The fan of Elastica...

The fan of Elastica...

Aline was enjoying a pleasant night’s sleep when she was suddenly awakened from her dreams by a sharp rapping on her room’s window.  Of course her arm was halfway to the door connecting her and Eliza’s  room before she realized this fact, and even then it was only because the rapping came a second time.  

Aline hoped that in the darkness whoever was at that window hadn’t been able to clearly make out the way her body had distorted itself and began to rapidly retract her arm.  She looked at the window blinking a few times and as her mind slowly began to resume normal functioning she realized what was making that particular sound.  She was just able to see a white-gloved hand, and only a hand, rapping on her second-story window.  

She still had no idea exactly what that meant, but was completely sure of just one thing, whatever was going on out there was superheroine business.  She headed to her closet, slipped out of the nightclothes she’d gone to sleep in, put on her costume (all while listening to a few more incensed raps from the arm outside her window) grabbed her mask, made sure it was properly adjusted, and finally opened her window.  

Ironically the moment she did so the arm began to retract, leaving Aline to wonder if she wasn’t face to face with some kind of superpowered prank.  She contemplated just going back to sleep, then realized that as she had gone through the work of getting in costume, she should at least make a good faith effort to prevent her rest from being interrupted yet again.  

So she slipped out the window and increased the length of her body, winding her way up the roof.  There, sure enough, she found the white-gloved hand, not to mention its opposite number, and the body they were both attached to.  There was a full moon out that night, and plenty of stars in the sky, so now that her eyes had adjusted she was quite clearly able to make out the figure of a young girl dressed in a black costume with white gloves and boots.  

She had evidently designed the costume herself, since unlike Elastica’s it defined her figure without showing off any bare skin.  After taking a few more moments to evaluate that figure Aline decided “young girl’ might have been a bit of a misnomer, this other woman seemed to be only a year or two younger than she was.  

It was only after the two had sized each other up for about a full twenty seconds (Aline had a good three inches worth of height over her) that the woman in black and white saw fit to introduce herself.  

“Hi!  I’m Becky!”  Becky had blond hair and playful green sparkling eyes that almost seemed to have the sort of weird distorted effect that Aline normally associated with cats.  
A second look (and a few tentative steps closer as she was taking it) at her eyes left Elastica quite sure that indeed Becky’s pupils were vertical in nature, and extremely dilated.  Unfortunately while she was busy doing this, Becky was growing impatient.  

“You don’t need to introduce yourself to me of course, I know you’re Elastica, big, absolutely huge fan, really.  I even know what your real name, is but I’ll keep my lips zipped -- professional courtesy, and all that.”  Elastica promptly took one step back and adopted something close to a fighting stance.  

“How do you know that?”  In response, Becky momentarily busied herself doing something to her ears, and if there was any kind of jewellery adorning them they didn’t sparkling in the moonlight.  

“Well Mr. Six gave me the description of the girl he saw get splashed with the Formula 13888, so then I decided to cross check Dunfar Technology’s hiring records.  Of course the fact that you don’t actually ‘work’ there would keep anyone else from making the obvious connection, and it wasn’t easy to check those records either but that’s a long pointless story...”  Aline’s posture shifted to a full-on combat stance and she could feel her entire body starting to bristle to the point it was almost a surprise she wasn’t suddenly developing spikes of elastic flesh all over her body like the world’s worst case of acne.  

“It’s 31888, and you know the guys who broke into Dunfar Technologies?”  When Becky’s hands moved away from her ears they were gone, at least for a moment, then they were in the back but in the wrong place and looking the wrong way.  The blonde- haired woman now had a pair of disturbingly feline ears jutting from underneath her head of hair.  

“Well I can’t be sure, they may just know some guys who know some guys who know the guys who did it.  That’s how things work in the thief market these days with the Internet and all.  Granted, it’s a lot easier than needing to conduct entire conversations with a phone in one hand, and a voice-changer in the other.”  

Becky’s voice was of a particular pitch and decibel level that seemed to have been designed with the specific intent of giving Aline a migraine, or maybe her body was just protesting about being up this late at night (or maybe in retrospect it was actually this early in the day).  

“Look, can we put aside everything else and just focus on who you are, why you woke me up, and why I shouldn’t got back to bed?”  Becky’s feline ears twitched playfully for a moment before pressing themselves firmly against her head in a show of submission.  

“All right, if you insist, I’m a thief, a very good one in fact.  You probably haven’t heard of me because people in my previously-mentioned profession who get heard about a lot tend to show up in articles with headlines like ‘will be arraigned on’ ‘serving a sentence of’  or even worse yet ‘while serving their term has found the healing power of’ as you might guess.  Anyway, I got hired by these guys who had this stuff that they said would give me superpowers if I stole something for them.  No idea what it was or what they wanted what I stole for, or even exactly what it was in the first place, and the exchange, well, the exchange was complicated.  But the end of the story is that I got this needle full of green liquid.”  For the first time, something that Becky had said really caught her attention.  

“Wait a minute, green?  The stuff we’re talking about is yellow.”  Becky shook her head firmly suddenly seeming far more serious, for her at least.

“Nuh-huh!  Trust, me it was green, anyway they said that they could give me whatever I wanted, and sure enough it worked!  I wasn’t interested in anything as dramatic and obvious as that Blaze chick, for me the perfect gift is something a lot more like yours.  The ability to squeeze myself into small places, to be incredibly unobtrusive.”  As she was speaking, Becky’s cat ears vanished and her normal human ones reappeared at more or less the exact same time.  

“Which is where we get to the crux of the matter.  I figured that now that we’re more or less the same, we could play a game together.”  At this point Elastica was resisting the urge to stretch her arm across the difference between herself and Becky and throttle her.  In part because superheroines didn’t do such things, and in part because if the other woman was as stretchy as she claimed to be, then it wouldn’t do her any harm and would make Aline feel a lot better.  

“You’re crazy you know that?  Is there any reason we couldn’t have gone over this at a more sane hour?”  Becky spread her arms wide and suddenly an impressive set of feathered wings sprung into being attached to them.  “Well I’m gonna be busy pretty soon scoping my target out.  I’m gonna go against my own rules and start leaving  calling cards, literal calling cards from ‘the Rubber Bandit’ as I steal some stuff.  Hell, I’m going to be breaking another one of my rules and start stealing stuff just for the sake of it.  Granted what with these new powers I can probably afford to be a bit sloppy, oh this is gonna be so fun.  See you!”  

Then she jumped backwards and the last Elastica saw of her was some kind of bird in midflight headed away from her, and she didn’t have the strength of will to even consider chasing it.  In fact, all she had the strength for was to crawl back to her bed and go to sleep without even bothering to try and take off her costume.

----

“Dare I ask?”  Aline blinked a few times and at least the woman awakening her this time was a familiar one, even if it was Eliza in a bad mood.  

“What?”  Eliza placed her hands on her hips her glower growing all the more severe.  

“The mask on its own is sort of telling, so what do you expect people to make of this?”  With one firm yank all the covers were removed from Aline’s bed revealing that she was dressed in her superheroine costume.  Aline sighed, and all too soon exactly what she had done last night came to her, but at the same time she was too irritable to give her roommate a true answer.

“Well, last time you shouted my ear off  about how important it was for me to be ready to get into costume early in the morning, so I figured why not just go to sleep in it?”  Eliza looked like she was about to tear her hair out in anger.  

“Yeah, and anyone who looked in your window would realize that you’re a superheroine!”   Deciding that was about as good a segue was she was likely to get, Aline went for it.  

“Well on the subject of people, my window, and knowing I’m a superheroine....”

----

Eliza had gone from irritated and angry to sad and depressed.  

“Okay first of all, do we have any proof that this ‘Becky’ actually exists?”  There was a very awkward pause.  

“What do you mean by that exactly?”  Eliza took a step back that seemed to cover far more distance than her usual stride.  

“Look, let me be perfectly honest about this.  Remember Blaze?  Well people who have been injected with formula 31888 have this minuscule, slightly higher, lets say only five to ten percent greater than your average person’s chance, of coming down with mental disorders.  You know stuff like the belief that there’s some criminal that running around committing crimes that only you can see, leading to the inevitable and unfortunate realization that you’ve come down with Dissociative Identity Disorder.”  Aline just stared at her vacantly, leading to Eliza slapping herself upside the head three times.  

“You see, this is why you should have gone to college.  Because then you would know that when I say DID I actually mean MPD, or to take a step away from the DSM, Multiple Personality Disorder.  But since you only have a high school diploma, I’ll put this in a literary reference you’ll comprehend. Does The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ring a bell?”  It did of course, but that didn’t mean that Aline enjoyed this particular line of reasoning.  

“You know what might be slightly more productive than you making plans to have a bunch of men in white lab coats come along and make sure my rubber body spends the rest of its life in a rubber room?  The two of us coming together to deal with Becky!  You can start telling me that I’m crazy when I start using whatever I have for blood to scrawl messages on the walls.  Until then, can I least get the benefit of the doubt, and we talk something useful?”  Eliza took a very deep breath.  

“Hmm, you say useful, and do you know what I hear?”  

“What?”  

“Breakfast.”  

----

Aline took the time to wipe down her face with a napkin and smiled.  

“Okay, now that, as opposed to your plan to have me declared mentally deficient, was a good use of our time.”  By now Aline was dressed in something noticeably less dramatic than her costume, in fact only her outfit’s ability to stretch along with her made it any different from a normal vest and pair of long pants.  Eliza also seemed marginally less upset after eating, but that still didn’t mean she was in a good mood.  

“I’ll admit that the world looks better with a full belly, but we still don’t know anything about where Becky is going to strike and what she’s going to steal.”  She paused for a very long moment and sighed deeply.  

“I suppose that we should be thankful for certain small blessings, though, if she’s really able to do the things that you said she can, and she’s as big a fan of you as she claims to be, I guess we should just be glad that she isn’t planning to take on your appearance when she commits crimes.  Wouldn’t that make for a perfect cherry on top of this disaster sundae to be?  At least this way we don’t have to worry about the cliché of some supervillianess pretending to be you while they go on a crime spree, leaving me with the unpleasant task of having to arrest my best friend.”  Aline found herself experiencing yet another one of those moments where she just didn’t believe the nature of the world her best friend lived in.  

“That’s really a common occurrence?”  

“Well, it happens often enough that we tend to take measures against the possibility, just in case.  Anyway, that’s not what we need to worry about.  Our goal is to figure out where Becky will strike and to do that I suggest we go watch some TV.”  Aline began to stretch her neck towards their apartment’s couch.  Once she had reached it her neck made a quick U-turn to resume eye contact with Eliza.  

“Well I officially no longer have the slightest clue how your thought process works, but I do know this, I like this stage of your master plan!”

----

“Okay, this stage of your master plan. I’m not so fond of.”  Eliza strode back and forth in front of the incredibly precious Mirai Ruby that was on display in the city’s museum.  

“It’s called a stakeout, and if you can’t handle it then you’ll never make a good cop or secret agent.”  Aline crossed her arms as she lounged in a chair which the museum had been kind enough to provide her with.  

“Well I’m neither of those things, last time I checked I was either a secretary or a superheroine.  Besides, how come you won’t let me have coffee?”  Eliza was at the moment sipping from a cup emblazoned with the logo “Shoot first, drink later” emblazoned upon it.  

“Look, it’s nothing personal, but humans who have formula 31888 in them tend to react badly to caffeine and I don’t need you puking your guts out, when we’re suppose to be stopping a supervillianess.”  Aline stretched out a hand towards Eliza’s cup tentatively allowing it to draw closer one inch at a time.  

“You keep saying that, and I keep thinking that it’s just your way of screwing with me.”  Eliza focused both eyes on the offending gloved hand that was just about to violate her personal space.  

“You know I’m wearing a Glock holstered on one hip, and while you may not care about that, you might be more interested in knowing that I’ve got a cattle prod on my other.  If your arm comes any closer then you’ll find out just how many volts I’ve set it to.”  The offending arm was withdrawn, though Aline couldn’t help but slowly allow a smug smile to come to her face.

“Okay for now, but if things go on like this for another few hours, I may try again, because I’m going to need a little electro-shock pick-me-up to stay awake.  You know, I can’t help but think that if Becky was feeling confident enough to send a note to the museum ahead of time, warning them just what she’d be stealing and what day, it’d be nice if she’d also been specific enough to mention during what hour she planned to steal it.  Doing that would have saved us both, what, three hours now?”  Eliza sighed, and then took another large sip from her cup.  

“That’s because, no matter what she says, in reality she hates us, Elastica.  Plain and simple, she hates us.”  Aline sighed and took a moment to carefully examine her friend’s outfit, trying to figure out if she could tell by the shape of the bulges which hip the cattle prod was on.  

“So, just to pass the time, how did you know that Becky would send a note announcing what she was going to steal ahead of time, and that there would be a news report about it?”  Eliza looked deeply into her coffee cup as she was some mystic fortune-teller discerning omens from tea leaves.

“Really, you can’t guess?  If she was egotistical enough to introduce herself to you ahead of time it’s pretty clearly it’s not ‘in it to win it’ so much simple attention.  Just like any other spoiled brat, all she cares about is having center stage and the limelight for as long as physically possible. What happens to her while she’s up there doesn’t matter at all.”

---

Becky whistled a happy tune as she approached the museum.  She was not dressed in her traditional “sneak suit”, but then she didn’t need to be at the moment.  Her new outfit, that had been part of her payment, adjusted to her body and was a thing far more grand, since it allowed her to use her powers without being stuck with the Sophie’s choice of growing enough fur to keep warm (and thus drawing the attention of everyone who even peripherally believed in Sasquatches) or escaping countless other charges only to get tossed in the slammer for indecent exposure.  The latter of the two in her mind would be as manifestly unfair as the fact that Al Capone got taken down for tax evasion rather then the umpteen-dozen other more serious crimes he had committed.  

But that was not a choice she’d needed to make, because she now had an outfit that was every bit as adaptable as her new body was.  She chuckled and playfully rubbed her cheek as to reward her mortal shell for a job well done.  It now provided her with countless different methods of altering the museum from which she had promised to steal the Mirai Ruby.  

She could have crawled in through some shaft that was to small for any reasonable-sized human, she could have flown in through any window that was open so much as a crack, or about a dozen other equally-convoluted plans that she had summarily rejected.  Instead, she had opted to walk in through the front door.  

This was a feat best accomplished during normal business hours, when the museum was open to the public.  After that, it had simply been a matter of finding a place to hide.  She had ended up selecting a mousehole that the museum hadn’t gotten plugged yet, and decided to make herself at home in.  

Of course, as it turned out there already was one other mouse present, but it was in no mood to fight an opponent who suddenly turned into the largest rat that the small hole in the wall could accommodate.  From there it was smooth sailing, and time for a nice nap until it was a few hours before  closing time.  Then she crawled out of the hole and returned to her normal appearance, which was how she had reached her current favorable position.  

The security would be busy looking for someone trying to sneak inside, not someone who was already inside, especially not one of their own.  That was a touch she was especially proud of, one good look at the security personnel on her way in was all she had needed.  With but a quick thought, she was suddenly dressed in a  perfect dark blue uniform , including the hat.  

She had no idea how the hat had come about, but decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth.  Instead, she began to lazily saunter towards the room the held the ruby she had promised to steal and was pleased with what she found inside it.  None of that fancy laser- tripwire pressure sensor-stuff; instead she had two human opponents to worry about.  

One of them was a blonde-haired woman, who was holding a coffee cup in much the same way that ancient monks would have held the Holy Grail.  Of course she quickly fell by the wayside when Becky once again caught sight of Elastica.  Granted, she was just sitting there at the moment, not making use of her powers in the slightest, which Becky found a real shame.  The sheer fluid grace with which that woman’s rubbery body could move, even a blind man should have been able to comprehend the beauty of it.  Becky shot a quick smile at the superheroine who seemed to be mildly out of it before cheerfully addressing the blonde- haired woman.  

“How are you two holding up?”  The woman (Eliza was her name Becky suddenly remembered, and for a press agent, she had a surprisingly Spartan manner about her) fixed a powerful glower upon Becky.  “I thought I told you rent-a -ops that we weren’t to be disturbed?”   Becky nodded slowly and tipped her hat at Eliza her eyes focusing upon the superheroine in the room.  

“Well I just wanted to...”  Eliza’s glower became even more focused, though it only lasted for a moment before she looked down at the container clutched tightly her hands.

“If you’re about to ask for an autograph, then I’ll give you a free set of first-degree burns in the shape of whatever random pattern my coffee makes when it splashes your face.”  There was an awkward pause as Becky took a moment to evaluate the situation.  She had a simple rule for situations like this one: have an exit strategy.  So long as you had an exit strategy ready for any situation you found yourself in, you could get free and live free to burgle another day.  

At the moment her exit strategy was a ventilation grate located on the other side of the room.  She just needed to get her hands on the Mirai Ruby and get to that vent.  Of course if everything went straight to hell, there was another big way out which involved doubling back into the next room and smashing a window before leaving through it.  But that wasn’t the issue at hand, what she did have to worry about was how she was going to win this particular confrontation.  

Luckily Becky was every bit as used to coming up with ideas on the fly as she was at long-range planning.  It took her approximately five seconds to figure out exactly what she was going to do.  

“Well if I can’t have an autograph, I guess I’ll just help myself to a souvenir!”  Her right arm curled into a fist and extended itself suddenly out slamming directly into Eliza’s stomach and driving the air from her lungs.  That would keep Ms. Frownypants out of the fight, now it was time for the fun part!

---

Aline wasn’t sure how she’d expected Becky to try and break into the place and seal the Mirai Ruby.  Possibly her expectations concerning what supervillianesses were like had been hopelessly colored by Blaze, but she had expected something much more flashy than walking in dressed like a guard and sucker-punching Eliza.  Gathering her wits about her as best she could given her semi-sleep deprived state she rose from her chair.  

“All right Rubber Bandit, you want the ruby, you’re gonna have to go through me.”  The other woman blushed slightly as the hat that had been covering her blond hair seemed to melt into her skull and vanish.  

“Please, I already told you once that you can call me Becky.  Not only that, but I don’t so much have to get through you as past you.  Believe me, there’s a world of difference to the well-practiced thief.”  Aline didn’t care if the woman who had just decked her best friend wanted to be called the Space Pope, she was going to stop her.  

How of course was another question entirely, since she had no particular ideas how to fight an opponent who seemed to have powers very similar to her own, so she’d just have to make it up as she went along.  She lunged towards Becky, stretching out her body like a giant tarp to try and envelop the other woman.  

With a profound bounce in her step, Becky managed to backflip and avoid Aline’s grip.  Then she proceeded to suddenly grow six extra arms, except that after a moment’s worth of examination Aline saw that they were really more like tentacles, especially given the circular sucker-like things that dotted them.  

These new appendages shot out and wrapped around Aline’s body and she felt the sucker things adhering to her elastic flesh to hold her in place.  Aline rapidly began to return to a more humanoid appearance and began to stretch her arms towards Becky.  However, said arms had tentacles attached to them and Becky simply took a step back, her tentacles yanking upwards like fishing poles that had somehow hooked a full-grown great white shark.  This odd maneuver proved effective at pulling Elastica’s arms up into the air and away from their intended target.  

“You know the way this is going, I might not only escape with the ruby but you as well!”  Aline glowered at Becky, by no means ready to throw in the towel.  She just kept stretching her arms out longer and longer, and Becky did the same thing with her tentacles.  As the two took part in their own little “arms race” Aline’s limbs became long enough that they developed a serious droop.  Which was exactly what she wanted as that drooping section lowered itself towards the ground and then neatly looped itself around Becky’s neck.  

“Well what do you think of that Rubber Bandit? I believe the lollypop company is going to be calling on you fairly soon, they’d love to have a picture of the world’s biggest sucker!”

“Mighty big talk for a URRRKKKK!”  Becky’s retort was cut off by the formerly loose section of Aline’s arm pulling tight.  Just as the other woman’s face was starting to turn be faintly tinged with blue streaks however her entire body transformed once again. The tentacles retracted freeing Aline while simultaneously Becky’s body slimmed down into that of a relatively small serpent.  Aline continued to refine her grip on Becky’s now much slimmer neck.  

“That’s the best you’ve got ‘rubber bandit’, I’m so scared!  I’m don’t care how venomous your are, your fangs won’t be able to pierce my skin!”  Then the snake opened up its mouth, it seemed to be doing something strange, and two streams of clear liquid shot out of it.  The two streams nailed Aline point blank in her eyes.

Suddenly Aline’s entire body was racked with pain the likes of which she had never felt before. In fact, she couldn’t truly remember ever feeling pain since she gained her powers.  She began to thrash around wildly and could feel Becky slip through her fingers, feel it but not see it.  

All of a sudden, Aline realized she was utterly and completely blind.  With this came the realization that the best thing she could do at the moment was to try and avoid creating any more pointless chaos.  So as she lay there uttering things that were not well enough thought out to be called curses, she heard the sound of something huge trampling on the floor, gunshots, Eliza swearing much more proficiently than Aline currently was, Becky cackling, another gunshot, more of Eliza cursing, and then she could feel Eliza kick a strand of her body.  It was at that when if she hadn’t already been unable she would have thought that everything went black.

----

“Well that was just about a textbook case of a snafu.  She comes in here and waltzes out with the jewel in question.  So how are you doing?”  Aline opened up her eyes and looked her eyes.  

“Um, well, for starts I still can’t frickin’ see anything!  So where the hell am I?”  Eliza’s voice was perfectly calm.  

“You’re back in the Dunfar Technologies building.  As for the blindness, don’t worry, it’s usually temporary.”  Certain phrases just about always sent a shiver up the spine of the one who heard them, and what Eliza had just said was a perfect example.  

“Wait a moment, the blindness is ‘usually’ only temporary?  You guys better have one dam impressive severance package lined up if it ‘possibly’ proves permanent!”  Eliza’s voice gave the suggestion that she was at least trying to be comforting.  

“Don’t worry about it, after you blacked out from the pain, we got your eyes taken care of and the cobra venom washed out.  The few instances of permanent blindness tend to spring up from situations where the venom isn’t treated.  So in short, your vision should be coming back any time now, which is good because you’re going to need it the next time we go up against that sticky-fingered bitch.”  Aline sighed and began to slowly work her hands towards her eyes, as if tempted to make sure that they were still there.  

“You know what I think?  I think I need to get rid of this stupid mask and get me something actually useful you know, like goggles.”  It was at this point that things began to come into focus and she was just able to make out Eliza’s head going back and forth.  

“Trust me, goggles are not a good way to go -- they severally limit your field of vision , and quite frankly, they just look stupid.”  Aline crossed her arms and pointed towards the section of her chest that wasn’t covered by her costume.  

“What happened to people won’t be looking at my face?”  There was a long pause and Eliza reached down to pry the mask from its resting place.  

“Here’s a compromise, this thing we will be getting rid of.  But only because there might be some venom left on it and we don’t need it to get into your eyes at the wrong time.  Which is why I got you a new mask to replace it.”  No sooner had she removed one mask than the other one was put in place, though in retrospect she decided it was probably a good idea in case someone else entered the room suddenly.

“Okay, you know what, since I’m apparently going to be going toe-to-toe with our Rubber Bandit yet again, why don’t you tell me what happened after she spat in my face?”  A very crafty smile came to Eliza’s face.  

“Well, at that point I was ready to get back in the fight, unfortunately when I started shooting at her she turned into a rhinoceros.”  Aline raised her eyebrows wonder if her friend was pulling her stretchy leg.  

“A rhinoceros?”  Eliza nodded though her expression suggested that she was having a hard time believing what she was saying as Aline was what she was hearing.

“Yeah.  Then she charged me and I almost got gored on her horn.  Luckily she only did it once, then decided that I wasn’t worth it.  At which point she calmly walked over to the ruby’s case while I pumped rounds into her backside, smashed it, took the ruby in her mouth and revert to human before stretching out of the place.  That was when I managed to achieve the one success of the night, and put my last bullet into her.  Of course center mass shots are a lot less likely to hit a vital organ when the body in question is stretched out to be ten feet long, but I’m still....”  She patted the gun which she was now wearing holstered in plain sight on her right hip.  

“At least one of my companions did their job last night...”  Aline looked at the gun sourly, then realized the futility of getting into a competition for Eliza’s praise with an inanimate lump of metal, and she would act in a manner according with that realization as soon as she took one parting shot of her own.  

“So you hit her, big freaking deal.  I’m sure the bullet just bounced off of her body the same way it would have if you shot me.”  Eliza’s grabbed Aline’s head with both hands and pulled her close so that they saw each other eye-to-eye, even if Aline’s neck had to be stretched out rather noticeably in the process.  

“She doesn’t have the exact same powers that you do.”  Aline sighed heavily as she allowed her head to slip through Eliza’s grip and sag listlessly.  

“Your right, her powers are apparently even better than mine, given that I can’t grow tentacles or hawk up poisonous loogies.”  Eliza got down with her hands and knees on the floor so that she could continue to glare at her best friend.  

“There is no ’better’ when it comes to superpowers only different.  Were you not listening to the part where I told you that I when I shot her the bullet went into her body?  She has weakness that you don’t, so all we need to do is to exploit those weaknesses, the exact same way we did with Blaze, it’s just that Becky’s weaknesses are somewhat less obvious.  But we can start that process by making her steal what we want instead of letting her pick and choose targets.”  Aline retracted her head and as she did so Eliza stood back up.  

“Okay, but fill me in, how exactly are we going to make her go for one particular object in a city filled with countless precious statues and paintings?”  The only response she got at first was a smile.

-----

Becky dropped the bullet that she had removed from her body after a DIY surgery.  She shook the glass jar that it had been dropped into and smiled.  Looking around her home she spoke aloud to the silent walls.  

“You know, if I hadn’t been able to shift my nervous system into a state where I can’t feel pain, then that would been a real bitch to get out!”  Now that the offending lump of lead was no longer playing merry hell with her insides she was able to use her powers to speed up her recovery, she estimated that in an hour or so she’d be fine.  

She stretched her left arm out to pick up a pen and her right to pick up a piece a roll of tape.  Slipping the pen between her teeth like a pirate who needed some place to store their cutlass, pulled off a fair length of tape and then yanked it free from the roll and attached it to the bottle.  

That task accomplished it was just a matter of spitting out the pen (and catching it with her left hand before it hit the floor) while she held the bottle steady and got to work writing.  Once she had scrawled a quick message on the piece of tape she took a step back to admire her work.  

“Bullet I got shot with while fighting Elastica, yep, that says it all.”  Then lacking a better place to put it for the moment, Becky tossed the Mirai Ruby into bottle as well.  Her truly precious treasure safely taken care of, she now calmly turned around and looked at the newspapers she’d picked up on her way back in after her night on the town.  After sorting through them, Becky made a few quick notes.  

“Trap, trap, trap, trap, trap TRAP, TRAPPPITY, BIG OLD HONKIN’ TRAP!”  Becky studied these notes intently for a few moments as if they were some ancient text instead of a few brief scrawls she had made not thirty seconds ago.  

“Oh yeah, this is only one giant trap.  So if I’m gonna walk right into it then I think I’ll need some heavy firepower, in fact, I think it just might be time to break out some biological weapons.”

----

It didn’t sound easy to arrange a prestigious auction on the fly, but somehow either Eliza or her company had managed to pull it off.  So while rich people bid on various items for some worthy charity or another she had a private conversation with her press agent.  

“I saw the newspaper article on what happened at the museum.”  Eliza shot a quick smile at her.

“Yeah I know, nice piece of work wasn’t it?”  The most Aline would give her friend was that the article in question had been a real piece of something.  

“I couldn’t help but notice the part where you talk about how the quick actions of Elastica presented any sort of loss of life.”  Eliza just shrugged.  

“Hey what can I say, I’m your press agent, it’s my job is to make sure that people think the best things possible about you.”  Aline was left somewhat flustered and extremely incredulous about the situation.  

“Yeah, but I think its pretty clear that Becky was never thinking about killing anyone in the first place, I mean its not like she tried to stick around and off you before she made her escape.”  Eliza once again gave a smile which suggested that she might as well have been rubbing her hands together and letting loose with a malevolent cackle.  

“Elastica, let me make something perfectly clear to you.  No one died last night.  Now that said, you need to know that there are three kinds of mistruths in the world: lies, damn lies, and statistics.  The third of them is the most insidious, but if we don’t make use of them, then sooner or later somebody else will....”  While they were having this conversation the necessary stage hands were rolling out the final item being auctioned off -- the very first mask worn by the superheroine Elastica, its authenticity assured by the presence of the superheroine herself.  

Halfway through a somewhat long-winded description of what a tremendous memento this was, the auctioneer began to sniff the air hesitantly.  He wasn’t the only one: a particular scent was starting to waft through the room, and it smelled ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE!  The closest thing that Aline could compare it to was a demonic mix of old eggs and burnt rubber.  

People began to cough and wheeze, a few in the back departing the room.  Then a white-gloved hand emerged from an air vent holding a glass bottle.  It let go of the bottle and it shattered.  At this point the smell became exponentially stronger, and peoples faces were all but literally turning green.  A mocking voice called down into the room from the same vent which had produced the container.  

“You boys and girls might want to start vacating the premises. That’s only enough skunk scent to send any dogs around for miles heading for the hills!”  Without a second thought Eliza began to hike up her shirt over her mouth and nose with one hand while she reached for her gun with the other.  

“You heard the crazy lady folks, leave the day-saving to the professionals. You all just try to get out of here before the only thing you can do to get that scent out of your outfits is give them a Viking funeral!”  Sure enough, people (some of that half-gagging from the stench) began to abandon the room  in a fairly orderly manner until only Eliza and Aline were left.  

At that point the white-gloved hand shot out of the vent and began to work its way down towards Elastica’s first mask, still on the same display table it had been resting on when people had been bidding for it.  Without even trying particularly hard, Aline wrapped her arm around the offending extremity and yanked hard.  

What happened next was not at all what she was expecting, the arm was yanked cleanly off of whatever it had been connected of.  A moment later Becky’s smiling face came into view leering down at them.  “You know, octopuses, or is that octopi, I can never keep them straight, whatever, those things have a whole bunch of tricks up their eight metaphorical sleeves.  For example they can detach limbs, which is a good thing since I haven’t figured how to do the lizard trick with anything but a tail.”  

As she spoke she released her grip and dropped to the floor (her body sporting a pair of perfectly normal looking arms) without her expression changing in the slightest.  Aline who was breathing through her mouth like it was going out of style took a moment to stretch her nostrils closed, just to make sure she couldn’t possibly comprehend the smell that was filling the room.  

“How are you able to just stand there smiling?”  Becky rose to her feet, in the process countless bones seeming to pop back into place as if her body was changing from a quadrupedal configuration to the one she had been born with.  

“Oh that’s easy.  At the moment I have all the olfactory prowess of a sea cucumber thanks to playing around with my biology.  Want to know how I got so much ‘essence of polecat’ so quickly?  It’s a funny story...”  Eliza leaned against the podium looking like she was about to collapse from the sheer strength of the odor that was filling the room.  

“You know what story I want to hear at the moment?  The one where I take you to the cleaners, and not just to make you pay whatever it costs to cleanse every single fiber of this outfit right down to the smallest quark!”  She held her gun in both hands and looked down the barrel at Becky who was still doing what seemed like an overly-elaborate warm-up routine.  

“You know, Mrs. Trigger Happy, high blood pressure can lead to a only about a dozen different medical conditions that are likely to put you in an early grave.”  Eliza eased the safety off.  

“So can lead poisoning, but apparently I didn’t give you quite a high enough dose last time.”  Becky started running towards Eliza who started firing.  BANG!  The bullet flew over the head of a sleek cheetah.  BANG!  The bullet was hopped over by a kangaroo.  BANG!  The bullet had missed a sickening sweet-looking Dachshund by a considerable margin.  BANG!  A bald eagle took flight heading straight for Eliza.  BANG!  The bullet was lost in the roof as the bird’s talons raked Eliza’s hands making her drop the gun and culched her bleeding hand.  

“Oh I don’t care if your endangered or not, I’ll still throttle you with the one good I hand  I have left!”  It was at this point that the large bird of prey suddenly turned into a much larger bear that reared up on its back legs.  “Elastica, little help?”  The bear’s huge meaty paw swung forward, but luckily Aline’s arm had wrapped around her friend’s middle and yanked her out of the way.  

“You get out of here, and try to find yourself enough tomato juice to fill a bathtub!”  Eliza nodded and proceeded to run from the room. Becky let her go without showing any desire to chase the superpowerless woman.  In fact Becky even returned to her normal human appearance raising both of her hands in clenched fists.  

“All right then, here we go, round two of this little tango.”  Aline stood up tall and proud, ready for the fight that she obviously had coming.  

“Yeah, except that unlike a videogame, after I win this one, there won’t be any round three!”  Becky’s hands once again stretched out toward the mask, in response Aline jumped, curled her body into a sphere, rebounded off of a wall, the floor, and then slammed straight into Becky’s face.  The younger woman reeled backwards, her neck stretching with a most unpleasant sound accompanying it.  As Aline uncurled Becky’s head was left hanging down to about her stomach looking towards the wall behind her.  This grotesque sight lasted for all of five seconds before Becky literally got her head on straight, though there was still quite obviously a trickle of crimson liquid flowing from her nostrils.  

“Wou bwoke wy nodes!”  She pressed a hand to the part of her face in question, and with another less than pleasant sound, she twisted her nose back to normal, and the flow of blood promptly abated.  

“You’re really serious about this aren’t you?”  Aline who had by this point returned to her normal appearance nodded.  

“This might be a game to you, but it’s a job to me.”  Becky’s cheeks suddenly began to puff up, but Aline knew what to expect this time.  The thief spat forth a stream of clear liquid venom, but given the distance between them, and the fact that Elastica knew how to dodge bullets, twisting out of the way of some toxic spittle was easy. In fact in the process she even managed to throw in a powerful right hook which nailed Becky’s middle.  Once more, her body was distorted by the blow, but rather than snapping back the way Aline’s would have, Becky toppled over to lay on the floor.  

“Oh that was so not fun!”  Her body once again began to return to normal but Aline wasn’t about to give her enough time to recover.  Her arms shot intending to grab hold of her opponent, but it turned out that Becky was just a bit too canny for that.  Her body began to take on a scaly appearance and she managed (even laying on her back) to wiggle her way along the floor at a ridiculous pace.  

Aline was hot on her heels however, and she thinned her hands down into giant scoops that she slipped under Becky’s body.  By this point however Becky had apparently regained some of her snap and proceeded to leap at Aline pinning her to the ground.  Luckily Aline was able to stretch out her legs bending them backwards to wrap around Becky’s middle and hurl the other woman against a nearby wall.  

The shapeshifting woman slammed against it, and was left awkwardly teetering on her feet.  Seeing her chance to finish the fight Aline stretched out her arms, grabbed Becky’s and started pulling.  Becky tried to slip her arms free, but couldn’t’ and Aline mercilessly tied them in a simple knot that slowly began to get more and more and more complex as she further stretched out Becky’s arms.  

Then she did the same thing with the woman’s legs eventually tying that knot into the one made of Becky’s arms leaving her entire body bound into one pretzel.  She rocked back and forth on her shoulders, her eyes expressively crossed.  

“Dear God, do you realize just how painful this is?!  Do you?!!”  It was at this point that Eliza re-entered the room, somehow having managed to find what looked like a WW1 gas mask so as to protect her sinuses.  

“Oh don’t worry, now that you’re not going anywhere, I’ve got something right here that’ll make all your problems go away.”  Becky continued to rock back and forth, saliva dripping from her mouth.  

“Sedate me, tranquilize me, anaesthetize me, just get this frickin’ thing over with already!”  Eliza bent down and gave her he necessary injection.  For a few moments she just lay there, and then the look of pain vanished and once more she smiled.  

“And there we go... about frickin’ time...”  Her eyes closed and her body went limp.  Aline looked hesitantly at Eliza.  

“We’re going to wait a few moments to untie her just in case she’s faking right?”  The gas mask muffled Eliza’s response, but not to the point of intelligibility.  

“Untie her?  You and me just aren’t going to bother doing that at all, the company has people to take care of that kind of thing.  Now let’s carry her out to the car, and after we turn her over I’ll see if I can get The Company to pay for another new one since we’re gonna need a priest to exorcise the stink out of my current one once we’re done with it.”

----


It was twenty four hours later and the two had just finished a much more mundane days worth of work which mainly consisted of training. Aline whipped off her hands as she got back into Eliza’s car.  

“I hope whoever runs that special prison of yours for PMDs who commit crimes is really on the ball.  The last thing I need is to see Becky the ‘Rubber Bandit’ again any time soon.”  Once more Aline missed a subtle paling of her friend’s face as she opened the driver’s side door and took up position behind the wheel.  

“Well I can guarantee that she won’t be stealing anything.  That said...”  Before Eliza couldn’t get to the end of this sentence Aline closed the door behind her and a third voice joined the conversation.  

“Konnichiwa, Elastica!”  Aline jumped out of her seat, flattened her skull against the ceiling momentarily, then twisted her neck about and found herself face to face with Becky who had suddenly appeared in the backseat.  

“Eliza, are you seeing her here also, or am I just going crazy the way you said I would?”  Becky leaned back and pouted like a child told she couldn’t have dessert till she finished her vegetables.  

“You could show your number one fan a bit more appreciation.”  Aline realized how pointless it would be to argue with Becky, deciding to shift her focus to the car’s driver.  

“Okay, since she obviously isn’t going to get around to it any time soon why don’t you explain to me what she’s doing in here, hell can you explain how she got in here all of a sudden she wasn’t here when I opened the door!”  Becky didn’t give Eliza a chance to respond however.  

“I was so here, it’s just that nobody seemed to ever notice something like a tarantula hidden under their chair.”  Aline mutely just kept pointing at Becky waiting for Eliza to acknowledge that she had heard her as well, which luckily was quick in coming.  

“Well the boys in charge of The Company decided that since she only committed breaking and entering...”  Once more Becky butted into the conversation.  

“Hey it was just ‘entering’ I didn’t need to break anything to get in!”  Eliza kept right on talking without letting her voice change tones in the slightest.  

“And grand larceny, which as PMD crimes go, is fairly far down on the list.  So in exchange for playing along and telling us where she stashed the Mirai Ruby and letting us know everything she does about everyone she’s ever worked with, her sentence has been committed to a rather unique form of community service...”  

“I’m going to be your sidekick, Shifter, or maybe just Shift, I’m not quite sure yet...”  Eliza gave a quick gesture of helplessness at the bureaucratic practices of her employers before starting the car’s engine.  After a few seconds of contemplation Aline still hadn’t been able to wrap her mind around what was going on, but she had at least undone all the twists in her neck.  

“There’s no way that this is going to work.   She’s a supervillianess, people are going to notice!”  Becky’s face flickered through about fifteen different permutations, different faces appearing and vanishing before Aline could truly comprehend them before finally going back to the one she’d been ‘wearing’ to start with.   

“Point one do you know how many people I’ve let see my ‘actual’ face beside you two recently?  The answers zero, and not just because I tend not to be seen, I mean seriously, superpowers are a huge improvement over ski-masks, after all, who could miss the sensation of having wool rubbing against their face whenever they’re working?  But, so long as I’m going to be working with you guys I might as well change my hair color so that I stand out from your friend.”  Sure enough in the blink of an eye, Becky had gone from blond to brunette.  Aline still had one major question left.  

“And the reason we’re going to trust her?”  Eliza sighed as she leaned back in her chair directing a bored look at the newest member of their crime-fighting team.  

“Show her the bracelet.”  Becky with an equal lack of emotion rolled up her right sleeve revealing a glowing blue bracelet.  

“It’s not exactly in my colors, or at least what my current colors are, but I’m sure it’ll be useful when I go cycling at night.”  Then she once again pulled the sleeve back up to its full length while Eliza got back to giving driving her full attention.  

“The Company used to use collars, but some people complained that they were too demeaning, not to mention too obvious.  That thing contains a Taser powerful enough to give its wearer a shock that will cause her quite a bit of pain.  If she keeps pushing it, a level which will cause your average human to go unconscious, and after that, cardiac arres,t with the voltage ready to go even higher just in case.  There’s also a needle ready to inject a powerful sedative into her bloodstream, there hasn’t been a single person anywhere who has ever escaped one, so I doubt she’ll be the first.  Oh and there’s also a tracer, so we’ll know where she is at all time.”  Becky was blithely unconcerned about the fact that she now had a technological ball-and-chain around her wrist.  

“Yeah, but what really matters is that I got what I wanted, and everybody knows I always get what I want!”   Now it was Aline’s turn to once again fix the young thief with a withering glare.  

“Yeah, right, this is what you want?”  Becky’s arms grew long enough to wrap around Aline’s body and pull her back against her chair in an elastic hug.

“Of course I did!  I mean you guys wouldn’t have taken me seriously if I just walked in the door and said I wanted to be a superheroine, so I had to impress you by making you tear out a few hairs first.”  Aline slipped out of Becky’s hands, whipping a bead of sweat from her forehead.  

“She’s staying with us isn’t she?”  Eliza’s nod ironically showed through a complete lack of emotion that she was secretly harboring the exact same emotions as her friend.  

“Yep.  Meet your cousin Rebecca from out of town.”  Aline thought about the apartment then stretched out an arm and looped it around to point at while purposely avoiding eye contact with the subject of the sentence.

“You’re sleeping on the couch.”  Of course, as she was quickly discovering was par for the course, nothing could dampen their new roommate’s spirits.  

“An entire couch to myself, sweet!”

---

“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey!”  Aline’s first thought was a quick pondering if, as a superheroine, the law would be more lenient with her than with most people.  Her second was wondering why she’d even bothered with the first, any jury of her peers who had ever been awakened in such a manner would consider it justifiable homicide before the judge ruled the court was now in session.  

Then her nose and eyes started functioning, and she realized that in addition to that painfully exuberant chant, Becky had also brought what actually amounted to breakfast in bed with her into Aline’s room.  She just stared at the plates and glass of orange juice that were sitting on her lap.  

“All this is for me?”  Becky nodded as pleasantly as you could ask.  

“Well of course, I already made my breakfast and ate it first.  So what do you think?”  Aline looked Becky over again.  Maybe living with someone who seemed to have endless supply of energy and unwavering devotion to her wouldn’t be so bad after all.  

“I think we might have to think about spending some of my money to buy a couch that actually folds out...”