It’s another beautiful day in the city of Ironclad! Each citizen can greet the day with a smile, knowing that nearly everything is bound to grow; their city size, the number of jobs, the economy, everything! But whenever some dastardly criminal or maniacal supervillain threatens that peace, the citizens can rest assured that any number of the local superheroes will show up and, with a catchphrase and a flourish, have the problem wrapped up by lunchtime, with whatever threat cropped up either being hauled off to jail or slinking back into the shadows to lick its wounds. In a forgotten alleyway, behind a dumpster, a seemingly ordinary metal garbage can concealed a ladder which led to the underground lair of that crooked genius: Atom Woman, who was in the middle of throwing the tattered remains of her costume, as well as anything else in arm’s reach. As she was doing this, a mechanical device, not unlike a four-foot tall bacteriophage virus with arms, approached, holding folded clothes.
“I take it you lost again?” the robot said, its programmed voice containing an air of sympathy, “Fret not, mistress. You’ll get them next time.”
“Oh, shut up!” Atom Woman snapped, snatching the outfit out of her robot’s hands, “You’re only saying that because I programmed you to and your dumb A.I. hasn’t learned enough to say it’s hopeless!”
“But it’s not hopeless.” The robot simply said as it began to clean its owner’s cuts and scrapes. “Why don’t you tell me what happened? Talking helps humans through trauma.”
“It wasn’t trauma,” Atom Woman sighed, slipping on her costume, orange, with black trunks, boots and sun emblem on the massive, pregnant-looking belly; a souvenir from her failed team-up with a villain called The Stork. “It was Lady Neptune again.”
“Lady Neptune? Surely with time, your nemesis would be easier to defeat, as you would have more practice?”
“That’s the trouble; she’s got more practice with me as well, so I’m actually getting worse! I thought teaming up with another villain would be enough of a change, but…” For emphasis, she heaved her gut with both hands, letting it drop back down with a bounce. The robot scanned this odd behavior, attempting to learn.
“Why do you keep your midsection enlarged? If your tenure with the baby-themed supervillain is over, why keep the look?”
“Because I don’t know how to get rid of it! All I know is one splash from that liquid, whatever it was, and I look nine months pregnant! I don’t know if it was a disease or a chemical or what, and I can’t exactly stroll into an urgent care. Besides, it makes most heroes hold back in a fight if they think it’s real.”
The robot stopped caring for its mistress, and left to another part of the steel-plated maze they called a lair, leaving Atom Woman alone to think. What had gone wrong? It was so simple; break into the hospital, threaten the doctors with her robots and force them to make a cure for her. But then Lady Neptune had to screw it all up! How could she overcome that land whale? Then the robot returned, holding a plate with a cut up sandwich and some milk.
“Your lunch is ready, Mistress. It helps you think, I’ve observed.”
“Really?”
“Yes, 55% of your intellectual breakthroughs occur within 30 minutes of your lunch. 20% comes from discussing your quandary with others. These are not mutually exclusive.”
Atom Woman sipped her milk and stared at her robot; perhaps it was learning after all? It wouldn’t hurt to try.
“Okay, robot, here’s the run down. I need her gone to complete any of my plans. That beluga can create and control water, but can’t breathe in it. She also has a knockout touch, but it only works on organics.”
“Does she carry any breathing apparatus?”
“Yes, so she can…I just got an idea.”
The next day, citizens ran screaming from the Third and a Half Bank of Ironclad. Smoke and robots carrying sacks of loot were pouring out of the building. But then, this typical bank heist was interrupted by a tidal wave, existing only in the street, crashed through the horde, breaking the robots and collecting the money in a whirlpool. And riding atop this wave was an obese heroine in a bright red bikini and scuba tank,
“I love traveling by wave,” Lady Neptune told the citizens, “It’s got great gas mileage and cleans the streets in the process.” As if to emphasize her point, the water then directed itself safely into any nearby storm drains, leaving nothing but destroyed robots and a pile of recovered money. But then, out of the bank, came a pregnant-looking woman in orange, holding what seemed to be a double barrel gun with random screens and antennae attacked to it.
“Well, well well. If it isn’t Lady Neptune. It’s been too long.”
“It’s been less than a day.”
“Sh-shut up! This time, I’ve got you! And do you want to know why?”
“Is it because of your toy gun?”
“Yes!” Atom Woman cried, pointing the device at the superheroine, and preparing to pull the first trigger. But as the red energy was about to leave the left barrel, Lady Neptune shot a concentrated jet up the barrel, causing the machine to overload and explode in a brilliant display of orange-red and yellow-green.
The first thing Lady Neptune noticed was a butt. Right in her face. Standing up, the next thing she notices was that everything looked yellow-green, including the people staring at her, some in shock, and some in…amusement? The third thing she noticed was that she was completely naked! With an embarrassed squeak, she covered herself and noted the butt’s owner; it was Atom Woman, who seemed to be pushing or leaning on the bubble, buck naked herself.
“Uh…mind explaining what’s going on here before I knock you out?” Lady Neptune asked.
Atom Woman only laughed, “Go ahead and try, do-gooder! You can’t break the membrane of my poli-bubble! Once again, my intellect has- Hey, stop that!” she cried as Lady Neptune tried time and again to use her knockout touch, only squeezing the foe’s bottom through the thin membrane.
“We’ve got bigger problems anyway, hero. Thanks to your stupid water attack, my device exploded, causing this –grr- stupid –ung- effect!” she added, straining to get her butt off on the bubble. For some reason, it just wouldn’t come loose! That wasn’t supposed to happen!
“Well, what was your stupid thingy supposed to do?”
“The first effect disintegrated non-living material. The second trapped you in a bubble made out of a chemical of my own design. It was meant to allow air through but be able to withstand the pressure of the deepest oceans so you’d…well, never mind that for now. Because of you, the gun destroyed our costumes and itself! So I can’t turn this off.”
“Fine! Then just take us to your lab so we can fix this.”
“First, I wouldn’t be able to get into the entrance. Second, I’m not showing you where it is. We’re going to your base, the Tide Pool.”
Trying to ignore all the bystanders staring at her most intimate bits, Atom Woman began to walk toward where she knew the hero’s base was. It was slow goings, as she was essentially pulling a three hundred pound woman by nothing save whatever was sticking her ass to that horrible bubble. But, with the speed of a baby’s crawl, she was moving forward, taking her technical prisoner with her.
“Can’t you go any faster?”
“Maybe if you lost a few pounds! Believe me, if you weren’t stuck to my butt, I’d leave you behind to starve!”
“Forget this! I’ll just burst your bubble.”
“Go ahead and try.”
Almost instantly, the bubble filled with water, becoming taut with pressure, but still the bubble held. Atom Woman stopped to try and watch the show as best she was able. But the bubble still held.
“Damn, I thought that’d work” the echoing voice of Lady Neptune said.
“Wait, why aren’t you drowning!? You’re supposed to drown in that thing!”
“Ha! I only wear that scuba stuff to make people think I can’t breathe water! Now move it! I want to be out of this thing as much as you want to be off of it!”
Atom woman nodded and tried to walk forward without success. The thing about water is that it’s very bulky and heavy. And when you were barely managing to move before, it’s all but impossible with the extra weight. As the paparazzi began snapping photos of the two naked supers, Atom Woman began to think that perhaps her fake pregnant belly wasn’t as big a deal as she thought.