A most peculiar turn of events

Mark opened his eyes, and though his head was foggy, his eyesight was amazingly sharp.  Even without his glasses on, he could make out the details on every single snowflake that swirled around him.

Wait.  Snow?  He lived in southern California, and he had been in Hawaii just moments before, when Sara had...could it have all been a dream?  He remembered intense pain, realizing the mistake that the two of them had made when they tried making love.  Then he must have blacked out, but what had happened since then.  There was no more pain, but he was still confused, nothing was adding up, so he lay there in the snow.  Even that was strange, for while he could sense the cold, he couldn't feel it.  Perhaps he was dreaming...or dead.

"You're up," Sara said, her lovely enhanced face coming into view. At least that part of it had been real, he realized.  "How do you feel?"

"Not bad," he said. Something was wrong with his voice. It sounded strange in his ears.  "What happened? Where am I?"

"Alaska.  Mount McKinley.  I'm so sorry, Mark," Sara said. Her lovely eyes filled with tears.  "I thought I had control over myself, but when we...I'm so sorry. I almost killed you."

Mark tried to move, but his balance felt off and he decided it was best to lay still for now.  "Don't cry.  I feel fine now.  You must have healed me somehow, right?  No worries." It was not hard to sound brave.  he really did feel fantastic, apart from the strange tingling sensation he was having.

"I did the only thing I could think of. I'm sorry, I'm not good in a crisis.  You were dying. I couldn't wait for an ER doctor to see you."

"But I'm fine, I feel fine. You must have healed me."

Sara drew a deep breath. "Mark, I used the computer."

"You mean you gave me powers? That's excellent, no we can..."

"Mark, I gave you my powers.  Everything. Look at yourself."

Mark didn't have to look. All the pieces made sense. His eyesight, his voice, his new sense of balance. "You mean I'm Ms. Infinity too?" Sara could only nod in response. Mark sat up, feeling the unfamiliar weight of breasts shift on his chest.  He noticed that both he and Sara were wearing the red, blue, and gold outfit she had worn earlier.

"Wow," is all he could say.

"Yeah," Sara said, looking downcast.  "Wow."

"But we can still change me with the computer, right?"

"That's just it, Mark.  The computer is trash.  It's all destroyed, even the disk."

For the first time, Mark started to feel panic. "What? How could that happen?"

"There were police there, at your apartment.  They wouldn't let me use the computer to help you.  Things got out of hand."

"Sara, you didn't..."

She swallowed. "I did.  They were trying to hurt us.  I lost my temper.  I turned one to ash and punched holes in the other three." 

Silence hung in the air for a minute while Mark took in this information.  "Sara, this is terrible! They're going to be after us!"

"Is it? Because from where I sit, they can't do anything to me or you that we don't want them to do. We're not like normal people anymore, Mark. We don't play by their rules."

"How can you say that?" Mark snapped angrily. "This is what I was warning you about.  Sara, you're going to lose yourself in your power if you're not careful."

"Well it's a little too late to go back, now, isn't it?" Sara said sharply. "This is who we are. I didn't ask for this..."

"And I did?" Mark asked, cupping his...her breasts. "At least you got turned into your fantasy. I got crushed by my girlfriend and then got turned into Super Barbie."

"I only made myself into what I thought you wanted me to be!" Sara yelled, causing several landslides on the mountain slopes below them. "I didn't want to play your stupid game. I just did it because I love you."

"Do you still?"

"What?"

"I mean, I'm not Mark anymore.  I'm you, or at least a copy of you.  This could change everything between us."

Sara's demeanor changed rapidly.  She calmed herself, knelt down beside Mark, and took her hand. 

"You're an ass.  You know that?  Do you really think I would be so shallow as to stop loving you because you went through a little change?."

"Really? I mean, it's still me in here. I'm incredibly turned on by you. But do you think you're ready for...this?"

Sara actually laughed.  "It's still you in there, stupid. Of course I love you."

"But you're not bi.  Wait, are you?"

Again Sara laughed.  "I don't think I was.  But there's something about being in this body, with these powers.  I turn myself on. It's like I get horny all the time whenever I think about myself and what I can do."

Now it was Mark's turn to laugh. "Oh, good. I thought it was just me."

Sara moved even closer, until her lips were brushing Mark's ear. "Wait until you feel sex in your new body. You'll understand why I lost control." Her had crept up until it brushed underside of Mark's breast.  Even through the the fabric, Mark could feel the sensation start to cause arousal.  Another second and all of her fears and anxieties would go out the window, and she would take Sara right there.

"Wait."  It took all of her willpower to utter that one syllable.  "I'm not ready for this.  It's all too much. Almost dying, powers, a new gender.  I think I need some time to take it in."

Sara backed off and pouted, but a hint of a smile crept around the corner of her mouth.  "Fine.  Prude.  So what do you want to do instead."

"Well, to be honest.  I want to try smashing something.  To let off steam."

Sara grinned. "I thought you'd never ask."

Why is nothing ever simple?

Sara found three police cars around Eric's apartment, and four officers were looking at the hole she had created just over an hour before with no more than her breath. Mark's landlord was trying to explain the situation to the officers, and one of them dutifully took down notes as the others tried to ascertain the cause of the damage.

The lights on their cars were flashing, and police lights always made Sara anxious. Added to the fact that she was carrying the body of her dying boyfriend, and her mood was as dark as it had ever been.  She landed by the police cars and strode towards the hole in the wall.  There was not a second to lose.

"Hold it right there, Missy," one of the cops said.  "I'm afraid I can't allow you to go inside."

"But it's my boyfriend's apartment," Sara protested. "He's right here." Cops always intimidated her.  It hadn't even dawned on her to blow right past them. The cops had a swagger about them that bespoke authority, and the way they leered at Sara made her forget her invulnerability and become increasingly self-conscious.

Perhaps the cops were too stunned by Sara's appearance, but it was only then that they noticed that she was carrying the bloody, mangled and naked body of her boyfriend. "Jesus, lady!" one cried. "Put the body down, and step away. I'll get an ambulance here right away." 

Sara didn't budge, but rather took a step forward. The more attitude the cops gave her, the less she felt like respecting their authority. With every second that passed, she saw them as obstacles.  "It's too late for an ambulance. He's dying.  I need to get him inside right this minute."

The cops stood firm. One put his hand on the butt of his gun. "I can't let you do that," he said. "This apartment is unsafe and a potential crime scene.  We just can't let..." he seemed to be at a loss as to how to describe the impossibly beautiful woman holding a dying man standing in front of him. "I just can't let you in there."

"Shit. I don't have time for this," Sara spat.  Her eyes flashed red.  She glanced towards the cars.  The cops swore they saw pulses of energy shoot from her eyes, striking their cars and blowing them to atoms.  "Now get the hell out of my way. I don't want to hurt you, but I will if you don't move."

Momentarily stunned, the policemen parted.  Sara moved forward and laid Mark down on his bed.  Then she sat at his computer and entered the twenty digit password she had concocted earlier.  The program took a few seconds to load, and in that short amount of time, the policemen recovered their wits.

"Lady, come out of there right now with your hands up or we'll open fire.  I don't know how you trashed our cars..."

"Shut up," Sara commanded. "Just give me a goddamn minute." She was no longer intimidated, and she was starting to feel once again like the goddess she was.  No-one was ever going to give her orders ever again.

The policemen waited for all of a second, and when Sara turned towards the keyboard again, they began to shoot.  Bullets pinged harmlessly off of Sara. She felt the impacts as if the police were throwing marshmallows at her.  the more they shot, the stronger she felt, and she kept her back to them while she smiled to herself.  Then she heard a ricochet strike Mark. A moan escaped his lips, and Sara worried that she might be hearing her boyfriend's dying breath.  She turned to look at him, and in so doing, a bullet whizzed by her and struck to computer.

"No!" she cried, and time seemed to stand still for her.  She realized that she was working at super-speed, but the impact of the bullet was going to destroy Mark's computer. There was no getting around that inevitability, but she had one last chance to do what she had come here to do.  Still working at hyper-speed, she typed furiously.

"Select...copy...paste...save!" she said in words too rapid to even register with the policemen.  As soon as she hit enter, she could see the surge start to scramble the data being displayed on the monitor.  In slow motion, she could see debris and sparks fly from the machine, and she knew that it would never work again. If her plan failed, she would have killed Mark.

Still the bullets came.  Sara ignored them and she knelt over Mark.  Tears streamed down her face.  He had warned her something terrible would happen, and she had refused to take him seriously. He was right, her powers had turned her into some kind of monster.  And now, along with the loss of her boyfriend, she had lost the chance to return to a normal life...

Then she saw Mark start to change.  The bullet hole in his side closed up, and his crushed midsection regained its healthy form.  Sara cried out in delight.  It had worked.  Mark would live, and he would enjoy all of the powers she had. 

But Mark was not done changing. There, before her eyes, Mark became a being of power and perfection, but not the one Sara had imagined him becoming.  When Sara had cut and paste her abilities onto Mark, she had not simply given him superpowers.  She had copied her entire template onto him.  Mark was now a super-woman, Sara's identical twin in all respects.

"Oh, no!" Sara cried.  She did not know whether to laugh in relief or cry in horror at what she had done.

Oh, look. Something went wrong!

Mark had little time to worry about leaving the computer unattended.  The sheer terror of flying at hundreds of miles an hour, protected only by his girlfriend's embrace, pushed all other anxieties out of his mind.  They raced above the ocean into the sunset and watched the sun slowly climb back into the sky as they moved westward.  They were hundreds of feet above the ocean, and vertigo welled within Mark.  At the speeds they were travelling, he felt every little dist particle ping into his skin, and he didn't dare to open his mouth for fear that his cheeks would balloon up.  That didn't stop Sara from chatting idly to him as they flew, but he didn't have super-hearing, and he couldn't understand a word she said.  He understood that she was holding back, however.  he had little doubt that she could fly a hundred times her current supersonic speed.

They reached Kauai in just about an hour.  Sara set them down beside a pool hidden in the rainforest, where a waterfall plunged over a cliff face from fifty feet above.  Mark was never so happy to set foot on solid ground.

Evening was approaching, and at that hour, all tourists had gone from the waterfall.  They had it all to themselves.  "It's just like I remembered it!" squealed Sara.

"Great," muttered Mark.  It was only then that Sara looked at him and felt his pain through their psychic link. In addition to the dirt and bruises from earlier, the skin on Mark's face was now dry, cracked, and bleeding from a dozen tiny cuts.

"Oh, Mark!  You look terrible!  I had no idea the flight would be so rough on you!" Sara said, genuinely concerned.  "I wish I had taken some healing powers."

"It looks worse than it is," Mark said.  He didn't actually feel that bad, but he was willing to put the return flight off for as long as possible.  Or perhaps he could go by plane. At least the sympathy he got from Sara was nice.  His girlfriend picked him up and flew him slowly to the edge of the waterfall, where the spray was cooling and soothing.  "That's nice," he said, holding Sara close.

"I'm the luckiest girl in the world," she said. "And I don't just mean because of the powers.  I'm as happy with you now as I was when we came here the first time."

Healing powers or not, Mark immediately felt better.  He kissed her gently on the lips.  For a second, it felt strange to kiss a woman who looked so different from his girlfriend, but when she returned the kiss, there was no question in his mind that it was her.  He could feel the closeness between them through Sara's mental link, and he would have been happy to remain there by the pool forever.

Moment's later, Sara broke the kiss and whispered softly in his ear. "Know what would make this even better?"

"What?"

"SKINNY DIPPING!" Sara shouted.  She released him and grabbed his grubby clotes.  In a microsecond she had torn them off of his body.  He had only a moment to contemplate his nudity before he plunged into the cool, refreshing water below.  A second later, Sara joined him. She too had shed her Wonder Woman-y garments, though she had time to fold them neatly and lay them by the side of the pool in the time it took him to plunge then feet into the water. She grabbed him by the hand and they floated to the surface.  They were almost directly under the water, and Mark sputtered.  The two of them laughed and embraced.  Mark thought that Sara felt terrific against his body, and there was no hiding the desire he felt for her.  Her fingers stroked his body slowly, as if reveling in her new super-sensitive sense of touch.  Mark decided to give Sara the sensations she craved, and he stroked her perfect, heart-shaped ass.  She moaned slightly and whispered in his ear. "Oh, Mark. It feels so good when you touch me.  I can feel the slightest touch, and it only feels better when you try to be rough."

That was all the encouragement Mark needed.  He groped one of Sara's wonderful breasts, kneading her flesh more roughly than he ever had before, but she didn't seem to mind. In fact, she was getting visibly turned on by the second.  Her hand crept down to Mark's erect member, stroking it and teasing it until it was harder than mark could ever remember it being in his life. Sara plunged underwater and took all of Mark into her mouth. Apparently she did not need to breathe, for she teased him orally for over five minutes, keeping him just on the verge of exploding.  Then, she lifted Mark out of the water again, hovering above the waterfall.  They kissed and caressed each other.  mark had no fear of falling. he felt perfectly safe in Sara's arms.  Finally, she lifted herself up and lowered herself on his erection.  Her eyes opened wide and she smiled. "It's never been like this before," she purred.  Mark was turned on by everything: the setting, the erotic sensation of making love in midair, his girlfriend's supernatural beauty. He began pumping like mad, and Sara's breathing came hard and ragged.Mark reveled in the fact that he was bringing the most powerful being in the universe to orgasm.  At long last, he closed his eyes and released just at the precise moment that Sara climaxed.

She only lost control for a second.  She had had no trouble in limiting her near-infinite strength before that, but the throes of passion caused her to lose all rational control over her strength.  There was a sickening snap as Mark's hips and spine shattered.  She could see in painful slow-motion his eyes widen as he realized that the ultimate price for making love to a goddess was death.  "I'm sorry..." was all he was able to say before losing consciousness.

"No!" Sara cried. "What a dumb thing to say! It's all my fault!" She pounded her fist into the ground, creating an impact that worried seismologists as far away as Chile and causing several small landslides on the island. She could hear mark's heart beating more and more faintly, and she knew that in a matter of moments he would be dead.

Frantically, she tried to think of some way to save Mark. Why had she not given herself healing powers? Stupid! she thought to herself.  She thought about taking Mark to a hospital, but even the best emergency rooms would take a few minutes before they could perform any procedure that would save mark's life, and that was an even shot at best. In less than a second, she made up her mind to do the only thing she could do.

Cradling Mark's broken and dying body in her arms, she sped towards home, where the computer with the character generator might be Mark's only hope.

I can't imagine anything possibly going wrong with this

Sara rematerialized beneath Mark, grinning up at him with her arm extended.  She tossed him gently onto the bed, where he nonetheless bounced until the springs squealed.  Sara took a step closer, and then her feet left the floor.  She stood there, hovering a foot above the ground, reveling in the new sensation of weightlessness.

"That shouldn't be possible," Mark said. "None of what superheroes do, none of it is possible by basic laws of physics and biology."

"You're going to have to rethink science, Mark," Sara chirped, "Or else you're going to have to come to terms with magic."

"I don't believe in magic."

"But this is real!  Why deny it?" Sara said.  "This is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.  To anyone!  Ever!  It's better than winning a hundred lotteries back to back...Oh, my God!  I made myself immortal!  I'm never going to get old!  I really am a goddess!"

"Yeah, great," Mark said.  he sounded less than enthusiastic.

"You're jealous?" Sara said.

"Maybe.  But maybe the character generator has more than one charge in it.  Who wouldn't want power like yours? But, Sara, I've been reading superhero comics and fantasy novels for a long time.  There are rules to situations like this.  These things never end well.  Either you're going to go mad with power, or there's going to be some horrible ironic monkey-paw twist that leaves one or both of us miserable."

Sara began to look defensive, but she softened abruptly.  "You're lucky I can read minds.  I was going to accuse you of wanting to ruin the greatest day of my life.  But you really care about me, don't you?"

"I don't want to see you hurt.  And I don't want to lose you."

Sara beamed.  "No chance of that.  I'm yours forever." She leaned in and gave him a tender kiss on the lips.  Mark pulled back just a bit.

"Scared?" she asked.

"You're ten to the fifteenth times more powerful to me.  A slight slip could pulverize me."

Sara giggled again. "Don't worry.  I'm in control.  I haven't destroyed any of your furniture yet, have I?"

"Do you want to?" Mark asked dubiously.

"Yeah!" Sara said, her eyes lighting up.  "I really want to cut loose, and destroy some things.  Oh, don't worry.  I can read your worry like a book.  I'm not going to go Godzilla or anything.  I just want a little smashing time to get it out of my system."

Mark regarded the sex goddess that his girlfriend had become.  As different as she looked, she was still Sara, always up for a good time.  "So, like, maybe a junkyard or something?"

Sara's grin turned a little wicked.  "Or something.  It's not like I really have to worry about consequences now, do I? For instance, you hate your landlord, right?"

The humor left Mark's eyes. "Now, Sara, this is exactly the sort of thing I was worried about.  You can't just go attacking people because..."

"Oh, I wasn't going to hurt anyone," Sara said, sounding a little hurt.  "But I might do a little property damage on the way out." With that she puckered her lips and blew a kiss at the wall.  The force of her breath was enough to blow out an exterior wall.  Mark, who had been standing next to the pocked hurricane, was caught up in the sudden vacuum and was forced out through the gaming hole that Sara had made.  He wound up face down in the mud, scratched and bruised.

"Oh!" Sara cried, not realizing the force of her blast.  She was at Mark's side in a split-second.  "Are you all right?"

"Unintended consequences," Mark muttered, getting up to a sitting position. Fortunately, he did not have any serious injuries.  He looked at the gaping hole that looked into his apartment.  "Really?" he asked.  "You had to trash my apartment? I had a security deposit, you know."

"Oh, Mark, we don't need to worry about money anymore," Sara chided.  "I can take care of everything.  Anything you want, it's yours."

"Sara, that was my home."

"I'll make you a palace," she said reassuringly.  "People will give us millions just for a look at me and what I can do. Oh, look, you're filthy."  She began rubbing some of the crud off of Mark's face.  Some things didn't change.

"Yeah, I need a shower.  Unless you want to destroy that, too."

"Maybe I will," Sara teased.  They both knew it was a matter of time before emergency crews responded to the blast.  A shower was probably out of the question. Then Sara's eyes lit up with an idea.  She stood up and flickered for a second.  Mark felt a breeze and realized that she had just traveled at lightspeed again.  Then, she reached under his arms and gently lifted him, cradling him against her spectacular bosom. He couldn't help but nuzzle her breasts a little.

"Nice, huh?" she laughed.  "I don't blame you.  I turn myself on.  And I'm going to take you somewhere we can both shower together.  You can see me in all my glory."

"The gym?"

"No, silly. Hawaii.  Remember that vacation we took two years ago, when we hiked to that waterfall? The water was so clean and pure.  I want to go there right now.  With you."

Mark thought of a million reasons why that was a bad idea. "But the computer...!" was the first one that sprang to mind.

"Is locked with a new unbreakable password," Sara said. That's what she had been doing in the microsecond she had left.

"Which you're going to tell me, right?" Mark asked dubiously.

"Eventually," Sara said.  "I want to enjoy being the earth's sole goddess for a while.  But you'll get your turn.  I'm going to need a mate, of course.  Imagine what our children are going to be like!"

Every instinct in Mark's brain told him that trouble was looming on the horizon, but he was increasingly powerless to resist anything Sara asked of him.  Maybe it was her mental powers.  Maybe he was just really horny.  Maybe the thought of fathering a race of gods won out over any rational objection he might have.

"Hawaii, then?" he asked meekly.

"That's the spirit!" Sara said cheerfully.

Yes, they're real. And so am I

Mark tried to say something, but he could not process what had just happened.  His mouth moved ineffectually.  Sara smiled at how absurd her boyfriend looked, and that helped her get over her own shock. She struck a cheesecake pose in the bathroom door.

"Like it?" she asked.

At last, Mark found his voice.  "That's not possible!" he stammered.  "It's just a game.  An ordinary game!"

"Diamond edition," Sara corrected.  She ran her hands down her newly voluptuous form.  "Mmm,..I feel so good.  It's like I haven't even been alive before now." Her clothes had changed to match her new form.  Instead of her college sweatshirt and jeans, Sara was wearing what could only be described as a pornstar version of Wonder Woman's costume.  It barely held her massive breasts, which threatened to swing free with every second.

"Sara, please.  Something is not right here," Mark said slowly.  "Let me fix it."

"Don't you dare!" Sara replied.  Then, in an instant, she was between Mark and the computer.  Mark had not even been able to see her move from one space to the other. She moved so quickly that he did not even feel the breeze from her passage until a moment after he saw her standing in front of him.  He knew he should be alarmed, but Sara was smiling at him sweetly.  "Mark, baby.  Maybe I'll change back later.  But I want to have some fun in this body first.  Don't you want to have some fun with me?"

Mark was about to answer.  His answer was obvious anyway, with his cock straining at his jeans, aching to be set free.  But before he could say a word, Sara's eyes opened wide.  "Mark!  You want to have sex with me!  You're imagining me giving you a blowjob and a tit-fuck at the same time!"

"Well, that's no secret..."

"No!  I saw it! In your mind.  It felt, well, I knew it was you thinking it.  Like how right now you're trying to think of some personal information that you can use to test to see if I'm really mind reading.  Your little league team was the Cardinals by the way."

"It's a trick..."

"No trick.  And you wet your pants on the first day of second grade.  And I know for a fact that you have never told anyone about that, because you went to the bathroom and cried for an hour."

Mark looked defeated. "OK, fine.  You can read minds.  Please stop it."

"Oh, Mark, don't be defensive.  You don't need to hide anything from me.  You've been a good boyfriend.  In the three years we've been together, you've done four hundred twelve sweet things for me and have only done seventeen things that made me upset."

"You read that from my mind?" Mark asked.

"No, I remembered it," Sara said.  "It's all clear in my head now.  Everything I've ever done or thought, it's right there.  I've organized all of our interactions by date and emotional impact.  I can even tell you that the seventh word on the twenty-third line of page 163 of my freshman year English textbook is 'turnip.'  Mark!  I have all of her powers!  I don't just look like Ms. Infinity!  I am her!" Sara was so excited she could hardly contain herself.  Mark could not help getting more and more turned on, but if what his girlfriend was true, then he had reason to be terribly afraid.

Sara was standing just inches from him.  She loomed over him, as he was still seated and she must have now stood six and a half feet tall.  She grinned, and although her face had been perfected, he could still recognize that playful impish smile she showed every time she teased him.

Then, in a heartbeat, Sara was gone.  She faded from sight, becoming transparent one second and totally gone the next.  "Invisible?" he asked tentatively.

"Yep," a disembodied voice said.  Mark could feel Sara's breath.  Unable to help himself, he reached out to see if he could still touch her.  His hand felt something soft and yielding.

Sara giggled.  "Nice of you to feel me up.  Well, they feel the same, anyhow.  Better, in fact.  It's like my sense of touch has gone up as well."

"Did you actually change that?" Mark asked.

"I don't know.  I clicked a lot of stuff."

Mark took his hand off the invisible breast (which was marvellously full and firm, despite its impossible size) and tried to peer through his girlfriend to see the laptop on the other side.  Before he could focus, though, an invisible hand hoisted him into the air and he found himself suspended just inches from the ceiling.

"You're so light!" Sara squealed.  "I can feel your mass, but it's like you don't weigh anything at all.  I can't wait to lift a battleship.  Or a billion battleships..."

"Before you get ahead of yourself, maybe you could become visible again?" Mark asked.  Talking to thin air kind of unsettled him.

"Sure thing, sweetie," Sara said.

In which Mark and Sara's adventure really begins

"Looks like a lot of math," Sara noted.  She knew well enough what role-playing games were, but she liked to needle her boyfriend with complaints she had voiced a hundred times before.

"Not a lot of calculation," Mark said, sounding like the grad student he was.  "The software takes care of all of that.  You just have to divide up a number of points into attributes and powers to craft exactly the character you want.  See, if you wanted your character to be super-strong, we just slide this indicator along the strength attribute, so that the strength score goes up. See how the total character points go down?  That's to make sure the characters are balanced.  You might be the strongest being on the planet, but you would be clumsy, dumb, and rude."

Sara pouted a little.  "That's not fun.  I don't just want her to be strong, I want her to be fast, brilliant, and sexy, like that Maxima chick.  I want lasers to shoot of her eyes and I want her to be able to fly."

"And immune to damage, I take it."

"You read my mind.  Oh, and she can read minds.  And can turn invisible and is immortal."

"Anything else?" Mark asked, eyebrow arching.

"What, am I being greedy?"

"Did I say that? Here, I can give your character all of those powers. But they're all going to be at a pretty low level.  Look.  She has an eight rating for strength.  That means she can lift a car, with effort."

"I want to lift a battleship, too. You say Maxima has a twenty strength?"

"Yep."

"Why does she get to have it all?"

"Because he's an experienced, high-level character," Mark explained.  "Starting character..." But he was cut off by Sara, who shoved her way onto his chair, sharing it with him.  She took over the mouse and keyboard.

"Well, that just won't do.  If I'm going to play your little hero game, I want to play a character that people look up to.  How can I crank her up?"

"You can't.  Starting characters begin with only a hundred development points..."

"So what's this then?" Sara asked.  She found a button marked "Point Override."

Mark shrugged.  "I dunno.  It wasn't in the earlier version.  Must be a diamond feature."

"Well, it's letting me go over a hundred character points.  Look!  It's allowing me to make my strength go up to fifty!"

Mark scowled.  "Well, that shouldn't happen.  Twenty is the maximum.  Its a logarithmic scale.  Fifty would be like...well, a billion times more than Maxima could lift."

"So...my hero could lift a billion battleships at once?"

"I guess."

"Cool!"

Mark sighed.  "Look, I'm glad you're getting into this.  But there's this concept called play balance.  If you make a hero too powerful, there's no fun to be had.  You can beat anything without breaking a sweat.  Real gamers like a challenge."

Sara would have none of it.  She was practically drooling as she shaped her hero on the screen.  "Poop.  You and your game balance. If I had the powers this chick I'm making has, I'd have fun.  I'd make my own fun."

"Yeah, but..." Mark started to protest.  He had always wanted his girlfriend to take an interest in role-playing games.  Now he was starting to regret it.

"Hey, what's this? Cool, I can make a character portrait!" Sure enough, Sara had found a part of the program that allowed her to make a 3-D model of her character.  "I love this!  It's like superhero dress-up."  She started playing with her avatar, giving her a variety of body types before settling on one.

"Really?" Mark asked incredulously. "You went for the super-stacked Playmate type? Are you sure you're not a thirteen-year old boy?"

Sara stuck out her tongue.  "It's my fantasy alter-ego.  Besides, you would love it if I looked like this, wouldn't you?"

"You know the boyfriend code prohibits me from answering that, don't you?"

"Of course, sweetie," Sara said, giving him a peck on the cheek.  "You think H cups are too much?"

"No," Mark said a little too quickly, and they shared another laugh.  "You know she's way too powerful for a game, right?"

Sara sighed.  "I suppose I have to follow your rules if I'm going to play in your game." reluctantly, she got up from the cramped chair.  "I'll make a new character in just a second.  But first I have to go to the bathroom."

She started to go, and Mark was about to delete the overpowered being she had made to start from scratch. Before he could do so, Sara called from the bathroom.  "But save that first hero.  I might want to play with her from time to time."

Mark shrugged, He didn't really see the point, but his girlfriend was finally going to game with him, and he was not about to argue.  "Sure thing.  You got a name for her?"

"How about 'Ms. Infinity'?" Sara said from the bathroom.  Mark entered the name and his 'save.' A second after he did, there was a shout from the bathroom.

"Oh...my...God!"  Sara sounded shocked and alarmed.  Mark swiveled the chair to see what was going on.  Sara stood in the doorway, but the girlfriend he had known was no longer there.  In her place stood the most dazzling vision of female power and beauty he could imagine.  Sara had become Ms. Infinity.

For a while, Mark could focus on nothing but Sara's breasts.  He couldn't help it.  They were huge and firm and abundant.  A man could get lost in that cleavage, he found himself thinking.  It was only gradually that he realized that he was looking up at Sara's breasts.  She now stood over seven feet tall, and she had to duck under the doorframe as she emerged from the bathroom.  Her legs were long, toned, and topped with a set of sexy hips that screamed feminine power with every step Sara took.  A narrow waist and taut belly led Mark back to Sara's breasts.  She giggled when she saw Mark staring at her chest, and Mark realized that she had been posing for him.  There was a trace of her old face remaining, but everything seemed more refined, more flawless.  She was perfect. That was all there was to it.

The beginning

Strange but true (in an alternate universe)...

"Calm down, Mark, it's only a game," Sara said as her boyfriend practically danced around the room, looking for a knife with which to open the package that the mailman had just delivered.

Mark looked hurt.  "Sara, checkers is just a game.  Stratego is just a game.  Mazes and Maniacs is just a game.  But this..." he shook the still-sealed box for emphasis "...is the limited diamond edition Capes and Tights, with deluxe CD-Rom Character Builder Plus." 

Sara looked amused. "So, like you and 499 other nerds now have an overpriced roleplaying game?"  Sara was indulgent of Mark's geeky hobbies.  She even played Settlers of Catan and read a comic book now and then.  But she was nowhere near the hardcore nerd that her boyfriend was.

"Try like, the only one in existence," Mark said. He had finally found a knife and carefully opened the box, going slowly to avoid any chance he might damage the contents. "I won a contest, remember?  This is a one-of-a-kind collectible.  I've already received offers of over a thousand dollars to...dammit!"  While he was talking, he had inadvertently cut the shrink wrap.

"No more mint?" Sara asked.

Mark sighed. "You know, that's all right.  I really wanted to keep this one.  This is for me, not for some future collector."

Sara came up behind him and gave him a hug.  "That's very mature of you, my adorable little man-child."  Mark was tense, but her relaxed at his girlfriend's touch.  He wondered how a computer-jockey like him had ever managed to land a babe like her.  Though she had stopped swimming after graduating college two years ago, she still had an athlete's body, and a fresh elfin face that belonged on a Noxema ad.

Mark carefully cracked the book.  Sara looked over his shoulder, not really understanding the numbers and statistics, but admiring the artwork.

"What's her power?  Super-cleavage?" she teased.  Mark blushed in response. 

"Yeah.  Comic artists are perpetual thirteen year olds.  I believe you've made that point once or twice."

"Or maybe a dozen times.  Hey, that's cool.  Is she lifting a battleship?"

Relieved that his girlfriend was off the topic of comic boobs, Mark smiled.  "Yeah, that's Maxima.  She's the strongest hero in the comicverse.  With a 20 Strength, she's over a million times stronger than the average person."

"Cool."

"Don't humor me."

"No, I mean it.  I would love to be that strong."

Mark looked dubious.  "I thought you didn't like superhero comics?"

"Well, I never really got into the stories.  Too emo, if you ask me.  And no matter how powerful the women got, they always seemed to take a back seat to the male heroes."

"But Wonder Woman..."

"Yeah.  How many Wonder Woman movies got made?  Compared to Batman, Superman, even Daredevil, for crying out loud."

"Touche."

"If I had strength like that, I wouldn't take crap from anyone."

"But you'd dress more conservatively, right?"

Sara smiled cryptically.  "Mm, I don't know.  I mean, with all that power, I might want to show off, you know?  Of course, with a rack like hers, I'd probably flaunt it at every opportunity."

Mark looked at his girlfriend quizzically.  He was half-convinced she was putting him on.  She had never talked this much about superheroes with him.    "Tell you what, let's make a character for you.  You can make the superhero exactly like you would be if you were a superhero."

Sara's eyes narrowed.  "Are you trying to get me to play one of your make-believe games?"

"Yup.  But we don't have to if you don't want to.  Sometimes it's fun just to make up a character."

Sara agreed, and they popped the CD out of the jewel case.  Sara tapped the case  suspiciously.  "I don't think this is plastic," she observed.  "More like crystal or...well, kind of like diamond."  

"Don't be silly," Mark said. "'Diamond Edition' is just marketing. There's no way they could cut a diamond in the shape of a jewel case.  And it would be worth a thousand times more than the game itself." He took the CD and loaded it onto his laptop.  


Sara then took the jewel case and dragged it across the window.  It left a clearly visible scratch.  Then she etched a heart, and wrote "M+S" inside of it.  She looked to Mark, as if she had proved her point.

"Doesn't mean anything," Mark said.  "Lots of things scratch glass."

"Believe what you want.  I think you got more than you know in that box," Sara said.

"Whatever.  I still have to load it," Mark said.  The install was taking an inordinately long time, so Sara went and got some tea for the two of them.  When she returned, Mark was just opening the new software.