The honking of geese (a notebook)

“Live in 5... 4... 3...” the rest of the studio went dim as the lights on Katie and Robert intensified.

“This is Katie Grace reporting for KIBC in San Francisco. We interrupt your usual programming to bring you this as-it-happens exclusive...”

She turned to another camera, going to close-up. “Parents always dread some sort of schoolyard outbreak and today the cause for those concerns is very real. A new Paranatural has manifested in a local high school here on the peninsula. Already severe injuries have been reported and police are on their way.” It was about par for a news show opening: 'Stay tuned or your children Could Die.'

You set the hook with Fear. Then you reeled them in with the Sex. “Eyewitnesses say the beautiful Paranatural is a student there. She’s already displayed the trifecta of prime abilities: flight, immense strength, and some degree of invulnerability. Unfortunately much of the student-shot footage of her... exploring... her new powers with some of the male students is simply too graphic to be re-broadcast.” Katie hadn’t actually said the words ‘raped senseless’, but everyone heard the real message: ‘listen up folks! The girl’s a super-nympho and every guy she ever had a crush on just became her helpless fucktoy. What's wrong with your life that you aren’t there getting laid right now?

There were a few more boring facts she had to go through. Background crap nobody really cared about. People zoned out, just listening to the lilt of her musical voice and not the words. Katie delivered it all with the eager breathiness of a girl who’d just spotted her prom date driving up. She’d taken her earlier arousal by the scruff of the neck and put it to work. Men responded to the throaty voice and bedroom eyes without even knowing it, transferring their filthy desire to touch the forbidden fruit of a sexy young super-teen onto Katie, the sexy young newsgirl telling them the story. Their fevered brains insisting, '...because it's totally legit if I want to want to fuck the newsgirl, right? Jesus, just look at that face. Is she even old enough to drink? She was born to moan like a whore while she swallows my dick up to the balls...'

Katie felt something rapidly building inside her, and it felt wonderful.

Katie’s regular fans had already noticed she was looking especially good this afternoon. Her skin glowed with health and her blue eyes had a smoldering gleam. The creepy stalker types even noticed the tiny birthmark on her right check was gone.

It was probably just her imagination, but Katie thought she could feel the thousands of penises rising to greet her as the newscast took over more and more screens all around the Bay. Only it wasn't her imagination. Every time she blinked, behind her eyelids she saw thousands of tiny threads around her, each one whispering to her of a viewer's lusty desires. So many of them wanted to see her body sprawled out over the news desk as Robert's huge dick split her like firewood as their proxy. Or to feel her sloppy kisses on the head of their cock before her tongue licked them like ice cream. There was a whole contingent in Japan who saw the white girl's tits pressing against the inside of their TV screen, twice as large as life and about to burst through into their rooms! 'Ah, gotta love the otaku,' she thought. A few threads even whispered of groping and kneading her impossibly full ass, one of the great 'Katie Grace mysteries', a wonder never seen on television but certain to be amazing...

She'd never catch up with reading all her 'fan mail' because for every thread she sampled ten more attached itself to her, each bringing her another tiny grain of power. She wanted to take it all and just rub it up and down her body, let herself burst through her clothes as she swelled up like the Angel. But she wasn't in the game to gather a bucket of sand. She was going to be the whole beach, going on for miles... But a little power now couldn't hurt, right? in her mind's eye she opened her mouth... only to find the threads trying to rush down her throat, eager to take her!

On camera she coughed, obviously a bit of dry throat after all her exposition. Katie reached for the already open bottle of water always close at hand. 'Thanks, Ella,' she thought gratefully, using the moment to regroup. Even that single swallow was enough to change her: she felt her skin growing smoother, her arms firmer, her heart stronger. She’d just been at the gym, but now she was feeling pumped up all over, all over again. She wanted to flex for the camera and maybe rip the whole desk into itty bitty pieces with her little girly hands. But that would be too obvious this early in the game. She had other cards to play first.

Robert tagged in, bouncing the narrative energy up a notch while Katie sipped her water. “Our man in the field is only moments away from the scene, folks! While we can’t announce the name of the young woman at this time, we have been able to identify her with the help of her fellow students...” From the booth Larry smoothly brought up his cut-together package of Before/Now images, titillating the viewers all over again as it became clear that what had been a rather ordinary student body had detonated into a comic-book style sexual titan. And if the tip of her tongue peeking out at the corner of her porn-star mouth said ‘I'm about to fuck you SO GOOD...' well, that was pretty much what had happened 3 seconds later. The caption read “The SF Angel?” piggy-backing off of some clever students streaming to the net before the broadcast had started. He’d already bought out their video for a measly $50 via Paypal and had his two mixers chopping the footage into something that the FCC wouldn’t fine them out of the universe for airing. KIBC had almost uncontested control of the web-feeds now. Larry grinned - his whole staff was working together like an Italian racing team to drive this story into as many homes as possible before the Feds shut them down. Seeing Katie absolutely oozing the juice like never before, he gave the sign to put her back in the frame.

Katie looked attentive as a new box opened on the screen. Larry’s cutters had found a clip of the Angel posing for the other students. She was spectacular, covered only by a blue one-piece swimsuit with the school logo stretched into an unrecognizable squiggle of white lines over her bulging breasts. The stretchy material was sprayed on her Amazon frame so tight it left nothing to the imagination. It was a miracle it hadn’t exploded trying to contain her awesome body. When Larry had called her a ‘porno-queen’ earlier, he hadn’t been exaggerating. She was STACKED with almost annoyingly firm, pert girl-flesh. At the encouragement of her former peers, she snatched up a school auditorium folding chair in each hand and rolled the two of them into a single ball. Not satisfied with the cheers of her classmates she then slipped the basket-ball sized mass of metal between her long shapely thighs and crushed it utterly, syrupy red iron dripping over her knees. There were a few screams as droplets of hot metal squirted into the crowd of gawking students.

“As you see, even the smallest displays of paranatural power can be dangerous to bystanders.” Work that fear, work it. Then pull it back... “Though she does look like she’s having fun.” Katie chirped. She looked into the camera, sharing a moment “Wouldn’t we all like to be able to be able to get rid of trash like that, ladies?” She snatched up one of the energy-drink cans discretely displayed on the corner of the news desk: product placement at its finest. She mimed smashing the can between her hands, then squeaked with surprise when the can actually burst, spattering her with shiny, sticky soda.

“Ooops! Don’t know my own strength...” She waved the cameras off as she began to fuss with her clinging top.

Robert, taking center stage again, played off her joke: “Neither does she, it seems. As you can see from the earlier photos and this new footage, the Daly City Senior’s been completely transformed by her manifestation. At least she does appear calmer now. The earlier outburst may only have been a temporary bout of disorientation, overwhelmed by need to explore her new limits even at her classmate’s expense...” Like Katie, his voice and manner painted a whole different picture than the words. ‘The teen-goddess is still a wild tiger that could explode at any moment. Your children ARE NOT SAFE. Be afraid.’

He went on, "We're now told the police are escorting several students off the school ground who may have had altercations with the Angel in the past." The worried tension in his eyebrows finished thought: 'Because it would be just TERRIBLE if she plucked some mean girl's head off and drop kicked it 30 miles out into the Pacific Ocean. No one would want to see that.'

Katie nodded along, "Lets hope that their protective custody isn't required." The flicker of a sly smirk flashed across her face and was gone. Her thoughts were so obvious it might as well have been part of "the crawl" running along the bottom of the screen: 'Because seriously, folks, if I were a pissed-off super-girl, you think a couple of cops could stop me from giving some mean bitch the comeuppance she deserves?'

The box in the corner of the screen jumped to a new corner, swapping to fresh footage of several handsome high-school athletes huddled together, covered only with first aid blankets. One look at their bare knees and you knew their own clothes were gone, probably torn to shreds by needy, slender fingers. As the male half of the broadcast duo, Robert was the natural choice to play the sympathy card describing the young men who had been humiliated by a girl they’d probably ignored a dozen times that day suddenly become hundreds of times stronger than them.

‘God he’s good,’ Katie though. ‘He’s just lining them up for me to knock ‘em down. Be afraid of her and trust in me. Wouldn’t it be so much better if I was the Super one?’ The new shots of the super-teen and her obvious sexual conquests had wound the crowd up, but now it was time for Katie to steal that thunder.

“Those poor boys,” Katie trilled. Not that she or they actually looked too upset. More like exhausted. Their classmate-gone-superbabe wasn’t the only one who’d hit the jackpot. After the bruises faded they’d be bragging about this day for the rest of their lives. “But I'm afraid to say it’s possible they had a hand in it.” You could almost hear the collective gasp. “New studies now suggest some paranaturals are created by the crowds around them through a sort of cumulative desire. If enough people wanted her to become a super-girl today it could have triggered her metamorphosis.”

Larry frowned from the control booth as she went way off script. But she only needed to flash him a look in the secret language of old friends, blue eyes pleading ‘Roll with it’.

He nodded to her. ‘Make it good.’

‘Oh, I will’ she promised him with a wink.

Robert knew Katie was off-script too. They were supposed to warn people away now, using 'public responsibility' as a mask to whip the hysteria -- and ratings -- higher. But even if she were off in the bushes with her own agenda, he would never leave a wing-man hanging. “That’s right Katie, but tell the viewers what that the studies mean in layman’s terms.”

“Well, Robert...” she favored him with a wide smile. To the audience she looked delighted at this chance inform them all of this critical discovery. To Robert sitting next to her, Katie’s raised eyebrow and drumming fingers transformed the smile entirely. It said ‘you might get in my pants yet if you keep that up’ as clear as a billboard sign. “What it means is some paranaturals are just waiting for enough people to want to see them manifest. In fact they may even be PREVENTED from realizing it’s happening.” The rising tone emphasized the paranatural’s innocence in these events. As fast as she said the words people were imaging ‘what if I’m part of that special crowd and Katie was my lucky girl...?’

Right then the newsgirl’s already elfin face... shifted... the bones gaining a haunting symmetry, the cheeks lifting with a hint of lingering baby-fat Katie Grace hadn’t had in years.

Almost a million viewers around the Bay did a double take. Had the always adorable reporter just... changed? Deep in the warrens of social media the echo rang out with far less uncertainty: “You all just fucking saw that right? What do you mean you aren’t watching? Tune in now, Now, NAO!1!!”

Robert Lake’s eyebrow also rose. He’d caught her subtle metamorphosis instantly. He knew her features with or without make-up and the girlish visage beaming at him was significantly more attractive than Katie’s on her best day. This new and improved Katie looked closer to nineteen than twenty-five. A really hawt nineteen. Whatever she was up to, he was IN.

As the viewership climbed even higher on a burst of internet hits another ripple washed over the young woman’s trim body and her eyes sparkled sapphire blue. “I mean... It could happen to anyone and they wouldn’t even know.” She looked to Robert, as earnest as a puppy. It was like the old joke: ‘don’t think of green monkeys.’ Now all anyone could think about was how her face had changed, her piercing jewel-blue eyes, and the way she’d crushed that can...

That girl was going Super right there in the studio and everybody but her seemed to know it.

She was going Super right there in the studio and everybody but her seemed to know it.

Robert’s deep melodious voice hooked the viewers and dragged them forward in their seats. “Our viewers may already know some of these... special... Paranaturals. He quirked an eyebrow at Katie, 'we really need a good buzzword for this line of BS...' But he continued on, more smoothly now, "For example when Mister Steel manifested during the 1981 Superbowl. That may have been a result of all the fans wanting him to– to go beyond the ordinary.” Robert offered. He didn’t know the stakes Katie was playing for, but he thought he saw shape of the con now.

Katie let out the sweetest, sexiest, most genuine laugh. It made a rod of iron out of many a listener’s cock. She’d entirely forgotten about that incident and Rob had woven it in like they were reading from a government report instead of spinning a total fabrication. Robert was an amazing bullshit artist in a clinch. Right then she seriously considered giving him a hand job under the desk over the next commercial break. If this worked he’d more than earned it. Plus he’d feel so puny in her super-strong hand. She could just slide her fingers down under his ass cheeks and hoist him to the ceiling. And if one of those super-strong fingers were to slip ...inside... him, well he’d have no right to complain after all the times he’d hinted at putting something long and hard in her ass... Down girl! Work before Play!

But oh, she would play.

“Exactly!” Katie squeaked like he’d single-handedly proven the theory beyond a shadow of a doubt. To most viewers he just had. “So if she’s one of these... Lets call them ‘Kickstarter’ Paranaturals, then she’s probably still getting stronger without even knowing it!” She felt especially clever linking the idea of fan-powered super-girls to the crowd-funding world. It turned scientific mumbo jumbo into something simple and totally believable. Something people wanted to believe could happen because they were a part of it.

Larry saw the shape of Katie’s game now too and he was betting on a winner. From the director’s booth offers were already going out at the speed of light: KIBC would graciously allow all their affiliates to carry the segment Live. “Get onboard NOW, because we’ve got a Paranatural blowout happening IN the studio.” his note read. One look at the dazzlingly beautiful creature that had replaced Larry’s prize pupil on the set and it was clear saying ‘no’ was ratings suicide. A dozen of his counterparts sent their agreement immediately: ‘Yes. So much Yes! We owe you, Larry’.

She started to appear in other cities, one after another. The threads behind her eyes wove themselves into cables as tens of thousand of new backers offered up their fantasies for every channel she conquered. All gleefully pitching in to the ‘Katie for Super-Goddess’ project. If this was a Kickstarter, she was fully funded already - there was a full-blown superwoman lurking behind her demure smile and her strength was still growing by leaps and bounds. She needed to start thinking about STRETCH goals... Because there was so much power out there for the taking!

Robert raised his hand and opened his mouth as if he was about to make a very telling point, one like ‘Its happening to you right now, Katie. You know that, right?’ but he paused.

She continued on. “But they’re also in a very fragile mental state while it’s happening. Forcing them to confront the changes before they’re finished could be... dangerous.” Her eyes literally flashed under the studio lights, ‘and you wouldn’t like me when I’m... dangerous.’

Robert recoiled from her, dropping his hand. “Like trying to wake up a sleepwalker I suppose.” he mused. He shot Katie a knowing look that was only for her. ‘Ohhh... my part’s the half-terrified, half-enchanted hostage. Got it.’

“Most sleepwalkers can’t rip a tank in half while you’re shaking their shoulder.” She smiled dreamily, picking up one of the dense reference books they kept behind the desk. It wasn’t phonebook-thick but it was still huge in her hands. She tore it in half lengthwise like it was made of kleen-ex. ‘Yes it is, Robert. Yes it is.’

Still plainly off in her own little daydream, she stacked the two pieces into a long bar over 3 inches thick and tore that the long way like it was two pieces of kleen-ex. It was strangely terrifying.

“Food for thought,” he agreed, looking a little pale. For real.

Up and down the entire West Coast thousands of shoppers, drivers, and people in offices began to look up. The face of the goddess-in-the-making shone from the largest digital billboards to the tiniest hand-held tablets all streaming live from the heart of the Internet. Graphical wizardry surrounded a raw shot of the sweetest grinning face many viewers had ever seen, adding exactly the right amount of movement and blinking colors to ensure everyone had to at least take a look. And with one look, you were hooked. The steady ongoing evolution of Miss Grace live on camera was pure, concentrated eye-candy crack and Larry was a very skilled pusher. She was getting more and more impressive right before their eyes.

Katie checked herself in the monitor. Damn she looked good. The cameramen were working it as skillfully as any centerfold spread. She was the star of course, but it was still a total team effort. They were creeping up on the perimeter of the stage and trying to get the perfect angle. If she hadn’t been wearing a turtle neck they’d already be peering down her top. One of them started to carry a shoulder cam around the edge of the desk where her chair and legs would come into view but she warned him off with a look. She could feel her legs stretching and toning, knew that they were already dazzling, but she didn’t feel they were done cooking yet. She’d hidden them from the world her whole career and when that reveal came it should be nothing less than mind-blowing. You only got to play some cards once. Annoyingly he keep on working towards the backside of the desk. Her frown turned to a glare and there was a sharp pop from inside the camera and flames began to curl up from the rubber lens-guard, the lenses within all charred black.

He finally got the picture and backed off. As he scampered away she threw him a dirty look that literally set the seat of his pant's on fire. Fortunately Ella was there with a fire extinguisher in moments.

Out in the twittersphere a war was brewing. Thousands of women viewers, seeing their chance to back what could be the most powerful woman Paranatural ever had rallied around #GoKatieGo and were actively recruiting for their champion. Meanwhile an even larger number of men eager to see her blow up into a city-destroying sex doll had gathered under the banner of #WereDoingThis! Within seconds their more radical members broke off to form the splinter group #TheDickstarters and were posting engorged 'peniselfies' to show their true devotion to the cause. The chain reaction had begun.

She ran her long fingers delicately across her collarbone, up the back of her neck and then combing out her chestnut hair, freeing it from a ponytail into a wild cascade down to her shoulders, its waving chaos framing the perfect symmetry of her face. “Ohh... Sorry. For a moment there I felt like a million of our viewers were cheering us on as we continue to track the SF Angel’s movements. And I do want to thank all our viewers. We rely on the fans to send me all their hottest d- tips!” If they thought she meant send her the hottest dicks, well, it was an honest slip of the tongue, right?

Were Katie’s small breasts just a little heavier now? Their fullness catching up with the promise of her shiny pink lips? She also seemed to sit taller in her chair, head and shoulders higher above the line of the desktop than usual. Her precise posture showcased the taper from her firm shoulders to her tiny waist. Anyone saying she was only 5’5” would get called on their obvious bullshit. More like 5’10” next to Mr. Lake’s well known 6’1”. It could just be a trick of the camera angles, but she totally looked like her height was rising into the runway supermodel range.

If only wishing made it so.

Except it looked like wishing very much DID make it so! The battle-lines drawn, the hash-tag war began in earnest when #GoKatieGo's militants started posting their own genitalia-selfies via #FeertheV and promising doom to all who did not seek the mercy of 'Our New Katie Overlord'. Before it could become a complete bloodbath the SF-geek contingent swooped in with a photon torpedo barrage of clever memes actually focusing on Katie again, fired from their stronghold at #WeLive4the1. Soon they were the acknowledged peacemakers and trusted go-betweens, backed by a tiny faction using #1HandfulsPlenty to share an incredible archive of nude photos Katie had done when she was 22 and showing her fearless and proud of her slender figure and small breasts.

At this point people were scrabbling to tell all their online friends to join the party. Because no matter which side you were on, everyone was winning. Assuming of course Katie didn't find out and decide to kill them all, as the reformed #TheDickstarters suggested in hushed posts, their new battle cry: DbKSS! (Death by Katie Snu-Snu!)

Robert looked up from his notes, his hands tightening, craftily drawing eyes off of Katie with his sudden, jerking movement and the rustle of paper. “Our field reporter is pulling on to the campus grounds now! Please tell your friends to tune in to this very special report on this breaking story as we go live to the scene.

The screen split and Katie and Robert turned to the right to look off stage at their monitor while the audience got the footage direct on the right half of the screen. With only the slightest bit of shaky cam (which Larry could have easily corrected, but the audience expected such things), the reporter and his cameraman were working their way through a parking lot almost commando-style. The teenage “SF Angel” as the internet had named her was in what appeared to be a student parking lot, dead-lifting an older car over her head as 10 classmates balanced on top like surfers. Even the awkward camera work couldn’t fail to accentuate her powerful comic-book body and her muscles effortlessly raising and lowering tons of Detroit steel and California student bodies. It was as wholesome as a 50’s beach party movie. A young Elvis could come strolling in to croon to the girl and nobody would even blink.

Katie managed to fight down the flinch. Holy fuck, Little Miss Daly City was a super hottie! Katie had never done it with another woman, but if she won this bet the first thing she was gonna do was fly down there and have a little 'exclusive interview'. The girl was lifting tons like it was nothing... and Katie would be So. Much. Stronger! She was going to be able to pin even that titan down like a child and cover her supposedly bullet proof skin with super-hickeys... Fair’s fair -She’d done worse to some of her classmates. Katie would just be the duly appointed agent of cosmic kharma...

Second ticked by, a hush fallen over the studio. “You have to wonder if by reporting on her, we’re making her more powerful?” Robert mused. “So many viewers...”

“Mmmm-hmmm...”Katie leaned back almost off the left edge of the screen with a throaty contented sigh, letting the audience know she was as impressed with the girl’s display of power as they had to be. But inside she was totally ready to feel her own power blast past anything that trollop could do. ‘Sorry, little girl’ she thought to herself.

Katie laced her flingers behind her head, ruffling her loose hair, causing a little red sparkle as one of her earrings caught the light. The simple gesture also pulled her shoulders back, lifting her chest in a beautiful echo. She looked at the camera and through it into millions of hungry eyes. “It’s possible our viewers are creating the next super-goddess Right Now. If she’s unknowingly a ‘kickstarter’, audience participation would be the key... Everything would depend on how much they actually want her to grow. She could have started changing hours ago without-"

Katie's form visibly pulsed, becoming more toned under the smooth skin.

"-even-"

She pulsed again, leaving her fuller figured.

"-knowing it!”

And a third time, her head surging a full inch taller.

Katie's eyes closed and she let out a soft 'hhuuuhhh?' as her whole body levitated out of the chair. Not only was she floating, but for the first time ever the audience saw the brash flare of her womanly hips below her waif-like waist. It was the stuff of dreams for many, and Katie had delivered on those dreams spectacularly.

Still in the seated position, Katie drifted upwards three more inches, bring her knees into view and revealing the front of her skirt didn't quite reach them. Being spread wider her shoulders, they created a trick of perception as if viewers were peering into a long dim corridor between her milky thighs... and leaving millions staring in absolute agony at the equally absolute blackness that concealed the passageway's fullest depths. Just as it seemed certain her rise would allow light to reveal the color of her panties (if any!!), Katie's body unbent at the waist, her shoulders swinging away and her knees plunging back below the edge of the desk. She drifted back down into her chair, reclining lazily and giving the viewers the hooded smile of a lingering afterglow. 'Yeah, as orgasms go that... was a good one.'

Or maybe of a cat that had just eaten that damn canary. Because Katie Grace could FLY.

She lifted a hand, waving almost drunkenly, "Now over to Dave in the field." She slurred the words adorably, smaller aftershocks of pleasure still sending ripples up and down her body.

How could anyone really not know THAT was happening to them?!?!! Except... the reporter had told them that a Kickstarter might not be able to recognize any kinds of changes, even if it was to her own body.

On the left half of the screen Robert, being a gentleman, assisting Katie back into a more upright posture in her chair while she apologized softly for her fainting spell. On the right, a shaky zoom-in on the teenaged Paranatural’s smiling face and pumping arms. Even disheveled and dizzy, it was no contest who was the bigger draw. Millions of people were wanting someone they were seeing to keep on erupting into a super-goddess, but it wasn't the SF Angel – who was already quite satisfactory to many.

The focus pulled back from the Angel and Dave's head dipped into view. “Excuse me miss? Dave Moore, KIBC news. Can we talk with you for a moment?”

The young titan – looking a little more tame now as Katie was catching up – turned to the reporter, her long hair shaking down behind her and framing Dat Ass. Every breath was held—

Suddenly Robert’s face filled the screen. He looked deep into the camera, his face full of apology. “I’m sorry, but our LA, Portland, and Seattle affiliates need to take a moment to replay some of our earlier coverage and thank our sponsors without whom this program would not be possible. Here in San Francisco we will continue our live coverage without commercial interruption. While they catch up and our man in the field arranges an interview, lets check the weather! Over to you, Ken.” His smile was conciliatory: ‘Sorry for the blue balls folks... you know how commercials are. But don’t fret, our own Super-Katie’s not going anywhere!’

The screen split, Katie’s unreasonably pert figure dominating the right half, while Ken the Weatherman stood in front of KIBC’s ‘Weather Wall’ on the left. Why Katie was still in frame had exactly Nothing to do with the weather update, but nobody minded. It was the first sustained look at her profile since the start of the broadcast and it was breathtaking. As her shallow breaths softly flared her nostrils you could see the perfect outline of her just-upturned nose, the hallmark of feisty princesses everywhere since the dawn of feisty princesses.

If Katie looked a little bored as Ken launched into his spiel, the audience couldn’t look away. At least, not from her. She’d hunched down and wrapped her arms under and around the armrests of her chair, catching each of the steel bars in the hooks of her elbows. In a literal demonstration of the bootstrap principle Katie straightened her back and tugged upwards on the chair arms... which pulled the whole chair right up into the air... which lifted Katie... which pulled the arms higher... and the chair rose farther...

The loop didn’t go far: she basically sat hovering about 2 feet off the floor, the chair’s rotating castors slinging one way or the other as her breathing made the chair tip gently forward and back. But every time Ken called out a high, she rose a few inches, and every time he reported a low she dipped down. He had her full attention now.

Focusing on getting through the list as fast as possible, Ken had only barely caught the rhythmic movement out of the corner of his eye as Katie performed her bobbing thermometer act. But when he did happen to glance across the studio and saw her looking back at him from almost 4 feet in the air now, he froze like a mouse realizing there was a mountain lion in the room. The awkward pause left her literally hanging. Suddenly terrified she might look down at any moment and ‘wake the sleeping dragon’ they’d been warned about, he quickly advised the viewers that there was a cold front coming in and proceeded to rattle off a series of likely lows that gently shepherded Katie back to the ground, disaster averted as the chair’s wheels sank soundlessly back to the carpet.

Impressed with his own cleverness, he finished with a flourish, “But until that cold front gets here it’ll be just another beautiful day in Paradise!” He paused as if listening, the camera staying with him “And our director has just told me we’ve broken 50 million views via our website alone! Thank you out there, from all of us at KIBC!”

Katie looked like she’d just about cum again at the news. “Oooh Ken! Fifty Million watching meee- ...us I mean?” Katie’s whole torso shivered like she was suddenly in a nasty draft, the stage lights painting tiny triangular shadows under her stiffening nipples. Another chill rolled up her body, even more powerfully. “Oooo.” She coo’d, hunching her shoulders forward and creating an epic display of gathering cleavage. “I think I feel that cold front blowing in already!” she joked. Eyes half-lidded, she swung her arms behind her and inhaled so deeply it seemed certain her twice-damned grey blouse would finally split open over those heavenly bodies - she was definitely up to a full C-cup now. Loose papers swirled up around her in a storm as if she were sucking in all the air in the building. Lungs filled to their incredible maximum capacity she paused, papers fluttering down in the calm before the storm. Eyes closed, she lifted her narrow chin, made a perfect little ‘o’ with her lips and blew.

...Or more accurately: BLEW!!!

Across the studio and on the left side of the TV screen Ken was lifted up by a hurricane and tossed a dozen feet through the air to slap spread-eagled against the Weather Wall like a bug on a windscreen. Katie leaned into it, her cheeks inflated like a chipmunk and her ribcage compressing with slow, steady force until her lungs were empty. Before she even opened her eyes she’d turned back to the front of the desk, eager to launch into the next segment as the affiliate stations finished their commercial break.

Unbeknownst to Katie, Ken was still nailed to the Weather Wall three feet above a field of what looked like wind-swept snow, no longer held in place by the gale of her breath but by the inches of shining ice covering him. The whole wall sparkled with emerald highlights as the real color of the green-screen peeked through the digital overlay, reflected through the thick crystals of frost covering it.

Stagehands carefully picked their way across the ice covering the floor and could be seen chipping a wide-eyed Ken loose. Ella could be seen for a moment, already attacking the snowdrifts with a push broom as the line dividing the screen brushed the scene away and Super-Katie once again dominated the full frame. The legendary Akira Kurosawa himself couldn’t have delivered a more satisfying wipe.

And still the smiling blonde bimbo missed it all! It was infuriating! The internet had broken down into incoherent gurgling and new memes tore through the switches. In the fierce evolutionary conflict between images, one emerged supreme: a shot of her ‘o’ face right as she’d begun to exhale, the caption declaring “Blow ME, Katie!!” Because Katie fans are Best Fans.

Ken had his own crowning moment of internet shame-to-fame. At first it seemed the rest of his life would be doomed to being the butt of 'when Katie almost broke her Ken doll' jokes. Until a black-edge demotivational poster appeared featuring his chilly predicament. The caption simply "Still luckier than all of us. Bastard." There were few who disagreed and a subtle awe began to form around the bravery of all the mere mortals in the studio with Super-Katie.

A tone sounded, indicating the other channels had caught up and Katie launched into it with gusto, “Welcome Back! We do apologize for the delay, but the good news is the break gave the rest of the country a chance to realize what our viewers on the West Coast have known all along. Because life goes fast out here, California! We’ve just been cleared to go National! We’re now being picked up on EVERY channel in the Network coast to coast!”

As the handsome Robert and mouth-watering Katie shrank to the corner of the screen, she bit her lip. It was the only way she could stop herself from breaking into the most wicked smile. This was IT. As the Network logo swirled into existence and the ‘news fanfare’ played she actually squirmed in her seat with anticipation. And why shouldn’t she be excited? She’d seen herself in the monitors. There wasn’t a playboy bunny alive who could hold a candle to her hourglass figure. There’s a real difference between being sexy or being gorgeous... and she was overwhelmingly both. She had the face of a nineteen-year old ANGEL. When your whole livelihood was your face, you knew a thing or two about the history of beautiful faces. Katie had never even dreamed someone could be so- so- so magnetic. The dark pools of her eyes. The fresh cream-colored skin of her cheeks gleamed with the hormonal promise of maidenhood. And oh God, those lips... pink and shiny as polished coral.

If a single color could tell a story, her lips said, “Excuse me, but... I just became a woman. Would you bust my cherry for me? Pretty please? Oh, please help me become a Real Woman. I need you in me so bad...” One look at her and it would be lust-at-first-sight for at least forty million more guys! Hell, for that many million women too.

Even shrunken down to one-quarter of the screen, her audience couldn’t tear their eyes away from the newsgirl perched quivering in her chair like she was hiding a secret orgasm. There was no question now- Katie’s breasts weren’t just two cup-size fuller than they’d been at the start of the program... they were Right. Not huge, simply perfectly sculpted masterpieces of woman-flesh complimenting her smoothly muscular torso and firm arms. She had that balanced, toned build that was a religion to the most serious joggers. Gym-owners would gladly pay her wheelbarrows full of cash just to be seen showing up and using their equipment. But you’d have to have ambulances standing by, because men and women alike would be collapsing in heaps as she pulled off her sweats and started to limber up in a sports bra and yoga pants. A fantasy already being played out in thousands of skulls, firing yet another sloppy web of sparkling heat into Katie’s body. She was already SO powerful now! She'd have to come up with a whole new bucket list. Take in a live concert while dancing to every song in the air above the screaming crowd, skinny-dip with the whales under the northern ice cap, drink lava so hot it was white from her cupped hands, blow kisses to jet fighter pilots racing faster than the speed of sound before she showed them what real speed was, make a thousand snow-angels in the dust on the dark side of the moon, carry the first astronauts to Mars... after she'd been there and back twice of course. Because not even the sky was the limit for her anymore! And then there was the BIGGY: catch up on her damn reading list without having to get out of bed and go to work. Wouldn't THAT be nice? Super-Katie could - no, she WOULD - do all those things and so many more!

Confidence rolled off her smiling cherubic face in waves. If she looked confident, well why the hell not? In the next few seconds she would become so powerful she could balance a garbage truck on the tip of her pinky. Was there anything more reassuring to a girl than knowing you could smash your way into and out of NORAD just by swinging your tits a few times? That a hail of deadly armor-piercing bullets was nothing more than foreplay before somebody had either the single best or single worst day of their lives? No man would ever lay a hand on her again and live if she didn’t welcome their touch. And the ones she did welcome would never think of another woman again.

Katie and Rob once again filled the screen, her animal magnetism pulling in viewers so hard they fell out of chairs and rubbed their cheeks against the glass hoping to come even the tiniest bit closer to her. With Katie's face and body now appearing in every major market the answering mad impulse for sex shooting into her was like using a fire hose to fill a water balloon. She wanted to let go and just swell up until she exploded, showering four time zones with all with pleasure she’d received multiplied tenfold. She would fuck every one of them if she could. ‘Kilofuck, Ella? This super-duper-girl won't be satisfied with less than a MEGAfuck now!' she giggled, then realized she could literally do it - Super-Katie could take a million lovers and it wouldn't even dent the line of guys waiting to be next. 'Because I AM THAT AWESOME!’ Goddamn she wanted to throw off this charade, put her brain on a shelf for a week, and just rut like an animal morning, noon, and night until she had her new body well and truly broken in. And she knew after even that she wouldn't feel the slightest bit tired or sore... just a little tingly. Left with only the buzzing echoes of cock after cock between her legs. Mmmmm... God, she was so aroused it was a minor miracle there weren't lasers shooting out of her tits.

“Thank you for tuning in. We’re back with a quick recap for our national audience just joining us.” Robert lead off this time, setting Katie up for the kill. No doubt about it now - he was getting an epic blowjob later. Her tongue thrashed in her mouth just thinking about what her Super-blowjobs would be like... She could lick through solid granite like it was half-melted ice cream and probably suck his brain out thought his penis using her super-breath. As powerful as she was becoming, she’d have to be sooo careful around puny little men or it really would be ‘killer sex’. Fun in theory, but probably pretty gross in practice.

Before/Right Now images played behind a solo Katie. "The appearance of a new Paranatural near San Francisco this afternoon has renewed focus on how Manifestation works.” Larry had taken the precious minutes work his magic, building on Katie’s impromptu narrative with a crawl at the bottom of the screen filled with fictitious quotes from experts and man-on-the-street interviews. He’d have to call in a lot of favors later, but those were the names of Realm Established Experts in the field of paranatural studies, most of whom he knew personally. He was running a three ring bullshit circus around Katie’s lion-taming act and making it look good. Now the story had changed - the SF Angel had become just a case study in a much larger plot.

The camera showed the duo together now, chairs turned just slightly in towards each other, all the body language of an intimate conversation with family and friends. Robert talked and Katie blossomed. “While most Paranaturals manifest in moments of stress, experts now believe some are empathic - the more people wanting a hero to appear...” Out of Katie’s sight, Robert’s hand pointed urgently at Katie, signaling the newest members of the audience that 'it was happing right now and to Katie!'

He went on, “...the stronger they become when it finally happens.” He flashed all the men out there a quick, dominant alpha-male smile, ‘Because MY woman's gonna be HUGE when we done here.’ Katie’s bust almost seemed to jiggle in answer to his unspoken command. “No one is certain what the critical mass might be. But, I have a theory of my own...”

He paused, drawing out the moment as Katie looked at him with wide-eyed innocence, deeply needing the wisdom he might share. He leaned towards her, stage whispering to her as if he were about to say the dirtiest words ever: “Oh, this just in, Katie... On our web page we're up to over a 150 miiiilllllionnn hitsss..." He drew the number out in a hiss, openly leering at her now, his eyes quickly bouncing between sharing the joke with the audience and not wanting to miss an instant of the monster he’d just unleashed. ‘Watch this shit, guys. Pull pin, and count to three...’

Katie had been leaning in to catch every syllable of his intimate whisper, but as he called out their new viewership numbers she was flung helplessly backwards, crushed into her chair as if a roiling wave of lust had crashed down through the ceiling of the studio and drenched her head to toe like the legendary splash scene of Flashdance. “A hundred and fifty ...? She gasped at the ceiling with superhuman volume that shook the stage and knocked over light-stands with a clatter. Then she stretched out with her whole body, legs straight and toes reaching with all her might towards the camera. A ripple rolled downward from her neck, her demure grey blouse turning a whorehouse lantern red and pulling tight against her bosom like it had been shrink-wrapped to her every curve. While the sleeves still reached her wrists, the bottom pulled up until tiny pale crescents of her underboob peaked out at the world above a trim hardbody abdomen, the creamy skin as smooth and flawless as her face. The blood-red fabric clung impossibly tight to her flanks showing the exact arc where her rounded breasts rose from the wall of her ribcage, while the center portion was pulled taut across her cleavage, creating horizontal ruching that caught the light and illustrated the stress it was under trying to contain her. None of those bright-dark lines more sharply defined than the one connecting her jaunty nipples, each the size of the last joint of a large man’s thumb. And thanks to the miracle of ludicrous-definition television, you could see every detail down to the pebbling on the surfaces of Katie's conical aureole lifting those nipples an inch or more above the broader hemispheres of flesh.

Any corporate or government censor who should have killed the feed right there was evidently too busy trying to rip their own cock off with their frenzied masturbation to push the button. #1HandfulsEnough quickly morphed into #KatieDDsOK2 and hard drives began to overflow with terabytes of screen captures and micro-clips of the glorious moment. Coast to coast millions of hands went groping for their dicks, their other hand reached out longingly to stroke the surface of the screen.

The now properly costumed Super-Katie lay back in the big chair like it was a pool-side lounger, the metal frame of the back squealing as she reshaped it to a more comfortable 45° angle with a shrug. Her casual, sensuous stretching giving the audience an awesome view of that spectacular underswell. Her breasts rose from her narrow ribs in two barely contained domes of red fabric like the buns of home-made hamburgers - each one an extra-extra-value meal that would turn into a sloppy mess unless you had very skillful hands indeed. At the very top of Katie’s stretch, for one instant the angle lifted her protruding nipples past the backlit red arc of her generous sweatermeat into perfect silhouette against her gleaming hair, framing the soft point of her narrow chin and half-closed eyes. It was gone before it could do more than burn an afterimage into the wide eyes of an ocean of gawking men. But already streamers and amateur clip editors were spooling back through the feed for the exact frame where Katie Grace totally nippled-out on national television. 7 seconds later memes showing the twin peaks and her bedroom eyes began to spray across the internet with captions like “What other girl? / We want KATIE!” and “Katie Grace, the People's Goddess / Tune in now, WWW.KIBC.NET\newslivestream”.

Because as fast as network news is, Rule 34 is faster:

Katie felt the flow of power roaring into her now, massive braids of fantasy spreading coast to coast. ‘Fifteen minutes?’ Katie thought to herself, and puffed out her breath through her nose in a little snort that made her chest bobble. She’d curb-stomped the bet, hitting her quota of a million ejaculations fifteen times over in half the allotted time. And fantasies? Hundreds of Millions. While Robert had mentioned internet hits, that was only half the number of threads she could feel connecting her body to divinity. Pretty much every single person who saw her went into some kind of daze, created some little daydream that featured the child-like super-ditz she was portraying. She was filling out into a super-powered sex-symbol like every starlet Hollywood had ever produced rolled into one. The ever-so-blonde Katie Grace might not be in on the secret, but 300 million TV and wired-in watchers were pretty clear on that point. With more joining them by the second!

If a deal’s a deal she was now strong enough to put even the heaviest of heavy hitters like Phalanx under her thumb... using just her thumb. She glanced down at the changes to her clothes. Could the girl in Daly City do that too? Or was Katie not just instinctively choosing her looks, but also the powers she was developing as her 'bank roll' of fantasies grew? Could the Voice really be stupid enough to have let her choose the powers she needed to gain more powers? It was tantamount to a genie saying, "you wish for more wishes...? Sure, why not? What cold go wrong?" Katie considered, 'I mean, I'm gorgeous, not doubt about it, but what if I'm also some kind of psychic gorgeous now?' It seemed plausible to her. The folks here in the studio we turned on (duh) but they hadn't just dropped everything and started humping themselves the way soooo many people were on the other end of the TV screen. Except she wasn't really choosing her looks, so much as they became what she needed. If her powers were growing the same way... Hmmm... What did she need?

An experiment seemed to be in order.

She reached out, willing her original fans to take her to the next level. #TeamKatie was a team after all. It might be her imagination, but she could almost feel them respond, combing their libraries for the best pictures ever taken of their favorite newsroom hottie. She could almost taste it as the torrent of memes gained another flavor: Her worshipers with years of longing under their belts posting and re-posting their own Before/Right Now comparisons of Katie, mimicking the photo-comparisons KIBC had broadcast only moments ago. Only now, the side-by-side images were of her and had captions that conveyed much more honest sentiments like “Before: Hot as Fuck / Now: Oh God can my Balls take Any More of This?” Chat boards and tweets were screaming at the top of their virtual lungs that she’s gotten it all in the last ten minutes. All of social media rang like a stuck bell: get your goddamn friends online and WATCH THIS SHIT! We want to see how far she can go!

She wanted to see how far she could go too! To make 'super-goddess' more than just the popular culture buzz word for the most powerful paranatural women, but to make it a literal fact.

Back in the studio there was a staccato series of pops and then a sound like bed sheets ripping. It clearly came from under the news desk as both hosts looked down, startled. The camera obligingly panned down. Katie’s fans new and old were in for a treat. Viewers plainly saw Katie’s long toes, poking out of the ruin of what looked like once-adorable pink sneakers. Framing those cute feet was a oversized ‘mouse hole’, the smashed and splintered edges of oak boards punctuated by bent steel straps in crazy torn-off noodle shapes. Super-Katie had kicked the massive desk like a wrecking ball and hadn’t even noticed.

Rather than wonder about the hole she'd made, Super-Katie looked down and cried ‘Oh, my shooz! I loved those sneakers...”

She looked up past the camera and made a little gesture than should have had him cut away, either to another reporter or a commercial break while she tidied up... But at Larry’s silent command the camera stayed on her. There was no hiding it now, Katie Grace wasn’t a reporter delivering the news... She was the fucking news.

Assuming the camera was off her as requested, the drop-dead gorgeous young woman’s whole demeanor softened. She went from serious anchorwoman to girl next door like flipping a light switch. And clearly this girl next door was more than happy to be ‘friends with benefits’. If you'd bought a new couch, she'd be right over to help you break it in properly. Her girlish face radiated confident, casual sexuality. Even the shyest men in her audience were drawn in, imaging her laughing gently and reaching out to hold their timid hands up to her breasts. “See? They’re real. You can touch them. I need you to touch them...” On the screen the young goddess sat up and licked her lips and shivered like she actually felt their questing hands. For no reason at all she leaned forward slightly as if pushing herself into their ghostly grasp, her DD mounds quivering as thousands of phantom fingers stroked their flanks.

Shrugging off the poltergeist fondling, Katie looked over at her co-host, hangdog. “Dang it, Rob. Those really were my favorites...” She stood up and their desk suddenly looked almost tiny next to her. The move revealed athletic legs that went on forever, distilled from the dreams of a thousand swimsuit models. Rumors of Katie Grace’s mediocre lower body had been terribly mistaken it seemed.

Or just badly outdated. It was clearly not an issue Super-Katie would ever have to worry her pretty little head about.

Turning to face Rob showed off hips fit for a primordial fertility goddess. Women watching the broadcast up to this point had been able to lose themselves in the symmetric perfection of Katie’s angelic face. They’d admired the full curves of her chest that still said ‘100% all-natural’ to a woman’s knowing eye. But Oh My God, those HIPS! Ten thousand years of child-bearing instinct shouted, ‘Behold your goddess and worship her. Worship her!!’

A daring cameraman did finally make and end-run around the desk from Robert’s side, taking shelter in the anchorman’s shadow as her turned a camera on Super-Katie from about ten inches to the right of Rob’s crotch. The penis-eye view of Katie’s full length was an instant hit. The force of Katie’s revealed figure hammered into a nation of feminine brains: ‘I am the alpha bitch of the Whole Human Race. I am every prettier girlfriend you hung around so you could pick through her scraps. Every model you wished you could be. Yield to me. Offer up your adoration. Smile and submit to me... or get run the fuck over, little girl-child.’

ALL her women viewers began to fantasize about being with her or just being her. 100% market share. Katie’s divine body grew even more lovely before their stunned eyes, spiraling feedback loops that sucked in towns, counties, whole states.

The goddess swung an incredibly long leg up onto the desk, revealing her pleated red skirt fell well short of her knees. Taken with the bare midriff, the tight top struggling to rein in her full young breasts, and her smooth, youthful face... Super-Katie looked a lot like a cheerleader... A really sexy adult magazine version of a cheerleader. Only what Super-Katie was bringing to the role now would have thousands of cheerleaders grinding their pom-poms between their thighs as they played this clip over an over, their secret moans filling their frilly bedrooms. And Katie drank in their fantasies too.

Katie leaned forward over her outstretched leg, the sleek muscles clearly on display, her pendulous breasts dominating the pie-wedge of space between torso and leg. She ran a hand over her buttock and down the bottom of her thigh, pulling the skirt taut against her largest muscles and highlighting the beach-ball ass lurking under that fluttering red flag. Katie’s hand lingered in the hollow of the back of her knee before sliding under the length of her beautifully defined calf muscles. With a single flick she shucked off the exploded shoe and the torn remnants of the matching pink mini-sock, revealing the foot every foot fetishist dreams might exist somewhere out there in the big wide world. One shoe down, one to go, and another market gobbled up in Katie’s world-wide brand.

She swung her leg back off the desk, shifting her weight to her bare foot as she turned the inverted triangle of her shapely back to the flabbergasted Robert Lake. Then she lifted her left leg perfectly straight behind her, leaning forward to balance herself like a ballerina as she raised her foot almost to his face. “Get the other one, would you please?” The dancer’s pose thrust her slim torso out like the figurehead of a sailing ship. Robert couldn’t see it from his angle but no one else watching her could look away. She ground the heels of her palms into the hollows above her hips, highlighting the narrowness of her waist in case anyone missed it. The collection of lines and curves gave the home audience the ultimate sexual geometry lesson: while the “perfect body” is a myth with as many minute variations as there are men to drool over them and women to aspire, Super-Katie was a creature of myth and this is what the PERFECT WOMAN’S BODY looks like! Might be other things you like more, but here was nothing you could say was wrong. Viewers offered up their very souls to Heaven or Hell for the chance to be Robert at that moment, and Katie drank them in too.

She wobbled, balancing on one foot. Like any gentleman, Robert sprang to his feet, his hand shooting out to catch hold of her thigh just above the knee, steadying her. She shivered, and millions shivered with her. His other hand came forward to cup the top of her thigh in the narrow space between the hem of her skirt and her knee. Then he slid both hand together up her raised leg, stroking the silky skin of her bare calf until his fingers came together around her narrow ankle and stripped the tattered sock and torn open shoe off the tips of her agile toes. He was far from being the only one wishing he was stripping more than just Katie’s socks off her luscious body, the causal intimacy she’d allowed him highlighted as she wiggled her toes playfully in his face. Unlike the audience, he could see back down the length of her leg, along her inner thigh to the shadowy spaces hidden from the main camera by the drape of her skirt. He smirked a little, he could see she was very, very wet. Suddenly he wondered about the condition of his own pants, thankful for the cover provided by their desk.

In the booth Larry nearly broke his teeth grinding them in frustration. Robert’s standing up had blocked the view from the forward observer just before the money shot up her raised miniskirt had been revealed. But a master of making lemons into lemonade, he did put the resulting image of Robert’s slacks-clad buttocks helplessly air-humping in a corner box - a little human interest piece for the viewers because it was plain there was only one human behind the desk now.

Again Super-Katie dropped into her seat like absolutely nothing special was happening in the news room, primly watching her monitor while the ‘real story’ unfolded out in the field. Robert all but collapsed into his chair and turned away from her if only to catch his breath. Finding a cameraman almost under his ass, he gave the man a not-friendly kick before Larry ended up with a perfectly framed close-up of the wetness soaking through the crotch of his pants. In a heroic effort to pretend everything was normal, he delivered the bare minimum of chit chat to the man in the field. Dave – not realizing what a circus was going on back in the studio – was dutifully questioning the SF Angel directly now. She was chirping like a bird with some vapid 18 year-old’s bullshit about just wanting to make a difference. Katie could sensed the child wasn’t even putting a dent in the audience’s focus on her gymnastics. If anything the inane chatter was making the audience focus on Katie's tiniest gestures even more.

If there had ever been any contest, it was over. Katie in her tight red crop-top would still trample the much more buxom SF Angel buck-naked and carrying a sign that said “free hugs”. But she didn’t just want to coast across the finish line. With four minutes still left on the clock she wanted to spike the ball so hard it bounced back up to the Moon. Actually, she could probably do that already. But still. Why not MORE?

But she needed an angle. The she saw it - five of them really - still sitting on the far corner of the desk.

Katie retrieved and popped open a can of Red Bull, taking a long sip while standing relaxed if she thought the cameras were still off her (spoilers: they weren’t). She stretched her hands out hard at the ceiling, palms up to ‘raise the roof’. Several of studio-hands could be heard to gasp off camera as her arms fell back to her sides revealing plumes of light like wings flaring up over her firm shoulders. They were made of soft swirling energy shimmering like the brightest TV static, spreading gracefully from her shoulders. They were already over three feet long and still growing to fill the room. Pulses of energy formed at the tips of every wispy feather, then shot up the shaft like cartoon electronic signals, plunging into Katie’s back. It was a poetic visual representation of all of her backers’ contributions flowing into her body from every quarter. She nudged Robert from behind as he was trying to make a good show of talking with Dave in the field. Giving the sponsors the product placement of the decade, she laid her breasts on either side of the back of his neck, reached her arm under his and around him in a half-hug, and offered him a sip of her drink...

“If only it did give you wings” she joked.

20 years of Victoria’s Secret annual pageants weren’t wrong. Take the sexiest models in the world and give them wings and they stopped being women. They became something out of legend, primordial and gleaming. Angel-women had appeared on pottery and wall-carvings in every corner of the ancient world and one of the biggest companies on the planet still invoked a goddess’s wings with their stylized ‘swoosh’. It was intrinsic in human DNA, in the very folds and whorls that shaped the brain: ‘That’s what higher beings look like. duh.’

Katie had become the Angel of All the Airwaves. A Television Goddess who reached out with a thought to fill every screen she could find. A golden ripple ran out from her back, flowed out to the tip of each feathery wisp and onward into the ether until the ripple spread out across the globe. Where it passed every channel was KIBC, San Francisco.

But where it was felt most strongly was South America. In the same time zones as the USA, it was an entire continent wide awake and going abound their business. Often overlooked by the networks because so many of the countries there were dirt poor, they still represented almost 600 million potential viewers if you included Mexico. There had been mild interest in Katie’s broadcast south of the border of course. But not the rampaging shockwave of internet chit-chat that had fueled her march across America. Extreme paranatural-fetishes were a first-world phenomena. In other countries those with powers were often closer to the people, just a part of the community. But all that studied disinterest changed as she spread her gleaming wings and a clarion cry sounded from her fans south of the border:

Bull’s-eye.

The Latin America nations had a different body aesthetic that in the USA, one that favored a heavier build. While Katie was proud to embrace the Brazilian Beach-Ass and the inverted triangle keyhole that would show between her thighs when she brought her knees together, she was unwilling to give up her more athletic, bicyclist’s lean limbs. But the Latin nations were also Catholic nations and oh boy did those hot Latino lovers have a few secret fantasies piled up over their sacred messengers of the Lord! You know, the ones sent to comfort them in the cold lonely hours of the night?

Sometimes you just need to play to the audience. Only the halo of energy forming around not just Katie’s head but her whole glorious body wasn’t an act. She literally had more power than she knew what to do with and hiding it ‘behind the curtain’ was no longer an option anymore.

As the seconds ticked by snuggling against Robert's back the Archangel-Katie became a one-woman religious phenomena radiating from every screen. Mexico and South America signed on to her humble little Kickstarter en mass with genuinely religious fervor, tripling Katie’s viewership. The Angel of the Airwaves’ market penetration raced towards 100% bringing SIX-HUNDRED MILLION new viewers into the fold. As she sucked in each of their tiny individual offerings, their combined numbers sent power like the whole Amazon River roaring into her, whitewater currents flowing up her wings into her body. Wisps of searing white God-fire began to ignite the air in the studio.

There was no chance for subtlety left now. This was it, the Endgame. Katie turned full to the camera and floated up into the air. Her knees bent, her chin lifted, her breast thrust directly into the viewers faces. Her ass-cheeks jiggled and spread behind her like the whole world was doing her in the rear. She moaned in utter sexual bliss.

Then her eyes went wide and she howled, “Oh, Oh! OHHHH GAWWD..." Her hands clasped tight around her breasts, squeezing deep into them before she glanced down at her newly discovered chest in her final moment of innocent surprise. "...What’s happening to MEEEE...?” The single vowel trailed off in a rising shriek as the phantom pile-driver working her ass increased its tempo, the rhythmic impacts shaking her from the tips of her toes to the tips of her hair.

The Goddess knew herself at last and Katie was finally in on the joke. Rather than a million new memes spiraling out, the internet actually fell silent in the pure rapture of the moment. Nobody had a single hand free for typing anyway.

Floating there riding the waves shaking her whole body, Katie’s innocent hand slid down her exposed belly of its own accord. “I’m so....” It pressed into the modest folds of her skirt until clinging red cloth outlined her swollen camel-toe. Her index finger stiffened and her other fingers pulled back as she inadvertently flipped half the world the bird. “...incredibly horny...” She was on the verge of plunging that long powerful finger right through skirt and panties alike when she suddenly pulled back an inch, too shy to complete the thought.

In one-hundred-and-eighty-five cities and 14 time zones men and women were screaming, screaming at the top of their lungs:


“I need...” she moaned. Instead of fingering herself, she ran her hands over the whole length of her torso, to the sound of her own alternating chorus of grunts and moans, shaking in the grip of an infinite pleasure too primitive for words.

“I NEEED!!” She shouted, exerting a MEGASEXUAL APPEAL that went beyond physical beauty and chewed directly into your brain, overwriting any preferences you might have previously held with the desperate need to Fuck your one-and-only KATIE-KATIE-KATIE-KATIE!

“I NEED SEX!!!” she screamed. Now even her tiniest thoughts were filled so much power that she was becoming something akin to the Voice, twisting the world around her like it was made of spun glass...

There was no more pretending she was anything but the most powerful and magnificent being on the planet. She fluttered her shimmering pearl wings of light and finally took a deliberately cheesecake pose, laughing as her diamond-hard nipples tore through her crimson top sending little red scraps in every direction like a popped balloon. The prophecy fulfilled, the Great Wardrobe Malfunction come at last. Around the world streams of cum shot in every direction and women fainted completely away, confronted with the ultimate expression of femininity and to everyone’s surprise they really weren’t that huge. Perhaps a robust E protruding from her long torso. But like back when Katie’d only had B-cups, it was all about how you wore them. She’d won the bet. Won so decisively she could skim off 1% of her power and make ten SF Angels. Challenged to a million, this ‘little succubus’ had seduced nearly a cool BILLION in a runaway recursive spiral of power and desire.

Time itself began to bend around her, stretching out all the possibilities of the last trio of minutes in her fifteen minutes of fame. The seconds now falling like lazy autumn leaves instead of grains of sand and each one bowed respectfully to the Goddess as it passed by. Super-Katie’s laugher was the ringing of bells for the largest church in the world. It was time to be magnanimous. To give back for all that she had been given. To show the world their Super-Katie was a loving Goddess.

Mostly. Or it could just be she really did need sex as badly as she claimed, acting and truth inseparable now.

Those first otaku followers thinking of her had been right all along, she realized. There was just one more power she wanted and with the Fires of Creation swirling around her, wanting was exactly the same as having. She saw only one way she’d ever be able to personally thank all her millions upon millions of backers. It was time to reveal the FINAL Katie-for-Super-Goddess stretch goal! The Arcangel of the Airwaves would give them all a miracle! If you couldn’t come to the TV... Katie would come to you!

Across the entire Western Hemisphere and in isolated pockets around the world, Katie Grace simply leaned forward out every one of the hundreds of millions of screens and monitors tuned to KIBC, each solid image of her growing or shrinking as she pulled her long legs through every size of frame, changing as needed to match the original’s willowy 6’ 1” height. All of Katie’s worshipers abruptly found themselves in the company of their very own personal guardian angel. An especially frisky angel who threw herself on them with a musical laugh, glomp-tackling them to the ground and shucking their clothes like ears of corn as they took the concept of ‘fan service’ all the way to its logical conclusion. Around the world copy-Katies began to cry out in sweet ecstasy, their super-lungs all but drowning out the matching cries of their many, many lovers.

In the outskirts of Moscow, a lonely flickering television watched in secret by two young women in a state-sponsored dance school became a gateway, the whole building infested with angels who pressed up against the flexible women of the entire company in their beds, entwined with them against the walls and in doorways and even sixty-nined them in mid-air, fucking them all entirely out of their minds with darting tongues that found a woman’s every erogenous surface inside and out.

In Brazil the final score of a major soccer game would never be known as fountains of naked copy-Katies streamed out of the massive monitor banks to fall not only on every single player on the field, pinning them to the grass with long smooth thighs that were fifty thousand times too strong to be denied, but also filling the stands with their girlish squeals, turning the entire arena into a 60,000-fan/60,000-Katie orgy that ran all the way from the private boxes up to the nose-bleed seats.

In the crowded streets of Tokyo where there would never be enough ground for the masses of people to lie down and take their blessings, angels bursting from store window televisions simply launched people hundreds of feet into the air where a veritable cloud of their sisters hung over the city waiting to catch them and sweetly ravish them on the wing.

In Times Square a 40’-tall copy-Katie pulled herself from the main screen while a herd of 30’ lesser giantesses emerged from the smaller displays on every side of the famous intersection. These New York City Girls failed to shrink down to human stature. Instead, the leader scooped up armfuls of squealing tourists, hugging them twenty at a time against her car-sized breasts while her siblings spread themselves out across the warm pavement side by side, their quick hands snatching up men and women screaming “pick me, pick meee!” to drop them on to the living playground of their huge bodies. Women laughed shrill as little girls while they sat bouncing-on-the-bed of her bellies. Boy’s would be boys as impromptu games of King-of-the-hill broke out at the peaks of her titties, full grown men struggling trying to keep their footing as she laughed at their games. The bravest of her worshipers mounted bold expeditions up the narrowing ravines formed by vast pairs of spread legs on a quests to find and service a goddess's g-spot grown as large as a manhole cover.

In parks and homes across the sunlight side of the earth gentle Katies sheathed in sundresses of shimmering light tossed softballs to shouting boys and played patty-cake with little girls while their teachers and parents were busy with ‘adult stuff’ safely out of sight. And even they fed her power with their childish fantasies as they swore they'd marry her one day or grow up to be almost as pretty themselves.

As displays of power go it may have been showing off. Just a little. But if you’ve got it, why not flaunt it?

In the studio the one true Super-Katie writhed in mid-air, hundreds of phantom fingers and tongues dimpling even her invulnerable skin with the combined tactile feedback from her millions of other-selves. Because she could feel them all down to the most tender touch of the gasping virgin she was deflowering on an Marine base in Guam to the teeth scraping at her long nipple as a middle-aged auto-designer in Frankfurt, Germany took her taut breast into his mouth. She was surrounded by a whole churning flock of FX-winged copy-Katies who had boiled out of the multitude of screens in the studio to give her sincerest thanks to Rob, Ken, and all the crew. One even took over manning the main camera as its usual operator was otherwise engaged on the floor next to it. A particularly sly angel snuck up behind Ella, caged her B-cup breasts in long gentle fingers and began to nibble sweetly on her ear, expertly massaging Ella’s back with her tits. Another TV-born godling with Katie’s face knelt at her feet, spreading Ella’s legs across her shoulders, taking each of Ella’s buttocks in her mischievous hands. The second angel plunged her face into the girl’s muff, her cute nose giving ‘Eskimo kisses’ to Ella’s clitoris while her long tongue pierced first the girl’s yoga pants and then her innermost places, licking her to a screaming orgasm in seconds and not stopping for a moment in her ministrations as that orgasm stretched into a second, and a third, and a fourth...

Technically using two copies at once was cheating, but Katie felt she owed Ella an apology. It had been kind of mean to tease her about kilofucks when only minutes later Katie had gone on to enjoy actual simultaneous gigasex: half a billion cocks between her legs, half-a billion vaginas speared on her fingers and tongue.

Despite the smorgasbord of fantasies playing out on the main server of the world’s first MMG (Massively Multi-player Goddess), Katie began to have her own fantasies and they were of EVEN MORE POWER. The world, perhaps afraid of disappointing her, agreed. In Beijing, she imagined a Junior Minister of Media Control who knew far too much about State Emergency Protocols. 45 seconds earlier the angel beside him whispered in his ear and the poor besotted fool tossed his future with the party into the dumpster as he triggered a National Alert. Claxons blared in every city and town and sleepy eyes opened in the pre-dawn gloom to turn on the TV... only to find millions of wanton angels lying in wait for them in a glorious sexual ambush. She ate whole cities across Asia.

She thought she’d reached the limit of ultimate pleasure at 900 million, but as all of China converted to the Divine Cult of Katie, the woven cables of desire tying her to her fans became nothing but cobwebs compared to the single solid jade pillar of lust 1.3 BILLION Chinese men and women rammed up into her cunt. Their fantasies carried colors and textures and even smells she’d never imagined! Their dreams weren’t of superheroes, but of dragons who were also Gods. The whole celestial zodiac marched into her pussy and surrendered every power in all of Chinese mythology to their new Empress. The rain only fell at her will and the sun only shined because she allowed it. It was like being tied up in a thousand miles of silk and being torn apart over and over as the whole Middle Kingdom played tug-of-war with her in the center, every province and village fighting to choose which fantasy the August Lady of Jade would act out for them next.

As Katie rocketed past a full 2 BILLION worshipers touching her body (because nobody got to just watch anymore) she realized even time itself was her bitch now. She couldn’t stop it like the Voice, but it certainly slowed down to smell her flowers. She took the China story in her hands. It was a simple, plausible scenario... In a long molasses second she’d copied it a hundred-fold. She threw her dreams outwards, not just to every corner of the globe, but also back through time to almost a minute earlier and angels burst into existence in the past. The tale retold played out again and again, almost simultaneously as she roped in Russia, Australia, Europe, and Africa...

It was done. From Las Vegas to London, Johannesburg to Saint Petersburg, from the deepest Outback to the your own front yard, Katie Grace was LITERALLY in every business and every home. Everywhere people congregated from darkened movie theaters to sunlit bus stops was an orgy in the making. On all six inhabited continents (and the no-longer lonely tents in Antarctica) legions of squealing playful Katies answered every one of her worshipers’ prayers as long as that prayer was to have sex with her. All around the world - for one shining moment - not one person was sad or alone.

The corona of God-fire around Katie blazed like a star. She had the WHOLE EARTH in the palm of her hand (or between her thighs) with 11 seconds to spare. The wave rushing back towards her as another 5.4 BILLION souls gave totally of themselves to their new Goddess would arrive in moments. Her still only 6’1” body was already more massive than the universe could properly contain. The walls of the studio weren’t so much crumbling around her as fading away, blasted out of existence by the inescapable gravity of Her Being . Katie’s final orgasmic ascent atop that geyser of power would melt the world while every single person was held safe in her arms.

...Even the lazy fall of time’s leaves froze. Again. The Voice drawled.

...The lazy fall of time’s leaves froze. Again. The Voice drawled,


Divine-Katie sensed a vast unseen door being slammed shut, cutting her off from the brink of infinity. Goddamn, the highest rating show in the history of history and he was canceling it? What, was this asshole a FOX executive? Besides, she still had at least 8 seconds left for the black-hole of her power to swallow the Earth like slurping an oyster from the half-shell. Katie answered the Voice in kind~


She already knew he wouldn’t. But she’d outplayed this halfwit before. She crushed a portion of the power she held from before he’d cut her off – a mere half-a-billion dreams worth – down into a fiery speck, imprinting it with all the shapes and dimensions of her perfected mortal shell. She’d need the rest for the fight certain to come.


‘And a terrible Bible-quoter’ Katie thought, her own sneer more than a match for his. She snarled at the Voice in the divine equivalent of a head fake while she also pushed the tiny seed of her power in a direction she’d only recently discovered. So much would be lost on its journey, but she’d still deprive this prick of the satisfaction. She might not be a goddess when this played out, but at least she’d be a self-made woman and owe this rat-fucker nothing.

She spit on him with her mind~


After that there were no more words. Titanic wills collided with the mass of continents and the ferocity of pit-bulls. Reality itself split and crackled in a mad kaleidoscope that would unquestionably destroy them both and reshuffle a large portion of the solar system as byproduct. But Katie smiled her secret smile. She’d already won.

Exactly fifteen minutes ago...

Katie was reviewing the before/after shots on her tablet. She snickered evilly to her co-host, Robert Lake. “Imagine what you’d get if you started with some quality raw materials...” She arched her back seductively. His eyes widened, even though he’d been looking at the clips too. That was flattering. She started humming the tune she’d been listening to as she’d come in.

“There's a mad man looking at you
and he wants to take your soul...”

The before-girl would have made some nerd very happy, Katie decided. But now? She was rockin’ the kind of body Katie could only dream of. Dream like she might dream of having the universe’s biggest winning lottery ticket.

“There's a mad man with a mad plan
and he's dancing at your door. Oh!”

“I wish it were ME.” she whispered, experiencing the strangest sense of deja vu...

Suddenly Katie’s whole body was on fire.

She shrieked, throwing herself back from the desk in startled agony. But instead of falling backward she hung in the air, her heavy chair dropping away from beneath her and the multi-ton news desk firing away from her kicking feet into the shadows of the darkened studio like a runaway truck. The attention of her shocked and frightened co-workers was divided between the white mass of flames surrounding her body and seeing the rocketing desk suddenly get cut in half with a thunderous boom by some massive invisible sword stroke. A young blonde man strode out of the shadows of what would have been the best seat in the house - for a broadcast that would never happen but whose consequences would still be keenly felt. He passed through the narrow gap created in the fatal missile with pieces of shrapnel whistling past him on either side, none actually touching him.

Robert, being closest to Katie, could see his co-anchor writhing inside the shroud of flames. He reached out to touch her and pulled back his hand with a yelp, his skin burnt and blistering. But where his flesh had sizzled, Katie’s body was drinking in the shimmering heat. Before his eyes she was changing, and all for the good. In fact, she was quickly morphing into some sort of unbelievably sexy idealized version of herself. He realized that like the high-school girl they’d been about to cover, his co-anchor was going hardcore paranatural right there in the studio! He desperately signaled to keep the cameras rolling with his good hand even as he kept the other tucked to his side. Larry took the hint and started the national uplinks. If Robert had though Katie was actually burning, they’d have killed the cameras in a heartbeat. They might be professional vultures, but Katie was one of their own.

Meanwhile the young man strode towards both the news anchors, his hands lifted into claws like some cheap ren-faire wizard or maybe a puppeteer furious at his misbehaving puppets.

“No... NO!” He shouted, his hands waving in forceful strokes that seemed to tear sheets of light from Katie’s fiery cocoon. “I Decide! Only ME!”

The tableau flashed out across 6 satellites as Liam Tyrell Walker fought to kill a Goddess not quite of his own making. He wrenched power from her body, ripped unimaginable forces into tatters, peeled away energies rightly reserved for God Himself. In answer Katie only curled tighter, instinctively clinging to the unimaginable glory that burned in her very core as her lovely flesh continued to refine itself according to some unseen plan into something more that mortal.

“You’re. Only. My. Puppet!” he screamed. His clawed hands slashed from over his head down to his hips in an ‘X’ through the empty air. Almost a quarter of the power swirling around Katie tore away in a massive gob of searing white God-fire, carrying off forces that could have turned fifty people into formidable Paranaturals.

...Or a single brave person into a phenomenal one. Before it could dissipate the sizzling mass collided with Ella as she rushed to Katie’s aid, intent on throwing herself between her unconscious burning friend and this awful monster. While only a healthy fraction of the power still lingering in Katie’s cocoon, the bonfire that now surrounded Ella would still launch the courageous young woman from human to ‘century-class’ Paranatural over the next eight seconds.

The redhead rose six inches into the air, legs spread 90° and toes pointed like a ballerina balanced on an hydraulic piston driven into her ass. “Hhaaahh... hoooh... Whuuhh? ...that feel’s sooo...!” she gasped, her face becoming softly radiant even as her breath caught her throat. She snatched at the hem of her t-shirt with both hands, her pert buttocks clenching, pulling the white fabric tight over her sweet little breasts in a narrow ‘V’ as she tried to cover the stain spreading across her trembling loins. But overwhelming pleasure won out over modesty as two long fingers from each of her hands fish-hooked up into her camel toe, tearing through black yoga pants like a soggy paper bag. Fifty million erotic fantasies flashed behind Ella’s eyes as she spread the pink flesh of her pussy lips wide, willing the force lifting her directly into her spasmming vagina. “Take me... fucking TAKE ME!!”

Even the strange man paused in his attack to stare at her accidental apotheosis. The ripples of blazing God-fire orbiting the floating youth obligingly fired up into her needy body like flames from a rocket played in reverse. The consequences were immediate: Ella’s slim arms and legs surged with long, luscious curves. As her hips spread inches wider, Ella’s legs also lengthened until her clenched toes reached the ground below, then punched down into it like steel spikes driven by her relentless growth. Her gleaming shoulder-length red hair began to run down her back like a waterfall of rubies only slowing when the tips reached the floor below. Ella didn’t want or need Katie’s sophisticated beauty. Her ideal ran toward ‘an athletic beach-volleyball queen, only she keeps a pair of volleyballs under her skimpy red sports-bikini...’ Wished and granted in the same breath, Ella’s merely human tits rapidly inflated into honeydew-melon sized monsters, delightfully matched by the sudden explosion of the her ass-cheeks into massive globes of muscle. Nipples an inch long and hard and thick as steel bolts rose up and out from peaks of Ella’s super-breasts, popping her already overstretched white t-shirt like a soap bubble, in turn revealing the tautly muscled definition of her washboard belly sheathed in tanned, satiny skin.

Boom. Eight seconds later Ella’s eruption into a Beach-Volleyball Super-Goddess ended. But her fun was only beginning.

Where Katie was shifting towards gorgeous, this new super-girl was just wantonly sexy. The beach-goddess that had replaced slender Ella in an instant chewed at her lip hard enough to bite through a mountain, her eyes rolling back behind half-closed eyelids. “OHH FUCK MEEEE!!” Ella demanded, shouting louder than any rock concert. With no immediate volunteers, she swept up both her tremendous new pieces of athletic equipment with one hand and the crook of her arm, guiding a pair of nipples as red as her hair to her lips. Gravity was just one of many inconveniences Ella would no longer have to tolerate and as her cheeks dimpled with the hard vacuum she was creating in her mouth, it looked suspiciously like she’d sucked her own body up into the air, her slim ankles crossing beneath her as she rose. The long triangle of leg tapering down from her wide hips was breathtaking even without her thighs grinding against each other as she massaged her own thick cunt with the hand not otherwise occupied.

Seriously, if a goddess asks you to fuck her, don’t make her wait. It’s rude.

Still sucking and fingering herself, Ella’s flight path careened randomly around the studio, ripping loose lighting frames and knocking down backdrops, creating havoc in her kingdom more easily than a child toppling a sand castle. She’d have been so pissed if anybody else had done that, even Katie. Releasing her tits at last with a loud ‘pop’ and a wicked gleam in her eye, Ella rolled in mid-air until she was spread-eagled face up and completely horizontal. Then the broad ‘X’ of her outstretched limbs shot upwards, slamming through the ceiling without pause. Earthquake-resistant beams exploded against her soft bare breasts while metal framing was cut to pieces by the trailing whips of her long red hair. “YES!... YES!!... YES!!...YES!!!” echoed back down though the gaping hole she’d made, each of her receding squeals of ecstasy accompanied by a boom and followed by a rain of crushed cement and bits of wiring dropping through the hole as the newborn deity blasted through floor after floor, nothing able to resist the indestructible perfection of her naked hardbody. And if she didn’t come back, well Ella did have the minor matter of a kilofuck on her day planner. Starting with that girl in Daly City that had made her feel so small earlier. You know, the weakling everyone thought was such a big deal?

In the echoes of her absence, the stranger shook his head, having been quite mesmerized by the sight. Then the ugly sneer returned and he turned his glare to Katie once more. But it was too late: while Ella had enjoyed her very special moment, Katie had absorbed what power remained to her. No longer ablaze, the cocoon now revealed itself as a pair of pearlescent angels wings still curled around her protectively.

The blonde intruder’s hands rose again as if to tear the sleeping angel apart. Only he stopped to stare at them. They had turned black, with veins of deep red heat running through them like coals in a fire. He may have been winning the one-sided fight, but he was paying a price too. Before his wide eyes the charred flesh crumbled down to skeletal claws. He turned then, facing directly into the camera. “You’re. All. Puppets!” He snarled as the blackness washed up his arms and burst forth on his torso in ugly blotches that burned his dapper sports jacket to ash.

He screamed at them all in pure rage until his lungs were gone.

Rather than skeletonize like his crumbling hands, his incinerating torso burst from within, the half-charred skull bouncing away to strike a distant wall with a harsh crack.

In the same moment Katie’s eyes flew wide open and she gasped. “Um... wow?” she breathed. She felt so fucking strong! She tried to lever herself up, resting her hand on her toppled seat but the metal frame bent like folding a pillowcase. She sat up, then deliberately tried to squeeze the heavy-duty chair. She ended up turning the metal frame into something that looked more like a ball of yarn. The carbon fiber shell crunched and shattered between long fingers like she was pulverizing a bag of corn chips. She looked at her hands in wonder. They were... nicer than she remembered. Good grief... what had just happened to her? Her balance felt so strange.

Though all the chaos, Larry appeared at her side. “You ok, kid?” he asked, draping a swath of stage-curtain across her. She hadn’t even noticed she was naked. She’d felt as safe and confident as wearing armor. Untouchable. Covering herself felt like throwing a dirty, oil stained tarp over the most beautiful painting you’d ever seen: it wasn’t right.

Unbidden, an image appeared in her mind, of herself clad in a crop-top red cheerleader’s outfit. She liked it immediately, the design suiting her tastes, but still the idea seemed unfinished or maybe rushed. In her mind’s eye she replaced the pleated mini-skirt with skin-hugging bicycle pants that stopped just short of the knee, while adding a field of black across the neck and shoulders to highlight the transition to blood-red at the top edge of her breasts and the beginnings of her arms. A black waistband and dark stripes down the sides of her pants that grew wider as they approached the bottom hem turned the pants into an inverted triangle of red centered on her unapologetic camel toe. So much hotter than plain crimson. She felt better somehow for having overridden the foreign impulse and making it her own. She’d never be someone else’s puppet.

She considered recreating her missing pink sneakers, but decided to go barefoot. She had a sneaky suspicion she didn’t need to worry about cutting her feet on a piece of broken glass anymore.

The curtain covering her shivered for a moment, then fell apart in a fluttering puff of scraps, the leftovers as the rest had been transformed into a perfect match for her dream-costume. ‘oh’ she thought, ‘now that’s a handy ability!’

People were recovering from their shock. A wide circle of emptiness had formed around the intruder’s remains, no one willing or wanting to approach. A cameraman was tending Robert’s burnt hand and already there were four safety cones set out to warn people away from the still crumbling hole in the ceiling. People were shaky, but calm had been restored.

“Yeah. What was all that?” Katie asked, looking at the still smoking ruin of the strange young man as if somehow she WASN’T the biggest story in the room. At the sound of her voice two of the riggers turned and collided with each other. She was a traffic hazard even standing perfectly still.

“No idea. But we’ve got the only footage anywhere.” He grinned. He’d have to turn it over to the government of course, but not before tonight’s broadcast. They’d probably made budget until the spring off this one coup. Some sort of paranatural battle right there IN THE STUDIO. Pure ratings gold. And Jesus... Katie and Ella both were beyond belief. The internet would never stop talking about the uncut footage that had raced out live and uncensored.

She stood up. It seemed like the floor was a long way away... and hiding behind rather more chest than she was used to.

She looked at Larry, only then realizing he was slightly shorter than her now. “Um... do I have bigger tits?”

“Dear, that’s the least of what happened to you. You and Ella, both.” He laughed, glancing down amusedly as his own raging boner. “Can you even hear yourself? That voice... You could give thousand-dollar-a-minute phone sex and you’d be undercharging.” He looked her up and down, but the lust in his eyes was highly technical. Finally he whistled. “I could build an empire around you. It’d be so easy it would feel like cheating.”

Damn he was good. It might be cliché as hell, but she did have the hots for teacher. But she smiled sadly. She was a full-bore paranatural now and that had consequences. Non-negotiable consequences. “Well, we’ve probably got time for an interview before ORCA gets here. ‘Cause I’m pretty sure...” she gestured down the length of her body with the tips of her wings, not even realizing she was using them instead of her hands, “...I’m leaving with them.”

“Now that is a great idea!” He crowed, his eyes twinkling. “Exclusive right?” He elbowed her playfully and literally bounced off. He rubbed his bruised arm like he didn’t mind at all. She restrained the urge to give him a playful punch back. It might go badly, she realized.

‘Um, Guys?” Robert called out. “The van says they’ve made it to the school. And they say Ella’s there too, um... playing with her.”

Larry snorted. “Damn, we’re not getting anything we can air for hours, are we?”

Katie laughed for her friend’s good fortune and raging libido. “Fortunately, we’ve gotta a bigger story right here.” She did a little show-girl hop. “Me!” Then she scooped Larry up in her arms like he weighed exactly nothing and stalked off looking for a quiet place to do their exclusive interview.

That’s what the kids were calling it these days. Right?

“You are go for breach, Knock-Knock.”

“Copy, Control. Liberty 4 Breaching now.”

Two FBI agents sighted in on the door’s heavy hinges with their under-barrel shotguns. There were a pair of precisely synchronized ‘BANG!’s as they pulled their triggers. Before the echoes even started in earnest in the long barren concrete hallway of the underground passage the two had stepped out of the way and two more agents replaced them, slipping long steel pry-bars into the resulting jagged-edged craters. The sheer formidability of the inches-thick reinforced security door marked this particular chamber as very out of the ordinary in the warren of subterranean storage spaces. But with the hinges blasted away, the steel and leverage quickly bypassed a massive array of locks. Somebody had gone a lot of trouble to keep people out... or to keep something in.

They went radios silent, the squad of eight filing in, two-by-two. The last two covered the hall for a long moment before bringing up the rear, "FBI" in white block letters on the back of their tactical vests.

Daniels and Corey were on point as the squad advanced. The space seemed to have been retrofitted as some kind of dense-pack barracks. It was clean and orderly, but cramped. Well lit by modern LED fixtures. They were popular with tech-savvy criminals because of the low electrical draw and almost non-existent thermal signature.

Whimpering could be heard from further inside. Feminine whimpering, from multiple throats.

“Shit!” Daniels whispered under his breath, still loud compared to the creaking of body armor that was the squad’s only other sound. He looked to his partner. “Sounds like our intel was right. Fucking slavers...”

Tina Corey, agent in charge and a 7 time veteran of raids just like this, could have given the command by handsign, but opted to voice it just to emphasize the importance: “Stay sharp everyone. Full IED sweep. The Deveron Cartel’s been known to slaughter their girls rather than see them go free. Edwardo, Finn: hold and clear. Beck, back outside and ping control. We need ambulances on stand-by for up to... ten, no eleven.” she announced, counting the tightly stacked bunk-beds.

Daniels meanwhile began to push aside a makeshift curtain covering the entryway to an inner chamber with the barrel of his carbine...

Only years of FBI range practice kept him from pulling the trigger in shock and causing a tragedy as a tall, beautiful, Latino girl burst from the space beyond the curtain and wrapped herself around Daniels, weeping tears of fear and joy. She wore only a thin white smock. hardly more than a nightgown. She might have been old enough to drink.

As if a sign had been given, more young women emerged from the tiny chamber they’ve been cowering in to throw themselves on their rescuers. It was a typical mix for the Southern California ‘white’ slave trade, with a quartet of Latinas, one black girl, three different extractions of Asian and three Caucasians, looking to range from fifteen to maybe twenty. Hooray for the Los Angeles melting pot. This gilded cage was obviously one of the cartel’s high value "jewelry-boxes", as all of them appeared well-fed and possessed of almost eerily good looks and voluptuous figures that strained their simple smocks. Figures so exaggerated in fact that it was likely they’d been hand-picked from thousands and then handed off to plastic surgeons in preparation for being placed on the auction block. Premium product for the Deverons, certain to bring in at least a quarter-million dollars each, likely considerably more. The only physical sign of their captivity was their long, lank hair, which was a soft grey better suited to 50-year-olds.

Finn saw the slave-pen was equipped with some pretty serious free weights. The lengths the cartel was willing to go to keep these girls in peak condition before their sale made her want to puke. The place was better furnished than her apartment, other than being bolted in and forced to cohabitate in a tiny space seemingly modeled on an attack submarine's cramped quarters. She continued to check for booby traps before the black girl hugged her hard enough she actually was being trapped by boobies. The blubbering young woman was kind of ridiculously top-heavy. Sick fuckers had worked her over good and somewhere there were sicker bastards waiting to buy her like it was the goddamn colonial era all over again.

“Daniels, show some restraint...” Corey complained even as she was being mobbed by a sprightly young white girl, her steel-grey hair in actual pig-tails. The youngster had stripped off Corey's helmet to kiss her repeatedly in thanks.

“Trying, boss. Girl’s got a hell of a grip...”

Which would be the last full sentence from Liberty 4 on the recording.

Because after that the screams started.

Daniels may have realized he was in trouble first as the woman clinging to him flexed her arms and crushed the air out of him like an anaconda, but it was Corey that died first. The smiling fifteen-year-old clapped both her hands against the sides of Senior Field Agent Corey’s exposed head, crushing her skull in with a single blow. The rest of the team, also in close quarters with the prisoners lasted only seconds longer. Beck, who had stepped back outside to check-in died last, squashed against the far wall of the hallway like a runaway truck had come roaring out of the slave-pen and hit him dead center of mass. While the forensics showed shots had been fired by Liberty 4, the follow-up team found no blood spatter.

The second team arrived under 10 minutes later at a dead run, their other lead in the vast warehouse complex having turned up empty. The girls – no one was quite willing to call them prisoners anymore – were gone and had seemingly taken Daniels with them. Possibly alive, thought they'd left his vest.

Drives recovered from their vest cams showed the youngest girl bursting the heads of three more agents even after they were dead before the first girl, the tall Latino that appeared to be both the eldest and the leader, finally discouraged her by throwing her across the dormitory one-handed. Sullenly, the girl had fallen into line as the group neatly grabbed what appeared to be go bags and filed out, stepping casually over the corpses of seven FBI agents.

It was, in a word, a fiasco. Human Trafficing handed the whole mess off to Pandora, those weird fuckers up on the 9th floor. Pandora was the FBI’s newest iteration of the X-files, only with a real budget for a change.

And surprisingly decent coffee, Agent Kenneth Monroe decided, still uncertain how he’d gotten called up to the 9th floor.

“So, Agent Monroe... can I call you Ken? What do you see with your keen investigator’s eyes? Any insights to share on our little ambush?”

“Not a lot, other than it’s not an ambush. I’d also say it’s still Agent Monroe, ma’am. I never Ken on the first date.” He smiled softly taking most of the sting out of his refusal to adopt a more casual conversational posture.

Karen White, senior operations director for Pandora seemed to take the rebuff in stride. “Certainly, Agent Monroe. And let me reiterate how glad we are you could join us on short notice from the Hong Kong office. What makes you say it’s not an ambush?”

With a few quick exchanges with the techie running the main monitor he wound the Daniels vest-cam footage back to less than two seconds after he’d cleared the outer door.

“There.” Monroe pointed to the door of a mini-refrigerator swinging shut. At his gesture the footage crawled forward and the door finished closing. It had been sealed before the second pair of agents entered, leaving no sign on any of the other video tracks. “Some or even all of them were just in the main living space as Liberty 4 breached.”

“That would support the ambush scenario. Their reactions were pre-planned. Highly practiced even.”

“If it were an ambush there would have been no need to react. They’d have been in on the gag from the outset, likely with cameras on Liberty 4 even before they reached the outer door. No, they followed a script all right, but only after events were in motion. Liberty 4 walked into a nest full of killers, but not an ambush.”

“That’s an interesting hypothesis, Monroe. But where does it lead?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe some sort of elaborate honey-pot? I mean, you only have to look a them to know they were going to be sold on sex appeal, but with their skills, maybe the cartel was going to rig the auction, insert sleepers into other organizations.”

“That seems a bit far fetched, don’t you think?”

“I do, actually. It's crazy. I’m just speculating on about 6 minutes of looking over the raw video, and I have to admit I’m still severely jetlagged.”

She put a hand on his shoulder, kindly. “Well, if you can still pick up things like that refrigerator when you’re wiped out we’re doubly glad to have you...” This time it wasn’t inter-office formality.

“If I may be candid, ma’am: I still don’t know why I’m here.”

“I don’t want to spoil the scene for you. Look at the main spool again. I’m sure you’ll see it this time.”

He watched the slaughter of his fellow agents again, as the women with nubile bodies and old silver hair fanned out to distribute themselves amongst their rescuer’s before they struck with terrifying strength...

“Oh. Oh, that’s very bad.”

“You do see it. Good. Welcome to Pandora, Agent Monroe. I won’t even have to read you in. You drew the Grimms murder in Hong Kong, and probably know even better than we do what we’re up against here...”

Because Agent Kenneth Monroe had been the investigative lead on the death of American citizen and notorious underworld boss Albert Grimms... a powerfully built man known for his casual brutality and street boxing prowess who had been torn limb from limb in his high-end hotel suite. And while Kenneth had yet to close that case, he’d built a solid trail back to an unknown Asian woman with a Barbie-esque figure and steel-gray hair. A woman that had seemingly eluded pursuit by leaping off a 14 story roof without leaving a bloody smear on the street below. A trail of evidence that had done his career no favors. He'd spent half a year trying to put it out of his mind, to focus on other cases that wouldn't lead down Alice's rabbit hole.

Some kind of superwoman.

And here were eleven more of them.

Karen dropped a packet of photos in front of him, paper-clipped to an FBI dossier.

If the Asian woman with the grey hair still haunted him, this girl’s dark eyes peering up at him from the glossy photos pierced him to the core.

He began to read, growing more and more astounded at what his own agency had known and buried:

Rose Cassel, Daughter of David and Margareta Cassel. Heiress to a junior branch of the Cassel Steel fortune, IQ 140+, likely a victim of grossly unethical biological research and maybe a living bio-weapon. Her father had been a reclusive but brilliant metallurgist working with his family’s companies, while her mother was a world-renowned doctor and virologist, famous in humanitarian circles for her interest in stabilizing conditions in Africa.

Rose had been under intermittent surveillance for years. Her father had been killed in front of her in Africa when she was 12, an accidental brush with local warlords during one of her mother’s many inspection tours. It was a tragedy that caused her and her esteemed mother to withdraw from the public’s eye. Her mother had also made a few public statements about ending the world immediately after her husband’s death that had put her on watch lists in 23 countries. While it was likely just the grief talking, Margareta Cassel had a skill-set that could turn threat into alarming reality.

By 14, photos taken of Rose at the family compound showed her hair had turned steel-grey, though such a thing was hardly noteworthy at the time - the girl had experienced more than enough trauma to cause such physical signs of distress. By 16, Rose’s burgeoning adolescent growth spurt saw her body evolving into an anime sex-idol which only continued to improve as time when on. Again, not precisely a red flag. Some kids were just lucky that way after all and the immensely wealthy Cassels certainly had access to the finest trainers, teachers, and dieticians. At 17 her mother had hosted a coming out party in Bern that had become a pivotal turning point in the secret economies of decadence in the West and the grimiest underbelly of the East. It was believed that the Bern Gala had been staged to spread rumors that her daughter’s spectacular appearance had been deliberately engineered. Without the use of crude surgical techniques. Those rumors had brought Margareta Cassel to the attention of international slave-trade rings. Many believed Margareta had used her own daughter as a test bed for a revolutionary new beauty-treatment process. One which all signs now said were being employed by the Deveron Cartel to amplify the value of their product. By 19, Rose - even more exaggeratedly beautiful if such a thing were possible - had been linked to 3 of the richest male scions of Europe... Simultaneously, which was simply beyond all credence given the size of the egos in play.

She was also currently a person of interest in four murders and had been cleared of wrongdoing in two other deaths. Justifiable homicide in self-defense. An assassin and mugger had both found out that the beloved ‘Dark Princess’ of Europe was an accomplished judo-ka. The princess part was obvious, despite her merely industrialist bloodline. Dark, because she always wore black in public. Audio surveillance during one of the multi-million dollar parties she attended in Monaco suggested she saw it as a gesture to her absent father, a small trace of mourning him still incomplete.

It had grown dark outside. His jetlag felt a like a dog gnawing at the bone of his ability to process, but he couldn't stop reading.

“You knew...” He finally looked up. The director had continued working on a hand-held device, but she'd never left him. A powerful gesture coming from a woman of her lofty rank in the agency.

“Not precisely. Human Trafficking had some chatter that the Deverons had acquired high-grade medical support and were using it to produce a superior class of sex-slave. Remarkably docile and extraordinarily attractive. But they certainly didn’t have any reason to make the connection to the Cassels. All signs are Margareta should hate slavers like the Deverons. They have ties to the savages that killed her husband and wrecked what looks to have been a truly happy life. And speculations about Rose’s... enhancement. I’m sorry. You have an open mind from your own experiences in Hong Kong, but that sort of thing is exactly what gets flushed down the X-files chute around here because nobody wants to think somebody would actually play Doctor Jekyll with their own daughter.

White continued, “But really, we couldn’t begin to put it all together until the Liberty 4 disaster. And what we saw there...”

“That was no beauty-treatment. Those girls were strong,” Monroe looked pained.

“Not just strong.” Director White agreed. “Ruthless. Kind of reminds you of Rose, when you think about it.”

“Strong... but not like my case in Hong Kong. My perp was crazy strong. Order of magnitude higher than what we see in the Liberty footage.”

“May be some variation in the success of the treatment. There’s still a TON we don’t know.” she acknowledged.

“This Doctor Cassel hasn’t screwed up in eight years. Even though she'd still actively on a dozen watch lists. Unless you’ve got another folder to show me, we’re miles away from an arrest.”

“You're right . But we do know enough to put you on the Cassels. So you’re gonna get about 3,ooo miles closer to making that arrest.”

His grin was feral. Unlike the people that should have had his back in Hong King, it was clear Mrs. White had actually read the reports he’d been filing about the murderous superwoman he’d stumbled over. Read them, and believed them.

“Oh joy: more jetlag.”

She wasn’t fooled for a second. He WANTED this hunt. “You’ll be worming your way into a criminal aristocracy. There’s folks already on the ground in Switzerland to get you started. The slush fund is deep for this, but not infinite, so do try to save your receipts. They may help me keep my job when some over-zealous senator comes sniffing around.”

He nodded.

“And remember: we’ve got seven of our own on slabs and one still missing. You will not be the only Bureau hotshot looking for payback, but you’re the only one with a Pandora perspective. Get. These. Bastards.”

Six Months Later

Jane fucking hated Las Vegas.

It was hot. It was really hot. It was Africa hot. She smirked at the old Mathew Broderick line, so perfectly encompassing this hellhole-on-Earth.

It was also a moral cesspool, which ultimately made it the perfect backdrop for a conference to discuss the growing crisis in the FBI’s Human Trafficking division.

Because for six months the FBI had been at war.

The Deveron Cartel had swallowed or bought out not one or two but four of their longstanding rivals, securing an unprecedented grip on the flow of slaves all the way around the Pacific Rim. If they’d been a legit enterprise they’d still be in the crosshairs for horizontal and vertical monopoly violations. As an organized crime syndicate they were perhaps the largest monster of the modern day.

They were also killing cops and Feds left, right, and center. Every time someone reached for an example of “things haven’t been this bad since...” they trailed off with a pained look. It had Never been this bad. Even in the bad, bad old days.

She was bringing HT division’s Director down to the 4th floor for another closed door meeting, this time with Army Intelligence. For any part of the DoD to become involved in what was nominally a policing issue told you how bad things had gotten. Hell, she’d even be obliged to act nice to the CIA.

They were just approaching the sweeping three-story escalators that connected the upper hotel rooms with the huge foyer at the center of the conference complex when she got a ping on her ear bead.

“We’ve got an incident in the main entryway, Corey. Some kind of fight’s broken out and there are civvies AND suits down. I don’t have eyes yet but it sounds like a whole damn riot...”

In a way she was thankful for the timing. She hated that escalator - almost 100 feet of no-options pathway and terribly exposed on every side. They’d gotten the word before reaching it. 10 seconds later and they’d have been sitting ducks if the mayhem downstairs was a diversion.

“Copy, Powell. We’ll withdraw the principle to the room. Discretely.” They couldn’t ignore the threat, but they could keep HT’s Director from looking like he was jumping at shadows as they did it.

She nodded to her seconds on the three-man detail. “Sir, trouble. Please shelter against the pillar, there. I’ll clear an elevator and we’ll return to your rooms until we get the all clear.”

The older man nodded. He had the good sense to let his people do what they did best. He sidled over to the broad concrete pillar beside the top of the escalator, making a good show of needing to check something in his briefcase before going downstairs rather than having cozied up next to the heaviest cover in any direction for 25 meters. One of his guards positioned himself between the director and the escalator, ready to intercept anyone coming up from below, while the other took up station in directly front of the principle, nonchalantly blocking the maximum field of view from the side not blocked by feet of concrete. ‘Not optimal. But serviceable as long as the threat didn’t escalate,’ Jane decided as she turned to trot briskly back towards the elevator cluster.

The place was still a security nightmare with thousands of guests milling about. Far too many of the FBI’s potential allies had to be baited in with a sweet weekend boondoggle in Vegas. She passed retired couples, kids in pigtails making their way to the pool, and fit young urban professionals that she instinctively searched for concealed holsters... because the difference between a yuppie and a Russian mobster lying low was something you didn’t want to discover only after the ironworks came out.

Jane whipped out a special key on a long chain and with a twist took control of elevator 3, summoning it directly to the 7th floor. She looked down at her outstretched hand. The edge was stained black like she’d had an accident with a copy machine. Moments later her eyes darted to her opposite sleeve, and again she found a broad smudge of black particulate.

“What the hell did I get on m–”

Jane had a premonition of doom. Some agents trusted their gut. She trusted her ‘disaster sense’. Not as versatile maybe, but she was still alive to be proud of it.

Agent Corey’s brain shuffled back through the last 30 seconds. The girl in the sundress with long black hair in pigtails had brushed past her arm, grinning with childish glee. A girl with a face Jane knew almost as well as her own. Only the girl she dreamed so often of strangling to death with her bare hands had steel-grey hair... The girl in Los Angeles who had killed her sister Tina at the very start of the current crisis.

Jane yanked her override key from the panel even as her wrist came to her mouth. “Poe! Kane! Girl coming from the elevators, black pigtails, yellow sundress. DO NOT ENGAGE. Take the principle and you RUN!” Jane was already running herself, a shiny new agency Glock materializing in her left hand like a magic trick.

But even as Jane began to speak in their ears, Agent Poe had deftly grabbed the arm of a smiling, skipping teenager and started to turn her back away from her near collision with the HT Director.

Without turning to look at him the girl flicked her whole arm in a circle like spinning a hula-hoop on your wrist. The motion translated back up the beefy bodyguard’s arm as a spiral twisting that broke all three bones between wrist and shoulder and then flung him onto his face, muffling the scream that followed. Her near foot lashed out at the second guardian and her dainty one-inch heel instantly punctured not only his vest but the abdomen beneath. He crumpled, black blood oozing from his gut. Kane was down too, and likely fatally wounded. Piercing the intestines and allowing feces into the abdominal cavity was a slow and horrible way to die, beyond even 21^st century medicine's ability to reverse.

The director had the good sense to bolt, but he hadn’t gotten more than a single step before the still smiling girl caught him not by the neck, but actually cupping the back of his skull. She hopped forward, putting all her weight on him and driving his head down almost even with his knees. Through a momentary gap in the crowd Jane had a painfully clear view of the girl’s whole body winding up for a bone crunching throw.

Jane continued to lunge through the crowd, her weapon still pointed at the floor, ‘no shot, no shot... find the shot...!’

With people being thrown to the ground left and right as she raced towards her boss, it was no surprise the attacker saw her coming. The girl looked right at her. A innocent face out of Jane’s nightmares. “Don’t you love the sound they make when they pop?” The girl taunted her.

It was her... It was absolutely fucking God-give-me-strength HER.

The girl that had killed the elder Corey sister... by crushing her skull.

The girl windmilled in place, slamming the director’s head against the massive concrete pillar that should have been his protection. Jane had to admit there was an awful and very distinct ‘pop’ as his brains were splashed across the tawny stone.

For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. The girl was thrown back from the impact, rolling over the railing and dropping down through the narrow gap beside the top of the escalator and the pillar.

Without hesitation Jane threw herself after her. She was sliding face-first and belly down on the slick metal at the edge of the up escalator. Only her right hand and the top of one foot hooked over the rubber handrail was keeping her from plunging to her death as she slid down the narrow strip of polished steel. Even so she searched the ground below for the blood smear that should mark the spot with the girl had fallen. Her left arm dangled over the abyss, still holding her gun and sweeping for a target.

Nothing.

Something! Movement! The predatory part of her brain identified the impossible: The girl was up and on the move. Jane’s hand lashed out and seeing no one in the way, she squeezed the trigger.

Blood sprayed from her prey’s calf and the assassin’s headlong sprint converted into an awkward hobble.

Jane eased up on the pressure her foot and hand were exerting, increasing her risk of falling, but also increasing her speed. As the floor came up at her she let go entirely... Falling away from the escalator, she executed a forward roll off her free hand and came up running. Bystanders still startled by the sound of her single disabling shot must have thought she was a Terminator in hot pursuit of Skynet’s enemies, but Jane knew it was just years of parkour. She hadn’t made the FBI’s elite guard detail by being anything less than amazing in an urban environment. And she had never, ever been so motivated to catch someone.

Like a good agent, she’d recused herself of any involvement in the Liberty 4 investigations. She wasn’t investigative material anyway. If she could trust her fellows with her life, she could trust the agency to put good people on that bloodbath. They’d bring her sister’s murderer to justice.

But when God Himself delivers your greatest enemy into your gun-sights and hands you just cause... She’d already made her bleed. Next she was going to make her die.

The girl had bolted into a cul-de-sac, a lounge area pressed up against tall windows overlooking the courtyard and beyond the fabulous Las Vegas Strip. They were still four stories up.

She was still limping aimlessly toward the glass when Jane caught up to her, one of several low couches between them.

“FREEZE! FBI!” Some habits die hard. And besides, there’d been ten other murderers in that tiny box. Plenty of vengeance to go around if the girl talked.

The girl didn’t freeze.

‘And that’s when I shot her, your Honor...’ Jane thought to herself. Even straight-laced Tina would have sworn it was a righteous kill.

Jane squeezed the trigger.

The bullet nicked the girl’s ear before punching through the floor-to-ceiling window, causing the entire ten-by-ten panel of safety glass to convert into a crazy crackle pattern. She hadn’t meant it as a warning shot, but something inside her had baulked at the last instant, the moment when she would be the one making heads pop. She wanted to have nothing in common with her sister’s killer.

“I. Said. Freeze.”

The girl slowly pivoted behind the couch, her hands coming up. One furtively touching her bleeding ear for a moment.

“You move, you die, little girl.” Jane was so completely done with playing around.

The girl grumbled. “I’m not a little girl. I’m almost as old as Tia. My birthday’s next month. I’ll be 19.”

"Nineteen!" She repeated forcefully, as if that was the most important thing in the world.

“Awesome.” Jane answered with a sneer. She knew she shouldn't address the perp, but she was so damn angry. “For a second there I was worried we wouldn’t be able to try you as an adult.”

“That’s when the Mistress says I'll BLOOM–“

Jane heard the tension in the young woman’s voice build, telegraphing some hostile intent. It was warning enough: she had just enough time to fall flat to the ground as an entire couch came flying at her. The youth had kicked it at her without ever dropping her hands. It flashed over the length of Jane's body so close the wind of its passage plucked at her clothes. She heard screams behind her as more than one tourist wasn’t so lucky. Jane had to clear her field of fire before shooting. Her enemy had no such compunctions.

Forgoing the action movie one-liner that came unbidden to her lips, Jane popped up with a one-handed push-up and was already firing. The first bullet went wide, blasting another diner-plate sized gap in the window. She winced, having to trust to luck that the tumbling projectile would spend most of its energy before reaching the distant street beyond. Two, three, and four all found various points along her sister’s killer’s torso and crimson bloomed on her yellow sundress.

Jane’s grin was probably not strictly professional, but it felt good!

Seemingly unaware that the script said she should crumple in a heap now, the diminutive killer snatched up a second couch and swung it in a full arc around her before launching it at Jane hammer-toss style. The back side of her turn knocked the majority of the shattered glass out into the open air, allowing a hot wind to come roaring into the air conditioned sitting area. Jane heard distant shrieks as the mostly harmless bits of glass sprayed whoever it was below.

Jane had already made a roll forward and to the left, the second couch-missile going wide. She came up shooting again. Internally she swore, ‘fucking 9mms!’ The FBI’s new service pistol might be easier for someone with little girly wrists to manage but she’d always preferred the heavier .40s. Precisely because they hit harder. Still, emptying the magazine usually had the desired effect and Jane did not hesitate to empty the sidearm this time.

Five more splashes of crimson appeared on the woman's torso along with a red streak across her girlish face as a bullet grazed her cheek deeply enough to draw blood. And still the assassin failed to go down. She seemed dazed though. But she also looked like she was shaking it off... fast. In fact she was already reaching vaguely for another piece of furniture to hurl... Jane was getting the premonition of doom again.

Lacking any other credible weapons, she hoped that maybe this time gravity would take her side. She sprinted at her foe and at the last moment threw both of her feet forward in a sacrifice kick...

Jane’s ankles screamed in agony as all her momentum was transferred into the smaller woman’s body. Instead of being properly flung away, the killer only stumbled back and Jane fell to the floor as if she’d slammed into a bronze statue of a woman, far heavier than anyone should be.

Fortunately that 'statue' wasn't actually bolted down. Arms wind-milling, the little bitch rocked back one more half step and found only air under her foot. Without even a scream, she went over backwards and vanished from Jane’s line of sight.

The courtyard below was already in chaos. The diversion on the first floor that had been meant to lure her away from the principle was no small thing and there were dozens of injured and dead already being triaged on the broad sunlit concrete.

The frantically busy EMTs turned at the sound of the girl’s impact, but didn't make the connection that she’d fallen from one of the higher floors rather than stumbled out of the front door and collapsed.

"Unresponsive, multiple lacerations... no pulse!!" A female EMT had been the first to reach her and called out for help. One of the casino’s security guards brought an emergency kit to her at a run. Attractive girls tended to shoulder their way to the front of the line in many triage scenarios. Because cute actually is a survival trait.

They switched places, the burly guard starting compressions while the medic unpacked the kit. The big man had only delivered a dozen or so of the often rib-breaking blows to the patient before she had the defibrillator charging. At her insistence he took a pair of sheers and cut away the right shoulder and side of her bloodstained dress, revealing half of an elaborate corset. He pulled back with startled embarrassment, quickly revising his estimate of the girl's age upwards. Despite the baby fat on her face this was no child. Good lord, she was buxom...

The undergarment was heavy, broad, designed to minimize her figure and contributing to her earlier childlike appearance. It was too thick and too wide to get the paddles placed properly. The medic urged him on with a glare: "Get it off her!" Emergency sheers made short work of it and the guard's blush deepened as he revised his estimate of her age upwards again. She was very womanly.

The EMT checked the side of the unconscious woman's throat one last time. “Still no pulse!” The distinctive whine of capacitors charging reached its steady peak tone. “Clear!” the paramedic warned, pressing the metal plates to her blood-spattered flesh above her sternum and against her flank, bracketing the formidable sphere of her exposed breast and aiming the current path through her heart. She thumbed the trigger built into the handle...

The young woman’s back arched like she’d been electrocuted, which was appropriate, because she had been. Only instead of falling slack again after the discharge, she stayed locked in the rictus position, her body beginning to glow blue where the paddles had pressed against her skin.

“What the...?” the paramedic whispered as the blue glow rapidly spread over the small but shapely woman’s rigid torso.

The only answer she would ever receive was the woman's small hands lashing up to grab both sides of her head before crushing it against her chest with a single jerk. The naked breast hardly compressed at all as the paramedic's skull burst against it. The guard fell back and away from the bloody-handed monster, shouting in terror. She ignored him as she awkwardly climbed back to her feet, idly running two fingers through the brains smeared across her pert boob.

The blue glow continued to spread from those two initial patches. Whatever it was, it was filling her with incredible pleasure! Her belly clenched over and over, her chin lifting in little jerking thrusts as the spreading glow reached her loins. "Mmmm...MMMMMMM!" she purred behind tight, smiling lips. She lifted her fingers to her mouth dreamily, her tongue flicking out to lick the grey-red ooze off them before announcing "MMMMmmmmmm... oh? Huhhff. OH!! OOHH!!"

The pleasure washing over her as the glow spread lifted her up on tiptoes, arms swinging back, torso arched like she'd been electrocuted a second time. The cool light was coming from every part of her flesh now. Thin bright bolts of electricity began to arc randomly from her body into the ground or dissipating into the air. Her shoulders rolled back and she inhaled, spreading and lifting her ribs, thrusting her oversized breasts at the sunny sky so hard her whole body followed... And failed to come down, six inches of air beneath her tattered shoes. She levitated in a crackling field of electric discharges, her torn and tattered dress dripping with blood and worse. She cried out again with the most extreme pleasure yet as an electric arc leapt from her bare nipple to a nearby light pole, causing a shower of yellow sparks as the bulb exploded. People screamed again, but she couldn't have cared less.

The black toner powder she'd used to disguise her metallic hair burned away in the electrical heat rising from her, revealing not her usual steely grey, but a shimmering silky white. Nine bullets plinked to the ground, forced from an equal number of small holes in her body. A happy byproduct as her flesh did far more than just re-knit itself. The baby fat still clinging to her body was consumed from within as her muscles visibly tensed and grew. She clenched her small fists and the tendons in her forearms creaked. The blue glow surrounded her completely: a warning that this body was now infused with terrible power! She trembled in the grip of a 'full-body' orgasm before she came with a roar that cracked windows on every side of the courtyard up to the tenth floor!

Above, an exhausted Jane was also picking herself up, the post-fight jitters making her knees tremble. She shuffled on her hands and knees towards the edge of the broken window in agony: one, possibly both her ankles broken. She wanted to look down and confirm the kill. She needed to see the bitch's body. Know the job was done.

In the midst of this harrow journey she heard a distinctive ‘skull pop’ from the courtyard below, followed by the renewal of screaming. And then incredibly loud cries of growing feminine ecstasy rising into a crescendo of raw-edged sexual gratification that shook the building. What? The Fuck?

She reached the edge and stood, leaning lightly against the unbroken glass panel next to the opening, looking down only to find a blood-streaked pixie with rather prominent tits looking back up at her. A pixie with murder in her eyes and an eerie blue halo surrounding her body. The girl-woman from her nightmares looked entirely refreshed and all too eager to start Round Two.

“This is not happening...” Jane declared as the killer’s wrath seemed to lift her up. She launched at Jane with a feral grin like some kind of demented Peter Pan. The agent managed two punishing steps away from the brink and then fell backwards onto another couch as the petite woman alighted on the edge of the broken window, an oversized and utterly deranged faerie with milk-white hair. Tinkerbell’s psychotic second cousin maybe.

The killer took a step towards Jane, her tiny foot smashing a small crater in the carpet-covered concrete with the hollow boom of a pile driver at work. The impossible stacked on top of the surreal. No one could be so strong.

This wasn't- it couldn't be happening! Death only seconds away, Jane felt a momentary pang of disappointment: she’d felt no premonition of doom. Maybe it had always been just her imagination. A broken fragment of a children's tale flashed through her mind, as close of a fit to what she was seeing as she could come up with:

“I don’t believe in faeries!”

The blue aura surrounding her sister's killer flickered and went out. The Pixie of Death took another step closer... and fell down dead at Jane's feet.

Jane laughed, more than an little hysterically, until darkness took her too.