever.

"I can explain all of that," said Oriana through a tense lump in her throat.

Eddie shook his head. "There's nothing to explain. So you look at porn; I could have guessed that."

"But I don't want you to think this," she said, waving an open hand across the screen, "is me. It's harder than you think for a straight female feeder to find anything to watch online. Most of the content in the community is BBW stuff. So, you start rubbing one out to anything, even the really rough, really weird shit that doesn't even do it for you. You just turn off the audio so you don't have to hear the humiliation, or farting, or whatever the fuck it is because you're lonely and horny--"

"Really, Ori, this isn't a problem," Eddie reassured her. "In fact, some of these clips seem more our speed, just looking at the titles. Maybe later on we can take a look through and see which ones are worth reenacting?"

Heat rose in her cheeks. "If you want to. We can skip the really wild ones. We don't have to try whipped cream inflation up the butt."

"How'd you know that one was the one I was gonna veto?"

"It's always that one."

"You mean you've...you know, shown this to people before?"

"I thought I told you, I had a feedee in college. Nice guy. Telepath. Sadly not bulletproof. After I became Bombshell, I couldn't justify keeping him in my dangerous life, so I left him hanging at the spring formal, senior year. He took it well, on the outside, but he was always an excellent bluff. It was for the best, though."

"Do you maybe want to talk about it?"

"It's in the past," she said. "It's nothing that's gonna come rearing its head any time soon."