Chapter 10: Make Up
GEMINI
It was around this time that I decided to finally make up with Bookworm. Her name was really Sara Bonnerange, or as she explained, "It's France! Ce n'est pas ce que je veux dire... It's... French! It is... how you say, a good row of crops. 'Zis is what Bonnerange means." I met her while working in the library. She was very bookish, but more often than not, it seemed as though we didn't fully understand each other. I tried to introduce her to anime, and her initial response was, "Non, zee cartoons, they are for children, oui?" Non. I later managed to show her several evidences to the contrary, from dark and brooding (parts of Naruto, Erased, and Sunday Without God), to outright disturbing (Monster, When They Cry, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica), and to even philosophy-heavy. I was amazed at her patience, considering how she so readily dismissed what I watched as cartoons. It was almost as though she was only teasing me to get me to show her some decent anime. But that was impossible.
I later discovered that her French accent was fake. Though her family name was French, she had actually developed it through a combination of Introduction to French 101 and binge-watching Maurice Chevalier films. The exaggerated accent should have been a tip off, along with her "Hon hon hon" laughing and gratuitous French words. I also sorta realized that when she became flustered, she dropped the act entirely, and spoke like a normal person (or at least a normal person who had read a great deal of books). She was actually only from a city a few hours away, and was just a huge fraud. This realization, however endeared me no less to her. No, our relationship troubles stemmed from something else.
I had picked up some books that were scanned to move from the cart to the shelf. While some people may wonder was it wasn't simpler to simply push the cart to the shelf, the truth was that it was faster to carry a small stack on foot, deal with customers, then shelf some more books. I had just finished this routine when Sara informed me of her intentions for the first time. Although the two of us had some chemistry, I also saw how she lost her cool (and her accent) when talking about her boyfriend.
Yes, I'm sad to say, I'm not her first pick. Despite hanging around her at the same workplace while her beau is in another town, I could never compete with the ideal she had set up in her head of this distant guy. I remember her explaining, "I will save up zee l'argent in order to... how you say, move to zee city," before suddenly lapsing into her real speech, "I'm gonna be so psyched to meet my boyfriend and all of my friends after all this time!" I blinked, and she remembered she was supposed to be French, explaining the rest of her plan with a number of borrowed words, and a thick put-on accent.
This was all while I was working as a woman in the library. She tended to be a great deal less formal and professional looking, because I thought that a library was a place to be taken seriously, while dealing with the public, whereas she was fresh out of college and didn't have the same values. So I admit, despite us being friends, I probably came across as slightly aloof and to be honest, just another girl to her. She probably didn't see me as boyfriend material, and dating me wasn't on her mind. What we did tend to do is she would give me a ride home since I walked to the library every work day in heels. It was close enough to do this, though my feet would not last long term. This was despite her house being in the opposite direction, so I was certain she did care for me, although I always had the sense of being beneath consideration as other than a friend. I was happy to be her girl friend, though I wanted to be a boyfriend (or girlfriend, for that matter), but the feeling of being so closed physically to her location yet being turned down for someone who was hours away really hurt.
Yet, as I sent her letter after letter slowly trying to patch things up, I tried to put the past hurt of the year or two after work in the library ended behind me. Oh, I had been plenty mad about how isolated I was during the years of ROVER-04, but it wouldn't do to take it out on her. She had her own problems.
Her family had been fairly poor, having a father who was only a seasonal worker, and a mom who was kinda useless and fat, if not for her older sister working full-time, they might have had their house foreclosed on. It didn't help that her older sister had about four children, and she who was dreaming of moving away and being cared for was instead forced to act as babysitter. But that wasn't what I was concerned about. I worried that she was placing all this faith in this man to be the solution to life's problems, yet he seemed to only be around during her best moments. His name was was Charlie Tempsbon, and he was from her home town, so that was all that mattered. Well, almost all. I had also heard later that she had actually been sexually assaulted by a boyfriend prior to this one, and it had made her depressed enough to slash up her legs, to the point where she wasn't confident to go out in a swimsuit or a short skirt. He was there when she finally cheered up after that bad time, to make her feel even happier.
But he wasn't there for any of the bad times. Like today. I had managed to get back in touch with her through a series of letters, then meeting her in person for awhile, then finally we talked more regularly online. "My friend, he has eaten the mauvais champignons, and his wife worries of children in neglect." Yes, this was an online conversation. Even though there was no good reason why she should speak with a French accent when people do not write like they speak, her accent persisted on the Discord screen. I tried to help her through the whole situation, wondering in this moment something. Where were her other friends? Where was this supposedly wonderful boyfriend? Why was I the one to pick up the pieces in this situation? I called 911, as I was concerned about this situation only to be told by the operator that this wasn't the right jurisdiction. This should have told me that maybe I was dealing with things that were outside my ability to help, and that I should have looked for a girl who was present in the concerns of the town. But at the time, I didn't make the connection. I only knew that I was fascinated by this fraudulent Frenchwoman and her fair-weather friends. I suspected she had a number of toxic friends including her beau, but I dared not voice them even online. The last time she had been pissed off at me, she read The Stand by Stephen King, and suddenly her powers dreamed up a pandemic. Such power was nothing to scoff at. So I kept quiet. I often wondered though. Would such events have happened despite my impact on her life, or did they only happened because things played out the way they did? Maybe I was giving myself too much credit, though.
EMILY
Since Summer left, I had been out of sorts. I tried dating a girl named Autumn Spring but things just weren't the same. I missed Summer's hardworking nerdy mentality, I missed the way she hid her true personality behind the appearance of normalcy, and I missed her quirkiness. Though this Autumn girl was cute and had a few things in common with Summer, she just seemed like a pale imitation. I needed to find the real one. Even though it had been years, I was confident she would still be in town. Why? Because nothing ever happened outside this town, it seemed. This town was called something like Metropolol, and it was remarkable for being the first town named by the medical community. It was also unique for being a city in terms of urban sprawl but a town in terms buildings or people.
Let me explain. Most cities had skyscrapers packed into dense commercial areas, then suburban residential areas, then rural areas on the outskirts, followed by mountains and forests and farms even further out. But Metropolol had a sort of haphazard setup to its layout. It was filled with scattered lanes of residential areas broken by the occasional shop or skyscraper surrounded by green space. Some areas looked like a proper city, others looked like suburbs, and still other sections looked like the town outright ended. In other words, had not the entire area been known as Metropolol, it instead would have seemed like a series of linked together villages. The highest mountain, Mt Shinoyama, had been the site of a nemesis attack years ago, and a bus had almost crashed into it, if not for the intervention of a hero. I had reason to believe that Summer was still in town, along with most of the heroes that I knew from high school and college, but I was experiencing serious problems tracking her down. I even did a search outside of town!
Finally I decided. If she went to our college, it was likely that I would find her if I worked as a superhero. Either she had become a hero or...
In any case, I decided to spend extra time after work each day fighting crime in hopes that I would catch a glimpse of her one way or another. Unlike Gemini's alter-ego Unmasked, I couldn't go around debating with people and then punching them out. My power was the creation of objects, so short of defeating them by summoning enough to crush them under (which was exhausting), or summoning weapons, I had to use my powers similar to solving a puzzle.
My first fight was a band of people in armor. I think they said they were the knights who said Nu or something. They kept demanding tasks of people. It was for this reason that people decided they must be villains. But eventually I managed to put a stop to them by saying some word that they didn't like. What word? To this day, I do not know what it is, but whatever it was that I said, I dare not repeat it.
I quickly realized that the villains I was encountering were somehow organized by weight class. I was starting our with the fifth-string nemesis candidates, not the real threats. If I had any doubt, the next ones I dealt with were Chinese Midget Wrestler (he insisted "small person" was the right term), Trap Expert (she turned out to be a boy, which was too bad because she was cute), Couch Potato (whose super powers included sleeping and sitting in front of the television), and lastly the dreaded Office Worker. I dealt with each of them efficiently, analyzing their weaknesses and overcoming them.
Chinese Midget Wrestler was a tough customer, managing to climb up my body and put me into a headlock then wriggle away when I tried to throw him off. I summoned a robot that picked him up, and it turned out he was completely helpless when his short arms and legs couldn't touch the ground. Trap Expert was dressed in a cute Chinese red floral qipao with black stockings and heels, and hair tied expertly in a braid. Like me, she had summoning ability, though it was restricted only to snares, holes, spiked rooms, and the like. Despite my best efforts, she caught me in a snare and boasted of her conquest. "You thought you could trap me in a cell, didn't you? Well, too bad! For I am the Trap Expert!" While I dangled in the rope snare, I could have summoned a chainsaw or sword or something to free myself. But because she was so cute, I got curious and my perversion took over. Most people don't know this about me, as I seem to be constantly fixated on engineering and always inside a workshop, but Summer and I are pretty intimate. I remember the last time: kissing her neck, fondling her breasts, and rubbing up and down against each other. I slurped at her sweet flower, and the taste still made me crazy. It had been too long since then, and seeing a cute girl like this Trap aroused my interest. And so, despite being able to summon virtually anything sharp to cut myself free, I instead used my free right hand to grab her left breast through the top of her qipao. She moaned cutely, motivating me to rub them more. But I had felt Summer's breasts often enough to realize that something didn't add up. I continued rubbing her breasts, until I found that the edge of breasts was kind of loose. Padding? Because my curiosity drove my scientific investigation, I had to know the truth. And so, while I continued groping her breasts with my right hand, my left hand slid under her dress. Looking at her from outside, her crotch seemed from like any other woman's but as I reached into the top of Trap's panties and tried to feel into her vagina with my fingers. I quickly realized that her clitoris was much largely than normal, but also that there were two things that should not be there. She abruptly gave a girlish scream, removed my hands from her panties and breasts, and ran off. I found her weakness, but at what cost?!?
As for the others, Couch Potato was completely invincible so long as he stayed in his home territory. But when he offered me potato chips, sure they were poison that would also make me a couch potato (and thus his slave), I flipped the table over near where he was sitting. "Dude! Not cool!" he said, and got up from the couch. It was then that he was defeated. As for Office Worker, I had only to summon a pink piece of paper mentioning that his services were no longer needed, and he totally freaked out and lost all will to fight me.
After this, I no longer had to deal with weak fighters. Instead, when I went out to fight crime the next day, I found a girl named You Go Girl punching walls down in the name of "smashing the patriarchy." She explained that all the walls of those buildings were built by men (which I found a dubious claim, since both women and men worked in construction nowadays, but anyway), so smashing them up was a way of smashing what men built and thus the patriarchy. It made a weird sort of sense, but I had the distinct feeling of not only fighting someone incredibly stupid but also brainwashed to follow a cause. I missed Summer and her quick wit so much. Summoning a Blackberry, I cross-referenced the nemesis You Go Girl with her secret identity. While heroes often had their identity de-listed to protect their private lives, when you became a nemesis, your identity became public knowledge. This was so these people could be apprehended at any time, but it felt like an abuse of privacy, especially since the government could decide you were a nemesis at any time. Anarchist Man, his wife Anarchist Woman, and daughter Anarchist Girl all lived together in a compound not paying taxes but otherwise minding their business, until they were declared nemesis material, and all of them were suddenly harassed by superheroes. In any case, I found out the real name of You Go Girl was apparently Bravery Journey. "Hey! Bravery Journey, is it? Stop smashing up buildings or I might have to stop you!" I said, pointing to the girl. I looked her over. She was about Summer's height and build (which was honestly surprising, as most of her ilk seemed morbidly obese like the Trigglypuff archetype) but had a nosering and a rainbow-colored buzzcut and was wearing shorts and a messy cropped brown tee shirt that said «Revolution Like Yesterday», something I couldn't see Summer wearing. I blushed, realizing I was doing nothing but thinking about Summer, as You Go Girl's fists glowed before she hit the wall. "Timber!" she said derisively as the entire building caved in. Bravery looked at me and sneered, "Hey you, pipsqueak! Get out of here. You're gonna get hurt." She was right.
There weren't any standards for a hero facing a nemesis or not. Their primary duty was to protect and save citizens to the best of their power. The shopkeeper that had previously managed business in this building had wisely decided to vacate the premises when seeing her punching up the place so I was off the hook in that regard, and I realized that one punch from her could take me down like that building. I was simply outclassed.
Back home, I thought about this encounter. The rush of emotions. The constant dwelling on Summer when I looked at her, contrasting how different she was. And then it hit me. What had she said?!? Hey you, pipsqueak! Get out of here. You're gonna get hurt. I heard those words echo in my head.
Years Ago
After Summer and the others had seen Gemini naked, and avoided telling the entire school, and getting her expelled, I had convinced the others to lay off her and get her some proper clothes. Gradually, we stopped bother her about being born a boy, and treated her like another of the girls. Well, all except for Nerissa, who always seemed to think of her as boy. Not in a bad way, though.
In any case, we went on play dates and shopping trips. On one of these trips, Summer got tired of me always wearing the same thing, and decided it was overdue for me to have lessons about fashion. Nerissa convinced Gemini to dress like a boy for a change to go out for dinner and a movie. Summer said, "Look you pipsqueak!" knowing that I was actually two inches taller than the female standard, while she was about five foot nine inches and leggy as hell, "It's high time you learned how to dress like a lady." She pulled me into a dressing room, and ripped away my overalls and brown tee shirt (come to think of it, this was exactly the same shade of brown Bravery was wearing just now). revealing some cute pink lingerie with little hearts. What? Just because I dressed for work didn't mean I couldn't have something cute and feminine underneath that?
Summer blushed, "Wow Pipsqueak, you're kinda cute under all that. Now I'll show you mine." And she stripped off her outfit. While I always thought many things about Summer from her prim and proper image, it turned out all of us were wrong. She was wearing her standard school uniform, which certainly had a prim image. Underneath her uniform was a thick white lace slip, underneath that was a smaller navy blue slip, and underneath that was nothing at all. I glanced at her tall and slim body. I wasn't fat myself (on account of constant work) but I was big breasted, while she put me to shame with her lean bean pole body that somehow managed curves at the hips and nice breasts. Sensing a theme here, I removed my lingerie, and she stripped off her ankle-high white leggings and heels and jumped me, basically giving me a reverse piggyback. The height difference made things a bit awkward, but as she started suckling my breasts and grinding against me, I didn't mind so much. All of a sudden, she leaned forward too much and both of us fell awkwardly on top of out stripped clothes. The thing about this changing room was that it had a high opening on the bottom of the stall door so clothing could be passed under, so two nude bodies were more than a bit noticeable. We continued kissing and carrying on until we heard a knock on the door. "Ummm, madams? We don't allow lesbian sex here." I was going to stand up and put my clothes back on but Summer pulled me back down. "I'll take care of this," she said. Her first act appeared to be finishing what she started, as she didn't talk to the changing room lady until both of us had orgasmed. She got a look of all of this while she repeatedly tried to tell us to stop. Finally, both of us got up. I started to dress, but Summer in typical Summer fashion slammed the door open while still stark nude and demanded, "Why is it you don't want lesbian sex in your store? Aren't we good enough to buy your clothes and make out?!?" The woman was already blushing, as was I, but Summer was shameless, "I apologize. What I meant was that we don't allow public sex on our floors, then I saw the two of you, and my brain kind of misfired." Summer smirked, "Oh really? So we turned you on so much that you said the wrong thing? How would you like to forget all about this?" The woman remarked, "I don't think I could ever do that." Summer started kissing her as I groaned, "Well, if you can't ever forget us, why don't I do to you what I did to this pipsqueak, and you give her a discount on all dresses and shoes I buy her." She shook her head, "That's against store policy. Anyway... I'd only do it if you let her do it to me." Summer mumbled something jealous sounding about a pipsqueak stealing her good time, but agreed to the terms. And so it was that while I lost my first time to Summer, my second time came in rapid succession to a store lady. Anyway, Summer kept her word, buying me six new outfits. The first was a prom-like tiered pink dress with matching open-toed heels. The second outfit was a dress made to look like a blouse and skirt combination. The third was a yellowish (almost gold) dress that came up to my hips and zipped in the back. The fourth was a brownish cotton dress that unlike the others was probably sturdy enough that I could use it for work, but pretty enough that it gave a change of pace to overalls. The fifth an all black pencil dress that I could use for formal work presentations, and the last was downright absurd. A completely iridescent opal dress that extended to just above the feet with a slit in the side extending to mid-thigh when I walked and strappy heels to match. Unless I got married or something, I would never wear this.
Present Day, Present Time
Pipsqueak. The nickname echoed in my head. I thought about Bravery's physical features, comparing them closely to Summer's. Summer always wore pretty glamorous eye makeup and lipstick, as well as foundation, blush, powder, and concealer, looking fully the part of a lipstick lesbian or a heterosexual woman. I suspected she was bisexual, but I never asked. This girl wore pretty much no makeup at all as best as I could tell. But I mentally compared their faces, removing the nose ring and adding back in the hair. I was no facial recognition software, but I had seen this face for years. The skin tone was the same, the height was the same, and the only difference in build was that Bravery had more muscles in her arms and legs, but I realized this could be accounted for by years of punching things. I cringed, "Oh my God..."
Summoning the Blackberry again, I clicked on the page again. This time, I clicked on the History tab. It listed her Career as a nemesis, but I decided to keep looking. The first reference of Bravery was her college degree, shown on the website: «Bravery Journey is hereby awarded B.A. Women's Studies» and I noticed the school and year of graduation to be the same as ours. Come to think of it, I remembered someone looking similar to her at the school graduation, coming up to collect the diploma. I looked at the page again, and noticed that while Career and College Degree was already expanded, the Early Life tab needed to be expanded. And so, I touched the screen where the button mentioned the expand button, and I gasped.
This is what I read, «Summer Winter, later known as Bravery Journey, spent her early life in Metropolol, where she still currently active in crime. Summer's early ambitions appeared to be heroic, but following a Women's Studies course, she changed her minor and her general look. It was at this time that she became more aggressive, speaking out at length about destroying the the patriarchy. Her powers appeared to have taken a shift, a feat which while rare, is not completely unheard of...» The article went on and on, but as one tear in my eye turned into several, I realized I was a total mess right now. I looked at the picture of her, and decided to have it printed out. It was photo of her in her schoolgirl uniform, back when she still was a student.
She loved that uniform, and couldn't get enough of wearing it. It symbolized her feelings of belonging in school and her pride in her studies. At this point, I went from shocked to angry. Whoever had corrupted Summer into this would have a lot to answer for. But the first step would be getting her back.
