chapter 3.1

Oriana was at her desk, hacking into the mainframe of a major clothing chain and feeling awkward. Earlier in the day, DeAndre had asked her if she might want to grab a spot of coffee, possibly as eventual-more-than-friends. She'd had to give him a heartfelt apology and tell him that she valued their friendship too much to risk it over a romantic entanglement, and now, they worked in uncomfortable silence. But what could she have done?

DeAndre was cool, and funny, and, if she was honest with herself, very pretty in the face department, too. But he brought his gym bag to work with him and kept his membership card on hand so he could race over to Fitness Zone every day immediately after leaving the office. He would never fulfill certain needs she had. Any man of hers had to like being spoiled and doted on, and embrace putting on a few pounds (or a lot) as a result.

She'd prefer to do it the old-fashioned way, too, with her cooking rather than her powers. But she didn't think it was a fantasy that would ever come to fruition. Though she received dozens of propositions online weekly from men hoping she'd be their feeder, she simply couldn't risk dating a civilian. What if word of their relationship spread? What if she made enemies with some villain and they kidnapped and tortured her hypothetical sweetheart for information about her? Oh god...what if they starved him?

It could never happen. The life of a vigilante crimefighter was a solitary one. At least, hers was. She had heard of some heroes finding love with one another, but what were the odds of her finding someone in the hero scene with whom she genuinely shared an intellectual attraction, who wanted to double his weight for both of their pleasure?

Until she retired from crimefighting, she would have to get used to being alone with her vibrator, which she had affectionately named James after her favorite chubby talk-show host.

She was snapped out of her monotonous work at the keyboard when that old theme song from The Splice Sisters started playing in her cubicle. Her stomach dropped. There were three phones she carried in her handbag: her work phone provided by the company, her personal phone, and the phone she used for her vigilantism, its number displayed on the trunk of her car and on her Twitter in case someone had an emergency and needed rescue. But you didn't call the FatPhone during working hours. She had expressly specified that on her page. Nevertheless, an emergency was an emergency…

"Hey, is that Splice Sisters? I miss that show, man!" said DeAndre. Oriana was glad the silence was broken, but she had urgent matters to attend to.

"I have to take this...back in a little bit!"

She missed the first two calls on her way to the family restroom two floors up, but the persistent caller rang her a third time just as she was locking the door. "You've reached Bombshell, what's your emergency?"

"Good afternoon. This is Jasmine Freeman with the Blackwater City Council--"

Oriana groaned. "I know about the speeding tickets, I already told the court Imma pay them eventually, I'm just a little out of pocket right now! Anyway, nobody pays me for the whole day-saving thing, so maybe we can talk about skimming fifteen percent off the top?" Well, she had a few corporate sponsorships: free tacos from Taco Shack, free car repairs from the Go Fork Yourself forklift company, free cell service from Horizon Wireless. And hacking was fine, but it was no way to pay a mortgage--not in this city.

"That's not really my jurisdiction," said the councilor. "I actually wanted to talk politics."

Oriana winced. "Yeah, I don't really do politics. No offense to you or your work, but everybody knows how heavy it is on the kickbacks and bribes."

"I want to demilitarize the police!" the councilor blurted. "I just thought...well, what with you undergoing a bit of friendly fire recently…"

Oh. That changed things.

"I guess this city could use some reforms. Give me a time and a place where we can talk."

"Tonight, if you can. Eight o'clock at my room at the Hotel Calypso? I'll DM you the address and room number."

"It's a date, Ms. Freeman. But for future reference, this line is only for emergencies, and only between the hours of 5 PM and 9 AM."

***

Brittney from the marketing department always stopped to make small talk with Oriana on the elevator down to the ground floor whenever they happened to leave work at the same time. Oriana didn't know an awful lot about her other than she had a soft voice and an understated dress sense. Put her in a lineup of other bespectacled blondes, and Oriana wouldn't have been able to pick her out. It was appropriate, then, that they only ever spoke in the elevator. To Oriana, Brittney was something of a human equivalent of elevator music: inoffensive, even kind of pleasant, but without terribly much to say.

"So I heard you turned down DeAndre Jones," said Brittney unprovoked.

Damn. Apparently, word traveled fast.

"Yeah, I guess I think we're better off friends," said Oriana.

"Really? But I hear you always talk to him…"

"I always talk to you in the elevator. So where you thinkin' we should take our honeymoon? Maybe Cabo?"

Brittney blushed bright pink. "Don't get me wrong, Oriana. You're quite attractive. But I'm, uh, strictly dick-ly."

"Me too, me too. I was proving a point."

A silence passed.

"So DeAndre is still on the market?"

Ah. There was the hidden motivation.

"He likes girls who wear colorful makeup and platform heels. Big fan of that show Paranormal, despite all its flaws. Total gymbro. Has a sensitive side, but you'd never know it. Listens to country music, of all things. Ask him about his Space Trek fan fiction. He's also really passionate about the environment. Good luck, girl."

As they reached the ground floor, Brittney darted out of the elevator, presumably to try and catch DeAndre in the parking lot, leaving Oriana to sneak next door, suit up, and embark downtown. She had given thought, briefly, to showing up in plainclothes, but decided ultimately against meeting a stranger as herself. So she turned up as Bombshell, every driver on the road making way so she could parallel park next to the hotel.

The Hotel Calypso was a lavish establishment across the packed city grid from the opera house and the city court. Bombshell strode past the automatic revolving doors, overhead chandeliers, and central lobby fountain (all nice touches) into the elevator that would take her to the councilwoman's floor. Once she arrived at the room, she knocked twice and waited until the politician answered the door.

Councilwoman Freeman was a slim, dark-skinned woman a few inches short of Oriana's own frame. She wore her jet black hair relaxed in a neat bob that fell to just above her shoulders and had on a navy blue double-breasted jacket over a matching skirt that landed below the knee. Very stately, very ambitious. Presidential, almost. Oriana suddenly felt underdressed, overexposed--while repairing the tear in her costume from when she got shot, she'd decided on a whim to give herself an underboob window instead of stitching it up. Now, she was hoping the pristine and polished councilwoman didn't see her as some sort of skank. She wasn't normally one to care about what others thought, but Ms. Freeman had an air about her that commanded respect. "Ah, Bombshell, you're early. I admire that. Punctuality is a sign of commitment to duty. Please, come in. Can I offer you a glass of pinot noir?" She led the way into the room, where Oriana saw that she had set a bottle of wine and two glasses on the coffee table between a flat screen television and a set of armchairs. The television was playing the news with the volume off. The headlining story was about the ongoing investigation of the break-in at Milken Brothers the other day. Oriana had known about that as long as the police had, but she hadn't bothered investigating it. Yeah, it was weird that a window had been cut so high from the ground when there was no scaffold to support an intruder, but as far as her tricked-out radio had been able to tell her, no one had been hurt in the robbery, so it wasn't Bombshell's scene. Now, they were saying that a supervillain had done it. That tracked, as far as the method of entry went. It was still none of her business.

She took a seat. This was the nicest hotel armchair she'd ever had under her ass.

"Wow," she mumbled, "I feel bad now for not bringing anything." Her mom had raised her never to show up at someone's house empty-handed, but Ms. Freeman had called her on such short notice. And did the rule still apply to hotel rooms? Nevertheless, she was self-conscious.

"Nonsense, I asked you to come here. You've done enough simply by honoring my request. Wine?" Ms. Freeman asked again, unscrewing the bottle.

"I guess one glass couldn't hurt."

Ms. Freeman poured them each a glass. "I've taken the liberty of ordering room service; I hope you're hungry."

"I appreciate you taking the time. And I ain't eaten dinner yet. You didn't have to on my behalf, though."

"I wanted to. You're one of the heroes I admire most for your nonviolent approach to crimefighting."

"I don't know that I'd call fattening people to immobility nonviolent," said Oriana. Sexy? Sure. A forbidden fantasy weaponized for a good cause. But still violent in her eyes. She thought once more on her ideal life: a loving husband staying adorably plump on her cooking. Maybe a promotion in her future, so she could afford to take him out to fancy restaurants on the weekly. Once in a while talking dirty in the bedroom about stuffing him into tremendous weights: the six-hundreds, seven-hundreds, eight-hundreds, but always solely for titillation in the moment, and always followed by gentle cuddles and reassurances that she loved him just the way he was. Sinking against his impossibly comfortable and warm, pudgy frame...the excitement of knowing she'd get to do it all again tomorrow…

But today wasn't the day. Today, all she had was the next hostage situation to look forward to. Violence for the sake of justice and something nice to look at in the meantime.

"Non-lethal," Ms. Freeman corrected herself. "I hope you'll enjoy surf-and-turf."

That sounded fancy. Too fancy. "You didn't have to do that to impress me," said Oriana, humbled. "I don't know who you think I am...but to be quite honest, I'm not one of those billionaire playboys doing the superhero thing for fun. To put things into perspective, I work in a cube."

"On the contrary, it's the least I can do after that heinous attack on you by a member of the police force. I can't begin to apologize on behalf of Blackwater City."

"Yeah, well, I was bulletproof at the time."

"Not every Genetic Deviant can say that. Remember what happened to Voltage?"

"How could I forget?" Oriana had been a college freshman at the time when the most beloved rogue heroine on the coast was martyred. It was still unclear whether the cops or the Heroics Division had done it, but despite the outroar it had caused at the time, the investigation had been quickly dropped. "Nobody likes an independent Deviant."

"They wouldn't feel so threatened if you weren't so competent. And I'm sure the fatphobic public zeitgeist doesn't help. But I guarantee you, at the root of it all is this: there isn't a cop in the country or a contractor in the Division who isn't scared Bombshell will take their job."

"I dunno. Scarlet Flame's okay."

"Has it ever occured to you that Scarlet Flame only extended her friendship to you to disincline you from forcing her into irrelevance?"

"Hey, don't talk about Flame like that," said Bombshell, softly but firmly. "She's been nothing but a mentor to me."

Jasmine bit her lip. "Of course. I shouldn't presume to understand…"

Soon, there was a knock at the door. Ms. Freeman answered and received the server in the hallway with his cart. She took two plates off his hands, handed him a tip, and returned to the table to set Oriana's plate in front of her along with a roll of silverware.

Lobster tail over a ribeye with cheddar grits and spiralized carrots, zucchini, and squash sauteed in what smelled like a lemon butter sauce...it looked delicious. And expensive. Ms. Freeman clearly wanted something, and yet, Oriana was still impressed by her hospitality. "Speaking of the police--feel free to dig in, by the way," she said as she cut into her own steak, "let's get down to business.

"Back when I was young and idealistic, I thought I could do some real good on the force. So I went to the police academy, made it out and onto the line of duty, but barely. Did you know that they administer an IQ test, and they won't let you be a cop if you score too high? They want trained dogs, not inquisitive minds who are more likely to challenge authority. I had to fudge my score to even get through the screening process."

"I didn't know that," said Oriana in between sips of wine. The steak was done to perfection, the lobster decadent with a firm but pleasant bite, and the vegetables just the right amount of soft. "They might have covered it when I was majoring in Crimefighting at the Rivington Hero Academy, but I didn't retain it." Incidentally, she had been thrown out of Rivington for her poor grades in ethics. Rivington had a heavy focus on following the letter of the law and didn't appreciate a student who pointed out that 'legal' and 'moral' were not always synonymous. She had finished her education at the Bellvue School for the Gifted, this time majoring in computer science, which came naturally to her, and minoring in Creative Power Use.

"As soon as I got to work, I realized it was a broken system," Ms. Freeman continued. "So, I quit. Now, you're right: politics isn't much better. But at least I can have control. Maybe even enough control to change things--really improve the relationship between Deviants and authority."

"So where does disarmament come in?" asked Bombshell. Fancy food would not distract her from the point.

"Think about it: who needs a gun when we could have a guy with laser vision, or a super strong woman, or someone who can literally incapacitate criminals with a single glance?"

"Hold on, Councilwoman," said Oriana. "You're not suggesting superheroes work on a city payroll…?" She couldn't see herself doing it. Bombshell worked on Bombshell time. She picked the crimes she wanted to address and she dealt her punishments as she saw fit.

"On a voluntary basis. Ideally as part of a Deviant-run program, with all participants vetted by a psychological team. I won't ask you to participate if you'd rather make your own agenda. All I'm asking of you is a public endorsement on social media. I'm running for police commissioner. The campaign is already underway, but if I could have a little help from you...even something as simple as a Tweet..."

Oriana had finished most of her dinner by this point--and her wine--and, feeling safe with the councilwoman, blurted out, "Can we do more than disarmament?"

Ms. Freeman sighed. "I can't, in all good faith, let you fatten up any more cops without a very good reason."

"Sorry. You're right, I know you're right. This last thing just ain't been my first bad experience, is all."