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Randolph and Kim – Chapter 1-4

Written by conceptfan :: [Tuesday, 05 July 2005 16:43] Last updated by :: [Wednesday, 26 December 2012 10:52]

Randolph and Kim – Chapter 1-4

 

By Conceptfan

 

 

 

CHAPTER 1

Submitted for your evaluation: the story of one Randolph Thomas Sherman. Not a particularly attractive man at first glance, but appearances can be deceptive. In order to make a balanced observation of the man, some back-story is required. It has taken Randolph many decades to become the ageing, sour-faced and conservatively-dressed individual he is now. Much might have happened to him in the course of those decades to shape him into the form we now see. Let's find out if that is the case …

 

First entry in Randolph's file: Chicago, Illinois, USA. September 21st 1940. That's when he was born. Those were tough times. When Randolph was three years old, his father was reported as Missing In Action in Normandy. He remained Missing once the Action had stopped.

 

His widow, Randolph's mother, lasted four more years, although she spent her last eighteen months in an asylum for the mentally ill. The double tragedy left young Randolph, from the age of five, in the care of his father's sister. A cold, unloving woman, bitter at finding herself taking care of her dead brother's child, Marcie Sherman blamed the boy for her own unhappiness. And she rarely missed an opportunity to remind him of that fact.

 

Books and learning provided Randolph with his only his only effective escape from the harsh, unwelcoming world around him. Every moment that he could, he spent in his local library. In breaks at school, he read. At home, he read. He absorbed knowledge and thirsted for more. He excelled in his studies, and was rewarded by the reaction of his teachers – for the first time in his life receiving praise and attention from adults.

 

In 1959, Randolph won a scholarship to attend a prestigious university. He majored in biology and chemistry. There were no women studying sciences with him, but the few that were around the campus – mostly arts undergraduates – intimidated him. At first he simply could not find the courage to talk to them. He fretted over this; a desperate inner urge to be with females occupied his thoughts and yet he lacked the basic social skills to fulfil it. The more this paradox troubled him, the more his fear of women grew.

 

He began to resent the opposite sex for its apparent inapproachability and increasingly saw women as the unreachable, untouchable keepers of the secret to life's joy. As his need for them grew, so did his confusion. He told himself lies to calm his mental turmoil. His favourite lie stated that all women were evil and that the great "thing" that he was missing out on (he could never bring himself to refer to it, even internally, as "sex") was an overrated distraction. Women used their devious ways, their strangely fluid movements, their bewitchingly pretty faces – their wickedly-shaped bodies – to trick men like him into believing that "the great thing" (sex) was some glorious pursuit. Randolph convinced himself that this was not the case and, over time, came to believe that his shunning of women was to his credit, rather than his loss.

 

Still, he could not completely conquer the stabs of jealousy that tore through him every time he saw another man with a female companion. He dealt with them by developing a hatred for anyone of his sex who seemed comfortable around women – in other words, most other men. His strongest disapproval was reserved for his contemporaries who were most successful with girls. Those who went on dates. Touched women. Did what he really wanted to do more than anything else in the word: had sexual intercourse. He told himself, repeatedly, that those men were fools, letting themselves become slaves to their basest instincts. He was above all that. He, Randolph Sherman, was superior.

 

But it was difficult. To begin with, he was fighting a one-man war. No-one else acknowledged his moral superiority. Quite the opposite; they looked down on him because of his awkwardness, ignoring his principled stand. He knew that the other young men called him all kinds of words with disgusting connotations and, as for what the women muttered to each other behind their hands before giggling in that obscene, flirtatious way that they loved … Well. he didn't want to know.

That, of course was not entirely true. He did want to know – desperately in fact – but he convinced himself of the opposite. Terrified of the witch-craft-like effect women seemed to have on him, and sickened by the female-obsessed behaviour of other men, he shunned the rest of the human race as much as his studies allowed. This caused his general dislike of the species to strengthen. With plenty time to spend by himself, he thought about it a lot. He thought about how much he hated the male half of the world for allowing itself to fall under the spell of the female half. And he thought about the female half and how much he hated everything about them.

 

Randolph spent a great deal of time thinking about the things he hated most about women. He would think about those things most of all when he was naked. And as he thought, he would touch himself, all the while revolted by himself, by the way he was so powerless before the mysterious, hateful force known to the rest of the world as femininity. The images that came into his head disgusted him and made him touch himself more and more aggressively. His brain was at war with itself, confusing him, betraying him with pictures … disgusting, immoral, unignorable pictures.

 

In those quiet, solo moments, twice – sometimes three times a day – as he thought of all that he detested, his hand, with a will of its own, would seek out his penis which, also with a will of its own, became erect. His mind filled with the terrible images his yearning, repressed imagination generated. He saw women. Young women, fresh as spring, their faces bright with clear complexions. Their eyes would be blue or brown or green, but always radiant with long, showy lashes. Randolph saw lips, rich and thick, pouting overtly. The lips were usually brightly painted, drawing attention to their alluring presence. Drawing not just attention but also men – innocent, proud, intelligent men like himself. Ensnaring, cutting through male wisdom and intellect to something far more primitive beneath. Something which could not fight back.

 

As well as faces, Randolph saw bodies. Voluptuous, curvaceous bodies with long, beautifully-shaped limbs, rounded, smooth thighs and flat, flawless stomachs. His mind tormented itself with images of taut, spherical buttocks that bounced so suggestively as their owner walked away. Above all, the picture that most tortured him – the sight he most hated himself for seeing, and the one he was least capable of ignoring – was of breasts. Big, round, firm, proud, bouncing breasts. Breasts which begged him to touch, to caress. Begged him to feel their weight, to squeeze them, pinch their upstanding nipples, lick them and finally, to lay his head between them. Randolph imagined himself surrounded by the warmth of the breasts in his mind, made himself believe they were pressing, pushing so insistently into his face until … until the breasts and the bodies and the women won. At that point, he would reach for a kleenex in disgust.

 

He consoled himself with the knowledge that as he had committed the obscene act alone, his morality – his purity – was still intact as far as the outside world knew. He made sure of that by letting his dislike of all things female and all concepts sexual go on public display. The guiltier he felt about his frantic under-the-blankets fiddling, the more he presented to the world an image of a morally superior man sickened by the weakness of his fellow creatures.

 

Occasionally, jealousy won him over. He justified acts of cold-hearted maliciousness towards the objects of his envy as punishment for their immorality. One spring morning, he walked, nose arrogantly in the air, past two of the more popular male students. Each of them had his arms around a girl. The girls were dressed in the kind of obscenely tight clothes he thought about when he was touching himself. He knew as he saw them that he would be thinking about them that night and was furious that they would, with their evil dress and disgracefully voluptuous bodies, cause him to do something so foul.

 

Randolph punished the quartet by writing an anonymous letter to the local F.B.I. office in which he accused them of harbouring communist sympathies and of trying to subvert the entire university. All four were expelled soon afterwards. Although the author of the "red" scare was never revealed, most suspected Randolph. If he had been shunned prior to that, he was violently ostracised thereafter. He blamed everyone else for that and saw their treatment of him as yet another symptom of their moral bankruptcy. Proof of his need to stay away from them for fear of becoming tainted by their poison. Especially the women.

 

In this way, Randolph became one of the least popular students in the University's long history. At the same time, however, his academic work was equally as notable for very different reasons. His examination results were invariably excellent. His papers drew universal praise from his Professors and soon came to the attention of the wider academic community. When his degree course was completed, those who had followed his work urged him to continue his studies and work towards a PhD. The concept of researching alone towards that qualification and avoiding the social contact that employment would entail appealed, and he needed little persuasion to extend his student years.

 

His papers continued to provoke stir after stir in the scientific community. Rapidly, he became well known in his field, a rising star in the world of bio-chemistry research. His theories began to push back the boundaries of knowledge, opening up new avenues of study and experimentation. At the forefront of this new work, he continued to impress and enlighten those who read his work. The successful completion of his course, marked by the addition of the letters "PhD" to his name, surprised no-one. That was in the summer of 1967.

 

Randolph had no concerns about finding work after receiving his academic qualification. A queue of potential employers beat a path to his door, all keen to sign up the brightest young man in the field. But despite the offers of lucrative salaries and access to some of the best-equipped laboratories in the world, he did not find any of the propositions appealing. They all seemed to be promoting their "teams" – other men and, worse of all, women that he would be obliged to work alongside. One by one the representatives of the big pharmaceutical companies left without acquiring his signature.


As he was slowly coming to the realisation that, regardless of his reservations, financial imperatives required him to accept one of the posts on offer, the ideal solution presented itself to him. He'd met with a dozen men from a dozen companies all wearing the same grey suits, offering the same kind of working conditions, reeling off the same prepared speech about joining their "team". The thirteenth man was different. He wore a long, dark blue trench coat and a trilby hat and his offer contained no mention of any "team". Instead, he promised Randolph that he could work alone in a laboratory that was as up-to-date as any with a budget greater than most. And, as the man in the trench-coat said, his research would be for the greater good of mankind: "The U.S. government needs people like you to help in the fight against the spread of communists and their degenerate immorality." Randolph signed his name on the contract.


A sense of revolution was in the air. Not the kind of political revolution that Randolph would have known all about from newspaper reports, but a social revolution. Huge crowds gathered at generation-defining music concerts. In many circles, people talked openly about previously taboo issues. The ring of ice surrounding the topic of sexuality melted away. Films were made that reflected this new attitude and played to packed cinemas. Bright, flamboyant styles of clothing became an increasingly common sight. Men wore their hair long. Randolph Sherman bought himself a new, grey suit and started his new job, working for the government.

 

At first, they gave him small projects to complete, which he found deeply unchallenging. But after a couple of months, he was called in to see his supervisor. He was commended on his work up to that date. "We like your work." the supervisor had said. "And we like you. We feel we can trust you." He was asked if he was willing to take on a new, far more difficult task and he didn't hesitate before accepting. This, he was told, would be top-secret work. As he had no friends or close family, he was deemed ideal for such a project. There were documents – scores of them – which he was required to sign. His supervisor warned him that revealing a word of his new research to the outside world would be an act of treason, punishable by death. Randolph accepted the terms without giving them too much thought. Who would he tell, anyway? He was excited by the prospect of the project he would be undertaking.

 

Randolph threw himself deeply into his task: trying to create a device which could physically enhance a human being. His preliminary investigations into the effect of sunlight on chlorophyll in plants lead to him discovering that certain types of solar radiation produce a similar, but much more potent and permanent reaction in animal tissue. If enough energy from the sun could be somehow gathered, it might have hitherto unimaginable effects on a man's body. He worked on refining that theory, and began to test out various aspects of it in the laboratory. Every time he mentioned to his supervisor that he required another piece of equipment to carry out his experiments, no matter how expensive or difficult to procure it seemed, the machinery would arrive and be installed within days. Sometimes, even within hours. Randolph read the newspapers; he knew his country was fighting a war in Asia and that military interest would explain the government's enthusiastic support for his work, and, for the first time, he began to think about the wider implications of his research.

 

If his estimates were correct – he acknowledged that, at such an early stage, much of it was guesswork – then he might just be able to devise a method for greatly enhancing a soldier's strength and stamina. The effects might also include a substantial decrease in the subject's reaction times and a much improved speed of movement. If he was right about the behaviour of human cells – a very big "if" – then the subject might also become vastly less vulnerable to physical damage. Such a man would be an ideal soldier; harder to kill, almost impossible to defeat in battle. And, once again, if he was correct, a greater dose of stored solar energy would cause a greater augmentation of these physical abilities. A soldier could be made stronger, hugely stronger, or, even …

 

Randolph was convinced he had invented a method for creating a superman. He needed more tests to be certain of his discovery. He began to wonder what it would be like to be the subject of his final experiment – to be the man who would be given physical abilities far beyond the imaginations of most. Were he to be proved right, then such a man, given the maximum possible dose of concentrated solar radiation, would be virtually unstoppable. Such a man would not have to put up with things he found distasteful, like men who chased around after girls, or women who dressed like whores and constantly distracted men from higher callings. Such a man could lay down rules that would have to be followed. Such a man could punish those who transgressed his rules. Especially the women. He could punish the women for their sluttish ways. He could do whatever he wanted with the women … That is, whatever had to be done.

 

Over the weeks, Randolph began to realise that the full potential of his discovery would be wasted on soldiers or other men. Only he possessed the moral fibre and sensible, uncluttered judgement required by someone who commanded so much power. He resolved to withhold the potential of his work from his employers. He would give them what they wanted, a handful of stronger-and-quicker-than-average soldiers to kill communists in the jungle. But he would keep for himself the secret of real power. And by the time anyone realised what he had done, it would be too late for any of them to stop him. Then the women would come to him, and beg him for forgiveness, throwing their bodies at him for him to … No! Why did those creatures and their damned flesh keep invading his thoughts even now, when he was trying to ponder the greatest scientific breakthrough of all time?

 

Every Friday, he had to present a report on that week's progress to his supervisor. His earliest reports, about his theory and the tests he had carried out which supported it, were full and frank. But as he began to covet the full extent of his discovery, he became less and less honest in his briefings. At first, he simply neglected to reveal a key fact or two. As the months went by, he found himself inventing ever more elaborate lies about the limitations of his theories. The supervisor seemed interested and encouraging none-the-less, taking notes as Randolph spoke, posing questions. Almost every week, at some point, the supervisor would ask him if he was still certain that the process could be applied to any human being. He always appeared reassured when he received an answer in the affirmative.

 

The supervisor took a much keener interest in Randolph Sherman's project than he did in any other work being carried out under his authority. When he had first heard the young man's theories of creating a superman – since, sadly, revised to the creation of a near-superman – the supervisor had visions of a soldier in the jungle, surviving the best attempts of enemy soldiers to shoot him whilst he lifted one of their number off the ground with a single hand around his throat. And then his mind had wandered. Clips of a movie he had gone to see with his wife a few months before jumped into his conscience as they had done many times since that night in the theatre. The film was "1 Million Years B.C." and the clips in his head all featured its lead actress, Racquel Welch, in her movie costume of tattered cavewoman rags.

 

He'd been struck by the sight of her on the big screen. Her beauty affected him deeply. Her gorgeous face, long legs and fantasy figure were etched into his brain. Her glorious breasts moving beneath her costume haunted him so much that even now, months later, their image would pop into mind and push all other thoughts into some far, inaccessible corner. Now, as the part of his mind responsible for his professionalism struggled to bring his attention back to his meeting with Sherman, a couple of wires crossed. He tried to return to his original mental image of the superhuman soldier in the heat of battle. He almost succeeded. Almost. Except, in his imagination, he saw the battle, and the enemy soldiers. But not the superhuman good guy. In his place, he saw Racquel Welch as a cavewoman.

She was in the same pose as the soldier had been before, her arm extended high, her back straight, which caused her generous chest to appear even more prominent. In the hand at the end of that extended arm, was an enemy soldier's neck. Racquel was holding his entire weight with one of her hands, clamped tightly around his throat. The supervisor could tell both from the way the soldier was dangling and the casualness of the screen beauty's stance that the man felt lightweight to her. Somehow, the image was the most erotic he'd ever known. He sought to enrich it and imagined a hail of hostile gun fire hitting the film star and merely bouncing harmlessly away from her, its only effect to tear away her rags, leaving more and more of her body exposed until she was completely nude and he could imagine the sight of her large breasts jiggling as bullets struck them before rebounding away.

 

A moment later, the supervisor was silently reciting the names of baseball players to himself in a last-ditch, panic attempt to prevent himself reaching an orgasm as he sat behind his desk in his office in the middle of a top-secret meeting between government scientists. He averted the crisis, but only just. Shortly afterwards, he ended the meeting early. As soon as Sherman had closed the door behind himself on his way out, the supervisor ran to his private bathroom. Less than a minute elapsed before he returned to his main office. As he did, he wondered if he would be able to influence the powers-that-were into selecting a woman as the first test subject should Sherman's work ever come to fruition.

 

As unaware of his supervisor's particular interest in his project as the supervisor was of Randolph's own selfish plans, the young scientist set about his work in the laboratory with an even greater fervour than before, working long into the night and at weekends, forgetting meals. He had no social life to neglect, no friends to miss, just a single goal to aim for: the acquisition of power. Power for himself. But to achieve that target, he had to continue his efforts for the government. He still had to turn his theories into some kind of practice. Then, one Saturday night, whilst his contemporaries were all out in filthy bars, listening to degenerate music, and going to repulsive parties where unspeakable acts were carried out in upstairs bedrooms, he made a huge leap forward. By bombarding a chemical compound with a very specific type of radiation, he created a crystal that could absorb the sun’s radiation, store it, and act as a partial bridge between solar energy and organic cellular energy.

 

He was more than halfway to making his theory a reality. Without sleep, he waited for dawn when he could begin the process of filling his crystal – which he immodestly named the Sherman crystal – with the sun’s power. Setting the fist-size semi-transparent, multi-facetted rock in a housing by an East-facing window, he arranged an array of testing and measuring devices around it and waited. And waited. The morning passed, and the first seeds of doubt began to sprout in his mind. Then, about noon, the first measurement of stored energy was recorded.

 

The Sherman crystal was absorbing power. He was vindicated. But as he watched his instruments in vain for signs of any further development, he realised that he had grossly miscalculated the speed of the process. He moved the crystal to the windows on the opposite side of the room to make the most of the afternoon sun. By dusk, he recorded a tiny further increase in its stored radiation. His experiment was working, there was no question about that. But it was a slow, slow procedure.

 

Randolph made sure he was in the laboratory every morning before dawn to position the Sherman crystal. He began to loathe overcast weather, cursing the hours of solar energy that were lost to clouds. Whilst the crystal slowly gathered power, he busied himself working on the final part of his process: the transmitting of energy stored in his giant-dull-diamond into a living being.

 

It took him three months to devise and build the transfer device. Despite its appearance – a huge, complicated affair – the principle on which he hoped it would function was simple. The charged crystal would be placed in the machine and then a beam of pure radiation would be fired through it into the recipient. But until he actually tested it with a prepared Sherman crystal and a live subject, he could only speculate as to its effectiveness.

One morning, a grey-haired man in full military uniform entered the laboratory, accompanied by Randolph’s supervisor. A curt introduction was rapidly carried out during which the stranger was named as General Smithson. “I’ve come to see how your work is progressing.” The general announced. “If you could please arrange a demonstration.”

 

“I should have something ready in a couple of months-“ Randolph began.

 

“Now.” The general interrupted.

 

Randolph knew he was obliged to comply. In truth, he too was keen to measure the effects of the small amount of energy that had built up over the past fourteen weeks within his original crystal. Retrieving the rock, he noticed it was slightly warm to the touch. He interpreted that as a good sign. He set it up inside his cumbersome transfer device and pointed the end of it at a work-surface on which he placed a small cage containing a rodent’s wheel and an adult white mouse.

There was a large meter with a dial affixed to the side of the cage. Randolph drew the General’s attention to it. “It measures revolutions per minute of the wheel,” he explained. As if on cue, the mouse climbed into the wheel and began to run. The needle on the dial responded immediately. “As you can see, the mouse is currently turning the wheel approximately 22 times every minute. Now I will switch on the beam generator and transfer the energy from the crystal.”  Somewhat anticlimactically, the enormous device made no noise save for a low hum as it was powered up.

 

“How long before you can fire the beam?” the General asked.

 

“It’s already fired,” Randolph explained. “It’s radiation is well beyond the visible spectrum, so it is completely invisible to the human eye.”


“When will we know if it’s worked?”


“I estimate that in an organism of that size, we should be able to measure the effects of the energy transfer within a couple of minutes.” None of the three men present were apt at making small talk, so the next one hundred and sixty seconds passed in silence. At the end of that period of time, the mouse stretched as if awakening from a sleep and clambered into its wheel. And then it began to run.

 

“Ha!” Randolph exclaimed, delightedly if unprofessionally. “I knew it! I knew it would work!”

 

The general was peering at the meter beside the spinning wheel. “25 revolutions per minute,” he read, in a monotone. “Is that it? Is that tiny increase all you have managed to achieve?”

 

Randolph was crest-fallen. “The… the Sherman crystal needs time to charge up properly. A much much greater effect will occur if the crystal is exposed to sunlight for a longer period.”

 

“How long would it take to produce a doubling in an organism’s strength?”

 

Randolph went to a pad of paper, picked up a pencil and began to scribble illegible notes and calculations. After a while, during which he had filled most of the page with graphite markings, he looked up. “Approximately six years.”

 

“Six years?” the general seemed stunned. “We’ll have lost the war by then!”


“I thought we were winning,” Randolph said, confused by the general’s lack of enthusiasm and the statement which seemed to contradict everything he had read in the newspaper that morning.


“Um… yes, yes. Just a figure of speech.” the general muttered before clearing his throat and thanking Randolph for his time. Before Randolph could respond, the military man was halfway out of the door, the supervisor close behind. As soon as the door closed, Randolph grabbed his pad of paper and the pencil once again. He began jotting a fresh calculation.


He was certain now that the accumulation of power in a Sherman crystal was an exponential process; the more energy the crystal absorbed, the faster it could absorb new energy. He wanted to know how long it would take until the crystal became completely saturated with power. Until it could absorb no more. Until its power could be transferred with truly startling results, not just a fifteen percent increase in a mouse’s speed. He wrote frantically, tearing off one page to begin filling the next, figures and formulae appearing as fast as he could write them down. Finally, he drew a thick circle around one particular number. The answer.

Randolph had calculated that in order to soak up sufficient solar energy to be capable to transforming a man into a superman, a Sherman crystal like the one he had used on the mouse would need to charge for 37.4 years. He could give the government what they wanted within half-a-dozen years, but his own dream would have to wait for four decades. He would have to be patient.

 

The next morning, pre-dawn, he arrived at the laboratory entrance. One of the regular young ladies was seated behind the reception desk. Randolph loathed her. He hated her immaculately-brushed long blonde hair, which she let cascade, shamelessly, over her shoulders. He hated her perfect, white teeth which she flashed so ostentatiously and her big blue eyes with their long, fluttering lashes which she made even more prominent by painting them with mascara as if to tell every man she greeted that she was available for … for disgusting things. Things she evilly made him think of by wearing her uniform shirt so tightly that he could see the outline of her breasts.

 

As normal, Randolph stared disapprovingly at that hypnotic, rounded outline as he completed the formality of stating his name and security code. Why did he have to go through this ridiculous ritual with this … this whore day after day? Surely even her man-snaring, lust-obsessed brain could remember his face by now? But he knew it was not the vile woman’s decision that the protocol had to be observed. It was someone higher up the chain. Someone who feared the possibility of agency staff being replaced by doppelgangers. Or worse: doppelgangers with communist sympathies.

 

Now what was happening? The stupid whore was looking down at a list of names. Was she checking his code, just in case he was an impostor? Someone who had gone to the finest details to transform himself into a carbon copy of Randolph Sherman, but had not bothered to memorise his six-digit security code-number correctly? She looked up from the sheet, the movement of her head de-obscuring, once again, his view of her chest. Surely she had to know the effect those two… things had on men? Why did she flaunt them so disgracefully?

 

“There’s no-one by that name on the list, sir,” she said. Randolph thought he could detect a note of something more than professional courtesy in her smile. Satisfaction, maybe.

 

“What are you talking about?” he demanded.

 

“There’s no Randolph T. Sherman on the list, sir,” she repeated. It was definitely satisfaction. Randolph wanted to slap her. And to rip her shirt off and bury his face between those… No, no! What was she doing to him? How could such an intellectual inferior play with his mind in this way?

 

“Stop this nonsense!” Randolph exclaimed, rather like an exasperated parent addressing a tantrum-throwing child.

 

“If you like, sir, I can call a member of the security team.” She picked up a telephone, already dialling a single-digit number and turned to face him, the radiant grin still fixed on her features. Randolph returned it with a sneer of contempt. Within seconds a security guard appeared from the room behind the reception desk. In terms of physical size he had more in common with a grizzly bear than he had with Randolph.

 

“What’s the problem?” the bear growled.

 

“The problem is this: your receptionist here is so busy making sure her face is well-painted that she doesn’t seem to have enough time to do her job. She can’t find my name on her list. Maybe there’s too many letters in it for her.”

 

“What’s your name…. sir?” enquired the big man, leaving a long-enough pause before the “sir” to make it clear that any implied respect was not intended.

 

“Randolph T. Sherman. I work on Hercules Project. Hell, I AM Hercules Project. Now let me get to my lab!”

 

“Sherman, Sherman, Sherman …” the security guard muttered. “Ah yes. I have a package for you.”

 

“Bring it to me in my laboratory.”


“I’m afraid that you cannot enter the building unless your name is on this list, sir.” The receptionist chimed in. Now her grin was one of smug victory.


“This is preposterous!” Randolph exploded. Neither the girl nor the bear responded. The large man disappeared into the room behind the main desk for a moment, returning clutching a brown paper package and a white envelope. Randolph snatched the envelope and tore it open, reading the brief, typed message it contained twice before mumbling “No. No. They can’t do this to me. Not after all I’ve achieved!”


“Looks like Randy’s going to be looking for another job.” the pretty blonde receptionist giggled, relishing his crushing defeat, any pretence at civility now abandoned.


“Bitch. Whore.” Randolph cursed her.


The security guard raised an eyebrow and took an intimidating step towards him. “Your personal effects, sir,” he snorted with a nod towards the brown paper package that was now lying on the desk. Slowly, humiliated, Randolph picked it up. He turned on his heels and walked pathetically away.


When he got home, he re-read the curt dismissal note he'd been given then angrily threw it into the trash. He sat down on his bed, thinking of the injustice of it all. His anger focussed on the receptionist who had first told him he couldn't enter the building. He thought of her delight at his suffering, the brightness of her smile, her painted face, the shape of her breasts so ill-concealed by her uniform shirt. He loathed himself for not being able to stop himself as he unfastened the fly of his grey trousers and reached in to take hold of himself.

 

A while later, he tore the brown paper from the parcel containing his personal effects. The contents – a comb, some loose change, and a retractable pencil – spilled out across the kitchen table. The only other thing in the packet was his lab-coat. Disgusted, he tossed it onto the tiled floor, and was surprised by the dull thud he heard as it landed. Something was still in one of the pockets. He bent down to investigate. A cool, hard object …. It couldn't be … But it was. Randolph extracted the discharged Sherman crystal and held it up to examine it. His creation. The thing that could have given him the power to change the hateful world in which he lived. If only the government had been more patient. Now his dream was in ruins.

 

A shaft of sunlight momentarily beamed through the kitchen window, and it made Randolph freeze in his thoughts and movements. He'd told himself that his dream of power had died because, without access to his remarkably-equipped laboratory, he would never have been able to create another Sherman crystal. Yet he now had his original crystal in his hand. He knew that it worked; the mouse had proved that. He just needed to charge it properly. As for the ray to transfer its accumulated energy into his body … well, he had 37.4 years to build another. The rock didn't need a lab in which to be exposed to sunlight … it just needed sunlight.

 

"I can do it!" Randolph shouted out loud, although there was no-one there to share his delight. "I can get the power! Then I'll show them! The supervisor, that stinking general, his army, the government! They'll all be sorry for the way they treated me. That big security guard … I'll toss him aside like a matchstick! That receptionist bitch with her painted face and her obscene breasts – I'll make her regret messing with my mind and laughing at me. All of her kind will learn! One day, one day, they will all learn!" He struck his fist down on the kitchen table, determinedly.

 

His brain was alive with calculations. 37.4 years … he'd be 65 then. It wouldn't matter once he transferred four decades' worth of energy from the Sherman crystal into his body. His age would be irrelevant. He held the crystal up in front of his eyes. It was hard to believe that this insignificant piece of semi-transparent rock was going to change the world. All he had to do was get it charged. But where? His kitchen window only let in direct sunlight for part of the day. The obvious place was the roof. But, where he lived, there was little sun from late autumn until early spring. He needed – deserved – better than a Sherman crystal that wasn't in direct sunlight all day, every day …


A month later, Randolph had sold his house. His government salary had been huge, and his expenses low so he had managed to save a considerable sum. More than enough to tie him over while he found a new source of income. Somewhere sunny. After considering the possibilities, and finding them all to be abhorrent in their own way, he chose California. He immediately rejected Los Angeles. He hated the bustle of big cities anyway, but L.A.'s smog made the place completely unsuitable for his crystal. San Francisco, he realised after only a few hours, was full of those so-called "hippies". They disgusted him. He hated their garish dress and above all the way the women were so open with their whorishness. Sitting on the lavatory in his motel room, he pondered their obscenity as he manipulated himself to an angry, despicable orgasm.


He bought a modest suburban house in a small town far from the major cities. Before he'd even begun unpacking his personal effects, he visited the local hardware store and purchased a ladder. Back home, he immediately climbed onto the roof of his new home and set to work installing the Sherman crystal. He mounted it carefully on top of a weather-vane he'd bought for the purpose. Climbing down, he noted with satisfaction the way the crystal glinted in the streaming sunshine.

His new neighbour, a man maybe slightly older than himself, came out of the house next door and introduced himself. "You're not going need a weather vane much in these parts!" the neighbour commented.


"It's a family heirloom." Randolph deadpanned in reply.


"Oh, family heirlooms are wonderful. Do you have any kids to pass it on it?"

 

"No. I hate kids." Randolph could not keep the contempt from his voice.

 

"Well, perhaps you'd like to come over for a glass of lemonade once you've done unpacking.."

 

"No thank you." said Randolph. He and the neighbour barely exchanged another word for the next two decades.

 

Randolph got a job working part-time in the back room of the town's electronics store. He repaired televisions, radios, electric toothbrushes – whatever the townspeople brought to the store. The work was a long way beneath him but he had decided never to use his genius for the benefit of others again. Besides, the arrangement suited him. He didn't have to deal with customers and the short hours gave him plenty of time to pursue his hobby – trying to recreate the energy-transfer-beam generator. To that end, he stole parts from almost every piece of equipment he repaired, taking them home to his garage which he converted into a kind of workshop.

 

Increasingly he became known around town as a sour, miserable, anti-social presence – one best left alone. In his street, rumours spread about the noises of machinery coming from his garage when he was in. Sometimes, bright flashing light could be seen escaping from the edges of the big door which was never opened. Gossiping neighbours invented tales in which he was building a Frankenstein's monster or an atom bomb or a rocket ship. But he never gave them cause for real concern. People soon understood that all he wanted was to be left alone, and they were, on the whole, happy to oblige. Especially as any contact with him invariably left the other party stunned by his rudeness.

 

And in that manner, twenty years went by. Randolph became middle-aged, but other than the ageing of his body, outsiders could discern little difference in his manners. Of course, the loneliness of his life did cast an ever darker shadow over his countenance, his mind’s defence mechanisms building up an ever more solid and impenetrable dislike of the rest of the world. The passage of time did nothing to ease his bitterness towards the government that had discarded him so abruptly. If anything, it had intensified. Every time he left his house, or returned to it, he would glance up at the Sherman crystal on the roof, glinting in the sun as it slowly absorbed energy from Earth’s star. That was his one hope of retribution. Of eventual triumph.

 

Two decades was plenty of time for him to collect a huge array of parts from domestic electronic equipment. He worked long and hard to re-create his energy transfer ray, spending hours alone in his garage testing theories. New appliances began to be taken into the shop for repairs. Small machines for playing audio cassettes through headphones for people to listen to that horrid modern music that he so disliked. Video recorders. And, most excitingly for Randolph, microwave ovens. The types of energy converters that had been the exclusive property of top laboratories were now beginning to appear in every kitchen. He realised that, with extensive modification, parts from these new cooking devices could be used in his beam-generator.

 

In the autumn of 1985, his long-time neighbour moved out. A young, newly-wed couple moved in to the house next door. Randolph hated them on first sight. The man was too casually dressed, often appearing unshaven. As for his wife – she was an abomination. She would parade around the street and in the yard behind her house wearing tops that were so tight they were little more than second-skins. From his upstairs bedroom window, Randolph could look out on that garden and see her. He spent many hours doing just that, tutting in disgust as he stared at the way her T-shirt did nothing to hide the obvious roundness of her generous bust. Sometimes, when he used his binoculars, he could even see the clear shape of her nipples. That was obscene. It made him touch himself as he watched her.

 

It was worse at night. With his window open he could hear the cries of the couple as they performed the disgraceful act of intercourse, oblivious to the fact that any normal, morally-upstanding person might be listening in to… to their filthy activities. He knew the woman was a harlot. That was why she dressed the way she did. But couldn’t her husband learn some self control? Obviously not. He was completely under her spell, just another weak-willed man unable to resist the siren’s lure of a whore. The noises they made were disgusting. He convinced himself that he was not jealous. He was just morally outraged. When he was most outraged, he would listen to the sounds from next door as he furiously stroked his organ.

 

The degenerate couple had been his neighbours for two and a half years when, as Randolph watched the wife in her back yard one morning, he noticed that she looked pregnant. They hadn’t told him their good news, of course, as any communication between them had ceased after the husband’s first, disastrous attempt at starting a conversation. Randolph’s reaction to the woman’s state was one of disgust. Procreation revolted him. Worse than that, the thought that shortly his privacy would be disturbed by the sound of a wailing infant from next door really angered him. For a few weeks, he considered moving house. But he realised that anywhere he moved to would likely be just as bad, if not even worse. And his beloved crystal would never find a better home than the one it had occupied for the past twenty-three years.

 

The spring of 1988 was one of the worst of Randolph’s life. The new baby screamed long into the night most nights of the week. The sluttish mother brought her damn child out into her back yard often, meaning that its yells seemed even louder to him. Sometimes, he could even hear it screeching as he worked in his garage. Worse than that, she would often feed the thing out in the yard. Randolph could not believe her complete lack of decency as he held his binoculars to his eyes to study as she scooped out her milk-filled, bigger-than-ever breast and put the baby to it. As he played with himself, he shook his head in horror at the thought that this woman could expose herself like that in a place where anyone – well, him anyway with his eye-glasses – could see.

 

The child’s nocturnal screaming became less and less frequent as the months went by. The mother stopped suckling, and Randolph, carefully examining her in disgust from his bedroom window as she sunned herself in the garden, noticed that her belly and breasts returned to their previous dimensions. One day, he saw the two parents encouraging their child to try and take a few, shaky steps out in the garden. Three months later it was running around unaided, making far too much noise for his liking. He heard the child’s name being called more than often enough. “Kimberly, come here! Look what I’ve got for you!” He considered complaining about the noise, but decided not to. His words were unlikely to have any impact on such morally lax people.

 

For her fourth birthday. Kimberley’s parents bought her a bright pink tricycle. To Randolph’s horror, the child took to riding it up and down the pavement in front of his house. No matter how many times he came out and gave her disapproving looks or even openly scowled at her, she continued to pedal past his front door. The tricycle had one of those irritating little bells attached to the handlebars. She used it incessantly. The sound of that horrible tinkling outside his house infuriated him. It annoyed him most when he was working in the garage and he could hear her outside on his driveway, ringing that damn bell, going around and around and around until he wanted to grab a shovel and … As he worked on his transfer ray, he longed for the day that he could use it. There would be no more children riding tricycles in his driveway after that!

 

One day, late in the autumn of 1996, Randolph was at home when his doorbell rang. He went to the door and opened it, prepared to tell whatever salesman was out there to get lost. Instead he found his hated neighbours’ now eight-years-old daughter. Next to her, a rough home-made cart stacked with boxes of cookies. “Hello Mr. Sherman” she trilled brightly.


“What do you want?”

 

“I’m selling cookies for the girl scouts. Will you take one? They’re only a dollar a box.”

 

“I don’t like cookies.”

 

“Mr. Simpkins over the road took ten boxes. It’s for the girl scouts.”

 

“If I buy something, will you go away and leave me alone?” She didn’t answer his question, but the look on her face seemed to say “yes.”

 

“I’ll take half a box.” Randolph said, fishing two quarters from his trouser pocket.

 

“Um… I can’t break them in two,” the girl said. Randolph snorted and extracted a crumpled dollar bill from another pocket. He almost slammed it into her tiny hand, grabbing the box she proffered in return and slamming the front door in her face without so much as a “thank you.” Inside the house, he threw the unopened box of cookies into the trash. He hated that child.


When Kimberley was twelve, she started playing her horrible music too loud in the garden. Randolph decided that his best hope of retaining his sanity was to completely ignore the child. The policy served him well for two years. After that period had elapsed, as he glanced out of his bedroom window one day after fourteen year old Kimberley had returned from school, he noticed something. The girl had started to change. He could see the beginnings of her figure now starting to appear. How reprehensible of her parents, he thought, that they allowed her to wear clothes so tight that he could see how her body was developing.

 

He began to watch out for her as she left in the mornings and when she came back in the afternoons. What was wrong with the society he lived in that she could go out, day after day, with her flat midriff on clear view? Her wardrobe was a disgrace. Many of her tops were so tight, he could almost follow the daily increase in the size of her bust. He found himself tortured by impure thoughts once again. Despite his disgust, he could not take his eyes from her maturing body. He knew all her outfits and spent hours watching her trying to tan herself in the back yard. He heard the disrespectful way she spoke to her parents and closely studied the obscenity of her dress.
 

By the following summer of 2004, she had started to wear bikinis. Randolph was sickened by the way her parents let their fifteen year old daughter flaunt her still-ripening body in that way. Staring down from his bedroom window as the young harlot walked into her garden, he noticed that she now had quite a visible cleavage. It was just so obscene. His hand stroked his throbbing erection as he looked at the disgraceful spectacle, shaking his head in disbelief at the sheer immorality of it all. When she bent down to pick up something from the lawn, the view she offered of her nubile, rounded buttocks nearly gave him heart failure. How could such a public abomination be allowed? He almost dropped his binoculars in horror.

 

That autumn, Kimberley got a new set of clothes. Within a fortnight, Randolph was familiar with just about all of them. Of course, he found them all disgusting. She had a green top that was the least-tight fitting of all of them, and covered the largest portion of her midriff. He went to great lengths to convince himself that he was not secretly disappointed on days that she wore it. The top he found most unacceptable was the yellow one. It was ridiculously tight, allowing him to see the precise shape of each of her burgeoning nipples. More shockingly, it was low cut, leaving a large expense of young cleavage clear for all to see, as well as the three inches of tanned, smooth belly below. Sometimes, Randolph saw her wearing it in his dreams while he slept.

 

Over the next half-year, her physical development completed. Her breasts became full; astonishingly large for such a slim young girl. They were firm and upstanding at the start of her first summer as an adult. Her face was fair too. Randolph noted with great displeasure how her lips were large and usually pouting, her eyes big and blue with those long lashes he found so repulsive. She remained slender, her navel and the surrounding smooth flesh constantly on display, even as her hips became increasingly curved. Increasingly, she wore cut-off shorts that showed off her lengthening legs and her disgustingly round thighs. She learnt and quickly perfected what Randolph called the “whore’s walk”, making all the obscene parts of her body move in such as way that he couldn’t help but touch himself as he watched her striding into the yard.

 

It was not just her appearance that he loathed. He could not stand the way she spoke to her parents and other adults. So disrespectful. The music she listened to was hateful, too. The tunes just incomprehensible repetitive noise, the lyrics – those that he could understand – just obscenities shouted over the background racket. Working in his garage, he occasionally overheard her passing by talking with one of her friends on her cell-phone. He could not believe the way she spoke. It was as if she was proud of her ignorance, her lack of proper education and moral fibre. To Randolph, the girl symbolised everything that was wrong with the modern world he lived in. There was no morality. No discipline.

 

A change was desperately needed. A new sense of leadership. An end of the tolerance of moral decay. Society needed a strong leader, someone who could teach people to be decent, who would punish those who were not. A leader who would truly lead by upright example. According to his calculations, the Sherman crystal that had been on his roof since 1968 was almost fully charged. Once he transferred its power into his ageing body, he could become the leader that the world so badly required. He would show the youth of the day how to behave. How to dress decently. His moral code would be the only moral code. As leader, he would force the women to be decent. Not to torture innocent men like himself with their obscene flesh. All of them. Except perhaps for that hateful tease next door. He had special plans for her.

 

He also had special plans for the government that had mistreated him. And the army that didn’t have faith in his work. He’d show them all just how wrong they were. There wasn’t long to wait. His transfer-beam-generator was ready now. Soon. Very soon.


And that is Randolph Sherman’s back-story. Perhaps your first impression of him wasn’t so harsh, after all. Let’s re-join him now, in the present.


 

 

CHAPTER 2

The calendar on the kitchen wall displays the month of June in the year 2005. The 5th – that’s today – is ringed in thick red marker pen, but there are no other markings. Randolph doesn’t need any. He’s known the significance of that date for nearly forty years. It’s the day, according to his calculations, that his Sherman crystal will reach energy saturation point. In his garage, the transfer ray device is complete, waiting for the moment for which it has been built. Made from parts stolen from televisions, microwave ovens and other bits of domestic equipment, it doesn’t look like a device that could change the world.

 

Randolph is outside of his house, puffing and sweating as he awkwardly tries to climb the ladder he’s rested against the side of the building. He remembers how easy it was to get up there when he first installed the crystal on his roof. Now, he is an old man and the physical effort is challenging. But the prize is almost in his reach now. The weather-vane has rusted over the decades and it’s hard work to remove it. He smiles to himself through the struggle as he thinks of how easy such physical tasks will become once he completes the energy transfer.

 

The crystal is hot. Too hot for him to touch with his unprotected fingers and he has to extract a handkerchief from his pocket, fold it in half and use that to handle the rock. Even so, it is beginning to burn his fingers. He hurries down from the roof, but he can’t climb down the ladder with one hand, so he has to drop the hot crystal into his pocket and hope that it isn’t so hot that it burns the fabric during his decent. On the way down, he slips twice, once almost falling, but clings on, determined to complete his life’s work. He pauses for only a few seconds to catch his breath when he gets to the ground and doesn’t waste any time removing the ladder, so keen is he to get to his garage.

 

Once there, he places the hot Sherman crystal into his bizarre ray generator. He’s designed the thing to be a tight fit, so that the crystal will be properly held in place when he activates the beam, but it’s a test of his remaining strength to insert it. For a minute he struggles, sweat soaking his forehead. He wipes it off with the still-warm handkerchief. Finally, he succeeds; the rock is properly in place. He switches on the machine and a low hum fills the garage. A small green light labelled “Defrost” – stolen from a freezer he once repaired – illuminates telling him that the ray is ready to be fired.

 

Randolph goes over to a work-bench and picks up what looks like a television remote-control. A series of scratch marks around the “Volume +” button indicate that that is the one he needs to press to activate the machine once he is standing in front of it. He can’t help laughing. He’s so close to fulfilling his dream now. He begins making his way towards the garage door. The transfer-ray is aligned so that the recipient needs to be standing in front of the centre of the closed door. He’s almost in place when he hears a familiar, hateful, young feminine voice. “…Yeah, it was like, so, gross! He PROMISED he’d take it out of my mouth in time. It’s not like everyone doesn’t know that I don’t swallow. And he’s so well-hung … Not!”

 

The slut-girl from next door! Randolph realises she’s walking past the front of his house on her way home from school, chatting with one of her so-called friends on her cell-phone. Unable to resist the opportunity to check which obscene outfit she is wearing today, he moves as quickly as his ageing limbs allow, standing on a broken television to peek at her through a small crack in the garage door, the customised remote control unit still in his hand. He has to rise onto his toes to see through the chink in the panel, and it's no easy feat for a man of his age. The old television creaks beneath him as he puts his eye right up to the gap. His reward is a glimpse of the girl's dramatic profile, so whorishly displayed by her clingingly-tight top as she walks by.


Her big chest is moving slightly with each stride. Now that she's passing almost directly in front of him, he can even look down to see the outline of her proud ripe nipple beneath her T-shirt. How can her parents allow her to go out in public dressed so outrageously. Subconsciously, Randolph's hand leaves its post against the garage door where it had been providing extra support and makes its way down the front of his body to begin rubbing his groin through his trousers. Completely distracted now, the rubbing intensifies. But with his body slightly unbalanced, and all his weight concentrated in the tips of his feet, the cheap plastic casing of the ageing television he's standing on can no longer hold out.


A crack appears in the plastic beneath his toes. It spreads instantly, and the casing gives way. The television crumbles under him. With nothing supporting his weight, his feet fall, the left faster than the right, tipping him off balance. The hand that should be bracing his body against the garage door is still on his groin. The other hand is gripping the remote control to his energy transfer device. Instinctively, he flashes out that hand to try and protect himself from injury as he collapses towards the television-wreckage on the ground. The little black rectangular box slips out of his grasp in the confusion, crashing down a half-second before Randolph joins it on the floor. Pain registers in his brain as he impacts with the shattered glass, broken plastic and electronic components. The wind is knocked from him, and he lies in the mess for a full half minute, recovering his breath before gingerly, awkwardly, hauling himself up to his feet.


"That damn slut!" he mutters to himself. Angrily, he thinks "That only happened because she walked past in that ridiculous whore's costume. I'm all bruised down my right side because of her. If she hadn't been passing, I'd have already activated the transfer ray making myself unbruisable … The transfer ray! Oh my god! I dropped the remote! Where the hell is it? It must be near here somewhere …. Down there! Ouch! It hurts when I bend down now, thanks to that little bitch … Got it. Is it OK? Looks alright … all in one piece, nothing rattling inside when I shake it. It should still be alright. Thank God!"


On the other side of the garage door, Kim – it's been years since she thought of herself as "Kimberley" – is still chatting on her cell-phone, completely oblivious to the farcical scene taking place just yards away from her. If she heard the commotion inside the old man's garage, she did not register it. Her free hand momentarily presses against the front of her T-shirt, scratching, through the thin material, the narrow valley of flawless skin between her two generous, perfectly-shaped breasts. Absorbed in the conversation with her friend, she turns from the pavement on to the path to the front door of her house. The sun in shining and she's thinking about the rays she's going to catch out in the yard once she's changed into something more suitable.


Back in the garage, Randolph is still examining the remote control unit he dropped when, suddenly, he panics. The colour, what little there is of it, drains from his features and he feels unsteady. Every movement makes his fresh bruises ache, but that is not his prime concern anymore. He's realised that there's a chance, a horrible, terrifying chance, that the remote control unit may have fallen onto the "Volume +" button, activating the energy beam. If it did, it would have happened as he fell, out of the line-of-fire of the ray and the power of the Sherman crystal would have been shot into thin air. The radiation is invisible and the machine that generates it is quiet; there would have been no way of detecting that the thing was firing, other than the crystal becoming cool and dull.

 

Ignoring the pain in his body, Randolph almost runs to the transfer-beam-generator. Without care for his creation, he tears open a side panel to peer inside. He feels sick as he examines the contents. He reaches out, already certain of the worst, and touches the cold crystal within. "No!" he screams, as if by denying the truth he can change it. "No! No! My energy! My power!" He falls to his knees, not caring about the extra discomfort this causes him. His hands cover his eyes as tears start to roll down his wrinkled face. Forty years of work and patience has been lost. Lost because he had to climb precariously on top of an old television to peek at that … that damned whore from next door.

 

Why did that bitch have to dress so obscenely provocatively? If only her parents had taught her some decency, he would be super-powered now. Instead, he’s nothing but an old man, on the floor of his garage, crying for his cruelly murdered lifelong dream. The slut! Her degenerate ways have cost him everything! Everything … Four decades' worth of the sun's energy, slowly stored in his crystal waiting for the moment that he could transfer that energy into himself. And now, it has all been discharged into … into the garage door and the empty air beyond it. Wasted. The injustice of it all burns. How can his genius and his years of patience be nullified by an ignorant, immoral, indecent teenager?

 

Meanwhile, up in her room in the house next door, Kim is slowly pulling her tight T-shirt off. It's a little bit of a struggle, especially manoeuvring the stretched material over her large breasts which have developed so spectacularly over the past two years. The cotton and polyester rubs over her barely-matured nipples and the sensation, as ever, is far from unpleasant. The two points of her chest grow hard with the stimulation, swelling as her eyes close for a moment and she lets the feeling suppress all her other thoughts. Ever since she became a woman, she has enjoyed the way her breasts feel, but today – right now, especially – it's particularly lovely. So much so that once she has finally taken her T-shirt off, she can't help cupping her big mounds, which are so much larger than her girlish hands, and caressing them.

 

A familiar feeling spreads within her from the point where her fingertips are massaging her youthfully firm chest. Surrendering to it, she starts to gently pinch her engorged pink nipples between her thumbs and forefingers. Oh, that feels so good! She normally enjoys it, but this is something else. Mmmmm … She loves her body, the way it is now. The way it makes her feel … So tingly. So warm inside, so … She could spend all day fondling herself, but she collects her thoughts, brings her mind back to the present. She was planning on working on her tan. Her prefect skin is already an alluring golden tone but it wouldn't hurt at all to lie out in the sun for a couple of hours.

 

She opens her closet and selects a new, rather brief, two-piece bikini. Sliding out of her shorts, wiggling her perfect rear as they fall to her ankles, she stands in front of the wardrobe's full-length mirror as she slips into the swimming costume. She's only worn it once before, in the fitting room at the store, and once she's put it on, she spends a few extra moments admiring the way it looks on her lithe, ripe body. The top half bulges where each of its hardly-adequate cups overflows with full, round teenage breast, a little of each mound visible around the edges of the material, the prominent protrusion of an aroused nipple marking their centres. In the centre of her chest, a deep, stunningly erotic cleavage is dramatically displayed, as sexually inviting as any image plucked from an adolescent boy's hyperactive imagination.

 

Below the top, an acre of smooth, even skin is on view. Her belly is as flat as her chest is rounded. The flesh is silky and unblemished, spreading like a plain around the small, profound navel just below its middle. Her hips are curved and fully visible as only the tinniest of strings fastens her lower garment together. It's a tiny affair; little more than two pieces of material, one to protect her modesty in front of her body, the other behind. The one in front just about covers her pubic area but leaves her thighs and her hips on show, the other hides the crevice between her buttocks but does not enclose much of either of those two solid, peach-like spherical cheeks. She can't help admiring herself in the mirror for a few more moments before she grabs a bottle of lotion from her dresser and her cell-phone from where she'd dropped it on her bed and makes her way downstairs to the back door.

 

Out in the yard, she finds that her mother has left a reclining chair open and ready for use on the lawn. She sits down on the edge of it, and places the bottle of lotion and her cell-phone beside her. She's not lying back yet, because she needs to apply her cream first. Taking the bottle, she uses her index finger to flick open the lid, taking care not to damage her recently-manicured bright red nail in the process. She transfers her grip so that she is holding the bottle in her small right fist, its digits with their lustrous nails curled around the cylinder, gently squeezing it, urging the thick white liquid it contains towards the small hole in the lid until a large blob of it squirts out onto the flawless skin of her waiting forearm. She repeats the process several times. First, by switching the hand holding the bottle of lotion, with her other arm. Then she eases some more cream onto each of her thighs in turn.


Her skin is warm out in the Californian sun, and the lotion is much cooler. The contrast feels lovely as she slowly starts to rub the various dribbles of white paste in. She massages her arms and legs as she distributes the cream, her thick, pouty lips parting as she works, her two rows of straight white teeth set slightly apart, her eyes closed to the glare from the sky. When she's satisfied that she's covered every inch of exposed limb, there's still plenty of lotion on her hands. Rather than wasting it by wiping her hands off on the grass beneath her feet, she rubs the excess into her neck and then top of her torso, spreading the sun protection as far as the uncovered upper edges of her breasts. She almost shudders at the sheer delight of the contact. What is it with her breasts this afternoon? When she touches them, they make her feel incredible. She continues the caressing, long after every trace of lotion has been absorbed by her flawless skin.


About five seconds earlier, Randolph entered his bedroom. His bruised legs seemed to carry him there of their own accord. His mind, still in shock, still unable to come to terms with his loss, played no part in picking him up off the garage floor and carrying him upstairs. He moves like a robot; a thing devoid of emotion, mechanically going about its function. His bloodshot eyes with their obvious traces of recent tears are the only clear indication of his membership of the human race. They cast about the familiar room with detached disinterest, resigned perhaps to the knowledge that nothing they might alight upon will ever be enough to replace the dream that has just died. His life is ruined. It has all proved pointless. With hunched shoulders, he drags himself towards the window. Maybe he wants to look out at the sky and curse it for the injustice it has allowed to pass beneath its canopy. But he never gets to do that.


Randolph's gaze is caught by the scene in his neighbours' back yard. The disgusting trollop of a girl is out there. The bitch, whose sluttish dress he tells himself was the real cause of his failure, is lying on a recliner, sunning herself. He notices that she's changed clothes. Gone are that whore's shirt and the disgracefully revealing shorts. Instead, she's wearing a far, far more obscene swimming outfit. It's red. He's not seen this one before. It must be new. How could anyone wear such a thing? There's hardly anything to it. All her disgusting feminine bits are out on display where anyone – anyone in an overlooking window next-door – can see them. She might as well be completely naked. From his vantage point, he can see right into her cleavage. It's so disgusting! And far from being ashamed of her near-nudity, the slut seems quite comfortable. Why she's even touching herself, rubbing the edge of one hand slowly along the underside of one of her breasts.


It's wrong. It's obscene. He stares, shaking his head in sheer disgust at the scene down there. How could anyone touch themselves in public like that? Randolph's right thumb and forefinger pincer the tag on the fly of his trousers and slowly draw it downwards, his eyes not flickering from the disgraceful exhibition, even when he releases the zip and his fingers enter the newly-opened fly and grip his already-stiffening member. His left hand feels around on the window sill. He knows he left his binoculars there last time the little trollop was out in the yard, but he cannot tear his gaze from her even for an instant to search for them. He doesn't have to. He finds them by touch and brings them up to his ageing eyes. Now he can see the disgusting things she's doing much more clearly. He can see the way her large mound moves as she touches it.


It gets worse. She starts to use two hands, pushing her oversized bosoms together, squeezing them in her fingers. Her mouth is open. He can see her teeth. He doesn't realise that his own jaw is also open and that his tongue is now hanging out as his right hand strokes his shaft with increasing insistence.


The binoculars are trembling in his hand. That's partly because of his ageing fingers, but mostly because his whole body is shaking as he masturbates. A drop of saliva falls unnoticed from the tip of his tongue as he sees the girl sliding her fingers under the flimsy cloth of her bikini, exposing more and more of her creamy breast as she does so. Her eyes are closed, and Randolph can tell she's losing herself to her lust. It's unbelievably vile that she can allow that to happen. The movement of his right hand speeds up a little.


Down on the recliner, a low moan is passing through Kim’s rich open lips. She is surrendering to the wonderful sensations in her body caused by her hands as they massage her chest. Her eyes, which have been shut for a minute or so, open and look down at her fingertips as they compress and stroke her large breasts. A small part of her mind is curious to know why the feelings are so intense. After some moments of self-examination, she decides that upper body looks the same as it did yesterday, it just feels different. Not just different, in fact. Better. She rests her head backwards as is just about to close her eyes once more when something moving in the very periphery of her vision catches her attention.


The far side of the lawn lies in shade as two large, leafy trees stand between it and the afternoon sun, casting their shadows. But standing out from the relative darkness over there is a bright patch of light on the grass. It could be caused by a glint of sunlight finding its way between the branches of one of the trees, but that’s unlikely. The area of light is dancing about on the lawn whereas the trees are dead still in the hot, windless afternoon. That brightness must be the result of something else…  perhaps the sun glinting off something shiny. Something shiny that’s moving around rapidly. Maybe it’s something behind her. She turns to look and as she does so, the patch of light suddenly disappears. She sees nothing that might have caused it – nothing is moving behind her… except…

What was that? Her eyes flick to where she thought she’d detected some motion. She’s looking at the upper storey of the house next door. Is that… yes. Yes. She’s certain now. The curtain in one of the upstairs rooms is twitching, as if someone has just hurried to hide behind it. Kim realises immediately what has happened. Someone’s been watching her as she played with herself. And there’s only one person in that house. The miserable old man. She’d noticed him checking her out quite a few times since she’d grown up. Now he was taking it one step further. He was perving on her from the window. The filthy old bastard, spying on her. “Well, old man,” she thought, turning away from his house once more, “if that’s want you want, I’ll give you a show you’ll never forget. Let’s see if your heart can take it.”


Randolph eases the curtain about half an inch away from the widow and peers cautiously through the tiny gap. The relief when he sees the girl reclining with her back to him once more is palpable. For a moment, he feared she saw him watching her. But it turns out she’s as stupid as she is degenerate. No match for a man as worldly and intelligent as he. Not only has she failed to spot him, but she hasn’t even found cause to stop her filthy self-manipulation. Her hand is already inside her bikini top once more, already squeezing her breast. And what’s this? Her other hand venturing inside the waist band of her knickers! He grabs the binoculars again. He can see her fingers moving about inside that tiny lower garment. She’s touching her sex! How repulsive. That is not what nature intended. He recommences stroking his penis as he watches and thinks about the wrongness of it all.


Kim is so wrapped up in the way her body feels as she touches it – so much better than when any boy has done it and quite a few boys have in the past eighteen months – that she almost forgets that she has an audience. Whilst her right hand is buried inside her panties, its index finger extended to trace circles around her moistening labia, her left is thrust into her top. Her dainty, feminine fingers aren't long enough to completely encircle her left breast, but it's wonderful the way they're digging into that soft, sensitive flesh.


Remembering that she's being watched, she sensuously digs her fingers under her mound and scoops her entire, heavy breast out of her bikini, lifting it slightly so that her voyeur can get a good view of its round perfection and the glorious, erect nipple that crowns it. She bends her head towards that wonderful breast, and slowly, with practised erotic expertise, extends her pink tongue. She licks her nipple repeatedly, surprised by the astonishingly gorgeous sensation, taking her time as she traces around it with the tip of her tongue.


Her left hand's index finger has now been joined by two of its colleagues. She's working the three digits more and more energetically around the entrance to her sex. Her fingertips slip on her increasingly wet flesh, sliding over her body and plunging a little inside her. It's like an explosion in her mind, so strong is the wave of pleasure that fills her entire being. Losing track of her surroundings for real this time, she throws her head back, her eyes shut, her breast still bared. Her right hand rolls and pinches her big nipple as her left rhythmically darts a short way in and out of her vagina. It's never, ever, felt this good before.

 

Randolph has already been pushed over the edge of control. The sight of the girl pornographically licking her ripe mound is more, far more, than he can take without erupting. He has to drop his binoculars to grab a fresh kleenex from the box he keeps handy for these occasions. After shuddering for a few moments in guilty, obscene pleasure, he wipes his penis and his leg, the carpet beneath him and the wall beneath the window where some of his seed has landed. Then, he heads into the bathroom, throwing the soiled tissue disgustedly into the toilet, and flushing it to destroy the evidence of his moral weakness. All that remains is for him to scrub the stench of degenerate sexuality from his body in the shower.

 

The old man is still rinsing soap off himself under the stream of warm water as Kim, who has forgotten about him entirely, feels her orgasm begin to build. Her fingers are working frenetically now. One set is intensely rubbing the entrance to her sex and teasing the opening of her love-canal with expertly applied movements, the other is squeezing and stroking her breast and her nipple in particular, generating sensations that reverberate within her more forcefully than any she's ever known. She already knows that the release that is approaching may well be the most passionate and explosive of her life, and that its arrival is almost guaranteed now. As long as she can keep stimulating herself as she is now doing. Her eyes are closed, the features of her face slightly contorted as the overwhelming physical sensation takes full control of her body.

 

In anticipation of the imminent, fabulous, internal eruption, Kim grabs her big breast as tightly as she can, her other hand plunging deep inside her vagina. A burst of sexual pleasure rips through her and, without thinking, she arches her back violently. There's a cracking sound which she barely registers, but then she cannot help but notice as the sun lounger suddenly collapses beneath her, its plastic legs giving way so that the chair, with her on top, falls the eighteen inches to the lawn. The jolt distracts her for a moment. Her eyes open instinctively, and she realises immediately what was happened. She curses the cheapness and poor quality of the garden furniture and that is enough to disturb the rhythm she has spent so much time and energy building towards. The moment has gone. She removes her hands from her intimate zones, rearranging her bikini and then placing her palms flat on the grass either side of her.


Kim sits up. The frustration of her close call with sheer ecstasy is prominent in her mind. She glances down at the wreckage of recliner that is beneath her. If it wasn't for that heap of junk, she'd probably still be riding the waves of a glorious orgasm. She takes a deep breath that makes her large breasts rise even more prominently than usual on her chest and, pouting her gorgeous lips, theatrically sighs. She's shocked to hear a sound like a hurricane. A tree twenty yards in front of her shakes violently for a moment, as if caught in a sudden wind-storm, and every single leaf is torn from its branches and sent flying. A second later, everything is calm again. The noise has ceased and the displaced leaves are slowly floating down to the ground, making a dark green carpet in the far corner of the lawn, some distance behind the now naked tree.

 

Kim sits for a moment in shock. She's never experienced anything like that before. It's not just the remarkably powerful gust of wind that came from nowhere and disappeared so quickly. It's the fact that the wind coincided with her dramatic sigh. It kind of felt at the time as if the hurricane was actually coming from … from her – through her mouth. Maybe she should – just to put her mind at ease – try blowing, and see if the same thing happens again. But before she can resolve to do that, her cell-phone starts to ring. She glances down and sees it on the broken recliner beside her. She grabs it to answer the call as she has already done twelve times today. But this time, as her fingers close around the handset, something strange happens. The phone crumbles into little pieces in her grip. She doesn't even feel it resisting for a moment. It just seems to dissolve between her fingertips.


Now Kim is completely confused. Something really weird is going on. She brings her right hand up to her face and examines it, turning her fingers slowly in front of her gaze. It looks the same as ever. Carefully, she picks up a piece of phone-debris and squeezes it between her fingertips. She doesn't use much pressure – less in fact than she was using to stimulate her nipple moments before – but the solid lump of plastic shatters instantly into countless smaller chunks. Intrigued, she places her left palm on the handrest of the broken recliner she's still sitting on. It's made of metal, covered in decorative fabric but when she pushes down, she feels the solid frame yielding beneath the fabric. A loud metallic groan confirms her suspicions. She's compressing the thing with her hand! "Oh my god!" she thinks, jumping up onto her feet.

 

Kim bends down and grips the edge of the recliner with her right hand. As she straightens up, she's stunned by how easily she lifts the entire lounger with that single arm. She's moved this chair many times before, and she knows how heavy it always felt, but now it seems utterly weightless to her. She tries raising it above her head and lowering it a few times, and finds it's completely effortless. She tightens her grip, and hears and feels the metal tubing succumbing to her fingers as if it were wet cardboard. "What the fuck?" she asks herself. Experimentally, she tries to toss the recliner into the air. "Shit!" she exclaims as her careful toss sends the large folding chair rocketing into the sky. Her head is tilted back as she watches, amazed as the thing gets smaller and smaller. Soon, it gets lost in the glare of the sun.


Instinctively, she blinks, and to her amazement, her eyes seem to adjust to the brightness and she can once again make out the tiny dot that is the recliner still rising into the atmosphere. She can tell it's still travelling away from her, despite its remarkable distance from her now. It's about to disappear from her view altogether when she blinks again and suddenly, she can see the thing in detail once more. It's as though her eyes have zoomed in, like a telephoto lens on a camera. When she briefly closes her eyes and reopens them, the view returns to normal and the recliner is almost too small to spot at all. She spends a few seconds alternating between  "zoomed in" and normal views of it until she's confident she can control whatever it is. It's awesome.

 

The chair is finally beginning its descent. She's no idea how high it peaked, but some time has passed since she tossed it upwards. She watches it coming down and glancing between the object and the ground, realises that she can predict where it will land. She can't quite understand how or why, but she's absolutely confident that the broken recliner is going to crash down onto the roof of the house next door. The old pervert's house. She smiles. If she'd been given the choice, that's the place of impact she would have chosen. She wonders if it will do much damage. She has to wait ten long seconds to find out. The chair hits the roof with a sound like a small bomb detonating. Bits of smashed plastic fly off in all directions, clattering against the house and the pavement around it. A small cloud of dust rises from the point of the main collision and she hears a muffled sound, like something heavy falling inside the house itself. "Wow!" she says, as the realisation that she is responsible for the damage sinks in. She's amazed, and more than a little proud.

 

Her curiosity is rampant now. She has to know if the business with the recliner was some kind of fluke. Can she really, suddenly, be incredibly strong? She casts her eyes around the yard, looking for something to test herself with. There's nothing obvious around. Her gaze settles on the big redwood tree that spectacularly lost all its leaves a minute before. Thinking of that strange incident, she wonders. Did she do that too? If her fingers were now strong enough to crush a cell-phone to dust and her arm contained enough force to easily throw a big garden lounger into the sky, were her lungs also inexplicably more powerful? She turns her face towards the wide-spread carpet of leaves on the lawn and tentatively exhales a very measured breath through her pursed lips. Immediately, she hears the same sound of rushing wind that accompanied the initial stripping of the tree. The leaves on the ground are picked up by an invisible force and tossed backwards, dancing in the air as they fly away from her. She stops blowing and the gale-like noises cease at once. A second later, the leaves stop moving and settle back onto the lawn.

 

Kim laughs out loud. This is just so cool! She walks excitedly up to the trunk of the big tree. It's huge. If she were to hug it with her arms fully extended, they'd barely reach half-way around. But she's not in a hugging mood. She extends one hand towards the bark and jabs it carefully with her index finger. To her delight, her petite digit sinks into the solid tree as if she'd poked it into a slab of near-molten butter. She wiggles her finger about and is stunned by how easy it is for her to enlarge the hole she's made. She can hardly even feel the wood resisting as her slender digit carves out big chunks of it. Pulling her hand away, she pauses for a moment, then comes to a decision. She makes a fist. Her hand is small and feminine and seems to carry no threat. But when she punches the tree, it sounds like a muffled gun-shot and a shower of bark and wood fragments spray out. It felt like hitting a sponge, but she can see her arm buried almost up to her elbow in the tree. Effortlessly, she pulls her hand free, admiring the damage she's caused.

 

"What the fuck's happening to me?" she mutters, examining her hand for any sign of an injury and finding none. "I'm like, totally fucking strong. I've got to try this some more!" She racks her brain for a moment, trying to think up a new test for her apparent strength. She looks at the huge tree with the hole she's just created. "No way!" she thinks. "But.. I've got to try." She walks right up to the trunk. It's hard not to be intimidated by its sheer size, but she's determined to go through with her experiment. She opens her arms and reaches them around the tree. To get any kind of purchase, she has to lean into the thing. Her large breasts press against the trunk, briefly reminding her of the wonderful sensations she was enjoying a few minutes ago. Wanting more of that indescribable pleasure, she briefly removes her hands from the trunk, reaching behind herself to unclasp her bikini top and lets it fall at her feet. Now bare-chested, she leans forward against the tree, savouring the feeling of the rough bark against her breasts. She hears a loud crunch and, looking down, sees that a large area of the trunk has crumbled around her naked bust.


"No fucking way!" she exclaims, delighted. She rotates her upper body slightly and watches as the side of her right breast carves a massive channel out of the solid tree. She turns in the other direction and is rewarded by the sight of her left mound causing similar damage. Pressing herself hard against the trunk, she sees how, rather than compressing against it, her chest keeps its rounded shape and it is the wood that yields – chipping, snapping and breaking off in chunks. She takes a step back and stares at the deep, wide recess her bare breasts have torn out of the tree. "Even my tits are super-strong! This is totally awesome!" she comments. She brings her hands up to cup herself, and notices that there's no trace of any scratch or bruise anywhere on her big mounds. Her body feels great to her touch, yet she barely even noticed the resistance when she had been using it to carve out the tree.


She bends down to retrieve her bikini top and fastens it over her generous, youthful chest. Approaching the trunk once more, she's pleased to note that there's now a pre-cut recess to accommodate her big bust. She stretches her hands as far as she can around the tree, and presses them into the bark. There's a series of cracking and creaking noises as her palms sink a little into the wood. Her forearms also push an inch or so into the trunk. Confident of her purchase now, she tentatively tries to pull upwards. Nothing happens at first. She pulls a little harder and hears something groaning inside the tree. Encouraged by this, she keeps lifting. A large chunk of trunk breaks off under her left hand. She lets it fall and re-adjusts her grip. She's not straining. She is conscious of the strength flowing into her arms and she can tell, somehow, that there is much much more of that power available for her if she requires it. But she doesn't need it now. The ground below her shifts a little. She can see the lawn beginning to tear in a few places near her feet as the tree's roots breach the surface.


The creaking sound increases in volume and intensity. It's fantastic to think she's exerting so much power. She's smiling as she continues to pull her arms upwards. There's a series of sharp snaps, followed by the loudest creak yet and then a crack and suddenly, her arms shoot up about six inches. She has to look to see that the four-yard-diameter tree trunk has torn completely in half at her waist height. Even though she's now supporting the entire weight of the top five-sixths of the tree, branches and all, she hardly registers the load on her arms. It's only the lack of resistance to her lift, brought about by the trunk breaking in two, that has captured her attention. She looks up at the huge bare tree that is dwarfing her. "I'm so fucking strong!" she exclaims, excitedly raising and lowering the massive object with far greater ease than she would have lifted a single branch this morning.


Even though it has already lost all its leaves to a puff of her breath, the broken tree is still top heavy. Its weight might be negligible to her, but maintaining balance, what with the base that she's holding being far, far too wide for her arm-span, is difficult. After tossing the whole thing several yards into the air and catching it again as if it were nothing more than a beachball three times, she inevitably loses control of the massive tree on the fourth attempt. She grabs the bottom of the trunk as it falls, but does not manage to keep the rest upright. Gravity takes over and the top part of the tree begins to fall earthwards. She's still holding the other end off the lawn, but the thing has tipped beyond rescue now and its upper portion is crashing down towards the ground. She tries to get a better purchase to regain control, and succeeds only in crushing a large section of lower trunk to matchsticks between her palms.


The top half of the tree accelerates on its way to ground. Only now does Kim realise just how tall it once was. Laid on its side, the thing is too long to fit inside the yard. The top of the ex-tree crashes unceremoniously onto the fence that marks the boundary with her neighbour's land. The wooden posts offer no resistance to the falling weight, instantly breaking as the giant plant finally comes to rest, one quarter of it now lying inside her neighbour's yard, the ruins of a section of fencing buried beneath it. She's still holding what's left of the far edge in her hands. "Ooops!" she giggles, looking at the damage she's caused to the old man's fence.


From her holding position right at one end of the tree, raising the battered trunk back to vertical looks like it will be difficult, given the unfavourable lack of leverage. So she is pleasantly surprised to find that with very little effort, she can lift the fallen tree off of the broken fence and back into the air directly above her. Extending her arms, she holds the torn trunk over her head and tosses it upwards, taking care not to lose balance when she catches it on the way down.

Randolph is standing in a towelling robe outside his bathroom, shaking his head as he looks at the mess caused by a huge chunk of plaster that has fallen from the ceiling. When he heard the crash from the shower, his first thought was that something had fallen onto the roof of his house from a passing airplane. He ran out, grabbing the robe, to investigate. He found the hallway full of dust and quickly identified the dislodged plaster, but was relieved to note that the roof itself appeared to be still intact. Not that it matters, he thinks with a heavy heart. There's no longer a Sherman crystal up there collecting solar energy. Thanks to that delinquent whore next door, his forty-year experiment has ended in total failure. His dream of power is, like the hallway ceiling, in ruin. It might be the dust irritating his retinas, but it's more likely it's the sense of loss that causes a single tear to appear in his left eye.


He needs something to wipe his eye. Whatever other household supplies he might run out of, he always, always, makes sure that there's a supply of Kleenex, along with his trusty binoculars, within easy reach of his bedroom window. He makes his way there, his vision blurred and grabs a tissue. He cleans his eye and blinks. He's facing the window and that's why he notices the broken fence. "What happened there?" he wonders. "Did that happen at the same time as the ceiling? It looks smashed, not like it's just fallen over, but like something has crashed on to it. Maybe something did fall out of an airplane after all. What's that moving over there? Did that tree just jump into the air? What the …" At this point his thoughts switch gear from silent to spoken aloud. "Oh my god! No! No! It can't be! It can't!"


 

 

CHAPTER 3

Randolph runs as fast as his bruised, ageing limbs can manage, nearly tripping more than once on his towelling robe. His mind races with questions, but it already knows the answer to the key one. He didn't fire the transfer-beam at thin air … he fired it directly into the obscenely-shaped body of that slut of a teenaged girl. The same slut of a teenaged girl who had caused him, by her immodest clothing, to misfire the beam in the first place. He thought his life's work had simply vanished into the ionosphere. Now he realises the truth, and it's far, far worse. The idea that no-one would ever reap the benefits of his labour seemed a cruel, bitter blow. But the fact is that someone – someone so repulsive – has profited from all the energy it took him so long to gather … It's too much! He could have almost borne losing the power he has so patiently craved if no-one else would ever gain it. But he cannot accept that he is to get nothing – nothing at all – and that this trollop is to have everything.


How could fate play so cruel a trick on him? To take the fruit of his genius and forty years of waiting and hand it to the least deserving, most ignorant, morally-bankrupt of adolescents! Worse: an undeserving, ignorant, morally-bankrupt adolescent GIRL. A whore of the lowest kind. Who dresses not to hide her shameful allurements but to expose them more temptingly. Who not only flaunts her sexuality but actually enjoys it! Who lures upstanding citizens to surrender to their own basest impulses.


With the power, he would have changed the world. He would have forced all the degenerates like her to accept decency and morality, to show him the respect he deserves as a scientist without equal, a man of values far beyond the lax society in which he's forced to live. He would no longer have been vulnerable to the witch-like tricks of women. He would have been the master, the one to punish their witchcraft with proper justice. The one to make them regret their degenerate displays of so-called feminine power with his own, pure, male authority. He would have risen above the ethical decay to lead by example – once he had taught her and her ilk the consequence of her ways. Now, instead of him being in a position to correct the likes of that slut, it's she who has the power to do as she pleases and he who is powerless to do anything to stop her. She can flaunt her obscene body as much as she wishes, using it to confuse and distract upstanding men like himself to her heart's desire.


Just the thought of her disgusting body and what she can now do with it makes him want to scream. She's lifting a tree with those long, shapely arms! It should be him with that incredible strength. Who knows what else that trollop might do with her powers? Whilst he has nothing to look forward to but the final degeneration of his weakening, frail body, she can now pervert his dream in ways he dare not even imagine. He cannot abide the thought of those obscene, over-sized breasts, which she loves to display so immodestly, now even firmer than before, possessing the strength and power that he had dreamed about for so long. She can probably crush stone with those mounds now. She can flaunt them, destroying the moral fibre of helpless men as she goes about her selfish, ignorant ways. It horrifies him to think about it all. It's the complete opposite of his plans and his hopes. His dream has become a nightmare.


Randolph tears out into the yard. "What are you doing with my power?" he practically screams at the slim big-breasted teenager in the red bikini who's carrying a massive tree like it's a matchstick. "That energy is mine!"


"Hey, what's your problem, old man?" Kim asks from behind the huge tree trunk.

 

"You've absorbed the energy from my Sherman crystal! My transfer-beam must have hit you as you walked past my garage. It's my power! You stole it!"

 

"Your power? Transfer beam? You mean, like, you zapped me with something? Dude, is that, like, legal?"

 

"Yes! No! Who cares?! You took the power of my crystal!" "So 'cos of your shitty aim I've, like, got superpowers now? That's pretty funny."

 

"It's not funny! It's a disaster!"

 

"Seems funny to me. I mean, you build a super-ray and then you can't even shoot it straight ‘cos you're so old and feeble so I get the superpowers!"

 

"No. That energy is mine! They're MY superpowers!"

 

Kim tosses the huge tree into the air and catches it once more. She's getting better and better at keeping it balanced. "They don't feel like YOUR powers to me!" she says.

 

"I've been working on that process for forty years, you ignorant trollop!"

 

"No wonder you're so pissed off then. Looks like you fucked up big time, pervert." She pauses for a moment, as if considering her final verdict. After about three seconds' thought – which is all he deserves in her opinion – she pronounces: "Bummer for you, funny for me!" A gentle lifting of her arms sends the whole tree spinning into the air. It crashes down just a yard away from Randolph, making the ground shudder and the old man jump back in terror. "Ooops, sorry. That's gonna take you a while to clean up!" Kim says.

 

Randolph can almost feel his blood boiling inside his brain. "You little whore! You've stolen my life's work!" He screeches. With an arm raised over his head, he charges as best he can at his age, wearing a towelling robe, through the gap in the fence between the two yards.

 

Kim doesn't move, but she does put her hands cockily on her hips and retort with "Well, you should've thought of that before you zapped me with your transformer-thing."

 

"Whore!" Randolph yells as he leaps at the girl. She turns her head, closes her eyes and flinches from his first blow. Something isn't right. She can hear slaps – one, two, three, four now – but she can only detect what feels like raindrops on the top of her head. The old man is yelling now. "Ow … Ow … What have you done to my hand, trollop?" Slowly she opens her eyes. She sees her neighbour clutching is right hand with his left. The right is turning purple with bruises. Before she can work out what's going on, he hits her with his left. At least, she thinks he hits her. He definitely strikes at her, but she feels nothing other than another light tap before he screams and pulls his hand away. It takes Kim quite a few moments to work it all out.

 

"Hey! I'm in venerable!" she announces.

 

"The word is 'invulnerable' you ignorant, thieving whore!" Randolph hisses between clenched teeth, clearly in pain as he nurses his damaged hands.

 

"This is so fucking cool!" Kim trills. "I gotta show my friends!"

 

Before Randolph can even begin to formulate a response, she seems to dissolve into a pink-and-red smear. A rush of displaced wind almost knocks him off his feet.

 

"Wow!" it's the girl's voice, but it sounds like it's coming from a long way behind him. That can't be – she was standing in front of him a second ago. But when he turns around and looks, it is her. She's at the other end of the yard now, one foot already in her house. "I'm like, ultra-fucking-fast! Awesome!"

 

"Come back you slut! Those are MY powers!" Randolph yells, the despair evident in his voice. For a second time, the girl becomes a streak of colour. The next thing he knows, he's staggering backwards as a wall of wind briefly hits him from the front. He recovers his balance only to be shocked almost off his feet once more as she seems to materialise just a foot in front of him. She's so close, he cannot help but glare down at her stunning cleavage, so well-displayed by her red bikini. She notices, and smiles, pushing out her large breasts and taking a mini-step towards him.

 

"You're such a perv, old man." Kim tells him, slowly moving her chest from side to side under his gaze so that his eyeballs oscillate from one side to the other, like a hypnotist's victim staring at a swinging pocket-watch. "Just look at your eyes following my bod! What a joke!"

 

"How dare you speak to me like that you trollop!" Randolph shouts, but the impact of his chastisement is lost as his eyes remained glued to her breasts. Beneath them, her hand streaks out, but he doesn't have time to react. He feels a tug on his waist and hears a tearing sound. He looks down, beyond the twin mounds that have been filling his vision and realises that she's torn his towelling robe open. The loose material falls around his ankles, leaving him standing naked from the waist down. Now his obvious admiration for her nubile body is clearly on display, his grey-haired, erect penis fully exposed.

 

Kim looks down at the disgusting sight of the old man's prick. "That'll learn the old pervert," she smiles to herself. Then, she thinks of something really clever to say to him. "No wonder they call you Randy, pervert." she sneers at him, very pleased with her wit.

 

"Whore!" Randolph explodes. But the girl becomes a blur before the word has even left his lips. She moves too quickly for him to even know in which direction she has gone. “Trollop!” Randolph spits. "Thieving whore!"

 

She has his power. All of it. It's worse than if he'd fired it into the air. "Now," he thinks to himself, "this disgraceful slut has it all in her disgusting body … Wait a minute! If the transfer-beam filled her body with energy from the Sherman crystal, then maybe I can find a way to reverse the process and draw the energy back into the crystal … Yes, it must be possible … And once I get the energy into the crystal then I can re-transfer it into my body. Into its rightful owner. And then, that whore will pay for her disrespect." He bends low, wincing in pain, as he picks up the torn piece of towelling robe from his feet. He holds it in front of his naked groin as he makes his way back into his house.

 


 

CHAPTER 4

Kim feels as if she's jogging gently down the sidewalk but she realises from the way that everything else, including the cars on the road, appears to be static in comparison that she's actually running remarkably fast. "Like, hundreds of miles an hour!" she thinks to herself. It's funny the way that every pedestrian she passes gets knocked over by her slipstream without her even needing to touch them. She wonders if it's because she's so super she makes everyone else faint in awe. Of course, the truth is that none of them have any idea what's happened to them. Even she realises she's moving far too fast to be seen. It's all just so cool. She's not even getting tired or out of breath with all the running, even though she's never been any good at sports. Now, she knows, she could smash every single world record for running. "And weightlifting, too," she reminds herself, thinking of her adventures with the tree in the yard. "And fuck knows what else!" That sets her thinking as she runs.

 

Spotting a trash can left out in the middle of the sidewalk, she decides to see if she'd be any good at hurdling. Of course, she's got no concept of the correct technique. She doesn't need one. She launches herself mid-stride – not at all ungracefully for a complete novice – with a fairly lazy leap. She's not making any effort to run fast, and she didn't make a lot of effort to lift that tree, so why should she do any different with her hurdle? She's right not to push herself off the ground too hard. As it is, the concrete pavement under her foot crumbles to dust as she takes off. She clears the trash can that was a yard from her lift-off point with no bother. In fact, she's still rising from the ground. She sails over the heads of a couple of pedestrians. The sidewalk flashes past beneath her. Glancing to the side, she passes the second floor windows of a building. Then the third floor of the next. "Fuck, this is awesome!" she thinks as she counts the number of green ties being worn by office-workers on the fifth floor of an insurance company. She knows that in reality, she's moving too fast for any of those guys – no matter what colour tie they're wearing – to even see her pass.

 

The trash-can is a distant memory as Kim's vast leap carries her high over an intersection, the cars and trucks like toys below her. She looks down at them, so far, so very far beneath her feet. "This is cool," she thinks. "I'm way up here with all these new powers and they're all way down there, so small and so slow in comparison. It kinda feels right like that." She's only now entered the descent phase of her enormous arc. She passes fourth floor windows, then third floor then … Then she thinks about her landing. She's pretty sure she can't fly, so she knows she's going to meet the ground pretty soon. Will she be able to control herself? Will she smash through the sidewalk? Or through some innocent pedestrian and then through the sidewalk? "If that happens," she tells herself, "it'll be that old man's fault for zapping me with his super-ray, not mine anyway." Still, she's a little nervous as she scans the pavement ahead and below. She can work out where she's going to land, and she sees there's a couple of guys just walking past the spot. She's knows she’s got to concentrate on her knees and bend them just right when she lands to absorb the shock …

 

It turns out to be pretty easy. The timing of it, the knowing exactly how much to bend her knees as she hits the concrete … it all seems to come naturally to her. "I can, like, do anything now!" she smiles to herself. She lands on both feet like a gymnast. Her legs absorb a huge proportion of the impact. So much so, that the – admittedly slightly cracked – pavement beneath her bare feet is less damaged where she lands than it was where she took off. Her leap has covered over a block and a half. "So fucking cool!". She comes to ground about eighteen inches behind the two guys and the shockwaves of her arrival, or maybe the jolt on the sidewalk, send them both sprawling, face first. It takes them a while to move. One of them has a bleeding, broken nose. The other has badly hurt his arm. Kim is already a blur in the distance by then. "Serves them right for being in my way" is the only thought she spares the two injured men.

 

In the time it has taken Kim to run a couple of miles through the town, Randolph has just managed to go back into his house. He goes upstairs and starts putting on some clothes. As he dresses, he's already thinking about the changes he will need to make to his energy-transfer-beam-generator so that it will function in reverse, drawing all the undeserved power out of that disgusting slut and returning it to his Sherman crystal. He imagines what it will be like to watch the strength being drained from that little whore. Her cries of protestation as he takes away what should never have been hers. The pathetic high-pitched moans as she begs him to leave her with just a few shreds of HIS powers. He cannot wait to see her obscene slim-waisted, full-busted body reduced to its proper state of weakness and vulnerability. And then … then he can restore the energy to its rightful owner. Himself. He makes his way slowly, painfully downstairs to his garage and bends to peer inside his ray device. There's a lot of work to be done in there. But the theory suggests it should all be within his abilities. He is, after all, a genius. That ignorant juvenile trollop could never build a machine as magnificent as this. "That's why I will triumph in the end!" he assures himself, reaching for a screwdriver.


By now, Kim has blurred through the centre of town and is heading towards the suburbs. It's terrific zipping past everyone else like they were just statues. She doesn't have to wait for anything or anyone and she loves it. She's in an area which she knows well. It's where a number of her friends live, and she often hangs out here. She thinks about going to one of their houses and maybe showing off a little. And then she spots the familiar hoardings of Luigi's Leaning Tower of Pizza. It used to be her favourite restaurant. It used to be the place where she went every weekend with her friends and with dates. Until the night when Luigi, the miserable prude, had thrown her out and told her he'd never let her back in again. And for what? For daring to have a good time with … with what’s-his-name. She couldn't remember which guy she was with that night – it might have been Brad, or Steve, maybe even Todd – but that wasn't the important detail. What was important was that Luigi ruined the meal by constantly asking her to stop sticking her tongue down whichever-boy-it-was' throat. Then, he found them together in a cubicle in the women's restroom.
 

What the hell was he doing in the women's room anyway, the pervert? Kim remembers her anger as he stood watch whilst she and whoever put their clothes back on, threatening to phone their parents if they didn't leave immediately by the back door and never come back. "Why would anyone want to come back and eat your greasy pizza?" she had called over her shoulder as the door was closing. She hates that stuck-up jerk. He's nearly as bad as the pervert next door with his binoculars and his crazy ray-guns … An idea dawns on Kim. For the first time since she sprinted out of her yard at home, she stops moving. She's been running at hundreds of miles an hour, but now she stops. She doesn't slow down or ease off, she just stops dead in the space of a single stride. It's all so easy! She celebrates the glory of her physical powers by spinning on the spot with pure joy, her nubile body rotating hundreds of times a second. The wind, which her brief spin displaces, sends people up to fifteen yards away sprawling. Some of them barely have time to register the shock of seeing a teenaged girl materialise out of thin air on the sidewalk before they're knocked off their feet. Kim giggles at the sight of them all, not even considering the possibility that some of them might be hurt. It’s not as though she cares if they are, anyway.


Thinking of the old man's ray, her new superpowers and the prude in the restaurant, Kim beams brightly. Now that she's super-strong and super-fast and she didn't even feel it when the ancient perv tried to slap her, how's a jerk like Luigi going to stop her doing whatever she wants in his restaurant? "This is going be cool!" she thinks as she jogs across the street, at a normal, human speed, giving the finger to a car that brakes just in time to avoid colliding with her. She walks arrogantly up to the door to Luigi's Leaning Tower of Pizza, and gives it a careless, one-handed shove. Instead of flying open, the door seems to explode inwards, its copious glass shattering into countless fragments that ping against her face and body – most of which is left exposed by her brief two-piece bikini. The shards of glass feel like confetti to her but a customer, sitting at a table some five yards away yells in shock as some pieces hit him in the face, cutting him in the cheek, the forehead and under his eye. The metallic frame of the door is badly bent where she pushed it, and, as a result, the thing is stuck in the open position. Kim glances at the damage and thinks "That was cool!" as she walks in.


Luigi hurries from behind the counter. He glances from his wounded customer to Kim and says to her "You break-a my door! You gonna pay-a for that. But you cannot-a come in-a like-a that. You put on-a some clothes!"


"No, I want to come in like this." Kim sneers back. After all, she considers, there's no fucking way somebody super is going to follow some pizza-jerk's stupid dress-code! "Don't you like my body?" she asks, out loud, leaning forward and hugging her chest with her forearms so that her cleavage stands out more than ever. "I bet this makes the bastard hard as a rock." she thinks to herself.


"You!" Luigi replies, as recognition dawns on him. "You are-a banned from my restaurant! Get-a out!"


"Make me." says Kim, really starting to enjoy herself.


"Why, you-a little-" Luigi is interrupted by another shout of pain from the customer who was hit by flying glass. Over his shoulder, he calls in the direction of the kitchen. "Bruno, bring-a da first-aid-a box!" Then he takes a step towards Kim, who has abandoned her glamour model pose for a more natural, but only slightly less alluring one-hand-on-hip, one-knee-casually-bent stance. "You get-a out at once!" he bellows, trying to sound as authoritative as he can. Kim just giggles. She's not in the slightest intimidated. She's coming to the understanding that being this powerful means she doesn't have to accept anybody else's authority any more. "I will not-a tell you again! I call-a the police!" He steps closer, making himself look as intimidating as possible, but the girl just has that stupid grin on her face. He moves to grab her arm. Suddenly, she's not there anymore. A strong wind zips past his right, making him stumble before he can regain his balance. The girl has simply disappeared.


"Superspeed is awesome" Kim thinks to herself as she effortlessly zips around Luigi. "He doesn't even know, like, where I've gone!"She realises she'll have to tell him.


"Looking for me?" her voice calls out. But it's behind him. He whirls around and sees her standing inside his restaurant, her hand still comfortably rested on her shapely hip.


"How … how … did …"


"What happened here?" that's Bruno's deep voice as he enters the main restaurant, carrying a small green box with a large white cross on it. He's a tall man in his mid-thirties, broad shoulders, not exactly slim, but well-muscled. He hasn't shaved for at least three days. Kim turns to see him and stares for a second. Bruno meets her gaze and stares back. Kim slowly licks her lips sluttishly. Bruno shifts his weight uneasily on his feet and swallows.


"Bruno, please-a help this-a gentleman." Luigi says, indicating the man with the cuts on his face. "The young-a lady is just-a leaving."

 

"No I'm not." Kim pouts. Just what is this jerk's problem? Doesn't he understand that she's not going anywhere until she wants to? She folds her arms under her chest, giving Luigi and Bruno an even better view of her breasts.

 

"For the last-a time, get-a out!" Luigi shouts, exasperated.

 

Bruno puts down the first aid box and walks towards Kim, laying his huge left palm under her petite elbow. "Come on," he says, "you'd better go."

Kim turns her head to look at Bruno. He might be a large man, but she's got superstrength. No way is she about to take orders from a pizza waiter. "You stay over there." she tells him, giving him a very gentle push in the stomach. She's careful to use less force than she used on the door, but still Bruno's big frame lifts from the floor and flies over a couple of tables to crash down on top of another which collapses beneath him. He's left lying on broken wood, a table cloth, and a mess of cutlery. He gasps for air, but does not move. Luigi's eyes grow huge. He looks back at Kim who cocks her head to one side and parts her lips in a sexy, arrogant sneer. She's feeling exceptionally pleased with herself. Bruno's flight was spectacular to see, but she knows she only used a fraction of her strength to launch him. Tossing guys around like that is cool. Behind her, the man with the bloody face slowly stands up and, as discretely as possible, makes his way towards the door at the back of the restaurant that reads "Men".

 

Luigi reaches out with his left hand and picks up a large wooden pepper-mill. He brandishes it over his head like a weapon, lets a feral cry rise up from his throat and runs at Kim, intending to slam the pepper-mill down on top of her skull. "Oh, like that's really going to hurt me!" Kim laughs sarcastically to herself. She doesn't move an inch until he's right on top of her. She feels she has all the time in the world to react. Lazily, she reaches up, grabbing the wrist that's connected to the hand holding the bizarre weapon. She's amazed how easy it is to hold the big man's arm immobile. "This is just so easy!" she thinks as Luigi's face goes red and he starts to sweat. She keeps his arm in place without any effort. "Does he know how little effort I'm using to overpower him?" she wonders. She smiles at him, and he responds by punching her stomach. Kim hardly feels the blow, but she hears the Crunch! as the restaurateur’s hand breaks against her rock-hard, pancake-flat belly. He pulls his hand back, screaming. But his other arm is still trapped above her head by her delicate fingers. "Oh wow! He's busted his hand on my belly and it didn't hurt me one bit! How cool is that?" Kim thinks.

 

"What the fuck's going on?" Luigi demands through clenched teeth, breathing hard. Suddenly, his accent is native West-Coast.


"Hey, I thought you were supposed to be Spanish!" Kim says, not releasing his arm.
 

"Italian! I'm supposed to be a freakin' Italian, you stupid, dumb- aaaggghh!" Kim only squeezes his wrist gently. His yell is loud, but not quite as loud as the sound of his bones disintegrating. "Cool! I just squeeze a little and he goes crunch! So easy!” she says to herself.

 

Out loud, Kim pouts: "Aw, I liked it more when you were Indian."

 

"Ital-" Luigi begins.


"Oh just shut up!" Kim thinks. Before Luigi can correct her again, she uses her hold on his wrist to casually fling his entire body over her head. "Wow, it's about as hard as tossing an apple-core over my shoulder!" says the delighted voice in her head as her effortless movement lifts the bogus-foreigner into the air. “That'll teach him to call me 'stupid', the stupid jerk," she thinks. He's so light to her, that she misjudges the throw. He flies into the back of the restaurant, smacking into the far wall about six feet up with a horrible wet slap. He bounces down to the ground leaving a huge, dark red stain. "Fuck!" she thinks "That was just like something out of a movie! I love being super!"

 

"Whoops!" says Kim, for the benefit of her remaining audience. The men's room door bangs. That must have been the guy with the bleeding face! Kim realises that she could be in big trouble if he tells someone about what she's done. She's got to go after him. She becomes a blur as she runs into the bathroom, the wooden door flinging open so violently that it snaps into three pieces, each of which is embedded about an inch into the plaster wall. She takes a split-second to admire the damage she's caused. It's so cool being this strong! And so fast, too – the customer still hasn't had time to select a cubicle to hide in as she runs around him at super-speed and stops dead, just inches from him. The displaced air knocks him a step backwards. He stumbles. She's thrilled by the way he starts backing up towards a wall as she quickly advances on him.

 

"P… P … Please …" the man stammers, tears washing some of the blood off his face. Kim pauses for a moment. No-one has ever been scared of her before. It's a bit weird, really. This guy is older than her, and taller. She hasn't done anything to him, and he's already terrified of what she might do. Having superpowers is going to completely change the way other people treat her. Especially guys. "This is awesome!" she thinks. "This guy is like, shit-scared of me! Maybe I can have some fun with him."

 

She puts her hands on her hips to make herself look even more in charge. "Take off your clothes." she says. She has to concentrate not to start laughing when he obeys. It's so cool – he's actually shaking as he undoes the buttons on his trouser fly. In less than a minute, he's standing in his shorts and socks. "ALL your clothes." she says, trying to sound dominant. He hesitates for only a second before complying. She’s delighted. She really can make him do whatever she wants. When he's done, he puts his hands in front of his groin. "Hands behind your back!" she commands. He does as he is told. His trembling seems to get worse. She reaches for him, gently taking his manhood in her small hand. She's held quite a few before, but never under these circumstances. She's enjoying herself enormously. He rapidly starts to swell in her palm. "Not bad." she says. "Come with me." She doesn't give him any choice in that matter, gripping him painfully tightly by the shoulder and charging out of the men's room back into the restaurant, pulling him behind her. His feet hurry to keep up with her. Whenever he misses a step, she just drags him along the carpet. She’s not the slightest concerned for his comfort and carrying his weight doesn’t slow her down in any way, so she doesn’t care if he moves under his own power or hers.


She pulls the customer over to the wall where Bruno is still lying on the broken table. "No more escaping for you!" she thinks, "Not with super Kim on the scene." Bending low, she grabs the big waiter by the collar of his shirt and lifts him. He's so light! His huge hands rise to try and pull her comparatively tiny fingers off him, but his efforts come to nothing. She’s still got the naked customer in an unbreakable grip with her other hand. She sets Bruno on his feet and releases him. It's so much fun, dominating these big men. "What do you want?" Bruno croaks, rubbing his throat. "Money?" Kim is about to answer, when she stops herself. She hasn't thought about money. She just wanted to teach that Luigi a lesson. Now that he's dead – and he wasn't even a real Indian! – her priorities have shifted to making sure neither Bruno nor the other guy tell the police anything about her. But, why shouldn't she take some money while she's here? It's not like Luigi's going to be needing it … Plus, she reasons, she deserves it as compensation for that time Luigi threw her out.


"Yeah, money." Kim says to Bruno. "Hand it over." She arrogantly holds out her upturned palm in readiness to receive.

 

"It's in the register." Bruno tells her. "Over there."
 

"Well, you'd better, like, get it then." Kim tells him, glancing briefly at the ceiling in mock exasperation. Bruno edges nervously past her and makes his way to the register. It opens with a "Ding!" and he starts pulling out notes. Kim watches for a few seconds but soon gets bored and turns her attention back to the naked man whose arm she's still gripping. She can go back to testing out her power while she waits for Bruno to gather up the cash. "Do you like me?" she asks the guy with the cut face.

 

"Er … yes, yes." he says, completely scared.

 

"I mean, do you, you know, like my body?" Kim is learning fast that teasing guys, now that she has superpowers and she can throw them across the room if they attack her, is a lot more enjoyable than it used to be.

 

"Yes, yes."

 

"So, like, how come you haven't got a boner, then? Can't get it up?"

 

"Er … I … I …" he tries to reply. If he’s not even going to talk properly, he’s not going to be as much fun as she hoped. Kim wonders what she should do with him. She's got to do something to stop him telling the police all about her.

 

"You nearly got wood back in the men's room." she says. "Maybe you'd should just stay in there." The man says nothing. Kim seems to think for a bit. She realises that exiling the guy to the toilets won't stop him giving the cops a description of her. She's got to come up with a better plan. After all, she's super Kim now. Maybe she can find a more creative solution …

 

Then again, she reasons, why should she bother? It's not like she cares about what happens to him. She reaches her decision and announces it: "Fuck it. You can stay here. With Luigi." She pulls sharply on his arm and lets go. It’s enough to fling him, hard, into the back wall some ten yards away. He impacts directly on top of the stain Luigi left and spectacularly dissolves in gore, making a much larger area of fake-frieze wet and red. "Eeeuww. Gross!" Kim comments, pulling a face. But it's awesome to see the effects of her casual strength.

 

Watching over by the register, Bruno nearly vomits. Just as the girl didn't notice at all when he pressed the small red button under the counter a few moments before, he's relieved that she's also not looking now to see him pulling a pistol out of the bottom of the cash tray. With trembling hands, he points it at her.

 

"Put your hands up." he says. Kim spins around in the blink of an eye and freezes. "Shit!" she says to herself. She hasn't thought about guns. She doesn't feel quite as super for a moment.

 

"I said, 'Put your hands up', freak bitch!" Kim doesn't know what to do. Maybe she should just run out at super-speed. Or … wait! She knows. She'll do like she did with those leaves back in the yard and just blow at him and … But it's too late. Bruno is far, far too nervous to give her a chance to raise her hands. After all, she's already killed two guys. He pulls the trigger. Kim panics for an instant, her mind, quite out-of-character, filling with thoughts. One particular notion rises to the surface: "Why is the smoke just hanging motionless at the end of the barrel of the gun? No, wait. It's not motionless – it is moving, just very, very slowly." A few moments later, an object unhurriedly appears from inside the puff of smoke. It takes her a while to realise that it is a bullet. "Oh my god!" Kim thinks, "How totally cool is this? My super-speed has kicked in and I'm so fast, a bullet is like a snail to me. I don't have to worry about guns!"

 

Kim realises that she has time – plenty of time – to simply step out of the slug's path. She could even run out of the Leaning Tower of Pizza before the thing is halfway to where she's now standing. Or she could jog around the bullet as it hangs in the air, and grab the gun from Bruno before he knows what's happening. But, she's no longer afraid of the shot. Something travelling as slowly as this bullet appears to be cannot possibly harm her. She decides, mostly out of curiosity, to stand her ground and wait for the slug to reach her. She remembers the way the tree crumbled against her body without hurting her. She thinks "It'd be, like, so totally cool if gun-fire didn't affect me ‘cos then I'd be really, really super! I'd be, like, oh my god, the most powerful person in the world!" She smiles as the bullet leisurely floats towards her stomach.

 

It feels like a gentle tap from a pencil-eraser. The sensation is disappointing, really. She was expecting being shot to feel more noticeable. But it does look awesome. The bullet just seems to fold up on itself, compressing against her belly, getting shorter and wider until it just changes direction and starts moving away from her. Her stomach must be harder than steel! She laughs, the result of a mixture of emotions including relief and joy, and that seems to switch off her super-speed mode. The world reverts to its usual pace. The squashed bit of metal falls onto the floor midway between Kim and Bruno. She examines the flawless, smooth skin of her abdomen and can't even see a little red mark where the thing hit her. She's glad. She puts a lot of time and effort into her appearance and it would be really annoying if she got a blemish. Bruno, meanwhile is staring at her, the gun shaking violently in his hands, his jaw hanging open. "What the fuck?" he mutters. He’s in total shock. It's as if she's blowing his mind. It's so cool, it makes her laugh even more. That, in turn, makes Bruno even more terrified. He fires the gun at her again. And again. And again.

 

Kim doesn't bother to use her super-speed as Bruno shoots at her this time. She knows she doesn't need to. Besides, she wants to know what it's like when a bullet hits her in "normal mode". Of course, it's the same as before, just the lightest of little taps as the shots smack into her sexy, invulnerable body. She can't see them slowly crumpling up against her skin at this speed, but she can see them pinging off her wonderful flesh and clattering into the walls and floor. It's as if her silky skin is actually solid steel. One bullet hits her neck, another bounces off her nose, and another her cheek. To her initial amusement, one of Bruno's wasted bullets actually strikes her on her prominent left breast, about an inch outside her nipple. It feels quite nice, but nothing like as good as her own hands feel. When she glances down at the point of impact, she sees that a small hole has been torn in her red bikini. The area around the hole is charred black. Suddenly, she's less amused. "Hey, this is a new swimsuit, arsehole!" she tells Bruno, who by now is reduced to a quivering wreck, his mouth opening and closing as though he wants to speak, but can't think of any words.

 

In desperate panic, Bruno pulls the trigger again and again, but it's just clicking now. There's no more bullets left. He looks up to see the incredible bullet-proof girl now walking towards him. His terror is complete. He starts to back away behind the counter. Why haven't the police responded to the panic button yet? Still she's approaching. With nothing else to hand, he throws the now useless gun at her head.

 

Kim is pretty angry over the damage to her bikini. It's totally cool that bullets don't even hurt her, but if her clothes are going to get ruined, that's a bit of a bummer. At least her superpowers mean she can get a proper revenge on the jerk for messing up her swimsuit. She sees him tossing the pistol at her and thinks "Don't waste my time, asshole." After the ineffectiveness of live rounds, she cannot even be bothered to move out of the way of the improvised projectile. She doesn't need to, so why should she? The butt hits her forehead with a clang and the gun bounces away to land on the floor. She doesn't even blink. But this guy is really starting to annoy her now. She's glad that he's terrified. She can see the sweat beading on his forehead and hears that his heart is racing. A single tear forms in his left eye and rolls down his cheek. "I'm the one who's had her brand new bikini ruined," she thinks. "I've got more reason to be crying than he has."

Kim reaches the high counter. She barely presses down on her toes at all to produce enough spring to leap gracefully over the four-foot high obstacle. After her short "flight" through town earlier, she's not impressed with herself this time. She knows she can jump huge distances now. It's nothing special. She lands on the other side perfectly balanced, just a yard away from Bruno. He's backed up as far as the wall now. He can't retreat any further as she takes the last few strides towards him. "This'll teach you to damage my clothes," she thinks. She grins, purely to make him feel even more uneasy. The smile achieves its aim. In blind panic, Bruno tries to make a dart to the side. She takes a step, reaches out with her left arm, and encircles her fingers painfully tightly around his right shoulder. He yells in pain as she gently squeezes and crushes his bones, pushing downwards at the same time, forcing him onto his knees without really putting any effort into her one-handed attack. She looks down at the much bigger man completely at her mercy and thinks "I'm so fucking powerful! This is the coolest thing ever."

She transfers her grip from his damaged shoulder to his armpit and, with total ease, lifts his entire body. The pain makes him groan, and the knowledge that she's the sole cause of his obvious discomfort does not displease her. She pulls him up, not all the way to his feet, but until his eyes are right in front of her ripe, generous chest. His legs are still bent. He tries to straighten them, but she is holding him exactly where she wants him, and there is nothing he can do to change that. She turns her upper-body slightly, positioning her left breast – the one that got shot – right in front of his face. "Look what you did to my bikini!" she chides him.

 

"I'm … s … s … sorry." he wheezes. His vision is completely filled with the glorious sight of the young girl's remarkably firm and wonderfully full and rounded breast and the sheer eroticism of the spectacle is not lost on him, regardless of his agonies and his rampant fear. Kim hears the way his heartbeat speeds up, and smells the particular note in his sweat that reveals his arousal. It's just so amazing to be able to do all these things. She feels a new sense of power. It's not just the way she's physically dominating him. It's the way she can now use her overwhelming sexuality without fear of taking things too far. No guy can ever do anything to her against her will now. She can drive them all wild with lust without any fear of them trying to attack her. Her lips part in a mischievous smile. She's going to enjoy his punishment.

 

She holds him fast as she slowly moves her body a little, making her breast sway very slightly in front of his startled eyes. "You know," she says, taking her time and savouring the moment, "I smashed a big hole out of the side of a tree with this tit earlier on." Bruno swallows hard. She's loving the way she's got him completely in her power. She goes on: "And your bullet didn't do any better, did it?" She's not interested in any reply he might have. She has another, more interesting question for him. "What do you think would happen," she begins, still moving her mound so enticingly right next to his face, "if I just leant forward right now?"

 

"Please … don't!" Bruno's voice is a weak, pale imitation of its former depth and authority. Kim doesn't really care what he has to say, anyway. She's already made up her mind. He damaged her swimsuit, so she's going to damage him. It seems fair enough to her. She holds Bruno perfectly still as she bends at the waist and dips her shoulder, thrusting her large breast towards his face. Right away, there's a burst of cracking sounds like someone stepping on an eggshell. A scream starts to leave his throat and then stops completely. She feels as if she's pressing her chest into a fresh, warm apple pie. When she glances down she sees why. Her big mound has completely crushed his face, pulverising his bone and pushing apart the stuff beneath. It's an absolutely disgusting mess. She pulls Bruno's corpse away from herself and drops it on the floor, repulsed. She finds a cloth on the counter and tries to wipe herself clean. The blood and gore comes off her creamy skin with no problem but her bikini top is now stained as well as holed. She's pleased that the guy who caused all the mess is dead because, as she convinces herself, "he deserves it."

 

Now, there's no more witnesses. No-one to tell the cops anything. The only evidence of her involvement in the carnage is the hole and the dark damp patch on her brief top. There's no other mark on her. She hasn't so much as broken a nail. "I could just stroll out of this dump and no-one will ever know a thing." she congratulates herself. Just at that moment, she hears the crescendo of police sirens. "Fuck!" she thinks. "Maybe I'd better change." She considers taking the bikini off, but there's nothing else she can wear in its place. Looking around at the three corpses in the restaurant, she realises that the shirts on all of them are far more bloody than her the top part of her swimsuit. It's amazing to think that she is responsible for all this carnage, especially considering the fact that she hasn't used any weapons. Just her hands … and her breast. She looks down at her jutting chest. It doesn't look like a murder weapon. But the stains on her bikini and the bullet hole in one of its cups tell a very different story. If it wasn't so annoying that the swimsuit is ruined, it'd be funny. She knows now that her body is indestructible. But as for her wardrobe … today is the first time she's worn this red two-piece and already, it needs replacing!

 

Thinking about the shopping she'll have to do reminds her of the money Bruno was removing from the register before he decided to try out his gun on her. The sirens are getting nearer and nearer so she needs to hurry. The cash is still lying on the counter, a rough pile of used notes. She picks it up and counts the four hundred and twenty-seven dollars in less than a second. It's not as much as she would have liked, but she decides she'll take it anyway. Realising she's got no pockets, she tucks the bundle of notes into the waistband of her panties so that about an inch of the stack is visible against her flat stomach. Then, she turns for the door to the street which she smashed on her way in. But, as she's just about to step out of the Leaning Tower of Pizza, a police squad car screeches to a halt right outside the restaurant. She knows she should break into a superspeed run and get as far away as possible, but she hesitates. She's thinking "What can the cops do to me that Bruno and Luigi didn't already try? This could be fun. And even if it isn't, I can get away anytime I want anyway. Fuck, it's cool having superpowers!"


A second car arrives from the opposite direction to the first. The two vehicles form a kind of barrier across the front of the pizza parlour. Four uniformed police run out of the cars. Two of them crouch down behind the stationary autos. The other pair draw their pistols and edge carefully towards the shattered door. It's like something out of a cop drama on TV. After a quick nod to his colleague, one of them springs into the door way, his revolver pointed at the only upright person he can see in there. "Put your hands in the air and don’t move!" he barks at Kim, his eyes flicking briefly from her face to her chest and then back to her face before lingering on her chest for a while. He takes half a dozen cautious steps towards her. Kim looks at him contemptuously. "Who the fuck does this creep think he is, shouting at me like that?" she wonders to herself. "I'm super now. I don't have to take this crap anymore."


Kim becomes a blur that solidifies a foot in front of the policeman, the displaced air buffeting him like a storm gust as she decelerates so sharply so close to him. He's in too much shock to react as she reaches, at only slightly-faster-than-normal speed, for his gun. She pulls it out of his hands as easily as if he wasn't holding at all. The cop screams because he was holding it, quite tightly in fact, and Kim has broken a few of his fingers tearing it out of his grasp. "That's what you get for shouting at me." Kim thinks to herself.


As the officer comes to terms with the pain, the realisation dawns on him that the girl – who seems to possess superhuman qualities – is now holding his gun. His features betray his sudden fear. She just smiles and casually closes her small fist around the stolen pistol. Amazingly, the steel yields to her hand, her fingers effortlessly overpowering it. The bullets in the clip are crushed with such force that they explode, but Kim's invulnerable hand absorbs the powerful blast without her experiencing any discomfort.


"Piece of shit." is Kim's internal verdict on the weapon as she tosses the now useless lump of ex-revolver over her shoulder. It travels so fast, it embeds itself deeply into the blood-splattered wall some ten yards behind her. "Oh my god!" the policeman breaths. Kim is increasingly enjoying herself. She takes her time, reaching for his collar with her left hand, and places her right dominantly on her hip as she lifts him off the ground by his uniform, using only her left arm. He's a big man, and he must weigh quite a bit, but he feels as good as weightless to Kim. He uses both of his hands to try and prise her fingers off him but his best efforts are useless. He hammers his fists on her face until they're so badly bruised he has to stop, but her smile does not even flicker for a moment. He tries to knee her in the belly, and receives nothing but fresh pain as a reward. "Keep trying, asshole," she thinks, "nothing's gonna hurt me. It’s up to you if you wanna break yourself on me." The policeman's body dangles, at the end of her slender, bare arm.

 

"Put him down and raise your hands above your head!" shouts the dangling man's partner as he runs into the restaurant, trying to aim his gun at Kim and not the other officer.


"Oh, what now?" Kim thinks, getting fed up of these guys interrupting her with their shouting all the time. What good is it being super-powered if nobody shows her any respect? Enough is enough! She releases her captive with an easy flick of the wrist that throws his entire body through the air at great speed. He slams into his would-be rescuer, knocking the second man off his feet and back through the doorway. They land together in an unmoving heap on the sidewalk, only a few yards from the two startled policemen crouched behind cars outside the Leaning Tower of Pizza. Kim dusts off her hands, satisfied that she's dealt with the two men appropriately. Leisurely, she strolls out after them.


"Hold it right there!" yells one of the crouchers over the hood of one of the parked cars.

 

"I'm getting really pissed off with these jerks." Kim tells herself. "They still don't get it. I’m super.” She places both her hands on her hips and cocks her torso in a movement that is simultaneously defiant, casual and extremely sexy.

 

"Or what?" she demands.

 

"Or we'll shoot!" the other surviving officer explains.

 

"Boring!" thinks Kim. She's already been shot. She removes one hand from her hip and pretends to be examining her perfect nails.

 

"Hold it right there or we'll shoot!" the policeman shouts again, even more insistently than the first time.

 

Kim decides that if he's got nothing new to say, she's not even going to bother to acknowledge him. She doesn't even look away from her fingers which are flawless and certainly don't require being examined right now. Both cops decide to fire their guns. Repeatedly. Two sets of bullets strike Kim. She's hit on the eyeball, the nose, the throat, both breasts – the left just above centre and the right bang-on her big nipple – her upper abdomen and her lower belly. Not a single one of the shots hurts her, or leaves a mark on her perfect skin. The two that hit her chest do cause further damage to her bikini, however. The left cup has two holes in it now, through which her erotic flesh is visible. The right cup has been punctured dead centre. Her stunning, engorged pink nipple pokes through the circular tear. "Someone's going to pay for that." Kim thinks.

 

Both the men behind the cars stare in total disbelief at that remarkable, desirable bit of female anatomy. They do not see the young man hiding behind the blinds in a window on the opposite side of the street. He too is focussing on Kim's recently-exposed nipple. He's quite some distance away from her, but his view is much clearer through the viewfinder of his video camera. Kim does not spot him either. She's much too concerned with the two cops who have just emptied their guns on her and, more significantly, caused further damage to her outfit. She glares at them as she walks towards them. They remain motionless, each still crouching behind a different patrol car. "You're both so fucking dead." she thinks. She lets her body sway sexily as she approaches the cars. She can read the awe and the terror on the two faces. She loves the thought that her new superpowers mean she can affect grown men in this way.

 

Sashaying up to the two cars, she stands for a moment where the two front fenders are almost touching. "This is going to be easy," she tells herself. "A lot easier than getting a new bikini." The two rapt policemen are just a couple of yards from her, on the other side of the vehicles. She places one of her palms on the near-side of each car and smiles down at the crouching men. "You've had your turn," she thinks, "now it's mine. Let's see how you like this." She gives the vehicles a gentle, almost unthinking shove. Immediately, both big machines career away from her. They move sideways-on with such force that they instantly knock down the two policemen. Still the cars move. The two sets of tires burst, unable to withstand the friction and the loose rubber soon rubs away. Sparks fly as the wheel hubs scrape over the tarmac. Both cops disappear under the vehicles, reappearing a moment later as hideously gory streaks on the road as the two vehicles continue to cross the street. Kim glances at the mess. "Well, they should have been nicer to me." she concludes.

 

The cars Kim has shoved crash into parked vehicles on the other side of the road hard enough to knock them up onto the far sidewalk. Broken glass tinkles as finally, the mass of metal comes to rest. There’s a moment of eerily silence as Kim proudly surveys her handiwork. Then, as people come running out of the shops and offices all around to investigate the commotion, she thinks "I've had enough here. Someone else can clean it all up." With that, she simply turns on her bare heels and runs away. In less than an instant, she has become a blur once more, moving far too fast for ordinary human eyes and brains to process. She’s just murdered seven men using her new superhuman strength and discovered, in the process, that she is invulnerable to gunfire. Her thoughts, however, are pre-occupied by her torn and bloodied bikini. She decides to head for home where she can change. After that, she thinks, it would be cool to find her friends so she can show off her powers to them.

 

It’s been five minutes since Kim entered Luigi’s Leaning Tower of Pizza. Randolph meanwhile has only just managed to remove a circuit board from his transfer-beam-generator. He hasn’t even begun the difficult process of de-soldering the components he needs to remove. Then, with his less-than-steady, ageing hands, he must affix the replacement parts and reconfigure the machine to draw energy into his precious Sherman crystal. It’s late afternoon now, but the task is going to take him most of the night. But one night without sleep is a small price to pay for taking what is rightfully his away from that obscene, undeserving trollop. He shudders to think what a frivolous waste she is making of his life's work. How could she know what to do with his powers? He imagines her, parading her obscene, superhuman body as his right hand absent-mindedly begins to rub against his groin once again.


 


Will Randolph manage to build the reverso-ray? Will he be able to use it on Kim to get the superpowers for himself? What colour bikini will Kim change into? How long will it remain intact? Find out in Chapter 5 (coming soon to http://www.conceptfan.com)

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