Second Try

Commissioned by Anonymous

Written by HikerAngel

Every head turned in Marie’s direction as the blonde stunner walked confidently down the main hall of the courthouse. Her stylish business suit accentuated her tall and lean—but somehow still curvy—frame. Shapely calves and firm thighs flowed sinuously downward from a skirt made short by the endlessness of her slender legs. Her silky blonde hair was curled into a tight bun at the back of her head, and black-rimmed glasses adorned her breathtakingly gorgeous face. The young goddess looked like a supermodel in costume for a sexy secretary photoshoot.

Marie didn’t notice the others’ stares. Her black patent-leather pumps clicking along the waxed floor, all of her concentration was focused, for the moment, on balancing her flight power against gravity so that her super-compressed mass didn’t shatter the floor beneath her heels with every step.

This was her second attempt at passing the “mortal test” required by her goddess training, and she was determined to get it right this time. She looked at each room number as she passed, intent on finding the conference room number described in the odd little electronic communication called an e-mail that was displayed on the simplistic communication device in her perfectly manicured fingers.

When she finally found the correct room, her lips parted in a hall-brightening smile. Pushing open the door, she surveyed her new surroundings. Two suited men sat to her left, another two such men to her right. At the far end of the table, a court reporter readied her recording devices.

Everyone except the court reporter, who was still busily setting up her equipment, looked shocked at her entrance. Marie blushed, thinking she had done something wrong, causing offense somehow. She followed their eyes, which seemed to be roaming her body, and looked down. She was still covered in what she had been told was the traditional sort of clothing for this kind of thing. She had been placed on earth as a legal assistant this time and had studied their manner of dress carefully before forming an indestructible set of clothes for herself. Had she made some sort of mistake?

A moment later, however, the men all seemed to stop ogling her appearance and rose. Now, the female court reporter at the far side of the room, finished setting up, looked up and gasped. Marie wasn’t sure why she was attracting such reactions. It was almost as if they knew she didn’t really belong here. But she hadn’t even said anything yet!

The breathtaking blonde shook everyone’s hand and offered the banal sorts of greetings that she had read were customary on this planet before taking a seat next to her client, a coal company executive of some sort. From what she had read, these mortals from earth burned black rocks extracted from their planet’s surface to power their amusing little machines. It was a creative way to utilize the substances, she supposed, but it seemed so unnecessary when there were so many other, better resources readily available without the negative effects to their atmosphere such burnings could produce.

Settling into her seat, Marie felt it creak as she lost her concentration on lessening her tremendous mass for the briefest of moments. Luckily, she caught herself and utilized her power of flight to take some of the pressure off of the flimsy sitting receptacle before it shattered beneath her.

“Are you ready to begin?” asked the opposing counsel from across the table of Marie’s boss.

He nodded his acquiescence.

The attorney turned toward his client. “Walter? Ready?”

The man nodded.

With that, the attorney cleared his throat and began. “Okay then, what we have here is a classic case of mining rights vs. community rights. You’re trying to force these poor people out of their homes to strip mine the coal beneath their town. Most of these people don’t want to leave, regardless of the amount offered by your client. And their offer of financial compensation comes woefully short anyway. It doesn’t take into account the environmental impact, loss of commerce considerations, property tax impacts, and numerous other things. My client has asked me to petition the court to block you from acting on your mining permit until a proper environmental impact study can be done…”

Despite her best intentions, Marie’s mind began to wander as the man droned on. She wanted to keep her attention on the laws, rules, and such that they kept quoting, but it was difficult. Her mind kept drifting back home. She began to wonder what the Milky Way galaxy—the one she was inside of right now—would look like from afar when the two new supernovas that were scheduled to hit in the next millennium flared up. She was sure the sight would be absolutely breathtaking.

“...so we believe that section 402, subsection z gives us the right to…”

Marie’s attention waned once more. This dispute was more than a little frustrating to her. Her first instinct was to simply fill an energy reservoir with a tiny fraction of her power. Even the tiniest amount would be enough to power the humans’ cute little machines for millennia.

She sighed, knowing immediately that she couldn’t do that, however. Under the terms of her test, she wasn’t allowed to reveal her powers to these mortals. Besides, they probably wouldn’t know what to do with that much energy. They might blow up their planet or something, and that would definitely cause her to fail.

The men continued to go back and forth, making legal arguments with tiny little details from their convoluted documents as if they were the most important things in the universe. Marie supposed that such matters were important to them, but they just seemed to dreadfully dull to someone more accustomed to activities on a galactic scale.

The resplendently beautiful girl turned her spellbinding blue eyes toward each of the men in turn as they stabbed their fingers at their papers and shouted at one another. There had to be a way to resolve this. One that didn’t require her to reveal herself to them. She simply needed to find the solution within the confines of these mortals’ limited methods!

Finally, the conversation seemed to come to an end, and everyone gathered folders full of documents, placing them carefully into the little leather boxes they carried. Marie breathed a sigh of relief. As she rose, her boss looked her over appreciatively.

“Did I, um, do anything wrong?” Marie asked, her eyes wide. She nervously adjusted her spectacles, unsure why the man was looking her over so intently.

The man smiled hungrily, licking his lips like a cat eyeing a mouse. “You must be new to the firm.”

“Oh, I am! Brand new, in fact!” Marie said, an innocent smile lighting her flawless visage. “I hope I’ve performed acceptably thus far.”

The man’s smile turned into a lecherous smirk. “Oh yes. You’ll do nicely. Why don’t you stop by my office later this afternoon, so we can discuss the, uh, case?”

“Oh, that would be so wonderful,” Marie replied, clapping her hands together in excitement. She was so thrilled, in fact, that she felt the heels of her pumps crunch into the tiled floor below her, accidentally grinding it into dust as she momentarily forgot to adjust her weight.

Luckily, the man seemed too engrossed in studying her chest to notice her slight faux pas. As he turned and walked out the door, she mused on his fascination with the upper portion of her outfit. She looked down to see the white silk blouse inside her smartly cut jacket. That was it! He must have been admiring the way she was dressed! Pleased that she had done so well in selecting her clothing, she left the courthouse beaming. As she walked down its stone steps, she considered what to do about this little coal dilemma.

She had been tasked with resolving this dispute between mortals in a way that didn’t reveal her powers to them. She didn’t have another human gathering requirement until her appointment with her boss in the afternoon. That left the rest of the morning for her to go to the town and see for herself what all the fuss was about. Maybe going there to see the problem first-hand would help her understand how to solve it.

Smiling in satisfaction, pleased that she now had a plan of action, Marie slipped into the alley next to the courthouse, looked around to ensure no one was watching, then rocketed into the sky at a speed she was sure that no human could track with its eyes. Her high-heeled feet kicking behind her, suit jacket fluttering lightly in the breeze, she sailed through the air toward the town, arriving there in seconds.

The gorgeous young blonde landed a little harder than she intended in a vast expanse of blackened surface with lines drawn all over it. Large combustion-powered boxes on wheels were scattered all about this area. This must be what the earth mortals referred to as a ‘parking lot’. Raising her foot from the shattered pavement, she grimaced. Oops! That hadn’t been how she’d intended to kick off her visit. But these peculiar shoes with their funny little pointy heels made it even more difficult not to destroy things than it already was!

She slipped the patton-leather pump off her dainty foot and held it up before her piercingly blue eyes, looking over the rim of her glasses to examine it. It was a strange shape for footwear. She couldn’t remember seeing anything else like it in her training on other worlds. It seemed to be a uniquely human thing. She reached down to massage the arch of her small foot, not because it hurt, but because it tingled after being encased in this odd footwear for the past hour. Touching her human feet like this did seem to give her pleasure, however. But enough of that for now. She had work to do! She slipped the shoe back over her curved foot, noticing how it made her calf tighten into a smoothly rounded ball as she did, then clacked her way through the parking lot.

She walked down the sidewalk, looking around at the closely connected two-story brick buildings and occasional passing vehicles. She took care to make each step light enough not to destroy the mortals’ gray walking path, but she couldn’t seem to find this coal that everyone was so concerned about.

She stopped a man in overalls walking by. His eyes bulged as they saw her. “Excuse me, my mortal fr—” She quickly caught herself. “...sorry, I meant ‘sir’. Would you happen to know where I might locate the coal that the human organization known as ‘Black Lung Mining Company’ is interested in?”

The man gave her a curious look before scratching his head. “Coal? I don’t rightly know, ma’am. My farm’s a ways out of town, and I’m not really in the loop on these here kinda things…”

“You’re not in a loop? Do you mean others of your species are caught in a time loop of the sort that is formed when a singularity…” she trailed off as the man simply stared at her blankly. Marie mentally kicked herself. Stupid! These people didn’t really know much about the nature of singularities, having only ventured a few million kilometers from their home planet. She had to keep her audience in mind!

“I’m so sorry, sir. I know not what I’m saying. Have a wonder-filled day!” She gave the perplexed man a dazzling smile and continued onward, scanning the area for coal again without success.

Marie fiddled idly with her glasses as she wandered aimlessly about town, anxiety beginning to mount. How was she supposed to solve a problem that she couldn’t even see? As she continued to look to one side, she inadvertently walked right into the brick wall of the adjacent building.

A clerk restocking his shelf startled as he heard a cracking sound behind him. Whirling, he realized it was coming from the cinderblock wall! Watching with wide eyes, he saw a shiny black pump emerge just above the floor from a puff of dust, bits of brick scattering before it. The foot appeared to have come from outside the grocery store! But how was that possible?! No one could kick through a brick wall!

However, the foot was quickly followed by more shattering cinderblock. As the rubble accumulated around her black pump, a slender ankle emerged, then a beautifully rounded calf, then a smooth, slender thigh. A moment later, two perfectly shaped breasts, covered in thin, white silk crunched through the heavy outer wall of the building.

The clerk was dumbfounded, watching the rest of that section of wall collapse inward in shocked amazement.

The rest of a breathtakingly beautiful blonde woman crashed through the wall, bits of pulverized brick, concrete, and insulation falling all around her, but strangely leaving her clothing perfectly clean and completely undamaged. The tall, slender blonde was smartly dressed in elegant, professional attire that only seemed to accentuate her sexy curves. He gave her a dazed smile, unsure of what had just happened, but far from upset that some sort of supermodel had just entered the store, however unconventional her means.

Marie’s swirling blue eyes focused through the thin lenses of her indestructible glasses, coming to rest on the teen boy before her. His mouth was wide open wide, and the box he had been holding slipped from his fingers to drop with a loud thud on the floor. Marie looked around, quickly ascertaining the reason for his reaction. Flustered at her inability to locate the coal, she had accidentally walked through the stacks of baked clay material that these humans used to denote the outer borders of their places of commerce! Her entry had been quite unintentional, but she already knew that most humans weren’t capable of creating their own openings through such materials without the assistance of their funny little tools.

Another mistake.

This mortal test was so difficult! It was so much work to keep track of every little way in which she needed to fit in while still accomplishing her mission!

Glancing over her shoulder at the hole in the wall behind her, she frowned at the obvious damage, highlighted by two dangling wires that continued to spark as the lights in the store flickered. Marie turned her attention back to the boy, giving him a hesitant smile, a rose-colored blush blossoming over her cheeks. “Would you be so kind as to perhaps make this our little secret?”

“S-sure!” he stuttered, still awed by what he had just witnessed.

Marie’s shoulders slumped in relief, and she grabbed him lightly by the shoulders, lifting him off the floor in her delight. “Oh, thank you so much, young boy!”

Setting him down, she skipped toward the glass doors that she’d identified as the building’s proper entrance, her stiletto heels shattering the floor with every step as she forgot to use enough flight power to glide more gracefully out of the store.

The glass sliding doors at the entrance began to close on her as she passed through them, however. Stretching her long, willowy arms to either side, she curled her slender fingers over the alloy frame at the inside edges of the doors, her instinctive grip crushing the metal into a bent, mangled mess. The glass inside the metallic frames exploded in all directions a millisecond later, showing the floor and sidewalk in tiny shards. Dozens of eyes cast startled glances in her direction.

Oops! she thought sheepishly, shielding her face with her hand as she hunched over and shuffled away at super speed before she could be identified.

As she distanced herself from the store, she straightened, hearing a wolf whistle from across the street. She turned to see a nice young man staring at her, making a some sort of thrusting gesture with his hips. She smiled and waved back at him. He seemed bemused.

His expression quickly changed into one of alarm, however. Puzzled, Marie furrowed her perfectly sculpted brows, turning to face in the direction in which she was walking. But her attention came a moment too late. Her body collided with the concrete support column of the bridge overhead. The column gave way to the young goddess’ invulnerable curves, even the steel wires buried within bending until the entire thing broke away from the structure above. The corner of the bridge dropped, the road overhead slanting precariously as terrified drivers slammed on the brakes, their cars skidding and lurching before coming to a stop. Several cars crashed into each other, leaving a messy four-car pileup directly over Marie’s head.

Marie raised a slim hand to her full lips, covering her mouth in horror at what she’d done. Luckily, none of these mortals had driven off the bridge and ended their fragile little lives.

The slender blonde reached down and picked up the heavy column with a single hand, wedging the fractured cylinder of bent steel and crumbling cement under the roadway over her head, raising the corner of the bridge to its normal height once again. Small bits of concrete continued to fall from the damaged column, shattering on the ground below.

The support didn’t look like it would last long, but Marie didn’t seem to notice. Brushing off her hands, she smiled, pleased at her handiwork. No harm done, after all.

But she was no closer to finding the coal she was after!

Stopping to think for a moment, distracted by the chain of accidental destruction she had wrought, the breathtaking blonde tapped her toe on the sidewalk. In her worrying state, she completely forgot to lessen the weight of her foot, and the small tap inadvertently shook the bedrock under the town. She heard screams of terror coming from the surrounding buildings as their contents shook and the paintings and chandeliers inside came crashing to the floor, but Marie thought nothing of it. Those sounds couldn’t be related to her this time, could they?

She decided that the rattling of these mortals’ structures must be from some other phenomenon and their screams of outrage must be normal for them. So they were frightened. They probably should be! These mortals were so fragile that nearly anything could hurt them. It was probably a good thing if they were randomly fearful from time to time. Maybe that would lead to the sort of caution that could extend their short lifespans by a few dozen years.

Marie shrugged off the odd behavior of the townsfolk, then got back to thinking about her task. Maybe if she found a different vantage point, she would be able to catch sight of the vast expanse of coal. Looking around, she saw that no one was present to see her, so she lifted off the ground. The pointed heels left the ground first, followed shortly thereafter the balls of her feet and toes. She floated upward until she was even with the highest building in town. She drifted toward it, unwittingly knocking a chuck of its overhanging decoration before touching her stiletto heels down gracefully on its roof. Sighing, she surveyed her surroundings.

Slipping her glasses down her nose, she looked over their upper edge to see the town, trees, farm fields, and… nothing else. No coal. This was insane! How could she miss what sounded like such a huge amount of the material back at the courthouse?! She exhaled a frustrated breath before closing her eyes to calm herself. Her eyes closed and attention on relaxing herself, she failed to notice that her short, frustrated breath shattered every window in the building across from her, sending a hail of glass into the people inside.

Think, Marie! she told herself. Where would these humans find coal…?

Then she had it! Coal had to be mined. Mines were dug into the ground. So the coal must be buried under the soil! Of course!

Marie chided herself for her simple error, but it didn’t sting in the least, now that she had her answer. She felt giddy, overwhelmingly happy at having unlocked the riddle after nearly an hour of searching. In her excitement, she almost ceased use of her flight power to let her full mass carry her downward into the earth, but she caught herself. She remembered she was on top of a building. Not wanting to destroy it, pleased that she had avoided any further damage to this small town, she hopped over the side of the roof. She cut off her flight power completely, letting her full mass drop her downward with breathtaking acceleration.

The magnificent blonde dropped through the sidewalk below, her small, pump-clad feet piercing the earth’s crust as if it were tissue paper. She sunk one hundred feet into the soil. Then, two hundred. Then, three hundred!

Suddenly, she realized she was surrounded by dense, black rocks and diminished her weight again until she came to a sudden halt. She reached out, her slender arm grinding through the soil and coal deposits as it were moving through water. She plucked a piece of dark rock with two fingers and moved it through the soil toward her face until it came to rest just before her eyes.

Coal. She accessed her elemental vision, which functioning perfectly in the subterranean darkness, and identified the substance immediately. Coal. Marie laughed, thrilled that she’d found the source of all the trouble.

Grinning, she rocketed upward, traveling through the dirt and rock with ease, until she tore into a building from below.

Diana Carver and her family had run the town’s general store for generations, and she and her son were in the middle of stocking its shelves, when suddenly, the floorboards exploded from underneath her boy, launching him out the picture window at the front of the shop and into the street beyond. Diana shrieked in horror as some sort of blonde, black, and white missile tore through the center of her shop, shattering supports, snapping wires, and mangling pipes. Steam from a damaged pipe blasted the poor woman in the face, burning her face and sending her agonized body to the floor. Electricity crackled as loose wires writhed around on the floor like striking vipers, electrocuting her husband as he attempted to run out the door to help their son.

Marie crashed through the building before bursting out of the roof in a spray of detritus. As her long, shapely legs cleared the ceiling, her sexy, heel-clad feet kicked free of the clinging remnants of its upper surface.

The building shuddered. Then groaned. Then collapsed inward. Walls, ceiling tiles, and the contents of every room slid inward as the structure toppled in on itself with a hideous cacophony of cracks and crashes. Diana and her husband watched in horror from their backs as their lifelong abode crumbled atop their trembling bodies.

A massive billow of dust and smoke wafted upward from beneath her feet as Marie watched, grimacing. That was a shame. Especially after she’d been so careful to avoid damage to the building a moment before.

She shrugged, hopeful that she hadn’t accidentally killed any townspeople, furtively looking around to make sure that no one had noticed her floating above the town. Luckily, the collapsing building had provided enough of a distraction that she had managed to escape notice. She quickly rose higher into the air, accelerating upward with breathtaking speed until she was two or three miles above the town.

She focused her dazzling eyes on the ground below, switching to her x-ray vision to see below the earth’s surface to the coal deposits below. Sure, enough, streaks of coal swirled in the soil under the town and the surrounding farmland and forest.

Marie paused to consider. This coal was the source of all the issues, but what should she do about it? She turned her sensitive hearing toward on the law office, eavesdropping on the conversation of the opposing counsel and his clients inside.

“As if this town didn’t have enough problems with this coal company trying to move in! Now we’ve got grocery stores falling apart, a bridge support giving way, weird, bottomless holes appearing in the sidewalks, tops of buildings falling off, windows shattering, an earthquake, and even a building collapsing on top of its owners!”

Marie blanched. Everything but the earthquake and the shattering windows had been her doing!

“I wish that damn coal had never been there in the first place!”

The man’s final sentiment struck a chord in Marie. He wished the coal was all gone! Could it really be that simple?

Marie’s luscious lips formed a massive smile. Sure, she’d caused a little damage to the town, but that would all be forgotten when she solved their coal problem for them! A little zap of her heat vision would incinerate the coal, and everything would be made right.

Marie sent a searing blast of heat vision into the ground, tracing the veins of combustible material with her eyes, watching with delight as massive billows of black smoke erupted from the ground. Training her x-ray vision deep underground, she followed every line of the underground material. She was so intent on ensuring that every ounce of coal was destroyed, that she never flipped back to her regular vision to notice that she was slicing into the fields, forests, streets, and buildings. When she was finished, she gave a satisfied smile, then rocketed back through the sky toward her company’s law office for her afternoon meeting with the partner.

***

Walter left his attorney’s office and sniffed. Was something burning? He looked around, only to see a massive plume of black smoke erupting from the ground and moving quickly in his direction. What on earth was happening?!

He saw two faint red beams rising upward from the smoke into the sky, and his gaze followed its path until it arrived at a small speck high above. Something was sending a beam into the earth to ignite the coal! A satellite maybe?

Walter ran to his truck, parked just a few yards away, and pulled his binoculars out of the glove compartment. He held them to his eyes, focusing them on the small object overhead to see something completely different than he’d expected.

Something that couldn’t be!

It was the beautiful woman from his meeting with the coal company’s attorney that morning, floating effortlessly in the air! She was still dressed in the same clothes, as attractive as ever, but shooting lasers from her stunning blue irises!

Hearing a scream, he startled, dropping his binoculars to look in the direction of the sound. Stunned, he watched as a couple’s passing car was sliced cleanly down the center by the two red beams, leaving the man on one side and the woman on the other. A second later, a geyser of flame and soot exploded from under the car, launching each side like a spinning missile into the brick buildings that lined each side of the street. They struck with enough force to embed them deep into the nineteenth century structures.

A fire truck pulled out of the fire station, only to have its front tires drop into a widening fissure in the street, the two men clinging to the side of the vehicle flung into the inferno below.

Barely able to comprehend what was happening, Walter heard what sounded like a stampede to his other side. His head swiveled to look. A stream of fleeing wildlife from the nearby woods were pouring onto the streets of the town, racing desperately away from the series of explosions that drew inward to town from the forest.

What was happening here?

Was that woman doing all of this? But how?

It was the last thought Walter’s mind ever formed as red light from the sky flashed downward and his world exploded into oblivion.

***

Marie arrived at her company’s main office, walking directly to her boss’ office. Upon reaching the entrance, she hesitated. The door was open. She had read that humans always knocked to request entry. But did that only apply when the door was closed? She stood there, looking uncertain, puzzling over the question of etiquette until her boss finally looked up from his computer screen.

“Ah, my new assistant! Right on time! Excellent!” The tall man smiled broadly as his eyes again surveyed the lines of her body. Marie had nearly forgotten how much the man liked her clothes! “Sit down, sit down!”

Marie breathed a sigh of relief that she no longer needed to work out the intricacies of human door knocking customs and walked inside.

As she stepped into his office, the man spoke again. “Why don’t you close the door behind you?”

Marie smiled, then did as instructed, before taking the proffered seat. She crossed her long legs, causing her black pump to separate slightly from the smooth skin of her petite heel. She returned the man’s smile as he leaned back in his plush leather chair, his eyes hungry, his smile turning smug. He seemed about to say something when the phone rang.

The man looked vaguely annoyed at the interruption, but picked up the receiver. “Yes?” he said, impatiently. “I’m kind of busy at the moment…”

He listened for a moment, his eyes going wide in surprise. “Oh my God! Really?” Another pause. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”`

He set down the receiver and leaned back in his chair again, his eyes turning from surprised to calculating.

Marie was curious what her boss had been told. She had considered listening in on the conversation, but had been attempting to be polite and not use her powers this time. Besides, a mortal would not have been able to hear the conversation, and she was supposed to be playing a mortal right now, right? She may have used her powers a teensy little bit to assist her with the whole coal problem, but now that it had been taken care of, she was trying to be a good little goddess.

As the man sat in silence for a moment longer, she realized what the brief conversation must have been about. He must have been told that the lawsuit had been dropped! She had saved both the town and coal company from any further disagreements, so everyone could get along again, and she could pass her test with flying colors. She nearly giggled in delight, but managed to restrain herself.

“May I ask what the news was?” she finally asked, eager to confirm her suspicions and bask in her boss’ appreciation for what she’d done. “Did it have anything to do with our case?” she probed, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose as she eagerly awaited his answer.

“Actually, it did,” the man replied, his smirk giving way to a Cheshire grin. “We won.”

“We did?” Marie’s voice was strained slightly, and she looked puzzled. Then, her look turned knowing as she determined how they had won. “Because the coal company no longer needs to mine there, right?”

“No. It’s not that. It’s that the plaintiffs, along their counsel, are dead!” The man seemed even happier as he broke this news. “I guess that’s one way to win without too much effort. It would have been nice to milk some more fees out of Black Lung, though. Still, we could always make up some shit about all the paperwork required to handle the deceased status of the plaintiff. I’m sure we’ll manage to wrestle a few thousand more out of them…”

Marie’s stomach dropped. Dead? But she had just fixed all of their problems! Incinerating the coal had been the perfect solu—

—oh no!

When she’d incinerated the coal, it must have destroyed the town. And probably the fields. And the woods too! Marie suddenly felt terrible.

With a heavy heart, she realized that she was going to have to take the mortal test for a third time.