Crime Brulee and the Great Lingerie Heist

Chapter 1

In the city of Blackwater, crime ran rampant, but not even the most super of its villains dedicated their every breath to the pursuit of evil. Take, for instance, Connie Conway, known on the streets as the crafty Crime Brulee, pyromancer extraordinaire and founder of the prolific Villains Association, who had ended a night of arson and burglary with a return to the bunker under a casino where she lived with a handful of close teammates to kill a bottle of whiskey and have hours of sloppy, drunk sex with her right-hand man and husband, Bone Appetit, nicknamed as such for his remarkable ability to rip solid objects out of one another–like bones out of people. Connie currently lay spooned against his back under the duvet in their bed, one arm draped over his waist so she could give the lower roll of his plump belly an occasional, affectionate squeeze, and she might have been minutes from drifting off to sleep when her cellphone rang on the bedside table.

Connie groaned. She didn’t want to answer it, but it had already roused her from her restful daze, and besides, it could have been one of her crooks, in a spot of danger. If she was in no condition to come to their aid herself, it was at least her responsibility, as the one who’d brought the Association together, to dispatch someone who could, or at least arrange for a jailbreak in the morning.

“Frankie, could you pass me that phone?” she asked, her voice raspy. He reached over to grab it and tucked it between her fingers and his flesh. She rolled around to lay on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, and flipped it open. “Crime Brulee.”

“Connie!” Distorted through the receiver, the voice of Leo Caprisky reached her ear: CEO of Mybrid, world-famous billionaire, Connie’s own on-again-off-again rival and accomplice, and an evil genius who’d secretly rebuilt himself from the ground up into a passably human android who could transform into a mechanical monstrosity, complete with flight thrusters, laser eyes, and mechanical tentacles, which explained why he sounded so cheerful despite the ungodly hour. “I paid volunteers to eat nothing but junk food and soda containing yellow food dye for a while, and you’ll never guess what I have now!”

“A bunch of fat test subjects?” ventured Connie.

“A bunch of fat test subjects with SEE-THROUGH SKIN! My scientists are still trying to work out whether something in the dye is stripping the pigment out of their skin or preventing its production, but it’s so fascinating! You can see the fat deposits on them as clear as day! You’ve gotta come down to the lab one day during data collection and check it out!”

A growl built in the back of Connie’s throat. “First of all, it is THREE in the TITTY FUCKING MORNING. And second, do you listen to yourself? Is that even sexy to you, or are you just on a quest to fund the most unhinged things money can get done?”

“Well, shucks, Connie. Here I thought you might appreciate something like this, seeing as you married a man who can, among other things, walk through walls. But I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked that your tastes are too vanilla for the most flamboyant of my endeavors.”

“Or maybe you’re just so obsessed with finding out whether something can be done that you never stop and think about whether or not it should! Good–” Morning? Night? “Good titty fucking 3 AM.” She hung up and tossed her phone onto the end table on her side, rolled out of bed, and stumbled in the dark to the kitchen to crack into the vodka. “Crazy-ass robot tech bro calling me up, wrecking my buzz…”

***

Renata felt all eyes upon her as she stepped into the Alibi, a dodgy-looking Blackwater bar, for the interview that had been set up for her after the Villains Association reached out to her, interested to recruit. She didn’t know how they might have gotten her phone number, but they promised a lucrative opportunity, and she was willing to try anything to get out of the hole she’d fallen into.

She’d been told via email to meet someone whose codename was Polygraph in the back, where there was a low table and some couches and armchairs on which to sit. She’d also been told they called him that because if she tried to lie to him, he would know. What she hadn’t been told was that he would be the fattest human being she’d have seen in her life so far, but as she sat down across the table from him, she could hardly say that made her any less self-conscious. After all, she was plenty plump herself. Oh, and her skin was completely transparent.

As soon as she sat down, however, the patrons’ eyes averted. She guessed her interviewer commanded respect among the regular crowd. “Codename Polygraph?”

“It’s just Kurt, don’t worry about it, and you must–OOF!” He gave a grunt of effort as his belly presented an obstacle to his forward lean, but he did finally manage to shake her hand across the table. To her left and his right, there sat a bottle of wine and two glasses. The table was set with a spread of appetizers, but she wasn’t sure she could have any of it while still involved in the study, and the glass of water set for her was a definite no. She wasn’t allowed clear liquids.

“You must be Renata.”

She nodded. “Is there some more private place?” she asked, worried about the potential dangers of sitting for an interview for the position of supervillain in a crowded bar room.

“If it makes you more comfortable, we can talk in Polish,” he responded, in fluent Polish. “However, I assure you, nobody here means you harm. This is a bar for thieves.”

She trusted him, but her Polish was better than her English, anyway. Switching, she responded, “Did they send you because I listed Polish as a skill on my resume?”

“I came here,” he said, “because I’m the one who scouted you and put in the good word with Crime Brulee.”

“Why?” asked Renata.

“Because,” said Kurt, “from the headlines, I surmise you’re someone who’s had something done to you. Something not very nice. If I’m right, then you and I can relate more than you might imagine.”

“You’re not wrong,” replied Renata.

“Anyway, we’ve got our hearts pretty dead-set on you. This interview is to figure out whether it would befit you to join us. So, for starts, why don’t you tell me a bit about what brought you here?”

She wasn’t sure if he meant to this bar, or in general, so she took it from the top. “I came to America on the arm of my husband, when his job required him to come here,” she explained. “But our marriage lasted about as long as it took for him to discover American girls with loose morals who dance in bars. Suddenly, I was on my own. I tried to work in a restaurant, but it barely kept ends met. Then, a big businessman approached me to be a part of his research study. He would pay me an unimaginable amount of money…I was in no position to refuse. The study…well it put me on a special diet. And that’s what turned me into this.”

He nodded, his chin doubling more deeply than it did already as he did so. But it wasn’t as though hers didn’t.

She had the sensitivity to spare him some of the details: such as how when she first arrived here, she had been thin. At her old waitressing job at a restaurant owned by a kind Turkish couple, that was failing to pay for its inventory, before Leo came into the picture, she’d been the smallest one on the dining room floor, and when other servers needed to move past her, sometimes they shoved her into the gap between the register and the fridge where all the wine was so that they could pass. Even working with food all day, she’d maintained her figure eating salad and rice pilaf.

Until Leo.

“The man behind the study pays our check and pays for the food, but he doesn’t deliver it,” she explained. “He gives us a catalog of approved items and where to buy them. We must meet a daily quota for the amount of the chemical, but other than that, we pick and choose, and he sends us the money on top of our check. He says he does this so that we can have variety. Freedom,” Renata explained.

“Do you believe that?” asked Kurt.

“I believe at least a part of him enjoys the notion of us being embarrassed in public,” said Renata. “Take me, for example: I didn’t set out to be a thief. But when you go into a shop with your hood up and your head down, they think it. And when you lower the hood because they ask you to and you look like this, they assume you must be robbing them because you’re a freak, but they don’t stop you. They’re too afraid. That’s how I’ve been getting away with walking out of places with my items. That’s how I ended up in the newspapers. My benefactor still sends the money, I’m just saving it now.”

“You’ve retained a remarkably sensible head on your shoulders throughout this ordeal,” said Kurt. “With the VA, you’d be shaking places down for the money in the drawer, and you keep everything you steal, on top of your paycheck from us, which I think you’ll find competitive. There are also opportunities for international heists, if you’ve got the ambition. Are you sold yet?”

“I would do anything to–”

She would do anything to be able to tell Leo to get bent, to leave his study and stop letting him ruin her body, if she could even be saved from ruination. She had heard that the subjects who dropped out of the study got their skin pigmentation back after a while, though the weight loss was harder. She didn’t imagine it would be easy. She used to be able to walk the length of the city, but now, at more than twice her original waifish size, she barely wanted to think about walking to the bus stop to go home after this interview. But thinking again, regarding Kurt across the distance between them, she decided that might not be so kind to say.

“I would do anything to get out of my current predicament.”

“Then what would you need from us in terms of weaponry, transportation, attire…?”

She thought about it. “I think a gun would work fine.”

“Easy.” Palming the bottle of wine, he asked, “Do you drink?”

“Oh, no red things. Only yellow things, orange things…”

He took his phone off the table, turned on speech-to-text, and muttered something in English too quickly and quietly for her to catch. Moments later, a server arrived and placed before her a cold drink in a can. “What is?” she asked the woman in English.

“Oh, it’s a mango hard seltzer,” said the waitress. “It’s good, it’s like a soda pop, but with alcohol.”

“Cheers,” said Kurt, switching back to English as well while he poured his own glass of wine. “And congratulations, Renata: welcome to the VA.”

***

“YOU PUTTING MONEY IN BAG, NOW!”

Renata’s English was still not super great. Her self-esteem wasn’t super great. And her new apartment was big enough, and it had enough furniture, but it was an awful mess, just because of how busy she tended to get.

But her grip on her gun (serial number filed off, silencer holes drilled methodically into the barrel) seethed with the confidence of someone who had been trained by someone under whose protection she had been under, like a commanding officer or a brother or a dad. Her stance was sturdy, and her command unwavering, and soon, her sack was filled.

Was the cashier of some corporate chain gas station really about to argue with a stick-up artist whose blood and tissues were all on display?

“Y-yuh-yes ma’am! Ma’am? Here ya go!” The cashier opened the register and tossed the whole box divider thingy into Renata’s bag. Renata left, taking a Citrus Sun and a share-size bag of Glo-Ritos for the road, and turned the immediate corner, wary but experienced when it came to avoiding the cops. In fifteen minutes, she was back at her apartment, where she locked the door and cracked open her sweet, refreshing soda.

See, here was the thing: she didn’t hate American junk food. As a matter of fact, she’d fallen rather in love with it. If not for the effects it had had on her appearance, she could have blissfully lived on soft drinks, chips, and snack cakes…

Tipping her head back, she drank deeply, let out a belch, and staggered back. Then, she ran into something.

“Your paycheck’s here, Foreign Exchange.”

“WHAAA!”

Had she been lighter, she might have leapt a foot into the air. As it stood, she managed only inches. Turning around, she brushed her fingers against her chest through her shirt, finding herself face to face with the nefarious Bone Appetit.

In ‘01, he made his debut in crime under the tutelage of Crime Brulee.

In ‘03, he shocked the nation when his fight with the heroic Ulti-Man ended in him ripping out his opponent’s femur.

And now he stood, before Renata, in his tight tailcoat and skull-like mask, holding out an envelope, having walked through her wall to deliver it.

“You scare me!” she breathed, once she’d regained her footing. He just laughed this laugh that made his belly bounce under his straining buttons.

“One of these days, chickadee, we’re gonna teach you how to use the letter D.”

“What if I am naked?” she snapped.

“Well, you’re see-through, so does it–? But if you were naked-naked, I would have left. I’m married, after all. Anyway, Crime Brulee says to take you downstairs. She wants to bring you out shopping.”

Renata took her check in hand. “But bank is close 5, and now it is 9.”

“You won’t be spending your own money. You’ll see what she means, kid, just get ready.”

***

In the months that Renata had been a part of the VA, she’d yet to meet Crime Brulee. Some guy named Hacksaw Pete had issued her her weapon. She had declined a vehicle, denied fancier weapons, and denied a super-villainous alter-ego. She didn’t want to be famous or infamous. She simply wanted to survive.

This was only her second time at the base, the first having been when she’d come to collect her gun, and just like the last time, the passers-by in the hallways of the white-walled underground lair were overly friendly in a way she had yet to experience much of in America. Everyone wanted to give her a friendly nudge, ask her where she’d been hiding, or tell her it was nice to see her again. Following behind Frank, she did her best to mumble half-coherent greetings and salutations through mouthfuls of Stun-Ions from the share-size bag in her hands.

“You remember Pete, right? He’ll be your getaway driver,” Frank explained along the way. “Crime Brulee will lead the operation, but you’ll have Nightfall there as well. Just do whatever they say and everything should go smoothly. Remember, here at the Villains Association, somebody’s always got your back.”

She nodded as she crunched on another battery-acid-yellow ‘onion ring’. She wished she had something sweet to follow up her snack, like perhaps banana pudding, with powder-dusted lemon shortbread cookies for dipping…she’d meant to give Leo and his study the boot as soon as she got the hang of criminal activity, but as impossible as it made having a normal social life, her horrifying visage came in handy for intimidating the people she robbed, and besides, his was one more paycheck she could collect. Additionally, while American junk food had turned her into a freak, she didn’t know if she’d be able to give it up if she tried. It was so tasty! Or maybe it was just that after a lifetime of eating clean and watching her figure, the novelty of doing the exact opposite had seduced her like a casanova, and, having never had to build up her defenses, she was now so permanently food-minded that the only thing she could think of after finishing her latest snack was what she would eat for her next.

“And, here we are, Crime Brulee’s study.” Frank knocked on the door, and was answered by two women’s laughter.

“It’s open!” one of them called through. Frank pushed open the door.

Crime Brulee sat on top of her desk in her full criminal regalia, her cream-colored catsuit with accenture in fiery orange and gold clinging to the contours of her long, lean frame. Reflective goggles with an orange sheen to their lenses sat nestled in the jet-black curls of her hair. As for Nightfall, she was leaning back in a squashy armchair, likewise dressed up for mischief in a black leather biker coat and tight black pants, a black domino mask completing her ensemble. She was a hefty sort of woman–not nearly as fat as Renata, but her wide hips filled her chair armrest-to-armrest, and her round belly and huge, heaving breasts strained the zipper of her jacket to its limit. Her butter-blonde hair fell in loose waves to the middle of her back.

It appeared it was snacktime for the pair of them, too: between them, on the surface of the desk, sat a bottle of vodka. Nightfall was plucking the third flaky fruit danish out of her box of an assorted dozen as she drained the last drops of a festive-looking pink cocktail from a martini glass, and she looked so happy with her treat, so warm and comfortable in her plump body, that Renata couldn’t help but envy the smile that lit up her eyes and rounded out her chubby cheeks with her every contemplative bite. Meanwhile, Crime Brulee slugged back a shot, straight, before following it up with a bite of caviar, which she scooped out of a small jar with a ceramic demitasse spoon. When she noticed Frank and Renata in the doorway, she shimmied herself off the desk and said, “So you’re Leo Caprisky’s latest lab partner, huh?”

“I never said–”

“You didn’t have to,” Crime Brulee interrupted her. “Leo did. Guy’s a madman, and he’s always blowing up my phone to brag about his latest insane accomplishment, but he keeps ending up being accidentally useful to me. I’m Connie, by the way. The voluptuous dame you see behind me is Moira. Moira, this is Renata, the girl I was telling you about.”

“Enchante,” said Moira with a wink, but otherwise not moving.

Connie helped herself to another shot and slammed her glass onto the desk. “Now let’s move out.”

“Don’t you girls get too reckless,” Frank advised them. Connie walked up to him, hooked two fingers under the knot in his cravat, and pulled him down for a long, lingering kiss on the lips, her other hand slipping into his tailcoat to give his soft stomach an affectionate squeeze through his crisp tailored shirt. Somehow, seeing her get amorous with his extra fat made Renata’s heartbeat quicken. Her cheeks heated, and she looked down, self-conscious about how everybody would be able to see the blood throb faster in her veins, yet she couldn’t stop imagining somebody undressing her, seeing all of her, and looking on the rolls and bulges of her body with love.

“When am I not?” teased Connie, breaking gently away. “Now come on, we’ve got a shop to rob.”

***

They traversed the city in the cargo trailer of a moving truck emblazoned with the insignia of Go Fork Yourself Forklift, Machine and Truck, LLC. The company, Connie had explained, was owned by the VA’s allies in the Contini Mafia, and utilized mostly as a money laundering front, but Don Corpulone, the head of the family, was all too happy to let Connie and her crooks borrow his equipment at no charge, seeing as they clocked so many hours running drugs and stealing priceless artifacts for him. In fact, Hacksaw Pete, up at the wheel, was related closely to the mob boss himself, but preferred these days to lead a life of excitement as emergency medic and getaway driver to Crime Brulee and her inner circle.