Interlude: Rest Stop

It was clear from the flight that something was wrong.  The girls had gotten used to travelling at impossible speeds, crossing oceans and continents in a matter of seconds.  Though it was less than a thousand miles from North Jersey to the location in West Virginia, it took them over a half an hour to clear the Alleghenys.  Worried, they set down in an industrial park just a few miles past Pittsburg. 

 

"I'm worried we'll lose flight altogether," Maya said.  "I don't want to crash in the middle of nowhere.  And with our defenses draining, too, who knows what could happen to us?"

 

"You want to take the bus? Not very superheroic," Sara stated.  It was clear that she was worried, too, despite her joke.

 

Maya sighed.  "No, but I think we should fly low, and slow enough that we can safely land if our powers fade."

 

Sara nodded grimly.  She hated having to be serious, but even she had to admit that the situation looked bad. Neither of them wanted to speculate on what would happen if they lost all their powers.  Would they return to their old bodies? Would they face criminal charges and lynch mobs for all the damage they did? What if the draining didn't stop at what used to be normal for them? What if they faded away into nothing?  She set her jaw.  Giving up was not an option.

 

"Let's test our strength," she said.  She strode over to a dumpster, and to her relief, lifted it with only the slightest effort. It was clearly more of a strain than it would have been hours ago, but she was able to toss it dozens of feet into the air.  Maya glanced up and with a blast from her eyes turned the entire metal bin red-hot in under a second.  Sara cooled it down with a blast of her breath, knocking it ninety degrees off of its trajectory.

 

"At least we can still pack a punch," Maya said.  "We can fly at a few hundred miles an hour, and we should be able to take a bullet, right? Maybe we're getting worked up for nothing."

 

"Let's hope we find answers about whatever is doing this," Sara said.  "Now that we know that there are other supers out there, I don't want to be on the receiving end of what we pulled on those clowns in New York. "

 

"Do you think there's some Alpha Unit out there draining us down to the level of 'ordinary goddesses'?"

 

"Let's not waste time guessing," Sara said.  "It shouldn't be far now. " She lifted off into the night sky.  Maya followed behind her.

 

The address that they had searched appeared to be a small corporate building atop a mountain in a remote area of West Virginia. The last known occupant of the building was LightSword Games, the publisher of the role-playing game that had started the whole affair, but according to real estate records, their lease had expired a year ago.  The image on Google Maps looked like the parking lot was overgrown.  The girls had no idea what to expect.

 

What they found certainly caught both of them by surprise.  They saw the glow for a dozen miles before they reached the site.  The entire mountaintop was on fire.  It was as iff all of the coal underneath the mountain had caught fire at once, turning the landscape into a hellish scene of flame and glowing rock.  There was no sign of the building.

 

"You've gotta be shitting me!" Sara cried.  "All this way for nothing!  And now we're out of clues altogether!" 

 

"No wait," Maya said, grabbing Sara's arm and pointing.  "There, where the mountaintop used to be. It looks like the building fell into a cave or sinkhole or something.  I can see tunnels." Sure enough, their vision was acute enough to see through the acrid black smoke, and radiating out from the jagged hole were a series of tunnels, filled with flames and noxious gasses.

 

"Are you sure?" Sara asked.  "There can't be anything alive in there, and anything useful must be melted into slag."

 

"We could live down there," Maya said.  "Maybe another like us could, too.  Who else could do something like this?"

 

Sara nodded. "Well, I'm out of alternatives.  Into Hell it is."  She pointed straight down and dove into the infernal pit.

 

Holes in the armor

Ten minutes later saw Maya, Sara, and four new superheroines in the musty basement of a suburban Jersey home. Maya sat curled on a couch where, just a few hours earlier, a role-playing game had taken place. Batgirl and Supergirl snuggled to either side of her, while a busty woman in a Flash costume curled up between her legs.  Sara sat in a threadbare easy chair opposite, with a svelte green woman named Jade leaning over the back, offering kisses and tender caresses.  Sara looked a little annoyed.

 

“Really?  Did we really need super-bimbos? You can be such a guy sometimes!” she said. 

 

“Oh, now who needs to lighten up and enjoy themselves?” Maya retorted playfully.  “C’mon, all I did was make some new toys for us to play with.”  The four submissive women giggled at the statement.  Sara rolled her eyes.

 

She was about to offer a comeback when they were interrupted by a middle-aged woman in her pajamas.  She clutched a revolver in her shaking hand.

 

“One of those…women is my son, isn’t it?” she said, hoarsely.  “I know what you did to him.  He changed himself and you changed him some more.”

 

Maya smirked.  She was learning to regard the threats of ordinary people as insignificant, but Sara was not in a mood to joke around.  She got out of her chair.

 

“Look, lady, we both know that gun won’t hurt us, but it might make us mad enough to do some real damage around here.  You seem like a sensible woman…”

 

“Bring back my son!” the woman cried, her words catching on her sobs.  Maya replied by blasting heat vision to the laptop, which glowed for a second before vaporizing into a foul-smelling cloud. 

 

“No dice,” Maya said, stroking her Batgirl, “We like them better this way. Now run along before we make your former son tear you apart.”

 

Now it was Sara’s turn to speak for restraint.  Perhaps she had a better sense of the woman’s pain.  At any rate, she stepped forward, holding out her hand to receive the gun.  “We’re not going to hurt you, and we’re going to treat your son..er, daughter well.  They’ll have a life they could have only dreamed of before…”

 

The woman had heard enough, and she pulled the trigger. Sara let the bullet smash into her, and Maya blew the woman upstairs with a swift but forceful puff of breath.  She hit the wall opposite the top of the stairs and fell to the floor unconscious.

 

“”We have to go,” Sara said.

 

“Yeah, this place is a dump,” Maya agreed.

 

“No, we have to find out who sent those CD’s.  Now.”  Sara’s tone was firm.  “That bullet…that bullet actually hurt me.”

 

“What? Are you hurt?  Do you think that our powers are fading?”

 

“I’m fine, but I’m pretty sure I’m bruised.  And I don’t know what’s happening to our powers.  But I want to find out before we’re back to our old selves and the subject of a lynch mob.”

 

“Good idea,” Maya agreed.  “Batsie, do you have the envelope that CD-Rom can in?”  The cowled sexpot hurried to bring it to Maya.  “Well, we have an address.  Somewhere in West Virginia.”

 

“Fine.  Get directions then let’s go.  Leave your bimbos here.”

 

“Aw,” chorused Maya and the girls.

 

“I’ve created a monster,” Sara quipped, but I don’t need to remind you of all the things that could go wrong.”

 

“Fine.  Let’s go.  Before we have to take the bus.” 

 

In which the girls' life gets a little more complicated

Two hours later, the girls were snuggled together in a large king-sized bed in a cabin on the coast of the Pacific Northwest.  The previous occupants had not needed much persuasion to leave: just a show of force against the couple's cell phones and car.  Sara and Maya hadn't really needed to play with their gun, but the girls found firearms an endless source of amusement these days.  Sara figured that it would take the couple an hour at least to walk to the nearest telephone, so that gave them plenty of time to decide whether to play with the local law enforcement or to move on.

After enjoying a quickie under the plush down comforter, Sara went to enjoy a shower while Maya turned on the TV to catch up on the news.  A few seconds on CNN left her stunned.

"Sara, come here!"

Sara emerged from the bathroom a second later, naked and dripping.  "What is it?"

"Look at the news!"

CNN was showing a live helicopter feed from New York City, which was washed in bright, early-morning light.  The camera zoomed in to some figures on the street below.  Sara could clearly make out people dressed as Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and the Flash.  "Are they...?" she began.

"Yeah, look," Maya said as the Superman figure picked up a cab witht he occupants still inside and threw is the length of Times Square.  A glowing green baseball bat the size of a bus materialized, took a swing at the cab, and knocked it into the Hudson River.

The CNN Reporter was breathless "As you can see, these people seem to have all of the powers of the heroes they are dressed as.  Yet they seem to have none of the goodness or sense of responsibility that those fictional heroes are known for.  Police estimate the death toll at over two dozen thus far, and the police have been unable to even slow their progress even a little so far..."

"Oh, man," Sara laughed.  "How could I assume we were the only ones?"

Maya was thoughtful.  "There were ten first-place prizes awarded. Gold editions of the rules. They must have gotten the same character generator we did."

"No way," Sara said.  "Diamond beats gold. I say we go to New York to teach these cosplay freaks a little respect."

"Aw, I was hoping to sleep in, at least until the cops came."

"You don't get tired.  I made you that way.  You're just being lazy.  C'mon, this is going to be way more fun than scaring some hick cops.  And you can pretend you're the good guy.  These punks are killers."

"Yeah, but we're killers." 

Sara's response was to kick Maya's backside.  Her foot cleaved through the bed until it made contact with her lover's derriere, sending Maya through the roof and several hundred feet into the reddening sky over the Vancouver Sound.

Maya was still rubbing her rump when Sara joined her a second later.  "That really hurt!" she said.  Sara stuck her tongue out in reply before streaking into the morning sun.  Maya sighed, dressed herself in a nanosecond, and took off after Sara.

______________________________________

The four new heroes were not hard to find.  The police had cordoned off most of Times Square, while a dozen police and news helicopters hovered overhead.  Sara found the four men in front of the shattered window of an electronics store, helping themselves to the merchandise on display.

"Really, boys? Smash and grab? Kind of cliche, isn't it? I'm surprised that you didn't choose to wear black domino masks to complete the look?"

The four heroes spun around.  They clearly were not expecting this.

"Wonder Woman?" the Green Lantern ventured.

"Nice guess," Sara said. "But I'm just me.  You can call me 'Mistress.'"

Batman nudged the Flash in the ribs. "I told you you should have become a chick.  She's smokin'"

At this moment, Maya landed beside her twin, she had clearly heard the exchange, and she was as amused as Sara.  "Let me guess. Contest winners?"

Superman spoke up for the group.  "We don't have to tell you anything.  Find your own city to loot.  Times Square is ours."

Sara and Maya gave each other a look, feigning shock before both erupting into giggles.  "Oh, you must score lots of chicks with lines like that," Sara laughed.  "Why my old boyfriend used to say things like that..."

"Let's stay focused, shall we?" Maya asked, annoyed. "Look, you can have your fun.  We saw the SWAT teams coming on the way here. In a few minutes, you'll have more fun than you know what to do with.  We just wanted to introduce ourselves and get to know you before the real crazy shit went down."

"Who do you think we are?" Superman asked, annoyed.  "Have you ever picked up a comic book before? And where did you get those outfits? Sluts-r-us?"

Sara made a sound like she was choking.  Maya touched her on the arm to calm her.  The hitting part of the encounter could wait a few moments.

"Look," Maya said calmly. "It should be pretty obvious that we got our powers the same way you did. We know all about the game.  And the character generator, which is currently installed on a computer at your home which is at...?"

The four DC heroes looked at each other puzzled, then Batman barked "Clear your mind!  She's a telepath!"

"486 Maple Crescent, West Orange, New Jersey," Maya said triumphantly.  "Thanks, Lantern."

"Dammit!" Batman cried, throwing his hands up in the air.  "Gor...Flash, go to my house and hide the laptop where she can't find it.  Now!"

Maya felt a message from Sara pop into her head.  You used telepathy!  I'm so proud!  You follow the Flash.  I'll take care of these three punks.

Maya did not hesitate.  In a blink she was gone, heading west over the river into Jersey.  Sara cracked her knuckles for effect.  "Well, boys, it's just you and me.  Please play rough.  I like it rough."

Superman was the first to act.  In a second, he became a blue and red streak, flying towards Sara at a thousand miles an hour.  She could see him coming.  He was fast, but not that fast relative to her perceptions and reflexes.  The diamond edition had seen to that.  The hardest part was deciding to dodge or block the oncoming attack.  She chose the latter.

She help up her hand to stop the Man of Steel.  He came to a halt, and she remained standing, but he did succeed in knocking her back about ten feet.  He looked up at her, astonished.  She grinned in reply.

"Are your powers fading?  Or did I drain them? Or am I really that much stronger than you?"

She didn't give him a chance to respond.  Her knee came up with the force of a million jackhammers into his crotch.  Superman whimpered, then fell over, his eyes tearing up.  "Who needs kryptonite?" she laughed. 

The other two heroes took advantage of the exchange to make their moves.  Sara found herself ensnared in bands of green energy.  Try as she might, with all of her power, she could not free herself.  A moment of panic set in when she realized that, despite her cosmic strength, she might still be vulnerable to some attacks. 

"Hold her, Lantern!" Batman cried, pulling a cylinder out of his belt.  There was a flash, and Sara found herself enveloped in a green cloud.  Tears streamed from her eyes.  How much trouble would it have been to add teleporting and immunity to chemical attacks to Ms Infinity?  She cursed her lack of foresight.

Then a memory of the books and movies that Mark forced on her returned to her.  With a thought, one of the helicopters overhead careened into a nearby bank of neon, causing yellow sparks to fly across the battlefield.  This in turn caused the force bands holding Sara to flicker, and in an instant she was freed.

"Worst...drawback...ever," she said, snatching the Green Lantern off the ground.  "Wanna know the second?  This!"  A flick of her wrist was all it took to sever the Lantern's arm.  Without his connection to the ring, he felt as limp and as fragile as an ordinary man.  He fell unconscious ten feet to the pavement below.

"That leaves you and me, Bats," she said.  her opponent was eyeing her up, looking for an opening.  He had clearly found a way to give himself his model's tactical brilliance. 

"All you have to say is 'I surrender.' We don't want to grind you to mush.  Really.  We just want to make it clear what the new hierarchy is around here."

Batman grimmaced in reply.  His answer was so grim and gravelly that Sara wanted to laugh at what an excellent Christian Bale impression he was doing.  "I answer to no-one!" he cried, and he lobbed another smoke grenade.  This time, Sara was ready with a puff of breath, blowing the cloud back into Batman's face.  He held his breath, but he needed to race to be clear of the cloud's effects.  When he emerged from the smoke, her ran straight into Sara.  She grabbed his shoulders.  The Caped Crusader wasn't going anywhere.

"Game over...Tony. A shame you didn't make yourself a billionaire. I kind of like that in a man.
Let's go into my office," she said.  She flew straight up with her victim.  Moments later, a black cowl and a utility belt fell to the streets of Manhattan below.

--------------------------------------------------------

Gordon Finley, now calling himself the Flash, arrived at his friend Tony's house a second after he left Manhattan.  Fortunately, the door was still open.  He raced to the basement, where they had left the laptop that had changed their lives forever.

"Oh, Gordon, you should really tidy up down here.  Tony's mother is going to have a fit when she sees it!"

The Flash spun around.  "How did you?"

"I was right behind you the whole time.  I wanted you to feel you were doing well, so I let you come in first.  But the game is over, Gordon.  The laptop is mine now."

The Flash laughed.  He had now idea how this slut had beaten him to the basement, but she clearly did not know who she was dealing with.  He flipped the top open and started to type.  No sooner had he hit the first key, though, than a pair of powerful hands grabbed his wrists and pinned them to his sides.

"You're the fastest man imaginable," Maya said, "But I'm faster than you can imagine.  And I'm stronger." She shoved the Flash across the room so that he fell back into the couch. He was about to get up using his superspeed, but a warning finger made him wait.  Maya tapped a few keys then turned the keys around so that the Flash could see that.

"See the status of your friends?  One is unconscious and in shock.  Another lost his arm and is in a borderline coma.  A third is naked and about two thousand feet over Times Square.  In about ten seconds, he's about to drop to his death."

Flash shot up making a grab for the computer, but Maya was faster.  She spun out of his way and gave him a stern glance.

"Nice try.  But here's how it is.  I'm going to destroy this computer now.  That will doom your friends to their current state.  Or, if you ask nicely, I'll make some changes to you and your friends and we can all be friends forever.  Sound good?"

"What will happen to me if you smash the computer? " the Flash asked in a meek voice.

"Oh, you'll stay as you are.  But since I can't have any rivals running around, I'll have to kill you." The Flash swallowed.  He had no doubt that the insane busty chick was capable of just that."  "Unless, of course, you allow me to change you first."

"Whatever!" Gordon Finley shouted.  "Just make this end!"

"I knew you'd see reason," Maya said, and she began to type.

_____________________________________________________

He was Batman to the last, Sara thought as she flew back to street level.  Stubborn and defiant, she had almost hated to let him drop.  Almost.  Part of her did not want to see the mess that she had caused, but part of her had to be sure.

What she found amazed her.  There was no naked corpse of a defrocked Caped Crusader. Instead, where he should have been was a cowled woman, clearly Batgirl, if Batgirl had gone in for immense breast implant surgery.  Nearby were two other dozing women, far chestier than Sara would have thought practical for a female superhero.  One was dressed as Supergirl, and the other was a green-skinned woman that Sara guessed had something to do with the Green Lantern.  She rolled her eyes.  It had to be Maya.  She knelt down and shook Batgirl gently until she woke. 

Even through her mask, her eyes registered unadulterated joy when she saw Sara.  "Oh, Mistress!  I'm so sorry for my bad behavior earlier!  It pains me more than death that I might have added sorry to the life of tho woman I love above all things. Please punish me as you see appropriate!"

Yep, Sara sighed Definitely Maya. 

Bring on the bullets

They ended up in Hawaii, right by the very waterfall where Sara had inadvertently begun the process that would result in the creation of Maya.  They lay together naked, the cool waters playing at their feet.  Sara brushed some hair out of Maya's eyes.

"Feel weird?" she asked. "I mean, being here?"

"Yeah, kind of.  This is where my life ended.  I have all these memories of being me that lead up to this point, and after that, it's all different.  I have a whole new life now."
For the first time, Sara understood what Maya was going through.  She, too, had undergone an incredible transformation, but she could always tell herself that she was the same person deep down. 
Maya had gone through much, much more. "You know I'm really sorry."

Maya smiled. "Sorry for not letting me die? Don't be. You did the right thing.  And what you gave me...well, if I died here yesterday, then I'm in heaven now."

"Two days ago."

"Huh?"

"We were here two days, seven hours, annnnnd...thirteen minutes ago."

"Really?"

Sara's face grew more serious. "Yes, really. It's all so obvious.  Apart from our ability to measure actual personal time passing, it's clear from our latitude and the angle of Betelgeuse that it's exactly 2:21 in the morning, local time. Maya, it's like you're holding back sometimes. You don't communicate with me telepathically, either. I don't think you've looked into my mind once since you've changed."

Maya breathed deeply, sending counter-ripples across the pool. "I just don't know if I'm comfortable with all of this yet.  It's hard enough adjusting to having a new body.  But having this much power...well, I'm afraid that if I cut loose I'll lose everything about my old self."

"Like I did?"  Maya knew Sara's tone very well.  She knew she had to tread carefully.

"Sara, you're amazing.  After all you've been through, you're still the same happy, funny, witty woman that I love.  Even when you say things that make me a little frightened, I don't worry because I know deep down that you're still you inside there." 

Sara sat up, it took a long time for her to respond. When she spoke, it was in slow, measured tones. 

"I don't think you've changed a bit. I love you, Maya, but you're always one to test the waters before you do anything.  You calculate the odds and dither for hours before you make a decision that's obvious to everyone around you."  Maya shrugged.  This discussion was not new. "But it's only a matter of time before you see things my way.  There's no chance that we can live a normal life now. 

Ordinary people are going to be terrified of us, and they'll want to put limits on us.  We can either become prisoners and test subjects, or we can live life on our own terms, taking what we want and enjoying ourselves.  I'm not talking about being evil, hurting people for fun or forcing people to worship us. I'm just saying that we need to live life on our terms, and to send a message to anyone who tries to stop us."

Maya sat up, too and exhaled again, this time aiming her breath at the waterfall itself, which bent 90 degrees and dissolved into mist before it could hit the pool below.  "Are you in my head now?"

"Yep."

"What do you see?"

"A lot of confusion. And some kinky fantasies.  You're giving me ideas, you perv."

Maya blushed, then laughed.  "You're damn right I'm confused. And you should be able to see that I'll never have your ability to jump into something headfirst.  I see that things are going to be different now. But I don't think I can take the first step just yet. Are you saying we should just walk into Buckingham Palace and tell the Queen to move out?"

"Something like that, yeah," Sara said, grinning. "But not Buckingham Palace. It's a dump.  I want someplace with a better view. The Riviera was nice."

Maya nodded.  "Yeah, I wouldn't mind living there.  But I can't just move into someone's home and tell them to get out."

"Why not?" 

Maya sighed.  She knew that Sara's argument amounted to 'because we're stronger,' and that troubled her.  Yet she had also felt the thrill of power, and she would be lying if she said that a tiny part of her didn't want to lord her abilities over ordinary people.  She wasn't cruel by nature, but she felt so much more than human now.

"You're considering it, aren't you?" Sara said, leaning in and giving Maya a little tickle.  Maya was as ticklish as she had always been in her old body.  A tank couldn't stop her, but tickling could leave her helpless.  It was her kryptonite.

Maya squealed.  Sara always knew how to put her thoughts to rest.  "Maybe."

"But claiming a home is a little much for you.  Fine," Sara said matter-of-factly.  "We'll start you small.  How about a little shoplifting to get you going on your life of crime?"

"You mean, walk into a store, stick a couple of dirty magazines under my bodice, and walk out without paying?"

"That's pretty much the definition of shoplifting.  But dirty mags?  Don't I do it for you?"

Now it was Sara's turn to get tickled.  She was almost as bad as Maya.  "Fine.  Then I'll take a six pack of beer."

Sara smiled.  "So I take it you have no moral objections to stealing beer?"

"I suppose not.  You're really determined to follow through on making me a bad girl, aren't you?"

Sara actually considered this carefully.  "No, not really.  We're beyond good and bad.  This is about helping you to do what you want.  Do you want a beer?"

"Yeah, kinda."

"Good.  Let's find a convenience store."

They actually had to fly to Oahu to find a store that was open at that hour.  They found one in a seedy industrial area just west of the naval base ("Hawaii has dumps like this? Who knew?" Sara asked). 

Two motorcycles were parked outside, and two rough-looking Asian youths were inside buying bourbon and cigarettes.  Maya hesitated before approaching the door.  Sara nudged her forwards. 

"Go on, I'll think you're cool," she teased.  "C'mon, what are they going to do? Arrest you? Shoot you? The only thing holding you back is you."

Maya gave her a look. "Have you always had a criminal lurking inside of you, or is this a new attitude to go along with your new look?"

Saralaughed.  "No need to worry. I'll be right next to you the whole time."  She turned invisible. 
Once she had disappeared, Maya felt a spectral hand grab her firm, heart-shaped ass.

"Funny. You better not do that inside there. I'm nervous enough as it is."

"Aw, that's so cute.  Every advantage is on your side, and still you're nervous," came Sara's disembodied voice.

"All right, let's go," Maya said, and she strode into the mini-mart.

The three men inside the store all looked up as Maya entered.  She was dressed in her skimpy outfit, and one of the men audibly moaned in desire as he admired Maya's ample curves. Maya found the attention intrusive, but she also enjoyed the power her appearance gave her.  She strode with confidence to where the cooler holding beer was.

"Can I help you, miss?" the portly Hawaiian clerk asked.  He was in his twenties, and he had on a greasy yellow polo shirt. 

"No, I'll help myself," Maya answered.  She studied the selection for a second.  Why did places like this always have such crap beer, she wondered. At last she took a six-pack of Lowenbrau and walked towards the door.

"Want me to carry that for you? Wouldn't want you to hurt yourself," one of the bikers said.  He and his friend came up uncomfortably close behind Maya.  She knew she had nothing to fear from them, but she could not help feeling more than a little intimidated by them.  If she didn't have superpowers, she would be terrified.  It didn't help that Sara was practically laughing in her ear at her situation.

"No, I have this," she said, walking towards the door.  The clerk made no move to stop her.  She froze in the doorway and turned around, irritated.  "Aren't you going to try to stop me?" she asked.

"For you, wahine, it's on the house," the clerk said, eyeing her dreamily.  Maya rolled her eyes, and the three men each could swear they heard another woman laughing. 

Maya considered her actions.  "Then I'll take this also," she said, grabbing a stand of cigarette lighters.  "And this," she said, taking a whole rack of DVDs of the latest Adam Sandler movies.

"Jeez, lady, mellow out," the clerk said, looking annoyed at the babe who seemed determined to make him call the cops.

"I'll be going, then," Maya said, daring the clerk to try to stop her.  Instead, the two bikers moved to cut her off. 

"You want us to teach her a lesson?" one asked the clerk. "Maybe she needs a real man to teach her some respect." He reached up to put his arm around her. Maya turned to leave, ignoring him, and his hand wound up copping a feel.  Again, Sara's laugh was audible, and Maya's eyes opened wide.

"What did you just do?" The man made no move to remove his hand.

"You like that? Do I get you hot, baby?"

Maya reacted out of instinct.  She didn't think she hit him hard, just a quick jab to the face.  She wasn't even thinking about superpowers at the time, just about wiping that perverted leer off of his face.  She did more than that.  When her fist made contact with his face, his head exploded into a red mist and the rest of his mangled body went sailing back through the store, knocking over a rack of chips.

"Holy shit!" his friend yelled, and, grabbing a knife, he lunged at Maya.  Maya, now thinking more clearly, held her ground.  The knife stick her just above the collarbone, snapping in two and causing her assailant to jerk his hand back from the impact.  Maya caught his wrist and pinched.  It was like squeezing mashed potatoes. His hand fell to the floor, and he cradled his stump of an arm, screaming.  Maya looked at the hand, trying to feel shock and horror at what she had done, but those emotions didn't come. Instead, all she could feel was the sense that the two men got what was coming to them.

"I don't know what you are, but you just get out of here," the clerk said with a quavering voice. Maya noted with interest that he had produced a shotgun from under the counter and was waving it at her.

"Do you really think that scares me?" Maya asked with contempt. The more this went on, the more she began to agree with Sara.  "Go ahead and shoot."

"I don't wanna shoot. I just want you out of my store," the clerk yelled. He seemed rather tightly wound for a Hawaiian. 

"Shoot," a voice said directly in his ear.  Sara chose this moment to become visible.  The clerk panicked and pulled the trigger.

Time slowed down for Maya.  She could see the blast leave the muzzle, and she could make out each pellet as they raced towards her face.  She knew that she could dodge easily, or she could pluck each pellet out of mid-flight and flick them into the clerk's forehead in a celtic knot pattern.  Instead, she chose to let the blast hit her full-on in the face. She didn't flinch, and she barely felt the impact that would have torn her head off if she did not have powers.  Little flattened balls of lead clattered to the floor.  The clerk stood there dazed, and the two women smiled wickedly.

"Oh, now you've gone and made her mad," Sara said.  "Been nice knowing you."

The clerk just froze as Maya stepped up to him, her hips swaying provocatively.  She grabbed the barrel of the gun and squeezed tight.  The gun screamed under the strain.  Maya clenched tighter, until little rivulets of molten metal flowed through her fingers and splattered onto the floor.  The clerk started to quiver uncontrollably.

"Bye sweetie," Maya said, turning on her heeled boot.  "Have a beer on me."

Sara followed, walking though the counter and the plate glass window without missing a beat.

"Showoff," Maya said.

"How do you feel?" Sara asked.

"I killed a man in there, and I maimed another."

"Yeah, and you made a third wet himself.  But how do you feel?"

Maya frowned. "I really thought I would feel worse.  But I can't bring myself to care."

Sara sighed and put her arm around her lover.

Giving in to one's baser instincts

Mark looked up at the cliff wall towering above her.  She and Sara were standing at the bottom of a glacial valley, and a steep peak shot several hundred feet almost straight up.  Not quite Half Dome, but it was the nearest thing Mark could think of. 

The trip there had been an adventure in itself.  Though only a few hundred miles from their previous perch atop Mount McKinley, they had gone the long way: twice around the earth.  It had only taken a few minutes, and Mark was astonished to learn that even at those hypersonic speeds, she and Sara could still carry on a normal conversation.  Mark had tried to wrap her mind around how she could hear words that were already dozens of miles behind them by the time they should have reached her ears, but she might as well have tried to determine how, after moving at such blinding speeds, their hair could look as if it had just come from the stylist.  They had evolved beyond rational explanations.  Sara had said that they lived by their own laws now.  Mark was just starting to realized that her words also applied to the laws of science and nature. 

"So now what?" she asked, looking up at the sheer rock wall soaring into the darkness above them.

"Now we smash," Sara said brightly.

"You're shitting me.  Couldn't we start on a mailbox or something?"

"Chicken?"

"It's all going to come down on top of us."

"Your point being...?

Mark sighed.  Sara seemed to be adapting to this much better than she was.  She had always been the rational one, the conservative one.  For Mark, just knowing she had superpowers was not enough.  The old thought patterns were too deeply etched in her brain to truly cut loose.  She supposed that this was Sara's way of helping her to get over herself.

"C'mon, it'll be fun!" Sara said, taking a swipe at the wall.  A huge fissure opened in the surface, and boulders cascaded down on top of them from a crumbling ledge above.  Mark found them easy to dodge with her accelerated speed and reflexes.  Sara just let them hit her.  They bounced off of her as if they were made of foam. She was only using a fraction of her strength.  Another swing caused the rock face in front of her to crumble, creating a niche in the rock big enough to drive a truck into. 

"Your turn!" she said.

Mark gave a half-hearted swat at the rock, no more than a light slap.  She was met with an avalanche of debris falling atop her.  Boulders that would have crushed an elephant cracked and shattered as they hit her.  She jumped atop the rubble, feeling strong and invincible.  She wound up and gave the cliff a really good punch.

Almost at once, the entire mountain came down on top of them.  One minute there was a cliff, the next is was no more than a vast pile of rubble with two amazonian superwoman on the bottom.  Almost simultaneously, they erupted up out of the rocks, boring through hundreds of tons of stone in less than a second.  They hovered together a hundred yards over the immense dust cloud they had kicked up.  They shook the dirt off of themselves by vibrating at ultrasonic speeds (their outfits had not sustained so much as a scratch or stain) and then the two of them almost collapsed laughing. 

"That was great!" Mark cried.  "I feel so strong!"

"You are so strong," Sara said, beaming. "And that's just a fraction of what you can do."

"I feel...good," Mark said, her hands roving over her hips.  "I mean...wow."

"I know. Right?  The more I use my power, the hornier I get."

"Sara, did you program this in? It doesn't seem like the logical effect of any of our other powers."

"Who cares?" Sara laughed.  "It's like a bonus, as I see it.  And we deserve it.  We're goddesses, after all."

Mark didn't argue.  She was too busy experiencing the new sensations.  It felt different as a woman.  She had expected a more localized sensation in her pussy, but it was more like an urgency she felt all over her body.  She wondered what it would be like to be penetrated.  In her mind, she was still a man, but she was haivng to face the fact that she might have to put that life behind her.  Would sex with a man even be possible in this body?  Sara had tried it with her old form, and it had nearly killed her.

"I can read your mind, you know," Sara said.  She had used her speed to sneak up right behind Mark. 
"Already fantasizing about sleeping with men? I don't know if I should feel betrayed or not."

Mark was flummoxed.  "No! It's not like that!  I mean...well, I was curious. But it's not like I'm going to do anything about it."

"Why not?" Sara asked.  She had a sly look about her.  "Honey, there is no mere mortal who can satisfy you now.  Trust me, I know.  If you want to play, go right ahead. I know you'll always be there for me, and I'll always be there for you."

Mark frowned.  "Sara..."

"New rules, remember?" She embraced Mark from behind.  Mark's arousal was not lessened by the feel of Sara's breasts pushing into her back.  "Besides, you'll probably kill anyone you tried it with, so there's no need to worry."

"I can't believe you just said that. Being super doesn't mean we give up on our values."

"Do you really think I've become some kind of monster?" Sara's voice had just a hint of an edge to it.  Mark realized that the snugness of her embrace could probably have crushed a submarine.

"Sara...I..."

"You don't have to say it.  I can feel it in you.  I am what I am, Mark.  You're the one who's in serious denial."

"I'm the one who's still part-way human."

Mark expected Sara to fly off the handle at his remark, but she remained surprisingly calm.  "You can't believe it, can you? But you're going to have to face facts.  We're not humans anymore.  We're goddesses." Sara was grinding against Mark now.  The sensation was getting to become unbearable.
"Sara, I'm not ready for this."

"You're ready.  I can feel you're ready. Your mind and body both scream that you're ready." She spun Mark around and held her tight, mashing their breasts together. 

"Sara..." But Mark's words were cut short with a kiss.  Mark could no longer resist.  Letting her lust do the thinking was so much easier.  While they were locked together, Sara pulled off Mark's skimpy outfit. Mark looked down at her naked body for the first time. It was disorienting, looking at a woman's body from this angle, but it was less strange than she had feared. It was her body, after all, and it was challenging to remember what her old one had looked like from this angle.  Sara's hands were everywhere. Mark felt the touch as gentle, but knowing that Sara's caresses were enough to sink an aircraft carrier was an even greater turn-on.  Soon a second outfit joined the first on the pile of rubble below.

They did it in Hawaii.  And Bali. And on Everest.  And on the Great Wall (parts of which required major restoration afterward).  And over the tip of the Eiffel Tower.  Sara, who claimed never to have feelings for another woman, proved to be an excellent lesbian lover, knowing exactly what Mark needed at all times.  Mark, for her part, go over the strangeness of being the oposite gender with her first climax, and she was able to please Sara in ways that had never been possible in her old body.
It was hard to say how long they made lover, for on their trips around the world they had crossed dozens of time zones.  At long last, they lay satisfied and panting on a beach in Spain.

"Mark isn't going to work anymore, you know," Sara observed while they looked up at the stars. 

"It's my name.  Don't you like it anymore?"

"You are so not a Mark.  Why don't you pick a girl name?  How about Marcia?"

"Too Brady.  How about Monique?"

Sara laughed. "Maybe if you become Super-Maid.  But that doesn't suit you either.  What about Mara?"

"Mara and Sara?"

"Ugh.  You're right.  Never mind.  That would be bad even if we weren't twins."

"Maya is nice."

"Yeah, I like Maya."

"OK, call me Maya."

Sara rolled over to embrace her lover.  "All right, Maya.  Maya, I'm getting really horny again, and there are four continents you haven't made me cum on."

Maya grinned.  "Fine.  Race you to Australia."