I’d heard both from friends in college and from internet osmosis that lesbians moved fast. And, in defence of that claim, it’d only taken meeting her three times to make me question whether I’d fallen in love yet. Every meeting was exciting, every word captivating and every touch electric. Why she’d picked me I could not fathom, aside from a positive feedback loop of her complimenting me and me turning to mush. But it’s not like I was the only one who could provide someone as wonderful as her with that, so the mystery remained. I’d just have to ensure she got as much mushy idiot as she wanted to get her hands on. ‘Hands on,’ for now largely meaning holding hands with and kissing occasionally, or uh, kissing one time… so far. We’d get to more, though, and soon too; while being a girl myself was new to me, wanting to kiss another wasn’t. I only had so much patience for taking things slow, and at this point, it seemed unlikely that I was conflating dating a beautiful woman and sporadic gender euphoria, especially given that the two had a large, secret identity shaped wedge forced between them.

So yes, the urge to kiss her was a little overwhelming, as was the urge to jump into her arms or her bed. Truly the lesbian stereotype was alive and well; at this rate we’d be living together in a week and married with two cats by the Tuesday after. Unless, of course, one of two issues reared their ugly heads: Firstly, this might be a wonderful vivid hallucination. Secondly, and more pressingly, I was a superhero. At some point, she’d definitely deserve to know. The question then became: Did the time dilation of lesbian relationships affect how long it is before a superhero has to unmask to their girlfriend? Not that I’d even thought to broach the girlfriend question yet, but getting ahead of myself was the name of the game here. Did I get leeway for being very new to the frankly terrifying world of lesbianism? Did I get unleeway for wasting her time with opening my heart about dysphoria that I had a completely easy way out of? Did she even want to date a superhero? It was, at best, complicated.

Far less complicated was being a girl. Being Ifrit, before, had been a welcome break from my normal body, but now, it was a paradise. Tall, toned and gorgeous. Pretty, smooth and light. Airy, soft and rich. My body, the feel of it and my voice, they all felt so much more mine as Ifrit than they ever did as Joe. I was Annie and her, my, body wasn’t the one Sandra knew. Nothing could make my girlitude more obvious than being honest with myself about how much I adored my new form. Since then, moving to my preferred form full-time had never been in doubt; I just needed to prepare for the changeover. Sandra would either need to know or be broken up with, please god the former; I could hardly wait for the look on her face when she saw my true form. Other than that I just needed to end my time at Krax industries and, consequently, lose my access to the company's interior. Which, in turn, meant that I had until my patience for dysphoria and lying to Sandra wore out to snoop deep enough to either find evidence to put Krax behind bars, or, failing that, maybe find some weak spot or flaw in the power armour that he was building.

It was a lot for a girl to think about, but the takeaway was simple: Lesbians moved fast and so, naturally, I needed to break into a supervillain’s secret lab.

–

To say my infiltration plan was only half-prepared would be incorrect; the correct fraction was closer to a quarter, in my estimation. In part, that’s because it wasn’t really an infiltration plan if you weren’t infiltrating anything and instead were just going, as usual, to your place of work. Getting me the rest of the way down to just a quarter of a plan, was that I’d be winging everything that wasn’t my reason for accessing the design and development docs for the rift reactor.

Initially, they’d only granted me access to the construction blueprints of the reactor as built. But a combination of the panelling melting once a fortnight and them having just gone ahead and built the first of Krax’s prototypes that had shown promise gave credence to me both wanting to and maybe being able to improve the damn thing. It’d then just been a matter of me throwing around enough nonsense science terminology at the admin clerk in charge of granting me access. For him, the courses of action when asked for research files on ‘alaminar heat vortexing’ had been to either dig through the notes himself, or just grant me permission to the lot and leave me to it.

That much had gotten me, unsupervised, into the project's file room. Not like anyone cared to watch an engineer dig through notes for hours on end, after all. Upon arrival however, I found both blessing and disaster. The good news was that the room had no surveillance and that the files were stored completely off network, presumably for ease of recordless disposal. That meant there wouldn’t be any trace of what I did or didn’t look at. The bad news, however, was that the file sorting bore all the hallmarks of being made by a superintellect and for a superintellect; there were neatly sorted folders of finalised blueprints for engineers to build from and then, there was the rest. All of it. Every last idle thought and in progress schematic barely labelled and only loosely sorted into one of just five folders: Rift opening, Rift containment, Rift closing, Reactor and Blueprints. 

The clerk’s decision to leave me to it made even more sense now; these files were a mess. A mess, however, that almost assuredly contained the plans to power Krax’s next suit of power armour. I just had to hope I found what I was looking for before he finished building it, both for the city and to avoid even more time in the sad sack of flesh known to most as Joe.

–

Long days of poring through design files would have blurred together but for two things: nights as Ifrit and dates with Sandra. Hours of stony silence from Cascade were more than fine, given that I got to spend them being comfy in my real body. The main issues were avoiding groping myself and hiding my giddy smiles from Cascade, who already thought poorly enough of me without me being a constant giggly mess. And dates with Sandra, while missing the bubbly physical euphoria, replaced it with something just as good: genuine emotional connection. 

I’d tried dating before to overtly underwhelming results, each time just a few evenings of bland platitudes before trailing off and never speaking again. Probably, in retrospect, due to me never opening up about anything. But with Sandra, it was a different story; we talked, endlessly, for hours and hours, about everything and nothing. I felt safe to let my guard down, to let her in, and it was wonderful. I talked to her openly and honestly, with one notable exception, and she shared herself back with me. That I could monologue for forty minutes about a band she’d never heard of and she’d listen and laugh and joke about it with me was something I’d always treasure. And when she, in turn, wanted to explain to me a fashion trend I had no understanding of, I couldn’t help but hang on every word.

Tonight we were meeting in a cosy pizza place she’d been recommended. Nothing fancy, at my request, as I was anything but ready to turn up to a fancy restaurant in fancy girl clothes, in this body at least. Leggings and a poofy jumper I could manage, which, in turn meant comfy cosy restaurants too, not that either of us seemed to mind. The place being small, quiet and out of the way had the added benefit of making it perfect for my evenings agenda; working out Sandra’s feelings over superheroes.

Hugging and a kiss on the cheek led to an embarrassing amount of me blushing, although in my defence she was just unreasonably gorgeous. Finding a table and a little flirty smalltalk led to me first broaching the topic. “So, did you see any of Avalanche’s new clothing line?” I’d pre-planned that one, it was an easy segue from Sandra’s interest in fashion to a prominent superhero.

“Ugh, yes, and it’s horrible! Who would have thought that the ability to summon rocks wouldn’t correspond to an ability to design good clothing? Like, I get it, that’s your brand, but a god damn rock bikini? A sequin dress with rocks not sequins, not even rare or carved ones? She must  know no one is going to wear that, right? That this is not a trend that can catch on.” Okay, less positive than I’d hoped.

“Okay, sure, but some of the shoes were cute, right?”

“Honey, no; I know you’ve not tried heels yet, although you will, because you’ll look amazing in them and I want to see that.” Well shit, now I wanted to hold hands and go shoe shopping… well, wanted to do that more. “But while heels are cute, you're missing how uncomfortable they can be. And Avalanche wants people to wear ones made of goddamn rocks! Lunacy, I tell you.”

“Hey, I’m easily swayed; the advert was cute and she looked hot in it, my brain could only process so much beyond that.” The advert was what I really wanted her thoughts on.

“Baby, she’s 6’4 and all muscly curves, of course she looked good in it. But please don’t tell me you think the advert was cute. ‘Woman lies to her partner for years about almost everything in her life’ is not the setup for romance or a happily ever after. Your girlfriend lying to you about being a superhero is a huge betrayal on her part.” Fuck. She literally shuddered at even the thought of it. I had to tell her right now, or it was all downhill from here. But then, I could have told her in the coffee shop; I could have told her before my whole song and dance about struggling with dysphoria. She already had cause to be angry, probably to break up with me, and I really needed her to keep quiet about my identity; I was anything but ready to be a publicly trans superhero. I’d need to do this gently.

“Okay, so, years obviously is too long, but then, when would be the right time to tell them?” She paused then, tilting her head cutely and clearly thinking hard about something I’d tried to present as a zany hypothetical.

“I’m not sure there is a right time? I mean, superheroes are functionally celebrities, just in constant danger. How are they ever supposed to have a healthy relationship with someone whose life is so different from theirs? You can’t just stop being a hero, but you also can’t reasonably endanger your partner like that or put them through the stress of you endangering yourself.” She trailed off there, looking about as sad as I felt. She couldn’t date a superhero. I could tell her, right now, and even if she wasn’t angry, she’d still break up with me.

Despite the quiet chatter of the restaurant, the silence was deafening. What was I supposed to say to that? I opened and closed my mouth a few times, hoping words would come. “I–” Almost mercifully, my phone took that moment to buzz at me. Not a regular buzz though, that was the alternate vibration pattern for imminent disaster needing heroic help near your location. “Sorry, I really have to take this, I’ll be back soon, I hope.” With that, I dashed out the door, leaving a distracted looking Sandra in our booth.

Putting my phone to my ear, the frantic league operator who’d called ran me through the details. “Ifrit, I’ll keep it simple, CannonBomb’s blown up the monorail by Fifth Street, but is being contained. Unfortunately he sabotaged a lot of the carriage's brakes too, to keep us busy. We need all hands on deck to stop those carriages, I’ve tagged your target on GPS. Godspeed.”

Rewq

Well, at least no ridiculous misunderstandings have occurred...

Now, if you fancy more trans people being silly, I really recommend Pocket Healer by Abby_Gay_Ill. Cute, funny and girls kiss, whats not to like?