Pilgrim Girls 

By GeekSeven


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DOWNLOADED FROM
http://www.superwomenmania.com/storybank
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[Author's Note: This is the 8th story featuring Stupendous Girl and follows on
from the events of "Halloween Girls".  As with most of the Stupendous Girl tales, there is a fair amount of accidental violence and blood, so readers be forewarned.] 


Stupendous Girl cut through the frigid
waters of the North sea like a razor blade through pudding. Neither the cold,
nor the pressure at a depth of 150 feet bothered the mighty maiden. She had
exchanged her usual short skirt and cropped top for a skintight blue wetsuit
made from an advanced Supremis material that was thinner than silk, tighter
than latex, and stronger than diamond. The suit clung to every line and curve
of her incredible body, forming a layer that appeared to be almost painted onto
her skin and leaving little to the imagination. She did not need the suit for
protection, but it was almost frictionless, which made her passage through the
water less violent and therefore less likely to cause tidal waves. As she swam
through the water, Stupendous Girl's incredibly sensitive hearing was able to
discern a cacophonous multitude of sounds from near and far. The distant songs
of whales and the chattering of dolphins competed with the roar of ship
engines, drilling rigs, submarines, and sonar.

She strained to separate out the sounds that were coming from the crippled
submarine that she was searching for. The last communication with the missing
submarine had come from nearby, and she could see for miles through the dark
water, but she needed to home in on the vessel quickly if she was to find it in
time to save the crew. Suddenly, she picked out a tapping sound: Morse code
rapped out on the hull of a vessel by a crewman with a spanner. "SOS. HMS
Ulysses is down. Help needed. SOS." The message repeated. Now that she knew
where she was going, it took her only a few minutes to reach HMS Ulysses. The
nuclear-armed vessel sat under 200 feet of water off the southwestern coast of
Norway, close to a ledge that plunged down a further 1000 feet to one of the
deepest parts of the North Sea. If the damaged submarine shifted and fell, then
it would likely crack apart. Stupendous Girl could survive at the bottom of the
deepest ocean trenches on Earth, just as easily as she could survive in the
empty vacuum of space, but she knew that humans and their machines were far
more fragile than her own invulnerable body. Stupendous Girl slowed as she
neared the submarine, in case the turbulence of her rapid approach knocked the
submarine off of its precarious perch, in spite of her frictionless suit. She
carefully used her x-ray vision to determine the extent of the damage; the
engine compartment had flooded through a ragged gash in one side of the hull
that appeared to be the result of an explosion from within the engine room, but
the rest of the submarine was sound. Still, she was worried that the damaged
section of the vessel might compromise the structural integrity of the
submarine as a whole, causing it to come apart when she tried to lift it.

Stupendous Girl swam to the damaged portion of the sub and used her heat vision
to weld the broken section of hull back together. When she was satisfied that
HMS Ulysses was seaworthy again, she swam around to the section of hull that
held the bridge. She gingerly tapped out a message in Morse code on the side of
the hull. It took an effort of superhuman will to keep her taps light enough to
echo inside the submarine without tearing finger-sized holes in the steel hull.
The strongest materials on Earth were like room temperature butter in the hands
of Stupendous Girl. "Stupendous Girl here. Will start raising in one minute.
Hold tight," was the message she tapped out, not daring to go into any more
detail in case she damaged the fragile vessel more. She positioned herself
under the center of the submarine and waited the promised minute before she
began to raise the sub. She had more than enough strength to lift the vessel
and a million others like it at the same time. The tricky part was controlling
her strength so that she brought it to the surface in one piece, rather than
snapping it in two like a twig. 

Stupendous Girl laid her palms flat against the
side of the sub and pushed, gently. The vessel creaked and rolled over
slightly. She quickly swam under the submarine and lay flat on her back; when
the sub rolled back, it rolled on top of her. From her prone position,
Stupendous Girl was able to apply gentle upward pressure, slowly bringing the
submarine off the sea floor. She took her time bringing the HMS Ulysses to the
surface. She could have raised the submarine in a few seconds, but it would
have disintegrated into a thousand pieces along the way. Slow and steady was
the only way to go if she wanted to save the sailors on board rather than drown
them, or squash them into a sticky paste against the hull of their own ship.
When the submarine broke the surface, Stupendous Girl swam to the back of the
vessel and pushed, skimming the vessel across the waves. She was able to move
the submarine a lot faster now that they were free of the pressure of being
underwater. As she steered the submarine towards the Royal Navy rescue ships,
she activated her internal communicator, which patched her through to her lead
ship. 

"This is Stupendous Girl to HMS Buckingham," she said. "I have raised HMS
Ulysses and I am bringing her to you now." 

"HMS Buckingham reading you loud and clear, Stupendous Girl," came the reply. "Are there survivors?" Stupendous Girl double-checked the status of the crew with her x-ray vision, taking care to only use as much power as she needed to; she did not want to give any of the survivors cancer, or even boil their brains inside their heads. The HMS Ulysses was a Vanguard-class submarine with an active complement of 135 officers and
enlisted men. Stupendous Girl counted 15 dead in the flooded compartment and
120 alive in the rest of the sub, some of whom were wounded. "Yes," replied
Stupendous Girl. "There are 120 survivors. 37 will require immediate medical
attention." "Roger that, Stupendous Girl," came the reply. "What is your ETA?"

"I will be there in ten minutes," she said. ***** Stupendous Girl stayed with
the HMS Buckingham for long enough to make sure that no more help was required
to retrieve the surviving sailors. The men on board the ship whistled whenever
she went past, taking no effort to disguise their lustful glances as the
perfectly proportioned superwoman passed them in her skintight suit. She signed
a few autographs and posed for some photographs with the sailors. After the
events of Halloween, she needed all of the positive PR that she could get.
Rescuing 120 men from near-certain death on the ocean floor would go some way
to repairing the damage that the fake Stupendous Girl had done by massacring so
many people on Halloween. Denials had been issued, but many people did not
believe them, especially after somebody had leaked information to the media
about the other occasions on which Stupendous Girl had accidentally killed or
maimed people. Being a supergirl on Earth came with a steep learning curve and
ordinary humans had often paid the price for Stupendous Girl's lessons. From
the time she had tried to play the part of Santa, to the time that she had
tried to save a redwood forest from loggers, Stupendous Girl had inadvertently
left a trail of death and destruction. The Department of Extra-Solar affairs
had done a good job of covering up these events, but now they were coming out
and discrediting any attempts at damage control for the Halloween massacre in
Salem, Oregon. The simple fact was that most people did not believe that an
impostor had been responsible for the attack. Every day, Stupendous Girl was
denounced on the cable news networks as an alien terrorist bent on destroying
humanity. She was trying to be extra careful when using her powers so as not to
give her enemies any more ammunition. At that moment, however, Stupendous
Girl's biggest worry was that she was needed to get to Nantucket to spend
Thanksgiving with Randall Dixon - her lover and her liaison to the Department
of Extra-solar Affairs - and his family. Randall's aunt and uncle owned a
compound on the island, where they held court every Thanksgiving with as many
members of their extended family as could be persuaded to come. They had
insisted that Randall come and that he bring Stupendous Girl, his relationship
with her being an open secret within the family. Stupendous Girl launched
herself from the deck HMS Buckingham and quickly flew to the edge of Earth's
atmosphere. She could have flown at lower altitudes, but when she did that, she
often stirred up tornadoes and other freak weather events. By flying through
the thin outer layers of the atmosphere, she could avoid adding climate change
to the list of sins being levied against her. She flew west, towards the United
States. When she was a few miles from the coast of Massachusetts, she plunged
down towards the ocean. She slowed her descent, so that when she hit the sea,
she simply slid into the water rather than impacting with enough force to start
a small tsunami. Using her incredible vision, she quickly spotted a group of
nice looking lobsters on the ocean floor. She swam towards them faster than a
great white shark and bundled them up, holding a pair of three pound lobsters
under each arm. She propelled herself back to the surface and emerged in a
spray of water like a nuclear-powered mermaid. A few minutes later, she landed
in the grounds of Myrna and Alfred Putnam's home. The entire family was
outside: Randall, his brother Bradley, sister Iona, and his parents, John and
Carol (Myrna's sister). Alfred and Myrna were fussing over a turkey fryer and a
smoker. Everyone turned to look at Stupendous Girl as she ran across the lawn
to them, her impossibly firm breasts bouncing gently as they strained against
the paper-thin fabric of her wetsuit. "Good afternoon everybody," shouted
Stupendous Girl. "I am sorry that I am late, I had to rescue a submarine. I
brought lobsters for dinner, much as the pilgrims must have done on the first
Thanksgiving!" Randall walked over to meet her. He kissed her warmly. "That's
wonderful, sweety. We'll need to figure out a way to cook them. The turkey is
frying in the lobster pot right now. Maybe Bradley and I can figure it out
while you change?" Stupendous Girl looked over her costume. She could not see
anything wrong with it, but she understood that her standards of modesty were
very different to those of most cultures on Earth. The fact that the shapes of
her diamond-hard nipples were clearly prominent through her thing wetsuit might
have had something to do with the frosty looks from the older members of the
family. "Maybe I can borrow something from Iona," she said. After Randall had
introduced her to Myrna and Alfred, and after she had greeted the rest of the
family, Stupendous Girl grabbed Iona by the arm, gently. "Iona!" she squealed.
"I have missed you so much! I have not seen you since Halloween. Do you have
any clothes I can borrow? If not, I will have to fly back to my apartment and
make something." Iona was strangely subdued. "Of course, Chrissy," she said;
'Chrissy' was the name that Stupendous Girl had chosen to use amongst her
friends on Earth. "Come inside with me. I also need to talk to you." The two
young women went inside the large house and made their way to Iona's room.
"What is the problem, Iona?" asked Stupendous Girl. Iona gingerly sat on her
bed and sighed. She bit her lip. "It's my powers," she said. "You mean from
Halloween?" asked Stupendous Girl. "You miss having superpowers? I am sorry,
but I promised Randall I would not use the power ray again." Iona shook her
head. "You don't understand," she said. "I still have my powers. You said that
they would wear off in a few hours, but it's been nearly a month and I still
have them." "Oh my goddess!" exclaimed Stupendous Girl. "That is impossible.
The power ray has a strictly temporary effect on non-powered races. I do not
understand. Are you sure you still have your powers?" Stupendous Girl examined
Iona. She should have noticed immediately that something was different; Iona
was a couple of inches taller than she should have been, and her body had the
curvaceous, yet firm and toned, look of a Supremis woman. Iona did not
immediately respond to Stupendous Girl's question, she simply floated up into
the air. "Yes, I'm pretty sure I still have my powers."

"This is wonderful!" said Stupendous Girl. "Now I have a superpowered friend.
We are like sisters!"

Iona started to cry. "Yes, it's wonderful," she said. "It's also terrifying. I
keep hurting people and breaking things. My girlfriend split up with me because
I hugged her too hard and broke four of her ribs. I've broken five alarm clocks
and more cups and glasses than I can count. I have to put five layers of duct
tape over my breasts to make a bra last more than a day, because my nipples can
cut through solid steel."

Stupendous Girl floated up to meet Iona and wrapped her arms around the young
woman. "It is all right, Iona. I can help you. You should have told me as soon
as you realized."

Iona wiped back her tears. "I know, but I was afraid," she said. "I thought I
might have done something wrong. I didn't want to be punished."

"Well that's one way you are different from your brother," said Stupendous
Girl. "He likes it when I punish him!"

"Yuck!" shouted Iona. "Too much information!" She laughed.

"I really would like to know how this happened," said Stupendous Girl. "Do you
have any samples of your DNA from before Halloween?"

Iona nodded. "I have some old hairs on my hairbrush," she said. She floated
over to a dresser and handed a small hairbrush over to Stupendous Girl. "There
are no new hairs on there; I guess my hair is now as indestructible as the rest
of me."

"No problem," said Stupendous Girl. She reached over and plucked a single
strand of hair from Iona's head. Stupendous Girl was the only other person on
the planet who would have been able to do that.

"Come on," said Stupendous Girl, "let's fly to my apartment and make some new,
indestructible clothes for the both of us. I can throw these hair samples into
the DNA analyzer as well. We can be there and back before anybody realizes that
we are gone."

Iona opened a window and the two super-powered women flew out into the cold
November air and flew to Stupendous Girl's penthouse apartment as fast as they
could without causing a hurricane.

*****

Stupendous Girl had brought a machine with her from Supremis which could
manufacture clothes of any design in seconds, from fabrics that were nearly
indestructible. Iona had used the machine before to make a costume for
Halloween, so as soon as she and Stupendous Girl arrived at the apartment, Iona
began to design and manufacture a new wardrobe for herself.

Stupendous Girl placed the two strands of Iona's hair into a device for
analyzing DNA and left it running. It would take a few minutes for the
sequencing and analysis to be completed.

A low chiming sound told Stupendous Girl that the regular mail drone from
Supremis had arrived. Her ship contained an Ansible, a device for communicating
instantaneously over any distance, but it could only be used for low-bandwidth
communication, and then only in an emergency. The Ansible worked by taking
advantage of a loophole in Quantum Mechanics that allowed particles to be split
and then act on each other at a distance. The Ansible contained a finite supply
of half-particles, each of which could be used to transmit a single bit of
information. Non-urgent communication was carried out via shuttle drones, which
could make the trip from Supremis, hundreds of light years distant, in a few
days.

Most of the mail was routine: a software update for the systems on Stupendous
Girl's ship, which was automatically installed; news and weather from back
home; and tedious dispatches from other diplomatic missions across the galaxy.
The one unusual item was a holo-message from Stupendous Girl's mother.
Stupendous Girl activated it immediately.

A three dimensional image of Stupendous Girl's mother appeared in the room; a
statuesque blonde with beautiful features, but a severe case to her face. The
illusion was so perfect that Iona panicked for a moment, thinking that somebody
had appeared from nowhere.

"Is that your sister?" asked Iona.

Stupendous Girl laughed. She paused the holo-message and turned to Iona. "No,
that is my mother."

"Wow," said Iona. "She must have been very young when she had you!"

Stupendous Girl's mother appeared to be in her mid to late twenties; only a
few years older than Stupendous Girl's appearance.

"Not really," said Stupendous Girl. "She was almost two hundred years old when
I was born."

Iona whistled, inadvertently shattering every window in the apartment. "She
looks good!"

"The women of Supremis live for a long time and our appearance does not
reflect our age," said Stupendous Girl. "I am 47 years old, for example."

Iona whistled again, shattering windows in a quarter mile radius around the
apartment. "You barely look twenty!"

"Just one of the many benefits of being super!" said Stupendous Girl. "Now, I
should see what my mother has to say." She unpaused the holo-message.

"Greetings, daughter," said the image of Stupendous Girl's mother. "I am
afraid that I have bad news."

Stupendous Girl wondered what kind of news would be bad enough to break the
silence between the two of them; she and her mother had barely exchanged a
handful of words in the last five years.

"My sister, the Queen of Supremis, is dying," continued the holo-message.

Stupendous Girl was shocked. Her aunt was only a year older than Stupendous
Girls' mother, had been Queen for sixty years and could be expected to rule for
another two hundred and fifty, given the long lifespan of a Supremis woman.
"How is that possible?" asked Stupendous Girl to herself.

"She has Star Worm Syndrome," continued her mother. "We do not know how she
contracted it, but she has only a few weeks left. Already, she is in
excruciating pain." Stupendous Girl did not think she was imagining a tone of
triumph in her mother's voice, as if she were relishing the painful death of
her sister.

Her mother would be Queen, as she had always wanted. Her mother's bitterness
at being the younger sister and her overweening ambition to be Queen, were
among the factors that had driven a wedge between her and Stupendous Girl. The
fractious rivalry between the two siblings was also one of the reasons that the
royal family was unpopular.

"The royal council has yet to confirm the line of succession," said her
mother's image. "There was some foolish talk of making you Queen, but I am glad
to say that such chatter has faded of late. Things have gone so poorly on your
mission to Earth... Not to mention your unfortunate relationship with a member
of a lesser species."

Stupendous Girl gritted her teeth with enough strength to chew through the
hull of a battleship. She had not been aware that her love life was the subject
of idle gossip on Supremis.

"We now have a chance to put your foolish mistakes behind us," said her
mother, with the patronizing tone that had always driven Stupendous Girl mad.
"If you make a statement supporting my succession to the throne, then the royal
family can present a united front. Maybe some of your inexplicable popularity
with the common rabble will rub off on me, and it will show the royal council
that you have developed some maturity, in spite of your poor performance in
winning over the feeble primitives of Earth."

Iona started at that comment. "Hey, who are you calling feeble?" she asked,
rhetorically.

"I look forward to receiving your reply within one standard day," said
Stupendous Girl's mother. "I want you to remember that I have given you this
one chance. Goodbye, daughter."

The hologram faded. Stupendous Girl sighed. It was hard to be objective when
it came to the subject of her mother, but she genuinely believed that her
mother would make the worst Queen since the Great Enlightenment. If given the
chance, her mother would roll back many of the reforms that had made the women
of Supremis a force for good in the galaxy instead of a force for ill.

There was a low, pinging sound. "The DNA is done!" said Stupendous Girl. She
examined the analysis, quickly processing the vast quantities of information
with her super fast brain. "This is impossible," she said.

"What is it?" asked Iona.

"Iona, according to this analysis, you are half-human and half-Supremis," said
Stupendous Girl. "The power ray unlocked your latent powers. That is why they
have not faded."

"I don't understand," said Iona. "One of my parents is an alien? Can you tell
which one?"

"I can," said Stupendous Girl.

*****

Twenty minutes later, Stupendous Girl and Iona walked out of the house on
Nantucket and rejoined the rest of the family. After finishing up their
clothes-making, they had flown back to Nantucket, entered the open window to
Iona's room and exited the house as if they had never left.

Stupendous Girl wore a pair of tight black leggings, black knee-high boots,
and a short red silk dress. Iona wore tight black jeans with silver piping, a
black leather corset over a purple top and a long black coat with skull-shaped
silver buttons.

Randall and Bradley were still trying to figure out how to cook the lobsters.
The lobsters were trying to escape their culinary doom, which was not helping
the Dixon brothers' thought process.

Stupendous Girl walked over to them. "Honestly!" she said. "If you want to do
something right, you have to do it yourself."

She began to dig a hole in a patch of rough ground apart from the neatly
manicured lawn. The topsoil was a thin layer over rock, which was no more able
to resist her powerful hands than the soil. When she had dug a suitable hole in
the rock, she used her laser vision to fuse the sides into an impermeable
layer.

Stupendous Girl flew out over the ocean and began to fly in a tight circle a
few inches above the surface of the water. A funnel of water rose into the air
to meet her; while still flying in tight circles, she rose up, bringing the
water with her. She carefully flew over to the pit that she had dug, letting
the funnel of water fall and fill it.

She stood at the edge of the water filled pit and fired her laser vision into
the water, using a gentle beam spread over the surface of the water in order to
heat it to boiling, rather than flashing it to steam in an instant. When the
seawater was boiling, she chased down the lobsters, who were steadfastly and
slowly crawling towards the ocean.

In turn, she killed each lobster instantaneously by piercing its head with her
laser vision, and then she tossed the creatures into the pit of boiling water.
She stood by the pit, occasionally firing her laser vision into the sea water
to keep it boiling.

When the lobsters were cooked, she reached into the boiling water with her
hands and pulled the perfectly done arthropods out. She brought them over to
the table. Before serving them, she split the tails neatly in two with her
laser vision, an act which both browned the surface of the meat deliciously and
bored holes in the hundred-year old, solid oak, dining table.

"Can I cook, or what?" she asked.

She cracked the claws with her bare hands, sending lobster shrapnel flying;
luckily nobody was hit, but pieces of claw were embedded into the walls of the
dining room and several windows were broken.

Randall came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her slender, unyielding
waist. "You're the best," he said.

Shortly after, they sat down for dinner. In addition to the lobsters, there
was a golden, deep fried turkey, smoked brisket, oyster dressing, cornbread,
green bean casserole, yams, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, pecan pie and Indian
pudding.

Stupendous Girl poked some canned Cranberry sauce with a finger and watched it
wobble, suspiciously. "Some of these dishes do not appear authentic to colonial
times," she said.

"So you've been reading up on Thanksgiving?" asked Randall.

"Yes," replied Stupendous Girl. "It is a very confusing holiday."

Randall nodded. "Yeah, well, it was sort of invented out of whole cloth in the
19th century to be an explicitly American holiday. It doesn't have that much to
do with the historical events; which is why we weren't expecting to have
lobster!"

"It just seems odd to celebrate the beginnings of a genocide," said Stupendous
Girl. "I mean, the native Americans helped the pilgrims survive in the new
world and then the pilgrims and their descendants took their land and pushed
the surviving native Americans into some of the worst areas of the continent.
It is a cautionary tale about what happens when two cultures collide, rather
than something to be celebrated."

"That is one way of looking at it," said Randall. "Another way of looking at
it is that it is a celebration of a time when the settlers and the native
Americans could sit together and enjoy a meal in peace."

"But my understanding is that the very presence of Europeans in the new world
had doomed the native Americans," said Stupendous Girl. "Diseases brought by
the earliest explorers had wiped out millions before the settlers even landed."

Randall was impressed. "You really have been doing your research," he said.
"Do you think it's inevitable that when two disparate cultures meet that the
more technologically advanced one will inevitably wipe out the less
technologically advanced one?"

Stupendous Girl turned and kissed him, passionately but carefully. "Let us
hope not," she said. "Maybe the more advanced culture will simply fall in
love."

Iona watched this with a horrified look on her face. She stuck a finger in her
mouth and feigned vomiting. "Ugh! Get a room, you two!"

The two lovers moved apart. "Besides," said Randall, "modern Thanksgiving is
more a celebration of the ties of family than of the founding of the nation.
It's about reconnecting with your roots and being thankful for friends and
family."

"Ugh," said Stupendous Girl. "That reminds me. I am supposed to call my
mother."

Randall laughed. "Now you sound like a real Earth girl!"

Randall's father, John, suddenly took an interest in the conversation. "What
does your mother want?" he asked.

"She wants me to endorse her succession to the throne," said Stupendous Girl.
"My aunt is dying."

"Shit," said John Dixon. "Your mother would be a nightmare as Queen. She would
roll back half of the reforms of the Great Enlightenment."

"I know," said Stupendous Girl. "I have no intention of supporting her
succession." She paused. "How do you know so much about the history and current
affairs of Supremis?" she asked.

John Dixon shrugged. "I have my sources," he said.

"Hmm," said Stupendous Girl, unconvinced. "I wonder if I should return to
Supremis to challenge her for the throne. I do not want to be Queen, but it is
my duty."

"You can't!" said Randall. "Earth would be unprotected."

"It is all right," said Stupendous Girl. "Iona can take my place while I am
gone."

Iona made frantic zipping motions across her mouth, but Stupendous Girl did
not understand the gesture.

"What do you mean?" asked Randall.

"Iona has superpowers now," said Stupendous Girl. "She is almost as powerful
as me."

Iona made a sound of frustration. "What part of 'secret' do you not
understand?" she wailed.

"I thought you weren't going to use the power ray again," said Randall. "It's
locked up in your ship so it can't be misused."

"She does not need the power ray," explained Stupendous Girl. "When I used the
power ray on her at Halloween it unlocked the Supremis half of her DNA and gave
her powers, permanently."

The color had drained from John Dixon's face. He looked at his daughter, Iona,
with an expression of great sadness.

"Half-Supremis?" asked Randall. "How is that possible?"

John Dixon interrupted. "It's possible because my mother and father, your
grandparents, were from Supremis. They were explorers who discovered Earth a
hundred years ago. They decided to stay and make a life for themselves here."

"What happened to Grandma?" asked Iona. "Wouldn't she have been superpowered?"

"She was," continued John Dixon. "She died protecting the Earth, shortly after
I was born. I didn't believe half the stories that my father told me about her,
until Stupendous Girl arrived and showed us all what she could do."

"So, I'm half-Supremis as well?" asked Randall. "Would the power ray give me
superpowers?"

Stupendous Girl laughed. "Do not be silly, Randall!" she said. "Males cannot
have superpowers; it is physically impossible."

Randall looked slightly deflated. "However, this means that it's not such a
scandal that the two of us are lovers, isn't it? I mean, I'm no longer just an
inferior alien..."

"No," said Stupendous Girl. "Now you are just a half-breed. I do not think the
Royal Council would be too impressed to discover that my consort is a
half-human descendant of a pair of deserters." She sighed. "Maybe I am fooling
myself thinking that I can be Queen."

"Don't despair," said John Dixon. "I'm sure we can find a way to turn all of
this around. The first thing you should do is to tell your mother to go to
hell."

Stupendous Girl laughed. "With pleasure!" she said.

She used her communicator to patch through to the Ansible on her ship. She
sent a brief text message through the faster-than-light channel to Supremis. It
read: "Dear Mother, I will never support your succession to the throne. Love,
your daughter."

"That should put the cat among the pigeons!" she said. "Now, back to the food!
Are there any oysters in anything? I don't like oysters; they are too slimy."

While they had been talking, the sun had set and a persistent rain had started
up. As they consumed large quantities of food, the rain came down harder and a
powerful wind sprang up. Stupendous Girl had barely finished her fourth slice
of pumpkin pie when a bolt of lightning came out of nowhere and knocked out the
power.

"I'll go start up the generator," said Randall. "Chrissy, Iona: could you
check to see if there are any mariners in trouble? This storm came out of
nowhere and it might have taken them by surprise."

Stupendous Girl and Iona ran out of the house and launched themselves high up
into the sky. Using their near-perfect night vision, with which they could see
for hundreds of miles, even through the pelting rain, they scanned the sea for
problems.

"I can see a couple of pleasure boats out to the east," shouted Iona.

"The ferry from Hyannis is in trouble," said Stupendous Girl. "I will look
after the ferry. You check on the other boats" Since Iona was still
inexperienced with her powers, Stupendous Girl thought it best if she handle
the ferry herself, since there were more people on board.

The two mighty maidens soared off into the night sky.

*****

The Nantucket Ferry had been caught off guard by the suddenly stormy sea. It
would not normally have put to sea under such conditions, but the storm had
sprung up after it had departed Nantucket, heading for Hyannis. Stupendous Girl
decided that the safest course would be to simply lift the ship and carry it to
port.

She dived under the water, wishing that she was wearing her blue wetsuit
instead of her party frock, and positioned herself underneath the tossing hull
of the ship. Moving slowly and carefully, she hugged the bottom of the hull
where she estimated the center of gravity to be and gently lifted the vessel
into the air.

Moving at a height of fifty feet above the water, and at a speed of two
hundred miles an hour, the remainder of the trip to Hyannis was faster and more
nauseating than the passengers were used to. They arrived safely in port, but
their gratitude at having been rescued from the storm was tempered by their
acute air and sea-sickness. Nonetheless, the captain of the ferry shook
Stupendous Girl's hand and thanked her profusely. He knew the limits of his
vessel well and he knew that Stupendous Girl had probably saved a lot of lives
that night.

*****

Further out to sea, Iona Dixon was having a harder time with her mission.

When she reached the first yacht, it was obvious to Iona that the vessel and
her crew were out of their depth. It was only a matter of time before the boat
capsized. Iona decided to carry the entire boat back to shore before anything
could happen.

She dived under the water, also wishing that she was wearing something more
practical for superheroics. She positioned herself beneath the hull of the
yacht and swam up with her arms spread out before her. Iona was moving too fast
when her hands met the hull; before she realized what was happening, she had smashed into and through the boat, splitting it into two pieces which quickly sank. A splash
of blood in the water indicated that one of the unlucky crew had also been
caught in her violent passage through the boat.

There were still two survivors of the destruction of the yacht. Iona saw the
men thrashing around in the cold waters of the Atlantic. Determined to salvage
something from the operation, Iona swooped down and grabbed them out of the
water, wrapping an arm as far as she could around the chest of each man. She
groaned inwardly as she heard the telltale sounds of their ribcages shattering
in her steely grip, and she relaxed her grasp.

Iona turned in the direction of the mainland and the nearest hospital. She
launched herself in that direction with such fierce acceleration that the necks
of her two passengers jerked and snapped, violently, killing them immediately.

"Oh shit," said Iona. She dropped the two dead men into the ocean and set out
for the second pleasure craft that she had seen. She hoped that she was able to
rescue at least one person before the night was out.

When Iona arrived at the second yacht, it had already capsized. She spotted a
man in the water wearing a bright yellow life vest. She swooped down and
plucked the man out of the water, gently holding him under the arms.

"Is there anybody else down there?" asked Iona. She shouted to make herself
heard over the noise of the storm, but her voice was so loud and so powerful
that the man's eardrums burst. The man screamed in pain and struggled to free
himself from Iona's grasp, but only succeeded in dislocating his shoulder.

"Shit," said Iona. "This is not going well."

Still holding the wounded, struggling man, she scanned the area with her x-ray
vision. She spotted woman in the water underneath the boat, but Iona's x-ray
vision was on such a high setting that she fried the poor woman's brain,
killing her instantly.

She could not see anybody else in the area, so she turned to the mainland and
once again made for the nearest hospital. This time she accelerated slowly to
several hundred miles an hour, so as not to kill her passenger.

The man she was holding managed to free one of his arms and he swung wildly at
Iona's face, striking her firmly on the nose. Her nose could have shrugged off
the impact from an artillery shell without worry, so the man's punch caused her
no damage. However, it did surprise her so much that she dropped the man. Still
traveling at hundreds of miles and hour, the man plunged towards the sea and
literally disintegrated when he hit the water.

"Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit!" screamed Iona.

She began to fly, dejectedly, back to the house on Nantucket, when her
stupendous hearing picked up the sound of a wailing infant, coming from the
water. She turned back towards the area where the second yacht had floundered
and spotted a baby, miraculously stranded on the upturned hull of the vessel.

"Oh shit," said Iona. "Please let me not screw this one up."

She gingerly flew down towards the infant. She slowly removed her coat and
wrapped it around the infant to protect it from the wind and rain. Treating the
child as if it were more fragile than a quail's egg, which comparatively
speaking it was, she carefully picked up the bundle and slowly flew to the
nearest hospital on the mainland. She handed the mewling infant to a nurse in
the Emergency Room, then took back her coat and flew back to the house on
Nantucket, finally feeling a sense of accomplishment with her night's
activities.

****

On the other side of the planet, the dread Sorceress Anastasia, watched a
projected image of Iona flying through the night.

Her weaselly assistant, Wyrmfeld, skittered excitedly. "See, mistress?" he
said. "I have found a new body for you to inhabit. Far more powerful than any
that you have used before."

Anastasia was over 100 years old, but appeared to be no older than her
mid-30's. The body she currently inhabited was the sixth one that she had
stolen since she had abandoned her own flesh in 1932.

"Foolish Wyrmfeld!" screamed Anastasia. "You know that these accursed Supremis
females are immune to magics."

Wyrmfeld clicked his tongue. "Ah, but Mistress," he said. "This one is
half-human. She is vulnerable!"

Anastasia leaned forward and examined the image of Iona more carefully. "A
half-human, half-Supremis female hybrid," she said in wonderment. "But it's not
my birthday!" Anastasia laughed maniacally for a minute or two.

"I will prepare my spells!" she said. "Soon that superpowered body will be
mine and I will use it to rule the world!" She laughed some more. "Wyrmfeld,
fetch my scrying prism. I would read the future to see how the Earth fares
under my beneficent rule."

Wyrmfeld scurried away and returned with an angular prism that appeared to
exist in a dimension or two beyond the regular three. Anastasia waved her hands
over the crystal and chanted a few times. When she was done, she looked as if
she had aged two years in a moment. She had traded two years of her life for a
vision of the future.

An image of the Earth was projected from the crystal, but it was nothing like
the Earth that they knew. The oceans were boiled away to nothing, the
atmosphere was stripped, and the crust was broken and wracked by endless
eruptions of molten lava. It was a dead, broken, Earth.

"Do you do that?" screamed Wyrmfeld. "Does Stupendous Girl do that?"

"No," said Anastasia, carefully examining the information that the scrying
crystal was showing, and the facts that it was concealing from the untrained
eye. "Something new is coming."

"When?" asked Wyrmfeld.

"Soon," said Anastasia. "Very soon."