The Origin of Elastica


“So, what is this place like?”  Aline twitched her fingers nervously as she looked over at her best friend Eliza who was sitting confidently behind the wheel of her car.  The two had met in high school and remained friends after graduation despite Eliza being two years older than Aline.  Their friendship was a rather odd one, since it was hard to imagine two more different people.  

Eliza was always well organized, her personality forceful, and her face extremely prone to irritated frowns.  She was wearing a bright red shirt, black long pants, and gazed ahead with a vague contempt for the other drivers or quite possibly the road its self.  By comparison Aline was dressed in a much more tame green shirt and bland white pants.  

As they reached a red light and the car came to a reluctant stop Eliza finally provided her best friend with an answer.  “Does it really matters what it is like?  It’s secretarial work which is a major step up from standing in the unemployment line.   

You should just be glad that even though I’ve only been working there for three years I managed to put a bug in my boss’ ear about giving you a chance.”  Aline blushed as she suddenly found herself unable to meet the accusing pair of green eyes which belonged to the car’s owner.  “Well um... the economies not great right now and its...”  Eliza  ut Aline off before she was halfway through her winding explanation.  

“Yeah right.  You should have gone to college and we both know it.”  Aline blushed and turned to look very intently at the car’s floor.  “You didn’t.”  Eliza’s glower did not abate in the slightest.  “Yeah, but that’s because one of us had a plan for what to do with themselves after high school and one of us still doesn’t, that’s why you needed me to bail you out after more or less utterly wasting the last year of our life and a fair bit of your savings.”  

Aline nodded, silently wishing that she might have shared her friend’s drive, which while it could be a bit grating on the nerves at times, also made sure she always achieved whatever she set her mind to.  

“So to get off the subject of all the mistakes I’ve made recently, what exactly does Dunfar Technologies do?”  If Aline had been paying a bit more attention she might have noticed the way Eliza’s face went remarkably pale for just a single moment.  “Well, lots of stuff.  

Way too much to go over it all during the drive there to say the least.  But to put it simply, we provide technical solutions and experienced trouble shooters wherever they’re needed.  The company is fairly new, lot of real growth opportunities.  More importantly you just might be able to make enough money to finally stop freeloading in my apartment.”  

Aline was suddenly EXTREMELY interested in hearing more about this new job opportunity.  “Wait a moment, you seriously think that I’m going to be able to afford my own place on the money I’ll make being a secretary?”  There was another awkward pause, slightly lengthened by the fact that the light had turned green allowing Riza to drown out any sort of possible conversation with the roaring of her car’s engine.  

“Of course not, but a girl can dream.  So like I said, don’t worry about the big picture, just sit at whatever desk they tell you to, do whatever the tell you to, and if you get bored feel free to watch to the clock.  

Also bare in mind that if you do screw up... well I probably won’t get fired but be a big black mark against me, and that’ll affect the amount of money I make, which in turn purchases the food that you eat.”  

Aline rested her hands on the cars dashboard and sighed.  “Jeez, why don’t you just set up a running tab so you know exactly how much I owe you, or kick me out if I’m that much of a bother?”  Eliza gave one of her rare smiles.  “Hey what are friends for if not freeloading and mocking the freeloading habits of?”


----


Sure enough. just Eliza had promised working as a secretary for Dunfar Technologies seemed like pretty standard stuff.  People called and she saw that they got in touch with the right person, people came in and asked for directions, she gave them out from a book in a drawer of her desk.  

A few hours into the  job the main elevator in the lobby opened up and Eliza herself walked out.  “Keeping busy?”  Aline nodded, even though at the moment there was absolutely nothing for her to do.  “Yeah.”  Eliza leaned a hand against the secretary’s desk nodding in satisfaction.  “See?  Easy as pie, nothing at all to write home about.”  

Almost as soon as she said the words it happened.  A black van drove through the front of the building, smashing right through its glass double door.  Without even thinking Aline crouched low in the chair trying to place the sturdy piece of wood between her and the countless glass shards which went flying every which way from the impact.  

Eliza apparently had the same idea, but before the two could say anything. a loud voice split the air.  “EVERYONE GET THEIR HANDS UP!”  Aline peeked over the top of her desk and immediately regretted it.  

Half a dozen men had left the van, they were all dressed in black trenchcoats, shirts, pants and ski-masks, and holding assault riffles had jumped out of the van.   “HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEADS, NOW!”  Aline nodded dumbly and raised both hands over her head.  Three of the six men came over and quickly patted the two down, apparently searching them for weapons while the other three spread out.  

“Okay boys and girls, nobody do anything stupid and you’ll all get out of this alive.  Six go get the package, Five your job is to make sure that no alarms get triggered.”   Aline nodded dumbly and tried to look at Eliza as stealthily as possible.  “What’s going on?”  Eliza remained absolutely still as she spoke.  “If I knew, I’d tell you.”  “Shut up you two!”  While one of the men waved his weapon threateningly in their direction another one headed over the elevator and went up it, after that there was silence and stillness in the lobby for an unknown period of time untill once again the elevator door opened and another man came rushing out holding a black briefcase.  

“I got them, I’ve got them!”  The man in black who was pointing the gun at Aline glared at “Six” across the room.  “You did your job, do you expect me to rub your belly for it?  We’ve only got so much time left before the authorities arrive and we’re running late!”  The man continued to jog forward exuberantly, and right into Eliza’s waiting foot.  

He tripped, and fell to the floor, the briefcase flying from his hand and landing on Aline’s desk, where it sprung open.  Countless yellow testubes bounced free from it, most of them landing haphazardly on the floor around her.  One of them though hit the desk in just the right way to knock its top loose, and proceeded to splash its contence all over her clothing and face.  

“You bitch!”  The man who had been tripped rolled over pointing a handgun he’d drawn from a holster somewhere on his body at Eliza.  If Aline hadn’t been left suddenly feeling horribly light headed she would have let loose with a cry of terror at the prospect of what was about to happen to her best friend.  

Surprisingly Eliza was saved by one of the other men in black who promptly brought a foot down on the man’s hand, making him drop the gun.  “Zero fatalities you idiot!  Do you know how much time we have left?  You don’t have a brain but I need every pair of hands I can get to help get all the vials back in our case.  Hop to it, I’ll deal with little Miss Smartypants...”  

Without further ado he proceeded to strike Eliza upside he head with his gun, causing her to scream loudly in pain and drop flat to the floor.  Aline was left with no choice, but to sit very, very still while all of the men dressed in black from around the room moved close to her and reached down to gather up the still filled testubes pressing them back into the briefcase.  

Without another word being exchanged among them, they filled up the briefcase with its spilled container, raced back to the van and drove out leaving burnt rubber and some very shook up office employees in their wake.  “What... what just happened?”  Eliza slowly stood back up and walked over and picking up the empty testube whose contents still stained her friend’s clothing and skin.  

“Wow, umm... sorry that had to happen to you Aline, really, really sorry.  Words can not sum up how sorry I am.”  Aline blushed, surprised at just how frightened her friend was.  “Um, you’re the one whose bleeding, though I better get hazard pay if this kind of thing is going to be a daily occurrence.”  

She somehow managed to find a strange sort of humor amid the horror of what had just happened.  “Get ready folks, it’s time for the noon armed robbery!”  Eliza giggled and rested her right hand on her friend’s shoulder.  “That’s the spirit.  So are you feeling okay?”  

Aline put a hand to her forehead and felt a bead of sweat dripping down it.  “Umm... I feel sort of tired at the moment, but I’ll probably pass... I think.  Why?  What was in that testube?”  Eliza also put a hand to Aline’s forehead and was apparently very displeased with what she felt.  

“No idea.  Why don’t I’ll go talk to some people, I think I can finagle getting you the rest of the day off fairly easily and I’ll drive you back home since you look like you might fall asleep at the wheel if you tried it yourself.”  Aline blinked a few times and then pressed her hands to a different part of her forehead trying to draw attention to Eliza’s wound.  

“What about?”  Eliza adjusted her hair slightly covering up her wound.  “Don’t worry about that, it is the nature of the beast that head wounds tend to bleed rather profusely.  I’ll slap a bandaid on it and it’ll be fine, unlike the idiotic sonovabitch who was in charge of security for this place.  I told him we should keep a... never mind, above your paygrade as the saying goes.  You just stay here while I go check out a few things and get myself patched up.”  

-----

The ride back to the house was more or less completely silent  since Aline couldn’t muster the energy to do more than grunt nocomittaly in response to any of Eliza’s questions, let alone ask some herself.

-----

A few hours later Eliza returned to their shared domicile.  “Aline I’m home, you feeling okay?”  Eliza didn’t even have time to close the door before she got her answer.  “NO!  HOW COULD YOU THINK I’M OKAY LIKE THIS?”  Eliza closed the door not with a calm push but with a hasty shove.  “Like what?”  “Like this!”  One could say Aline spoke the words face to face with Eliza, after all the two were looking at each other.  

But there was the slight problem, that her neck was slowly snacking itself along the floor towards like a deranged flesh colored serpent.  Eliza looked down a her, blinked a few time absentmindedly locking the door before dropping her keys.  “Well... that’s the different...”  “Different?  Different!?”  

All traces of the black haired woman’s normally shy had gone right out the window, she pure and simply furious.  “Forget the hazard pay I am so totally going to sue that place into the ground as soon as I figure out how to walk around again!”  Eliza blushed as she slowly approached her friend.  “I hate to break it to you, but you really wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.  Mainly because you’d have a hard time proving that even accidentally anything happened to you which caused you permanent harm.”  

Aline had other ideas.  “No permanent harm, what do you call this exactly?”  Eliza’s blush deepened as she crouched down and picked up her best friend’s by her neck, then stood back up, causing Aline’s head to dangle a few inches from her own.  “Listen, this would be a lot easier to explain if I could sit down when I was doing it.  I’ll assume that the rest of you is still up in your bedroom?”  

Looking very much like the world’s angriest jack in the box Aline’s head began to waved back an forth.  “I’m not sure, what part of my head down on the first floor when I went down here on my bed, makes you think that I’ve got some way of being sure where the rest of me is at the moment?”  

Eliza began to walk through the apartment they shard, careful to avoid tripping over her roomate’s neck.  “Okay you raise a good point.  “Fair enough, but I’ve got some good news, if this kind of thing is beyond your control than you’ll be the first of... a lot who its happened to.”  Aline was to politely put it, less than comforted.  “What do you mean?  Does your company make a habbit of doing freaky science experiments to their employees what  are you part of some freaky government experiments?  What are you, part of some weird government conspiracy?”  

Eliza said nothing until she’d reached her companion’s room.  “Would you believe me if I said yes?  Listen, there’s a very long explanation here, but you’re going to have to get a grip on things.”  She caught of Aline’s body and shook her head in disbelief.  “Or maybe I’ll have to get a grip on you.”  

Eliza was kind enough to twist Aline so that she could get a good look at the condition of her own body.  “Your company turned me into a freaking octopus!”  At the moment Aline’s body lay on her bed, she was still wearing her clothing, but her arms and legs were stretched out to ridiculous lengths and lay in heaps on the floor of the room like limp noodles.

Eliza looked around the room and forced a smile to her face.  “Well, could be worse.”  “HOW COULD IT BE WORSE?”  Eliza bent down and placed Aline’s head gently on the floor.  “If the superpower you manifested was flame based then you probably would have burnt the entire building down.  Granted, I didn’t expect your power to show up this soon, but then Formula 31888 is usually not applied directly to the skin.  

So can you pull yourself together?”  Still laying on the floor Aline continued to fume.  “Don’t you think that I could pull myself together I would?”  Eliza nodded slowly.  “All right then, I guess we’re going to need to get the doctors to take a look at you, don’t worry they’re experts at dealing with this kind of thing.  

Of course to do that I’m going to need to get you into the car, and that’s gonna be a little tricky at the moment.”  “A ‘little tricky’ at the moment?”  Eliza nodded as she began to get to work.  “Yeah, this is believe it or not, totally fixable,  All it will take to fix is a little elbow grease and some time.  You should consider yourself lucky that I haven’t forgotten everything I learned in the girlscouts.”  

At first Aline watched in silence, but silence soon enough gave way to yet further irritation.  “Are you tying me in knots?”  Eliza held up one particular knot and shrugged.  “Yes, but don’t worry they’re slip knots, they’ll apart as soon as they’re given one good tug.  

It’s just that there’s no way that I’ll be able to drag you around in your current condition.  In fact, on second thought you just wait here till I get back.”  Eliza walked out leaving a brooding Aline behind.  “Yeah, because there are so many more things I could possible be doing at the moment besides laying here like something out a piece of abstract art.”  

What Eliza eventually returned with did not brighten her mood.  “Is that a trashbag?”  Eliza set it down on the floor and nodded slowly.  “Once again yes, it also has a reasonably sized hole cut in it so that you won’t suffocate.”  For just the shortest of moments Aline actually managed to lift her head and limbs off the floor.  

“You can’t seriously be planning too...”  Heedless of her friends words, Eliza slowly began to start stuffing sections of Aline’s body into the trashbag.  “You’re actually going to do it?  If you toss me in a dumpster somewhere I swear I’ll come back and haunt you for the rest of your life after I die!”  Eliza took a very deep breath before shooting her own irritated glare back at Aline.  

“Whether or not you believe me, I’ve got your best interest in mind right now.  But I need a way to carry you around that won’t raise any eyebrows, at least till you can control your powers enough to look normal.  Luckily that’s ussualy only a few hours after they’re manifested, though the doctors will be able to tell you more than I can.  

Till then, people seeing you stretched out like this would raise questions, and when people ask questions they expect answers.  Of course, if they bothered to think about things properly they’d realize that on some subjects questions are just a burden unto others and answers a prison for oneself, but we don’t live in a perfect world.  Which is why I’m going to take you back to the office in a trashbag.”

----

After a great deal of stuffing which Aline found most insulting to her dignity Eliza carried her out to the car tossed her in the passenger seat before quickly buckling herself in.  “What you’re just going to leave me laying here?”  

Aline couldn’t see Eliza, but she could hear just fine, and she had neither felt a seat belt being pulled over her, or heard the sound of a second one being locked into place.  “Like I said,, the entire point of all this is avoid raising eyebrows, and using a seatbelt to secure a trashbag in place will do just that.”  

Aline didn’t bother frowning, there was no way that Eliza could observe her expression.  “So what exactly is going to happen to me if you crash?”  Eliza on the other hand wasn’t feeling stingy with her facial expression and did actually scowl at the word spouting trashbag that was ridding shotgun with her.  “First of all, I won’t crash.  Second of all, why are you afraid that I’ll crash?  You’re made of rubber, you’d probably bounce of the windshield since it’s bulletproof.”  

There was a small pause before Aline asked the obvious question.  “Why does your car have a bullet proof windshield?”  Eliza shrugged as best she could while wearing a seatbelt.  “Well it didn’t make much sense to only replace the back and side windows with bulletproof glass but leave a windshield that can be shot out with any old 9MM, does it?”  

Aline took a deep breath and felt the trashbag contract around her almost claustrophobically.  “Maybe I’m being painfully nieve, but why did you have all your car’s windows bulletproof?”  There was a somewhat longish pause before she got an answer.  “Well it wasn’t like I paid for it, it was part of the my health insurance plan, not negotiable, ounce of prevention is worth a pound of pain and all that.”

There was a very long pause before Aline did the only thing she could, ask her companion to explain it all.  “Never mind, why don’t we start all over again?  You know, wholesale, so that I don’t have to keep asking you piddling little individual questions?”  

Eliza coughed slightly and then sighed.  “Okay then, but I’m not going to tell you ‘everything’ because there’s a saying at the Company, ‘what you don’t know psychics can’t find out just by being in the same room as you are.’  But here’s what I can tell you.  The first confirmed Person of Mass Destruction or PMD showed up in Vegas in 1998.  

He was relatively harmless, his power was luck manipulation.  Some people noticed that something as weird when he got a jackpot at five different slot machine at five different casinos and her was put in jail.  The cell bars rusted, and he walked right out.  Nobody was ever sure of exactly what had happened to him, but lets just say that you don’t empty a clip at someone from ten feet away and miss with every single bullet.  

Moving on, it wasn’t long before other PMDs showed up, and they used their powers for things much more reprehensible than ricking off the house in Vegas.  Which was why the Company was formed.  It has bases all over the world and organizations like Dunfar Technologies serve as fronts for it because there are simply some things your average citizen was not meant to know.  

At first it seemed like an impossible task, but then we got lucky and found a PMD who we will both refer to as Origin.  I don’t know Origin’s real name, or even what ‘his’ sex is so don’t bother asking me.  Origin’s power was that people around him tended to develop powers, though they only lasted for about half an hour after they moved any real distance away from him.

Somebody did some experiments and found out that his sweat contained chemical responsible for people around him suddenly gaining and loosing powers.  Also we discovered that the powers didn’t go away if a concentrated dose of the formula was properly administered, or sometimes like your case, improperly administered.  

Origin is the reason that the company has been able to do as good a job as it has because we can generate PMDs as needed.  Unfortunately while every major Company outpost has a welcome supply of the formula needed to create PMDs, they don’t have properly empowered agents guarding them, which is why what happened today, happened.  

I have no idea who those people were, the closest I can come to an explanation, is that some former Company agents decided that they’d like to raise some hell, and if they’re going to do it here then we’re going to need some heavy firepower of our own.  Which is why we’re going to need your help, badly.”  

Eliza’s explanation sadly made about us much sense as anything Aline had expected to come out of her lips.  “You need a girl who has been stuffed into a trashbag?”  Once again one of those rare smiles graced Eliza’s face.  “Yeah, trust me it’s as hard for me to say as for you to believe.”

---

“Feeling better?”  Aline lay in a bed on the bed, it’d been a while since she’d gotten brought back to the Dunfar Technologies building.  At the very least, her limbs and neck had now retracted back to the original length, though she was still less than pleased with how her day was turning out.  

“For the most part, though I’d still really love it if you guys would write me a huge check in exchange for me keeping quiet about all this, since there’s nothing like having more money in your bank account to make a girl feel better.”  Eliza sat down next to Aline and put a hand on her friend’s shoulder.  “Umm about that, if you’d be willing to become a superheroine then we’d be willing to pay you a lot.”  

Aline raised an eyebrow questioningly.  “How much is ‘a lot’ exactly?”  Eliza leaned close and whispered an answer to that question.  “So that’s annually, right?”  “Per month.”  Aline’s jaw promptly hit the floor.  It took her about ten seconds to get it to snap back to normal allowing her to properly shape the words that came out of her mouth.

“Seriously?  Why do you folks need a superheroine that badly?  I wasn’t even aware that superheroing as a viable career path!”  Eliza shrugged.  “Well it’s not, unless you have superpowers.  But you do, and if you were paying attention at the time you’d remember how I told you that we’ve got agents set up as superheroes in a lot of different places.  Honestly don’t you ever check the news?”  

Aline glowered at her best friend.  “I tend to care more about the want adds than what some superman is supposedly doing off on the other side of the world.  Oh and you still didn’t answer my question about why you’re willing to pay so much for me to be a superheroine?”  Eliza blushed and hung her head.  

“Well, we’re sort of caught in a vice at the moment.  On one hand, given how many people could gain superpowers from all the formula 31888 they stole from us, we’re expecting a sudden upsurge in PMDs around here.  But at the same time, since they stole all of ours, we can’t make any more, and it’s going to take us a while for us to get all the necessary paperwork taken care of to get another load of the formula delivered here.  

Shifting some our own active superpowered agents would be even harder, and don’t even ask about what kind of work has to be done to give someone else superpowers and then ship them here.  So yeah, at the moment Aline you’re all we’ve got, what do you say?”  

Aline frowned in irritation.  “If I’m going to do this, I want a costume, something tasteful, and even more importantly, something that stretches when I do, I trust I don’t need to explain why?  Hell if you got some material that can do that, I also want some ordinary clothes and undergarments that made out of it.”  

Eliza nodded along with every word she heard.  “We’ll take care of it, along with providing as much training in how to fight as possible.  Also if you agree, I’ll be the one responsible for being your go between with the Company, so you won’t have to worry about shadowy voices calling you late at night or finding tapes which self destruct after you listen to them.  So do we have a deal?”  Aline took a very deep breath.  “Deal.”  The two shook hands.