The trail by fire of Elastica

The trail by fire of Elastica.

“Wake up already!”  It was not just with a most ungracious shout that Aline was awoken, but she was actively shoved off the bed a few moments later.  Aline’s eyes shot open, and she twisted about to face Eliza.  “Hey, what was that for?”  Eliza bent down and slowly swept her hand across the room.  

“Well first of all, the next time you wake up and need to use the bathroom, get up and walk there like everyone else rather then just stretching the lower half of your body into it.  This place looks like an obstacle course, and I get enough of manuvering my way through those at work.  Take a look at what I had to make my way through in order to get here...”  

She bent down, grabbed Aline’s neck and pulled.  After extending her friend’s neck above the bed Aline could see that her legs were stretched out leading away from her bed and right out the door.  “My legs on their own are hardly an obstacle course,  they’re more like a carelessly strewn cable if you think about it.”  

Eliza let go of Aline’s neck and crossed her arms in irritation.  “You may say that now, but remember this, when you take care of your business and then forget to reel in your legs I’m left with no place to go unless I literally kick your ass off the can.”  Aline blushed as she began to retracted her limbs.  “Umm, sorry about that, let me try and get myself in some semblance of order...”  

Soon enough she was able to stand up and took a moment to stretch her arms, said limbs gaining about a foot in length during the process.  “So what are you going to shoot me with as part of our training today?  A bazooka, a tank, an artillery piece?  Maybe you just want me to stand around on some spot marked with an ‘X’ all day until the bomber shows up?”  

Eliza shook her head and pointed forcefully towards Aline’s closet.  “Not even close.  What I need you to do today is to get out of that nightshirt and into your suit, we’re going to the beach.”  Filled with a sudden burst of energy, Aline’s hands reached halfway across the room in an instant, pulling out two seperate outfits.  “Finally, it’s about time I got a break!  Which do you think I’d look better in, one-piece or two-piece?”  

However when she looked at her friends face she saw only scowling disapproval.  “I want you to wear your other suit.”  Aline’s glance shifted between the two outfits slowly.  “These are the only swimming suits I own.”  Eliza was by this point clenching her fists so hard that her veins had become quite readily visible.  “No, I want, you to wear, your, other, suit.”  

It was a weary and defeated sigh that left Aline’s throat about five seconds later when her still-waking mind finally caught on.  “Fine, but we better be able to eat breakfast first.”  “I’ve got a bag lunch waiting for you in the car, now get moving, we don’t have time to waste.”

----

Of course ironically once both of them were in the car there was plenty of time for them to make near-pointless conversation.  “Seriously, you wake me up, and practically the first thing you tell me is that we’re going to the beach and to get my suit, and I’m suppose to be able to tell that you’re telling me there’s a PMD running amuck out there and I need to get into costume from that?”  

Eliza shrugged as she pressed down firmly enough on the car’s accelerator that Aline would swear she could feel her body being squished by the force of acceleration.  “Well it would have been nice for me not to have had to spell it out to you in big block letters along with semaphore subtitles.”

This early in the morning Aline could match Eliza glare for glare however.  “Well if you wanted to tell it to me, why didn’t you just tell it to me?  We were the only ones in the room, so its not like you needed to whisper it to me in spy speak.”  Eliza pressed down on the peddle even harder.  

“The point of me using opaque language was training, by the sheer law of averages alone there are going to come times when I’ll need to say something private to you while we’re in a public place and the more effort we make at being able to develop a language unique to the two of us, the more fluent we’ll both become in it.  

Of course, as things stand at the moment, obviously we can’t afford to focus on cryptology until after we’ve dealt with the more immediate threat.”  Aline’s arm twisted about, going over her shoulder, down the slope of her chair, and probed around in the backseat for a few moments until she was able to locate the necessary brown bag.

“So since you’re always going on and on about how important information is in a situation like this, why don’t you explain to me exactly what is going on in crystal-clear terms while I eat this sandwich you were kind enough to make for me?”  

Eliza chuckled.  “I didn’t make it, I just bought it.  Anyway, this morning I got a call that there was a PMD, at the beach, and it has flame-based powers...”  “It?”  Aline said the word quickly before taking a big bite out of the sandwich.  

“Yes, ‘it’ our intelligence boys haven’t taken a good enough look at this particular PMD to let them determine the sex.  Not to mention there were some PMDs that in all fairness can really don’t deserve to be called either male or female  after the way that they’ve been changed by Formula 31888. Moral of the story, some times you just need to see things with your own eyes before you can be sure.”

---

“And then there are situations like this one, where you can see things with your own eyes and still not be sure of just what is going on.”  Aline didn’t blame Eliza, quite frankly she wasn’t about believe her eyes either.  Before them was a vaguely feminine figure completely covered by flickering red and orange flames.  

She was somehow doing a backstroke through midair and turned to lazily face them as they got out of the car.  “Aww, what’s this?  More friends to play with, so much fun!”  She traced her hand about in midair momentarily creating a burning heart which vanished just as quickly as it had come into being.   “I was looking for someone to play with ever since all those other jerks ran away just because I was trying to heat things up a little!”  

Eliza gave a quick bow to her partner.  “You know what Elastica, this looks clearly like a job for you instead of your press agent, so why do you go ahead and step up to the plate?”  Aline sighed, for the moment this ball of flame didn’t seem to be hurting anyone so she decided to try and be cordial.  “Umm, so uhh what’s your name?”  Somehow through the haze of flames, she was able to see some kind of a smile.  

“Blaze...”  She took a moment to look at her hands and then shook her head.  “You know, I sorta wish that I could remember how exactly this happened...  The guy with that needle saying that he was going to give me the ultimate high.... of course he wasn’t really lying was he?  This is amazing!  Won’t end though, cash, food, all that stuff is pointless when it turns to ash in your hands.  

The future is ash, the past is smoke, and all that’s left is the moment, and the fun!  Like I was going to have with all the people who were here before you, it was so hilarious the way they screamed and ran when I tried to make sure that they got a nice all-over tan!”  Eliza and Aline exchanged looks.  “Umm, Blaze would you mind coming down?”  

The fiery figure drifted closer and lower to the ground and Eliza winced and began to take several steps back.  “I can’t come down!  Haven’t you noticed that yet?”  Surely enough, no matter what she tried to do, Blaze couldn’t get her feet to touch the ground.  “Well listen Blaze, if you would come with us, there are some very nice men who will help you with that, right?”  

Eliza nodded along with her friend’s words, but then grabbed hold of Aline’s hair and yanked her backwards before whispering a few choice words into her ear.  “That fireball has no control over her powers, probably because something tells me self-control isn’t exactly her strong suit.”  

Blaze lifted back up into the air shaking her head back and forth.  “Come with you?  Hah!  You make it sound like I want to come down, why shouldn’t I be like this, why shouldn’t I enjoy the ultimate high?  Especially now that I’ve got some friends to play with, catch me if you can slowpokes!”  

With that she immediately began to jet away from them, the flames trailing behind her creating disjointed patterns in the sky.  Aline sighed and then began to send her outreaching arms chasing after Blaze, but the fiery girl evaded her at every turn.  After about two minutes of back-and-forth Eliza tapped Aline on the shoulder.  

“Look, she’s clearly a lot more mauneverable up there than your arms are.  Why don’t you try bringing her down to our level?”  Aline began to retract her limbs before doing a quick “Linda Blair” and twisting her head around so that she could look at who she was speaking to.  

“How exactly do you suggest I do that?”  Eliza kicked at the ground.  “We’re only standing on a couple tons of sand, and pouring sand on a fire is only one of the most well known ways of extinguishing a flame.”  Aline looked down at the beach, and sighed.  “Okay, then I’ll take my best shot at it....”  

She enlarged her hands, dug them into the ground and picked up a huge helping of sand, then waited till Blaze came relatively close to her before hurling the load of sediment at her target   Sadly, by the time the sand had crossed the space between the two of them, it had become a pathetically spread out brown mist, that Blaze was able to fly right through without difficulty.  

The fiery woman looked down at Aline and seemed to burn all the brighter after for a moment.  “That was the best you could do?  Well then I guess that makes it my turn!”  She held out her hands and suddenly a ball of fire began to form between them.  Then once it was the size of a volley ball she hurled it down at Aline who quickly bounced away from the ball of fire’s destination on suddenly spring-like legs.  

The ball of fire struck the sand and quickly burnt itself out, but Blaze was already working on creating yet another.  “Ehh big deal, I missed with my first shot, I’ve got way more shots in here than you can possibly believe.”  “That makes two of us.”  Eliza was in her standard firing stance, both hands steading a gun pointed right at Blaze, and she pulled the trigger, again, and again, and again.  

But watching closely Aline couldn’t help but notice that the bullets all became nothing but little smears of grey as they approached Blaze who was remarkably amused by this turn of events.  “Aww, poor little thing, looks like your lead bullets can’t stand the heat!  Now that I’ve had all the rounds you’ve got, lets see if you can weather even one of mine!”   

She launched a ball of fire downwards. Eliza started running, and Aline started stretching towards her friend.  Unfortunately, neither of them were Blaze’s target, as this second ball of flame slammed against Eliza’s car.  It was engulfed in by the burning orb, and then exploded a few seconds later.  

Without even thinking about it, Aline promptly made sure to fully engulf Eliza’s body with her own, lest her friend be struck by a piece of shrapnel and develop another one of those profusely bleeding head wounds.  A quick after-the-blast inspection showed that there wasn’t a mark on Eliza’s body, but all the same she seemed to have been knocked unconscious.  

“Aww, did she decide to take a nap all of a sudden?”  Well at least I’ve still got you around to keep me entertained!”   She began to generate another ball of flames between her hands, and having no desire to let Eliza get hurt by the attack Blaze would doubtlessly soon launch at her still-active superpowered opponent.  

As she stretched away from her friend she suddenly realized that it’d been foolish for her to play around with the sand, when she had so much water to work with right at her fingertips!  That was how you put a fire out after all, at least how all reasonable people put out a fire.  She barely even felt the resulting blast of heat from Blaze’s attack as her entire body slipped underwater.  

As she swum around for a moment, she could vaguely hear taunts being directed down at her from above.  “Hide and seek is it?  Seems more like ‘how long can you hold your breath’ to me at the moment!  Besides, I could probably turn this entire ocean into one big fish fry if I had the patience for that kind of thing.  

Since I don’t, I’ll just wait for your head to pop back up, and then it’ll be time to burn rubber!”  Aline had no intentions of returning to the surface empty handed however, or perhaps, on an empty stomach much be a more accurate turn of phrase.  She opened her mouth and rapidly began to drink in the all but unlimited amount of water that surrounded her.  

Her body, not wanting to drown, initially directed this liquid to her stomach, and Aline simply poured the pressure on, drawing in more and more water.  Eventually she’d drank in so much water that it’d caused her belly to bloat outwards to the point that her figure would have seemed vastly more appropriate for a patient in a maternity clinic than a superheroine, not to mention made her only as heavy as the water around her, causing her to rise to the surface.  

She bobbed up and down on her huge belly like a child’s toy in a bathtub while Blaze suddenly “fell backwards” laying perfectly horizontal in midair and laughing uproariously.  “Oh that’s rich!  If only you could see yourself, I don’t think you can even possible imagine just how ridiculous you look at the moment!”  

Aline didn’t care what Blaze said, in fact it was a good thing that she was distracted, as Elastica used her power to try and compress her fluid-filled middle, in effect turning her entire body into a giant squirt gun spitting forth a blast of H2O at her unsuspecting opponent.  

The water washed over Blaze, creating a hissing sound that it would have taken an entire cursed temple full of snakes to replicate, and concealing her body in a mist of steam as she plummeted towards the water.  However about ten feet before she was submerged, Blaze shot upwards out of the cloud of mist, her entire body once again completely alight.  
“Nice try bounce-for-brains!  Did you think I didn’t try to put myself out at first?  Ain’t gonna happen, Blaze burns too bright!  In fact, let’s forget playing catch, I think it’s time to crank up the heat!”  Blaze held out both of her hands toward Aline and a stream of flame poured fourth from them.  

Desperately Aline once again managed to press down on her belly and spit out more water, but Blaze’s flames just evaporated the water and kept right on coming, slamming into Elastica’s still rather distended belly.  Despite she fact that she should have been developing third-degree burns all over her body, Aline was actually fairly comfortable, she could feel the heat, and yet it also in some strange way felt like it didn’t matter.  

She was much more concerned about the hissing sound emanating from her belly, not to mention the fact that it was starting to grow larger again.  That worry only grew worse as she noticed everywhere she looked she was growing larger.  Aline held up her hands and before her eyes she watched in shock as her once slim fingers became thick and stubby, her arms growing unusually large, her entire body now rising out of the water and drifting about on top of it with unnatural ease.  

Blaze stopped the flames and took a moment to examine her opponent’s unusual condition.  “Huh... oh!  I get it, my fire must have vaporized all that water you drank and all that steam is turning you into a giant pool float!  Fun!  Of course I think I can do even better if you’ll give me a moment...”  

Blaze dove downwards, her fiery hands grabbing hold of Aline’s neck, being this close to a woman engulfed in flames was more than her body could bear, like a ruptured balloon her neck suddenly deflated and hung limply downwards from her shoulders.  Of course this was just fine with Blaze since it left her head drifting bellow the water line.  

“Now be a good little girl and make sure to drink plenty of water, like eight or nine gallons a day!”  Seeing no alternative, Aline began gulping down water which just barely had time to flow into her body before it evaporated due to the heat created by Blaze being so close to her.  

Her neck reinflated, but even as it did, this just gave her a perfect vantage point to watch how her ‘neck’ was slowly becoming nothing but a memory as her body puffed up even further.  Her arms and legs were suffering the same fate, at first they’d just gotten big, but now her middle was billowing out so far that it was staring to absorb her limbs.  Before long she was nothing but a giant ball adrift on the waves.

“Aww that’s just the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!  Now that I’ve got my little beach ball properly inflated, let's have some fun with you!”  Blaze grabbed hold of Aline’s bloated body and tossed her up into the air.  Then as Aline began to drift downwards slowly (she was after all an extra large air-filled balloon) Blaze flew after her, and proceeded to throw an uppercut at her which knocked her even higher into the air.  

The ground seemed to grow further and further away as Blaze delivered one blow to her after another, and at one point she actually laid on her back in mid air, kicking at her every time she drifted near.  Eventually however she finally allowed her to softly touch down on the ground.  Aline tried to stretch herself, but she was too full of air to do anything...  

“Ehh, you’re fun and all, but I wana get some new toys.  But the way I see it, I should leave you with something to remember me by.  Maybe since our association started with you trying to bury me in sand I should return the favor!”  She flew close to the ground and flipped over so she was looking at the beach and grabbed hold of a handful of sand which began to glisten strangely in her fingertips.  

“I always was something of a whiz in art class, now let’s do a little impromptu glass blowing. After all, I’ve got all the sand and heat I could possibly need!”  As Aline lay there helplessly to move Blaze slowly but surely constructed an entire glass sphere around Aline by grabbing handfuls of soft sand, and pressing them against her inflated body until they’d been properly cooked by the flames that never ceased to radiate from her body.  

“And now the piece de resistance, a proper stopper to stop you from being able to exhale out all that stream, since, trust me, that puffy spherical look is just so you!”  After finishing her makeshift prison, Blaze lazily drifted away from her handiwork.  “Yep, not a bad bit of work if I do say so myself.  Now you stay right here, as if you’ve got a choice, and I’m off to the city to go find all kinds of fun people to play around with!”  

She flew off leaving, Aline with nothing to do but watch her slowly drift away while she sat there.  “Well that didn’t exactly go splendidly...”  Aline did the one thing she could, shift her eyes slightly and saw Eliza approaching her.  She tried to say something but it was muffled by the makeshift bottle around her

“Thanks for saving me when that burning bitch blew up my car now let me return the favor.  Of course I’ve got to aim this shot just right...”  She drew her gun from its holster, assumed a to handed grip, aimed, Aline closed her eyes and Eliza pulled the trigger.  She felt a bullet strike her inflated body, luckily she didn’t pop like a balloon pricked with a pin, in fact quite the opposite, it was as if her inflated state made her body more resilient like a giant punching bag.    

When she opened her eyes up again, the giant glass ball around her was gone, apparently having been reduced into countless small shards, a though which once again made her very glad that her rubber body was impossible to cut.  “There, you’re out, now why don’t you try to figure out how to get yourself back to being fighting trim?”  

Aline bounced up and down slightly, a few short hops managing to take her out of the small minefield of the destruction of her jail had left behind.  “Look, um maybe if you could put some pressure on me I could puff all this out?”  Eliza returned her gun to its holster, and sighed.  “This, is definitely not in my job description.  Look,  you might not be able to control your body, but do you think you could make your hair longer, a lot longer?”  

Aline glowered downwards.  “Exactly what good would that do?”  Eliza made a slowly hand over hand gesture, as if she was climbing up an invisible ladder.  “Because I’m going to need something to grip if you want me to get into a position where I can properly put some pressure on you.”  

Aline tried, and sure enough, in a few moments several long tendrils of jet hair were pressuring along the sand.  Eliza took two of them, tied them in a quick knot around her middle and then grabbed hold of a third.  “All right, my rubbery Rapunzle, let's get this done right the first time.”  She climbed up the side of Aline’s body until she was sitting on top of her best friend.  “Okay, I’m going to jump up and down on you and if that isn’t enough pressure to force that steam out of you, then we’re gonna need a battering ram.  Here goes...”  

Eliza jumped up and when she came down Aline made sure to exhale as hard as she possibly could.   Sounding like a cross between the world’s largest tea kettle and the world’s largest whoopee cushion she let loose with  huge blast of steam and flew at least a good hundred feet along the beach, in the process deflating back down to her normal appearance.  

Glad to have a stomach that once again sloped inwards instead of pushing violently outward, she playfully tapped her tummy and then quickly stretched back over to Eliza.  “You know it’s a good thing that you woke up again so soon or I might have been trapped in that bottle for hours on end!  Not to mention where did you get that extra bullet?  I didn’t see you grabbing any extra clips before you left the house. “  

Eliza began to reach for her sidearm, but stopped herself.  “You know, you just made me really want to pistol-whip you for how stupid you were being...  First of all, I wasn’t knocked unconscious by the car, I was just playing dead since I realized that I couldn’t help you and would only end up getting deep-fried for my trouble if I tried.  

As for the bullet, you’re right, I didn’t bring any extra clips, but company policy is that you always leave one bullet left in your piece in case a target of opportunity presents itself to you.  Now then, we need to get back in the game and go stop that combustible... I won’t say it, before she can do any more harm?”  

Aline looked helpless in the direction that Blaze had vanished.  “How exactly are we going to do that?  She destroyed your car and while I can get places fast by stretching, I doubt that I’ll be able to catch up to her...”  Suddenly Aline’s ears were filled with the sounds of a spinning rotary blade, and she looked up and saw a helicopter approaching.  “Well you see while I was playing possum, I also called in a somewhat more up-scale method of transport...”

----


As they flew into the city Aline was forced to sit in the backseat while Eliza got to ride shotgun, and considering that the helicopter they were in seemed to be right out of an action movie, there was a reasonable possibility that she was now in command of weapons considerably more dangerous than your average shotgun.  

“How exactly am I suppose to stop her Eliza?  Whenever I go near Blaze I end up going... well, ‘all melty’ for lack of a better term.  Heck, how that can even happen to me, I thought you said the costume was completely unflammable!”  Eliza tried to shift around to look at Aline, but the seatbelts she was wearing at the moment were much more restrictive then those you’d end up wearing while travelling in most civilian vehicles.  

“Just because your costume is completely fire proof doesn’t mean you are.  But look on the bright side. You can be exposed to the kind of temperature which would fry the skin from an ordinary person’s bones, and the worst you have to deal with is a little melting.  If I had a first-hand experience with Blaze then I’d be toast in every sense of the word.”  

Aline fidgeted with her restraints slightly as she looked out the nearby window.  “Okay, that’s all fine and well, she hasn’t been able to kill me as easily as she could you guys, but we’re still not any closer to figuring out how to stop her.”  Eliza shook her head, even though Aline could only see the back side of it.  “Remember, I saw you two fight.  You almost had her on the ropes when you sprayed her with water.  

The problem is that so long as she’s conscious her body will continue to transform any and all nearby oxygen into flames.  We’ve tried sand and water and they haven’t worked, so next time no messing around. Instead we’ll going to cut that little firebug off at the source, by depriving her of oxygen.”  

“And we’re going to do this how?”  Eliza might not be able to turn around, but she could twist her arm enough to point squarely at Aline.  “How do you think?  She can’t permanently harm you with her flames, so you’re going to completely cover her body with your own like a living fireblanket.

Once you’ve done that she’ll burn herself out and go unconscious.  After that, I’ll administered a special tranquillizer that we’ve a dose of on board this ship which will knock her out for a full twenty-four hours.  By time she wakes up we’ll have taken care of seeing to it that she’s properly restrained.  Then we can all breath a heavy sigh of relief, and go home, mission accomplished.”  

Aline didn’t particularly like the plan (she couldn’t help but notice that just like all the other plans Eliza came up with, Elastica alway seemed to be up being the one who took the big risks) but couldn’t think of anything better, she decided to go along with it.  “All right then, let’s do this thing.  So how exactly do we find Blaze?”  

Eliza snickered and motioned for Aline to come closer.  “You think we actually have to ‘try’ to find her?  She’s only a giant ball of flame travelling around the city.  At least it would be any other day, would you believe that the weatherman predicted there was an 85% percent of random balls of flame showing up in the sky today?  Now get your head over here and take a look.”  

Since Aline didn’t want to waste time removing her safety straps, instead she lengthened her neck until she was able to drape it over Eliza’s chair and see what was going on.  Sure enough, there was Blaze right in front of them doing figure-eights above the city.  

“Agent Johnson take us up, we need to get above her so that we can have Elastica jump out and take her by surprise.”  The helicopter pilot, whose face had been more or less hidden by his helmet the one time Aline had seen it from the front (before she’d gotten into the helicopter) nodded and jerked back on the controls.  

Their craft rose upwards and now Aline could see Blaze out of her own window if she looked out it at the right angle.    “Good luck Elastica, all of our hopes and dreams are riding with you.”  Aline rolled her eyes at Eliza’s over the top dialogue, squirmed free from her restraints (with a little help from her powers), and got to work opening up a door through which she would make her exit.  

“Just make sure not to jump until I tell you to, the less distance there is between you an d her, the less time she’ll have to react and the more likely you are to succeed.  Okay, steady, steady, steady, steady, steady... NOW!”  Aline jumped out the door, and sure enough she found herself plummeting downwards with Blaze only a stone's throw away.  

Out of sheer gut instinct she spread her entire body out turning herself into a human parachute.  It slowed her decent noticeably, but also ended up alerting her target.  “Hey, what’s with all the shade?”  Before Blaze could get away Aline quickly stretched out her entire body, curling it into a completely three hundred and sixty degree cage for the spontaneously-combusting criminal.  

For a few minutes she simply hovered there in midair like a surrealistically-styled hot air balloon, but then they began to head towards the ground at an ever-increasing rate.  At the same time, she was able to quite clearly make out Blaze’s grunts, shouts and screams of protest from within.  “Let me out of here!  Didn’t you learn your lesson back on the beach? I can’t be contained!  

I’m going to get out of here, and when I do, I’ll see to it that you’re nothing but a foul-smelling smear on some building by the time I’m done with you!”  Aline felt herself bounce off the ground and felt Blaze’s body getting tossed around inside her.  She began to try and tighten her grip to leave Blaze with less and less room to manuever, yet at the same time it also meant getting closer and closer to the flames which still encircled her in all directions.  

“This won’t work, I promise you, the sun always burns brightest right before it sets!”  Unfortunately Aline could see what she was getting at, she was starting to melt all over the place.  Blaze’s cell was starting to get smaller and smaller, and now it was against Aline’s wishes instead of because of them.  

She could feel it happening to the point that she was no longer a ball, but more of a tarp that just happened to be lying on top of Blaze, and the tarp was rapidly loosing all definition as it became a blob of green, white, and skin-colored goo.  

She felt Blaze’s struggle start to win her room, and then to her horror she saw a hand win its way free from its confines and instantly it burst into flames.  From that point onward no matter what Aline tried to do the end was inevitable, Blaze might as well have been simply climbing out of a sleeping bag until she had fully emerged from Aline’s body, a body which was now so thoroughly melted that it felt like she was fused to the ground.  

“Oh poor little superheroine, at least that’s what I’m sure you consider yourself.  You know, I think you’re started to look a bit tired.  You what?  I like that!  I like it so much that I think I’m going to make sure you spent the rest of your life being tired, or at least run over by them!”  

Blaze spread her hands and streams of flame shot out.  Much to Aline’s surprise they weren’t aimed at her, but at the asphalt road around her.  An asphalt road that was rapidly turning into a bubbling black mire.  

“Forget half-measures like glass bottles, this time I’m gonna finish you for good!  They’re going to need a bunch of teamsters with jackhammer to exhume whatever the hell is left of you!”  As she spoke, the melting asphalt began to flow over Aline’s body and she only had time to take one quick breath before a wave of sticky black liquid washed over her dragging her into its dark depths.

----

“Looks like things aren’t exactly going according to plan Ma’am.”  Eliza glared at the helicopter’s pilot.  “How nice of you to let me know Agent Johnson, I never would have guessed that myself.  Look, we can either sit hear snipping at each other about how this is turning into one huge snafu, or we can do something to help our superheroine save the day.”  

“What exactly can we do?  So long as she’s lit up even an air-to-air missile to the face isn’t going to stop her, and that’s assuming she just doesn’t outfly the damn thing.”  Eliza looked out the window and then covered her face with both hands.  “Look, I know I’m going to catch a hell of a lot of flack for this, but given that our target just did a bit of unlicensed road paving, I think it behooves us to make one hell of a pothole.”

Eliza took her hands from her face and grabbed hold of the weaponry targeting controls before her.  “I want you to either get us far enough away from here that I can take a good shot, or better yet just get us vertical, now, like your life depends on it, because for all we know it does, not to mention mine!”  

Agent Johnson sighed.  “Always love taking orders from a hysterical woman.”  “What was that?”  “Always a pleasure to find oneself in the service of a woman who possesses your level of determination and professionalism.  Now let's see if you can find where I put that CD with Ride of the Valkeries on it...”

----

Blaze had just finished carefully controlling her flames to eradicate even the smallest trace of her foe.  That was when she heard the strange whistling sound and looked up.  What she saw made her take flight as fast as superhumanly possible.  

Thus, she was (for her) a safe distance away when the thing exploded creating a huge crater in the middle of the road and freeing the prisoner she’d just spent so much time entombing.  It was at this point that Blaze promptly displayed the lack of cognitive reasoning skills for which both supervillians and drug addicts were known.  “What?  How dare they undo all my hard work!”

----

“Looks like we pissed little miss Hot Flash off.”  

“You got that right Johnson.  So tell me, what kind of odds do you give this thing's structural integrity?”  

“Well there’s a famous saying about situations like ours.  Planes are built out of metal, helicopters are built out of plastic.”  

“That bad?”  

“Well the good news is that she seems to be in the playful mood from the way that she’s toasting our rotary blade.”  

“That’s the one we need to be able to control what direction we fly in isn’t it?”  

“Your knowledge of modern aerodynamics never ceases to amaze.”  

“So in other words, we should be making plans to bail out soon shouldn’t we?”

“Good thing we’ve both made sure to put on parachutes right?”  

“Yep.”  

“Well as you outrank me I don’t have permission to abandon company property without orders.”  

“Agent Johnson given that we’ve gone into a tailspin, permission granted.  Remember go spread-eagle and don’t open the parachute after the debris has fallen past us unless you want to get tangled up in it and crushed to death.”

“Thanks for the reminder, I had forgotten about that.”

----

Blaze watched the two white parachutes open and sighed in irritation.  “Why don’t they be like good little birdies and crash when I set them on fire?  Fine I’ll just have to do it again.”  She created a small ball of flame about the size of a softball in either hand and lazily lobbed them at the two parachutes.

----

Getting buried in boiling tar and then having an explosive go off around her had knocked Aline for a loop and a half.  As she struggled to blink her eyes enough times to properly understand just what was going on, a few words penetrated the fogginess of her mind.  “ELASTICA STOP SITTING THERE LIKE AN IDIOT AND SAVE US!”  

Her eyes opened wide and she was just barely able to make our two figures that were heading towards the ground.  She wasn’t able to tell what color they were or which one was Eliza and which one Agent Johnson, but she could make out two figures, and the ground and the buildings.

She stretched out her arms, curled them around the two objects, struggled to get them to stop falling now that she had a grip on them (it was like trying to hold onto lead weights with frayed pieces of rope) but somehow managed to get them to come to a stop before the ground had its say on the issue.  

After that, she lowered them the rest of the way, and began to rock her body back and forth till she was able to squeeze free from whatever vestiges of her liquid tar prison remained and stand back up.  Thus, she was perfectly positioned for Eliza to slap her face hard enough that her neck ended up dangling far enough down that she could see her own backside.  

“Congratulations, now instead of a quick splattery death we’re going to get slowly roasted to a crisp unless we can come up with a spur of the moment plan for how to douse that psychotic bundle of living phosphorus.”  Aline needed a few moments to literally get her head on straight, then got to work glaring at Eliza.  “Hey, why am I getting blamed when it was your idea that didn’t work!”  

“The plan was working fine until you went all gooey at the last moment!”   A firm hand was placed on each woman’s shoulder.  “Far be for me to interrupt a catfight in the making, but lets try and think up that spur-of-the-moment plan, and act it out, then we can worry about blaming whoever was responsible for the last one turning out to be a failure.”  

There was an awkward pause and then both of them nodded, and as they did so an idea suddenly struck Aline like a brick to the back of the head.  “I know how we can stop her, water!”  Eliza looked like she was about to rearrange Aline’s anatomy with another powerful slap.  “We tried water before, it didn’t work!”  “That’s just because we didn’t have enough pressure.  You two start running some place safe, I’ll take care of her...”  

----

After watching the impressive (futile but impressive) human drama of that damn superheroine saving the two jackasses who previously had possessed the gal to save her, Blaze allowed them to have a few moments to celebrate their ‘victory’, after all people couldn’t scream if you didn’t give them a chance to pause for breath every so often.  

Then the two without powers took off and Blaze swiftly headed towards the ground firing off a quick stream of flame that the rubbery one somehow managed to bounce out of the way of.  

“Oh how impressive, you made me miss again!  You can’t stop me, I could set an entire building on fire if I wanted to, and then what would you be able to do?”  She paused to lob another volley ball sized orb of destruction that only ended up turning yet another section of the road into uneven molten scrap.  Strangely the masked woman remained utterly silent as she continued to back away from Blaze.

“Nothing, that’s what!  You can’t win so you might as well just give up!”  She made a huge ball of fire, this one was almost the size of a beachball, and shot it right at the masked woman.  Who said one word as it approached.  “No.”  Then she stretched out her legs, making them tall and wide enough that the ball of flame could go right between them and strike the fire hydrant that she’d been standing behind.  

The pulsating flame ate through the metal with ease and in the blink of an eye a blast of water shot upwards like a the worlds most illogically placed fountain had just been switched on.  Then the rubbery woman took another step back as her body twisting in amidst the gushing water in a strange ballet of fluid and elastic flesh that Blaze was momentarily enthralled by the beauty of.  

She hovered there and watched as the elastic woman drew closer and closer to the water, curling herself around it,  becoming one with it, directing it.... towards her....  

Blaze let loose with all the firepower she had, but despite her bravado her streams of flame were no match for all of the water practically haemorrhaging out of the melted hydrant, being directed right at her through an elastic body momentarily turned fire hose.  The wall of water washed over her, dousing her flames and pinning her against the ground until she lost conscious and then neither flames or nor steam surrounded her.

----

“Nice job.”  Aline blushed.  “It’s still hard to believe that Blaze’s fire-generation was a conscious act, but the way it stopped once she was knocked out...”  Eliza placed a reassuring hand on Aline’s shoulder.  “There are precious few people that can’t control the powers they gain from Formula 31888, but there are a fair number of them who won't.  We managed to stop one of them today, plus nobody ended up getting hurt, even if there was a hell of a lot of property damage.”  

Aline looked out the window of the vehicle that was taking them home. To her recollection she was the first superheroine who ever needed to take a cab home after capturing a supervillian.  “So do you have any idea just how much property damage she caused?”  

Eliza very pointedly looked out her own window.  “I’d just as soon not think about that.  Believe me, we could have managed to stop her at the beach and the bureaucrats would still be all over us, you’ll soon find life is a lot easier if we don’t worry about little things like exactly how much that copter alone cost...”  

Aline stretched out her neck so that Eliza had no choice but to look at her.  “So how exactly are we going to get around after what Blaze did to your car, take cabs everywhere?”  Eliza smiled at Aline as she noticed that the cab was coming to a stop in front of their apartment.  

She reached into her outfit, pulled out the cab fare and a generous tip, handed it over to the driver and pointed out Aline’s window.  Aline twisted her neck around and saw a car sitting in the parking space in front of their apartment.  

A car that was a perfect match for the one Blaze had destroyed.  “Back at the beach after I  called in the chopper I also had time to let them let them know about what happened to my old car.  You’d be surprised how quickly wheels can get turned when you’re a press agent for a superheroine.”  Aline was left to wonder just how they had managed to replace Eliza’s car so fast, and for how long she’d have to put up with the infuriatingly smug smile on her best friend’s face.