Heroine Overdose

A hard rain was falling down on the crime-ridden streets of San Alvaro. I'd love to tell you that it was washing all the scum off the face of this city. Unfortunately, that was my job.

The rain was hitting my costume hard. The added body-armor padding, which had seemed like a great idea when Phil had suggested it to me, was getting soggy and heavy. It was like running while wrapped up in a full carpet. I drove through a puddle, splashing the brown-ish water back onto the diminutive woman running behind me.

"Hey!" Pixie shouted. "Watch where you're running."

Despite my fatigue, I still found the energy to yell at her. "We're chasing a criminal! I'm not going to avoid the goddamn puddles."

"Artemis would have jumped over it!"

"Artemis can fucking fly!"

Pixie was, in case you're wondering, my sidekick. I hadn't wanted a sidekick, but she hadn't given me much of a choice. She had shown up one day with a form-fitting pink costume, an admittedly much better-chosen superhero name, and never really left me alone since. Pixie had the power to shrink, you see, so she figured that teaming up with another size-changing hero would be a natural fit. It hadn't been.

"He's getting away!" Pixie said. "Quick, let's use our special attack!"

"We haven't practiced-" I started, but my "sidekick" wasn't listening. Pixie hopped onto my shoulders, at first a somewhat heavy weight that caused me to stumble. But she quickly began shrinking, her custom outfit shrinking along with her. Before long, she was sitting on my shoulder, no bigger than a baseball. Which was good, because she was about to get thrown.

Pixie scampered down my arm until she rested in my open fist. I decided to grow my hand just a bit, to ensure it went far enough, and tossed her up in the air. She was supposed to land on top of the criminal, and rapidly grow back to her normal size to take him down. Unfortunately, I way over-adjusted, and sent her flying off somewhere into the night. I didn't hear her land, but I did hear a car alarm go off the next street over.

"Oops," I said to no one in particular.

Fortunately, the commotion caused our thief to turn his head sideways. He stepped on a wet piece of grass and twisted his leg. I was on him in a few long-legged strides.

I twisted the crook's arm behind his back in the way Changeling had taught me. "You're fast," I said, panting just a little bit. "What, are you on the track team in between purse snatchings?"

"I didn't steal anything," he whimpered. "Please don't hurt me."

The rain was still pouring down on us. I flipped my prey over to get a closer look at his face. Could he be telling the truth? He didn't look like the guy I had spotted grabbing the woman's purse. I was pretty sure that guy had a moustache. But then again, it was dark, and we had run through some twisting alleyways. Who could be sure?

Pixie could be sure. I knew, because I felt her boot in my back, and it was a boot that conveyed an awful lot of certainty. "You asshole," she said. "I almost broke a leg." Her cheeks were covered in mud, and I noticed a tear down her suit that revealed her pale, bare back.

" Hey, Pixie. Does this look like our guy to you?"

My self-proclaimed sidekick squatted down on the ground to get a better look at the man I held prone. "Nah, that's not the guy who took the purse. That guy had a moustache."

"Oh." I let the innocent man go and stood up. "Sorry about that, sir."

"Sorry?" The man rubbed his wrist. "I should sue you assholes. This is what happens when you let any idiot who lifts weight become a superhero, I guess."

I felt like giving the man an equally sarcastic rebuke, but nothing was coming to mind. So I just let him up with a mumbled apology. He brushed himself off, gave me a stare that said everything, and shuffled back off along the rainy roads.

Whoever had grabbed that purse, he was long gone. Now all that was left was to figure out why I was still such a lousy superhero.

--

Pixie was okay, in the end. She had shown up with shards of glass in her hair, and cuts in her costume that revealed her pale skin underneath. Somehow, she never ended up physically hurt. Maybe it was part of her powers, or maybe it was just dumb luck.

She hadn't seemed too bothered about the mistaken identity. I think that for Pixie this was all recreation, and any greater sense of justice was just a bonus. That was fine for her, but I needed to show results if I wanted to keep getting funding. She had wanted to keep patrolling, but I was too disspirited and waterlogged to continue.

I slunk into my apartment after changing into my civillian clothes in a desolate park bathroom. It was 3 AM, and I just wanted to go to bed. My body was having a hard time adjusting to the nocturnal lifestyle of a costumed vigilante.

"Have a good night?"

I nearly jumped out of my skin. I had just stepped through my apartment door, and everything was still black. I instantly hit the light switch.

Hanging from my ceiling was a lithe but shapely woman dressed in a tight-fitting black costume. She hissed and covered her face. I recognized her instantly as Arachne and flipped the light off. I knew she was a little sensitive.

"That's better," Arachne said, her voice resuming its usual sultry tone. "So how did the patrol go?"

"Lousy," I said. "The one guy I got my hands on was completely innocent."

"Well, no one's completely innocent," said Arachne with a throaty chuckle. "Speaking of which... we missed you this evening. Changeling had to go and fetch some guy from a bar, and I hate to say it but he wasn't quite up for the task."

Ever since my first night as a superhero, I had spent the time just before dusk with the Three Furies. Artemis, the iconic heroine of seemingly endless virtue, was apparently cursed to require the seed of a man regularly to retain her powers. And her teammates, Changeling and Arachne, liked to get in on the fun as well. Needless to say, it was very enjoyable, but by the time we were all supposed to go on patrol we usually ended up as an exhausted puddle of limbs.

But unfortunately mortal life occasionally intruded into our superheroic hedonism. "My parents are in town," I said. "I was having dinner with them. You know, I could tell you guys about this all if you had phones. Then you wouldn't have to hang around your apartment in the middle of the night."

Somewhere in the imperceptible dark, Arachne shifted closer to me. I could smell her distinctive scent, a tropical tang. "I do have a phone. But it's for my alter ego."

"Alter ego?" I ventured my hand forward and found Arachne's silky hair flowing around my fingers. "I thought you were just an immortal, like the other two."

"You really don't know very much about me, do you?" Arachne said tauntingly. She was right. Artemis was a famous hero, with decades of stories and speculation about her identity and origins. Changeling couldn't keep a secret to save the universe (which was concerning, considering that she was tasked with saving the universe from time to time.) But Arachne had always been quieter, more taciturn. Even when we fucked, she kept her utterance to quiet moans.

"I'd like to get to know you better," I said, hoping it sounded seductive. It couldn't have been totally off-putting, as a moment later her upside-down lips were on me. It was a strange kiss, our gravities uncertain, our tongues flicking up in opposing directions. My body expected another body in front of it, but instead it found only empty air.

With a pleasured hiss, Arachne spun her web out and moved down my body. I could feel the swell of her modest breasts as they slid over my face, and then her taut stomach. When she stopped, I could smell the musk of her sex directly in front of me, particularly as Arachne wrapped her thighs around my head. Her own head was nestled up against my growing erection.

We quickly disposed of the bottom portions of our sweaty, constraining costumes. How Arachne did that so eloquently while hanging from the ceiling I would never know, but I guess she had practice. A moment later, I had the superheroine's tight ass in my hands as I pressed her snatch to my mouth. It was strange navigating the female anatomy upside-down, but her rich taste was the same any way you did it. I noticed her shiver when I ground my clean-shaven chin into the area of her clit.

Down below, Arachne was giving as good as she got. With the position we were in, there was no time for teasing - she had simply swallowed my cock in one smooth movement and was bobbing up and down on it. Arachne rolled her tongue around the head of my cock, as she reached one of her delicate hands out to fondle my balls. It took every ounce of control I had not to hug her to my body and throat-fuck her until I came.

Arachne had a different plan. With gymnastic agility, she rolled forward until she was perched on all fours ahead of me. She kept a grip on my wrist, so she could guide me forward and into her warm depths. I thrust into her hot cunt, made slick with both my saliva and her own juices. Arachne let out a low, animal moan, and I took a moment to savour the warm squeeze of her pussy around my cock. No matter how much superheroic sex I had, that first moment of fucking would always blow my mind.

I reached around so I could feel Arachne's lithe body against mine as we fucked. At some point she had lost her top, and the hot skin of her breasts filled my hands. As I began to pick up the pace of my thrusts, I reached down to rub her clit. "Yesss..." Arachne moaned, beginning at last to lose her cool composure. I took that as a cue to thrust my cock harder and faster into the superpowered woman.

By the end, Arachne had collapsed down on to the ground, pleasure quaking through her. "Si... si..." she muttered under her breast. Mounting her, our sticky bodies pressed together, I thrust into Arachne as deeply as I could before my own orgasm took me and I shot my seed deep inside her.

"Damn," I said, once I regained my breath. "That was, uh, amazing. Baby?" I was never really sure what to say after these sessions.

I reached again for the light switch. "Wait, don't-" Arachne hissed a second before I flicked it on.

Squatting there naked on the floor, in the thin beige light of my apartment's ceiling lamp, Arachne no longer looked like a mysterious and seductive demigod. Her black hair was slick with weat, and her body shook with small tremors. My pearly cum dribbled down her thighs. Most alarming of all, however, were the jagged red lines carved across her back, which now glowed with an eldritch energy.

I bent down to wrap an arm around her. "Rach? Are you okay?"

She grit her teeth, struggling to get the words out. "I'm fine. It's just that sometimes when I start feeling too much... human emotion... the spider spirit decides to remind me who's boss."

I hadn't seen this before, not in all the times we had been in bed together. Arachne's bare chest heaved, and it was easy to tell that she wasn't entirely in control of herself right now. I wasn't the keenest observer of supernatural things, but the hairs on my arm were standing up straight. There were three presences in that room: me, Arachne, and something more powerful than either of us.

"Tell me about it," I said. Maybe I could talk Arachne through it.

"I met this asshole on an archaeological dig in Mexico," Arachne said. "Turned over the wrong ancient urn, and the next thing I knew I had spider powers and a voice in my head that gave me a migraine every time it spoke. It likes me. It really does. It lets me use its power to do what I want. But sometimes..."

"You're not like the other two."

"No," said Arachne. "My name is Rachel Corcoran. I was born in the 1980s. I was a normal person. Maybe someday when the big guy gets sick of me, I'll be a normal person again. Or I'll die. Not sure which."

I wrapped Arachne up in a hug. Her back felt searingly hot. "I've seen you charge into danger, Rachel." She bristled a bit at the use of her given name. "Powers aside, you are way better than a normal person."

Arachne did something I'd never seen her do before. She giggled. "Thanks, I think. But nobody calls me Rachel any more."

Her body was beginning to cool down, and the symbol on her back was fading. "Why don't you stay with me tonight? I'm exhausted, and you look exhausted too."

She looked down at the floor. Perhaps she thought that she had already given too much away. "You go ahead. I still need a few moments to pick myself up."

I meant to wait for her, I really did. But between the chase and the sex, I really was exhausted. I went out as soon as I hit the mattress. When I woke up, Arachne was long gone. If she had ever entered my bedroom, there was no sign of it.

--

After sleeping until noon the following day, I met up with Phil at his garage. Perhaps inspired by my irresponsible superheroics, Phil had quit his job at a big engineering firm and started his own freelance business. His garage was littered with various half-finished projects and inventions. Hanging in front of one of the blueprints was a hunk of metal in the shape of a woman's torso, whcih I swear moved while it was in the corner of my eye. Another project was an old cell phone attached to a microwave with a bunch of extra mechanics grafted onto it. And hanging on the far wall was the latest protoype of my costume, half-finished.

"Hey Seth," said Phil, removing a pair of industrial goggles. "How's it hanging?"

"It's... hanging," I said. "Rough time out on the streets last night."

Phil's face furrowed in concern. "Anything I can do?"

"Can we make the costume waterproof? I got soaked last night."

"Good idea. Actually, let's take it one step further: what if we made it so that you could function underwater."

"Phil, how much underwater crime do you think takes place?"

He shook his head. "My friend, obviously you haven't heard about the terrible crime spree of Captain Pacific."

"Captain Pacific is a hero now." He had been for a decade: I even owned his trading card.

"That's exactly what he wants you to think!"

I looked at the half-finished suit Phil had been crafting for me. Most of the top was done, with the navy blue shade I liked fading into half-finished black plating before trailing off entirely. The key decision, Phil had told me, was the balance of lightweight flexibility with protective armour. I could have all the cybernetic bells and invincible whistles of the Mechanical Turk, he told me, but that guy couldn't move without six rocket blasters on his back.

Phil nudged me in the ribs. "So... how about you and that Pixie?"

"She's a pain in the ass," I said, deadpan.

"No, I mean... are you guys, y'know..."

Phil had no idea that I was fucking the Three Furies on a nightly basis, but for some reason he was convinced that Pixie and I were an item. "Phil, I don't think I've ever seen her without her mask on, let alone... anything else. She might be fourteen or something. You know, I never asked for a sidekick. It's way too early in my career for that. Hell, I should probably be someone else's sidekick. But she just. Won't. Leave. Me. Alone."

"Aww. Sounds like someone has a crush."

I slugged Phil in the back. He was lucky it was with a normal-sized fist.

"But seriously," I said. "Any word on the suit?"

"I'm thinking about incorporating a headset, so that you can listen to the police scanner on there," said Phil.

That was a good idea, which had somehow never occurred to me before. "Well, that would beat running around on rooftops hoping that I stumble across a crime."

"Exactly." Phil nodded. He seemed to hesitate before the next thing he wanted to say. "You know... I was listening to that scanner last night. As I was working. And I mean, uh... they were talking about wolves."

"Wild wolves?"

"No. It was... the Black Wolf. He's back in town, and apparently he brought a pack. From what I could gather, they went ham on a group of students out late at night. They all ended up in the hospital."

I tensed up. The Black Wolf was, in all these weeks of vigilance, the only legitimate supervillain I had come across. And, with my luck, I had encountered him on the first night and nearly pissed myself with fear. This guy was not your ordinary scientist who gets deranged, builds a ray gun and puts on a funny suit. He had been causing trouble across the West Coast for decades, and rumours said his history went back to the big bad wolves of European folklore. Whoever he wounded became another soldier in his werewolf legion. That is, assuming he didn't rip their throats out first.

I was scared. But there was a part of me that was excited. I liked to think that if I encountered the Black Wolf again, with all the training I had received at the hands of Changeling and the other two Furies, I wouldn't be as helpless. This could be my chance to prove it.

Phil had known me long enough that he could see where my train of thought was going. "Don't do anything stupid."

I managed a grin. "Do I strike you as someone that would do stupid things?"

--

Most of my afternoon was spent trying to work out a plan to take down the Black Wolf. I read everything I could about him, from old news article to sketchy friend-of-a-friend stories on message boards. Nothing suggested an obvious way forward. People had tried all the traditional werewolf remedies against him - silver bullets, wolfsbane, holy water, you name it. Nothing had worked. And in a straight-up fight, his size and speed made him nearly unbeatable. Ares had defeated him once, in '96, but they had levelled a few city blocks in the process.

The pack was another concern. Not only would I be outpowered, I would be outnumbered. But I couldn't stop thinking about how good it would feel to show Artemis and all the others that I had grown, that their faith in me wasn't misplaced. To show the world that I was a real hero, not just a klutz who couldn't catch a pickpocket. In other words, I wasn't thinking very clearly.

But before I could commit to my terrible idea, I had an errand to run. A very enjoyable errand.

I had long since learned how to get into the Three Furies' hideout in an upscale apartment building. You had to press the right sequence of buttons on the elevator, then pull a lever that was almost invisible to the naked eye. Once you got to the front door, you needed a key as well as another code. Changeling had also suggested to me that there were some magical protections placed on their penthouse to keep prying eyes away.

They had only given me the first code, understandably so. I was a boy-toy, not a member of the team. I didn't really mind the slight - I was halfway sure that if I screwed up the code for the door I would be sent to another dimension. And, like I said, there were a lot worse gigs than being a boy-toy for three heroines.

I knocked on the door, hoping it wouldn't bite. Changeling opened the door. She was her usual curvy self, but her hair was a radiant green - until the second time I looked, when it was a deep red. She liked to do stuff like that.

"Hey Artie!" Changeling hollered back into her hideout. "Milkman's here!"

Inside, Artemis was sitting cross-legged with her fingers clasped in some sort of meditation pose. She was floating about two feet off the ground. Artemis was always engaged in something mystical - if I ever came in and found her eating a bag of chips while watching daytime TV, I think I might have a heart attack.

"Hello, Seth," said Artemis.

"Where were you last night?" said Changeling. "The poor schmoe we got lasted about three seconds. Not that I blame him. I mean, look at us."

She wasn't wrong to be confident in their looks, but it was just a little bit offputting. "I had a rough night," I said.

Changeling snorted. "Yeah, Arachne sure looked like you gave it to her rough last night. She's still in her cocoon, recovering." I had no idea if she was joking about the cocoon part. "So how about it, Artie? You ready to go to the bone zone?"