CHAPTER 09b – PLAYTIME IN KENTUCKY

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SYNOPSIS UP TO THIS POINT
Julia and Howard took a wrong turn in a Kentucky cave and tumbled out into a world of amazon women.  Julia had promised to refrain from taking the elixir that transforms women to amazons, but later broke that promise.  Her new powers have many benefits, not least of which is the mental power to discover a route home. Now, she and her new amazon friend Mindy have traveled the route back to Kentucky— ostensibly to test it out, but also to have a little fun.

DISCLAIMER
This story contains adult sexual content.  If you are not of age to read this stuff, don't.  No resemblance between these characters and real people on Earth is implied or intended.

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Julia took a deep breath of the Kentucky night air, filling her lungs with the sweet summer scent. It was good to be back.

She and Mindy had completed the trek in a bit under an hour, less than a tenth of the time it would have taken a man. Some of the difference between her speed and his was technical: she had no need for belays or ropes or anchor. But the bulk of the difference was just sheer athleticism. A vertical shaft that would have taken Howard hours took the ladies only minutes. A steep incline that would have forced Howard to pause for breath, his lungs heaving, was so easy for Julia that she often didn’t notice it.

If Howard had tried to match that pace, it would have killed him, Julia realized – literally killed him. And with his never-give-up style, that was a little bit scary. But it was also a little bit thrilling, Julia realized as she exhaled. Her heart rate had never elevated during the entire trip. Her body accomplished superhuman feats without even bothering her to acknowledge it.

“What do you think?” Julia asked as she clapped the rock dust off her hands. Mindy was staring into the twinkling lights of the Kentucky night.

“It looks so big.” The girl’s eyes sparkled with the distant lights. “I can’t believe that this is an entire world, full of millions of people—”

“Billions,” Julia corrected.

“—and none of them can stop us.”

“Absolutely no conquering, Mindy,” Julia admonished. “You do NOT get to keep a country for yourself.”

“Even a small one?” Mindy applied a mock pout.

“No! I’m serious.”

Mindy laughed. “I would never want to live here anyway. Can you imagine spending your whole life in a world where everybody else is a weakling? I’d go crazy.”

Julia found that to be a relief. She picked up a boulder, just a small one the size of a compact car, and held it palm-up above her shoulder. She needed to seal up that cave entrance. “If you hate weakling men, as you call them, then why do you spend so much time playing with them?”

Mindy eyed her carefully. “You’ve never had sex in your new and improved body, have you?”

Mindy’s question evoked a flood of need inside Julia – one that she secretly struggled to dam. She shook her head ‘no’. She also felt a stream of fine dust tickling her shoulder, only to discover that she was gripping the boulder too hard.

“One word: semen.”

Julia must have appeared baffled.

“There’s magic between those legs, girl. When a man gushes his stuff into you, your body goes into some sort of sexual overdrive. The orgasms get SO much more intense. Nobody knows why – not me, not the scientists. They’ve tried to replicate a man’s jizz in the lab, but it’s not the same. We need the real thing.”

“Odd. You make it sound like a drug.”

“Not just A drug. THE drug. Man juice is something I wouldn’t give up for the world. Just don’t ask me to be friends with the guy who makes it.”

“Why not?”

“Because weak is disgusting.”

Julia shoved the boulder into the cave entrance. The mass was slightly wider than the entrance, so she put just a little bit of force into it, only about ten thousand pounds. The air filled with a grinding sound, and the rock shattered with explosive force along the edges, as her enhanced muscles easily drove it into place. In only a moment’s time, the cave had been sealed like a cork in a wine bottle. “If weak people disgust you, then why did you come to a world full of exactly those people?”

Mindy seemed uncomfortable with the question. “I guess I like hanging out with you. And I like watching you grow into a full woman, to see you discover your power. I thought it would be fun to destroy a few men together.”

———

Julia crossed her arms in frustration, reducing her body to a coil, as she glared at the sign taped to the front of the bank. “Closing 15 minutes early today. We are sorry for any inconvenience.”

“The hell they are,” Julia growled. There was no way to have fun on Earth without a little spending money, but her purse was sitting on a nightstand on the other side of the Caves. She cursed her poor planning.

Mindy drummed her fingers against her thick tricep impatiently. She was getting restless, Julia could tell.

And with good reason. Upon arriving on Earth, the pair had traveled straight to Julia’s house, where Julia found a past-due notice on her mortgage. Julia then spent an hour on the phone trying to figure out why her mortgage payments weren’t going through. To pass the time, Mindy had learned written English – pretty much all of it. The girl‘s mind had turned out to be much more flexible than those of the mortgage people: she wound up flipping through the TV channels (“It only shows one at a time?”) while Julia argued with them over the phone. Finally, Mindy threatened to go out on her own if Julia didn’t get off her rear and go out with her. That frightened Julia enough to give up on the whole mortgage thing, and, in desperation, suggest a night at the bar.

And now, Mindy was again getting restless. The girl appeared to spy a glint of copper on the ground. “Wait, is this money?”

“It’s a penny. It won’t buy anything.” Julia pointed at the ATM. “If only I had my ATM card, I could at least get some money out of that.”

“If we need something out of that box, why don’t we just take it?” Mindy offered.

Such were the thought processes of the superhumanly strong, Julia silently lamented. “No. Banks have cameras. And alarms. And the alarms bring cops. And cops will bring guns. We could end up in prison.”

“Dude, it’s like you’re already in prison. Every step you take, you walk into a wall made up of your own metal bars. Or MENTAL bars.” Mindy trapped the penny between her thumb and forefinger and flicked it at the ATM.

The penny impacted its target with the force of a bullet. The camera and its housing exploded with a CRACK, and the entire ATM shuddered. Mindy smashed a hand through the casing of the ATM and extracted its safe in another explosion of plastic. The reinforced steel of the safe released a loud groan as it was rent in two by the girl’s elegant fingers. She extracted a stack of bills as thick as two bricks placed side by side – easily fifty thousand dollars. “Is this enough to buy us a few drinks?”

By now, the remains of the ATM were squawking some sort of alarm, and Julia could hear the siren of a single police car approaching.

“It’s enough,” Julia concluded quickly. “Let’s go.”

“What’s that sound in the distance?”

“Police. Let’s go. These are not guys we want to mess with.”

“Guys? The police are men?”

Julia silently cursed herself for letting it slip.

“That’s so cool!” the girl announced. “You break the rules, and then they send you men. Do they send other gifts, too? Chocolates?”

“Mindy!” Julia was trying to be stern, but the girl was actually pretty cute about this. “We’re leaving. Now.” The siren increased its urgency.

“I could really use some cock right now.”

The girl was incorrigible. “Mindy, I’m serious!”

“OK, OK.” The girl flexed her legs and then sprang upward, alighting on the top of a four story building.

Julia took a moment to steele her confidence – it took some adjustment to believe that her new body worked in her old world – and leapt to the top of the building as well.

The air went by in a WHOOSH, and Julia soon found herself perched on the edge of a roof. From that vantage point, it was easy to watch the scene unfold below: the cruiser pulling up, the cops getting out, looking around in bafflement, opening their trunk to get out the yellow tape. Never once did they look up to scan the rooflines of the buildings. And why would they?

Is it really that easy, Julia asked herself? Have I been living in a prison of my own construction?

Julia surveyed her surroundings, hundreds of twinkling lights of buildings and homes and farms stretching into the distance, and a forest of treetops illuminated by the light of a single moon. Everything she could see, everything she had known from the earliest days of her life, suddenly seemed so pleasantly fragile to her.

_____

“This is what you do for fun? Really?” Mindy stared quizzically at the book. It had been sitting behind the bar so long that its pages were yellowed by beer stains. The corner of the cover had been torn away, taking a “y” from the title with it, which left only

How to Play

Card Games

Julia examined her surroundings as her friend read. She had picked a booth in the darkest corner of the bar, in the earliest corner of the evening, hoping to minimize the attention the pair of eight-foot women attracted. She had even squeezed herself and Mindy into Earth jackets – the largest size Julia could find at the discount consignment shop – to hide the spectacle of their extreme muscles.

Mindy paged through the book dismissively, with such speed and force that the pages nearly tore. She closed the five-hundred-seventy-four-page book and put it down.

“Boring.”

“No, card games of cards are fun,” Julia pleaded. “You’ll see.”

“I will?”

“In a card game, you never know what’s going to happen.” Julia tried to formulate an explanation that Mindy would understand. “Earth people have a hard time memorizing more than three or four things at a time. And they can’t calculate probabilities in their head. So, for them, every new card is a surprise, and that makes it exciting.”

“For them. Is this for real – a whole planet where everybody is as stupid as a man? Who is even in charge here? Who runs the government, or the schools or the hospitals?”

“Usually, it’s men.”

“Fuuuuuuucccck…” Mindy’s mouth was wide open with disbelief. The girl shifted uncomfortably in the restricted space of the booth, the table groaning with the pressure her movement. “And you still want to live here?”

“It’s home.”

Julia watched the teenager’s gaze wander the table before fixating on Julia’s face. The older woman grew uncomfortable as the younger one seemed to stare.

“You’re really fucking beautiful,” Mindy announced. “Such a waste that you want to live in a place that’s so far below you.”

Julia ran her thumbs nervously over the condensation on her beer glass as she cast a gaze across the bar booths. She could understand Mindy’s derision toward Earth: a bar like this certainly wasn’t the best first impression. From a ceiling that lacked many of its tiles hung cheap pendant lighting - that fake, plastic ‘stained glass’ type so common in bars. The lights did a poor job of illuminating the ramshackle walls. And on the walls hung an unappealing mismash of decor: pictures of long-time patrons, faded prints of Kentucky Downs races, crummy reproductions of classic western art pieces.

“Who’s he?” Mindy asked, jutting her chin at one of the prints on the wall.

“The David. It’s by a guy named Michelangelo. It’s very famous. David was a weak boy who defeated a larger foe, through cleverness and bravery.”

Mindy scoffed. “Why does he have a leaf over his package?”

“Queen Victoria objected to his nudity. She found it too sexual.”

Mindy raised an eyebrow. “Too sexual? What does that mean? What queen wouldn’t be interested in a man’s package?”

“Another bourbon, ladies?” It was the bartender, who was also the owner of the place.

Julia nodded ‘yes’ to the question. “Seems you have a changing of the guard here.”

The bartender glanced over his shoulder. The bar was getting roudier as the evening progressed. Farm hands and tradesmen still sat in some of the stools, grabbing a cold one at the end of the work week. But more and more of the stools were occupied by the bikers – guys who had been waiting all day to turn the night into a party.

“Happens every Friday night,” the bartender grimaced. “They come in here, start fights, sometimes wreck the place, always scare away the other customers. They’re awful for business. I had hoped to pass this bar along to my kids someday, a little nest egg for them. But not like this, never like this.” The bartender motioned at the unfolding action in his bar, increasingly drunk leather-clad thugs pushing around a harmless-looking guy in a fleece.

“You should throw them out. Hire security.”

That elicited a laugh from the bartender. “These guys ARE the security. They’re the bouncers at the downtown bars, the security at the racetrack. Nobody turns down their protection, but their protection comes at a price – a heavy one.”

Julia frowned. The owner was a nice guy. She remembered him from occasional visits to the bar in her pre-Nourished days, not that he would recognize her. He didn’t deserve whatever this biker gang was dealing out. “Have you tried selling the place?”

“That would be my dream, actually. Sell it and use the money to open up a something downtown. I’m actually a chef by training. I know I could do a great restaurant or gastropub. But who would buy it, with all this shit going on?” One of the bikers, already too tipsy, had dropped a pint glass, covering the floor with beer and broken glass.

“Call the cops,” Julia persisted.

He shook his head. “The cops just as intimidated as the rest of us. That gang probably has more guns than the sheriff’s department.”

Julia watched the bartender as he retrieved a mop from behind the bar to clean up the broken glass.

“How are you pretty girls doing?”

Two not-so-pretty boys were now standing over them, emboldened by more than two not-so-pretty drinks, if Julia judged their swagger correctly.

“Learning how to play poker?” The second guy said. Receding hairline, heavyset with muscle and fat, tattoos and riding leathers.

“First time,” Mindy beamed. “You want to show us how it’s done?”

“Hawk,” the man announced as he squeezed himself in next to Mindy. He paused momentarily, suddenly aware of the height difference between him and the women, even when seated. He looked down at the bench, as if to see whether she was sitting on an elevated surface, but the darkness likely left him blissfully ignorant. “And this here’s my brother Butch.”

Biker brother, Julia knew. Butch was taller than his buddy Hawk, and ironically, more bird-like: longer nose, wider shoulders and lanky arms that in the booth folded up almost like wings. Although he lacked Hawk’s sheer size, there was something about his coiled posture that was even more menacing.

Julia tried to smile at the men as they settled into their seats. But she knew they were trouble.

Seven card stud was the game they chose, and the men suggested ‘making it interesting’, with a starting bet of $20. Mindy assented with a shrug of her shoulders.

For all Mindy knew, $20 could be the price of a popsicle or the price of a Porsche. It was all just a game to her, Julia sensed.

But it wasn’t just a game to Hawk and Butch. They were serious, and they were good. The first few rounds went to them.

Meanwhile, Julia found herself struggling. Her mind raced and went nowhere at the same time. She looked at her cards, tried to decide what to do, and drew a blank. Where was the intelligence she had exhibited only one day earlier? Where was the ability to memorize millions of numbers with ease? She closed her eyes and tried to remember which cards were in her hand.

Nothing.

With each flip of a card, Julia grew more anxious. Having a poor memory had never bothered her in the past. But to gain a power, and then lose it again so quickly – it felt as though life had stolen something from her.

Mindy’s voice danced across the table in a whisper so soft, it surely was meant only for Nourished ears. “Relax.”

“What?” Julia whispered back.

“Relax and it will come. Remember how hot you are.”

Mindy’s capacity to be superficial knew no bounds, Julia lamented. But even as she did so, she caught Butch staring at her tits. And it felt strangely … good.

She wanted to find him disgusting, but how disgusting could a creature be when, between its legs, it produced such – what did Mindy call it? Ah yes, magic.

She found herself wishing that she had not disgraced her body by covering it so. She should be adorned by, at most, a bikini. Or maybe just a thong. Her muscles, her tits, her backside – all of it deserved to be on display. All of it deserved to be admired.

She sat up a little bit straighter, watching how the men’s eyes widened as she jutted her breasts out over the tabletop. The attention gave her new confidence, and the confidence gave her peace.

Julia momentarily closed her eyes and felt her mind relax. In only a moment, she felt a surge of mental power. Every face-up card she had observed since the start of the game instantly presented itself in her memory’s view. She began to calculate probabilities of where each remaining card in the deck would be, and then evaluate how those cards would combine into hands. She could feel her advanced neurons effortlessly running hundreds of fantastically complex scenarios on how each hand would play out well before it was done playing.

“Bring me a bourbon,” she said as the bartender came round.

Julia looked at her cards again, thrilling in the intellect she had unleashed. She had a pair of Aces and a pair of Four’s. The probability for a high three-of-a-kind or a Full House was, simply speaking, statistically good. And from the eighteen cards that had been laid face-up, plus the five in Julia’s hand, there could only be thirty one cards outstanding. Julia ran a few hundred scenarios in her head as to which cards might have been in those calloused biker hands. The likelihood that anyone had a better hand was only 24.13%, and diminishing with every move.

The bourbon arrived. Julia smiled, sipping it. “Raise you to $50.”

The boys grunted but stayed in. When they dug into their pockets, out came baseball-sized wads of folded bills, so much that the mass was held together by thick rubber bands. Drug money.

“You guys are loaded,” Julia observed as she picked up her seventh card.

“We fucking run this town,” Butch announced, peeling the outer layer off the wad as if a $50 bill was no more than the thinnest skin on a large onion. “Nobody does shit unless Hawk here says it’s OK.”

“Well, you’re probably not going to be OK with this.” Julia laid her cards on the table. She had a full house – and the boys, she knew, didn’t have shit.

Julia let loose a wide smile as she raked the money towards her. When she dealt the cards for the next hand, it was with a crispness that she hadn’t exhibited before.

And from there, the game only got better. With every card that was dealt, Julia’s mind performed an avalanche of computations in the background, even as Julia’s attention was on the conversation, the bar, her beer, whatever caught her interest. She wondered how many male brains it would take to achieve the power of hers. Fifty? A hundred? Her fingertips tingled with anticipation of the rout yet to come.

When the boys lost yet another round of $50, their don’t-fuck-with-us swagger gave way to knitted brows. Julia watched them thinking as hard as they could, trying to use their tiny little brains to beat Julia’s big one. It was like watching beetles try to push over an elephant.

“You guys are wasting your time against her,” Mindy announced. “She had you beat before the first card was dealt. She’s built for this.”

That got an angry glare from Butch. “Just deal the cards.”

Julia did, winning another hand easily. It was about to get repetitive when Mindy’s whisper filtered across the table. “Let’s flirt with them. Fuck with their heads.”

Julia wanted to be revolted by the idea. Their bodies were smelly and their personalities were crude – the exact opposite of Howard. But she found herself inhaling deeply. Yes, they smelled. They smelled like man – raw, unadulterated, 200-proof man.

She wanted all of them, now. The space between her legs ached for them. She bit her lip to offset the need with pain.

But she found herself staring at the men yet again. Their fifteen-inch biceps were intimidating by Earth standards, but ridiculously adorable to her now. “It seems like you boys work out a lot…”

“Ya think?” One of the guys responded, crooking his arm into a flex. Fifteen inches became sixteen inches.

SO small, SO cute, Julia thought. With the thick jackets still covering her and Mindy, the boys had no idea how much bigger the girls might be. Julia couldn’t help but goad him on. “What can you bench? Like 150? 200?”

“Two-fifty,” replied the guy, adding a second arm to the display.

“VERY impressive,” Julia responded immediately, hoping to drown out Mindy’s giggle. She fantasized about having him inside of her, of him using those puny muscles to drive as hard and deep as he could into her, before she pinned him against something solid and used her superior female muscles to pound him with merciless intensity. Julia pressed her legs together, trying to squelch the need. “My mind is wandering,” Julia admitted. “Let’s play.”

But as the game resumed, her mind’s wandering did not stop. She could focus only on him – only on tearing the bothersome cards out of his hands, tearing his stupid biker clothes off his body, pinning him to his seat with her 400-pound mass, and feeling him enter her right there, right in the middle of the bar, right in the middle of the crowd.

“Mindy’s right, you know. I AM built for this.” Julia unzipped the too-tight jacket slowly, the weight of her breasts spreading the panels wide. Underneath was a halter top that, although it had come from the Plus section of the store, had been designed for dimensions far less generous than Julia’s. The top’s ‘v’ neck opening did little to conceal the depth of her cleavage.

“I even come with a place to keep my cards.” Julia slid her cards between one strap of the halter and her breast, the movements of her fingers across its curvature followed by the gazes of the unfortunate men. That made Julia giggle. She wiggled within the confines of her top, tugging it down toward her aureoles just a little bit more.

“This round, all in,” Julia proposed, pushing her winnings back in the center. “$500. You could win everything back in a single hand. If you’ve got the guts.”

The men hesitated. She sighed and inhaled again, bending her stored cards into a “C” shape.

She could hear their breathing falter. Their resistance was breaking down.

Julia tried to imagine how these strangers’ lips would feel on her tits. How their teeth would feel biting down on her invincible nipple. She opened her eyes to see that her nipples were now the size of the shot glasses, and so much harder.

“Or we can just stop playing,” Julia suggested.

She watched the torment dance across their faces. They were so easily swayed, so weak. It turned her on even more.

“I guess… I see your $500,” Hawk admitted in a faltering tone.

The round of betting complete, Julia dealt the cards with machine-like speed and then picked up her hand. Her prospects for winning had gone from great to excellent: a low straight of clubs, almost impossible to beat given what else had already been dealt.

“Want to fuck with them a bit?” Mindy’s whisper drifted across the table.

“I thought we already were,” Julia whispered in reply.

“I don’t mean ‘play around with’. I mean ‘control.’

“Show me.”

Julia felt a shift under the table as Mindy’s legs spread slightly.

In moments, Butch and Hawk were clinging to the edge of the table, trying to steady themselves against the power of an unseen force. Their breathing quickened and deepened into heavy panting.

“You’re using your pheromones on them!” Julia announced in a whisper.

“Uh-huh,” Mindy whispered throatily back. “I’m not even really trying. Wait ‘till you see what happens when I do.”

Julia looked down at her hand. The boys were outgunned by her mind and the pheromones. They were little more than toys to her. And she loved it.

“Raise to $1000,” Julia said.

“$1000,” Butch agreed shakily.

“Did I say $1000? I meant $2000.”

“Uh…OK,” he agreed, even less steady.

They showed their hands. Julia was right: her hand was better. Mindy seemed to ease up on her chemical assault, allowing the minds of the men to gradually return to normal function.

When they saw that they were losing all that money, the boys allowed their anger to flare, their faces reddening to the point that their faces contained just as much color as the scarlet patches on their leather jackets.

As Julia raked the cash toward her, she heard Butch mutter a word she hated.

“You bitch.”

With the speed of a thunderclap, Julia’s arm crossed the table to intercept Mindy’s fist, which had been moving just as fast.

“I’m going to kill him, Jules,” the teenager’s voice smoldered like the ground after a lightning strike. “I’m going to rip his head right off of his shoulders.”

“Easy there, Mindy.” Julia tightened her grip on the girl. “You promised me, no dead bodies.”

“Nobody talks to you like that,” the girl seethed. “Killing him would be so worth it.”

“This is my planet, Mindy. Let me handle it.”

“Fat chicks don’t kill without guns,” Butch snarled, with still no idea what lurked under those jackets. “And that goes even for fat chick bitches.”

Mindy visibly tensed, but Julia motioned for her to stop. “Did I hear that right, Butch? Did you just taunt me with a nasty word?”

“Damn right. You come into our town. Into our bar, pretending to be some kind of jackass novices.” Butch had stood by now. He picked up the poker book and hurled it at the middle of everything, upending drinks and scattering the popcorn. “But it’s really just a hustle.”

“Normally, we don’t hurt ladies.” Hawk had stood as well now. “But that kind of swindle deserves an exception.”

The thought of fucking these boys had indeed been a pleasant one, Julia lamented. But now the thought of fucking them up was looking really good to her, too.

“Come on Hawk.” Julia taunted, still seated at the booth. “I saw the brick of fifties and hundreds you are carting around with you. A thousand bucks in a card game is nothing for a drug dealer like you.”

As she was saying this, Julia was watching Butch’s fist fly towards her face. She didn’t try to stop it. The amount of effort he was putting into the blow was actually amusing.

CRACK. Julia felt the fist slam down into her jaw, and then saw Butch withdraw his hand, pain riddling his face.

Julia remained seated, as if the pitiful confrontation did not even merit standing. “How many fingers did you break, Butch? Wanna try the other cheek? Did you happen to know that my bones are much, much harder than titanium?”

“You girls are so fucked,” Butch spat even as he cradled his hand. “You’re here alone. And you’re picking a fight with the meanest bunch of assholes for a hundred miles around. I almost felt sorry for you that you’re so fat. Now I don’t.”

“We’re not fat. We’re just big boned.” Julia felt herself smiling inside.

“And stupid. Next time you decide to swindle a guy, bring some muscle along.”

“What makes you think I didn’t?” Julia stood, the space around her filled with a plume of splinters as her powerful body straightened, shattering the table and bench. She watched with delight as the men’s necks craned back, and then back again, to take in her height. Weary of the cramped position in which she had confined herself for an hour, she found herself stretching, her stature such that her palms pressed flat against the ceiling. Her torso erupted into a “v” so wide it made the bikers seemed slender as teenage ballerinas by comparison. She watched the jaws of the men go slack and their mouths purse into horizontal lines as their lungs forgot to breathe. She dropped her arms and crossed them in front of each other, splitting the shoulder seams of her jacket as she worked out more kinks. Finally, she bent her elbow, forming an easy, twenty-seven-inch bicep. The swelling ellipsoid of her upper arm split the arm seam of her jacket along its length and caused the man’s jaw slowly to drop. “That looks like a muscle to me,” Julia suggested. “But let’s check to make sure.”

Julia contracted her other bicep, and then gave both of them the hardest flex she knew how, ballooning the flesh on each arm another several inches in circumference to near-spherical shape. “Yup, definitely muscles.”

She wrapped a hand around Butch’s neck, his weight registering no more to her than the deck of cards would have registered in her old body. “Not just any muscles either. Pretty awesome ones.”

Julia snagged Hawk by the neck as well, and soon had one man dangling from the end of each bare arm. Her leather jacket, its seams destroyed, was now a sleeveless one. She had become the ultimate biker chick, without even meaning to.

Mindy by now had stood as well, her rising body having destroyed the half of the booth that Julia’s had not. As she wiped the splinters off her midsection, she cocked her head at the men hanging from Julia’s arms, giving them a distant look. “So what are you going to do with them? Kill, maim or play?”

“At first, I just wanted them to leave me alone, mind their own business…”

A smile curled up the corner of Mindy’s lip. “And now?”

Julia watched the men struggle to free themselves from her grip, their legs flailing, their puny hand muscles not even a hundreth of the strength they needed to challenge her fingers.

“Play,” she concluded.

Mindy sidled up to a bar stool and rested her elbows on the bar behind her. “They’ll last a lot longer if you keep the neck hold brief. It messes up the ligaments and the nerves, particularly for guys who are fat and heavy.”

Julia had forgotten she had been holding the men aloft. She opened her fingers and let them spill to the ground with a pair of THUDs.

“We learned that in Male Punishment & Manipulation” Mindy elaborated.

“Is that a class?”

“MPM? Oh yeah. We all have to take it junior year.”

“They teach a how-to class in sadism? In high school?”

“Not sadism. Control. I was actually the star of the class, if you can believe it. The only class where I ever beat Amanda, goody-two-shoes that she is. I guess I just liked the topic. I’ve broken more bones in the two years since I Nourished than my mom has in a decade.”

By now, the bar had reacted. Stools clattered to the ground as shocked patrons rose to see the spectacle of two muscled women towering head and shoulders over them. The bartender has moved close as well; Julia’s enhanced hearing picking up his particular pattern of breathing with ease.

Recovered from the abuse to thei necks, Hawk and Butch lunged at Julia. Even Butch, who would already need a cast on his left hand, had drawn a nightstick with his right and swung it at her.

“What’s their deal? Are they suicidal?” Mindy asked out loud, as if they men were incapable of answering the question on their own. She remained out of the action, elbows on the bar, fingers laced over her pronounced six-pack, eyes on her friend alone.

“No, I think they just haven’t adjusted yet.” Julia gathered the panels of Butch’s jacket up in one hand and slammed him into the wall with a WHAM that shook the whole bar. “They’re not used to being the weaker sex.”

“Wow…” Mindy’s voice was appreciative. “Denial. We read about it in MPM, but you never see it in the Weald anymore.”

The two females watched Butch collapse to the ground, lungs heaving, limbs shaking.

“She didn’t even hit you that hard, Butchy,” Mindy intoned in a sing-song voice. “How many ribs are broken? Three? Four? You should see what happens when she decides to hurt you.”

Hawk used the interlude to swing his nightstick at Julia, but she intercepted it with an open hand. She squeezed the wood until her knuckles went white, the wood’s moisture dripping out as though it were from a dishrag. When she opened her hand, the middle of nightstick had been transformed into a soft, beige powder, spilling between her fingers as the ends of the weapon clattered to the floor. Julia flicked her index finger into his stomach, producing a stomach punch more powerful than anything one might see in a prize fight. Hawk emitted an OOOOFFF, and went down to his knees.

Julia felt Mindy’s arms encircle her from behind, and then squeeze her in a vigourous embrace. No substance on Earth could have withstood the terrible pressure the girl so affectionately applied. Julia felt the soft whisper of Mindy’s breath in her ear. “Seeing you teach these guys a lesson is such a fucking turn on. You are turning into a real woman now.”

“I’ve never wanted to get into a bar fight. But this sort of power…” Julia breathed. “it’s such a fucking rush.”

“You idiots,” exhaled Butch as he wobbled to his feet. “Do you have any idea who you are messing with? Do you have any idea how many of us there are?”

Julia reached down into Butch’s jacket and grabbed the money. There must have been ten thousand dollars in there. “I’m taking this,” Julia purred. “If you want it, you’ll have to pry it out of my little, girly hands.”

Bikers had swarmed the bar by now, their numbers so great that their bodies darkened the entrances.

“Um, how many guys do you have?” Mindy asked over Julia’s shoulder.

“A hundred,” Butch snarled.

Julia felt a moment of doubt.

“A hundred of them?“ Mindy’s whisper intoned. “That is so cool.”

In that moment, Julia felt more of her mental fetters fall away. She began to see it through Mindy’s eyes.

It might be a fight for the men, but for the ladies it was playtime.

———

“I’m glad these guys started this brawl,” Julia said as she punched a man gently, sending him flying. “I didn’t realize how ready I was for a new challenge.”

“I have a hard time imagining how this could ever be called a challenge,” Mindy said, examining her nails, she was leaning on the seat of some jerk’s three-wheeled “trike”. It’s owner was probably somewhere near the bottom of the pile of guys that was forming like a human volcano in the middle of the parking lot.

Julia was about to reply when she felt a few taps on her back. Someone was pounding her with brass knuckles.

“I still can’t get over the fact that I’m invulnerable. It’s like I don’t even have to think about defending myself.” She practiced tensing her oblique muscles, instantly making them many times harder than marble. The next blow featured a CRACK as the brass knuckles broke four of the man’s fingers.

“You're enjoying yourself so much, it’s hard not to smile,” Mindy admitted.

“I guess it’s just a novelty for me.” She grabbed the man by the forearm and tossed him over her head into the pile. “I went all the way to age thirty-five without Nourishing, so I have some catching up to do.”

“Don’t let the pile get higher than four or five guys,” Mindy observed, yawning. “Their little chests can’t take it. Compressive asphyxia sets in at about 800 pounds.”

“Thanks, Professor.” Julia sauntered casually over to two gang bangers who where writhing on the ground. She had given them the gentlest of blows a few minutes ago – more a tap than a punch – but it had still been too much for their pathetic little bodies. “I guess it’s time to start a new pile.”

Julia wedged a foot under the first man and flicked upward, sending him flying across the parking lot. She did the same with the second, her expert aim landing him on top of his buddy. So damn easy, Julia revelled.

Out of the corner of her eye, Julia saw other men making a run for it. “It looks like some of your boys are getting away,” Mindy observed. “Want me to help you herd them a little bit?”

“Don’t trouble yourself,” Julia answered

The teenager’s smile sparkled. “For my Julia, nothing’s any trouble.”

Julia watched her friend perform a series of quick end-over-end back flips and come to a halt alongside a pair of truck cabs, attached to flatbed trailers. In a smooth motion that belied the tonnage involved, Mindy hoisted one trailer above her head and walked it to the entrance of the parking lot, the truck cab scraping behind on the ground. Julia’s enhanced ears picked up every gasp, every “oh shit,” every “oh god” uttered by the group.

They would have a chance to utter some more, Julia decided. She grabbed the back end of the other trailer and tightened her grip, crumpling the steel like paper. Julia then hauled the trailer into the sky, pointing the truck cab straight up at the twinkling stars. It was only about 30,000 pounds – the unreal weight quite manageable to her unreal muscles. She walked the unfortunate truck over to the parking lot’s second entrance. On the way, she took some time to enjoy the stares and the gawking of her quarry. The eyes of those tough-guy bikers went wide as the hubcaps on their bikes. Their mouths moved but nothing came out. So cute to watch their brains trying to adjust!

“If you think that was impressive, boys, watch this!”

Julia tossed the truck across the entrance with a massive BOOM that so distressed the bikers, they began to drop their weapons. Julia could only giggle.

“Still thinking of running, boys?”

Some of the bikers began to huddle together, as if their weak male friends could help them. They feared for their lives, she realized.

That was when she noticed the guns. The guys who could still stand had drawn pistols, many of their arms shaking.

“Guns,” Julia announced to her friend, her voice suddenly unsteady. Her body could easily shrug off a punch. But a bullet?

“GUNZ?” Mindy asked. “What are those?”

“They kill people,” Julia replied, as if that were an explanation. Fear paralyzed her mind. Each of the women had about a half dozen weapons pointed at her.

“Cool…” replied Mindy. “I want to see.”

The girl walked casually toward her assailants, lacking either awareness or interest in the level of the threat those weapons posed.

Julia could have done any number of things at that moment. She could have told Mindy to run. She could have hurled a vehicle at the center of the scrum. But even an advanced mind is not always calm and collected.

So instead, she froze. She watched Mindy approach the guys. She watched the bikers point all of their guns at Mindy, ignoring the immobile Julia. She heard the men issue warnings and their threats. And then she watched as Mindy strutted toward them.

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM. There must have been thirty shots in all, directed at Mindy.

Julia had no idea what a bullet should sound like when it hit flesh. But she knew it shouldn’t be a hard, metallic PING. Julia also had no idea what a person’s face should resemble when being shot, but she knew is shouldn’t be the look of mild curiosity that marked Mindy’s.

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM the firing continued, Julia’s superhuman powers of observation recording each impact in high detail. One bullet crumpled against her smooth cheeks and left only a smudge. Another tore into her jacket, sending a cloud of fiber into the air and leaving a nickel-sized window in the material, the smooth and unharmed flesh of her breast underneath. Other bullets “pinged” uselessly off her bare midriff or thighs. The most damage any of them produced seemed to be the one that hit Mindy’s upper lip, temporarily depressing it before the flesh returned to a ripe pout.

I love those lips, Julia realized. So kissable. So alluring. And even more alluring now that I know the true hardiness of the body they are attached to.

Mindy liberated one of the pistols from its owner. The remainder of the guns fell silent, the men who wielded them finally realizing the supernatural nature of their adversary. Mindy examined the gun in her hands, trying to understand what had just happened. “So… they shot these little things at me because…”

“Because they thought that the bullets would kill you.”

“Seriously?” Mindy picked a few crumpled bullet off the ground. “These little things?”

“They go very fast.”

Mindy undid the knot of her shirt, letting the cloth fall away from her breasts. She fitted the muzzle of the gun over one nipple. The contact must have stimulated it, because the flesh seemed to expand around it. Mindy took her hand away, the gun held in place solely by her nipple.

“It’s not a toy,” Julia enjoined as she scooped up a few of the remaining assailants and tossed them across the parking lot. “At least, I didn’t think it was.”

“Then what is it?” She squeezed the trigger, emitting a BANG. The bullet traveled down the barrel and impacted her indestructible flesh. Not designed for such a blockage, the gun exploded and the barrel ruptured.

“I.. I don’t know.” Julia hoisted the final two assailants in the air. In her distracted state, she slammed them together with more force than intended, causing a few bones to crack. As she deposited them at her feet, Julia surveyed the scene.

The gang had been utterly battered. Only a few of the men could even stand. Most of them were on the ground, or crawling, or limping and moaning. None were in shape to fight, or even to flee. Some had limbs bent at unnatural angles. Some had blacked out from the punishment and the pain.

Julia, meanwhile, felt as fresh as the moment she had walked into the bar. Her muscles were completely untaxed and their breathing steady.

“Where’s Hawk?”

“Storage,” Mindy said simply. “I wanted to save him for later.”

“Alive, I hope?”

“You make me sound so mean!” Mindy pouted. She turned to a biker that was trying, with much difficulty, to stand. “Am I mean?”

His legs wobbled as a trail of piss formed on his pant leg.

For added effect, the girl struck a crab pose, her arms, shoulders and back exploding into a wall of muscle. “GGRRRRR!” She taunted.

Now thoroughly terrified, the man tried to run away, only to find his body too battered to perform the task. He stumbled and hit the ground with a THUD.

“They DO think I’m mean!” Mindy observed, sullenly. “Maybe I should teach them a lesson.” She cracked her knuckles, as loud as branches snapping in two.

There were a more THUDs as several of the men fainted.

“Oh look,” Julia laughed. “They’re swooning for you. I think they like you just fine, Mindy.”

“Well…” Mindy laughed. “…I AM pretty hot.”

It was no hollow boast. Julia could only marvel at the girl’s natural beauty as she lifted her arms above her head and swayed her feminine curves in a serpentine motion. Her clothing was now marked by a constellation of bullet holes that served only to remind the viewer of the smooth, creamy skin that lay underneath. The teenager’s huge, sumptuous muscles were entirely relaxed, ready to defeat a hundred more gangs without breaking a sweat. Her perfect face was unsullied by the fighting, her breathing casual and controlled. Even her hair still looked great: the extensive brawl had been capable of leaving it only playfully tousled and not disheveled.

Howard had always tried to be Julia’s protector. But he was nothing compared to this girl. Mindy had shown her power greater than she had ever dreamed. And then the girl had taken her by the hand, and showed her how to use everything that her new body had been given. Julia shared a bond with the girl than no man could ever imitate.

Julia surveyed the groaning mass of inferior bodies. “That was really…”

“What?” The corners of Mindy’s lips turned up into a smile.

The mass of men continued to writhe uselessly on the ground.

“… fun.”