Supergirl

Chapter 2

by Alan

(Follows on from Ann Douglas’s story, which now becomes chapter 1)

Discovery

Susan Wienczorkowski awoke and stretched slowly, languorously. Slowly opening her eyes, she found herself alone in her bed. The early morning sun shone through the window, reflecting its scintillating beams around the room and illuminating colours with a clarity and vibrancy that were as novel to her as they were unexpected. She breathed deeply.

Giving a deep sigh of intense satisfaction, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to quietly reflect on the incredible events of the past four days. Just last Thursday she had been saved from certain death at the hands of a desperate Intergang member by a blonde vision in red and blue. Then Thursday night’s dinner with her beautiful saviour at Amanda’s and the bomb blast which had interrupted such a wonderful evening. That incredible flight to a remote tropical island, the thrilling sensation of flight by herself within Kara’s anti-gravity field, the incredibly passionate hours in the arms of her new lover, coming to an end all too soon.

Then Friday spent running around catching up on things, her workout at the gym in the afternoon, the unexpected arrival on her doorstep of the strange brunette who turned out to be her new lover in disguise. Their passions flaring again that night, carrying them both to heights of ecstasy that both women had missed for far too long. The rapturous hours they had spent together throughout the weekend, coming to know, and to deeply love each other. Making mad, passionate love again and again to the point where they collapsed, exhausted, in each other’s arms, awakening hours later to carry on.

Susan sighed again, experiencing a wonderful feeling of deep happiness and completion, feeling more alive than she had ever felt before.

Reluctantly calling a halt to her pleasurable reverie, Susan threw the covers aside and bounded out of bed. “Whoa!,” she yelled in surprise as she found herself hurtling through the air, landing over by the door. On the verge of pitching head first through the doorway and into her living room, she frantically grabbed for the door frame, fighting to catch her balance. She quickly loosened her grip as she heard an ominous crunching sound from the frame. Looking closer, she gasped in astonishment as she noticed some slight round indentations where her fingertips had grasped the wood. “What the fuck is going on?,” she burst out. “What’s happening to me?”

Shaking her head in puzzlement, she lay down and started to do some sit-ups. She stopped a moment later, her puzzlement increasing. Normally she could feel the pleasant sensations of her abs muscles tensioning as they lifted her body. This morning though, she felt nothing. It was as if her weight was only a small fraction of normal. She flipped over to her stomach and tried some push-ups. Same thing. This didn’t even feel like exercise any more. Suddenly pushing down hard, she gasped again as, without seeming effort, her body flipped to an upright position and continued on over, depositing her neatly on her ass. “Oops!,” she giggled, gingerly getting to her feet. She tentatively rubbed her ass cheeks. Although she hadn’t felt any pain when she’d landed she was half expecting to feel a couple of tender spots, but she felt nothing beyond the gentle friction of her hands.

It was almost as if gravity itself had suddenly dropped by at least half. She shook her head in denial at that fanciful idea. She had experienced lowered gravity on Kara’s island before the weekend and this felt nothing like that. It was more as if she were somehow much stronger than normal. She started running on the spot. The impacts of her feet on the floor sounded louder than normal and she found herself bouncing almost a foot into the air with each pace so she carefully reduced the muscular effort of her legs. Finally achieving a degree of control, she was astonished to find that it felt to her like a slow, relaxed walk even while pacing as fast as she ever had.

“Right,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on but it looks like I’ll be walking on eggs until I find out.” Shrugging, she made her way into the bathroom. Remembering what had happened to the door frame, she treated the taps as if they were fragile as she took her morning shower. While she was cleaning her teeth, she regarded her trim, taut body in the mirror. She blinked, shook her head in surprise and looked again, more closely. “Kerist,” she muttered. “What next? I’m sure my teats have gotten bigger.” By the time she had dressed and eaten her breakfast, she had regained full control over her superbly conditioned body.

With over an hour in hand before she was due at the station, she decided to pop into Metropolis General to check up on her partner, Mike. She arrived at his ward to find him sitting up in bed, eating breakfast. He looked up, a smile creasing his dark face as he saw her.

“Susan,” he exclaimed. “How are you this morning?”

“I’m fine,” she replied, returning his smile. “More importantly, how are you?”

“If I were any better, I’d be twins,” Mike quipped. “Hey, you’re looking great today! Watching you come into the ward, it looked like you were walking on air.”

The partners exchanged small talk while Mike finished his breakfast. Then the conversation turned to the Intergang bust last Thursday, where Mike had been wounded.

“That’ll teach you to duck a bit faster,” teased Susan. “I’ve got to dash or I’ll be late to the station. You just rest up and get better. I’ll catch you later.”

“You’ll have to,” grinned Mike. “I’m not going anywhere. The doctors won’t let me.” Susan returned her partner’s grin, turned and left the ward, in high spirits and very relieved at her partner’s progress.

o o o

As she sat at her desk that morning, it seemed to her as if her hearing had become an order of magnitude more sensitive. She found herself able to easily hear and identify the tiniest sounds around her. Discovering this to be incredibly distracting, she finally managed to tune out the extraneous sounds so she could concentrate on her work.

Occasionally having to get up and search for files and other data, she found herself having to keep her attention firmly on what she was doing and carefully control the effort she put into even the smallest movements. Whenever she let herself become distracted, she found herself breaking or starting to bend whatever she happened to be holding at the time. She felt almost light-headed, coping with this strange phenomenon, but at the same time she felt more alive and healthy than she could ever remember so she ignored her seeming light-headedness and carried on with her duties.

At about 11AM, her SCU beeper suddenly sounded. Grabbing the unit she quickly absorbed the details and raced downstairs to muster with the rest of the team members. Inspector Maggie Sawyer quickly briefed them as they piled into vehicles and sped off to the warehouse district.

Duly arriving at their destination, the SCU members donned their protective gear and went in to do their job.

o o o

The all-clear having been finally given, Susan removed her headgear and fluffed out her short curls with a sigh of relief. She hated working solo in situations like this. There was just too much potential for things to go badly wrong. She walked back down the corridor towards the stairs she had raced up several minutes before. Just as she was walking past a smaller flight of stairs leading up to the roof, she heard a faint noise. She froze, focussing her full attention on the stairwell. Hearing the faint sussuration of someone’s breathing she cautiously began to mount the steps, her attention rivetted on the turn ahead.

Suddenly she heard the door to the roof begin to quietly open and saw the stairwell brightening with reflected sunlight. She snapped her eyes shut to preserve her dark-adapted vision. Moments later the door closed, again plunging the stairwell into relative darkness.

Susan raced up the steep steps, bursting through the door at the top, into bright sunlight. She saw a male figure running away across the roof.

“Freeze,” Susan yelled. “Police!,” as she raced out onto the roof, drawing her pistol as she ran after him. He disappeared behind an elevator tower, Susan hot on his heels. She raced around the obstruction and frantically halted herself as she realised her quarry had vanished. “Oh shit!,” she whispered to herself, feeling her stomach start to sink. She heard a tiny noise behind her and spun around, frantically raising her gun, to find herself staring into the bore of a large handgun, bulky with its silencing baffles, a hard blue eye peering malevolently down the length of its barrel at her, a finger pulling on the trigger.

“Die, bitch,” hissed the stranger, smoothly tightening his finger. The gun spoke.

“He’s shooting at me,” she told herself disbelievingly as she watched the small package of copper jacketted death seemingly casually floating toward her. “Damn it, Wienczorkowski. Move your butt,” she ordered herself but she remained frozen, unable to move. As it slowly continued to move along its leisurely course, her eyes began to cross, still tracking the projectile. She continued to watch in disbelief as the point contacted the bridge of her nose, starting to deform as a tingling sensation spread from its point of contact. Time seemed to abruptly speed up as she finally began to feel the impact of the bullet. She lost consciousness then as the force of the impact snapped her head back and sent her tumbling gracelessly over the edge of the roof to plummet five storeys to the ground below.

The strange man turned, quickly but silently retracing his steps to the roof access.

o o o

Susan became slowly aware of her surroundings. An intense, almost painful throbbing sensation between her eyes was just starting to die away and she felt as if she’d been run over by a truck, with miscellaneous aches and pains all through her body. She suddenly gasped as she recalled watching the bullet’s seemingly leisurely approach and its impact. She quickly opened her eyes then, her vision swimming momentarily before settling down and allowing her to focus on the concerned face of Inspector Dan Turpin, the SCU’s second in charge. Behind him she saw the warehouse building, the roof five stories above. Amazed, she realised that she must have fallen from that roof.

“How are you feeling?,” asked Dan in his gravelly voice.

Susan blinked in astonishment. She recognised the voice as being unmistakeably Dan’s but his voice seemed to have suddenly acquired overtones which she had never noticed before. “A bit groggy,” she eventually responded. She shook her head and cautiously sat up, feeling stiff. Looking down at her hands she found with some relief that she had somehow retained her hold on both her pistol and her helmet. “Good,” she thought. At least she wouldn’t have to fight her way through the maze-like trail of paperwork attendant to lost equipment. That would have been all she needed. She checked her watch then, gasping quietly as she realised that she’d been out of it for a good fifteen minutes. She stretched her arms tentatively and worked her shoulders. “Everything seems to be working okay,” she added.

“Do you remember what happened?,” inquired the Inspector solicitously.

“Not really,” she responded, editing the truth slightly. “God, I can’t tell him what really happened,” she thought to herself. “He’ll think I’ve flipped out, for sure. I might be able to convince Maggie to believe me, but Terrible Dan? Never!”

Turpin shook his head. “You’re damned lucky you’re here and not on a one-way trip to the morgue,” he said gruffly. He helped the junior officer get unsteadily to her feet.

Susan fervently but silently agreed. “You don’t know the tenth of it,” she mused to herself. She swayed a bit, then managed to catch her balance.

“It’s pretty obvious that you’ve been clobbered by something,” he said. Maybe you should be X-rayed just to be sure you’ve not been injured.”

Susan demurred, “I’m okay now, Sir. I’m just feeling a bit groggy, is all.” Indeed, she was feeling better as her aches and pains quickly diminished. Impossibly well, in fact, for a person who had just been shot between the eyes and fallen five storeys onto well aged concrete, to boot, either event normally proving to be quite adequately fatal just by itself. The tender spot between her eyes was dying away just as quickly. She looked around the dingy alley and saw the broken concrete where she had been lying. “Terrible Dan”, for all his legendary thoroughness and attention to detail, obviously hadn’t given it a second thought. After all, falling bodies didn’t usually smash concrete. It was normally the other way around, the body being thoroughly mashed by the hard concrete. “Damn me,” she thought. “I landed there after falling all the way from the roof. How could I possibly have survived that.” Bemused, she looked around the alley. Her eyesight seemed preternaturally sharp, she could see details in the dark alley she knew damned well she wouldn’t have been able to see normally. Not in this terrible light.

“Okay,” Turpin shrugged and walked off to the front of the building.

“Not only my sight,” Susan mused as she gradually became aware again of the multitude of faint, weirdly pitched sounds around her. “It’s as if I can suddenly hear things I could never hear before, both quieter and higher pitched.” Just then she spotted a glint on the ground, several dozen yards away, next to a crumpled newspaper. Intrigued, she peered at it, squinting slightly in the dim light. Suddenly the glint and the paper next to it seemed to come hurtling towards her, growing impossibly large. She identified the tiny, jagged shard of glass and made out several faded words on the ancient newsprint before she shut her eyes in disbelief. She staggered back a step, feeling suddenly dizzy, and shook her head. When she opened them again, her vision was back to normal. She was having trouble believing what she was seeing and hearing but they were merely two more impossibilities piled atop what she had already experienced today.

Just then, Susan heard her name mentioned. Listening intently and managing to temporarily tune out the multitude of unfamiliar noises that were suddenly enveloping her, she identified Dan Turpin’s gruff, gravelly voice tersely reporting what had apparently happened to her, heard Inspector Maggie Sawyer, the unit’s commander, murmur an anxious response. “Damn,” she thought. “Where are they? Dan walked off at least a minute ago. He must be halfway around the building by now.” Mystified, Susan started walking around the warehouse, curiously pacing out the distance. One hundred fifty yards later she reached the main street in front of the warehouse building and saw Dan still talking to Maggie, the unit’s Commander. Maggie saw her and walked across, a look of concern on her face. “Sure you’re okay?”

Again Susan was hearing a familiar voice rendered somehow strange by the unfamiliar overtones she was now, somehow, able to hear. “I’m fine now,” she managed to say.

Maggie took Susan aside, looked her square in the eyes and took a deep breath. “Did you have your mind fully on the job?,” she demanded bluntly.

“Of course I did,” answered Susan without hesitation. “You’re worried that I was distracted by what happened to Mike last week, or how well he’s recovering, aren’t you.”

Maggie nodded curtly. “I know I don’t need to remind you how vital it is to keep your wits about you in this job. But the last thing I want to see happen is you, or any other member of the team, blown away because of a moment’s inattention.” She dropped her voice to a harsh whisper, glaring fiercely at Susan. “Every time I lose a man it’s like a piece of my heart has been hacked off with a rusty, blunt blade.”

Susan’s already great admiration for her tough boss was boosted even higher by Maggie’s frank admission. She considered momentarily and, asking Maggie to keep what she was about to hear to herself, quickly gave her an edited account of the morning’s events.

Maggie’s hard face became a fascinating study in amazement and dawning disbelief. She shook her head. Susan held up her hand and whispered urgently, “I know it sounds completely nuts but that’s really what happened. I don’t understand how or why, or what’s happening to me but it really happened. I also heard Dan report to you just now, from at least two hundred yards away and half around the building.” She quickly began to repeat the conversation.

Half way through she paused, wincing, as a nearby police car started its engine. She shook her head. “Kerist,” she muttered to Maggie. “That car’s engine sounds like it’s about to explode.” She followed the car with her eyes as it pulled away, seeing Dan Turpin behind the wheel. As the, to her, excruciating squeal faded rapidly into the distance she looked back at her boss and continued with her report.

What makes you think Turpin’s car is going bad?,” Maggie questioned doubtfully.

“Didn’t you hear that incredible squealing?,” Susan asked her.

Maggie shook her head slowly. “I heard nothing unusual,” she said.

Susan’s jaw dropped. “Kerist!,” she muttered to herself. “The noise was bloody deafening!” Then she said to Maggie, “Please don’t spread any of this around though. I want, I need to understand what’s going on before I have to start coping with rumours.”

Maggie’s face cleared partially. She nodded sharply and said, “OK, I can have that. I think you need to have a few more days off though, particularly with your partner injured.”

“Thanks,” Susan said. “I do have some heavy thinking to do.”

Susan returned to her apartment, head awhirl. In the forefront of her mind was the knowledge that she should surely be dead but somehow wasn’t. There had been no miraculous super-hero save this time around, but she had just spent two amazing, glorious days with Kara, the most incredibly ecstatic experience in her life to date. “Somehow the two must be connected,” she mused. “But how on Earth …” She grinned wryly to herself as she corrected her thought. “How in the Universe, they could be related, …”

o o o

Kara awoke early, the first morning brightening of the sky just barely visible to her super-vision. She turned her head, looked at the compact, red haired beauty asleep beside her and reflected on the emotionally tumultuous events of the last few days. She felt physically and, more importantly, emotionally satiated for the first time since her arrival on the planet. Quietly she shook her head in bemusement at her rapidly forming attachment to the sleeping woman and sighed happily. “Oh, what I’ve been missing,” she murmured to herself.

“Oh well, I’d better get out and about and see what’s happening around the town,” she told herself ruefully as she reluctantly got out of bed and took a quick shower.

About mid-morning, she heard a sudden medley of police sirens, gunshots and squealing rubber. Focussing her tachyonic vision towards the sounds she saw several men running out of a large downtown jewelry store, heavily laden with bags and cases and brandishing an assortment of firearms. They ran down the street towards several waiting cars, exchanging fire with police as they went. Kara went into immediate action, swooping down until she was inches above the pavement and spreading out her arms. She came up behind the group of running men quickly, ploughing into their rear and sending them flying like ninepins. Accelerating then, until she appeared as a coloured blur, she raced around, seizing and crushing the mens’ guns. Then she noticed one of the cars speeding off. Seeing several police officers running up, brandishing their guns, she left the men she had skittled to their tender mercies and took off after the car as it ran a red light, scattering pedestrians and dodging other cars. Catching up with the getaway car within the next block, she alighted just ahead of it and, bracing herself in the middle of the road, brought it to a sudden stop. The driver had been knocked unconscious, his head having hit the steering wheel, but the two passengers quickly leapt out, running off in different directions. She saw a police car screeching to a halt just behind, its occupants setting off in hot pursuit of the first robber so she set off after the second, seizing him by the collar, quickly disarming him and holding him aloft with one hand. Casually strolling back to the police car, she turned him over.

“Thanks, Supergirl,” said one of the officers. “This could have turned very ugly without your help.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied. “Do you need any more help here?”

“No thanks,” he replied. “I think we’ve got things pretty well under control now.”

Kara leapt skywards again, resuming her interrupted patrol.

Just before noon, she heard another medley of screaming rubber, commingled with human screams and a series of dull thumps as several cars collided on an overpass. Seeing that one of the cars had smashed through the safety rails and was teetering on the brink of falling into a crowded mall, she swooped down. She arrived just as the car finally tipped over the edge with a deafening screech of metal on concrete. Flying underneath it, she caught the falling car mere feet above the heads of the terrified shoppers and carried it back up to the overpass, gently setting it down on the roadbed. The police and emergency crews were quickly on the scene, rescuing trapped drivers and treating injuries. Kara hung around for a few more minutes, lending a super powered hand where necessary then, seeing the situation fully under control, she took to the skies once more.

By mid-afternoon, all seemed to be quiet. Kara decided to go “home” and relax for a while. “Oh, the feelings that go with such a simple word,” she reflected, reminiscing yet again on her developing relationship with the red-haired beauty.

o o o

Susan arrived back at her apartment block and exuberantly ran up the stairs to her tiny attic apartment. As fit as she kept herself, running up had never fazed her but today she found herself bounding up the stairs three at a time, faster than she had ever ascended. She arrived at the top landing, her even breathing and steady heartbeat unaffected by her burst of energy. She opened the door and walked in, just as Kara appeared through the window.

The two women looked at each other, eyes glowing, and moved into each other’s arms with languorous sighs, kissing warmly. Susan felt intense tingles running up her spine, felt herself getting quickly wet. “Kerist,” she thought, “This woman turns me on more than anyone I’ve ever known,” as she brought her hands up to firmly caress Kara’s breasts, rubbing her thumbs teasingly around Kara’s nipples several times before pinching them through the thin, unearthly fabric of her top.

Kara sighed in ecstasy and leaned into Susan’s caresses, her nipples tenting up her top as they quickly became engorged. She thought, “Ohhh! That feels soooo good,” as she moaned quietly, feeling her love lips moisten. Susan moved her hands up to the neck of Kara’s costume, working it downward between their bodies, slowly uncovering Kara’s beautiful breasts and gasping in pleasure as she felt her hands gently sliding over Kara’s rapidly hardening nipples. Kara moaned in pleasure and the two lovers’ tongues started duelling amorously, Kara content for the moment to let her new lover be the aggressor, becoming rapidly aroused by their intimate contact.

Susan felt Kara relax into her arms and submit herself to her loving, felt herself becoming intensely aroused, her clit stiffening and her juices quickly saturating her panties. “God,” she thought to herself, “I still can’t believe how this can be happening.”

Susan quickly doffed her own blouse and the two women gasped in pleasure as their naked and rapidly hardening nipples touched, tiny jolts of electricity seeming to arc between them. Susan now began to move her breasts around, her nipples describing small circles around Kara’s, both women becoming more aroused by this intimate contact. Susan lightly ran her hands down Kara’s ribs, dragging Kara’s costume down further to her hips, where she started to caress her smooth, lean ass, then continuing to ease her costume down still further.

Susan reluctantly pulled her lips away from Kara’s, kissed down the curve of her jaw, onto her neck, across her collarbone and down to the gentle curve of her breasts. Kara stood, head back, eyes closed as she gave voice to a soft groan of sheerest pleasure.

Susan laid a soft spiral trail of kisses around Kara’s perfect breast, approaching ever closer to the impossibly erect, throbbing nipple. Just as she would have touched the achingly needful nipple, she pulled back, teasing, and started to spiral around the other breast. Kara moaned, inarticulately protesting as she felt Susan pull away just as she was joyfully anticipating the sensations of Susan’s lovingly experienced lips and tongue around her aching nipple.

Again, Susan spiralled around Kara’s breast, withdrawing just as she reached the nipple. Kara moaned again in protest as she felt herself teased almost to the point of ecstasy, only to be pulled rudely back from the brink.

Both women were intensely aroused now, the room filling with an intoxicating blend of Kara’s unearthly honey and wildflower aroma and Susan’s delightfully heady musk. Susan eased Kara’s tights down further, sliding the slick, smooth material down her shapely thighs as she continued to alternately kiss Kara’s breasts and tease her now almost painfully erect nipples. Kara was getting closer, ever closer to orgasm at the hands and tongue of her experienced femme lover. She felt electrifying tingles surging from her nipples to her clit with every teasing approach of Susan’s experienced lips, each surge carrying her closer to the brink, the sweet agony of each teasing withdrawal making her gasp. Kara floated in mid air as she pulled up her knees to allow Susan to slide off her costume entirely. Susan complied joyously, pushing Kara towards and down onto the couch and feeling the moist wetness of her inner thighs. She felt her own nipples, almost painfully erect, as if she were the one being so ecstatically teased, her clit erect and tingling, her love juices flowing copiously and the electric surgings of her own approaching orgasm getting stronger by the moment.

“Lord,” Susan thought incredulously. “This Super woman is SO responsive,” as she continued to caress her gloriously shaped thighs and kiss and tease her breasts. “And I’m getting more turned on than I’ve ever been just doing this to her. I just hope I can hold out long enough to really bring her off.”

Judging that Kara was now only moments away from a great-great-grandmother of an orgasm, Susan finally gave the peak of each nipple a final quick, teasing swipe with her tongue. She then quickly meandered her teasing tongue lightly down Kara’s abdomen, pausing to briefly apply her attentions to her navel. Kara’s legs shot out straight and her toes curled, hard, as she tried to simultaneously gulp, scream and gasp. Knowing that Kara was right at the brink and confident that there was no way she could physically harm this beautiful, ultra feminine being, Susan quickly reached up and pinched Kara’s nipples as hard as she could while simultaneously nipping her achingly erect clit between her teeth and mercilessly lashing its tip with her practiced tongue.

Kara screamed in ecstasy as her long-delayed orgasm began thundering towards her with all the authority of a runaway diesel locomotive. Her hands flew up to crush her breasts and tightly grip her aching nipples and her heartbeat soared as her body began to buck wildly. Susan, her hands released from their delightful duty at Kara’s nipples, grabbed her sweet thighs and hung on with all her not inconsiderable strength, barely able to hold her place and continue her erotic ministrations to Kara’s clit. She strainingly brought her right hand up to Kara’s nether lips, barely managing to force her fingers into Kara’s tightly convulsing pussy. Kara’s screams redoubled in intensity as she felt the experienced fingers of her lover penetrating her, playing over her most sensitive spots. As the first of Kara’s multiple orgasms began to engulf her, her spasming pussy gushing forth its sweet juices, Susan replaced her tongue at Kara’s clit with her now thoroughly lubricated fingers and began rapturously lapping of Kara’s nectar as if she were dying of thirst and this were the coolest, purest water.

Feeling her own orgasm rushing unstoppably toward her then, Susan gave herself up to the sensations of undiluted ecstasy and the two lovers’ gasps and screams of pleasure harmonised throughout their multiple orgasms, for many, many minutes.

Some indefinite time later Kara reached languorously down and, gently grasping Susan’s shoulder, moved her up so their sweat-streaked bodies lay side by side on the now somewhat battered couch. Both women were breathing deeply, still shuddering gently with the aftershocks of their intense and mutual orgasmic experience.

“Wow,” Kara started to say, but Susan cut her off, gently placing her lips over the blondes’, wordlessly ordering her to say nothing and just savour the magic of the moment, softly, deeply kissing as they both basked in their afterglow and gently slipped into the deepest of sleeps.

Two hours later, Kara awoke, stretching languorously and feeling the body of her new lover entwined with her own. She opened her eyes to the deep and loving regard of a pair of bright green pools. Susan blinked and brought up her hand to gently caress Kara’s cheek and brush back a cascade of her blonde hair.

“Love, …” murmured Susan quietly.

Kara softly interrupted her, placing her finger on Susan’s lips. “Do you really mean that,” breathed Kara, her intense blue eyes unusually soft.

“More deeply than I ever have in my life,” murmured Susan, momentarily losing herself in the soft blue glow of Kara’s eyes. The two women kissed deeply. Susan eventually broke the kiss, blinked and sighed deeply. “We badly need to talk though. I don’t understand what’s been happening to me today,” Susan continued softly. “Only that it must somehow be connected with you.”

“What do you mean?,” asked Kara. Susan gently kissed away the worried frown that momentarily crossed her face.

“I-I-Is it possible for you to pass, er, t-transfer some of your powers to another person?,” stammered Susan, suddenly feeling unsure of herself.

“W-What?,” returned Kara, her eyes opening wide in surprise and her body stiffening in Susan’s encircling arms. “W-What do you mean?”

“I-I-I mean, I-I s-should be d-dead, now,” she shivered uncontrollably. Kara embraced her reassuringly, holding Susan close as she proceeded to relate her mornings’ experiences. As she continued, Kara’s expression became more and more amazed.

“Oh, Susan. I’m sorry,” said Kara mournfully, after Susan had finished her recital. “I never dreamed that anything like that could possibly happen.”

“Sorry?,” replied Susan. “Don’t be. Whatever has happened to me saved my life today. Seems like you’ve saved me twice in the last few days. I find it real hard to complain about that,” she murmured, smiling softly then kissing Kara deeply.

Kara relaxed. “I was a bit worried that you might resent being turned into a freak with no hope of a normal sex-life, like me,” she said as they broke from the kiss.

“Well,” murmured Susan teasingly, “If you consider what we just experienced together as being in any way ‘normal’, I don’t think either of us need to worry about that. At least for the moment …”

“You vixen,” accused Kara smilingly. “Rao, that was some orgasm you just gave me. I’d just about given up any hope of experiencing anything that intensely in my life here on Earth. I’m still tingling all over. In fact,” she said, turning momentarily serious. “If whatever it is that seems to have ‘powered’ you up hadn’t happened, you could have been badly hurt or even killed just now. I’ve never lost control quite that far in my life.”

Susan shuddered at the vivid image invoked by that matter-of-fact statement. “God,” she said. “I never even thought about that. But if I hadn’t somehow become ‘enhanced’, I don’t think I would have been able to bring you off so thoroughly in ten years of trying.” She grinned and quickly kissed Kara again. “As it was, the other tenants must have thought they were experiencing an earthquake.”

Kara blushed slightly. Although she knew Susan hadn’t meant any barb in her comment, it had struck home in a sensitive area of her psyche. Then she thought to herself, “Rao, this woman is unbelievable. I’m falling in love!” Suddenly afraid of her inner feelings, yearning to examine them more closely but scared of the intensity of the emotions she felt coursing just below their surface, she frantically sought to change the subject.

“You said earlier that your time-sense stretched out so you could see a high velocity bullet coming towards you. Okay, that’s not necessarily unusual. A person’s time-sense can get very distorted in the midst of an adrenalin rush. But then, when you came around, you could see very clearly in that darkened alley and you were able to hear a low-voiced conversation from half way around the building,” Kara said. “That loud squealing sound you said you heard coming from the car must have been ultrasonic, by the way, if no-one else could hear it,” she continued.

Susan’s jaw dropped.

“Hold still a moment.” Kara peered searchingly at Susan for a few moments. “Interesting,” she murmured. “You’ll have heard about my so-called X-ray vision?”

Susan nodded, mystified.

“Well,” continued Kara more briskly, “X-ray’s it ain’t! It’s actually based on tachyons.”

Susan’s face telegraphed her puzzlement far more clearly than words could ever have conveyed.

“I’ll try to keep it simple as I can, I don’t understand the theory very well myself,” admitted Kara. “Kal could explain it much better than I,” she depreciated.

Susan quickly demurred. “I’ll be content with your explanation, love. I’m no rocket scientist and I’ve got no desire to ever become one.”

Kara grinned. “Me neither.” She continued. “As I understand it, tachyons are sort of like sub-atomic particles that travel faster than light. They can only exist when they are travelling faster than light. And they go through normal matter as if it’s hardly there. They are only affected by really intense fields of energy like are found inside atoms and even then, not very greatly”

“My invulnerability is based on energy fields that we believe derive from another, parallel universe. Under the influence of a yellow sun like Earth’s, every cell in my body becomes saturated with this interdimensional energy which then creates a field of force around every part of my body that virtually nothing can penetrate, hence my invulnerability. For the same reason I don’t really need to eat or even breathe. All the energy my body could possibly need is instantly available to me.”

“These almost impenetrable fields are able to interact with tachyons far more intensely than the energy fields in an atom of normal matter. That makes it possible for my eyes to use tachyons, both to see with and to use as a carrier wave for intense beams of heat energy. I can see, using tachyons, telescopically, microscopically and even through normal, solid objects as if they were hardly there. But if I look at my own body, or Kal’s, we are almost opaque because of this energy field.”

“It seems as if your body is somehow becoming energised in the same sort of way. Your adventures this morning all seem to point towards that, as do the changes in your sight and hearing that you’ve been telling me about. Also, while I can still see through you fairly easily with my tachyonic vision, I have to focus a lot harder than normal,” she finished off.

“What?,” stammered Susan. “Y-Y-You mean I might have ‘X-ray’ vision too? A-A-And be able to really fly?”

“Possibly,” replied Kara. “Don’t get your hopes up too high though, it’s still way too soon to say what might happen. This is totally unknown territory for me, too. I get the distinct impression that you are still undergoing changes. I don’t think it can be from just being close to me. I’ve been physically close to other people for extended periods before now, men as well as women, and there’s never been the slightest indication of the sort of changes you are experiencing.”

“Would Superman have any ideas about what has happened to ‘enhance’ me?,” asked Susan.

“That’s a good term for it. Enhancement,” mused Kara. “He might have,” she continued. “Although, remember I told you Kal was as straight as an arrow. He is certainly not going to approve of you and me, not that it’s any of his business anyway.” She paused. “I think, though, that we should find some place well away from any breakables, not to mention witnesses, and test you out a bit to see how far this ‘enhancement’ goes. Do you think you’d be able to take a few more days off work?”

“I think Maggie Sawyer would understand,” replied Susan. “I told her, in private, what happened this morning. I think she thought I’d got a concussion or flipped my lid or something, but she seemed to half believe me when we finished talking. And my partner will be in hospital for at least another week.”

“Good,” said Kara. But I think we’d better both have a quick talk with her though, to be certain that she’ll keep our little secret. You don’t need that sort of problem right now.”

“Tomorrow,” said Susan firmly. She smiled warmly at Kara and licked her lips. “Right now, my Super love, I want nothing more than to make love with you again.”

o o oChapter 3

Climbing The Learning Curve

Susan slowly awoke from the deepest, most restful sleep she could ever remember. Drifting quietly along that uncharted boundary that separates sleep from consciousness, she reflected on her incredible experiences of last few days. Aware of an unusual contentment and a deep seated feeling of incredible wellbeing that surpassed even her exuberance as a teenager, she began to consider the surprising depth of her feelings for the blonde lover whose presence beside her had become so central to her life, her very heart, in such a short time.

Sighing happily, she was about to roll over toward her new lover when she was shattered to full alertness by the sound of the telephone. She quickly jumped out of bed. “Oh Shit!,” she yelled as she found herself describing a graceless cartwheel through the air, barely missing the light fitting, coming to a sudden halt where the ceiling met the wall and abruptly encountering the floor as gravity suddenly managed to re-exert its normal effect on her body.

Shaking her head she gingerly got to her feet and, keeping one hand against the wall, shuffled carefully out to answer the telephone’s insistent summons.

“Wienczorkowski”, she said, looking towards the clock on the wall. “0630” she thought as she recognised the voice of Inspector Maggie Sawyer, her superior officer in the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit.

“Susan,” Maggie said. “Sorry to call so early. I felt I needed to check up on you after yesterday.”

“Hey, no problem,” replied Susan, warmed by the note of obvious concern in her superior’s voice. “I feel great! But I do need to speak with you, privately and ASAP.” She looked up at the bedroom door, where her now preternaturally acute hearing had picked up Kara’s quiet movements, her green eyes encountering a thoroughly naked and charmingly tousled blonde vision. Kara nodded, smiling faintly.

“About what you told me yesterday?,” enquired Maggie.

“Yes, and more,” replied Susan quickly, relieved that her superior had called so early.

“Right,” said Maggie, decisively. “Come over for breakfast. Can you make it by 7:30? Apartment 1409, 4501 Wiltshire?”.

“Yes.” said Susan. I need to bring a friend.”

“Fine,” said Maggie. “See you then.”

Susan gently hung the phone up and gingerly got to her feet again, seeing the amused twinkle in Kara’s eyes. With a wicked grin, Kara said “Do you always get out of bed so, uh, energetically?”

Susan placed her hands on her hips, trying to look stern but knowing her attempt was doomed to failure as a sheepish grin spread across her face. Kara gracefully floated into the air and over to Susan, gently placing her hands on her cheeks and pulling her into a lingering kiss.

“Lover, it looks like we’ve got some work to do,” breathed Kara as she broke their kiss. “Let’s get showered and dressed and go see your boss.”

“You heard?,” asked Susan, blushing as she realised what she had just said.

“Yep,” grinned Kara as she caught Susan’s hand and headed towards the bathroom.

Kara reached into the shower and turned on the hot water. She looked back at Susan, her blue eyes sparkling. She nodded, looking pleased. “You look even denser to my tachyonic vision now, than you did yesterday,” she said. “And this morning’s gymnastic display looked astonishingly close to flying to me,” she added, grinning cheekily.

Susan looked back at Kara, her heart in her eyes. “I don’t know how I could possibly, ever, thank you enough, Kara,” she whispered, as she stepped up to her blonde lover and kissed her slowly, lingeringly.

Together the lovers stepped into the steaming shower. Their intense passions largely sated by the afternoon and night just passed, they were both content to just touch and be touched, caress and be caressed as they luxuriated under the hot water. A feeling of wonder passed through Susan’s mind as she reflected on the incredible changes she was experiencing. She suddenly realised that before her miraculous ‘enhancement’ she could never have tolerated the shower as hot as it now was. Yet to her new senses it just felt comfortably warm.

o o o

Maggie answered the door quickly, flabbergasted to see Kara with Susan. She stepped back and let them in, quickly closing the door behind her visitors. “Supergirl!,” she exclaimed. “This is a surprise.”

“Please, call me Kara.”

“Thanks, Kara. This puts a slightly different complexion on what Susan told me yesterday. I was starting to worry that she was losing it,” Maggie admitted. “Sorry, Susan,” she added.

“Don’t worry about it. I was starting to wonder the same, myself, for a while there yesterday,” replied Susan. “I’m sorry to intrude on you this early,” she apologised.

“No apology necessary,” said Maggie briskly. “My ‘partner’ is away for the week, visiting her folks. Come and eat.”

The three women adjourned to Maggie’s dining area where she quickly served up a simple but nourishing breakfast. As they ate, Susan filled Maggie in on the changes she had been experiencing, finishing with “Then this morning I bounded out of bed to answer the phone and found myself tumbling head over heels through the air and hitting the ceiling.” Kara giggled.

Maggie smiled. “That would have been something to see,” she said. “Do you have any real idea yet of the scope of your new abilities?”

“I don’t even know how to control them properly, yet,” admitted Susan.

“We need to take some time out to do some serious testing,” contributed Kara. “As well as training.”

“I can see that,” said Maggie. “Well, as I said to you yesterday, Susan, you should take some time off. You’re certainly due for a break. You’ve hardly taken any time off since you joined the force. Since Mike will be in hospital for a few days yet and won’t really be fully fit for duty for several weeks, I’ll announce that I’ve detached you for some special training.”

Susan smiled her thanks. The women, having finished the meal, got up from the table.

“Something else I can’t help noticing, Susan,” said Maggie. “You are moving differently. I’ve never seen you move so smoothly and effortlessly before. Almost like a cat in some ways. And I’m positive that your bust is a couple of sizes larger.”

Susan blushed. From anyone but Maggie, that would definitely have been a line.

“That goes with the rest of Susan’s enhancement,” contributed Kara. “My breasts actually function as energy stores. The more energy I accumulate in my body, the larger they get. As for the movement, that’s part and parcel of enhanced strength.”

“Don’t worry about me spreading this around, either,” said Maggie seriously as she quickly cleaned up. “We need to keep this under wraps. Susan, depending on how Kara’s testing and training of you goes, you may need to consider resigning from the unit. I’ll be very sorry to see you go, of course, but I think you will probably be acquiring some pretty heavy responsibilities along with your new powers, that won’t fit in very well with a ‘normal’ job.”

“Let’s just play that by ear for the moment,” suggested Kara as Maggie escorted her guests back to the door.

“Oh, by the way,” Maggie added as an afterthought. “You remember what you said about a noise coming from Dan’s car yesterday?” Susan nodded. Maggie continued, an amused expression on her face. “The engine blew up halfway back to the station. The mechanic said that it had run completely out of oil,” she said as she closed the door on her early morning guests.

Susan’s jaw dropped and she looked at Kara in amazement. Kara grinned back at her. “C’mon, lover. We’ve definitely got some work to do,” she said.

o o o

Kara alighted in the isolated, lightly wooded valley, her red headed lover cradled in her arms. Susan reached up and wrapped her arms around Kara’s neck, pulling her head down for a deep kiss. “Mmmm”, murmured Kara, returning the kiss for a few moments. Then she reluctantly pulled back and deposited Susan’s feet onto the ground. “I could keep doing that all day,” she murmured happily, “But that’s not what we came here for.”

Susan released the blonde super girl with equal reluctance. “So could I, love,” she murmured back.

Taking a deep breath, Kara began, “Okay, let’s start with flying. I want you to cast your mind back to this morning when you jumped out of bed and started flying across the room.” Susan nodded. “What were you feeling at the time?”

“Sheer astonishment,” Susan replied promptly. The two women giggled together for a moment.

“What were your feelings just before?,” asked Kara.

“I felt really warm, cosy. I was thinking about you, us, and I was about to turn over toward you. My breasts were tingling slightly, just as if I were getting slightly turned on. Then when the phone rang, I thought, got to get over there quickly before the noise wakes you. I sort of tensed my thigh muscles like I was going to leap out of bed and the room just seemed to fall away.”

“Good. I’d like you to try and recapture those sensations now,” instructed Kara, “but take it slowly and easily.”

Susan did as Kara had requested. She cast her mind back to her morning reverie and felt her breasts start to tingle again. She closed her eyes to better concentrate on the feelings, then she lightly flexed her thighs. Feeling that something was suddenly different, she opened her eyes to find herself floating in mid-air, ten feet off the ground. She gasped and, suddenly afraid of falling, tensed her thighs harder. She screamed in sudden fear as she found herself soaring rapidly higher. She lost her balance then, windmilling her arms frantically and tensing her body in panic as she abruptly nosedived into a large boulder. The boulder disintegrated with a sharp “Craaak”, fragments of granite flying in all directions. Susan staggered to her feet, swearing quietly to herself and spitting out fragments of grit and dust. She saw Kara rushing towards her, a concerned expression on her face. Susan held up her hands. “I’m okay,” she said. She wiped the dust from her face and brushed herself off. “Damn it, I’m going to get this right. I want to be able to fly more than anything else.”

She closed her eyes, reopening them moments later as she again became airborne. Returning to her previous height, she hovered unsteadily for a few moments. She started to lose her balance once more and suddenly shot off to one side, screaming again in panic as she found herself ploughing into the side of the nearby hill at great speed. Abruptly finding herself in intimate contact with Terra Firma again, and unhurt, her panic ebbed and she set about trying to extricate herself from under a few tons of soil. A couple of minutes later she realised that she had been frantically digging downwards. Reddening in embarassment at her unthinking reaction, she remembered Kara’s explanation of her super vision and recalled how she had somehow managed to zoom in on the shard of glass in the alley. Concentrating on regaining that strange vision, she abruptly found herself able to see through the hillside.

Looking around, she soon became aware of a strange distortion in her new vision. The distortion stopped and she realised that she was looking straight at Kara. She surmised that Kara had been looking at her with her own tachyonic vision and that somehow they had interfered with each other’s view. Relieved that Kara was watching out for her and would help her if she needed it, she looked further around her until she found the shortest route back to the surface. Recapturing the tingly feeling in her breasts, she experimentally flexed her leg muscles and felt herself starting to slowly move through the soft soil. She experimented with clenching and releasing different muscles and soon found that she was able to turn around until she was pointing in the right direction.

Confident that she knew where she was going, she poured on the coals, flexing her powerful leg muscles. Moments later, she shot back into the air. Keeping a tight rein on her emotions, she gingerly continued her experimentation, rapidly achieving her balance and gaining a degree of control over her direction and speed. Euphoric now, she flew through the sky, doing barrel rolls and impossibly tight loops and even somersaulting in sheer exuberance. “Oh,” she thought to herself. “This is wonderful. This is better than I ever thought it could possibly be.” Eventually remembering her patient instructor, she scanned around herself, getting her bearings. Then she gracefully flipped around and accelerated back to the valley from which she had departed so precipitately.

Moments later, she flipped around again to land feet first and began to slow down. Realising she was coming in too fast, she flexed her thighs harder, then harder again. At the last moment she realised that she was still going too fast and it was now too late to correct. Flushing with sudden embarrassment, she felt herself impact feet first on the soft ground, coming to a halt moments later, hip deep in the earth. Kara stood ten feet away, a gently amused smile on her face.

Mortified by her graceless landing, Susan quickly extricated herself. Finally standing on the ground again, rather than in it, Susan looked down, ruefully observing the crater she had just made, then glanced down at her dusty, dirt streaked body. She blushed as she realised that her clothing had given up the battle some time earlier and she was standing there totally naked.

Kara floated over to her and gently took her in her arms. “That was very well done, love,” she murmured reassuringly. “You picked it up astonishingly well. Now you just need to practice hard to build up the right reflexes.”

Susan threw her arms around Kara’s neck and kissed her passionately. Coming up for air, she said “Oh, Kara. It felt so wonderful. Thank you, love.” Then she turned and regarded her fresh crater. Blushing again, she said, “You’re right about me needing to practice though. I don’t think the city would be very happy if I created potholes like that every time I came in for a landing. I see it can get rather hard on clothes as well.”

Kara cracked up at that, doubling up in her mirth. “Sorry, love,” she eventually burbled. “I shouldn’t laugh at you. You really did do outstandingly well and I’ve been trying hard to restrain myself but you looked so funny.”

Susan laughed then, as well. “I guess I did at that, love.” The pert redhead and the Girl of Steel kissed again.

“Okay then,” said Kara eventually. “You seem to be getting the grip of your tachyonic vision quite nicely, too.”

“I meant to ask you about that,” admitted Susan. “When I buried myself before, I noticed my vision distorting weirdly when I first looked at you. Was that because you were using your tachyon vision to check up on me?” Kara nodded, a pleased smile on her face. “I thought so,” continued the redhead. “You know,” she admitted, blushing slightly, “I thought to myself just after we met that if I had ‘X-ray’ vision I’d be checking out every woman I saw.”

Kara winked at her lover. “You’ll soon get tired of doing that,” she grinned. “I only do it on special occasions, myself. Like after I met you.” Susan blushed again. “After I’d flown off I looked back and checked you out pretty thoroughly.”

“I wish I’d known,” admitted Susan. “I felt so stupid there. I was worried that you might have thought I was making a pass at you and that I’d offended you.”

“You mean, it wasn’t a pass?,” said Kara, faking a downcast expression for a moment, then winking.

Susan grinned back. “What’s next, teacher?,” she quipped irreverently.

“Well, we need to work on your strength, and especially your control of it,” replied Kara. With that, she rummaged around in the backpack she’d brought and tossed a very brief pair of denim cut-offs and a loose teeshirt at Susan. “But first, get dressed. You are very distracting like that,” she chuckled. As Susan quickly restored herself to an approximate semblance of decency, Kara rummaged again in her backpack, eventually producing several objects made of different materials. Selecting a short bar of brass, she passed it to Susan. “I want you to try and squash it,” she instructed.

Wide eyed, Susan accepted the lump of brass, grasping it in her right hand. With a dubious expression on her face, she started to squeeze.

“As hard as you can,” ordered Kara.

The muscles of the redhead’s right arm and shoulder suddenly exploded into a mass of chiselled curves as she complied. She gasped in astonishment at the sight of her new musculature. “My God!,” she exclaimed to herself. “I’ve suddenly got more curves than a pro bodybuilder.”

Slowly, the bar of brass began to deform under her fingers. “Harder,” she ordered herself. Reaching within, she marshalled her seldom-tapped reserves, doubling the force she was applying. She felt the heat starting to radiate from her arm as her muscles and tendons almost seemed to hum under the tension she was placing on them. The brass deformed further, heating up in the process. Susan stared disbelievingly as the brass began to actually melt, runnels of the molten yellow metal flowing sluggishly between her fingers. Then she felt herself beginning to get aroused, her pussy moistening and her nipples starting to tingle. “I don’t believe this,” she gasped, as her grip began to tighten even more, the molten brass now flowing like water. A stream of the molten metal splashed down along her leg and onto her foot. She looked down in amazement, expecting to feel intense pain from the contact but feeling nothing except a pleasant warmth.

“Okay,” nodded Kara with a pleased expression on her face. “You can ease up now.”

Susan released her grip, gazing down at the cooling metal in amazement. “My God,” she gasped. “How much force is needed to do that?”

“Oh, a couple of hundred thousand pounds, probably,” Kara tossed off. “Now try it again, only this time I want you to hold this tennis ball in your left hand while you’re doing it.”

Susan accepted the ball and exerted her grip on the deformed bar again. “BANG!” went the ball a few moments later, the sharp sound echoing through the valley like a gunshot. She looked down at the scrap of rubber in her left hand, her jaw dropping in surprise.

“See what I mean,” said Kara. “Control! The object of this exercise is to improve your muscular control to the point where you can hold something really fragile in one hand while exerting tons of force with the other. Now, try it again,” she instructed, offering her lover another tennis ball.

Her mouth still open in her amazement, Susan accepted the second ball. She tentatively squeezed it in her left hand, getting the feel of its resilience under her incredible new strength. Then she transferred it to her right hand, doing the same. Then she took up the brass lump, with her left hand this time and began to squeeze. Again her muscles pumped up enormously as she pitted her amazing new strength against the lump of mere brass. Keeping some attention on the tennis ball in her right hand, she progressively stepped up her effort, again watching the brass slowly deform, then gradually start to melt. It seemed even easier this time. Satisfied, she released her grip again. She looked at the undamaged tennis ball in her right hand then, grinning, tossed it high into the air, catching it moments later. “How was that?,” she enquired.

Kara was impressed. Back when she had first arrived on Earth and had started coming to grips with her own newly acquired superpowers under the patient tutelage of her cousin, she had gone through a full gross of tennis balls before she’d mastered this particular exercise. Granted, she was significantly stronger than the beautiful redhead before her, but the difference was not really that great any more. Deciding that a challenge was in order, she reached into her backpack again, this time producing a fragile glass ornament about the same size as the tennis ball. Grinning at her redheaded lover, she handed it to her, saying “Here, try this then. I’m glad I thought to bring it. I didn’t think we’d be needing any of these for a few days yet.”

Susan immediately realised that she was being challenged by the lovely blonde. “Okay,” she said uncertainly. “I’ll try. I hope you brought a few more of these along though, love. I’ve got a feeling I’ll be needing them.” Gingerly holding the ornament in her right hand she again began to apply pressure to the brass. Concentrating intensely on the ornament, she discovered that by using her tachyonic vision she could easily see the changing stresses in the glass as she gently squeezed it. Reassured, she pumped up the muscles in her other arm and really started bearing down on the brass, at the same time smoothly controlling her grip on the ornament. With nearly all of her attention on the glass orb, she held it out at arms length to keep it well away from the heat of both the brass and her rapidly heating muscles.

To her amazement, she suddenly felt a squishing sensation in her left hand, as if she had been squeezing a tube of toothpaste, followed by a pair of dull thuds. Carefully releasing her grip on the ornament, she stared in amazement at her now empty left hand. She had squeezed all the way through the rod. Open mouthed, she looked up at her blonde lover and saw her own amazement mirrored in Kara’s face.

Rapidly regaining her aplomb, she reached down and gathered the remaining fragments of the brass bar, grinned cheekily at Kara and asked “I hope you’ve got another lump of brass handy?,” as she presented her with the remains. “This one is looking a bit the worse for wear.”

The two women burst into laughter. Kara shook her head ruefully. “I certainly didn’t think we’d need that, today! Lover, you are amazing,” she admitted. “I’m not going to tell you how many tennis balls I went through before I got the hang of that exercise.”

“I’ve always been stronger than average,” Susan confessed, “even as a child. I was a bit of a tomboy and, back then, I preferred to play with the boys, believe it or not. We would sometimes challenge each other with a game very similar to that exercise. We used to call it ‘Clay and Eggs’. I always won,” she finished smugly. “I even tried it a few times, by myself, with soap bubbles instead of eggs. That was really hard. What’s next, teacher”, she continued, winking cheekily. “Same exercise but running, jumping and flying?”

Kara’s face coloured slightly. “Er, if you want to, love. I never got that good at it,” she admitted. “I was too impatient and probably, truth be known, too old to develop that level of muscular control. I’d love to see you take Kal on with that exercise though. I don’t think even he is that good.”

Now it was Susan’s turn to blush. “I’m having trouble believing this, love, that I, a mere earthling, could be better at something than you.”

Kara stepped forward and kissed her lover. “Why?,” she asked gently. “Everybody has their own areas of special skill. You just happen to have unbelievably good muscular control. Why be embarassed about it? If I’d played a game like that as a child, I’d probably be just as good. And you, my love, are most certainly not a ‘mere’ anything.”

o o o

Susan flicked on the lights as she and Kara walked into the empty Metropolis Police pistol range, locking the door behind themselves. Inspector Maggie Sawyer had organised access to the facility for them and had assured them that they would have the place to themselves. Both women were laden with firearms of various shapes and sizes. Susan looked at her lover, an uncertain expression on her face. “Are you sure I’m ready for this?,” she faltered.

“Relax,” instructed Kara. “Check it out for yourself. You are almost as opaque to tachyonic vision now as either Kal or myself. That means you should be almost as invulnerable as us now, too. Besides which, you’ve already stopped one bullet without harm,” she reminded.

“Yeah, sure,” snapped Susan. “It stung like crazy and knocked me out for at least fifteen minutes, too,” she said, her uncertainty reflecting in her voice.

Kara deposited her load of armament onto a convenient bench and relieved Susan of her load. She took her lover into her arms and hugged her reassuringly. “Love, you’re far more opaque to tachyons now than you were back then,” she murmured. “Sooner or later you’re going to get shot at. It’s far better for you to become accustomed to the experience now, in a controlled situation, than to have to play it by ear later.”

Susan sighed in resignation. She nodded. “You’re right, love. I know you are. But I’ve got thirty years of experience at being vulnerable behind me and only a couple of days of being invulnerable. All of my training and reflexes scream for me to duck in a firefight. It’s going to take a while for me to get over that. Oh well,” she shrugged. “Might as well get it over with, I guess.” She quickly stripped, neatly folding her clothes alongside the pile of firearms. She walked to the far end of the range, turned around, took a quick breath. “Okay, I’m ready, I guess.”

Kara selected a .38 police special, checked it quickly, released the safety and pointed it at the naked body of her red-haired lover. Six sharp explosions echoed out as Susan’s reflexes took over and she dived for the floor. Six bullets ricocheted from various parts of her body and continued to bounce around the room until they were spent. Susan got to her feet, a sheepish expression on her face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I warned you about my reflexes. But I hardly felt the impacts. It was more of a tingle than anything else.”

Kara giggled. “Okay, try and hold still this time,” she requested as she picked up a .45 magnum. Susan braced herself as Kara sighted down the barrel at her and pulled the trigger. Six more, much louder, explosions quickly rang out through the range. This time, Susan managed to hold her ground as the six bullets impacted on her shapely breasts, each deeply deforming the soft, feminine flesh until, momentum totally absorbed, they popped back out to land at her feet.

Susan giggled. “Oooh,” she exclaimed. “That tickled.”

Kara grinned at her, then, selecting a sub-machinegun, she set it to full automatic. She pointed it at Susan and, pressing the trigger, began to hose her down with a hail of copper jacketed lead. This time Susan was thrown backwards by the continuing impacts, yelping in surprise as she wound up flat on her back. Kara continued to fire. With an impish grin she directed the hail of bullets at her lover’s pussy, smiling broadly as she heard gasps of intense arousal followed quickly by screams of ecstasy. Moments later, the magazine empty, Kara started laughing as the cries of ecstasy continued. The stimulation of the bullets having stopped, Susan had continued to manipulate her pussy and clit, rapidly attaining a screeching climax. Eventually, Susan stood, blushing slightly. A fleeting expression of annoyance crossed her face and she reached down to spread her nether lips and love channel. Several dozen mangled bullets slid out and fell to the floor. “You stopped too goddamn soon,” she accused her laughing companion.

“Sorry,” laughed Kara. “I ran out of ammunition.” She laid the gun down and gracefully flying down the long room to Susan, took her in her arms and kissed her deeply. Susan returned the kiss, with interest. “Still worried about guns and bullets?,” Kara enquired archly as she broke the kiss. Susan tried to retain a stern expression but gave up and let her smile break across her face.

“I guess not,” she admitted finally.

“C’mon,” said Kara. “Get dressed and we’ll return the ironmongery.”

o o o

The two women returned to their isolated valley, laden this time with a large assortment of steel bars and tubes, ranging from half an inch to four inches in diameter and in grades from mild to the very hardest of tempered tool steel.

Kara selected a thin rod, handing it to her lover and saying, “Try bending this, love.”

Susan accepted the rod, gripped it with both hands and started to bear down, her muscles pumping up slightly as she did so. Rust and scale flaked from the rod as she easily bent it into a ‘U’. She straightened it out again and, holding one end firmly in her hand, proceeded to wind it around her arm. She giggled as she unflexed her arm and allowed the coil of steel to drop to the ground. “Next please,” she said smugly.

Smirking slightly, Kara handed her another, identical seeming rod. Susan noted the smirk, wondering to herself what trick her lover was playing on her this time. She gripped the rod firmly and applied pressure gradually. “Hmmm. This rod is a lot harder than the first,” she mused. “Okay, you sucker, yield.” She turned up the wick and her muscles exploded out as the steel began to screech in protest, slowly bending. Then, with a loud “Snap”, the bar shattered, ragged pieces of steel flying around and ricocheting from the surrounding rocks.

An hour or so later, surrounded by a miscellaneous collection of warped and twisted steel, Susan raised her eyebrows at her patient instructor. “What’s next, love,” she said.

Kara sashayed over, an innocent expression on her beautiful face. “What a wonderful collection of steel pretzels,” she remarked. “They must be good for something.” She paused reflectively. “I know,” she said. “Let’s try out your heat vision.”

Susan looked blankly at her lover. “How do I do that?,” she asked, puzzled.

“It’s quite simple,” began Kara. She picked up two pieces of steel and held them together, peering intently at their junction. The steel rapidly heated to incandescence, flowing like water to form a perfect weld. Susan’s jaw dropped at the incredible sight. “You don’t have to strain or force anything to make it to happen,” she continued. “All it takes is good concentration and imagination.”

Susan’s puzzlement had not abated in the slightest. “Kara, love, that is as clear to me as a bucket of mud.” She reddened slightly, remembering her incredible new powers of vision. “Make that a bucket of lead,” she amended. “I don’t even know if I’m able to project heat yet.”

“I’m certain you can,” replied Kara. “After all, you’re very good with tachyonic vision already. Here, hold this piece and concentrate on the very end of it.”

Confused, Susan accepted the mangled bar and began to concentrate on its end with her tachyonic vision.

“Now,” continued Kara, “Imagine that it’s getting very hot and starting to melt.”

Susan did so. Her vision suddenly became tinted with a violet colouration and she felt copious amounts of energy flowing out of her eyes, almost seeming to be drawn out into the bar as it abruptly flashed into incandescence, sending sparks flying in all directions. She screamed her surprise, her concentration totally disrupted as she snapped her eyes shut and dropped the bar.

“Hey! Careful, love,” admonished Kara. “That’s a good way to burn out eyelids.”

Susan cautiously opened her eyes, peering embarassedly at the younger woman. “Wha… What happened?,” she managed.

Kara smiled. “I think you put a little too much effort into it,” she said gently. “No strain or force, remember. Just concentrate and use your imagination to see the bar as you want it to be.”

Susan swallowed. “I thought that’s what I was doing,” she said. “But then everything became tinged with violet and I didn’t know what was happening, then there were all those sparks flying everywhere.” She gulped again. “It scared me. I’m sorry.”

Kara embraced the statuesque redhead and smiled reassuringly. “Well, if nothing else, you now know you can do it, love. Now you need to practice until you can do it instinctively, without effort.”

Susan suddenly began to sob. Tears flowing freely, she sank to her knees and buried her face in her hands. Aghast at her lovers reaction, Kara knelt and put her hands on her shoulders, gripping them firmly and reassuringly.

“Oh, Kara,” she wailed despairingly. “It’s all too much. This started out being such a glorious adventure for me, learning to fly and all, but I’m just totally overwhelmed now. So much has happened to me so quickly and there’s so much to remember and to practice and no time to get used to anything.” The redhead continued to sob wildly as Kara gathered her into her arms, offering what comfort and solace she could, as Susan fought for, and gradually regained, control of her emotions. Finally, wet faced and embarrassed, she looked up and smiled waveringly. “I’m sorry,” she said huskily. She took several deep, slow breaths. “I haven’t broken down like that since I was a little kid,” she admitted falteringly. “After that little outburst you must be regretting ever having set eyes on me.”

Kara placed her hands gently on each side of the redhead’s wet cheeks and leaned over to kiss her. “Nonsense,” she chided gently. “I love you, you silly chook. What sort of a relationship would we have if we couldn’t let our hair down and our inner feelings show to each other. If either of us should be apologising, it should be me for pushing you so fast and so hard to master your new powers.” She laughed uncertainly. “I guess it’s been too damned long s-s-s…” She stopped, appalled, as she felt her own tears start to flow, as her own sobs began to overwhelm her, as the floodgates started to crack open on her own long-repressed aloneness and loss.

Susan watched, stunned, as the beautiful blonde super girl’s eyes filled and overflowed, as her sobs began, as the lovely face before her crumpled into a heart-rending expression of despair, as she gave herself over to soul-searing sobs of impossible grief and unbearable loss.

She suddenly knew, with utter certainty, that Kara was crying not just for herself and her lost family and lost love but was grieving for her whole race, an entire race with no known survivors save herself and her cousin. Her grief and loss for which, until now, she had kept so sternly repressed, that had had no possible outlet. Just as she herself had been comforted minutes before, but with a depth of care and compassion which she had never before experienced, Susan gently embraced and began to provide such comfort as she could to the hopelessly crying woman in her arms, who clung to her so desperately in her anguish.

Several times over the next hours, Susan felt Kara’s torrent of heartbroken tears begin to slacken as the beautiful Kryptonian struggled unsuccessfully to regain control over her naked emotions, to repress again the anguish she had held within herself for so long, only to topple helplessly back into the depths of her despair, and her heart went out to this lonely representative of lost Krypton who had given her so very much.

Eventually the blonde girl’s tears slackened and ceased as, utterly drained by her emotions, she drifted away on the blessed ocean of sleep. Susan gently, lovingly, gathered her into her arms and, with the utmost care, took to the darkening skies of Metropolis, flying gently back to her apartment, where she finally lay down on her bed, herself exhausted by the day and slowly went to sleep, her lover still cradled gently in her arms.

o o o

Kara slowly awoke, feeling utterly calm and at peace with the world, to a degree which she had not experienced since her childhood in the far-away, space-borne, but ultimately doomed Argo City. Becoming aware of the arms still lovingly holding her, she remembered the previous day’s emotional outpourings and opened her eyes to gaze at the bright green eyes and slightly careworn face of her red-haired lover. Momentarily uncertain, she experienced an unexpected feeling of relief as Susan’s face lit up with joyous welcome and leaned close to kiss her.

“Good morning, love,” said Susan happily, her face clearing.

Reassured, Kara stretched deeply then hugged her lover, returning the kiss. “Susan,” she said. “I love you.” The two women fell into each other’s eyes, then kissed deeply.

Eventually, the two women reluctantly broke their kiss. “And I love you,” returned Susan.

“Thank you for yesterday,” began Kara. “For being there for me. I’m sorry I overloaded like that. It’s not something I normally do.”

“Hush,” replied Susan gently. “That had been building up in you for a long time. You needed to let it go.” She grinned momentarily. “For that matter, I seem to remember someone else losing it a while earlier and someone who was there to help her then, too.”

“You’re right about one thing, love,” murmured Kara. “I did need to let go. I feel purged, more at peace than I can remember being since I was a child. As far as someone else losing it goes, I can remember pushing that someone pretty hard and a lot faster than she was really willing or able to go.”

“Be that as it may,” returned Susan. “I feel much better after my little release of steam yesterday and a good night’s sleep, too. If you feel up to it today, I’m ready to try again.” She smiled coquettishly at her lover. “Or anything else you might happen to have in mind.”

Kara burst out laughing. She reached for the redhead, pulling her close again and began a long, drawn out and very intimate kiss which rapidly led to a much more intimate and very enjoyable activity.

o o oChapter 4

The Key to the Matter

Some time later, the two lovers’ flaring passions finally being sufficiently sated to make room for other, less vital concerns, they lay on Susan’s bed talking.

“Given that I’ve got so much more to learn and so much practicing to do,” said Susan, “How long will be before I can start ‘earning my keep’, do you think?”

Kara smiled mischievously at her lover’s choice of words. “I think you’re doing a quite adequate job of that already, love,” she murmured teasingly.

Susan accepted the tease in the spirit in which it was intended and poked her tongue out at her lover in reply. “This isn’t work,” she protested, then. “It’s too much fun.” She threw herself across the bed at Kara and proceeded to tickle her mercilessly, the ensuing windmill of flailing arms and legs and flying blonde and red hair fully occupying the lovers’ attention for several giggling, strenuously aerobic minutes and severely testing the structure of the bed. Eventually tiring of the enjoyable activity, they fell apart. “Now,” laughed Susan. “A serious answer, please, love. How soon do you think I’ll be ready to start using my powers, to fight crime or whatever?”

Kara reached over and softly caressed the older woman’s face. “Whenever you think you’re ready, love,” she replied quietly. “You’re getting very good with your flying powers and tachyonic vision and you’re better than I at fine muscular control. You’re totally bullet-proof as well, now. We need to work on control of your heat vision a bit more,” she commented, smiling gently.

Suddenly becoming aware of something which, until that very moment she had, unaccountably, failed to notice, Kara began to chuckle. “I love your hair long, too, love. It really suits you.” She reached toward Susan, picked up a handful of her now long red hair and gently drew it toward her, into Susan’s own field of view.

Susan’s eyes bugged out and her jaw dropped in amazement. “Whaaa …,” she began. Wonderingly, she reached up and fanned out her hair. “I’ve never had hair this long,” she said dumbfoundedly. “When did this happen?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing, love.” Kara burst out laughing. “Oh, the expression on your face right now is absolutely priceless.”

Susan shook her head in bewilderment. “Hair doesn’t just grow like this, overnight,” she sputtered. “Is this something else that comes with enhancement?”

“I really don’t know, Susan,” admitted Kara, still chuckling softly. “It must be, though. I can’t think of anything else which could account for it.”

“How do you manage to cut your hair, love?,” asked Susan. “It’d be a bit difficult, wouldn’t it, what with invulnerable hair and all that?”

“I’ve never had to,” admitted Kara. “I like my hair at this length and it’s never grown any longer since I’ve been here on Earth. I don’t think it’s possible to cut my hair, with anything.”

“Oh, great!,” muttered Susan. “I guess I’d better get used to having it at this length, then,” she continued more loudly. “I was thinking just the other day that I should maybe let my hair grow out a bit more, but I really wasn’t expecting this. I just hope it doesn’t get in my way too much.”

“Well, as I said before, long hair really suits you. You look great like this, love,” Kara reassured her. If it gets to be too much of a problem, maybe Kal can work out some way of cutting it when he gets back.”

“Oh well,” said Susan, shrugging her shapely shoulders and finger combing her hair back over her shoulders. “I guess I’ll survive.” She grinned wryly. Kara grinned back at her. “Now, where were we before my new hair distracted us?”

Kara thought for a moment, then continued. “You’ve had extensive training in martial arts, haven’t you,” she asked.

“Yes,” replied Susan.

“I think it’d be good for both of us if you started teaching me at least the rudiments of hand to hand combat,” said Kara.

Susan’s eyes widened in surprise. “What on earth for?,” she asked, puzzled.

“Raw power isn’t everything, love,” replied the blonde. “It’s conceivable that some day we’re going to come up against someone from another planet who is comparable in strength to ourselves, maybe even stronger. The more skill we have at hand to hand combat in a situation like that, the better off we’ll all be,” she finished, thoughtfully.

“Mmmm, yes, I can see that,” mused Susan. “One thing martial arts does teach you is very good discipline, as well as fine control of your body and that has already helped me enormously since I’ve been enhanced. But I have noticed that my normal morning exercises don’t do a damned thing for my enhanced muscles.” She paused for a moment. “Although I certainly haven’t tried to do any martial arts katas since I’ve been enhanced. I guess learning to adapt the katas to enormously greater strength and speed and figuring out how to incorporate flying powers into the training would be good experience for me, as well.” Susan stopped and thought for a moment. “Love, what do you and Kal do to get a good workout, anyway. And how much exercise does a super body actually need?”

“Well, once we reach full muscular development it really doesn’t take that much work to keep in shape,” replied Kara. “In fact, we’d really have to work hard at it to manage to get out of condition. Generally I do isometric exercises, after all loose five or ten thousand ton boulders aren’t really that common and they’re hell to keep balanced,” she continued with a sly grin.

Susan’s eyes grew as large as saucers. “Can you really lift that much?,” she whispered, awed.

“Dunno,” Kara tossed back, shrugging. “I’ve never tried, myself. You might ask Kal, though. He’s probably tried it with a big iceberg or glacier at some time. Or a medium sized ship would probably weigh about that. It’d probably break apart under the stresses, though.” She grinned cheekily. “One thing you will probably discover soon, if you haven’t already, is that physical exertion can be a real turn-on. The more we exert ourselves, the hotter and hornier we get. At least I do. I assume it’s the same for Kal, he just somehow manages to hide it well.”

“Oooo!,” exclaimed Susan, grinning broadly. “Well I’ve always loved exercising. Now I’ve got an even better excuse to do a lot of it.” She winked. “I’ve always had trouble finding good sparring partners in my own weight and strength range though. I guess that’s going to be even harder now,” she continued ruefully, “Unless you and I are closely matched enough now, to give each other a good work out.” She thought a moment and permitted an expression of pristine innocence to encompass her beautiful face. “Although, if we did work out together, how would we tell if it’s actually the exercise that’s turning us on,” she remarked slyly.

Kara dissolved into a fit of giggles. “Oh, love, you are incorrigible,” she eventually managed to get out.

Susan grinned at her, deciding then that it was time to change the subject to one slightly less distracting. She waited until Kara had managed to control her outburst of hilarity and took a deep breath. “What is it about lead and tachyonic vision?,” she asked curiously. “On the basis of what you’ve already told me, lead shouldn’t be able to block tachyons the way it does.”

“I don’t really understand it that well myself,” admitted Kara. “It has something to do with frequencies, though. All tachyons possess a characteristic frequency, or ‘colour’ but our eyes only use a very narrow band of tachyonic ‘colours’. It just so happens that that band is very powerfully affected by the atomic structure of lead. Other materials respond to and strongly affect different ‘colours’ of tachyons but, as we don’t use those sorts, er ‘colours’, of tachyons, we don’t notice the effects. The tachyons our eyes use can go through literally miles of anything other than lead and be only slightly affected. Our eyes, when they pick up those tachyons, can somehow ‘read’ the slight changes in those tachyons and our brains can then reconstruct an image of the objects they had passed through. Of course, the more material they pass through, the more changes occur in the tachyons and the foggier the resulting image becomes. I think Kal called it interferometry or something like that when he was trying to explain it all to me.”

Kara paused there for a moment, a slight expression of bafflement passing across her beautiful face. “Kal’s never been able to understand, or accept, that I’ve got no real interest in the ‘why’,” she commented. “As long as I can understand how to ‘do’, that’s enough for me.” She sighed, continuing. “Heat vision works a bit differently. There, our eyes somehow actually collect and focus tachyons and use them as a sort of carrier wave for the heat. At least, I think that’s how it works,” she confessed. “Kal did try to explain it all to me once but he got horribly technical and I may have gotten it all mixed up.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Susan. “Is that why everything seems to become tinged with violet when I use heat vision?”

“I guess so,” said Kara. “We can melt lead easily enough, we just can’t see through it worth a damn.”

“What’s the story with Kryptonite then?,” asked Susan. “Am I going to be affected by it, too? After all, I’m not a Kryptonian.”

“Well, that’s different,” explained Kara. “Krypton had a core of almost solid, although not pure, gold. It was that, together with the red sun of Krypton, that had a very strong dampening effect on superpowers. You see, our bodies’ ability to absorb and use the interdimensional energy is multiplied enormously under the influence of a yellow sun like Earth’s. What little energy we were able to absorb under a red sun, we were prevented from using by the gold. Between the two effects, we were no more powerful at home, relatively speaking, than an unenhanced Terran is here on Earth.”

“Pure gold acts a bit like a mild poison to us, you know,” she continued. “Being too close to gold has an effect almost like being drunk to a Terran and I think it will prove to be the same with you, now. It doesn’t exactly prevent us from absorbing the interdimensional energy but it strongly affects our ability to use it. By the way, one of Earth’s scientists once learned to detect and partly harness that energy. He called it ‘Orgone’ energy, according to Kal,” she inserted parenthetically. “I think Kal said his name was William Reich, … Hang on, that doesn’t sound right. Um, Wilhelm? That’s it, Wilhelm Reich, or something like that.”

“Anyway,” she continued, “gold doesn’t stop us from absorbing and storing this Orgone energy but it does interfere with our normal use of it so we become much weaker and somewhat less invulnerable if we’re too close to too much of it. I wouldn’t suggest you wear any heavy gold jewelry, for instance, or go for a tour of the vaults under Fort Knox. Kryptonite is actually gold mixed with other, radioactive, elements. The presence of the gold makes us vulnerable to the radiation of those other elements and it can have some rather embarrassing and often dangerous effects on us.”

“Oh, I see,” said Susan. “So I’d be just as vulnerable then, to the different forms of Kryptonite, as you or Kal.”

“I would expect so,” nodded Kara. “The effects may not be quite the same on you because you are Terran, not Kryptonian, but there would certainly be an effect. It’s just as well the stuff is very rare here.”

“So it’d be possible for someone to make synthetic Kryptonite by mixing some radioactive elements with gold,” commented Susan.

“Kao! I hope not!,” exclaimed Kara. “I’ll have to ask Kal about that but I don’t think so. I think it was because of the dampening effect of Krypton’s red sun, that other elements never before seen on Terra were able to be formed. Under the influence of the more energetic yellow sun here, those elements become very unstable. They would probably explode very violently if there were too much together in one place and if they weren’t mixed in with the gold. But they start to emanate very powerful rays of energy that can have some very embarrassing, painful and dangerous effects on our bodies.”

“Wouldn’t that tend to suggest that this orgone energy is somehow involved, that it somehow helps to make those elements more unstable?” asked Susan curiously.

“I’ve got no idea,” admitted Kara. “You’d best ask Kal about that. He’s the scientific type and I’m sure he’d be able to give you chapter and verse on all the technical details. Surprisingly enough, the rays from Kryptonite don’t seem to have any effect at all on a Terran. Fortunately, once we are able to get away from the stuff, our ability to use Orgone energy normally is no longer suppressed by the gold and our bodies can repair any damage caused by the radiation very quickly. The other effect I’ve noticed,” she continued, grinning, “Is if our use of Orgone energy is blocked for too long by being close to gold, the results can be rather dramatic when the gold is finally removed.”

“Dramatic in exactly what way,” asked Susan suspiciously, having noted Kara’s grin.

“Oh, powerful energy discharges are pretty usual,” said Kara offhandedly. “Usually from my breasts and, particularly, my nipples. It tends to be very arousing, too,” she added, smiling.

“Hmmm,” said Susan, returning her lover’s smile. “Hey, I just remembered. I read something years ago about this Orgone stuff. Something about it having a lot to do with sexual responses in the body, and particularly with orgasms. I wonder if that’s got anything to do with exercise and exertion making us horny? Like if we’re using up a lot of Orgone energy very quickly and fresh energy is flowing into our bodies.”

“That sounds about right. I’d say that’s exactly what does happen. Well spotted,” congratulated Kara. “Well, my love,” she continued. “Let’s grab a shower and get dressed and go do some more work,” she suggested.

“Okay, you’re ‘on’,” replied Susan enthusiastically.

o o o

A short time later the two women were flying over the Metropolis skyline, enjoying an impromptu game of tag. After a brief detour while Kara rounded up some desperate criminals engaged in a shoot-out with some of the Police Department’s finest in downtown Metropolis, they quickly arrived back at their deserted valley. Susan was laughing in her exuberance. As they landed, she quickly grabbed Kara’s hands and swung her around in joyous circles for a few moments before embracing her. “Oh, Kara. How wonderful it is to be able to fly!,” she carolled in high spirits. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, my love.” Kara laughed unrestrainedly at her lover’s infectious enthusiasm, hugging her back. Eventually they drew apart, still chuckling with joy.

“Right,” said Susan, returning eventually to relative sobriety. “Let’s get down to business. First off, I want to try that welding trick again. Let’s see if I’ve got it right … I hold the pieces together, right? Then I concentrate on the join with my tachyonic vision and imagine the metal getting hot and melting and flowing together at the join?,” she asked.

“That’s exactly right, love,” replied Kara. “The most important thing to remember is not to strain or push at it. Just take it slow and easy. Then when you’ve finished, let yourself see the metal as it really is instead of imagining how you want it to be and your heat vision will turn off by itself,” she instructed.

Susan picked up two of the surrealistically twisted steel rods from her previous day’s activities and held them together. She focussed her tachyonic vision on the join and concentrated on imagining the metal of the join to be heating up and starting to melt. She started to breathe more quickly as her vision became tinged with violet again, but carefully maintained her mental visualisation of what she wanted to have happen, imagining the metal melting and flowing together at the point she was concentrating on and gradually moving that focus point along the join and around the steel. Moments later she allowed her imagined image to lapse and her vision flashed back to normal. She closely examined her handiwork and exclaimed with pleasure to see a perfect weld all around the join. “Kara, love! Look! I did it!,” she sang out joyfully. “It wasn’t hard at all,” she exclaimed.

Kara hugged the enthusiastic redhead. “Beautifully done, love,” she proclaimed. “Now let’s try some more.”

Susan quickly gathered up more of the steel pretzels, welding them together with her heat vision as she went, finding that the work became easier, her use of heat vision becoming almost second nature and that she hardly needing to think about what she was doing any more. Kara looked on with interest as a weirdly shaped piece of metal sculpture rapidly took shape under the hands, and eyes, of her red haired lover. Scant minutes later, Susan had finished. She turned it around slightly and stepped aside, a mischievous expression on her face. Kara looked closely at the result, then took a few steps around it and looked again, bursting into paeans of laughter as she realised what her lover had just wrought. “Oh,” she burbled in delight. “That is just so obscene! So cleverly done and so appropriate.”

For Susan had managed to create from the pile of warped and twisted scrap steel an amazingly recognisable caricature of a nationally known and very vocally anti-lesbian female legislator eagerly caressing a monstrous vagina.

Kara clapped her hands in sheer delight. “Let’s dump it on top of the White House tonight,” she exclaimed, grinning maliciously.

Susan laughed gleefully. “Oh, wouldn’t that be fun,” she bubbled, delighted. Then she shook her head regretfully. “No, we’d better not, love. That would be just too obvious. Everyone would realise that super powers had been used and they’d immediately conclude that you’d done it.”

“Not that it’d worry me too much,” Kara contended, “But you’re right,” she reluctantly concurred.

“Yeah. So let’s just keep it to ourselves,” proposed Susan. “I can use it to practice on some more.” With that, she focussed her attention on her parody and exercised her heat vision one more time, causing the steel to glow incandescently and slowly slump into a puddle upon the ground.

“You know, I never would have guessed you to be an artist, love,” smiled Kara. “That was so well done.”

“Oh, caricature isn’t really art,” denied Susan. “I used to play around with it a bit at school. I’d regularly get into trouble for caricaturing the teachers. The other kids loved them. The teachers were usually quite unimpressed by my efforts,” she grinned maliciously. “And then I’d have to take a note home. Mom and Dad found it all very amusing but they usually asked me to try and restrain myself. I haven’t done it for years, though. I was often sorely tempted while I was in the army but I somehow managed to convince myself that discretion was the better part of valour,” she concluded.

“Well, whether or not it’s art is a matter of opinion,” said Kara, “And my opinion is that it is. Be that as it may, you’ve certainly caught onto using your heat vision. I couldn’t have done better myself.”

Susan coloured slightly. “Thanks, love. I don’t know how I’d go on larger stuff, or smaller stuff though. There’s plenty of practicing to do yet, I think.”

“Even so, the basics are the same,” retorted Kara. “I don’t think you’ll find it as hard as you think, love.”

“That reminds me,” said Susan, changing the subject off of herself and onto something else that had been puzzling her for a while. “I’ve been noticing that people’s voices sound somewhat different to me now. There seems to be a whole bunch of overtones that I’ve never been able to hear before. Except for your voice, love. It hasn’t changed at all. Why would that be?”

“I think you’re probably hearing ultrasonic overtones since you’ve been enhanced. Everyone’s voice has them. In my case though, and Kal’s, our vocal cords are far, far stronger and we can exert a far closer control on them. That tends to block off the high overtones. But our control allows us to easily change the pitch of our voices, over a very wide range. For example,” and Kara effortlessly shifted her voice up several octaves so she was speaking entirely ultrasonically.

Susan was dumbfounded, her mouth opening in amazement. “Hey, love. That is amazing. Would I be able to do that?,” she eventually managed to ask.

“I don’t see why not.” replied Kara. Your vocal cords should be almost as strong as mine. Hmmm. I’m not really sure that I can explain how to do it. It’s an automatic, unconscious action with me. I decide I’m going to speak ultrasonically and I just do it. I guess you could try concentrating on your vocal cords and try to consciously tighten them as you speak.

“But,” began Susan. “If my vocal cords have gotten as much stronger as the rest of me, how come my voice hasn’t changed?”

Kara considered for a moment. “I think it’s probably because you’ve been unconsciously compensating for the changes, love. Although, now that I think on it, I believe your voice has changed slightly. Not so it’d be audible to a normal person though, but I do believe your own supersonic overtones have pretty much vanished.” Susan’s eyes widened again. “You just haven’t noticed it yourself, probably because you didn’t start to be able to hear them until you’d already started to lose them. If you concentrate on it and learn how to do consciously what you’ve already started doing unconsciously, you should be able to develop the same level of control as I have.”

“Oh well,” said Susan. “Let’s give it a try then.” She took a deep breath, from her diaphragm, and launched off into a scale with a pure, clear contralto voice. Kara’s eyes widened in appreciation at the purity of her lover’s singing voice, then widened again as Susan continued the scale on up through the soprano registers. Neither did she stop there, continuing for several more, humanly impossible, octaves into the ultrasonic before she ran out of breath. “Wow,” she panted. “I’ve never sung that high before.”

Kara shook her head in astoundment. “Double wow,” she breathed in awe. “You are one very talented lady, my love. Perfect pitch, too, if I’m not mistaken.”

Susan coloured slightly at the complement then shrugged depreciatingly. “I was too much of a tomboy as a child to take music and singing seriously.” she admitted. “My mother and several of my teachers tried to encourage me to take it further but I just wasn’t interested. I got quite aggressive about it at times. When I was in the army, Carmen used to enjoy listening to me sing.” Kara raised an eyebrow. “Captain Carmen Anna Gutteriez. She was the CO of Charlie Company and I was one of her Lieutenants.” She smiled reminiscently. “And her lover. I do enjoy singing for a small, appreciative audience.”

“Love, with a voice as beautiful as yours, I’m not surprised she enjoyed listening to you,” said Kara. “In fact, you can sing to me whenever you feel like it,” she smiled.

“Alright, you asked for it,” grinned Susan. Taking another very deep breath, from the diaphragm as all singers should, she closed her eyes and launched into a rendition of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Sounds of Silence’, with one slight variation. She impishly pitched her voice half a dozen octaves higher than the original score. She segued then into an equally ultrasonic rendition of ‘Scarborough Fair’, followed by ultrasonically rearranged versions of several other equally popular favourites, classical, folk and modern. Kara closed her eyes also, smiling slightly at the appropriateness of the first song’s title, at least for any non-superpowered listener and listened, enraptured, to the sweet sound of her lover’s voice.

o o o

Just then, Susan became aware of a faint, wierdly ululating and very highly pitched sound and trailed to a halt. She opened her eyes to see Kara cocking her head and listening intently. She turned, squinting her eyes slightly, and gasped. “Love, I have got to go, NOW,” she exclaimed hurriedly.

“Do you want me to come too?,” asked Susan.

“No,” replied Kara shortly, taking immediately to the air. Moments later Susan was astonished to hear a triple sonic boom as Kara rapidly disappeared into the distance.

Susan shrugged her shoulders. “Must be an emergency of some sort,” she mused. “Just as well she didn’t want me to go with her. At that sort of speed, I’d be starkers when I got there.” She grinned to herself as she realised that the possibility of appearing naked in public didn’t bother her in the slightest, now. Yet a week before, she was certain, she would have experienced terminal embarrassment at the mere suggestion that she might be placed in such a situation. “My, how the gal’s changed,” she murmured to herself, giggling. “Oh well, I’ll do some more practicing while I’m waiting. I might as well start trying out some katas.”

She launched into one of her simpler katas, concentrating hard on controlling her body as she did so. She ran through several more before stopping and shaking her head, an exasperated expression on her face. “This doesn’t feel right,” she muttered to herself. She thought deeply for a moment and attempted another, more complex kata that required her to tap into ki. As soon as she did so she felt an enormous surge of energy course through her body and found herself tumbling wildly, totally out of control, down the length of the valley. Coming to a slithering halt after smashing her way through several large boulders, she picked herself up out of the rubble, ruefully noting that her clothes had come off a distinct second best, again.

She sat down, closed her eyes and cleared her mind, initiating a meditative trance. Having entered the state, she very, very cautiously and tentatively reached again for her ki and instantly experienced another massive, uncontrolled surge of energy. Snapping her eyes open, she was astonished to see that the rubble around her had melted in a perfect five foot circle. She looked down at her body then and was astounded to see her skin glowing an incandescent silvery colour. She felt intense tingling sensations throughout her body, not the sensations of sexual arousal but rather as if she were filled to overflowing with energy and life. As she watched, amazed, her skin gradually returned to a more normal colouration, although the sensation of enormous energy remained with her. She then glanced down at her breasts, stupefied to discover that they had grown noticeably larger.

Susan considered long and hard, finally deciding to pay a quick visit to her old sensei from years before, to seek his advice. The white haired old Asian was one of the very few men she had ever truly respected in her adult life. She quickly flew back to her apartment and changed into fresh clothing, bundling her gi into a bag before taking to the skies again.

Arriving at the dojo, she entered the changerooms and quickly changed into her gi. She rapidly scanned the building with her tachyonic vision to locate the master and then went out into the hall to make the customary obeisance to the tatami. Oblivious to the eyes following her, she quickly strode then to the small, bare room of the master. Quietly entering, she bowed and knelt on the floor, remaining silent, awaiting the sensei’s pleasure, unwilling to gratuitously interrupt him, the habit of respect too deeply engraved to ignore. The master looked up as she entered, eyes widening as he observed her fluid, gracefully powerful motions. “Susan,” he greeted her, rising smoothly to his feet and returning her respectful bow. “How can I be of assistance to you.”

“Master,” she replied. “I need your advice.” The ancient Asian nodded at her to continue. “I need to learn how to adapt the katas,” she began hesitantly, “to work with greater strength and speed. I have recently experienced what can only be described as a miracle.” She flushed intensely and continued. “I mean no offence to you, master,” she began. “B-b-but I need you to keep my request in total confidence for the moment.” She hung her head in shame at having made such a disrespectful request of the sage, blushing incandescently.

The sensei quickly rose to his feet, approaching the embarrassed woman and touched her gently on her long, red tresses. “Stand tall, child. There is no need to be ashamed of a necessary request. All that passes between us here will be kept in total confidence. I have already noticed your new fluidity and power of movement and sensed your greatly augmented life force. I have concluded that you have changed greatly in the years since I last had the opportunity to train you and I suspect that it is this in which you require advice. Your sense of presence and your movements now remind me strongly of the one known as Supergirl.”

Susan looked up at the sensei gratefully and nodded her thanks, rising smoothly to her feet. “Her name is Kara, master. She and I have recently become lovers.”

The sensei nodded. “This much is obvious, even to one with only small ability to perceive,” he chided her gently.

“Somehow,” the redhead continued, “Unworthy though I am, my strength and speed have been miraculously enhanced by this relationship.”

“Unworthy, child? I hardly think so. Opportunity of such magnitude seldom crosses the path of the truly unworthy,” replied the master. “False modesty, on the other hand, can only work to hold you back from attainment of your full potential.”

Susan blushed again at the master’s subtle reprimand. “My past training in the Art is helping me enormously in adapting to the use of these new powers,” she continued. “But the katas do not seem to adapt well to my new strength of body or my ability to fly.”

“Flight too,” murmured the sensei. “That is awesome. I could almost feel envy for such an experience.”

Susan bowed deeply to the master. “Oh master,” she exclaimed exultantly but quietly. “You have no idea what a wonderful experience it is.” The master bowed his head for a moment in acknowledgement of Susan’s exuberant statement.

She continued, “Kara has asked me to start training her in the Art but I am unsure of where to begin. I have also experienced disconcerting results when I attempt to touch ki.”

The master nodded. “Tell me what you have experienced,” he said quietly.

“The first time, I attempted to tap ki in the course of a kata. I felt an unbelievable surge of energy and found myself tumbling out of control for several hundred feet. The second time, I entered a meditative trance, reached out to touch ki and experienced an even more powerful surge. When I opened my eyes I found that rock had melted for five feet around me and my skin had turned silvery. At the same time I was filled with life and energy.” Susan blushed, continuing, “Kara has explained to me that her, and now my, breasts store energy which comes from another dimension. My breasts had already increased noticeably in size since my enhancement but since my attempts to touch ki this morning, they have become even larger.”

She paused, thinking for a moment. “The conclusion I have reached is that this dimensional energy, which Kara also calls Orgone energy, is either the same as or very similar to ki. I seem to have this energy flowing continuously into my body now, making it invulnerable and powering my other new abilities, but when I deliberately try to open myself up to, and touch, ki, the flow seems to become an uncontrollable torrent, leading to the effects I described to you.”

The master considered for a time in silence. “You have studied the history of the Art, child,” he began. “And you know that the true origins of the Art are shrouded in antiquity.” Susan nodded.

“Know now that there are exceedingly ancient legends, passed down in the Art for uncounted centuries from master to advanced student, that describe how powerful beings, Gods almost, once came here and chose many people, amongst them many students of the Art, taking them forever beyond mortal ken.”

“There are later legends about fabulous beings with the ability to fly and with far beyond normal strength, who resided for a time in the northern lands, in what is now Europe,” he continued. “But that is largely beside the point. My child, you were an unusually talented student of the Art, absorbing that for which you were ready far more rapidly than most. But you would never allow yourself to be pushed past that point.” The old master smiled reflectively. “There were times when you became almost aggressive in your disinterest, as I recall,” he continued, smiling slightly. “There have been rare cases in the past where a student of the Art has been wrongly pushed too far and too fast in their training and they have unexplainedly perished, usually amidst intense flames.”

Susan’s eyes opened wide. “Spontaneous Human Combustion,” she gasped in horror.

The sage nodded. “The Western countries have indeed called it that,” he said quietly.

“Could that have happened to me if I had grasped too hard at ki when I was younger?” She shuddered violently. “Now though, with my newly acquired invulnerability I can handle far more ki without harm,” she mused, relaxing. “But how can I learn to control it?,” she finished pleadingly, hanging her head.

“As for one’s use and control of ki, there are two stages a student of the Art must go through on his way to attainment of mastery. You have arrived at the first stage, where you reach for ki only as you need it and only in small amounts for brief periods. The next stage, which must be attained before a student can continue on to full mastery of the Art, is where he or she must learn to become aware of and be in contact with ki during every moment, waking and sleeping, thus becoming able to use ki instantly, without any preparation.”

Susan’s eyes widened once more, this time in amazement. “But how could this be possible,” she breathed. “I have always had to concentrate hard to touch ki.”

The master nodded. “That is correct for the level you have attained in the Art. Had you had the interest to continue at the time, you would have been gradually trained in and guided into new katas, new exercises which would encourage you to contact ki more closely and for longer periods. Ultimately you would have attained full contact with and control over your use of ki. Note well that you do not control ki. Neither does ki control you. Ki is part of you. You more than most since your enhancement, child. I am going to teach you some exercises that will teach you to become consciously aware of the flow of ki into your body and able to sense yourself using ki.”

Susan nodded gratefully. “Thank you master,” she said. “I place myself in your hands in this matter. When may I begin?”

“Now, child. Seat yourself.” The redhead and the ancient master folded themselves into a lotus position on the floor, facing each other and the lesson began.

o o o

Dusk was beginning to fall when Susan finally left the dojo, promising the master that she would assiduously practice the new exercises he had taught her and that she would return when she had mastered them or if she had trouble. She took to the early evening skies and flew slowly towards Metropolis, mulling over her long conversation with the master and rehearsing in her mind the exercises the master had taught her. “I’m going to have to be really careful with this,” she said to herself. “Mmmm. I wonder where Kara had to go in such a hurry this morning. I hope she’s not worried about where I vanished to.” She smiled to herself then and, eager to start practicing the new exercises she had been taught, swiftly accelerated towards the deserted valley.

Duly arriving, she scanned around her, looking for any sign of Kara. Seeing nothing, she settled gently to the ground. Ruefully recalling the fate of her clothing earlier that day, she quickly stripped and threw her bag and clothes a dozen feet away, behind some rocks. Naked, she seated herself in lotus fashion, quickly ran through the first exercise again in her mind and then settled to her task. She quickly relaxed the muscles of her body, closed her eyes and set her breathing to a calm, even rate. She then cleared her mind, seeking her centre, that point of balance within herself where all was calm and the distractions of corporeal existence ceased to have meaning. Once she achieved this transcendental state, she tentatively began to open herself up, as the master had instructed her, allowing herself to become aware of ki without actually touching it.

A short time later, she became aware of a source of what she perceived as light, that was separate from her but at the same time very much a part of her. Entranced, she allowed her newly discovered inner perception to roam around. She quickly found herself able to distinguish a multitude of faint sparkles of the same “light” all around her and, as she allowed her perception to roam still further, became aware of more intense sources off in the distance. “Why, I’m seeing life itself,” she exclaimed to herself in quiet wonder. Marvelling at this magical new perception and mindful of the master’s lessons, she allowed her awareness to expand still further, discovering that she was somehow pervading an ever increasing volume and perceiving, not physical bodies so much as, in some strange and wonderful way, the life force which motivated those bodies.

All of a sudden she became aware of a blazing beacon of this strange life-energy, beside which all the other sources she had already sensed paled into insignificance. Entranced, she focussed onto this new source and tentatively reached out to touch it. As she did so she first became aware of another physical body and then another mind and the thoughts of that mind. Feelings of great tiredness, intertwined with satisfaction with a difficult job well done, of a vague unease coupled with a curiosity. Then the penny dropped for her. This was Kara’s body and mind and thoughts she was perceiving. “Why, she’s wondering where I am and just starting to get a bit worried,” Susan thought wonderingly. Cautiously and with infinite care, she attempted to insert a thought into the mind before her. “Kara,” she sent.

The mind she was watching suddenly roiled in confusion. “Whaa, What? What was that? Who said my name?,” she heard as clearly as if she had been talking face to face with her lover.

She tried again. “Kara, it’s Susan.”

At this, Kara’s mind calmed down. “Where are you, love. I can’t see you,” she heard then.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be home soon and I’ll try to explain,” she sent then.

“Okay. Hurry home. I love you.” came the response in the same unexplainable way.

Susan carefully encouraged her strange new perception to shrink back inward again. She realised then that she, herself was just as blazing a beacon of life as Kara had been, as her perception narrowed down still further until it sank once more within herself. Remembering the master’s careful instructions, realising embarrassedly that she had gone considerably beyond those instructions in her attempt to communicate with Kara and extremely relieved that nothing had gone awry, she gradually and carefully shut herself away from her awareness of ki. She opened her eyes then and, flexing her muscles slightly, gracefully floated into the air, to where she had thrown her clothes earlier. Retrieving them and getting quickly dressed, she grabbed her bag and took to the dark skies, heading for home.

o o oChapter 5

Disaster Averted

Kara was thoroughly miffed. There she had been, enjoying quality time with Susan, listening to her sing, only to be interrupted by an ultrasonic emergency call. On quickly checking the situation with her tachyonic vision she had discovered to her horror that Metropolis’s elderly and mostly retired nuclear power plant had, yet again, been targetted by a group of terrorists.

“Love, I have got to go, NOW,” she had exclaimed hurriedly.

“Do you want me to come too?,” Susan had asked.

“No,” Kara had replied, flexing her shapely thighs hard and shooting into the air as fast as she could, blasting through the sound barrier in moments. The triple sonic boom, which she had long recognised as being characteristic of her battering her way through the sound barrier at low altiude, had echoed around the hills as she went, muttering sulphurously to herself all the while. “Damn fool bureaucrats and politicians,” she swore. “They’ve been procrastinating for years about decommissioning that blasted reactor. The damned thing is a public menace. Now we’ve got terrorists threatening to blow it to kingdom come again.”

Scant minutes later, Kara decelerated to a stop several hundred feet above the enormous spherical containment building, hovering in mid air as she attempted to discover what, exactly, was happening. The task was rendered almost hopeless by the large amounts of lead shielding used in the building’s structure.

Looking around the scene, she saw a group of emergency vehicles standing several hundred yards away from the perimeter fence. She quickly flashed down, landing behind the vehicles where a group of police, firemen and disaster team personnel were huddled.

“Supergirl! Are we glad to see you.” It was Maggie Sawyer, chief of the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit.

“Inspector,” returned Kara, nodding politely. “What is the situation here.”

“We received an extortion threat by telephone a while ago,” explained Maggie. “A man with a very strong foreign accent presented a list of demands which he requires to be met by noon tomorrow or he threatens to set off a series of explosions that he says will breach the containment building and disperse tons of radioactive material over Metropolis. There were only half a dozen workers in the building at the time we received the threat. We believe they are probably being held hostage. We’ve cordoned off the area and we’re about to put evacuation plans into effect.”

“Meteorology says that the prevailing winds at this time of year virtually guarantee that most of Metropolis will be affected by the fallout to some degree,” she continued. “We were about to send in a negotiator.”

“Are plans of the building and reactor available?,” asked Kara. “Unfortunately, with so much lead in the building’s structure, my super vision is virtually useless,” she lamented.

At that, a gray-haired man stepped briskly forward, grasping a roll of papers in his hand. “I was a member of the engineering team that designed this facility,” he quickly explained. “There is a lot of lead in the building structure, which is intended to contain any escaping radioactivity in the event of a reactor malfunction. Nearly all of it is contained in the outer walls of the containment building, and immediately surrounding the reactor core and heat exchangers. Once you get inside the building you should have no problems using your, er, tachyon?, vision.”

“How can I best get in without attracting attention,” demanded Kara, deliberately ignoring the engineer’s educated guess at the mechanism of her superpowered vision.

“That is almost impossible to predict. Too much depends on how many terrorists are actually in the building and how familiar they are with the plans,” he replied.

“Explain to me where explosives would have to be placed to achieve the threatened effects,” asked Kara.

The engineer quickly unrolled the plans and pointed out various features of the building. “See these support columns here, here, here, here and here. If sufficient high explosive is used and one or more of those columns is destroyed, the containment building would be severly weakened and could easily collapse.”

“Kao!”, exclaimed Kara exasperatedly. “How was such a flimsy structure ever permitted in an application like this?”

“It’s actually a very sturdy structure,” contended the engineer. “When it was designed and built, it would have required several tons of dynamite to damage even one of those beams sufficiently to endanger the integrity of the containment dome. Unfortunately, with more modern explosives such as some of the newer plastiques, only a dozen or so kilos could do the job.”

“And the reactor,” enquired kara.

“If a person knew what they were doing, and we must assume that this group of terrorists do, they could send the reactor core critical within an hour by simply jamming the right valves open and closed,” said the engineer. “This reactor was supposed to have been shut down and decommisioned a number of years ago. Consequently, many of the safety interlocks that are now required in this sort of application have never been installed.” He shook his head. “About all that ever got funded was to set up a remote monitoring facility several miles away. All of the reactor instrumentation is duplicated there. The controls should have been remoted too but the funds were never made available.” He paused, a worried expression on his face. “It’s not just the radioactivity which is the problem,” he continued. “There’s literally tons of molten sodium metal in that reactor core. If the core is breached and enough water comes into contact with the molten sodium, we’ll have one hell of an explosion. The building is designed to contain such an explosion, but if it’s already been breached or just structurally weakened, the explosion could send molten and dangerously radioactive sodium splashing for miles around. Wherever it contacts water then, we’ll have additional explosions, possibly starting fires. It could potentially be the biggest nuclear disaster ever seen.”

The engineer then went on to quickly explain what the various valves and piping around the reactor did and how to check for dangerous tampering. He also covered the safest way of disconnecting the reactor from the heat exchangers and the building structure if it became necessary for Kara to somehow dispose of the reactor.

Just as he reached the end of his abbreviated briefing, Maggie Sawyer came over with a gravely worried expression on her face. “We’ve just heard from the monitor room by radio,” she interjected. “According to the instruments, the reactor has been sabotaged and is starting to go critical. They say we have at most forty minutes before something lets go.”

“Okay then,” said Kara. “We’ve run out of options. You guys get suited up,” she directed. “I’ll go in first, through the main entrance, and try to disarm the terrorists and save the hostages. You guys follow me.”

The SCU members quickly donned their gear and checked their weapons. Maggie pulled on her own helmet and glanced at her second in command. Receiving his nod, she said “Okay, let’s do it.”

Kara flew straight for the main building doors, shattering through them as the others ran behind her. Blasting her way straight through several walls, she finally got past the lead shielding and was able to use her tachyon vision. Not that well, because the shielding also blocked out most of the ambient tachyons, but at least she could see again. She quickly spotted the room where the hostages were being held, covered by a single terrorist who, she saw, was just raising his machine gun towards them. She veered then, smashing through the final wall, grabbing the gun and mangling it into scrap. She tapped the terrorist on the chin, sending him flying across the room and into the wall, where he slumped bonelessly to the floor, unconscious.

Quickly spinning around, she started to head back out of the room just as she heard several automatic weapons open fire. She frantically burst back into the main chamber, just in time to see one of the SCU members thrown to the floor by the rapid impacts from three machine guns. Gasping, she quickly focussed her heat vision on each gun in turn, instantly vapourising the entire barrels and rendering them useless. She then scanned the rest of the building, locating four other hidden terrorists. Accelerating until she became a blur, she quickly disabled them and dumped them out onto the floor, sending them sliding over toward the main entrance where they could be secured. Just then, she was staggered by a large explosion. She looked up in shock to see one of the main supports disappearing into a cloud of dust and smoke, the roof overhead beginning to sag inwards.

Kara quickly checked to see that no one was endangered by falling steel and masonry, then glanced over toward the paramedics now clustered around the fallen SCU member. She gasped in horror as she realised that the victim of that vicious crossfire had been Maggie Sawyer herself, now lying in a horrifyingly large pool of her own blood. Cursing herself for not spotting and disarming the gunmen in time, she dragged herself back to the here-and-now and flew over to the reactor to see how badly it had been damaged. Searching ahead with her tachyon vision she realised that another huge bomb had been placed directly on the reactor and that the countdown timer was mere seconds away from detonation.

Kara flashed down to the reactor and grabbed the immense bomb that the terrorists had planted there, mere seconds before the timer was about to time out and detonate it. She barrelled backwards through the weakened dome, cradling the package in her arms and wrapping her body around it to prevent it from being damaged or worse, prematurely detonated by her passage through the structure. As soon as she cleared the dome, she powerfully flexed her body and arms straight again, hurling the bomb upwards. The bomb, attaining supersonic velocity even before it left her straining arms, shot three miles into the air before abruptly disappearing in the midst of a huge fireball. She quickly flew back inside to inspect the sabotaged reactor, realising then that it was already too far gone to safely shut down. Accelerating to a blur again, she raced around the reactor core, carefully pinching off and welding closed the pipes as the engineer had carefully explained might be necessary.

Knowing that she now had only thirty minutes before the reactor went critical and either melted down or exploded, Kara quickly vapourised the immense anchor beams supporting the reactor structure with intense bursts of her heat vision. She then flew underneath the reactor and prepared herself to exert her maximum power, more power than she had ever before been required to apply, to lift the entire reactor, plus its shielding, into space, where she could safely dispose of it. She located the reinforcements the engineer had pointed out to her, carefully placed her shoulders under them and flexed hard, her entire body exploding into an incredible mass of finely chiselled curves, as she began to generate the millions of pounds of flying power required to lift the massive reactor. As she strainingly put everything she had into the gargantuan effort, the reactor slowly began to move upwards.

Just then another red-and-blue blur flashed into view, abruptly resolving into Kara’s elder cousin. Kal, just returning from his Justice League mission, quickly assessed the situation and, seeing that the terrorists had all been disarmed and safely restrained and no one was in immediate danger from the severely weakened containment building, sped over to join his cousin in boosting the dangerous reactor into space.

Kara, her attention focussed entirely on moving the enormous and incredibly dangerous mass of the reactor, was taken by surprise as the structure suddenly seemed to lose over half of it’s titanic weight. Frantically twisting herself around, she saw her cousin helping her and she quickly repositioned herself so the two of them could balance the immensely heavy structure more safely. The maid and man of steel both poured on the coals then and the doomed reactor slowly began to accelerate into the sky.

Fifteen strainingly intense minutes later, Kara experienced unutterable relief as she saw the sky beginning to darken around them. She had never before had to exert this much power over such a long time and even her enormous reserves of energy were rapidly dwindling under the incalculable strain. Her face twisting from the inhumanly intense stresses of her herculean efforts, she maintained the thrust, keeping pace with her powerful cousin who, she knew, would be feeling the strain just as much as she. Twenty two minutes after liftoff, by now well beyond the atmosphere, she realised with relief that they had reached escape velocity. The duo of super beings continued accelerating at their maximum, boosting their dangerous burden ever further and faster to ensure that, when it finally entered the radioactive hell of its final demise, none of its deadly material could possibly get back to Earth.

As they reached the twenty nine minute mark, the structure of the doomed reactor beginning to vibrate more and more intensely as the tons of molten sodium contained therein began to boil furiously, Kal and Kara put everything they had into a final burst of speed. Finally, abruptly slowing themselves down, they keenly watched the doomed structure draw away from them, heading off on a long journey towards the Sun. Mere instants later, momentarily exceeding the sun itself in intensity, the reactor finally transformed itself into a huge fireball. The unexpectedly great forces of such an immense explosion sent fragments of structural steel, droplets of molten lead, sodium and radioactive fuel flying in all directions, in a rapidly expanding globe of debris.

Aghast at the magnitude of the final explosion and realising that if the reactor had gone up on the ground, it would have levelled over half of Metropolis, the pair continued to minutely observe the debris. Eventually reassured that none of the radioactive wreckage could possibly make it back to Earth, they looked at each other, each shocked at how depleted, how close to exhaustion the other looked after their herculean efforts of the last half an hour. They turned as one, then, flying exhaustedly back to the city they had just saved from becoming a radioactive wasteland.

On the way back, they paused briefly to dive deep into the ocean, ensuring that there was no radioactive material adhering to their costumes or themselves. A short time later, they hovered together just above the water.

“Go home, get some rest,” ordered Kal. “You’re closer than you realise to being critically depleted, you know.”

“Uh, uh,” denied Kara. “You’re just as tired as I am. I’m going nowhere until you do.”

Kal shrugged his shoulders, knowing full well how fruitless it was for him to try and make Kara do anything she didn’t want to do. “Okay then,” he replied. “Try to get some rest and recharge a bit though. Remember, the Power Board really hates it, and us, when they have to try and account for several missing megawatt hours of power though.”

Kara shrugged. “Their problem,” she replied.

“Let’s get together tomorrow,” suggested Kal. “Then you can fill me in on everything that’s been happening while I’ve been away.” Kara nodded her agreement and the super powered cousins set course then, back to the damaged containment building.

As the duo arrived back on the scene, hovering above the damaged spherical building, Kara noticed an ambulance pulled up to the main entrance, its lights blinking angrily in the early afternoon sun. She gasped, remembering Maggie’s injuries. Knowing that Kal would be able to handle any emergencies with the partially collapsed building, she flashed down to the ambulance. She saw the paramedics carefully wheeling out a stretcher, festooned with drip bottles and other medical paraphenalia and cocooning the gray-visaged and barely breathing, critically wounded form of Maggie Sawyer.

“Supergirl,” exclaimed the lead paramedic softly. “This woman is critically injured. She’s taken at least six serious wounds and has lost far too much blood. She needs to be in surgery as soon as possible. We’ve got her barely stabilised, but it’s going to take us at least an hour to drive to the hospital at this time of day.” He shook his head, continuing. “That’s far too long. There’s not a chance of her surviving that long,” he completed, sorrowfully.

With a sinking feeling, Kara realised the truth of the medic’s bald summary. She also knew, to her regret, that she was far too tired to carry the whole ambulance. “How much of this paraphenalia absolutely has to go with her,” she asked urgently.

The medic pointed out the necessary items, quickly removing the unneeded ones. Kara followed, quickly flash-welding them to the frame of the stretcher with her heat vision. Then she removed her cape and tenderly wrapped it around the frighteningly still body. As the medic dived back into the ambulance, reporting necessary information back to the hospital via his radio, she gently picked up the stretcher and took to the sky.

Flying as fast as she could without further endangering the critically wounded woman, Kara made it to the hospital in less than ten minutes, carefully depositing the stretcher to the floor of the Emergency Trauma Unit and yielding it to the anxiously awaiting hospital staff. She followed them to the operating theatre then, seeing a comfortable chair just outside and knowing she would just be in the way if she went in, she sank wearily into it and composed herself to wait.

Finally, several hours later, with the rest having slightly recharged her, Kara was disturbed by the lead surgeon coming out of the theatre. She sprang to her feet, surprising the surgeon.

“Supergirl,” she exclaimed. “I had no idea you were still here.”

Kara shrugged. “I badly needed to rest and recharge. Here was as good a place as any,” she explained. “How is Inspector Sawyer,” she enquired worriedly.

“Not good,” responded the surgeon. “We’ve managed to remove the bullets, repair at least some of the soft tissue damage and make good some of the profound blood loss with intensive transfusions,” she explained. “But she’s sustained a lot of severe trauma. Any one of those wounds would normally be considered critical. If it hadn’t been for her body armour, she would have been killed outright.” The surgeon paused, taking a deep breath and looking Kara squarely in the eyes. “The inspector is in a very critical condition. The prognosis is not favourable. Her vitality is very low. She seems to be relatively stable now, but we’ve done all that we can do. All that’s really left to do is to pray, to whatever Supreme Being you acknowledge.”

Kara nodded tiredly. “I understand,” she murmured. Softly grasping the surgeon’s shoulder she continued. “Thank you for your efforts, Doctor.” She released the surgeon’s shoulder then, turned and left the Trauma Unit, returning to Susan’s apartment to rest.

Finding the apartment empty, Kara wondered for a moment what her lover was doing. She quickly decided not to worry, after all it was still daylight, Susan was more than able to look after herself and she was far too exhausted to do anything more, anyway. She stumbled into the bedroom and, somehow summoning the energy to strip, allowed herself to collapse onto the so inviting bed for some well earned rest, to allow her sorely depleted body to slowly recharge.

Some indeterminable time later, Kara was suddenly disturbed by the sound of her name, in what seemed to be a loud whisper. She quickly sat up, alarmed. “Whaa, What? What was that? Who said my name?,” she burst out.

“Kara, it’s Susan,” came the apparent loud whisper again.

At this, Kara calmed down. “Where are you, love. I can’t see you,” she said then.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be home soon and I’ll try to explain,” she seemed to hear then.

Somewhat confused as to what was happening but too tired to try to understand, Kara replied, “Okay. Hurry home. I love you.”

With that, she lay back and drifted off again.

o o o

Susan flew through her living room window and floated silently into the bedroom, to see Kara, her face lined with exhaustion, eyes closed and apparently asleep, lying on the bed. Gently placing the bag on the floor, she floated over to her lover and softly kissed her on the lips. Kara’s eyes flew open and she gasped in surprise. “Kao! Susan, love, you startled me,” she exclaimed. She then reached up and drew her into a tight embrace and a very deep, long, loving kiss.

After several extremely enjoyable osculatory minutes, Kara broke, heaving a deep, satisfied sigh. “Ooooh, that feels good. I was soooo tired but I think you just recharged me a bit. You know, I had the most amazing experience a while ago,” she said quietly. “It seemed almost like a dream. That I heard someone say my name and it seemed to be you, but I couldn’t see you anywhere.”

Susan broke in, smiling gently and placing her fingers over Kara’s lips. “And I said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be home soon and I’ll try to explain,’ and here I am.” She grinned as Kara’s eyes opened wide with amazement and her jaw dropped.

“Y-Y-Y-You mean it w-wasn’t a d-dream?,” stammered Kara. She took a deep breath. “Then what happened. I’m confused!”

Susan grinned wider, enjoying her lover’s reaction. Eventually taking pity on the confused woman, she alighted on the bed beside her, leaned over and kissed her briefly. “I’ve had a very interesting and busy day,” she began. “The short answer to what happened would have to be telepathy, or something very close to it.” At this unexpected revelation, Kara’s eyes widened again. “When you rushed off this morning,” she continued, “I started trying to practice some of my old martial arts katas, with some rather confusing results. So I went to visit my old master. He explained a lot of things to me and taught me some new exercises. For one thing, I’ve learned that the interdimensional energy which we use, and the martial artist’s ki, are one and the same thing and that all life seems to use this same energy to a greater or lesser degree. You, my love, use it to a much, much greater degree. So do I now.”

“Really?,” whispered Kara in amazement, her eyes shining. “Tell me about it.”

“There isn’t much I can tell you about it at the moment, love,” admitted Susan. “I’ve only just started to learn about it myself and there’s a lot I don’t understand yet. The master taught me some new exercises to do with being aware of ki and I went back to the valley to start practising them. Every living thing, from mites up to humans, seems to be imbued with ki to a greater or lesser degree. I was able to pervade the space around me and sense the presence of all manner of life. It seems that the more ki a creature or person is able to use, the brighter they appear. Then I saw a truly intense beacon of ki and when I focussed on it I could sense you, love, and your thoughts. So I experimented with trying to send a message to you.” She grinned impishly. “The experiment worked.”

“Wow!,” exclaimed Kara. “I know I’ve said it before, love, but it bears repeating. You are one very talented woman. Would it be possible to teach me how to do that, do you think?”

“I really don’t know, yet,” admitted Susan uncertainly, nibbling her lip. “I’ve just started learning this myself. I don’t know yet where it’s going to finish up. Let me get a handle on it first, then I may be able to start teaching you. Anyway, enough of me. You look totally wiped out, love. What on Earth have you been doing?”

“Working hard,” murmured Kara tiredly. “Not entirely on Earth, either.” She grinned briefly. “When I left you in such a hurry this afternoon, I was responding to an emergency call …”

“Is that what that weird sound was,” interjected Susan.

“Yes,” replied Kara. “Terrorists were threatening to blow up that damned old reactor over the other side of Metropolis. You know, the one the politicians have been promising to decommission for at least the last fifteen years. I finished up having to push the reactor core into space before it exploded. Fortunately, Kal arrived back in the nick of time and was able to help me, or I don’t think I would have made it in time. I’ve never worked so hard, or felt so exhausted, in my whole life.” She sighed deeply, nestling back into the pillow. “Remember how you asked me if I could actually lift five or ten thousand tons?” She grinned wryly. “Well, I can, barely. But it took both Kal and I to boost it into orbit.”

“Thank God the two of you were able to do the job,” exclaimed Susan. “That would have made a real mess of the city. Maybe I should have come with you, after all. I could have helped, too.”

“You could have,” admitted Kara wearily. “But your clothes would never have survived the flight there at the speed I was travelling.”

Kara stopped there, suddenly remembering that there was something else, something important that she should tell Susan but unable, in her extreme tiredness, to recall what it was. Then Susan spoke again, distracting her and driving the nagging recollection completely out of her tired mind.

Susan grinned impishly. “I thought of that,” she admitted. “You know, I’ve changed. A lot. Before you enhanced me, the very thought of being naked in public would have given me a case of terminal embarrassment. Now though, I don’t think it’d bother me. If anything, it would have been a turn-on.” She blushed lightly.

Kara grinned back. “Seems like there’s more to this enhancement business than meets the casual eye,” she admitted. “Love, I’m really sorry, but I’m bushed. I have to get some sleep, to try and recharge a bit.” She yawned widely. “Otherwise, I’ll have to really upset the power company by stealing a few megawatts of power.”

“Mmmm. Kara?,” asked Susan curiously. “Is it possible to transfer energy between us?”

“I’ve got no idea,” admitted Kara. “Why?”

“Just wondering,” said Susan. “I can see you must be badly depleted, your teats are much smaller than normal. But I’m overcharged, if anything, from experimenting with ki this afternoon. If I could transfer some of it to you, it’d help a lot, wouldn’t it.”

“It surely would,” replied Kara. “Hmmm. Remember how I told you that I seem to discharge a lot of energy after I’ve been in contact with gold. Do you have any gold jewelry?”

Susan shook her head. “Sorry, love,” she said regretfully. “I’ve never been into jewelry. But I do remember feeling something like sparks discharging between our nipples the other day, while we were making love. Would that help, do you think?”

“It might,” said Kara, “If I weren’t so thoroughly wiped out already. I don’t even think I could get aroused right now. And, for me, that is really not normal.” She smiled weakly.

“Maybe you wouldn’t need to,” mused Susan. “Let me experiment for a bit.” She gracefully got to her feet and quickly removed her clothes.

Kara gasped. “Love, that is amazing. Your breasts are huge. What happened?”

“I told you I was well charged up,” grinned Susan. “When I tried to touch ki this afternoon, I experienced massive flows of energy. I finished up melting rock for five feet around me. Scratch another set of clothes,” she continued ruefully. “This could get expensive.” She knelt back down on the bed, straddling Kara, and started to tease her own nipples. They immediately sprang erect, expanding to half an inch in diameter and protruding more than an inch from her now massively enlarged breasts. Susan gasped with pleasure and began to knead her breasts firmly. “Oooooh,” she moaned. “That feels sooooo good.” She suddenly grasped her right breast in both hands and began to squeeze hard, her muscles pumping up enormously. At the same time, she began to rub her pussy against Kara’s abs, breathing rapidly and gasping with pleasure. Her breast rapidly began glowing a dull red from the pressure she was applying and the nipple began to glow incandescently.

Continuing to firmly knead her right breast, Susan instinctively leaned over and placed her now white-hot nipple between Kara’s lips. A burst of steam issued forth as the saliva in Kara’s mouth abruptly vapourised and, totally forgetting her extreme fatigue, Kara began to eagerly suckle at her lover’s achingly erect nipple. Susan gasped in sheer pleasure, continuing to rub her pussy and clit against Kara’s firm abdomen, moving faster and faster until, with a shriek of ecstasy, she attained a gut-wrenchingly, mind-numbingly intense orgasm. At the very peak of her orgasm, squeezing her breast with literally tons of pressure, she suddenly expressed a drop of pure energy from her nipple.

The result, for Kara, was literally electrifying. Giving voice to an almighty scream, only partially muffled by Susan’s breast now pressing so firmly into her mouth, Kara’s body suddenly stiffened, then convulsed violently, smashing the bed into kindling on the floor and tossing their bodies high into the air, as her body greedily absorbed the incredibly concentrated drop of energy and arcs of electricity, monumental in their intensity, flashed between her own, suddenly erect, nipples. Almost as an afterthought, she experienced a massive orgasm of her own, passing out from its sheer intensity as the two women tumbled back to the floor, amidst the shattered remnants of Susan’s once-sturdy bed.

Many minutes later, Kara returned to consciousness, opening her eyes and finding her view totally obscured by her lover’s long red tresses “Kao!,” she murmured. “What happened?”

At the sound of Kara’s voice, Susan suddenly became aware again of her surroundings and groaned softly, opening her eyes and levering herself erect. “Sweet Jesus,” she exclaimed in stunned amazement, springing to her feet as she surveyed the wreckage. “What the fuck happened?”

Kara sat up then, gasping in surprise as she, too, saw what had happened. “Wow!,” she breathed. “What a blast that was.”

“Blast is right,” groaned Susan. “This place looks like a bomb hit it. Damn. That bed was only a few months old.”

Kara glanced down at her breasts, her jaw dropping in amazement as she found they were well on the way to regaining their former splendour. “Kao! I don’t know what you did then, love, but you certainly managed to recharge me,” she exclaimed.

Susan smiled ruefully at Kara. “I think, if we ever need to recharge each other again, we should do it somewhere out of doors, well away from breakables like furniture and, maybe, buildings.”

“But what did you do,” repeated Kara.

“I’m not totally sure,” admitted Susan. “I originally intended just to bring myself to orgasm to see if any energy would flash between our nipples this time. But then it just felt right to squeeze my breast really hard and to put my nipple into your mouth like that. Then, I came so hard that I just about passed out. I don’t really know what happened after that.” She looked down and cupped her slightly diminished breasts. “I certainly got rid of some of my excess energy though. I’ll tell you what. Let’s go back to our valley first thing in the morning and I’ll try to touch ki again and see if I can recharge you fully.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” remarked Kara. “We can’t really sleep here, now that we’ve so thoroughly wrecked your bed. Let’s go back to my island and you can try that recharging trick again, outside on the beach. Then we can share my bed.” She smiled. “You can borrow my cape to wrap some clothes in, if you like, and I’ll help you clean up this wreckage tomorrow. At least the trip will be a lot quicker this time. We should be able to get there in no more than half an hour or so.”

“Mmmmm. Love that idea,” murmured Susan. She quickly grabbed some clothes and bundled them into the bag she’d used earlier that day. “Okay, lover, I’m ready. Let’s go,” she grinned.

Grinning back, Kara leapt up and grabbed her costume. Detaching the cape, she tossed it at her lover. Quickly compressing the rest of the costume into her hand, she floated into the air. “C’mon, love, what are you waiting for. Let’s race!,” she cried happily as she started flying through the bedroom window.

Pausing only long enough to wrap the indestructible cape firmly around her bag and clutch it to her chest, Susan took to the air and gave chase.

Anyone in Metropolis who happened to be looking skywards with a pair of powerful binoculars at that moment, might have been able to see two beautiful, naked women flying rings around each other in the silvery moonlight, at just below the speed of sound. Had they been possessed of abnormally acute hearing, they may also have been able to hear the sounds of joyous, feminine laughter. At least, until the two flying figures had passed well beyond the outskirts of the city. Then, they rapidly accelerated well beyond the mach, very quickly disappearing into the distance and still, even at that incredible speed, continuing their exuberant aerobatics.

o o o

Twenty minutes later, the two women having followed a barely sub-orbital parabola, peaking out at over twenty times the speed of sound, they swooped toward a familiar, very beautiful lagoon, decelerating rapidly.

They alighted softly on the pure white sand and Susan dropped her bag, still wrapped in Kara’s indestructible cape, onto the ground. Still laughing with joy, the two women fell into each other’s arms. “Oh,” gasped Susan, some minutes later. “That was soooo much fun,” she exclaimed.

Kara chuckled happily. “Oh, wasn’t it,” she responded. “We’ll have to do that more often. I don’t think I’ve ever flown here so fast, before. And you didn’t seem to have any trouble keeping up with me, either.”

“No, it was fun,” laughed Susan. “Although I’m glad I was following you, love. Several times there you changed your direction when I didn’t expect you to. I would probably have finished up getting thoroughly lost in space. I’ve got no idea how to plot a trajectory like that.”

“To be honest, neither have I,” admitted Kara. “Kal tried to teach me the maths of it once, but I’ve never had a good feel for maths. I found that once I’d practiced a few times, I developed a knack for it and didn’t have to worry about trying to calculate it. It really is easy, once you’ve got that knack. I’m sure Kal would teach you though, if you want to learn how to work it out properly.”

Susan laughed. “I said once before, love, that I’ve got no desire whatsoever to become a rocket scientist. I’ll just keep practicing until I can do it your way. You know, it’s really weird not having to breathe. I kept expecting to run out of breath, nearly the whole way here.”

“I guess that does take a bit of getting used to, at first,” replied Kara. “You don’t need to breathe at all now, you know, any more than I do. Or eat, comes to that. The energy matrix supplies all the energy we need. The only reason we ever need to breathe is so we can talk, and because other people tend to get very uncomfortable if they don’t see us breathe,” she finished, grinning. And eating is only necessary if we somehow manage to get totally depleted of energy, even worse than I was before you recharged me before. Thinking of which, do you want to try that trick again, now?”

“Why not,” smiled Susan. “You’d better pick a suitable place, though. I’d hate to spoil such a beautiful beach with huge lumps of fused silica.”

“Ah. Yes! Good point, love,” said Kara. “Follow me.” She dropped her tightly compressed costume along side Susan’s bag and took to the air, Susan right behind her.

Moments later, they alighted on a rocky slope near the centre of the island and Susan folded herself into lotus position on the ground. She thought for a moment. “Sit behind me, love, and wrap your arms and legs around me, I think. And hold onto me tightly.”

“Okay,” replied Kara, fitting the action to the thought.

“Mmmmm! That feels good,” murmured Susan, leaning back into her lover’s firm embrace for a moment, Kara brushing her lips across her ear. Then she straightened up again and arranged Kara’s arms across her chest with each hand cupping her opposing breast. Then, controlling her breathing to a calm, unhurried tempo, she quickly attained her meditative state once more. This time, she followed her sensei’s instructions and again allowed herself to become aware of ki. As her newly discovered inner sense once more became active, she again became aware of the brilliant glow of her own, and Kara’s life force, noticing to her great interest that the two of them, as close physically as they currently were, had almost coalesced into a single, intense source of light.

“Now for the fun bit,” she thought to herself as she attempted to touch ki once more, with the greatest delicacy of which she was capable. To her surprise, there was no massive surge of energy this time. Rather, she experienced a steady and somehow intensely invigorating flow. The commingled glow of Kara and herself gradually became more and more intense and she began to feel the same tinglingly alive sensation she had experienced earlier. Eventually, almost reluctantly, she released her contact with ki once more and, again totally forgetting the sensei’s careful instructions, opened her eyes. With her new inner sense still active, she gasped with astonishment at the strange vista which confronted her then. Every living thing around her, for as far as she could see, was surrounded by a colourfully shimmering aura. “Oh, wow,” she murmured. “That is so incredibly beautiful.”

“What’s that, love?,” asked Kara.

Gently disentangling herself from Kara’s arms and legs, Susan gracefully arose and turned to face her. Her face alight with wonder, she looked down at the trim, almost inhumanly beautiful figure of her lover, lit from within as it now was, by her newly replenished reserves of life sustaining energies and surrounded by Kara’s own aura, now so wonderfully visible to her.

She shook her head, smiling gently, and smoothly sat down again. “I think I skipped a few steps in the Master’s instructions,” she admitted. I forgot to ‘turn off’ my awareness of ki before I opened my eyes and now, I seem to be able to see a sort of aura around living things. It is so beautiful,” she breathed in awe. “But so very distracting, too. Excuse me for a moment. I need to try and turn it off.”

She closed her eyes again, to discover that her new perception had spread out over the entire island. Slowly, carefully, she encouraged that perception to close back in towards herself and again shut herself off from it. Feeling a slight sense of loss then, she opened her eyes, finding that her sight had returned to normal. No longer distracted by the beautiful auras she had been able to see surrounding all living things, she looked Kara up and down and noted, with considerable satisfaction, that Kara was definitely fully charged once more with energy, her breasts fully restored to their wonted splendour. She heaved a large sigh of relief.

“Well, that worked a lot better than my first effort,” she said. “How are you feeling now, love.”

“Absolutely fantastic,” replied Kara. “I feel sort of tingly all over. Not aroused though, just full of life,” she said, wonderingly. “Whatever you did that time was certainly what the doctor ordered.” She reached forward and took Susan’s hand. “Thank you, love.”

They stood then, embracing each other. As their lips met, their tongues began a gentle duel and they abandoned themselves to pure sensual enjoyment as they began to make love.

o o o

The two women lay in each other’s arms under the tropical stars, basking in the afterglow of their shared ecstasy.

Suddenly Kara gasped and sat up. “What ever is wrong?,” asked Susan.

“Oh, Susan. I’m sorry,” moaned Kara. “With me being so tired and everything else that’s happened tonight, it completely slipped my mind.”

“What?” repeated Susan.

Kara gulped. “Your boss, Maggie, was badly wounded this afternoon.”

“Oh, no!” wailed Susan. “How badly.”

“Very badly,” said Kara softly. “I flew her to Metropolis General as soon as Kal and I got back from dumping the reactor and stayed there until the lead surgeon came out. She had lost a lot of blood. The surgeon said they’d done everything humanly possible but she still wasn’t sure if Maggie would make it.”

“We’ve got to go back right now,” exclaimed Susan, leaping to her feet and taking to the air. “Come on.”

Moments later, they both alighted on the beach, grabbing their things and rocketing skywards again as fast as they could, Kara again leading the way. Because of the urgency they both felt, they flew as fast as they could, making it back to Metropolis and landing in the hospital grounds in just under seventeen minutes. Susan quickly unwrapped her clothes and got dressed, handing the cape back to Kara.

“Let’s go,” she said urgently.

Kara quickly led the way to the Intensive Care Unit and asked a nurse where Maggie was. Following directions, they arrived moments later at the door. Just then, the surgeon came out, looking depressed and worried.

“Supergirl!” she exclaimed, brightening momentarily. Then her face fell again. “I suppose you want a report on Inspector Sawyer.” At Kara’s nod, the surgeon led them to a group of chairs lining the corridor. “I’m afraid there’s very little hope left,” she said, a resigned expression on her face. “The Inspector is still alive but just barely hanging on, almost just lingering.”

Susan choked off a sob. “We need to see her,” she said urgently. The surgeon shrugged.

“Okay,” she said, getting up and leading the women back to the ward.

Up to this point, Susan had not tried to use her tachyonic vision to check up on her former boss. She had been scared to. So the sight of the gray visaged woman was a considerable shock to her. She shook her head as if to banish the sight of the almost dead policewoman. Then she sought her centre, quickly calming herself and going into her meditative state. She again exercised her newfound ability to see ki, minutely examining the body in the bed. To her horror, she saw that Maggie’s life force was now almost non-existent, with what seemed to be dark blockages and barriers throughout her body.

Opening her eyes, she turned to Kara, grabbing her arm. “I’ve got to try and do something,” she whispered urgently, “But I don’t know what might happen. Please hold both my arms tightly.” Ignoring the mystified surgeon, she turned back to the bed. Kara moved to stand behind her, tightly gripping her upper arms.

Susan placed her hands on Maggie’s chest and closed her eyes again. Very carefully and delicately then, she reached for ki, willing the energy to infuse Maggie’s body, to pull her back from the very brink of death. She was somewhat surprised to find that she could do this, the feeble, dying glow rapidly strengthening. Then she turned her attention to the blockages she had earlier noted. Concentrating on each in turn, she somehow reached out, in a way which she did not understand and could not possibly have explained, touching the blockages and willing them to dissipate. Each blockage slowly diminished then, reducing to mere ripples amidst the rapidly replenishing life force now flooding throughout Maggie’s body and eventually, over the next few minutes, disappearing entirely.

The surgeon stood there, quietly watching the two women. She had seen many different reactions to the presence of death, ranging all the way from hysterical denial to calm acceptance, but what she was seeing here didn’t even come close to fitting any of the normal responses. She saw the red-haired woman turn to Supergirl and whisper urgently. She saw her turn back to the bed and place her hands gently on the woman’s chest. Then, to her surprise, she saw Supergirl move behind the redhead and grip her arms firmly. Then her jaw dropped as she saw the redhead’s hands seem to glow softly. The glow seemed to spread along the moribund woman’s body and as it spread, the woman’s almost indetectable breathing seemed to deepen and her colour seemed to improve. Really confused now, she flashed a glance at the monitors and gasped in amazement as she saw the life signs improve steadily, slowly at first and then faster until they were all back into normal ranges. Shocked speechless, she looked at the redhead, whose eyes were still closed, then at Kara, whose expression of rapt, wide eyed amazement, she knew, must precisely mirror her own. She looked down at the woman’s body on the bed again and was stunned to see that it had somehow been magically transformed, now presenting a picture of robust, rosy-cheeked health.

Knowing somehow that she had done all that she could, but not yet understanding in the slightest what she had actually done, Susan opened her eyes to see the surgeon looking at her with awe. Firmly squelching an incipient blush, she looked back down at Maggie, noting with surprised pleasure that her skin had gone from the sagging gray of near death to firm, rosy good health, better in fact than she had ever seen Maggie. She freed herself from Kara’s grasp and stepped back from the bed, noticing with a sinking feeling that the surgeon’s awe was reflected in Kara’s face as well.

“That was a miracle,” whispered the surgeon. “What did you do?”

Susan shook her head, pointing at Maggie then putting her finger to her lips in a command for silence, and motioned them to go back outside.

As soon as the ICU door closed behind them, the surgeon repeated her question. “That was miraculous,” she exclaimed. “In less than ten minutes that woman has gone from being all but clinically dead to all vital signs within nominal ranges. I’ve never seen anything like that. What in the name of God did you do?”

Susan shook her head again. “I’m not really sure,” she admitted. “And I certainly don’t know where to start trying to explain. Will she be alright now, do you think?”

“I’ve got no idea,” confessed the surgeon. “The clinical picture has gone from totally hopeless to amazingly good, almost as if she had never been wounded. I don’t know what’s going to happen, now.” She shook her head in bewilderment. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she repeated. With a dazed expression on her face, she turned and wandered aimlessly down the corridor, shaking her head as she went.

Susan turned around to Kara, seeing again the equally dazed expression on her lover’s face. “Not you, too,” she exclaimed. “C’mon, love. Let’s get out of here.” She grabbed Kara’s hand and headed to the balcony at the other end of the corridor. The two women took to the night skies, Susan leading the way to her apartment.

Arriving, Susan grabbed Kara’s shoulders and sat her down on the couch. Kara just sat there, shaking her head. Exasperated, Susan sat down next to her. “C’mon, love. Snap out of it. Talk to me, damn it!”

“Kao!,” Kara murmured. The expression of awe returned to her face. “I’ve never seen anything like that. I didn’t used to believe in miracles.”

“Kara, love. Look at me, please,” Susan exclaimed. “Look. It’s me, Susan.” She grabbed Kara’s shoulders again and gently shook her. “Damn it, woman. Stop looking at me like I was some kind of ghost. I couldn’t just do nothing. I had to try, damn it,” she exclaimed in frustration. “We were making love just an hour ago. I’m still the same person I was then, I haven’t changed. I’m still human.” She began to cry softly, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Oh, Kara,” she sobbed. “What’s wrong?”

Kara returned to herself with a jolt. “Oh, Susan,” she exclaimed softly. “I’m sorry.” She gently pulled the crying redhead to her, hugging her. “I’m sorry, love,” she repeated. Raising Susan’s tear stained face, she softly kissed the tears away as Susan stopped crying.

Susan swallowed convulsively and heaved a huge sigh. “Don’t scare me like that, love,” she said falteringly. “I was starting to think that you didn’t want to know me anymore, or something. I’ve known Maggie Sawyer for almost two years and working under her over that time, I’ve developed a lot of respect for her. I couldn’t bear to see her like that. I had to try to help her. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I hadn’t at least tried.” She shook her head. “Honestly, I didn’t know what was going to happen. I could just as easily have incinerated her. Instead, somehow, I managed to help her heal.”

“Love, I’m truly sorry I upset you,” soothed Kara. “I really do love you, you know.” She leaned over and gently kissed Susan again. “What you did was so totally unexpected to me, so miraculous, that I didn’t know what to think. I was in shock, I think.” She laughed softly. “You really are full of surprises, aren’t you, love.”

“Kara, love,” said Susan, “Since I met you, my whole life has been one big surprise, with one impossible thing after another. I don’t know what’s going to happen next.” She laughed ruefully.

o o o

Table of Contents

Chapter 2