Independence Girl by GeekSeven (with ideas from Argonaut) --------------------------------------------- DOWNLOADED FROM http://www.superwomenmania.com/storybank --------------------------------------------- [Author's Note: This is the sixth short story featuring Stupendous Girl, the others are: Santa Girl, Cupid Girl, Shamrock Girl, Stupendously Evil Girl and Earth Girl.] Stupendous Girl squirmed restlessly in the passenger seat of the rental car. "Ugh!" she said, "Why do we have to travel in this primitive vehicle? I could have flown us there in a few minutes!" Randall Dixon kept his eyes on the road as he answered. Holiday traffic on the Interstate was always a nightmare. "First of all: this is not a 'primitive vehicle'. It is the height of mid-size, mid-priced, Korean engineering excellence. Secondly: we are driving because I would like to keep the fact that you are Stupendous Girl quiet, and flying into my parent's July 4th BBQ might not be the best way to do that. Besides, the car is more practical for carrying the beer." He gestured to the back, which was loaded with coolers full of ice and beer. "Your brother already knows. Would he not have told your parents?" asked Stupendous Girl. "No, because I asked him not to," replied Randall. "Hmph!" Stupendous Girl pouted. "Well, I do not see why I have to wear this ridiculous safety strap across my chest!" She poked at her seat belt with annoyance. "It is not as if a collision would hurt me! Even if we collided head on with a large truck, traveling at a hundred miles an hour, you would be squashed flat, but I would not even feel it." "That's a lovely image. You need to wear it because it's the law, sweety," replied Randall. "There are plenty of cops out there looking to ticket some of this sweet, sweet holiday traffic." Although Randall suspected that Stupendous Girl's beauty would probably allow them to avoid a ticket from any traffic cop with eyes and a pulse. "Well, all right," said Stupendous Girl, "But if this traffic slows down any more, I am going to get out and carry this car the rest of the way!" Randall looked over to her and sighed. Stupendous Girl said that she wanted to learn more about humanity, to experience everyday life; but when she came up against the realities of what humans had to deal with, lacking super strength, invulnerability and the ability to fly, she quickly became impatient. It was one of the many hurdles that his relationship with the alien supergirl faced. "You look wonderful," he said. Stupendous Girl was dressed for a summer BBQ. She had swapped her trademark short skirt and crop top for a floral summer dress that stopped a few inches above her knees. After a brief argument about the prominence of her diamond-hard nipples through the thin fabric of the dress, she had agreed to wear a bra. The nipples were still noticeable, but they no longer looked as if they were about to burst through the dress. She wore a blue baseball cap, emblazoned with the logo of a nearby minor league team, with her long blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. Randall cursed himself inwardly for imagining that anybody could mistake Stupendous Girl for an ordinary woman. Even when she wasn't flying or juggling SUV's, her mere presence gave off an overwhelming aura of physical perfection. Stupendous Girl smiled at him, a simple gesture that caused Randall's heart to skip several beats. "Thank you," she said. Oh, well, thought Randall. Even if this visit to his parents turned out to be a disaster, it would be a nice change from the tortuous investigation into the events of Earth Day. Somebody had managed to smuggle a hydrogen bomb into a North Korean nuclear reactor. Somebody had known that Stupendous Girl would find out that the reactor was unsafe and try to do something about it. And somebody had been able to detonate the bomb by remote control when Stupendous Girl had flown off with the entire building. The investigation had come to a dead end. True, they had found the informant who had passed along the government's dossier on Stupendous Girl; he was a mid-level State Department official who had run up enormous gambling debts. But he claimed that he knew nothing about the recipient of the information beyond an encrypted email address. Investigators had found that the informant had been paid through a chain of dummy offshore accounts, ultimately funded through cash deposits by a man in Nairobi of average height and average weight and average appearance. Nor had the investigation in North Korea turned up anything. Even with Stupendous Girl on hand, with her ability to tell that somebody was lying by the minutest changes in his body's chemistry, they had been unable to find out how the H-bomb had been smuggled into the country, or how the reactor had been sabotaged. Somewhere out there someone wanted Stupendous Girl dead, or at least away from Earth, and Randall had no idea who. Thankfully, Randall had persuaded Stupendous Girl and then Stupendous Girl had managed to convince the Governing Council of Supremis that the conspiracy did not have the backing of any government on Earth. But the Council had insisted that the informant in the State Department be extradited to Supremis. Attacking a member of the royal family with a thermonuclear device was one of the few capital offenses under Supremis law. Randall was hoping to put all these concerns out of his mind for a day or two. With luck, the only thing he'd have to worry about over the weekend was dealing with his family... and introducing them to his companion without letting them find out that she was the mightiest woman on Earth... and making sure Stupendous Girl didn't kill anyone by accident. That last responsibility would probably be the toughest one. Somehow, despite her good intentions, Stupendous Girl managed to turn any holiday into a disaster of apocalyptic magnitude. ***** Two hours later, Randall and an impatient, agitated Stupendous Girl pulled into the driveway of his parents' home. "How do you stand it?" asked Stupendous Girl as she quickly released herself from her vehicular prison. "Traveling like that is so boring!" "We had music on the iPod to listen to," protested Randall. Stupendous Girl snorted; the air expelled from her nose sent a couple of pounds of gravel from the driveway flying. "That was not music; that was just meaningless noise! Although I did like the band called 'Britney Spears'." Randall popped the trunk and Stupendous Girl immediately piled three large coolers full of beer on top of one another and began to carry them up the driveway, balanced on the palm of one hand. "Chrissy!" said Randall. "That's a little more than a normal human could carry." "Oops, sorry." Stupendous Girl dropped the coolers on the driveway. Randall's heart sank when he heard the telltale sound of glass bottles breaking. So much for the microbrew, he thought to himself. They each grabbed a cooler and began carrying them over to the back yard. Stupendous Girl made a show of struggling with the weight of her cooler, even though she barely noticed it. Randall's struggle was no show. Randall's brother, Bradley, came around the side of the house and Randall shouted at him to bring the last cooler. Bradley strolled over towards them "It is nice to meet you again, Bradley!" said Stupendous Girl. "It's nice to meet you again as well, Stup..., erm, Chrissy," replied Bradley. "Mom and Dad and Sis are round the back, Randy." Randall's Dad, John, was a trim man in his 60's with close-cropped gray hair. They found him leaning over an enormous gas grill, poking at something with a screwdriver. Randall could smell gas, but he could not see a flame. His Mom, Carol, was fussing over a plate of raw burgers and hot dogs. His sister, Iona, was sitting in a folding chair, dressed in black, reading a leather-bound book and studiously ignoring her parents. "Randall, I am detecting a dangerous concentration of propane molecules in the air around the device your father is attacking," said Stupendous Girl, quietly, "Perhaps it has some defensive capability that he is unaware of." "Dad! What's up with the grill?" shouted Randall. "Hello, second offspring," said John, "Damn thing won't light. Can't figure it out. First and third offspring have been no help. Just keep telling me to buy a new one! No matches in the house since your mother forced me to stop smoking." "Why don't you let us have a look?" said Randall. "Oh. Mom, Dad, Sis: this is Chrissy." John grunted an acknowledgment of Stupendous Girl's existence. Iona looked up from her book for a moment and raised one hand, fractionally. "It's lovely to meet you, dear," said Carol. "I was beginning to think that Randall would never find somebody, he was always such an odd little boy. Where did you meet? Is Chrissy short for 'Christine'? Where are you from? I detect a bit of an accent! Are you hungry? I hope you like meat. Do you eat meat? You're not a vegetarian, are you? I see so many girls who are vegetarian and they don't look healthy, I have to tell you. Did Randall make you carry that cooler all the way from the car? Where did you get that lovely dress?" Stupendous Girl paused, clearly not used to having to answer so many questions at once. "Actually, my name is short for 'Chrysanthemum'. From the nickname I had when I was a girl on my home pla... in my home country, which is Swederland." Randall gestured for Stupendous Girl to join him at the grill. "Dad, why don't you check if we have a spare propane tank?" He lowered his voice and whispered to Stupendous Girl. "This is a device that burns propane in order to cook food. The ignition mechanism is completely rusted through. Can you focus a low-intensity beam of laser-vision here?" Randall pointed to the malfunctioning igniter. "It just needs to be hot enough to ignite the gas, not melt the grill. Oh, and the name of the country is 'Sweden'." "I thought I was supposed to be acting like a normal human?" said Stupendous Girl. "Just be careful and nobody will see. I don't want to spend the rest of the day bickering with my parents over a plate of raw meat!" Stupendous Girl carefully aimed a short burst of laser vision where Randall had pointed. She tried to keep the temperature as low as she could, but it was still hot enough to melt a hole through the bottom of the grill and to burn a small patch of grass beneath. It was also hot enough to ignite the propane, which as she had warned, had reached a dangerous concentration in the air. The grill burners ignited, but so did a small fireball. Stupendous Girl took the brunt of the explosion; she remembered that she was supposed to be acting like a human, so she let herself go limp and be carried through the air. She landed on her backside with a loud 'thud', leaving an imprint of her perfect buttocks two inches deep in the ground. Iona looked up with a glimmer of interest and stared at Stupendous Girl. She met Stupendous Girl's eyes and winked. The small explosion had also thrown Randall to the ground and singed his eyebrows. After nearly six months of hanging out with Stupendous Girl, he was getting used to this kind of thing. He picked himself up and dusted himself off. "We got the grill going!" he shouted. ***** "Another hot dog?" asked Carol, holding a plate of cold, blackened 'dogs and toasted buns. "I will take one, but I would not recommend that anybody else eat any; I can see a number of dangerous micro-organisms have colonized the surface of the meat since it was cooked, several hours ago," said Stupendous Girl. "Excuse me?" said Carol. "She's joking," said Randall. "You know that weird Swedish sense of humor that people are always talking about! Even so, we should probably grill up a fresh batch. Better safe than sorry!" Iona was sitting next to Stupendous Girl. She leaned over and whispered in her ear. "So you can see really small stuff? Can you see through things as well?" Stupendous Girl nodded. "Yes. I have to be careful, though. X-Rays are really dangerous to human beings. Did you know that?" "I think I read that somewhere, yes," said Iona. "OK, so you're bulletproof? What about if someone tried to blow you up with dynamite?" "Do not tell anyone," said Stupendous Girl in a conspiratorial tone, "but somebody tried to blow me up with a hydrogen bomb a little while ago. My hair got a little mussed." "OMG, you are awesome!" said Iona. "Can I ask you something?" said Stupendous Girl. "I am not very familiar with youth subculture on this planet, but you are a 'goth' girl, correct?" "Yeah, I am," said Iona. "You do not seem particularly surly or obsessed with death, though," said Stupendous Girl. Iona rolled her eyes. "That is a total media stereotype. Do you believe everything you read?" Stupendous Girl shrugged. "I do have difficulty separating the 'true facts' from the 'false facts' among information sources on Earth." "Look," said Iona, "there are as many different kinds of goth as there are goths, and we're a lot more fun than people say we are. I just happen to look really good in black and I think 'The Cure' are awesome." Stupendous Girl looked thoughtful. "I was talking to an 'Emu Kid' a while back..." "Do you mean 'Emo'?" asked Iona. "Yes, I think so. Anyway, he was talking about how much he enjoyed pain, but when I broke his arm, he got really upset," said Stupendous Girl. "You broke an Emo Kid's arm?" "I did. I just gave it a little squeeze with my fingers and it shattered. I thought he would like it, but he really did not." Iona laughed. "That is awesome! Emo Kids are such posers. Look, the next time I'm in the city, we should go clubbing. I bet you would look fabulous in a black corset!" "I would like that very much!" said Stupendous Girl. A deafening roar interrupted their conversation as a half dozen jet fighters screamed overhead. "That's the Air National Guard on their way to do their annual July 4th flyover of the city," said Iona. "Oh dear," said Stupendous Girl, "I forgot that I am supposed to do the flyover with them this year." She got to her feet and ran towards the house. "I have to use the bathroom!" she said. As she ran, she carried out a few calculations in her head. The city was only 73 miles south and the jets were flying at Mach 2, which gave her plenty of time to do what she needed to. When she was out of sight, she soared into the air and flew after the fighter jets. She contacted her ship using the telepathic link and ordered it to launch a capsule containing a spare uniform in her direction. She passed the fighter jets, moving at hypersonic speed. Stupendous Girl intercepted the capsule that had been launched by her ship and opened it. Still moving at incredible speed, she removed her dress, bra and panties. For a moment, she flew through the air naked. She removed her Stupendous Girl costume from the capsule, stuffed her old clothes in their place and threw the capsule high into the sky. She pulled on her shorts, skirt and cropped top and flew on towards the city. The whole operation took her a little under two seconds. As she neared the city, she swooped in low over city hall and removed the enormous flag from the roof. Then she waited for the fighter jets to catch up. When she heard them approach, she flew back into the air and held station until they reached her position, then she matched their speed and flew a short distance below them, holding the stars and stripes so that it fluttered behind her as she flew. The crowds lining the river cheered as she and the jets flew overhead. Then she flew back to city hall and replaced the flag, a little worse for wear from having been carried around at supersonic speed. Stupendous Girl flew north, back the way she had come. When she came to the point where she had thrown the capsule upwards, she met the capsule coming back down, just as she had calculated. She carried out her quick change in reverse and then threw the capsule upwards, harder this time so that it would go into orbit. She would retrieve it later. She landed by the side of the house and walked around to the yard. Only a few minutes had passed since she had left to "use the bathroom". "False alarm!" she said. Randall's Mom looked at her oddly. "Are you all right, dear? Your dress seems to be a little crumpled... and I think you may have forgotten something." She glanced at Stupendous Girl's chest with a meaningful expression. Stupendous Girl looked down and realized that she had forgotten to put her bra back on. She did not need the bra for support, since her full breasts were completely unaffected by gravity, so it had completely slipped her mind. Her nipples were poking against the thin sundress like a pair of tiny bullets. "Oops, sorry," said Stupendous Girl. There was nothing she could do. Her bra was now in orbit around the planet and she could not borrow one made of Earth fabric, since it would tear apart trying to contain her super breasts. John Dixon, Randall's Dad, came up to her. "Walk with me, Chrissy. I want to talk to you in private." Randall came over to interrupt, but his Dad held up one hand and shooed him away. ***** Stupendous Girl did not know what to expect. She had seen a lot of strange behavior towards her from Earth men. She did not think that Randall's father would try to do anything inappropriate, but she had learned not to underestimate the effect that her incredible beauty and power could have. They entered John Dixon's study. It was a medium-sized room lined with creakingly full bookshelves. In the center of the room was a large desk. John sat in a large leather chair behind the desk and gestured for Stupendous Girl to sit in a smaller, lower chair in front of the desk. "Please take a seat, Stupendous Girl," he said. Stupendous Girl made herself comfortable before she replied. "You know who I am? How?" John smiled at her. He counted off three points on his finger. "Well, first of all: I already knew before you arrived. Secondly: I'm not an idiot. Thirdly: you are a terrible actress. Quite, quite terrible." Stupendous Girl blushed. "Really? I'm... not used to being bad at things." John nodded. "Believe me, you are quite awful. I would have figured it out; Carol figured it out; Iona figured it out; Sprinkles, our incontinent cat, figured it out, and he hasn't been able to find his litter box in two years." "Really? The cat knows that I..." John interrupted her. "Good grief, you really are literal-minded. Of course the cat doesn't know!" "You say that you knew before you met me?" asked Stupendous Girl. John smiled again. "I did. Randall thinks that I recently retired after a long career at the Treasury. In fact, I am far from retired, and I work for a division of the government far more secret than the Treasury. I have known all about you and your relationship with my son for some time." Stupendous Girl waited for him to continue. "I need to talk to you about Philip James Forester," he said. "Who is that?" "He's the spy that you uncovered in the Department of Extra-Solar affairs. The one that was supposed to be extradited to Supremis next week." "What about him?" asked Stupendous Girl. "He's dead," said John Dixon. "He was killed in his cell while you and Randall were driving up from the city. If Randall paid as much attention to his Blackberry as he did to mooning over you, he would have known that." "What happened? This is outrageous!" Stupendous Girl was angry with Earth all over again. "You people are useless!" "Calm down, Princess," said John in an even tone. He reached over to a drawer and pulled out a small sheaf of papers. "We had his prison cell under surveillance with high-speed cameras." He placed a series of papers on the desk, facing Stupendous Girl. They showed the death of Philip James Forester in graphic detail. "I printed these out a little while ago," he said. "Do you recognize the means by which the murder is being carried out?" Stupendous Girl examined the pictures with her powerful vision. The man in the prison cell was being sliced to pieces by a narrow beam of light, coming from a cylindrical piece of metal around the size of a tube of lipstick. The metal cylinder was flying in circles around the man. "By the fires of Supremis!" exclaimed Stupendous Girl. "That is a Panagalian assassination drone! The Panagalian Federation must be behind this. But that does not make any sense. They would know that a simple hydrogen bomb would not kill me." "None of this makes any sense, Princess," said John Dixon. "Why would the Panagalians try to kill you with a weapon they know is useless? Why would they draw attention to themselves by killing an operative who knows nothing about them with a weapon that would be sure to be recognized?" Stupendous Girl shook her head. "I do not know. The Panagalians are not known for clever strategy. We fought a war against hem years ago and they were brutal and aggressive. They never let anybody else use their drones, though." John Dixon pointed to a close-up of the assassination drone. "Would this be able to hurt you?" he asked. "If there were enough of them," replied Stupendous Girl. "We think that the latest models use an anti-matter core to generate a dissociative particle beam that... Hold on! The droid in the photograph is an old model. They have not used visible wavelengths for nearly fifty years!" "So where would someone find a fifty-year old Panagalian Assassination droid?" asked John Dixon. Stupendous Girl felt like the old man was carefully leading her through a chain of logic that he had already figured out for himself. Her stupendous brain was capable of the most incredible mathematical calculations, but this kind of reasoning was alien to her. "On a planet that fought a war against them fifty years ago," she said. "So," said Dixon, "Somebody tries to make you mad at Earth by tricking you into taking a front row seat at an H-Bomb explosion. When Randall talks you out of abandoning Earth, somebody tries to draw suspicion onto the Panagalians. If you believed that the Panagalian Federation was behind the attack, what would you do?" "I would probably attack one of their outpost worlds. There is one about fifty light years from here," she said. "Which would take you away from Earth for a week. Somebody wants you away from Earth, somebody who has access to weapons stored on Supremis, captured during your war with the Panagalians. Who on Supremis would like to see Earth undefended?" asked John Dixon. "Nobody that I can think of," said Stupendous Girl. "Are you sure? Is there any group that would have a reason to see Earth destroyed? A group for whom the very existence of Earth is an affront?" Stupendous Girl was stunned. "The Originalists? But they are gone! Destroyed or banished." "Maybe not all of them," said Dixon. "They hold that your people evolved on Supremis, even though the scientific evidence proves that they were transplanted to that world twenty thousand years ago. They refuse to acknowledge that your people are related to the humans that were scattered across the galaxy around the same time, in spite of the physical similarities. Finding the planet where humanity originally evolved would be an affront to everything they believe." "How do you know so much about our history?" asked Stupendous Girl. John Dixon winked at her. "I have sources. I have fingers in pies. It's my job." "So you know about..." "The 'Great Crusade'? That your people spent two hundred years hunting down and exterminating every human that they could find? I know. I also know that your people renounced that path a long time ago." Stupendous Girl sighed. "So what do we do now?" John Dixon stood up. "You return to the city with my son and we try to figure out what our enemy's next move will be. Do not let yourself by drawn away from the planet. The lives of everyone on Earth may depend on you being here to defend us." Stupendous Girl stood as well. She nodded in agreement. "Oh, and try not to crush Randall to death," added John Dixon, "He's turning out much better than I expected." ***** Night fell over the Dixon house. Everyone was sitting in the yard, chatting. Now that Stupendous Girl's identity was out in the open, things were much more relaxed. "The town decided not to do fireworks this year," said Carol Dixon. "Budget problems." "That's OK," said Stupendous Girl, "I arranged a little something." Four large meteors that Stupendous Girl had knocked towards Earth earlier in the week hit the upper atmosphere and began to glow from the heat of re-entry. Without getting up from her seat, Stupendous Girl looked up towards them and fired several powerful beams of laser vision. The beams struck the meteors high in the atmosphere with enormous energy. The meteors exploded into millions of tiny fragments which traced dazzling streaks of red, blue and white across the night sky as they burned up in Earth's atmosphere. It was a stunning show. As the last of the the meteors faded away, Randall breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time since he had become Stupendous Girl's aide, a holiday had passed without her accidentally killing any innocent civilians. "Hmm," said Stupendous Girl, "Did I knock four meteors toward Earth, or five?" Fifteen miles away, a meteor plunged into a small town, leaving nothing but a smoldering crater.