Going Super Chapter 3
By: Happiest_in_shadows@yahoo.com
The story of a woman and her ever-growing abilities.


This story contains adult content, though no outright sex...yeah I know, 
don’t worry, it is coming in later chapters.  Anyway, if you dislike general 
fondling and bath scenes go read something else.  If you want to give some 
feedback, which is welcome, you may get in contact with me at 
happiest_in_shadows@yahoo.com

*****************************************************************************

Kate smiled as she listened to Jack on the phone.  Across the room from him, 
she could hear every word that was being said both ways.  Actually, she 
could probably have heard the conversation even from out of the room, her 
senses had become so strong recently.  It had been a full year since she and 
Jack had first left the city in order to begin her testing, and they were 
now quite sure she was at least going to maintain her human appearance.  
Which meant it was time for Kate to get back to the city and resume working 
for a living, though from what she heard it wouldn’t be quite the same.  
They had all realized that Kate’s old apartment wouldn’t be able to 
accommodate her with the changes that had been going on, so plans had to be 
made.  She had left that up to the two men she trusted most in the world.

Jack scribbled down on a piece of paper the address of Kate’s new apartment. 
  Nathan had already begun having the complex altered in order to allow Kate 
to continue her strength training and exercise routine.  There had also been 
some other alterations made for Kate’s comfort rather than practical 
reasons.  These had been kept a secret from Kate, quite a difficult task 
considering the fact that Kate could hear any conversation going on in the 
house it seemed.  At last Jack hung up the phone and turned his attention to 
Kate.

Even though Kate had been able to hear the conversation, she decided to play 
along.  And she really hadn't understood everything as some things seemed to 
have been spoken in code or technical terms.  "So how much longer do we need 
to stay here?"  Jack stood up and walked over to Kate, wrapping his arms 
around her.  He gave her as tight of a hug as he could, knowing full well 
that his version of a bear hug wouldn’t have really bothered Kate when she 
was normal, and now it had no chance of hurting her.

"We just need to clean out the fridge and then we can be on our way if you 
want."  Kate grinned widely and gave Jack a hug of her own, easily lifting 
him from the ground.  Jack had came a long way in a year.  He wasn’t a 
bodybuilder but he had toned up nicely and even managed to get his abs 
showing slightly.  While he was still pale as a ghost thanks to his natural 
aversion to all things outdoors, he had done what Kate asked of him and got 
himself into better shape.  Kate, for her part, was in better shape then she 
had been in her entire life as well, though the difference between Jack’s 
improvements and her own could be compared to the discrepancy between the 
Grand Canyon and a stream.

"Well then, I think I will prepare us a big dinner for tonight and then we 
can get on our way.  Now are you sure we don’t need to do anything about the 
exercise equipment?"  Jack sighed and nodded his head.

"I hate to admit it, but your father and I hadn’t done a very good job of 
thinking ahead as far as that goes.  We can’t very well get the machines out 
of the basement, since they're too heavy and they weren't built to be taken 
apart once assembled.  So the only way we could possibly get them out is to 
take out of one the basement walls."

"Ah well, thanks to your little oversight I get new equipment at my new 
apartment in the city.  Hehe, it seems everything about my life is new.  I 
have an enhanced body which is constantly getting stronger, a new home and 
equipment and, well we have been together for a year so I guess I can’t 
exactly count you as my new boyfriend.  Hmm...ahh, what the hey, this is 
going to be our first trip back to the city so I suppose I can count you as 
new too."

"Hey, does that mean you're going to replace me?"  Kate giggled for a moment 
and set Jack down.

"Of course not, I just like teasing you."  Jack grinned and followed Kate 
into the kitchen, planning on helping her prepare dinner.  The moment he got 
into the kitchen though, Kate took hold of his waistband and began to carry 
him out again.  Setting Jack down on the living room sofa, she gave him a 
kiss on the cheek.

"I said I was the one going to prepare dinner, since I'm going to be the one 
eating most of it.  You can just stay in here and watch sports."  Jack 
immediately gave Kate an "are you kidding" look, Kate knowing full well that 
Jack detested sports with every fiber of his being.  Kate let out a slight 
giggle.  "Fine, you can watch something else."

"Thanks, though if you were playing I would mind watching.  I think it would 
be kind of fun to watch you push through an entire football team without 
wearing pads, or knock the ball out of the stadium every time you swung a 
bat."  Kate grinned and gave Jack another kiss on the cheek.

"Well as fun as that sounds, it wouldn’t exactly be fair.  After all, I'm a 
little more than human now."  Jack grinned and gave his head a slight nod as 
he recalled the last readings he had seen on Kate’s strength.  She could 
support 2.6 tons with a single arm and benchpress 12.8 tons.  The humvees 
outside could no longer give her a decent workout as far as the benchpress 
was concerned.  Heck, she could have easily carried one on her back if it 
didn’t cause her feet to drive into the ground with every step.

"Hey Kate, I've been meaning to ask, just what do you plan to do when we get 
back to the city?"

"I'm going to rejoin the police force, of course.  I want to put my strength 
to good use and I think protecting people is the best possible use I can put 
it to."  Jack gave his head a slight nod; he had expected Kate to want to 
help people with her strength.  Still, the fact that she planned on 
rejoining the police department surprised him a bit.  Standing up, he made 
his way to the kitchen door to watch Kate.  He didn’t enter, figuring that 
she would just pack him out again.

"Are you going to tell them about your abilities?"  Kate grinned as she 
looked over her shoulder.

"Nope, I have no intention of telling anyone about anything I can do.  I 
think I'm going to let them find out on their own.  Besides, it would be 
awfully silly of me to go around boasting of what I'm capable of.  I kind of 
want to keep the element of surprise and avoid drawing attention to myself 
as long as possible."  Jack grinned as he watched Kate lay out the chicken 
and steak they had yet to eat, as well as a good deal of vegetables.  He was 
curious whether Kate could think of anything that would involve all the 
items or if she would make several dishes instead.  Kate gave a visible 
start as if she had forgotten something.  Jack rubbed his head against the 
door frame as he saw what it was.

Kate, having forgotten to wash her hands, simply turned the sink to pure hot 
water.  She held her hands in the water until she noticed the steam and 
realized it had reached its max temperature.  Jack could help but stare as 
she soaped up her hands, the scalding hot water causing her no discomfort as 
it rushed over her fingers.  Kate grinned as she turned to Jack and held up 
her hands.  Her skin was the same tone as always, the heat not even able to 
turn her fingers red.  It wasn’t overly surprising considering her overall 
strength, but it was still amazing to see.  Flipping off the sink, Kate 
turned her attention back to cooking.  "I figure we can have some baked 
chicken and grilled steak.  Oh, and a nice little salad."

"Hm, I think I'll be able to help with the chicken and the salad but steak 
is purely up to you."

"Do you mean that you are going to leave all this for little old me to eat?" 
  Jack nodded.

"You're the one cooking it, after all.  I suppose I should get to work on a 
few last details as well."  Noticing Kate’s questioning look, Jack didn’t 
give her time to respond.  "Your dad had a new computer station set up for 
me at your apartment, so I just need to delete anything that we don’t want 
other people knowing from my computer.  I also need to get rid of some of 
the samples that haven’t died off already."  Kate grinned, feeling a bit of 
pride at the news of her cells still being alive.  The fact that they could 
last so long even when removed from her was pretty neat as far as she was 
concerned.  It took Jack a moment to tear himself away from the door frame 
and head down into the basement.  He had no desire to leave Kate alone.

As he trotted downstairs, Jack took a moment to look at the exercise 
equipment that had been custom built for her.  Trying to think of a word 
that defined the machines, the only thing that came to his mind was big.  
The press had actually been built to deliver up to 20 tons of pressure in 
hopes that it would last Kate a good long while.  This it had done; the 
machine had actually lasted Kate for a few months and would have lasted her 
for one or two more before Kate exceeded its maximum weight.  He still 
couldn’t help but find it humorous though.  After all, most people don’t end 
up getting rid of their weight sets because they can’t offer enough 
resistance.

Walking over to the benchpress, he looked down at the holes in the floor.  
The concrete had given way under Kate’s feet when she had attempted to lift 
the entire machine.  It had been decided that there was no way the stairs 
would be able to support her if she had attempted to carry the machine 
upstairs.  Even if they had, she would have fallen straight through the 
floor the moment she got to the main level, and that only after knocking out 
a good chunk of the wall.  Getting his mind back to the task at hand, Jack 
took a moment to check through his desk and removed a few CD’s.  The disk 
containing the information he had gathered on Kate, as well as several hours 
of video from the microscope.  Carefully packing them away in a storage 
case, he finally placed the reformat disk into the computer.

Leaving the machine to take care of itself, Jack began to rummage around 
with a few vials of Kate’s blood.  Getting out a pack of deer blood, he 
began to empty the vial of Kate’s blood into the large amount of the deer's. 
  He had learned that Kate’s blood cells, once removed from her, would 
basically destroy themselves when placed with another type of DNA in a 
larger amount.  Thus the easiest way to destroy Kate’s cells was to mix them 
with another type of blood.  As Jack came to the last vial he considered 
storing it away and studying it some more, but finally emptied it into the 
container as well.  He then dumped the contents down a drain.  Even if a few 
cells hadn’t destroyed themselves yet, they could only survive so long once 
removed from Kate.

Kate by now had moved outside and was working with the BBQ, flipping the 
steaks and occasionally giving them a light poke to see how they where 
coming.  She didn’t bother making use of any utensils.  While the heat of 
the flames could indeed cook the meat, it had no effect on her own fingers.  
Actually, the flames licking at her fingers felt kind of nice.  This got a 
giggle from her as she wondered how many people had burned themselves while 
grilling, and here she was using her fingers.

The smell of the roasting chicken finally made its way downstairs to Jack 
who was finishing up with the last task, reprogramming the computers on each 
of Kate’s workout machines to make sure they could not put out more pressure 
than was humanly possible to withstand.  It was likely that the machines 
wouldn't see use any time soon, especially by someone who didn’t know what 
they were capable of, but better to be safe than sorry.  Jack had been 
extremely nervous when the old weights had been moved out of the basement 
and he began to work with the same machines as Kate.  Each time he would 
start to work out with them he would check three times to make sure that he 
had lowered the setting to within his human limits.

Finishing up his final task, Jack finally made his way out of the basement 
and flipped off the lights.  Considering that he and Kate planned on taking 
off tomorrow morning, he imagined that it would be the last time that he saw 
the place for a while.  At least with all the equipment there they could 
always hide away again if something began to happen to Kate.  A grin formed 
on Jack’s face as he considered that despite all her new abilities they were 
still worrying about her more than anyone else.

Taking a moment to look around, he realized what Kate would most likely be 
doing at the moment.  He made his way out to the patio at the back of the 
house and leaned against the door frame to watch her.  It was amusing to 
watch her place her fingers in the flames or stir the coals without showing 
the slightest bit of pain.  "I swear, I wish I had skin as tough as yours.  
I've burned myself so many times while cooking."  Kate giggled and looked up 
at Jack.

"You might end up eating steak with me and letting me finish off the 
chicken.  I think it'll be a while before that bird is done.  Don’t worry 
though, I won’t eat it all.  I'll be sure to package some of it for our trip 
back to the city."

"Ah, you just want to keep that entire chicken for yourself you glutton."  
Kate instantly stuck her tongue out at Jack.

"Fine then, you can wait for the chicken to be done and in the meantime 
watch me eat these nice thick steaks."  Jack walked over to get a better 
look at the meat.

"You wouldn’t make me go hungry now would you?"  Kate gave Jack a evil grin 
for a moment before moving her free hand behind his head.  Pulling him 
forward, Kate pressed her lips to his and kissed him deeply.  Jack held his 
mouth shut for as long as he could Kate tried to gain access to his mouth.  
He couldn’t help but be amazed as Kate easily worked his mouth open with her 
tongue alone.  It was a fun game for both of them as Jack tried to keep 
Kate’s tongue from entering, even biting down on hers once it was inside of 
his mouth.  She would easily move his tongue about with her own, and despite 
his biting he couldn’t hurt her in the least.  At last Kate let up, a large 
smile on her face.

"Of course not, though you will be waiting for a while if you hold out for 
the chicken."  It took Jack a moment to respond as he couldn’t recover his 
breath as quickly as Kate could.

"Alright...well then, I'll go ahead and set the table."

*****************************************************************************

Jack gave a slight jump as he heard the loud crunch of a bone.  Looking over 
at Kate, he noted the chicken bone in her hand was missing a portion.  He 
had just seen Kate eat two large steaks and half of his a short while ago.  
They had moved on to the chicken once it was done.  He had been impressed by 
how much Kate could pack away; her digestive system had strengthened with 
the rest of her and she was more than able to handle it.  However, this was 
the first time she had actually snapped a bone in two just by biting down on 
it.  "Kate, did you just do what I think you did?"

Rather than responding right away, Kate proceeded to chew on the bone a few 
times before swallowing it.  "I can’t say that I actually enjoyed the taste, 
but I was curious.  Actually that took surprisingly little of my jaw’s 
actual biting force."  Jack didn’t say anything but rather got a rather 
silly grin on his face.

"I swear, at the rate you are going it won’t be long before you can bite 
through solid steel."

"Oh, now that would be so cool, though I don’t imagine it would taste very 
good.  Still, I suppose this is one of those things that I shouldn’t do in 
public if I don’t want to draw attention to myself."

"I don’t know, with the way you've been eating I wonder if we should just 
start entering you in competitive food eating contess.  I'd be willing to 
bet you would win."  Tapping his finger against the table for a moment, Jack 
gave Kate a rather serious look.  "Kate, are you sure you want to go back to 
the city now?  I mean, I know you are plenty capable but do you really think 
that you are powerful enough?  I would hate to have you get injured or 
killed because we rushed things.  Your strength is growing so fast that if 
we just spent a few more weeks here you would be more than double what you 
are now."  Kate moved her fingers along the rim of her glass for a moment 
before speaking.

"That's true, but then we could say that in another few weeks I would be 
even more powerful than that.  We've discussed this and we both know that if 
we start saying I should wait because I'll be more powerful next week than I 
am now, I might never be willing to go back.  No, we set this to be the date 
for my return to work and that's what it's going to be.  Besides, it isn’t 
like I'm going to stop working out just because we return to the city."  A 
long sigh came from Jack as he nodded his head.  "Hm, I wonder if you just 
want to keep me up here all to yourself?"  A big grin formed on Jack’s face.

"Well I'd be lying if I said that wasn’t one of the reasons.  When we get 
back to the city I'm going to have to compete with other men for your 
attention."

"Ah, you don’t have to worry about that.  After all, you're still going to 
be my roommate.  We'll get to spend plenty of time together and get to know 
each other even better than we already do.  Besides, don’t you think I have 
my own concerns as well?  I mean, you might decide you want a normal girl 
instead of a genetically unstable person such as myself."

"Now that is not going to happen.  I think I'm one of the luckiest men on 
the planet."  Standing up from the table, Kate made her way over to Jack, 
but instead of bending down to give him a kiss she lifted him and his chair 
into the air before planting a kiss on his cheek.

"That is sweet of you to say.  But I think we need to see how well we get 
along with other people around before we make any solid decisions.  After 
all, I don’t know how you're going to react to my work schedule."  Jack 
nodded his head in agreement.  As much as he didn’t like to admit it, 
conflicting work schedules and other interests that they didn’t have to deal 
with while away from everyone could very well prove to be fatal for any 
relationship they might form.

"Well, I guess I might as well get ready to turn in for the night.  I don’t 
think you'll be finished eating any time soon."  Kate couldn’t help but grin 
as she continued to make a pig of herself.

"Well, we can’t let it go to waste can we?  Besides, it isn’t like I'm going 
to be putting on any weight."  Jack nodded his head as he put his plate in 
the dishwasher.  He gave Kate a good night kiss on the cheek, but before he 
could walk away she pulled him back, taking a moment to return the favor 
before she allowed him to head on to his room.

As Kate sat alone, she looked around the place that had been their home for 
the past year.  It had been a rather lengthy vacation for her and she 
wondered what had happened while she was away.  Had another over-powered 
maniac broken loose and destroyed some of her old friends, or had they been 
lucky enough to only have to deal with the regular lunatics with guns?

Snapping one of the chicken bones between her fingers, Kate grinned.  Though 
she knew she wasn’t a match for some of the most powerful villains, she at 
least felt confident she would be able to handle some of the lightweights.  
Finishing up her meal, Kate took her time and actually did the dishes by 
hand, knowing she would be awake at least two hours before Jack even if she 
went to bed an hour later than him.

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There was a wide grin on Kate’s face as she poked her head into Jack’s room 
the following morning.  Having woken up a full 2 hours and 23 minutes before 
him, she had already found the time to shower, make breakfast and brush her 
teeth.  Normally she would have taken this time to also jog, but today was 
different as they would be heading back to the city.  Kate was eager to get 
back to her job.  Being careful not to make a sound, Kate moved over to 
Jack’s bed and gently removed the covers from around him.  It was too bad 
Jack always slept in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.  There was no way for 
her to remove his clothes without waking him, or at least risking it.  She 
lifted Jack into her arms and made her way into the bathroom.

She took her time to adjust the water to a pleasant temperature.  She had to 
make sure it was the right temperature for Jack and not for herself.  If she 
had thrown Jack into a shower that she considered comfortable, she probably 
would have burned his flesh off.  Content that the water was safe for a 
normal human, Kate quickly thrust Jack under the shower, setting him down in 
the tub.

Jack nearly jumped clean out of the bathtub as the water rushed over him, 
soaking his clothes as well as himself.  Sitting up sputtering, he looked 
around for a moment and heard giggling coming from outside the curtain.  
"Time to get up, sleepyhead, and no stalling.  Your breakfast is getting 
cold and I want to get on our way back to the city.  After all, it's going 
to take a while considering that we can only go 70 miles per hour on the 
interstate."  Letting out a long sigh, Jack realized what had happened and 
began to strip away his clothing.  Tossing them over the shower’s top, he 
attempted to aim for the outline that he assumed was Kate.  The outline 
moved out of the way at an alarming rate, and he knew it was her.

"No fair, you got to soak me."  Kate just chuckled and walked out of the 
room, her first instinct being to toss Jack’s clothes in the dirty laundry 
basket.  Instead she recalled the days plan and dug into Jack’s suitcase, 
tossed a few dry items of clothing on the bed and put his wet clothes in a 
little pouch.  Zipp up the suitcase, she called over her shoulder.

"Bring the trash out whenever you eat your breakfast.  I put it on paper 
plates and already washed the pots and pans myself, so you won’t have to do 
anything.  I'm going to give the place another look over before we leave to 
make sure we aren’t forgetting anything."

"Yes Maam."  Heading back outside, Kate looked around for a moment.  Her 
parents had come and taken the spare humvee a few days earlier.  Kate 
actually regretted her decision to leave the place.  What Jack had said at 
the dinner table had been true; the thought that if she would only take a 
while longer to build up her strength she wouldn’t have to worry nearly as 
much.  In that time though, more things could go wrong, and she wanted to 
put her new found strength to good use.  Strength and speed.  A grin formed 
on her face as she considered the fact that she could now run over 200mph.  
True, she wasn’t breaking any land speed records, but that allowed her to 
move more swiftly than nearly any ground vehicle.

She had joked with Jack about running back to the city instead of riding, 
since she could make in 1/3rd the time it was going to take him.  After all, 
unlike the other vehicles Kate didn’t really have to worry about getting 
pulled other.  Even though she would have been moving remarkably fast, she 
would still have been a pedestrian.  That wouldn’t have been the best way to 
keep a low profile though.  She wanted to keep attention away from herself 
for as long as possible in order to do the most good.  Walking over to the 
humvee, Kate bent down and began to look over the bottom of the vehicle, a 
wide grin forming on her face as she noted the spots where her hands had 
been.  Having used the vehicle as a weight before the machines had arrived, 
she had accidentally placed her hands on a few of the weaker areas and thus 
the imprints of her fingers could be seen.  Fortunately she had noticed what 
was going on and had put the vehicle down before she damaged anything 
important.

The sound of the front door opening got Kate’s attention and she turned to 
see Jack exiting the house, wearing the clothing she had selected for him.  
"Well, are we all packed up?"

"Yup, did you set the alarm?"  Jack did a double take and dashed back to the 
door.  Kate chuckled a bit as she heard the beep to signify the alarm was 
now set.

"Sure thing."  Kate just grinned and stuck her tongue out at Jack.

"Yeah, after I reminded you," she teased as she climbed into the driver’s 
side of the vehicle.  Jack climbed in a second later and they both buckled 
up.  Having been with Kate for a little over a year now, Jack no longer 
required a reminder.  "Okay, here we go.  Let's see if I can keep this under 
control."  A wide grin broke across Jack’s face as Kate prepared to confront 
one of the problems her powers had been giving her as of late.  Kate had 
developed the habit of speeding while driving thanks to the rate at which 
she could run.  The standard speed of the interstate seemed mindnumbingly 
slow, and the back roads were even worse.  That wasn’t overly surprising to 
Jack, considering the fact that Kate could sprint at 252 miles per hour and 
considered a nice jogging speed to be 200 miles per hour.

Kate, for her part, was more than a little nervous.  With her increased 
reaction time and hyperactive senses, everything seemed to move far slower 
than normal.  This resulted in her wanting to drive far faster than what was 
legal.  It was made even more complicated by the fact that Kate had far more 
control of her own body than she did the vehicle.  She actually wished she 
could just pick up the humvee and run with it rather than having to ride in 
it.  This wouldn’t have been a good idea however, as her feet would have 
probably sunk rather deeply even into the pavement.  Leaving inch-deep 
footprints all the way up the interstate was not a good thing, not to 
mention the attention she would draw in the act.  "Don’t worry Kate, I'll 
keep an eye on your speed and let you know if I think you're going too 
fast."  Kate gave a slight nod and started the engine, and their trip was 
on.  The only stop they made before leaving the town was at a local landfill 
to drop off their trash.

"Kate, you're going too fast.  You're going 95 on a 70, you need to slow 
down."  Jack leaned back in his seat.  Kate had begun speeding up roughly 30 
minutes after getting on the interstate.  She had slowly worked her way up 
to her current speed.  With a quick glance at the speedometer, she grinned 
sheepishly and began to slow down the vehicle, once again pulling into the 
slow lane.  Jack knew this would annoy the people behind her immensely, as 
even those in the slow lane wanted to at least go 75 and Kate’s habit of 
speeding up and slowing down was no doubt getting on their nerves.  Still, 
she needed to get this down, otherwise she would be in trouble when she 
tried to get her old job back and couldn’t keep her patrol car within the 
legal limits.

"Sorry."

"No problem.  Not that it bothers me, I want to see what your father has set 
up for us.  I do think it is annoying the people behind us though."  Kate 
nodded her head in agreement as people began to pass her almost as quickly 
as she had been passing them only a short while ago.  "Tell you what, I'll 
let you know when you start getting up to 75 and we'll see if you can keep 
it down."  Jack gave the radio a look.  Getting an idea, he began to look 
through the radio stations trying to locate something with a soothing melody 
in hopes of getting Kate to relax a bit.  Finding a nice soft station, he 
leaned back in his seat and proceeded to keep his eyes on their speed, 
trusting Kate to watch the road.  Every time Kate would begin to exceed 75 
mph Jack would inform her, helping to keep her within the legal limit.

After two hours of this Kate finally seemed to be getting the hang of 
keeping within the speed limit once again.  Though she had hardly every 
broken the speed limit before, it wasn’t overly surprising that with her new 
abilities some things would change, including her driving habits.  If she 
had been capable of staying below 80mph Jack might have not even mentioned 
it to her.  "Hey Cuddly, why don’t you lean back and rest for a while?  I 
think I got it down now."  Jack nodded his head in agreement and reclined 
his seat.  Finding that long rides in the passenger seat tended to put him 
to sleep, a grin formed on his face as he considered something.

"You know, with your pound for pound strength having increased so much I bet 
your feet don’t hurt you anymore when you walk around.  I also bet that 
sitting down for such a long time wouldn’t make your butt sore either, no 
matter how bumpy the road was."  Kate chuckled at this and nodded her head 
in agreement.  As she noticed Jack relaxing, she reached a hand down and 
began to play with the music.  She hadn’t mentioned it to Jack, but she 
found a decent amount of the songs he had her listening to to be too 
depressing.  It didn’t take her long to find something with a more upbeat 
tune.  She was careful to watch her speed, not wanting to get pulled over on 
her way home to get her old job back.  She had left on good terms and she 
still felt confident that she would be rehired.

The only thing that had her worried was if they would want to do some blood 
work on her.  Though she doubted her physical would need to go that far, it 
was still a fear.  As Kate drove along, something caught her attention.  A 
vehicle was pulled over to the side of the road with a woman standing beside 
it.  Pulling over herself, Kate was careful not to wake Jack who by now had 
nodded off.  As she hopped out of the humvee, the other woman gave her a 
somewhat nervous look.  Walking over to her, Kate grinned.  "Hi, what seems 
to be the prob...oh."  Kate noticed that the woman had a flat tire.  "Do you 
have a spare?"

"Yes, but my husband forgot the jack.  He went on up the road to try and get 
to a gas station or a telephone."  Kate nodded.

"Too bad, he wasted the trip.  I'll give you a hand, would you mind popping 
the trunk?"  The woman seemed delighted.  Kate figured she had been stuck 
waiting for a little while.  The woman gave Kate a strange look as she took 
the spare out of the trunk without returning to her vehicle to get a jack.

"Umm, aren’t you going to get a..."

"Nope, don’t need it."  The woman gave Kate a concerned look, especially 
when Kate placed one hand under the vehicle.  A moment later the woman’s 
concern turned to shock as Kate easily lifted the vehicle off the ground 
just enough to remove pressure from the tire.  Using her free hand, Kate 
proceeded to remove the hubcap, setting it aside.  The woman’s shock grew as 
Kate unscrewed the lugnuts with her fingers.  Kate was grinning the entire 
time; she couldn’t resist the chance to show off her strength.  It wasn’t 
like anyone else would notice.  She was shielded from the view of traffic by 
the car.  Those that did notice her would simply assume she was using the 
proper tools rather than her bare hands.  Slipping the tire off, Kate picked 
up the spare and set it in place.  A few moments later she had screwed the 
lugnuts back on, careful not to break them by turning them too far.

In short order Kate had the tire changed.  "There you go, and don’t worry, 
those are on plenty tight."  The woman didn’t say much of anything as Kate 
let the vehicle back down and stood up.  Dusting herself off as she walked 
back to the humvee, she wondered what the woman would end up telling her 
husband.  That some redhead had shown up and replaced the tire with her 
hands instead of tools?  The thought got a giggle from Kate as she climbed 
back into the driver's side.  She jumped a little when she felt a hand on 
her shoulder, and looked over to see Jack waving a finger at her.

"I thought we wanted to keep a low profile."  Jack just continued to grin as 
Kate stuck her tongue out at him and started back up the vehicle.

******************************************************************************

Jack had forgotten about the poorer quality of air in the city compared to 
the country.  As he drove through the city streets he was sure he preferred 
the country.  He and Kate had switched off two hours ago when she had 
finally begun to feel tired.  It had actually surprised him how long she had 
managed to keep driving, though he knew such things shouldn't anymore.  Now 
he wished he had been the first to drive as he navigated the city streets, 
occasionally glancing at the address he had scribbled down.  At last he was 
able to locate the building.  Looking at it for a moment, he quickly decided 
that it wasn’t of the same quality as her previous apartment building, 
though it was still nice.  Jack could pretty much guess why the quality 
wasn't quite as high.  It was a rather unusual request to have floors as 
solid as Kate was going to need them.

"Are we there?"  Kate’s sleepy voice broke his concentration.  Looking over 
at her, he grinned.

"You sure are a sound sleeper, aren’t you?"  Kate grinned and gave her head 
a slight nod.  Looking up at the building for a moment, she then leaned her 
head on Jack’s shoulder.

"So which one is our room?"  Jack just grinned and took the vehicle around 
the back to park.  Taking a moment to look around, he finally pointed 
towards a door that would have been hard to notice had one not been looking 
for it. Kate didn’t say anything as she climbed out of the vehicle and began 
to get some of the bags.  Jack tried to read the expression on her face to 
see whether she was disappointed with her new living conditions or not.  All 
he could get was that she seemed rather glad to be out of the vehicle and 
able to stretch her legs a bit.  Jack, for his part, had actually been 
expecting better.  He carried a few things over to the door.

This only lasted until he unlocked the door and stepped inside.  The room 
that Jack stepped into actually exceeded Kate’s old apartment in size, much 
to his surprise.  Kate, stepping up behind him, gave the place a once over.  
"I guess Daddy figured we could use some extra space if we're going to be 
living together."  Jack nodded and stepped through the door, allowing Kate 
to enter.  Kate lightly chuckled at Jack’s reaction.  Looking around, she 
quickly located her room and put her suitcases down.  It took Jack a while 
longer to find his.  As he set his items down, a hand rested on his chest 
before he could get back out the door to get the rest of his things.  "You 
go ahead and get to unpacking, I'll get the rest."

He didn’t exactly see a reason to argue with Kate, since she could easily 
carry far more weight than he could.  The only reason she hadn’t carried 
everything at once was that her arms weren’t big enough.  Jack started 
unpacking his things while Kate made two more trips.  "Umm Jack, would you 
mind if I went ahead and exercised some?  I don’t want to put unpacking off 
on you but I could really use a stretch."

"Hm, only if I can watch you work out when I am done."  Kate giggled for a 
moment.

"Alright, it's a deal."  Proceeding back to her room, Kate took a few 
moments to locate her exercise clothing.  Slipping on the red and black 
outfit, Kate stopped by Jack’s room again before she went to the weight 
room.  Striking a pose, she whistled to get his attention.  He looked up and 
gave her the thumbs up, which got another soft chuckle from Kate.  She 
trotted off.

Kate’s first instinct was to jump in and try out all the machines she saw, 
but she managed to control herself.  Most of the machines resembled what one 
would find in most gyms, except that they were all much larger, clearly 
sturdier and didn’t have any weights.  The devices used hydraulics and were 
programmable to simulate varying amounts of weight.  Debating on what she 
should do first, Kate grinned as she recalled how much Jack loved watching 
her lift weights and how much she enjoyed showing off for him.  There was 
also her little promise to show off for him as much as possible, and she did 
need to warm up.  So instead of going straight to the weights Kate made her 
way over to the treadmill.  Looking at the machine for a moment, Kate let 
out a slight whistle.

The frame was a bright silver and the device was clearly meant to go much 
faster than a standard treadmill would have.  Just like everything else in 
the area it had been custom built to provide Kate with a decent workout.  
Climbing onto the machine, Kate first typed in 10mph to see if it could keep 
itself down to human levels.  Confirming this, she quickly brought the speed 
up to 150mph in order to get her heart pumping a bit.  As she jogged, she 
realized something.  While in the mountains, she had been able to admire the 
forest around her while running.  Now that she was inside, the only thing 
she found herself looking at was the same wall.   She resolved that she'd 
have to get a television put in the room before she went crazy.

Of course, a part of her wanted to just go for a run around the city.  
However, considering the speed she would be going, she doubted she would be 
unnoticed.  Jack could hear Kate running on the treadmill as he finished 
putting away the last article of clothing.  He had even taken the time to 
put away Kate’s clothing, which had actually been more fun then putting away 
his own.  Finishing up the entire process had only taken him twenty minutes; 
they didn’t exactly have any furniture to bring in.  He would use the CD’s 
he had brought with them to reinstall all the needed programs on his new 
computer.  But at that moment he found himself eager to see how Kate was 
doing.  As he made his way into the exercise room and saw her, he was amazed 
by the rate at which her legs where moving.

He could hardly see them.  Kate had brought the machine up to her regular 
200mph jogging pace.  Walking over to her, he found the sight kind of 
amusing.  Kate’s arms and legs were a blur while the rest of her remained 
essentially still.  Kate noticed the look on Jack’s face as he approached 
her.  The effect of jogging in place was funny; her senses were in full gear 
and yet everything around her remained still.  Jack’s movements seemed 
painfully slow.  Her full appreciation of this came when he actually spoke 
to her.  "Hey Kate, I was just wondering.  What do your legs look like to 
you?"  Kate got a curious look on her face, then realized it must be 
remarkably difficult for Jack to follow the movement of her legs and arms.

She looked down at herself.  To her, her legs seemed to be moving at the 
same pace they always had when she was jogging.  "They look normal to me."  
Jack blinked.  He had heard Kate speak, at least he thought she was 
speaking, but he couldn’t be sure.

"Umm Kate, would you mind saying that again and slowing it down perhaps?"  
Kate got a huge grin on her face as she realized what had happened.  She had 
been speaking at an accelerated rate and the words had been so close 
together that Jack hadn’t been able to tell them apart.  Curious, she 
wondered if she could slow down one part of her body while the other 
remained moving at super human speed.  Jack watched as Kate took in a deeper 
breath than even what her jogging would normally require.  As she spoke he 
was finally able to understand her.

"My legs look perfectly normal to me, but you seem to be talking and moving 
at an incredibly slow pace."  Jack just grinned at the news, quite excited.

"Hey Kate, once you're done jogging would you mind getting off and trying to 
keep taking in information at the same pace?"  Kate gave a slight nod, then 
turned her attention back to her exercise.  Jack clapped his hands together 
and moved away from Kate a little, though he made sure he could still see 
her, and began his warm up exercises.  Kate found herself constantly 
glancing at Jack as he went through his warm up exercises.  Even his jumping 
jacks seemed to be in slow motion to her.  Of course she had been noticing 
the effects of her increased rate of thinking and her magnified senses for a 
while, but with them all in full swing it was rather amusing.

As Kate finally began to feel warmed up enough to begin weightlifting, she 
slowly turned down the machine and climbed off.  Jack stopped warming up and 
turned his attention to Kate.  He waited a few moments before doing 
anything.  "Well Kate, how is it working?"  Kate got a grin on her face.

"You're still a slow poke."  A second later Kate was standing beside Jack, 
having closed the gap between them in less than a second.  She was careful 
to keep her movements slow as she leaned over and gave him a kiss on the 
cheek.  "Oh, this is so neat."  Jack nodded, despite the fact that he wasn’t 
the one moving at inhuman speeds.

"Neat is a good word for it, though would you mind slowing down now?  I 
wonder if we can test this later to see if you could go into this state 
while in a completely relaxed situation."

"Sure thing."  Kate nodded her head yes several times, making sure she used 
and spoke at her accelerated rate.  Then she began to slow down and move at 
a more human pace.  "But right now I want to get on with my exercises."  
Walking over to the treadmill, Jack turned his attention to Kate.

"Kate, would you mind turning this around a bit so that I could watch you 
while you exercise."  Kate, looking over her shoulder, gave Jack a playful 
grin.

"It depends.  Do you want me to turn it around for scientific reasons, or do 
you want to admire the view?"  Jack returned Kate’s grin.

"Admire the view, of course."

"Sure thing then."  Walking over to the machine, Kate easily lifted it from 
the ground, immediately grateful that the ground didn’t give out beneath her 
as it had at her grandparents’ home.  She turned the machine around 
completely so that Jack could watch her as she lifted weights, then made her 
way over to the hydraulic press.  As she situated herself on the machine, 
she noticed one thing that she didn’t like about it.  While using normal 
weights, one could look at her and tell just how much she was pressing or at 
least get an idea.  With the machine one would have to look at the computer 
readout.  Turning to Jack, she called out the numbers that she punched into 
the computer.  "12.8 tons."  With that Kate proceeded to lay down underneath 
the bar.  As she pressed up on it, the machine took a moment to register the 
force, requiring Kate to exert slightly more than 12.8 tons of upward force 
before the safety lock released and it began to press down on her.

Jack was so mesmerized by the site of Kate’s muscles expanding as she began 
to press the massive amount, he almost forgot to switch the treadmill back 
to more reasonable settings.  Catching himself just before he turned the 
machine on, he was grateful he hadn’t pushed the button.  Adjusting the 
machine back down to a human level, he began to jog along, focusing the 
whole time on the sight in front of him.  The thought that there were over 
12 tons, nearly 13, pressing down upon that bar proved to be an extremely 
exciting one.

As Kate pressed and lowered the bar, she couldn’t help but notice the 
muscles in her arms seemed to be more defined than they had been.  It wasn’t 
that they seemed larger, but as she turned her head to look at her arm she 
thought it seemed to display more power than before.  She couldn’t be sure 
if it wasn't just the psychological effect of knowing that she was 
supporting several tons with just her arms.  Even now she found herself 
envying some of the video feeds she had seen of other superpowered beings 
capable of lifting a tank with a single arm.  The thought that she might 
possess such strength eventually excited her.  As Kate’s excitement grew, 
the bar seemed to become slightly lighter, though it still offered a good 
deal of resistance.  Turning her gaze in Jack’s direction she noticed where 
his eyes were focused while he ran.

Jack found himself taking in the sight of Kate’s lovely form while she 
lifted.  Her muscles stood out in their greatest relief, muscles that could 
crush him in just a moment.  The thought that Kate could break every bone in 
his body without even trying had crossed Jack’s mind several times, but in 
all truth it only excited him even more.  Looking down at her sculpted form, 
Jack wished he hadn’t started exercising just yet as he desired to reach out 
and touch those biceps.  He was able to keep himself running only because he 
knew that once he was done Kate might permit him to explore her entire body 
when it was fully pumped.  Letting his eyes travel from her arms, Jack’s 
eyes wandered up to Kate’s face, finding her eyes meeting his.  His gaze 
didn’t stray.  Having spent a year with Kate, he knew she enjoyed his 
admiration.

As he looked into her eyes he realized that she was most likely also seeing 
how well he had progressed, just as he was seeing how well she had.  This 
made him pick up the pace a bit.  Though he knew it wasn’t anywhere near 
what Kate was capable of, he at least wanted to attempt to impress her.  His 
eyes left Kate’s face and traveled down to her chest, taking in the sight of 
her C-cup breasts underneath her workout outfit.  Though they weren’t the 
largest, they had always been nicely formed and quite firm.  They were now 
firmer than any he had encountered before, not requiring any support.  Kate 
still liked to wear a bra, but he had a feeling that was to tease and taunt 
him more than anything.  He had yet to get his hands on those wonderful 
breasts, but he had at least felt them pressed against him during their 
cuddling sessions.  A huge grin threatened to split his face in half as he 
recalled that after a good workout and a shower Kate was normally up for a 
lengthy cuddling session, and it was about time for bed.  Perhaps he would 
get to spend the night wrapped in those remarkably strong arms.

Leaving the wonderful view of her breasts, Jack’s gaze caught sight of one 
feature of Kate's that competed with her arms in muscular definition.  The 
sight of women’s abs had always been a subject of interest for Jack.  He 
recalled how surprised he had been back in college when he had found Kate’s 
abs were remarkably defined and clearly noticeable if she wore a tight 
enough shirt or simply decided to leave her stomach exposed.  The thought 
that he would like to kiss each one of the four well-defined muscles crossed 
his mind, an action that he had done many times before during their 
cuddling.  Kate seemed to like it when he paid attention to such details of 
her body, which wasn’t too surprising.  After all, she did love to show off 
her strength.

At least with Kate Jack didn’t have to worry about feeling like a jerk when 
checking out her body.  Not only did Kate enjoy showing it off and 
demonstrating what it was capable of, but she also enjoyed looking him over 
as well.  He had been grateful to learn that Kate wasn’t into the 
bodybuilder type since she enjoyed being the more powerful one in the 
relationship.  Even now she enjoyed the fact that she still looked stronger 
than Jack.  Still, she had expected and got him to get himself into better 
shape, actually the best shape of his life.  Now that he was back in the 
city he worried that he should have pushed himself a little harder.  Maybe 
put on a little more muscle just in case that was what Kate decided what she 
wanted.

The sound of a click took Jack’s thoughts away from this as he noticed Kate 
setting the bar in place, a task done by holding it within a certain zone 
for a few moments or by simply telling the machine what to do.  The zone had 
been set up because Kate seemed to enjoy the natural feel it gave the 
machine.  Jack, who had been jogging the entire time, found himself 
struggling to talk since his body currently needed all the air it could get. 
  "Moving on?"  Kate looked over at Jack, realized why he hadn’t used a more 
complete sentence, and shook her head.

"Going to wait a few minutes, then I'm going to try and do another set."  
Standing up for a moment, Kate watched the sweat rolling off Jack’s face.  
Picking up her bottle of water, she walked over to him and held the 
container over his head.  She poured some of the ice cold liquid over him.  
Jack shivered but smiled, showing that he was grateful.  This got a grin 
from Kate.  She proceeded to dump some of the liquid on herself before 
walking back over to the weight bench.  "12.85"  Jack blinked for a moment, 
then realized that Kate had added some extra pressure.  As Kate lay down and 
began to lift the weight, he took a moment to figure up just how many pounds 
Kate was currently working with.  25,700.  He couldn’t help but wonder if 
the time would come when Kate would be lifting a few hundred tons instead of 
pounds.

Having worked with Kate for a year now, Jack had watched as her body and her 
cells had undergone one miraculous change after another.  After a year of 
observation and her body’s constant steady increases in power, he was quite 
confident that it was only a matter of time before her body would reach such 
levels of power and exceed them.  Though he wasn’t quite ready to say it was 
a scientific fact that her body would continue to change and evolve in order 
to increase its own power, he was willing at least hypothesize that it would 
continue to increase in power so long as Kate gave it a reason to.  
Actually, he wondered if it would continue to gain strength even if she 
didn’t exercise.  When he had mentioned this to Kate she had refused the 
idea.  He didn’t mind; after all, if they had found that her body didn’t 
require her to exercise in order to grow stronger, he would have been 
deprived the wonderful sight currently in front of him.

Kate, for her part, was having to focus as she pressed and lowered the bar.  
While it hadn’t seemed like much, the extra 100 pounds she had added had 
pretty much pushed her to her limit.  She couldn’t spare any attention to 
look at Jack but rather had to focus on overcoming the pressure the bar was 
currently pressing down with.  At least with the machine she didn’t have to 
worry about the need for someone to spot her.  The device was set up so that 
the bar could only be lowered so far.  This meant that even without a person 
to spot her she didn’t have to worry about being crushed; still, she didn’t 
like the idea of having to tell the machine to let off the weight so that 
she could get up.  Paying close attention to her arms, due to the extra 
weight and the fact that she had already been working out Kate ended up 
cutting her final set short, feeling that her arms wouldn’t be able to lift 
the bar again.

Sitting up, Kate flexed her fully pumped arms, feeling the blood course 
through her muscles.  Placing her hands over her heart, Kate was surprised 
by how powerful the beat seemed even to her.  Jack had mentioned that her 
internals might be changing as well.  She felt fine though, in fact she felt 
great.  She stood up and stretched her arms.  Looking over at Jack, a giggle 
escaped Kate’s lips as she debated asking him if he was having trouble 
jogging.  Her little display had gotten quite a reaction from him.  Instead 
she simply set the machine back to a more human level for when Jack got done 
with his jogging.

Walking over to what would now serve for her leg curls, Kate sat down and 
slipped her feet into the machine’s grips.  Entering the pressure, she knew 
to set the weight for a ton or so more than what her arms could support.  
Kate’s body didn't bother as much with her legs anymore; they had about the 
same pound for pound strength as her arms, just more muscle to work with.  
Jack finally climbed off the treadmill and began to work with the benchpress 
himself, lifting far less than Kate had worked with.  Actually, had set it 
for even less than he normally used, wanting to keep a eye on Kate as those 
wonderful legs of hers resisted several tons of pressure.  The thought of 
what a kick from those legs or a punch from her arms would do to a normal 
human being made him shudder.  A moment later Jack realized what had 
happened and a bright blush appeared on his face.  He hadn’t realized that 
just watching Kate had worked him up that much.  "Umm Kate, I think I'm 
going to go and shower now."

Kate grinned a knowing grin and nodded her head as she watched Jack trot 
off.  She couldn’t help but notice she was getting a little wet herself.  
Her power was a turn on for her also, and the effect that she had on Jack 
was wonderful fun as well.  Still, she had a workout to finish up and then 
she would go and take her bath.  She knew that the place had showers for 
Jack and for herself so they wouldn’t have to compete over a bathroom.  She 
hadn’t actually seen what the showers were like yet; she had been so eager 
to work out the stiffness in her muscles from sitting around so long that 
she had yet to give the place a good once over.  Jack felt more than a 
little embarrassed as he got himself cleaned up, but it seemed that the more 
powerful Kate got the more attractive to him she became.  He was glad she 
wasn’t shy and didn’t seem to mind his little outburst every once in a 
while.  Actually, from the grin she had given him he couldn’t help but think 
she enjoyed the effect she had on him.

Jack finally heard Kate finishing up her exercise a good thirty five minutes 
later.  Having made use of a decent amount of the machines available, her 
entire body was fully pumped.  To her surprise, Jack hadn’t returned but 
instead was spending some extra time in the shower.  A huge grin covered 
Kate’s face as she realized what was most likely going on.  Her first 
thought was that she should go and join him, but she refrained.  She wanted 
to give the relationship a little more time before they would actually start 
doing such thigns as bathing together.  Instead Kate made her way into her 
own restroom, and was surprised at what she saw.  The shower was a solid 
cylinder that reached all the way up to the roof, with vents in the bottom 
of it.  A curious looked formed on Kate’s face as she wondered what was 
going on.

Stripping out of her workout clothes, she knew it must be one of her 
father's additions.  An excited glint came to her eyes as she located the 
latch and unlocked the door.  Sliding it open, she climbed inside.  Though 
she wished he had thought to put in a shower curtain for the outside, she 
didn’t mind too much.  Turning to the controls, she giggled at the two 
buttons and nodded.  A third button got her attention.  The label read, 
"Heat Limiter - Push to turn Off."  Realizing that it was probably there to 
keep normal people safe, Kate pressed the button to shut the device off.  
Then she began to play with the controls.  Turning the large knob, she found 
it controlled the flow of water which started at room temperature.  The 
bottom button, she quickly found, made the water colder, almost to the point 
of being slush.

Kate could guess at what the other button did.  Pressing it, the water began 
to warm up quite rapidly.  Kate assumed that either they had an extremely 
large hot water heater or each bath had its own separate one.  She was soon 
sure that the latter was the case, as the water reached the boiling point.  
Letting off the button for a second, Kate wondered if it was at the max.  
She pressed the button again.  It did take a few moments, but soon no more 
liquid water was pouring from the showerhead.  Instead a jet of steam began 
to fill the shower as the heat exceeded the boiling point and the water 
vaporized.  Kate couldn’t help but let out a delighted squeal, truly adoring 
her new shower.  She had expected it would allow for a nice hot bath, but 
nothing like this . The steam was so thick it actually soaked her hair 
straight through.  Kate could feel it moving over her entire body, the 
warmth and pressure creating quite a pleasant experience, at least for her.

Had she been a normal human, it would have been a most painful way to die, 
literally steamed to death.  Kate now knew why the shower walls had been so 
thick and locked into place.  Kate actually had the water up to such a 
temperature that even she began to feel the effects and had to turn it down. 
  Still, as she poured the shampoo into her hair and began to work it in she 
quickly decided she liked being steamed more than being washed by far.  She 
lamented for a moment that she couldn’t share the experience with Jack, but 
there was no way that he could survive the environment.  The extremely moist 
and hot air provided no problem for Kate’s lunges, but she doubted Jack 
would be able to breath.  Of course, his main concern would be being cooked 
alive in this oversized pressure cooker.

Kate rather liked the way the soap tended to just run off her skin.  Though 
it wasn’t nearly as quickly as when she was standing directly in a stream of 
water, the slow, steady pace felt delightful.  As Kate finished cleaning 
herself off, her desire to get out of the shower was extremely weak.  
Instead she found herself sitting down.  Leaning her back against the hot 
panel, which she realized by now wasn’t glass, the size of the shower also 
finally registered with her.  She had plenty of room to lay down if she 
wanted to.  Pressing her rear against one of the steam-gushing vents, Kate 
found her hands gently massaging her breasts.  Letting out a low moan, she 
wondered if the walls of her shower were thick enough to block out the 
sounds of her moaning.  She had already been quite aroused even before the 
delightful heat began engulfing her body and clouding her mind, and she 
wasn’t sure she cared if anyone heard her.

Squeezing the underside of her breast lightly, Kate crossed her legs for a 
moment and tightened her inner muscles as she resisted the urge to finger 
herself.  Rather she continued to caress her breast with her right hand 
while her left began to explore her body.  Her fully pumped muscles felt 
rock hard even to her, the thought of how much weight they had been 
supporting earlier further exciting her.  Placing her fingers on each of her 
abs, she recalled cuddling with Jack on previous occasions and imagined that 
his lips were kissing her abs once again.  The feeling of his lips on her 
legs returned to her as well as she continued to massage her breast.  She 
wondered if she would be willing to let Jack do that for her.  While she 
knew he wouldn’t be able to apply as much pressure to her breast as she 
could herself, she wondered what it would feel like to have his hands 
massage her flesh.

She had allowed him to explore some of her body but had kept that region 
from him so far.  Her mind turned from the kisses and wondered what his 
hands and lips would feel like on her firm breasts.  Playing with her 
nipples, Kate finally began to lose herself and uncrossed her legs.  
Inserting a finger into herself, she gasped at how sensitive her body had 
become.  She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone yet but even her sexual organs 
had grown more sensitive.  She had no doubt she would be able to enjoy the 
feeling of Jack’s hands massaging her breasts.  The thought that he could 
use his full strength and not even hurt her seemed even better then her own 
hands.  The feeling of power her ever-increasing strength gave her was the 
greatest turn on when she was with him.  He delighted in her showing off her 
power, and she loved showing it off for him.

Kate’s fingers began to massage her pussy lips more quickly as these 
thoughts ran through her head.  Her body starting to buck slightly as she 
struggled to remain still while fullfilling her needs.  The heat of the 
shower actually seemed to increase as Kate began to squirm and moan in 
pleasure.  Luckily the walls of her shower had been built to withstand great 
outward pressure, allowing them to withstand Kate’s movements as she moaned 
and heaved.  A loud cry came from her lips, almost making its way through 
the thick walls, as Kate finally found the release she had been seeking.  
Taking in a few deep breaths, Kate was only tired for a few moments.  Her 
stamina would allow for many such releases.  The thought of doing it again 
did cross her mind, but for the moment she felt the need to get out.  It was 
late and she wanted to do some cuddling with Jack.  She had told herself 
earlier that she would wait
before moving any further, but it wouldn’t hurt to go just a little further 
than they had been.

A long yawn came from Jack as he lay on the couch wondering if Kate would be 
finishing up her shower any time soon.  He normally would have gone to bed 
by now, but the prospect of cuddling with Kate had kept him awake.  He 
wasn’t sure if it would for much longer, especially since he didn’t even 
know if Kate would feel like cuddling or if she had already gone to bed.  
The sound of her bedroom door opening told him that she was at least awake.  
Looking up, he was delighted to see Kate wearing an oversized t-shirt, 
having learned that this could at times mean she wasn’t wearing any shorts.  
This of course made kissing her legs all the more pleasant, though somewhat 
torturous as he knew Kate wouldn’t allow him to pull down her lacy white 
panties.  Oh, how he had longed to be permitted to slip them down her thighs 
and give her lips a gentle kiss.  He would have been delighted to do just 
that much, but Kate had stopped him before he got that far and he had 
respected her wishes.

Not that he really had a choice in the matter.  If Kate felt like it she 
could easily snap him in half and there would be nothing he could do about 
it.  As Kate walked towards him, he noticed her demeanor seemed a bit 
different.  She walked more slowly and had a bit of a blush on her face, as 
if she had something planned.  Jack found himself getting somewhat nervous 
and blushing himself.  He had been insanely grateful to learn that Kate had 
kept her virginity for so long.  He had no idea how many suitors she had 
been forced to turn down; he could only guess.  Heck, he would have been 
delighted to simply have her wrap those remarkably powerful legs around his 
head and allow him to pleasure her.  The fact that he still got nervous 
during sexual encounters also revealed his lack of experience with such 
matters, so he didn’t feel completely alone.  Also, he couldn’t imagine Kate 
as the type to be simply swept off her feet and led to a bedroom.  No, she 
preferred to do the sweeping and leading herself.

All these thoughts were pushed aside as Kate leaned over the back of the 
couch and lifted him from it.  At least for a moment Jack thought that she 
might even take him to her room, but instead Kate climbed over the couch and 
laid down herself.  Setting Jack on top of her, she pulled his face down to 
hers and gave him a deep kiss.  Once again Jack attempted to keep Kate’s 
tongue from entering into his mouth, and once again found himself completely 
helpless against her.  As they kissed Jack’s hands once again moved to the 
areas where he knew they were allowed.  Taking hold of Kate’s arm, he felt 
the biceps that only a hour or so ago he had seen benchpressing several tons 
of pressure.  Pressure enough to crush a man, and indeed most vehicles, into 
a paste.  Despite having spent a good deal of his sexual energy in the 
shower, he found his manhood once again rising to the occasion.

Moving his hands along those inhumanly strong arms, he began to trace over 
her chest, moving them around her breast but never quite touching them.  
Until he felt Kate take hold of one of his hands.  Knowing this meant she 
was going to move it where she wanted, he made no effort to fight, and was 
delighted when he felt his hand pressed against Kate’s right breast.  Jack 
almost fainted dead away as he felt the seemingly perfect breast.  It proved 
to be even firmer than he would have guessed, but was still wonderfully 
pleasant to the touch.  Massaging her breast ever so gently, he was 
surprised again when Kate let up the kiss.  "Squeeze harder," were the only 
words Kate spoke before she once again pressed her lips to his.

As Jack began to apply more pressure to the firm breast, he wondered if the 
way it felt had been her natural texture at first.  Kate had been the most 
athletic girl he had ever known even before the change, after all.  Still, 
as he applied enough pressure to cause a normal woman nothing but pain he 
was quite sure that what he felt now was due to her increased strength.  His 
hands could only indent her breast ever so slightly no matter how much of 
his strength he used.  From the way Kate reacted, he imagined that to her 
all his strength felt like a gentle massage.  As Jack squeezed Kate’s breast 
with his right hand he found his left being guided down her body and placed 
on her rear.  Kate’s hands began to explore his body as well.  As he 
squeezed her firm rear and breast he could tell Kate was enjoying it, as 
when she would allow him up for air she would at times let out a slight moan 
before locking her lips down on his again.

Curiously, Jack began to move his hand from Kate’s rear, only to have one of 
her hands quickly take hold of it and return it to its previous place.  
While Kate had allowed him to explore more of her body, she rather enjoyed 
where his hands were at the moment and thus they were going to stay.  Kate’s 
hands were meanwhile busy exploring all of Jack.  Kate couldn’t help but 
delight in the fact that despite his physical improvements, his muscles were 
still so weak in comparison to hers and would continue seeming weaker.  
While Jack could work on remaining toned, he could never even approach her 
superhuman range.  Furthermore Kate’s strength would continue to increase at 
a remarkably rapid rate while his would take longer and longer to increase.

As Jack massaged Kate’s rear he was quite delighted by the fact that she had 
chosen to wear a thong.  Still curious, he began to pull her thong down, 
only to have her stop him.  "Not yet.  I don’t want to go that far just 
yet."  Jack gave Kate a mock sad look, though in truth he was quite 
delighted that she had decided to go as far as she had.  He had expected her 
to make him wait even longer than she had.  He wondered if Kate would allow 
his lips to go where his hands had.  He gave the top of Kate’s breast a firm 
kiss, though Kate was still wearing her shirt.  He was surprised when, as he 
kissed her breast, Kate reached down and tore a massive hole in her shirt, 
allowing him access to her breast.  Even though Kate was wearing a bra this 
gave him the chance to nuzzle his face against some of her breast flesh.

As he did this he entertained the thought that Kate could probably kill him 
with just the two globes of flesh he now buried his head in.  Licking and 
kissing her breasts, he traced his tongue along Kate’s cleavage.  His right 
hand continued to work her breast while his left squeezed her firm rear.  He 
regretted that Kate hadn’t torn away her bra along with the shirt and hoped 
that would come.  Reluctantly he worked his way away from her breasts, being 
certain to place a kiss on each one of her abs.  Running his tongue along 
her inner thigh, he looked up at Kate’s smiling face.  "Roll over, please."  
Obliging him, Kate gave a bit of a start when Jack kissed, licked and then 
bit her right butt cheek, though by her moans it was clear she was enjoying 
herself.  She even permitted Jack to cover her inner thighs with kisses 
before finally pulling him back up to her and locking their lips together 
once again.

The excitement actually proved a bit much for both of them.  Jack came the 
moment he felt Kate's shudders and realized what had happened.  Neither of 
them had the best orgasm of their lives, but both were quite content when 
they finally nodded off.  Jack contented himself with the knowledge that 
even if he hadn’t managed to go all the way with her he had probably made it 
further then anyone else.  To Kate’s surprise, Jack had actually managed to 
tire her out a bit despite her greater stamina.  The fact that he had put 
her pleasure before his own had helped to push her over the edge before him.

*****************************************************************************

Kate grinned as she walked into the police station and headed over to the 
front desk.  The receptionist, focused on going through a massive stack of 
papers, didn’t notice Kate until she gave the bell on the desk a slight tap. 
  The man looked up.  His wasn’t a face that Kate recalled.  Most likely a 
new guy.  Looking around, Kate noticed that she couldn’t see any familiar 
faces, but reasoned they must be in the back.  "Hi there, I would like a job 
application."  The man blinked for a moment, looking Kate up and down.  
Clearly he wasn’t expecting someone looking like her to be asking for an 
application.  He didn’t take too long to hand her the application though; 
once he got over his shock he seemed almost eager to give it to her.

"Thank goodness, it's been hard to get new recruits lately."  Kate gave the 
man a curious look.  Having been away for a year she hadn’t exactly been 
paying attention to the news.

"Now why is that?"

"Well you know, with the recent escapes, and not of normal criminals either. 
  A lot of good cops lost their lives and well, most people are getting a 
little scared to try this profession.  I don’t exactly know what I was 
thinking when I signed up.  I guess spending so much time chasing after a 
dream makes you a little blind to the danger."  Kate gave her head a slight 
nod, wanting to ask more to find out about some of her old colleagues, but 
not wanting to hear the news.  Instead she took a seat near the main 
entrance and began to fill out the various forms that had been given to her. 
  It only took her a little while to complete them before returning to the 
desk and handing him the papers.

"Well, don’t think I'm going to get scared off.  Would you mind handing me a 
regulations book?  I imagine I have a lot of studying to do."  The officer 
grinned and handed Kate the book, which seemed thinner than the old one she 
had to deal with.  This was a surprise, since it was her experience that 
such books got thicker and never thinner.  She didn’t bother to ask why the 
book had shrunk; with what she had been told she had a good guess.  If 
people were getting scared away from the job and the rate at which cops were 
being killed had gone up, she imagined they would take almost anyone.  The 
man looked over Kate’s paperwork for a second, making sure she had 
everything filled in.  He then took out another form and handed it to her.  
Kate only glanced over it, seeing that a doctor had to fill it out.

"Everything seems to be in order, just get that filled out by a doctor and 
bring it back to us.  We can get everything else set up after that."  Kate 
gave a nod and a wave as she headed out the door.  The entire process had 
been much quicker than before.  She wasn’t sure if it was her previous 
experience or if they had cut back on the paperwork just to get extra police 
officers.  Reaching down, Kate picked up a pebble.  After making sure no one 
was watching, she gave the rock a slight squeeze.  It shattered in her 
fingers, leaving a bit of white powder on them.  If what the officer had 
told her was true, she wondered if her new abilities would help to remedy 
the situation.  It really was hard for cops, seeing as how they were 
expected to deal with normal crooks and superpowered maniacs all on the same 
budget and with the same equipment.

The problem was, they couldn’t use the equipment they needed to take down 
anything with any real power.  Normal criminals would sue the crap out of 
them the moment they were hit by anything more potent than the standard 
issue weapons or pepper spray; even then they tried to sue at times.  Kate 
chuckled a bit at the thought of equipment and wondered how they would like 
it if the equipment she used was only her own two hands.  Kate had 
strengthened a decent amount since they had arrived back in the city.  Jack 
had managed to convince her to wait an extra month before returning to the 
police force.  He had said it was to make sure the change in environment 
wouldn’t have any negative effects on her abilities.  However, she felt 
certain that he was just worried about her safety and wanted her to put on a 
little extra muscle, so to speak.

Kate hadn’t minded the extra time.  After all, it had given her more time to 
build up her strength, and she did need to get back into city life.  One 
thing she did enjoy about her extra strength was her ability to push through 
the thickest crowds like they weren’t even there.  Of course, she had to 
move at a reasonable speed to avoid knocking people over, and she liked to 
make sure Jack stayed close to her.  He wasn’t a kid, but if she had to wait 
for him to push through a large group of people she felt like she would lose 
her mind.  As she looked around, she was glad she had chosen this hour to 
leave.  Normally this part of town would have been quite a bit more crowded. 
  Looking at the paper for a moment, Kate recalled the last time she had had 
to get such a form filled out.

She resolved that she would go there and get her physical, though she would 
again have to turn down any blood work.  She was immediately glad for the 
regulation changes; she had been worried that they would get stricter in the 
time that she was away.  At least now she felt confident that she could go 
without having any blood work done and have a standard drug test.  She 
considered whether she wanted to take a bus or call for a taxi, but soon 
resolved that walking would be more fun.  After all, she didn’t have to be 
anywhere at the moment and her legs sure weren’t going to tire out moving at 
such a slow pace.  Of course, had she been able to run at full speed she 
would have made it to the doctor’s far faster than any taxi could have taken 
her.

******************************************************************************

Sitting in the hospital's waiting area, Kate wondered why she hadn’t 
bothered to call ahead and set up am appointment the previous day.  She had 
known she would need a physical and could have picked out a hospital to go 
to then.  It had been an oversight on her part, but she wasn’t too worried.  
The place seemed as if it wasn’t busy, so she doubted she would have to wait 
very long.  She was a bit surprised though when her name was called only 
twenty minutes after she had finished filling out the form.  Following the 
nurse towards the rear of the hospital, Kate looked around the room she was 
placed in, instantly grateful that she wasn’t there for the same reason as a 
year and a month ago.

Kate began to look around the area, reading the various panels on the wall.  
Her heart nearly skipped a beat when her eyes caught sight of a heart 
diagram and she recalled what Jack had told her previously.  The beat of her 
heart had become stronger and quicker than that of a normal human.  Even 
though she wasn’t sure just how far it had gone, she suddenly had to worry 
that her heart rate was so abnormal that the doctor wouldn’t give her a 
clean bill of health.  Biting her lower lip, she considered leaving right 
then and there, especially since her fear was causing her heart rate to 
speed up even more.  She never got the chance though, as the door was opened 
and the doctor entered the room, nearly jumping out of his skin as he 
matched the name to the face.

Kate had been a fairly high priority case, though there hadn’t been anything 
they could really do for her.  Her father had paid for her to have extremely 
good care, though in her case that had simply meant extremely powerful drugs 
to keep the pain away as much as possible.  Now he found himself looking at 
the young woman who just over a year had walked out of his office after an 
illness that should have proved fatal.  "Ah, good to see you again Doctor.  
So, surprised to see your little cancer patient back again?"  The doctor 
gave a slight nod, not quite thinking about what he was doing.  Kate’s words 
confirmed that this indeed was the same woman.

"Oops, I mean no, I mean, it is very good to see you again Ms. Stonecutter." 
  Kate giggled.

"It's good to see you too, Doctor.  I imagine you have been busy with the 
recent breakouts."  The doctor assumed a somewhat saddened expression.  Kate 
realized that he might have gotten his fair share of those that had been 
injured in the escapes and crimes.

"Yes, we lost a fair amount of people.  The police force suffered heavily as 
well.  Even the Justice League can’t be everywhere at once."  Kate instantly 
wondered just how many villains had escaped.  Once again she held back her 
desire to ask, though she resolved she would be checking old newspapers 
later on to see just what had happened.  "Ah, well enough of this depressing 
stuff.  I see you're here for a physical, so let's begin."  Kate shuddered 
as the first thing the doctor did was place his stethoscope in his ears, 
almost as if he had been reading Kate’s fears.  As he walked over to her, 
she tried to decide what to do.  Deciding she needed a little more time to 
think, everything around her seemed to slow down as Kate induced her senses 
to begin reacting at their accelerated rate.  The doctor’s movements slowed 
to a snail’s pace as Kate’s reaction time jumped to a good 15 times its 
normal rate.

Considering her options, at least in her current state she felt she could 
think for a minute.  To her it was going to take the doctor about that long 
in order to cross the room.  Realizing that in her panicked state her heart 
would be going even wilder, Kate soon found herself focusing on calming 
herself down while keeping her senses fully active.  Choosing not to look at 
the doctor, she eventually felt the cold metal press against her skin.  She 
struggled to stay relaxed and keep her heart's beating under control.  As 
the doctor listened, he moved the stethoscope just over her heart, around 
it, and finally on her back.  He did notice her heart had an odd beat, but 
couldn’t find anything overly strange.

Kate wished she could have relaxed as much as she did when the doctor pulled 
away and didn’t say anything.  Realizing that she would need to stay relaxed 
throughout the procedure, she was at least glad he was getting most of the 
work over with as quickly as possible, including checking her blood 
pressure.  Once again she had to remain as calm as possible during the 
activity to keep her heart rate down.  Her toughened skin and muscles 
provided a problem; it seemed as if they didn’t want to yield to the device. 
  In fact, the pressure on her arm felt completely insignificant and didn’t 
bother her in the least.

Once again the doctor seemed to feel this was strange but didn’t say 
anything.  In due time the exam was finished.  Kate declined to have herself 
checked for breast cancer.  She didn’t want them to end up breaking the 
machine trying to compress her tits.  "Well, there doesn’t seem to be 
anything wrong with you exactly.  Your heart is beating a little fast and we 
really couldn’t check your blood pressure; strange, but I don’t think it is 
a danger to your health.  Your blood is clearly flowing well.  The only 
thing we need to do now is a drug test."  She chuckled as she took the cup 
and was directed to the restroom.

Kate sighed as she left the hospital, wondering just what she should do at 
the moment.  She could return home.  However, Jack had managed to transform 
himself ever so slightly upon returning to the city.

With her going back to work, it seemed that he shifted into work mode as 
well.  She figured this was to combat boredom since very soon he wouldn’t be 
spending as much time with her as usual.  He still gave her plenty of 
attention, of course, but it meant he expected her to give him at least four 
or five hours every day working in the lab.  Four to five solid hours 
studying her DNA and looking for any negative side effects.  He was 
extremely careful now, since they were back in the city and he had to catch 
any negative changes before they happened.  She did like the fact that he 
showed this much concern for her well being, though she didn’t like the fact 
that he would lock his door.  At first she had wondered if he was doing 
something else, but the only thing she ever heard was the sound of the 
machines, Jack’s mumbling various details, and the scratching of his pencils 
and pens as he took down various notes.

She knew that he would still be at work for another two hours at least, 
meaning she didn’t really have a reason to go home.  With her visit to the 
police station and doctor taken care of as well, she now found herself 
having to think of something to do.  There wasn’t anything she could do to 
speed up the process; she would have to wait for the doctor to send the 
police her medical reports and that wouldn’t come until they were done 
testing.  At last Kate resolved to go and get something to snack on.  
Checking her purse, she fidgeted around for a moment only to find she had 
forgotten to grab any cash when she left the apartment.  "Well, crap."

At least she was able to find her bank card, which meant she would need to 
find an ATM.  She scanned the area.  Figuring that she might come across one 
before she made it to any diners, she once again slipped the card into her 
purse and began to walk.  It didn’t take her long to find what she was 
looking for.  Presented with a choice between two ATM's, she instantly went 
with the more secluded machine.  She wandered over to the comparatively 
quiet spot, at least quieter than the city sidewalks, and brought out her 
card once again.

Kate had been used to the crowded city, at least before her little vacation. 
  Now a year later, she was having trouble getting use to the sheer number 
of people that crowded the streets.  She hoped that it wouldn't be another 
year before she got used to the crowds again.  She was so wrapped up in her 
thoughts that she didn’t notice the figure approaching her, until she felt 
something press into her back.  "Alright lady, don’t turn around and don’t 
make a sound.  Just go ahead and withdraw your money, then hand it over."  
Kate gave a long, drawn out sigh and defied the man by glancing over her 
shoulder at him.

"I swear, if you make a hole in my new sweater I'm going to break your 
fucking trigger finger.  Now get that damn thing out of my back."  The man 
was quite surprised at this protest.  Didn’t this woman know her life was in 
danger?  Angered by her words, he proceeded to shove the weapon more firmly 
in her back, only to be surprised when her skin wouldn’t yield anymore and 
the woman showed no sign of pain.

"Hm, touch bitch are you?  Well I don’t care if you think you are.  This 
bullet will go through you just as good as anyone else.  Now do as I say and 
give me the money."  Kate grinned, knowing full well that the gun would do 
little more than damage her shirt, but in truth she did like the shirt.  
Which meant she didn’t much care to have a gun pressed into it.

"Screw you."  The man had had enough by now; he wasn’t going to take this 
from anyone.  Pulling the trigger of the weapon, he was surprised when he 
didn’t hear the sound of a bullet being fired or even a click.  Looking 
down, he saw the problem.  Kate had spun around quickly enough to get her 
finger between the hammer and the bullet of the gun.  With her thumb 
blocking the hammer the weapon had been unable to fire.  Wrapping her other 
fingers around the weapon, she proceeded to wrench it from the man’s grasp 
and then give him a solid smack across the face, knocking him flat on his 
tail.

"What the fuck."  His first shock had been that Kate had blocked the hammer 
of the gun.  The fact that she had shown no pain was even more surprising.  
Then she had struck him across the face after taking the gun from him; the 
blow had felt like she had hit him with a piece of steel.  Looking up from 
his dazed position, he was finally able to take Kate in and noticed how well 
defined her arms and legs were.  The way she removed her finger from the 
handgun and slowly let the hammer down so it wouldn’t fire was another 
surprise.  His first thought was that he had run into some kind of special 
forces soldier or martial arts expert.  He imagined she had just hit him 
with his own weapon, not realizing that it had actually been the back of her 
hand.  He would have been even more worried had he known that Kate had been 
pulling her punch.

"Well now, what I am I going to do with you?  I suppose even though I'm not 
a cop I could put you under civilian arrest and give them a phone call.  I 
don’t know what good that would do, since you could just lie.  Or I could 
just break off your trigger fingers.  I doubt you would be as much of a 
threat without those."  Kate sighed and gave a glance over her shoulder.  
She was disappointed in the people walking the street, but she could 
understand what was going on.  In a crowded city once tends to become blind 
to certain things.  People become little more than trees.  It wasn’t that 
they didn’t care, but it was the only way to really get around in a sea of 
people.  You couldn't very well go around asking everyone how they were 
doing, after all.  The man, for his part, had had enough of Kate already.

He knew that he wasn’t a match for her, even without knowing about her true 
abilities.  She had managed to take his gun away from him even when he had 
it pointed straight at her back, and she had backhanded him and sent him on 
his tail.  He was quite sure he didn’t have a chance against her in unarmed 
combat, and now she had his gun in her hand.  When she mentioned what she 
intended to do, he took the only option he could think of and hopped up, 
taking off in a dead run away from her.  Kate grinned.  "Stupid."  Kate was 
surprised the man had been dumb enough to run further away from the crowd.  
It meant that it would be even easier for her to get him alone.

Waiting a few moments, Kate took off after him, easily closing the gap and 
getting in front of him.  Holding up her hand, she allowed him to slam his 
face into her palm, once again sending him on his tail.  "Now that wasn’t 
very nice of you, running away like that.  You just sit right there while I 
call the police.  Don’t move and don’t say a word."  Realizing that she 
would need the gun intact to hand over to the police, Kate dropped the 
weapon into her purse and took out her cell phone.  To the crook's credit, 
he didn’t say anything as Kate dialed the police and reported what had 
happened, leaving out a few details.  Of course, one of the reasons for his 
silence was the fact that he had just ran face first into Kate’s hand.  As 
soft as it was during a handshake, it had felt like running into a cinder 
block to the man.  "Well, good news, the police said they would be right 
here."

Withdrawing the weapon from her purse, Kate held it on the man as if she 
really needed it, waiting for the police to arrive.  One good thing about 
the situation was she was in one of the better parts of town, meaning it 
didn’t take the cops long to arrive.  The man hadn’t moved the entire time, 
having actually been knocked unconscious by the impact.  The cops naturally 
started by telling Kate to put down the weapon.  Quickly complying, Kate 
turned to see the two officers and almost forgot herself.  "Eddie!  How are 
you doing?"

Eddie seemed a bit shocked.  He and Kate had been in the police force 
together before she had left; she had a month's seniority on him.  They had 
gotten along well enough and he had enjoyed spending some time working out 
with her, though there had been no physical attraction.  Eddie tended to 
favor less athletic women than Kate, and had actually found her strength a 
bit intimidating despite being almost as strong.  Had he know what she was 
capable of now he might have jumped out of his skin.  Kate was glad to see 
someone that knew her; she wasn’t sure if another cop would have believed 
her.  Stepping away from the weapon she had laid down, she saw that Eddie 
was clearly relaxed and thus his partner seemed relaxed as well.

"I didn’t expect it to be you.  Um, this is the mugger right?"

"Well he attempted to mug me, though I don’t know if you could call him a 
mugger since he didn’t succeed."  Eddie grinned and approach the weapon Kate 
had just put down.  Carefully picking it up, he placed it within a plastic 
bag.  "So, are you going to need anything from me?"

"Oh yeah, we will need a statement of exactly what happened and we might 
have to call you in for questioning.  I mean, to be honest, if I didn’t 
already know you I would have wondered if you had actually been the mugger." 
  Kate chuckled for a moment, again thankful that it was a police officer 
she knew.  "Would you mind telling me exactly what happened for the record?" 
  Kate gave a slight nod and began to explain the story to Eddie, though she 
didn’t go into as much detail as she normally would have.  When she 
explained that she was able to block the hammer of the weapon, Eddie was a 
little shocked, but he did know Kate could handle herself.

"Well, that is something.  Um, would you mind showing me exactly how you did 
it?"  Eddie trusted Kate, but he couldn’t help wondering if she could really 
be that fast.  Grinning, Kate turned around and held her hands to her sides.

"Sure thing, put your gun to my back."

"I think I'll use my nightstick instead, I don’t want to end up turning this 
into a case of attempted manslaughter."  Kate gave a nod and gave Eddie a 
moment to place the weapon against her back.

"Alright, I'm going to disarm you now."  Eddie didn’t even have time to 
think or respond before his arm was pulled to the side.  Though Kate didn’t 
remove the weapon the same way she had done from the mugger, she clearly 
showed that she could indeed remove a weapon from her back.  Eddie was 
shocked at what had just happened; Kate had simply moved so quickly he 
hadn’t had time to think about it.  She had even told him what she was going 
to do and yet his fingers weren't even able to react.  As his shock wore 
off, he tried to remove his nightstick from Kate’s hand.  Kate continued to 
grin at him, showing no signs of effort as she easily held his weapon.  At 
last Kate released the weapon after she was sure he knew that without her 
consent he couldn’t have freed it from her grasp.  "So do you believe me 
now?"

"Yeah, I think that will do as proof.  At least it's proof enough for me.  
Um, we'll contact you and let you know how things go if you would just give 
me your number."  Nodding, Kate took the pad and pen from Eddie and wrote 
down the information before handing it back to him.  The mugger began to 
stir, already handcuffed by Eddie’s partner.

"Hey Kate I was just thinking, would you maybe be coming back to the 
police?"  Kate grinned and gave a nod.

"I was down there today filling out papers, and I just got back from the 
doctor.  I was getting some money to pick up dinner when this ass came up 
behind me."  Eddie seemed delighted by the news; even if he and Kate hadn’t 
had a sexual relationship they had still been friends.  He had been pretty 
sad when he found out she had cancer, and still sad, though not as much, 
when after her recovery Kate had chosen to leave the police.

"Well alright then, maybe we won’t have to contact you, depending on how 
long this takes.  I guess we should be on our way; we need to get this 
fellow back to the station and find out who he is and if he has any 
outstanding warrants.  Did you check him for weapons after you knocked him 
out?"

"Of course not.  I'm not a police officer, at least not yet."  Eddie 
chuckled and proceeded to give the man a quick search, not realizing that 
his partner had already done it.  Kate waited for the two officers to take 
the man away before she returned to the ATM.  As she started to withdraw 
some money she caught sight of a clock on the machine.  Realizing the entire 
event had taken longer than she thought, she put her card away and began to 
head home.  Stopping herself before she reached the street, she leaned 
against the wall for a moment and removed her shoes.  She took off down the 
alleyways, relying on her senses to avoid people as she took a longer route 
home.  The speed she was moving at easily made up for this.  She didn’t even 
have to slow down as she easily hopped over a few people.

She was sure she startled a few of them, but by the time they turned to 
notice she had already left them far behind.  Kate knew she couldn’t do this 
on a regular basis or people would begin to notice, but she didn’t imagine 
there would be any harm in doing it just this once.  After today she would, 
of course, have to start using a vehicle to get around, but in all truth she 
had developed something of a dislike for driving.  Her legs could carry her 
so much faster than most vehicles, and even when she didn’t run she still 
enjoyed walking now.

******************************************************************************

The phone got Jack’s attention as he stood over the stove cooking lunch.  
Today he was making stir fry chicken, not exactly his favorite food but Kate 
seemed to enjoy it.  Setting the pan down for a moment, he retrieved the 
wireless phone.  "Hello, is Ms. Stonecutter there?"  Jack gave a bit of a 
grimace.

"Is this a telemarketer because if it is..."

"Oh no sir, this is the Metropolis police, we're calling to see if Kate can 
come in for an interview."  Jack instantly felt like a jerk, but he did 
truly hate telemarketers.

"Oops, alright.  She's kind of in the shower right now, can I take a 
message?"

"Sure.  If you don’t mind, would you ask her to be at the police station at 
1:00.  We need to talk to her about her application."  Jack proceeded to 
scribble down the information, including the address, though he realized 
Kate probably already knew where to go.

"Alright, thanks.  I'll be sure to tell her.  Good bye."  Jack grinned for a 
moment before he noticed the scent of slightly scorched vegetables.  Quickly 
bashing back into the kitchen he proceeded to turn off the burner and 
removed the pan.  He was glad to find that only the bottom ingredients had 
been slightly burned.  Having prepared enough to feed five normal people, he 
gave Kate roughly 4/5ths of what he had prepared.  Even though she had told 
him that she didn’t feel hungry if she just ate a normal amount, he saw no 
reason for her not to eat more if her body desired and could process it.  
After all, from the energy she was putting out, he was surprised she wasn’t 
starving all the time.  He at times wondered just where that energy was 
coming from, but her cells had changed so much it was hard to tell anymore.  
He wouldn’t even have been able to recognize the nucleus or mitochondria if 
he hadn’t been paying extremely close attention since the changes had begun, 
a task that was getting harder to do since Kate’s body seemed to be 
accelerating its changes and getting even harder to pierce.  He couldn’t 
really get to her veins anymore and had to settle for giving her a light 
prick and getting what he could.

The so-called needles they were now using weren’t really needles but were 
intended to make holes in certain sheet metals.  Jack couldn’t even get 
blood with these needles but instead had to have Kate prick herself.  His 
human strength was simply not enough to get through Kate’s skin.  But even 
with Kate doing the work, these needles wouldn’t be effective for very long. 
  It was getting to the point that he had considered using a cutting machine 
of some sort.  He knew Kate wouldn’t like the idea and he didn’t like it all 
that much either, but he was beginning to run out of options.

He pushed these thoughts away when he felt the temperature in the entire 
house heat up and the air conditioning switch on.  Kate’s showers had 
reached the point that even when she shut her door the temperature and 
humidity in the apartment would skyrocket the moment she got out of the 
shower, at times jumping 10 degrees in every room.  Luckily Nathan had had 
an extremely effective air conditioner installed which quickly lowered 
things back to more regular levels.  Taking a quick taste of his cooking, 
Jack quickly added a healthy bit of salt to both plates before calling out, 
"Hey Kate, you got a call from the police station.  They want you down there 
at one.  That gives you about two hours so why don’t you get dressed and 
hurry in here to eat?"

"Sure thing, but what is that burnt smell?"  Jack blinked for a moment.  
Kate was a good few rooms away and the air was currently soaked with 
humidity.  Plus, with the vents going full blast, he hadn’t even been able 
to smell the burnt scent.  It hadn’t been all that bad from the start.

"I accidently burnt some of the stir fry, but I'm pretty happy that I did.  
We haven’t bothered to test all your senses, have we?"

"Nope, can’t say that we have."

"Thought so.  Well, later on I think we need to see just how acute your 
senses currently are."  Kate came into the kitchen a moment later wearing a 
pair of blue jeans and a rather nice sweater.  Jack looked her over for a 
moment, having expected her to be wearing a business suit, but shook it off, 
feeling rather silly.  It wasn’t like she was interviewing for a desk job.  
She would probably need some freedom of movement in what she would be doing 
today.  Kate didn’t have any trouble guessing which plate was meant for her 
as she took her seat.  Taking his across from her, Jack looked on nervously 
as Kate took the first bite, then proceeded to eat at a nice even pace.  
"Thank heavens, I was worried you wouldn’t like it."  Kate chuckled a bit 
and continued to eat, Jack following suit and trying not to watch as Kate 
ate.

Kate had developed the habit of doing some things at extreme speeds over the 
past month, and these included eating.  Jack knew that to Kate her rate of 
eating seemed no faster than normal, but to him, well, it was surprising 
that her spoon and fork remained in one piece.  In truth, she had to be 
careful when eating so that she didn’t bite the top of her spoon or fork 
off, an event which had happened a few times.  It was rather amusing as far 
as Jack was concerned, but Kate had felt embarrassed about not paying better 
attention to what she was doing.  "Hey Jack, I hope you don’t mind if I take 
the humvee."

"Now why would I mind that?  Not like I plan on going anywhere, or need to 
for that matter."

"I know, but some people just like having a vehicle around."  Jack chuckled 
for a moment.

"Well, not me.  If I don’t have a vehicle I have a great excuse if someone 
calls asking for a favor."  Kate giggled for a moment, though she decided 
she would have to get them a second vehicle.  Normally this would have meant 
another humvee or a truck, but since gaining her powers her preferences had 
started changing.  At first she hadn’t liked the idea of a motorcycle, since 
she didn’t like the odds of survival in a crash, but since she had begun 
running at speeds greater than most street bikes could reach she'd changed 
her mind.

She resolved that she would have to ask her father about getting her a 
street bike.  She normally would have saved up for it, but she hated taking 
out loans.  And besides, it was probably within the budget he had allotted 
them.  A part of her did feel guilty though; she didn’t like taking 
advantage of him, but she didn’t exactly want to get into the line of work 
that he would have preferred for her.  She began to wonder if she could 
eventually use her strength to make some money.  As she pondered this, she 
tasted and felt a piece of metal in her mouth and heard Jack’s light 
snickering.  Opening up her mouth, Kate pulled out the top of the fork, 
stuck her tongue out at Jack, and went to fetch another.

******************************************************************************

Kate was grateful that her hyperactive senses allowed her to think longer 
than normal.  She had been brought in earlier than she'd expected to take 
the written exam.  Luckily she had studied the regulation book over the past 
three days.  Waking up several hours before Jack, and with him now spending 
at least five hours a day in his lab, she had plenty of time to wonder what 
to do with herself.  Add to that her increased rate of thinking and the days 
could seem very long indeed.  Her increased rate of action had proven useful 
though as it had allowed her to read the book in an hour.  She had been 
disappointed when the book proved even more boring the second time than the 
first.

Now she sat taking her written exam, being careful to watch her rate of 
movement.  While she didn’t have to worry about anyone noticing how fast she 
was thinking, they would however notice if her hand was nothing but a blur.  
Also she doubted that the paper would hold up very well if she wrote as 
quickly as she could have.  The number of people taking the written exam was 
another surprise to Kate.  She recalled when the room would have been fairly 
full; now there wasn’t anyone sitting side by side.  She found it somewhat 
hard to believe that things had gotten this bad in the year that she'd been 
gone; after all, the city looked okay.  Then again, it had been known to 
hide its dirty little secrets fairly well.  She imagined the construction 
crews had gotten rather adept at quick repairs over the years.

She could tell by looking around that a few people had only skimmed the 
book, while others were either very confident guessers or knew what they 
where doing.  Of course she finished well ahead of anyone.  The tester had 
been surprised to see Kate filling in a question every four seconds, not 
knowing that to Kate it was more like a minute.  She wished that her 
hyperactive state would also allow her to recall the information more 
easily, but found that while it increased her senses and rate of thinking it 
did not improve her memory recollection.

She walked to the front of the room, grinning at the thought that it had 
taken her more time to fill in the bubbles at human speeds than it had to 
think about each question.  The instructor seemed skeptical as he took the 
papers from her, but after glancing at the first ten questions his 
expression changed.  "Well Ms. Stonecutter, we should be able to get your 
test results back to you shortly."  Kate gave a nod.  Looking at the number 
of people within the room, she couldn’t help but think it would be quick 
indeed.  She hadn’t bothered asking Eddie if any of their old friends had 
died; she'd been too scared.  At least she still knew one person in the 
police station.  But as she walked out the door she nearly choked at the 
thought that, thanks to her year's vacation, Eddie and most of her old 
friends would now have seniority on her.

******************************************************************************

Eddie could almost feel Kate’s eyes on him as he drove the squad car.  Kate 
had been very excited to be back in the police force, and even happier upon 
learning that she would be working with a friend.  She was also glad to find 
out that they would be working the late shift, hoping for some fun.  The 
problem was that Kate wanted to drive but since Eddie held seniority over 
her she couldn’t very well make him let her.  Technically, she could force 
him to do anything she wanted, but that wouldn’t have turned out well in the 
long run.  Eddie wasn’t denying Kate the ability to drive out of meanness, 
though he did get a kick out of it.

He simply held the same desire to drive that Kate did, and was lucky enough 
to be able to pull rank on her.  He only wished that she would quit glaring 
at him whenever his head was turned.  The thought of telling her to quit it 
had crossed his mind, but he never managed to actually catch her looking at 
him.  She was simply too quick.  Of course, Kate spent her time glaring at 
him every moment that she could, knowing full well that it frustrated him.  
Her little game was interrupted as the radio came on and Eddie picked it up. 
  The report that came over the line nearly made Kate clap her hands in joy. 
  A robbery was in progress.

Eddie immediately turned on the sirens and began to accelerate.  Driving as 
fast as he safely could, even with the sirens on, their speed still seemed 
painfully slow to Kate.  Considering that they weren’t even going half as 
fast as she could run, Kate lamented that she still had to conceal her 
powers.  The thought of hopping out of the vehicle and going into a dead run 
did come to mind, but that was out of the question.  She suppressed her 
desire to make it to the crime scene before the crooks escaped.  Soon 
enough, they pulled up to the convenience store, turning off the sirens a 
little ways before their arrival.  Looking in through the windows, Kate’s 
sharper eyesight allowed her to make out at least one man keeping the 
customers under control.  They didn’t know if he had partners.  An employee 
had managed to hit the silent alarm.

Eddie was a bit surprised at Kate when she was hopped out of the vehicle.  
Kate had, of course, waited for it to slow.  She had made a mistake though; 
she had no problem running ahead of the vehicle, not realizing it was still 
going some 25mph.  Furthermore, Kate hadn’t bothered explaining what she was 
going to do.  As she stalked towards the building she considered her 
options.  She could take out the man with a shot from her sidearm no 
problem, and just write it off as a lucky shot.  The problem with that was 
that if he had partners someone may very well get hurt.  She stopped a short 
distance from the door, having moved quickly enough to keep herself out of 
sight.  She gave a bit of a start when a huffing and puffing form showed up 
beside her.  Looking over at Eddie, she was shocked to see how winded he was 
already, at least until she saw how far the car was away and realized how 
fast she must have run.

"Dang, you're out of shape."  Kate joked under her breath, which only got a 
bit of a grin from Eddie.  He had been shocked to see her hop out of the 
vehicle and then outrun it, but perhaps the speed reading had been wrong or 
he hadn’t been looking at it right.  He was pretty nervous, after all; an 
armed robbery was never a good thing.  "There's one up front but I don’t 
know about the back.  How about you go around front while I go around the 
back?"  Eddie looked at Kate and gave a nod.  Kate was careful to move 
quickly as she dashed behind the building, but not so fast that Eddie would 
notice anything strange.

Rounding the back of the building, Kate found a back door.  To her 
disappointment, it had not been broken into but remained shut.  Grinning and 
deciding that the crooks would most likely take the blame, Kate gave it a 
slight twist, easily breaking the lock.  But she suddenly regretted her lack 
of foresight as she heard people moving in her direction.  Unable to back 
out now, Kate proceeded on into the back of the store and was greeted by a 
shotgun pointing right at her chest.  She didn’t even bother to wait for the 
man to speak before closing the gap between them, taking hold of the barrel 
and crushing it between her fingers.  The man's mouth dropped opened.

His entire face became a mask of pain as Kate drove the butt of his own gun 
into his stomach, the force of the impact sending him sprawling on his back. 
  Between the pain and the lack of air in his lungs, he soon passed out.  
Kate was fairly pleased with herself, having taken the man out without 
making too much noise.  Working her way further through the back of the 
store, she now paid more attention to her hearing and was rewarded.  The 
sound of a drill got her attention, leading her to an office.  Looking in, 
she saw a small safe in the bac.  While she doubted it would make anyone 
wealthy, she imagined the crook that was currently working on it felt it 
held something of value.

Kate was tempted to have some fun with him but pushed such thoughts aside.  
There were people whose lives were currently in danger.  She couldn’t afford 
to have fun at their risk, so she did the simple thing.  Without worrying 
about being stealthy Kate ran up to the man, moving too quickly for him to 
even turn completely around before the back of her right hand slammed into 
his face.  Instantly Kate regretted that she hadn’t pulled her slap more as 
she felt the man’s cheek bones shatter against her hand.  As his body 
slammed into the wall, she knew his accomplice out front had heard the 
impact.  There was no way he couldn’t have.

Eddie heard the sound as well.  Unsure of what had happened, the man 
shuffled around a bit before calling out.  "Hey, you guys okay?  Something 
going on back there?"  When there was no response, the man clearly seemed 
agitated and unsure of what to do.  He didn’t want to leave the people out 
front, not realizing that one of them had already signaled the police.  That 
said, he didn’t know what was going on in the back room.  Eddie, for his 
part, was suffering a similar dilemma; he was tempted to go into the store 
and try to subdue the man while he was distracted.  Luckily for Eddie he 
never had to make the decision as Kate took care of the problem.  She tore 
the office door off its hinges and dashed out of the room.  While to her it 
was a normal run, she knew that anyone else would have trouble seeing her.  
She couldn’t go the speed of sound yet, but a human sized target moving at 
320 miles per hour was rather hard to spot.

She had to be careful choosing which aisles to run through, knowing that if 
she accidently touched a person moving at her current speed she could 
seriously injure or kill them.  The store had few customers though, and the 
crooks had done a good job of herding them all to the front.  Of course they 
hadn’t meant for this to work to her advantage, but it did.  Eddie was about 
to move into the store at the sound of the second impact when he noticed 
Kate was suddenly besides the armed man, her hand grasping his weapon.  
Eddie couldn’t believe it; he had no idea where she had come from and by the 
look on the man’s face, neither did he.

As soon as the man’s shock wore off, he reacted to Kate's presence, 
attempting to pull his weapon from her grasp.  Kate only grinned at his 
struggles, confident that she had the rest of his little group knocked out 
cold, though she worried that she had killed one of them.  Despite being 
unsure of what was going on, Eddie quickly rushed into the store with his 
weapon drawn.  "Freeze," was the only thing he could think of saying.  The 
man, noticing that there were now two cops in the store, quit struggling and 
held his hands up.  Eddie didn’t bother telling the man to get on the 
ground.  The guy seemed stunned enough as it was and simply laid down after 
having a weapon pointed at him.  As Eddie cuffed the man he looked up at 
Kate.  "What was that sound in the back?"

"I hit one of them a little harder than I meant to.  The door was broken 
open when I got there, so I snuck in.  I managed to catch one of them off 
guard and knock him out without making too much noise, but the third one 
spotted me."  Jack nodded, imagining that Kate had let him have it pretty 
hard with what ever she had handy.

"Alright, but dang, I didn’t even see you sneak up on this guy.  What were 
you doing while you were away, studying to be the next batgirl?"  Kate 
giggled for a moment, wondering if Eddie had any idea of just how close he 
had been.  Though she hadn’t been researching heroism, she had indeed been 
developing some wonderful abilities.

"I did go through some special training."

"Going to have to get me some of that."  Eddie looked around for a moment, 
noticing the people on the ground.  "Oh shit.  Okay people, you can stand up 
now."

"Eddie, I'm going to go on back to the car and call dispatch, let them know 
everything is alright.  Also I need to check the two I left in the back and 
see if we're going to need an ambulance."  Eddie gave a nod and watched Kate 
trot off, a thought coming to mind.  Kate had said she made the sound when 
she knocked one of the men out.  Curiously he wondered what had made the 
second one he'd heard.  Kate didn’t have to spend long in the office; as she 
checked on the man she found her fears confirmed.  She had put too much 
force into her slap and ended up breaking the fellow's neck.  The word break 
didn’t really cover it.  She had almost torn his head clean off his body.

"Got to be more careful about that."  Kate didn’t really feel guilty; they 
had been crooks after all, and armed to boot.  Actually, Kate would have 
felt pretty bad had they not been armed.  While she had little moral issues 
with killing an armed suspect, the idea of killing an unarmed one was a 
concept she truly found unpleasant.  The second man seemed alright when Kate 
checked on him, though she still resolved to call a ambulance.  If anything 
maybe one of the customers would need some medical attention.  Placing some 
cuffs on the man and checking him for weapons, Kate took the time to lift 
his shirt and look at the rather nasty bruise she had given him.  "Oh, I 
hope there isn’t any internal bleeding."

*****************************************************************************

Eddie couldn’t help but feel a little strange as he looked over at Kate.  
She hadn’t told him what the second impact he heard was and had claimed no 
knowledge of the door.  Actually, there were several things that Kate didn’t 
really explain, such as how she hit a guy hard enough to collapse his skull, 
or more to the point, what she'd hit him with.  Then there was the fact that 
the other man had been diagnosed with internal bleeding when the ambulance 
arrived.  Still, since none of the civilians had been injured the chief had 
seen no reason to press the issue.  He didn’t really care that Kate had 
somehow managed to kill one crook and injure another.  So long as she didn’t 
do it out of context, it was easy enough to put a pretty face on the case.  
A pretty face that the police truly needed, with Kate and Eddie having taken 
down 3 armed crooks without a single innocent getting harmed.

Of course, Eddie was curious about just how she had done it, but he also 
decided not to press the issue.  Thanks to Kate the department was getting 
some fairly good press, and she had given him a good deal of the credit.  So 
who was he to rock the boat?  Nope, as long as the boat was sailing so 
smoothly he would refrain.  If Kate didn’t want to tell him about something, 
he could handle that.  Kate, for her part, had put in an order for a 
punching bag and a few other items since the accident.  She didn’t really 
feel too bad, but she now worried that in a rushed state she might kill 
someone she didn’t want to kill.  There was a big difference between killing 
an armed robber and a petty thief who was just running away.

Kate had been using standard punching bags at times, having Jack hold them 
while she would practice striking them.  It wasn’t really a good work out, 
considering that her fist could have easily torn the bags apart, but it 
forced her to control her actions.  She was finally getting the hang of 
pulling her punches after tearing five of them apart.  At least now she was 
fairly confident that she could knock someone out without killing them.

"Hey Kate, I've been meaning to ask you, why do you keep your eyes closed 
while I'm driving?  Am I that bad of a driver?"  Kate grinned and turned her 
head in Eddie’s direction, but didn’t open her eyes.

"It's simple, silly.  With my eyes closed I can’t see just how slow you're 
going."  Eddie blinked.  Having ridden with Kate before, he knew she never 
exceeded the speed limit, at least back then.  He on the other hand tended 
to go five or ten miles over the speed limit.  And now she was calling him 
slow?

"Ha ha, well I never expected to hear that coming from you.  Whatever 
special lessons you received must have had a real effect on you.  Hey, do 
you think you could teach me some things?"  Kate’s first thought was to try 
and explain why she couldn’t teach him, to make up some little fib.  Luckily 
a better idea came to her.

"Well, I'm not really qualified to teach you, but to be honest a good deal 
of the training is just sparring.  If you want I would be happy to spend 
some time sparring with you."  Eddie considered this for a moment.  He could 
understand where Kate was coming from; after all, sparring was probably one 
of the best ways to learn, especially if you have someone to spar with 
regularly.

"Alright, I'll take you up on that offer if we ever get the time."  Kate 
gave a slight nod, knowing she could never truly teach someone how she had 
taken down those crooks.  Still, sparring would be good for Eddie and it 
would help her learn to control herself better.  She would just have to be 
careful not to seriously injure him.  But it would have to wait until their 
job assignments had changed.  They couldn’t very well spar with one another 
while they were out driving around.  Leaning back into her seat, Kate sighed 
a bit.  The night had proven to be an extremely quiet one.  Of course Kate 
knew that ultimately that was a good thing; after all, she didn’t exactly 
want crimes to happen.  Still, she was getting a little bored with doing 
normal patrol.

She recalled the job being more exciting.  Of course she knew that she never 
really had more work than this.  It was just that at the time a high speed 
chase or a normal crook could be exciting and cause more than a little fear 
in her.  Now, with bullets posing no threat to her, she simply found them 
boring.  To make matters worse, she really couldn’t have any fun with them 
thanks to Eddie.  Not that it was his fault; she simply couldn’t reveal to 
him what she was truly capable of doing.  The vast majority of criminals 
didn’t really require Kate to put her abilities to the test anyway.  The 
occasional convict that chose to run was simply a joke to Kate as she could 
easily outrun most of them even remaining at human levels.  Olympic athlete 
human levels perhaps, but human nonetheless.  And anytime she pulled away 
from Eddie she was able to end the pursuit in a few moments.

No, she wanted to be able to have some real fun, to make full use of her 
abilities.  Kate’s thoughts were put on hold as Eddie had to swerve to avoid 
being hit by a van.  With no more than a glance at Eddie, Kate switched on 
the siren and picked up the radio.  Calling in to dispatch, Kate didn’t stop 
to think about what she was doing as she read the license plate number off 
of the van.  Her eyesight allowed her to see it despite the lead it had on 
them.  Fortunately Eddie wasn’t thinking about this as he accelerated.  Kate 
was surprised to see the LexCorp logo on the side of the vehicle.  Recalling 
what she had been thinking earlier, Kate wondered if some entity had decided 
to grant her request.  Though as they pursued the vehicle, she wondered if 
she really wanted it granted.

Despite the van's lead, its speed and handling couldn’t match the patrol 
car's, allowing them to catch up with it rather quickly.  Once they did, the 
problem arose of how to halt it.  While they could try to fishtail a lighter 
vehicle, a van was a bit out of the question.  Kate was wondering how to 
best handle the situation when the back of the vehicle opened.  Kate and 
Eddie found themselves staring down the barrel of an assault rifle.  Kate 
felt her body react; the entire world seemed to slow down as the weapon 
fired.  Eddie swerved to try to avoid the shots, but the bullets tore 
through the window and hurtled towards him.  Luckily, a much stronger object 
appeared before him in the form Kate’s hand.

Reaching out, Kate was able to catch the three rounds that would have torn 
into her partner before they met him.  Partly in shock, she didn’t think to 
move her arm away until a second later.  Eddie had seen what had just 
happened and there was no way to explain that as 'special training.'  
Realizing that Eddie was in shock, Kate took hold of the steering wheel and 
quickly brought them back onto the road.  Pulling over, Eddie looked at 
Kate.  "How...whaa?"

"It's a kind of long story, would you mind if we caught the crooks first?"  
Much to Kate’s surprise, Eddie nodded his head and started up the vehicle 
again.  Pulling it back onto the road, he once again began pursuing the 
vehicle, but far too slowly for Kate.  "Ah crap, I'm going on ahead."  Kate 
no longer saw any reason to hide what she was capable of.  At least she 
wouldn’t endanger him.  Opening the door, Kate made a running leap.  She 
matched the patrol car’s speed for just long enough to shut the door before 
taking off, easily outpacing the vehicle at an easy 250mph.  Taking a moment 
to look down at herself, Kate noticed several bullet holes in her clothing.  
She realized that the gun man hadn’t stopped firing when Eddie swerved; she 
had been taken into the line of fire as well.  This got a giggle from Kate.  
The bullet holes caused extra friction, resulting in her uniform being 
slowly torn away as she ran.

The gang was elated with what they had done.  They had managed to steal some 
new prototype laser weaponry from LexCorp.  The thought of what the weapons 
would fetch on the open market was exciting.  Or if they chose they could 
simply keep the weapons and have more fire power than any gang in the city.  
To make things even better, it seemed that they had managed to take a few 
cops out of the picture.  There had been talk about using some of the high 
powered laser weapons but this had been pushed aside.  It would have been a 
waste of such wonderful killing devices.  As the men patted each other on 
the back, they didn’t notice the blur that shot past them.  Kate, easily 
running at over double the van’s speed, was able to overtake it far before 
Eddie did.

Kate felt she had time to have some fun before he showed up.  So instead of 
just hopping into the back, Kate moved ahead of the vehicle, turned around 
and came to a dead stop.  The driver was surprised to see a woman suddenly 
appear in front of him.  However, the vehicle was kind of hard to control 
and he didn’t want to swerve to avoid her.  Unlike most people, he didn’t 
really care if he killed her.  As the van sped towards her, Kate drew back 
her fist and delivered a solid blow straight to the grill.  The impact 
countered most of the machine’s inertia; those of the team that weren’t 
buckled up were sent slamming into the back or straight through the 
windshield.

Kate felt the vehicle deform around her hand and then around her body.  
Recalling her previous experience in taking a hit from a moving automobile, 
Kate was able to hold her ground this time.  The air bag and his seat belt 
prevented the driver from coming through the windshield, must to Kate’s 
disappointment.  The jerks had tried to kill her and her partner, after all. 
  She would have to have some fun with these thieves.  With crooks like them 
it was little surprise that the number of police had declined.  In the van, 
several of the gang members were recovering, having had sense enough to 
strap themselves in.  Five of the eight men were able to stand up.  The gun 
man had been sent through the windshield, and two of his buddies had 
impacted quite heavily against the inside of the van.

Rubbing their heads, each man checked his weapon, unsure of what had just 
happened.  Opening up the back of the van, they began to climb out, weapons 
in hand.  "Hello boys, pleasant night for a cruise."  Each man turned in the 
direction of the voice to find a rather attractive and barely clothed 
redhead walking towards them.  Kate was ticked off.  The jerks had just 
tried to kill her and her partner, and the driver hadn’t even tried to 
swerve for her.  As far as she was concerned, she had every right to use 
lethal force on them at any moment she chose.  She didn’t want to do that 
just yet, partly out of anger and partly out of her own desire to show off 
her power.  She resolved that she would have some fun with these men before 
she dealt with them.

The crooks, for their part, weren’t sure what was going on.  Despite having 
their vehicle destroyed, they were all clearly armed and disguised.  Just 
what could this woman be thinking?  Looking at Kate for a moment, they 
noticed the torn remains of her shirt and finally caught sight of her badge. 
  Realizing she was a cop, their leader didn’t take long to act.  Drawing 
his sidearm, he took aim straight at Kate’s chest and fired.  The bullet hit 
right over Kate’s heart and probably would have come straight out her back 
considering it was a 45 caliber.  As it was, the bullet simply deformed 
against her skin.  Stopping dead in her tracks, Kate reached up and placed a 
finger over where the bullet had hit before retrieving the deformed 
projectile from her cleavage.  "Is that all you got?"

Despite his shock, the man quickly composed himself and proceeded to squeeze 
off several more shots from the handgun.  Kate simply stood there and let 
the bullets impact against her skin.  As she waited for him to run out of 
ammo, she noticed an odd feeling as the heat of the metal impacting her soft 
flesh actually began to excite her a bit.  Seeing that his weapon wasn’t 
having any effect on her, the man turned towards his cohorts.  "What do you 
think you're doing?  Shoot her, dammit!"  The men seemed to awaken from 
their daze, instantly leveling their weapons at Kate.  They began to fire.  
Kate’s frown faded and turned to a sadistic smile as the men began to 
understand the situation.

Their bullets were simply bouncing off her skin, at times tearing apart her 
clothing and exposing more of her flesh.  The men soon found their anger and 
confidence being replaced by fear as their bullets had no effect.  However, 
if they had noticed Kate’s change in demeanor they would have known their 
weapons were in fact affecting her, just not in the desired way.  As Kate 
enjoyed being showered by the automatic weapons, she forced herself into her 
accelerated way of thinking.  Now she was able to actually see the bullets.  
They were still moving far faster then she was capable of but they didn’t 
have the weight to injure her.  As her bra was torn away by the weapons fire 
Kate found herself moving her breasts slightly, trying to get as many of the 
bullets to strike her excited nipples as possible.  Despite the situation, 
Kate couldn’t help loving the thought that their weapons were only serving 
to excite her.

Even in her accelerated state, the fun had to end eventually as the weapons 
spent the last of their ammo.  Kate let out a long sigh and once again began 
to walk towards them.  By now the crooks had had more than enough of Kate 
and decided to cut their losses.  But as they attempted to flee, Kate, 
seeing which direction they were going, quickly moved to cut them off.  
"You're not going to run out on me now?  We were having so much fun."  The 
man nearest Kate actually managed to surprise her.  As he found his path cut 
off, instead of turning to run the other direction, he quickly drew a knife. 
  Kate, considering her options, realized that she could easily avoid the 
attack.  However, feeling confident that she could take it, she stood her 
ground.  The man’s skill with the weapon did surprise her as he effectively 
put the force of both his arms and his body weight into the thrust.

She felt the blade slam into her skin.  The man gave a slight cry of pain as 
the blade was stopped cold and some of the force came back into his wrist.  
A moment later he felt Kate’s hand clamp down on his throat and lift him 
from the ground.  Looking at the insect for a moment, Kate considered how 
easy it would be to kill him.  He had tried to kill her and Eddie, after 
all, so why not kill him?  Slowly her hand began to tighten, intent on 
snapping the man’s head off.  But Kate halted herself before this could 
happen, realizing what she'd been thinking.  Insect?  Kate looked at the man 
again.  Sure, he had tried to kill her, but he was still a human being.  And 
besides, it wasn’t her place to decide if he should live or die.  That would 
be up to the courts.  No, it wouldn’t; her gaze turned to the van and she 
released the man’s throat.  His fate would be most likely decided by Lex 
Luther, and considering what he had stolen Kate just about knew it would be 
death.

Drawing back her hand, Kate delivered a light punch to the man’s jaw, the 
force of the blow lifting him from the ground and knocking him out cold.  
Even if these men had tried to kill her, she was still a cop and it was her 
responsibility to try and bring them in alive.  Of course, that didn’t mean 
she couldn’t have at least a little fun with them.  She once again appeared 
in front of the fleeing men.  "Now didn’t you just get through trying that?  
Hm, well I guess you didn’t try running while a friend distracted me.  Since 
there are four of you left, maybe two of you should run while the other two 
attack me now?"  Kate grinned as she taunted the men, knowing that their 
weapons wouldn’t have any effect on her.

She was somewhat pleased when the next attack proved to be a group effort.  
A few of the men produced melee weapons while the man who had first shot her 
made use of his gun.  He had indeed used up all the ammo, but he still 
attempted to use it to club Kate.  Kate just grinned at their futile 
efforts; even four of them had nowhere near the strength required to injure 
her.  Instead she chose to try knocking them unconscious through different 
means.  The man who had attacked her had gotten the least painful experience 
so far and Kate decided to keep it that way.

Instead of his jaw, Kate slammed her fist deeply into their leader's 
stomach, forcing the oxygen from his lungs.  The impact actually lifted him 
off the ground a good foot, though he didn’t fall down right away.  Rather 
Kate continued to support his bulk upon her fist for just a moment before 
letting him slide off.  The other men stood back now, looking at their 
leader who was gasping for air.  The pain and lack of air proved to be too 
much, and he soon blacked out.  The other men just looked on in shock, at 
least until they heard a light giggle come from Kate.  "Well now, how am I 
going to knock you boys out?  I figure since you were the last to attack me 
and thus the most cowardly, I should make yours the most painful."  The men 
didn’t have time to surrender as Kate pounced them.  Getting one man under 
each arm she proceeded to wrap her legs around the waist of the fourth.  
"Now, who should I put out first?"

Considering that she had two people under her arms, Kate began to experiment 
with one of them, slowly tightening her grip around his stomach.  Acting 
something like a constrictor, she tightened her grip ever so slowly whenever 
he exhaled.  Keeping careful track of the man’s expression, Kate was 
cautious not to force any air from his lungs, realizing that would end the 
experience too soon for him.  His struggles only hastened the process.  Kate 
finally released her grip on him when he fell unconscious.  Turning her 
attention to the one in her other arm, she grinned.  "I think I squeezed a 
little too hard; let's see if you can last longer."  The man began to really 
struggle now, though this meant little to Kate.  Once again she began to 
tighten her grip on the man though this time more slowly.  It surprised her 
a bit that the man between her legs wasn't struggling more; after all, he 
was going to get the same treatment as his two colleagues.

Marvin groaned as he came to.  Having been the driver of the vehicle, he was 
quite pleased to see that the air bag had stopped him from going through the 
windshield.  Just what had happened he wasn’t sure.  He recalled that woman, 
and then...well, he had been in a rather bad impact.  He nearly jumped out 
of his skin when he managed to catch a glimpse of Kate through the rear view 
mirror.  Seeing the position she had three of his colleagues in, his first 
thought was to hop out and come to their aid.  Then he recalled the vehicle 
slamming into her and what had happened, and realized what the most likely 
result of him getting out of the vehicle would be.  Thinking on his toes was 
something that he was good at.  After all, he was the getaway driver.

Looking over his shoulder, he realized that his salvation may very well be 
in the back of the vehicle.  Cutting his seat belt away with his pocket 
knife, he climbed over the seat and began to arm one of the weapons.

Kate was able to get the second man to last almost three minutes.  Not a bad 
feat, as far as she was concerned.  Now left with one more person, she 
debated on using her arms again but resolved to try her legs.  Slowly 
tightening her grip on him, she pulled his weak body ever so slightly 
against her sex.  Letting out a slight gasp, she was immediately pleased 
with her choice.  Instead of choking him out like the others, she proceeded 
to move herself against him ever so lightly, not wanting to kill him.  The 
pain he was feeling negated any pleasure that he might have gained from 
being between Kate’s legs.  Kate was only able to reach a mini orgasm before 
the man passed out, but that was good enough for now.  Standing up and 
dusting herself off, Kate looked around, wondering what was taken Eddie so 
long.

At last seeing his vehicle, she began to walk towards him, wondering how she 
was going to explain this, when a sound behind her back got her attention.  
"Oh, it seems I missed one."  Kate turned around slowly, even for a human, 
wanting to have some fun with this guy as well.  The moment she was fully 
turned around she regretted her action.  The man had leveled a weapon at her 
that she had never seen before.  Even she couldn’t dodge the laser beam that 
shot out of the weapon; she didn’t even have time to think before the beam 
slammed into her body.  The incredible heat burnt away all her clothing and 
caused all metal on her form to dribble away, reduced to liquid.  A terrific 
boom could be heard as the super heated air cooled and slammed back 
together.

Marvin had been panicked as he fumbled with the weapon, not completely sure 
of how to use the complicated device.  He managed to get a shot off before 
Kate had completely turned around.  He hadn’t realized it but he'd actually 
delivered a blast powerful enough to destroy or at least severely cripple a 
Sherman tank.  The only problem now was the damn ringing in his ears; he 
couldn’t hear anything.  Still, as he stalked towards Kate’s prone form he 
was surprised to see that she was still in one piece, though burns covered a 
good deal of her body and it was clear she was unconscious.  Deciding to 
finish her off, he raised the weapon again.  Only to have a patrol car go 
right up his back side.

Eddie had taken longer to arrive than he would have liked, but with his 
windshield broken he wasn’t able to go as fast.  Plus they had gained a 
pretty darn big lead on him and he'd been forced to do some guesswork as to 
where they went.  He felt especially fortunate to have found them when he 
saw one of them standing over a woman, a woman that he realized was Kate.  
He didn’t take long to act.  Knowing that the man was about to fire whatever 
god awful weapon he was packing, Eddie made use of the only weapon he had 
readily available: his squad car.  Coming to a stop, he debated on reversing 
over the man, but chose not to.  He had to check on Kate.  As he ran over to 
her, he was shocked what he saw.  The cooling metal of her belt buckle and 
buttons pooled around her body.

Eddie didn’t know what to do.  As he tried to get near Kate the heat held 
him at bay.  Having already called in back up, he finally dashed back to his 
patrol car, retrieved a fire extinguisher from under the seat and ran back 
over to Kate.  He sprayed her down with the device, the foam soaking up the 
heat until he was finally able to touch her.  Kate’s eyes slowly drifted 
open as she felt the cool foam coating her form, then she felt herself being 
lifted.  Looking up at Eddie, she wasn’t sure how long she would be awake.  
"No needles."

"Huh?"  Eddie was surprised to hear her speak.  Kate still wanted to keep 
her secret, and she knew that needles and other cutting devices would have 
no effect on her.

"Don’t let them try to cut me."  Eddie wasn’t sure what Kate was talking 
about at first, until he heard the siren of an ambulance and other squad 
cars.  Unsure of why his friend wouldn’t want them using needles on her, he 
still nodded his head.  After all, he didn’t know what had happened to her.

"Sure, no needles."  Kate smiled and let her eyes drift shut, no longer 
fighting the blackness that was trying to swallow her up.

******************************************************************************

Kate hated pain, no matter the cause.  Luckily, she was feeling only a small 
amount of it as she opened her eyes and looked around the room.  She was 
delighted to find Jack waiting by her side, but she was also pleased to find 
Eddie as well.  The two men hadn’t noticed her waking up yet.  She kept 
quiet, listening to their conversation.  She was glad to hear them getting 
along as Jack explained where Kate had been the last year, leaving out 
certain details.  Of course, Kate knew Eddie had found out her little secret 
thanks to the crooks.  Looking around the room for a moment, she realized 
they were in a hospital.  "Hey fellas, how about some painkillers?"  Jack 
and Eddie looked up almost immediately and moved to Kate’s side.  Jack was 
the first to speak.

"Hey there sleepyhead, how are you feeling?"

"Sore."  Both men chuckled for a moment as Eddie took his turn to speak.

"Sorry, but from what Jack here tells me there aren’t really any painkillers 
that would have much of an effect on you.  Especially since we can’t exactly 
get an IV in you."  Kate sighed, lamenting her state though she was grateful 
for her abilities.  If she hadn’t had them, she and Eddie would have been 
dead.  Looking at herself for a moment, Kate was glad to see that there was 
nothing actually inside her body.  However, most of her upper body was 
covered by thick bandages.

"So how did you get the doctors to leave me alone?"

"Well, I told them that since your little bout with cancer you had come to 
believe in the natural healing ability of your body and you wouldn't allow 
any IV or injection of any type to be used on yourself.  After I informed 
them that you would sue the crap out of them should you find a single needle 
hole in you, they settled for bandaging you up as best they could."  Kate 
giggled; it was true that she believed in the healing ability of her body, 
though that didn’t necessarily mean she would advise a normal human to 
behave the same way.

"Well, I guess you know my little secret then.  That makes two of you."  
Eddie got a nervous look on his face.

"Actually, there are three of us now; I had to tell the chief what 
happened."  Kate's eyes went wide as she realized how soon her secret might 
be out in the open.  "I wouldn't worry about it too much.  To be honest, I 
had a pretty hard time convincing the chief that I wasn’t nuts.  After he 
took a look at the crime scene and the state of the car he finally came 
around to believing me.  We're already working on concealing any evidence 
that someone like you was around."

Jack spoke up.  "Eddie and the chief have both agreed to keep your secret 
for as long as you want to keep it.  After all, you're a pretty hand person 
to have around."

"Decided it would be best to keep me a secret weapon for now?" Kate asked.

"Actually, that was part of the reasoning.  After all, we don’t really need 
to announce that we have someone like you around.  Still, you freaked me out 
when you caught that bullet.  No wonder you've been able to apprehend people 
so easily recently.  You were holding back just to avoid letting me know 
about you.  Naughty girl, keeping secrets."  Kate found the strength to 
stick her tongue out at Eddie.

"And thanks to you I got hit by I don’t know how many bullets. Naughty boy, 
swerving like that and putting me in the line of fire."  Eddie blinked, 
having not even realized he had done that.  "So fellas, how long have I been 
out of it?"  Jack grinned and considered telling a little lie, maybe saying 
a month.  But he decided to be honest.

"Your recuperative abilities are quite remarkable.  You haven’t even been 
out for 48 hours.  I must say, I'm impressed.  I'm actually a little curious 
how those burns are coming."

"Oh, I would say that I still have them.  I'm still in some pain and to be 
honest I'm a little tired."  Taking a few moments to run his hand through 
Kate’s hair, Jack also gave her a kiss on the forehead.

"Then why don’t you go back to sleep?"

"I think I'll do that, but first would you boys mind getting me out of here? 
  I hate spending time in the hospital."  Jack gave a nod and stood up.

"Alright, I'll go and get the doctor and we can begin getting you signed 
out."  Eddie remained with Kate as Jack went to fetch the doctor.

"Well, I think I'll be going then."  As Eddie began to stand up Kate looked 
at him.

"Why don’t you come by later on?  There some things I want to talk to you 
about now that you know my little secret."  Eddie grinned.

"Alright, but is it okay if I bring the chief as well?  He wants to speak to 
you about the robbery and plan things out."  Kate grinned, imagining they 
wanted to start planning how to make the best use of her abilities.

"Sure thing.  Hmm, I wonder if this could get me a pay raise."

******************************************************************************

Jack felt odd as he carried Kate’s sleeping form towards the door of their 
apartment.  He had spent over a year with her now and had watched her 
physical abilities break one limit after another.  It had gotten to the 
point that he began to think she would be entirely safe on her job.  Now 
here she was, her body sporting several burns, though they were all quickly 
healing.  Still, she was so drained of energy that she had fallen asleep 
almost immediately after getting into the vehicle.  Between the conversation 
with him and Eddie and the actual act of leaving the hospital, Kate had only 
managed to stay awake for some thirty minutes.  As he unlocked and opened 
the door he was instantly glad Kate had made him start working out when he 
had first moved in with her.  His old self would never have been able to 
carry Kate's 180 lbs of muscle back to the apartment.

Even now, he regretted that he hadn’t pushed himself a little harder.  It 
required a good deal of effort on his part to get her into the house.  
Still, he refused the temptation to simply set Kate down upon the couch and 
instead carried her back to her room, depositing her on her bed.  Looking at 
Kate’s sleeping form, he realized this was the most vulnerable he had ever 
seen her.  Brushing away the hair from her forehead he bent down and gave 
her a light kiss.  She hadn’t even been this vulnerable when she was a 
normal human, lacking the energy to even stay awake.  Leaving the room, he 
began to consider his options.  He knew Eddie was supposed to bring the 
police chief by later to talk to Kat,e but he really didn’t want to wake 
her.  Going to the kitchen in order to be further away from Kate’s room, he 
picked up the telephone and checked the caller id for Eddie’s number.

"Hey, is Eddie there?"

"Speaking, what's up Jack?"

"Oh, I was just calling to ask you to hold off your little meeting with 
Kate.  She didn’t even make it through the car ride back to our apartment 
without falling asleep again and I don’t want to wake her up."

"Ah, so you want to keep her to yourself; well that's alright.  I didn’t 
plan on bringing up the chief just yet, he's a busy man.  I'll try and 
schedule a time a few days from now."  Jack chuckled a bit at Eddie’s sense 
of humor, but it was partly accurate.

"Alright then, I'll see you in a few days."  Hanging up the phone, Jack 
began to look around, wondering what he should do.  Remembering that Kate 
hadn’t actually eaten anything since she'd been injured two days ago, he 
made his way into the kitchen.  Digging though the cupboards, he pondered 
what to cook.  He wanted to make Kate something special to welcome her home, 
but with his lack of cooking skills he was scared to try anything fancy lest 
he burn it.  At last he settled on a couple of steaks, figuring that Kate 
would be fairly hungry when she woke up.  He would have liked to grill the 
steaks, but as he currently didn’t have that option he laid out a few pans 
and began frying them both up some dinner.

Kate felt more than a little groggy as she set up in bed, but the smell of 
fresh food was calling to her.  As she began to stand up though, something 
pushed its way into her mind, a desire surpassing even that of hers to eat.  
Standing up on unsteady legs, Kate began to walk towards the kitchen area.  
Jack, catching sight of her and noticing how unsteady she was, quickly 
rushed to her aid.  "Kate, what are you doing out of bed?"  As Kate looked 
at him Jack felt his heart ache a bit.  He felt she would be okay but with 
her body’s new complexities he couldn’t be sure.  There was one thing he was 
worried about; they hadn’t given her any painkillers since they didn’t know 
what effect it would have on her.

"Please get me something to drink."

"Sure thing, just sit down."  Jack didn’t bother helping Kate get to a seat 
but placed her back against the wall.  Dashing into the kitchen, he quickly 
rummaged through the fridge and took out the first thing his hand took hold 
off.  He poured Kate a rather large glass of orange juice, surprised by how 
dry her voice had sounded.  He wondered how much moisture her body had lost 
from the attack and the healing process.  She had been so tired when they 
picked her up at the hospital he imagined that her hunger and thirst hadn’t 
quite registered with her.  Handing the glass to Kate, he stood by her 
watching her drain the entire glass in a few swallows.  She handed it back 
to him, and he went back to the kitchen to refill it.

It was after the third glass was drained the same way as the first that he 
simply brought Kate the jug.  Amazingly, Kate turned it up as well and began 
to drain the liquid, feeling as if her thirst would never be quenched.  Jack 
had enough medical training to know that Kate’s body was currently focusing 
on hydrating itself after having lost so much moisture.  Returning to the 
kitchen, he found a few oversized cups and filled them with water.  He 
brought them to Kate who by then had actually managed to drain the orange 
juice bottle dry.  "My, you are a thirsty girl aren’t you?"  Kate didn’t 
answer verbally but just nodded her head.  At least while the liquid was 
going down her throat it didn’t feel so parched.

Jack wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to let Kate drink so much so quickly, 
but then again he couldn’t really use normal medical knowledge in dealing 
with her anymore.  While some of Kate’s genetic make up was still human, 
enough of it had changed that he couldn’t be sure.  So instead of trying to 
apply human knowledge to the situation he decided to just follow what Kate’s 
body wanted.  Kate, feeling somewhat better after draining the glasses, 
finally stood back up.  Her legs were steadier but she still felt so 
thirsty.  Making her way to the kitchen, she held her hair behind her head 
and put her face under the sink.  Letting the water rush into her mouth, 
Kate drained as much as she could.  Very little of it actually spilled.  At 
last Kate released the sink, the front of her shirt completely soaked, while 
a bit of water dribbled from her mouth.  "Thank you."

"No problem.  Here, let me help you."  Wrapping his arm around Kate, Jack 
guided her into the living room and sat her down on the couch.  He returned 
moments later with two large glasses of water.  Kate immediately began to 
drain them, though more slowly than before.  She was looking a little 
steadier now.  Looking back at the kitchen and realizing the steaks would 
still take a while, Jack got a few plums out of the fridge.  "Here you go."

Kate took hold of the fruit and bit into it, grateful that Jack had chosen 
to bring her something cold.  With her mouth as dry as it was, she didn’t 
really feel like eating anything warm.  Except...her gaze turned towards the 
kitchen and she took in the scent that had woken her up only moments 
earlier.  The thick slabs of steak were already looking quite good to her 
despite needing quite a bit longer to be completely cooked.

Jack had figured Kate would be hungry, but not this hungry.  He had hardly 
touched his food and yet Kate was eating like she hadn't had anything for a 
week.  Of course, considering how rapidly her body had recovered it probably 
had a lot of raw material to make up for.  Kate, for her part, wasn’t even 
thinking of eating like a lady, feeling far too hungry for such formalities. 
  A loud crunch got Jack’s attention as Kate actually bint through the bone 
of the t-bone.  His mouth hung open a bit.  He knew that Kate could do it 
easily enough but he had never seen her actually swallow the bone after 
chewing it up.  Absently he began to draw his plate closer, wondering if it 
was actually safe to sit near Kate at the moment.

He made no move for any of the side dishes that had been set on the table.  
At last Kate finished her meal.  Looking at Jack for a moment and noticing 
the look on her face, she giggled a bit.  "Oops, sorry, I guess I was 
hungrier than I'd realized."  Jack finally got a lopsided grin on his face.

"I’ll say, I was worried that if I got too close you'd bite off my hand.  
How are you feeling now?"  A long yawn came from Kate as if to answer his 
question.

"I'm actually feeling pretty tired again.  I guess all that food is making 
me sleepy."  Jack just chuckled and nodded his head.  Standing up, he walked 
over to Kate’s side of the table and proceeded to help her up.  He couldn’t 
help but notice that Kate had gone from extremely tired, to ravenously 
thirsty and hungry, to deeply tired again.  Considering her body’s new make 
up he couldn’t help but wonder if this was how things were going to be as it 
effected repairs or if she would spend the rest of the day recovering and be 
better by the next day.

"Well then, let's get you back to bed."  Kate gave a slight nod, but as she 
began to pass by the couch she stopped herself.

"Actually, would it be alright if I lay down right here?  You know, in case 
I need anything?"  Jack chuckled for a moment, realizing that Kate was 
indeed ill and still recovering.  It probably would be good if he was 
nearby.

"Alright, do you want me to put anything on the TV for you?"  Kate just 
shook her head as Jack helped her to lie down.  Taking a moment to fluff her 
pillow, he was about to ask her if she needed anything when he noticed her 
breathing.  Just as quickly as she had laid down on the couch, she had 
drifted back off to sleep.  Rubbing the back of his head, Jack finally 
returned to the kitchen to finish up his meal and do the dishes.

******************************************************************************

"Hello?  Yeah, I don’t think Kate is going to be good for that meeting 
today...yeah, she still isn’t feeling too well.  Actually, she spends most 
of her time sleeping....alright, I'll have her call you when she can get 
together for a meeting."  Jack hung up the phone and looked over at Kate.  
Looking at her sleeping form, one could forget just how powerful she was.  
Kate was sleeping on the couch, having chosen to sleep there ever since 
she'd been back from the hospital.  The routine had been pretty simple for 
the two of them.  Kate would wake up thirsty as a race horse and hungry as a 
hummingbird.  Once her hunger and thirst were taken care of she would fall 
back asleep almost the moment she found something to lie down on.  The thing 
that Jack felt was a little odd was the fact that all her burns had already 
healed up and yet her body continued to behave in such a manner.

He didn’t know how long this was going to last; after all, he still had so 
much to learn about the workings of her body.  As he considered what had 
happened he couldn’t help but think her body was responding to having taken 
so much damage.  The thought that it might be trying to adapt itself so it 
wouldn’t be hurt as badly from another such attack had crossed his mind.  He 
moved over to the couch Kate was sitting on and took a seat on the floor by 
her legs.  Running his hand along them for a moment, he admired how soft and 
smooth her skin was.  An odd look appeared on his face as he examined Kate’s 
legs more carefully.  They were indeed smooth, but he didn’t recall her 
shaving her legs.  "Blast it Kate, have you been shaving your legs in your 
condition?"

The sound of a glass being picked up got his attention.  Looking over, he 
noticed one of the glasses he had sitting around for Kate had been picked 
up.  As she drank she held up a finger indicating she needed a moment.  "No, 
why do you ask?"

"Oh, does your hair just grow slowly?"  Kate shook her head as she continued 
to drink.

"I haven’t had any hair growth on my body ever since my normal hair fell out 
and this stuff grew in."  Kate gave a light flick of the hair on her head as 
she said this.  Before Jack pressed the issue, he recalled what would be 
coming next and quickly rushed to the kitchen.  Having learned to be ready 
for Kate’s hunger, he took out a rather large tray from the fridge.  He set 
it down in front of her.  It held enough sandwiches, fruits and vegetables 
already cut up to feed a family of five, or one Kate.  He had also learned 
that except for meat, Kate preferred her food to be cold.

"Huh, I wonder how that happened."  Kate stopped drinking long enough to 
take a bite out of one of the sandwiches.

"I figured you already knew about it; that's why I didn’t mention it to 
you."  Kate took another large swallow of water, wanting to keep some 
constantly going down her throat to keep the dry feeling away.  "But I just 
thought it was for the same reason my body still keeps a human form."  Jack 
nodded his head in agreement, though just why her body was doing that he 
didn’t know.  He had several theories of course, most of them relating back 
to mating and sex appeal, or perhaps what Kate really desired guided it.  If 
either of these were true then it would make sense that her body hair would 
just fade away.  After all, he doubted Kate ever enjoyed shaving her legs.

"Have you noticed any other little changes in your body?"  Kate seemed to 
think for a moment, or she might have just been taking her time chewing.

"Nope.  Well, other than how much I can eat and other things you probably 
know about."

"Alright, well you enjoy your dinner."  Heading back into the kitchen, Jack 
looked back at Kate and began to take in her form.  There was one thing that 
he had been noticing about her recently and that was her muscles.  With her 
body altering itself so quickly, her muscles seemed to flow together more 
easily now.  When she lay in a relaxed position they were becoming less and 
less noticeable, but every time she would move her arm or leg they would 
make their presence known.  Their shape had never been really blocky but 
they appeared to be shaping together even better.

Taking his time, Jack checked around and found a picture of Kate relaxing 
back when she was human.  Holding it up to the woman he now saw on the 
couch, he was sure of what he thought.  The way Kate’s muscles seemed to 
flow together made her entire body look more graceful.  He wondered if this 
was due to her muscles strengthening or her body trying to adjust itself to 
allow for greater speed.  Of course, Jack had noticed a few things about 
Kate that she had no idea about.  In a dark enough room, he could swear that 
blood taken from her would glow.  He had actually checked it to make sure it 
wasn’t radiation.  Even after confirming this he still took some steps to 
avoid spending too much time with it.  It was one of the reasons he used a 
electronic microscope hooked up to his computer to look at the blood 
samples.  That and it allowed him to record what was going on and send it to 
Nathan whenever he was done.

Upon returning to the living room he wasn’t surprised to find that Kate had 
cleaned off the tray and fallen back asleep.  Taking the tray and the cups 
back into the living room, he began to quietly prepare more for Kate to eat 
and drink when she woke up again.  He had been doing all the cooking over 
the last three days, but he didn’t really mind.  Kate had been severely 
injured, after all, and she needed time to fully recover.  As Jack left the 
room, he noticed one glass had been left on the table.  Kate hadn’t been as 
thirsty as previously.  He crossed his fingers, hoping that meant her body 
would soon have effected whatever change it was working on.

******************************************************************************

Mark looked around the outside of Kate’s apartment, having ridden over with 
Eddie.  He had been glad to hear that Kate was going to be alright.  He was 
also eager to satisfy his own curiosity about the entire event.  Eddie had 
managed to convince him of what had happened; after all, there were so many 
things that just couldn’t be explained.  Still, he was eager to get some 
actual proof before he went too far.  For the moment he had managed to keep 
the press away by saying they were still investigating.  Now he would be 
able to confirm for himself if Eddie had been telling the truth or if he had 
just taken a really nasty blow to the head.

Jack opened the door.  Seeing Eddie and another man whom he assumed was the 
chief of police, he stepped aside to let them in.  "Hey Eddie, is this the 
chief?"  Jack was surprised when the man took his hand rather quickly and 
gave it a good shake.

"Pleased to meet you, and yes, I am chief of police, at least in this 
precinct.  Just call me Mark though; it's Saturday and we're all off duty."  
Jack grinned and let the two men inside, noticing a bit of a grin on Eddie’s 
face.  Jack had been a little stunned by Mark’s greeting but it had been a 
friendly one if a little direct.

"Hey there."  All three men looked to see Kate standing in the doorway, a 
wide grin on her face.  Everyone wondered what was going on until she walked 
over to Mark, took hold of his belt and proceeded to lift him from the 
ground.  Easily supporting all his weight over her head, she smiled up at 
him.  "I figured I'd remove any doubt out from your mind about what Eddie 
told you."  Mark could hardly believe what was happening.  Even after Kate 
set him back down it took him a few moments before he was able to respond.

"Well now, I suppose that is proof enough."  Kate giggled and led the entire 
group to the living room, pulling Jack along with her and having him sit 
down next to her.  Mark and Eddie sat across from the two of them, each 
claiming a separate couch.

Kate had been doing better over the last few days.  She didn’t need to drink 
or eat as much, though she still kept a cup of water handy.  She didn’t need 
to sleep nearly as much, now sleeping only half of the day.  That was why 
Jack had called the two men up, since if they just happened to drop by they 
risked coming when Kate was asleep.  She still wasn’t feeling well enough to 
try exercising, but her energy was coming back.  "So now, who's first?"

Everyone looked around for a moment before Mark decided to speak up.  "Well, 
first I need to confirm a few things.  Kate, you don’t want anyone to know 
about your abilities, do you?"

"No, I would prefer to keep them a secret for as long as possible."

"All right then, I guess I can tell the press we never found out what 
happened.  Still, if you wanted to keep all this a secret I wish you would 
have been a little more discrete in your actions."  A curious looked 
appeared on Kate’s face.  This got a grin from Mark as he saw that he was 
going to have to explain.  "Well, the first thing we are having trouble 
explaining is exactly what the van hit.  I mean, it's clear that it impacted 
with something.  The ruts you left in the ground, I'm assuming with your 
feet, aren’t helping much either.  Then there's the little matter of all the 
ammunition that clearly hit something but we don't know what, at least not 
officially.  Not to mention the extremely powerful military weapon that was 
fired and yet appears to have only hit the ground.  Actually, I guess we 
could just say whatever it hit was vaporized."

Kate chuckled for a moment.  "I guess the little matter of a police car full 
of holes and yet both officers still in one piece is another issue."  Mark 
gave a nod.

"Yeah,I almost forgot that one."  The group seemed to give a collective sigh 
as the problems were listed.  Again Mark was the first to speak up.

"I don’t know what we can tell the press that they would believe.  I guess 
our only choice is to tell them that we don’t know.  I will let the crime 
scene investigators check the vehicle over as best they can; I doubt there 
will be anything to lead back to Kate.  We can just say you both got damn 
lucky."  Kate bit her lip for a moment trying to think of a better option, 
but finally sighed.

"Wel,l I guess that's the only choice in this matter.  I was hoping we could 
give the department some better press.  But what about the crooks?  Won’t 
they talk to the authorities?"  Mark gave a slight nod, knowing that the 
criminals would indeed get to tell their side of the story.

"Yeah, but I wouldn’t worry too much about that.  We're trying to keep it a 
secret that it was you who stopped them.  We don’t really need to prove that 
it wasn’t some other super woman.  Now I think it's time we began talking 
about more important matters than another police cover up."  Kate grinned.

"Another?  You make it sound like we do this often."

"Oh, you don’t know about the other things?  Damn, I must be good at 
covering things up then."  Mark proceeded to straighten his shirt collar, a 
joking smile on his face.  Eddie just grinned and rolled his eyes while Kate 
stuck her tongue out at Mark.

"Alright Mister Conspirator, what other important matters do you want to 
talk about?"  Mark grinned, then got a little more serious.

"Well I was thinking that we could start putting your abilities to better 
use, especially now that Eddie knows what you are capable of.  I figure 
there won’t be as much need for you to hold back.  But to be honest, I want 
to take you off normal patrol and put you on other assignments."  Kate 
grinned as she felt her excitement beginning to build, thoughts of taking on 
more dangerous cases entering her mind.

"And would these cases happen to be more dangerous than the regular patrol I 
am on?  Perhaps a few cases that would cause you to worry about losing more 
officers?"  Mark was surprised by the eagerness in Kate’s voice.  After 
having nearly been killed just a few days ago he had thought she would be 
hesitant to take on such tasks.

"Well, yeah.  Really, I think it would be handy if we sent you undercover."  
Kate was grinning from ear to ear by now.

"Great!  I might get to make some good use of my abilities now.  But oh, I 
wish my sense of smell would hurry up and get stronger.  Then I could find 
drugs and such even more easily."  The chief blinked for a moment.  Jack 
decided to take the lead.

"Kate’s senses are increasing every day, including her sense of smell, 
though it isn’t developing as quickly as the others.  At the moment her nose 
is about half as good as a bloodhound's.  I would imagine that is still far 
superior to what any human has to offer."  Looking at Kate for a moment, 
Mark scratched his chin.

"Yeah, I can see where that could be handy.  Will it eventually get to that 
point?"

"Sure will, I'm improving every day."  The enthusiasm with which Kate spoke 
got a chuckle from the men.  Now that it seemed she was really going to get 
to put her powers to better use, she was visibly excited.

"Alright then, when you get to that point we'll have to start making better 
use of your abilities.  It would be nice to have an officer that could sniff 
out that junk as good as any dog.  Until then I was hoping we could get you 
to maybe walk the streets a bit.  Perhaps we can draw out a few muggers by 
using you as bait.  Normally I wouldn’t suggest this since we would need to 
keep an eye on the officer to provide support, but I doubt Kate here would 
need any."

"Oh, does that mean get to wear some really nice expensive stuff to attract 
the crooks?"  Mark just chuckled and waved his hand a bit.

"Well of course we'll give you some nice things to wear, but we don’t want 
to overdo it.  If we make you stand out too much, people are going to know 
something is wrong."

"Alright, I'm going to get to have some real fun then."  A hand came up to 
rest on Kate’s shoulder.  Looking over at Jack, she grinned sheepishly.

"Well, when I quit needing to sleep for 12 to 14 hours a day."  Eddie and 
Mark looked at each other for a moment until Jack spoke up.

"Kate tires very quickly right now.  While she only needs to sleep around 12 
hours a day, she also spends 6 of her waking hours in a sleepy state.  She 
isn’t up to her full strength yet either.  I think her body is still 
devoting a good deal of its energy to doing something to her."  A worried 
look appeared on Mark’s face at this.

"You mean you don’t know what's going on?"  A bit of a sigh came from Jack 
as he shook his head.

"Kate’s body has gone far beyond anything that I've seen, and I am pretty 
sure that it's still changing.  We don’t know when her strength is going to 
stop increasing or what else might change about her.  We're hoping that she 
doesn’t suddenly sprout horns or grow a tail and wings, but we can’t be 
sure."

"I don’t know; wings might be kind of fun to have."  When all three men 
turned in Kate’s direction she let out a giggle, sticking her tongue out at 
them for a moment.  "Well, it would be nice to be able to fly.  Still, Jack 
is right.  At the moment my energy drains too quickly.  Heck, I just woke up 
an hour ago; that's why I'm so lively.  In two or three more hours I'll 
start feeling drained and need to rest.  Though there is good news.  I've 
been getting more and more of my strength back, which I think is pretty darn 
good for someone who went through what I did."  Mark nodded his head in 
agreement.

"Well then, I guess we'll just have to wait for you to rest up.  Anyway, now 
that I know a little more about what is going on I think I need to get to 
work on covering all this up.  I'll set the investigators loose tomorrow and 
allow them to disclose any information they're able to find."  Kate gave a 
nod, grateful that the city was always busy with strange happenings.  It 
would only require one major crime to drive the story of the robbery clean 
out of the papers.  Standing up, Mark walked over to Kate and gave her a 
handshake, then turned to Jack.  Kate tilted her head to the side.

"Leaving so soon?"

"Of course.  It is Saturday after all; you don’t know the will power I had 
to exert just to get myself down here.  I swear, meeting with my officers on 
my day off to discuss such things."  Kate couldn’t help but laugh at Mark's 
exaggerated act.  Eddie followed shortly after and left Kate and Jack to 
themselves.  Turning around to look at Kate, Jack grinned.

"You have some very strange friends, you know that?"  Kate returned Jack’s 
grin.

"Ever since superpowered nut jobs have begun showing up, this has become a 
very crazy city.  You have to be a little out of your rocker to stay with 
the police force, it seems."  Jack nodded sympathetically, grateful that he 
had taken a safer career path and become a scientist.

******************************************************************************

Kate glanced around the area, attempting to avoid making eye contact with 
anyone.  This was an unpleasant part of the city and she had to try and make 
herself an appealing target.  Dressed as something of a tourist, Kate 
attempted to break every rule she knew of as far as keeping herself safe.  
She stayed away from most people and tried to keep near the darker areas.  
She fidgeted with several items of value numerous times, and she was out at 
a unreasonable hour.  The thought that she should act as if she'd had 
something to drink earlier had crossed her mind, but she pushed it aside.  
She wasn’t sure this was exactly the job for her.  After all, she might be a 
pretty woman but Kate didn’t exactly have the build of a helpless victim.  
At least, she didn’t think so as she made a bicep.  Watching the muscle 
swell under her blouse, she relaxed her arm and hoped that someone would be 
foolish enough to ignore it.

She also had to be careful not to walk the same street too often or people 
would begin to recognize her and know that something was up.  This was 
proving to be a bit of a problem, since she had been walking the streets for 
a few days now and no one had tried anything yet.  Mark and Eddie kept 
pointing out that there really wasn’t any need to rush things, but she truly 
wanted to put her abilities to more effective use.  She had even begun to 
consider requesting a new assignment, but she knew that this was one of the 
more dangerous jobs she could do.  The thought of what she was doing being 
"dangerous" got a grin from her.  Thanks to the changes her body had 
undergone, it was more dangerous for the crooks than for her.

Kate would have screamed with joy if a hand hadn’t came down upon her mouth 
as she walked by an alley.  Whoever had come up behind her wasted no time in 
pushing her into the darkened area, getting her even further away from the 
crowds.  "Don’t scream," was whispered in her ear, and Kate almost gagged as 
she smelt the man's foul breath.

"Good lord, have you ever heard of brushing your teeth or using a breath 
mint?"  The man took a moment to respond; he clearly hadn’t expected Kate to 
react in such a way.  Kate, for her part, was wondering how to best handle 
this.  She really wasn’t the type to play helpless, at least not in this 
situation.  She was in a dirty alley and she wasn’t sure how long it had 
been since her attacker had had a bath.  And the outfit she was wearing did 
belong to the department, so she didn’t want to let it get shredded.

"You know, she does have a point man, you kind of stink."  Kate was 
surprised when several young men appeared around the corner.  Looking at 
their outfits for a second, she resolved that they must belong to the same 
gang.  "Damn though, you caught a nice one today.  Tits could be a bit 
bigger, but oh well."  The leader chuckled a bit, an act that made Kate’s 
temper flare as her face began to turn a bright red.  Thank goodness she 
only had to play the helpless victim for a short while.

"Oh, that's it."  The man who was holding Kate gave a slight grunt when she 
pulled her arm free, apparently with no effort.  Reaching behind herself 
with the same arm, she took hold of his jacket and easily lifted him from 
the ground before tossing him over to his buddies, knocking several of them 
down.  Kate never really had the demeanor or the temper to play the helpless 
victim anyway; all she really needed to do was get the boys to attack her.  
Taking a defensive pose, Kate was sure to flex every muscle on her body, 
making then stand out quite visibly.  She wanted the men to think that she 
had used a martial arts move instead of raw strength.  After all, she still 
had to get them to attack in order for it to be assault.  But at least one 
of them had already assaulted her by dragging her into the alley.

"Now that was rather pathetic.  What, can’t you even handle a little girl?"  
Looking at each other, the men slowly rose to their feet.  Some of them were 
a little shook, but they still had her outnumbered.

"I don’t know how you did that shit but you made a big mistake."

"Ooh, such foul language.  You little boys should know better."  That was 
enough to set the group off.  Of course, they had planned on robbing and 
probably raping her in the first place, so they were already inclined to get 
violent.  As the group moved towards Kate she quickly looked them over and 
was grateful that the entire group had clearly decided to attack her.  Now 
she regretted wearing such a nice outfit; she really didn’t want to ruin it. 
  But she did want to have some fun and not just tap each one of them out.  
So she was glad that the first attack was an attempt to hit her in the face. 
  The men seemed to slow down as Kate forced her senses to enter their 
hyperactive state so she could see what was going on.

Assuring herself that he first attack would hit her in the face, Kate waited 
patiently for the fist to connect with her.  As the man’s fist connected she 
was careful not to move in the least.  A slight cry of pain came from the 
guy who had meant to take her down with a single punch.  He felt as if his 
hand had connected with a solid brick wall rather then a woman’s face.  
Stepping back, he took hold of his sore fingers.  Flexing her muscles, Kate 
made her body as solid as she possibly could, actually straining some of her 
clothing.  As a few more hits connected with her body the effect was 
immediate.  While normally, hitting Kate wouldn’t hurt the attacker that 
much, especially if she relaxed herself, it was quite a different story when 
she had all her muscles tensed.

To the men it felt like they had hit solid granite, cushioned only by Kate’s 
clothing.  A few of them took hold of Kate, trying to drag her to the 
ground.  She was quick to throw them off, not wanting them to damage her 
clothes.  As the men were sent slamming into the wall, the group soon began 
to change their tactics.  They didn’t know exactly who they where dealing 
with, but they weren’t going to give up without a fight.  At last a few of 
the men began to draw weapons.  However, a wave of fear went through them 
the moment they saw the grin on Kate’s face widen.  "Oh, you're going to use 
lethal force?  This is going to get fun then."  That was it; the men had had 
enough.

"Who are you?"  Grinning, Kate reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out 
her badge.

"I am a police officer of course, and you're all under arrest.  Oh and by 
the way, you don’t want to shoot me.  You probably know what using lethal 
force would allow me to do to you."  Now the men where unsure of themselves. 
  So far they had only punched her and ended up hurting their hands, and she 
had thrown them around like rag dolls.  Still, that didn’t mean that she was 
actually bulletproof, though with the confident grin she was giving them she 
seemed to think she was.  To make matters worse, if they did use their 
weapons it would no longer be simple assault and she would be legally 
authorized to use lethal force on them in return.

"Oh and remember, running is a felony."  At last a few of the men reacted, 
taking off in a dead run.  Kate didn’t bother letting them get very far.  
Although she was only able to run at 45 mph, she was still in the lead 
within a few moments.  Stopping in front of the men, she delivered a swift 
punch to each of their stomachs.  Easily knocking the wind out of them, she 
proceeded to lift the two men that had run and toss them back to their 
buddies.  Kate wondered just how the men would react now that their options 
where rapidly fading.  They might try to use their firearms on her of 
course; so far they had refrained from that.  Now that they had seen that 
they couldn’t hope to outrun her, she wondered whether they would fight like 
cornered animals or surrender.  "Alright, everybody down on the ground 
before I put you down."

Slowly the men began to comply with Kate’s request, most of them proving 
smarter then Kate had expected.  "What the fuck are you doing, just shoot 
her!"  With that a shot rang out from one of the men who hadn’t thrown down 
his weapon.  Several more shots followed.  Kate, having increased in speed 
and reaction time, was now able to track the bullets easily, and even more 
easily catch them.  Bracing her feet a bit so that the impacts wouldn’t 
shove her backwards, Kate proceeded to snatch each of the bullets out of the 
air.  A few of them would have missed her, but she chose to grab them as 
well.  As the man finally stopped firing his weapon, a horrified look 
appeared on his face as he noticed there wasn’t a single hole in her outfit.

"Nice shooting.  Seven out of those ten would have hit me.  That said, I did 
warn you about what would happen if you shot at me."  A look of utter terror 
appeared on the man’s face as he realized that not only had his weapon had 
no effect upon her, but he had just thrown away his life.  Seeing no other 
option, he quickly began to run in the opposite direction.  Kate, for her 
part, had no real intention of killing him, but she was going to repay him 
for shooting at her.  As the man ran he felt a sudden sharp pain shoot 
through his leg, sending him to the ground.  Screaming, he looked down at 
his leg and saw blood pouring from it.  Looking back towards Kate, he 
noticed the hand that had held his bullets was now empty.  She had actually 
thrown every last one of the bullets into his leg.  The other men just 
looked on, a few of them holding their hands together behind their backs in 
surrender.

Walking over to the downed crook, Kate picked him up by his shirt collar.  
She carried him over to his buddies, not rushing as she dug through her 
purse and took out a few handcuffs.  Placing them on each of the men, she 
finally took out her cell phone and dialed up the pick up crew.  "Hello, I 
would like to report that I caught six assailants, and I need an ambulance.  
One of them took a few bullets....Well, he shot them at me first....No, he's 
alive and should live.  I made sure they went into his leg...Okay, see you 
then."  Ignoring the injured man’s cries of pain, Kate began to search him 
and his buddies for weapons, not wanting to risk the lives of any normal 
police officers.  When she finally got to the man that had run from her, she 
took hold of his head and turned it so that he was looking into her eyes.  
"You shouldn’t whine too much you know.  After all, I could have killed 
you."

******************************************************************************

Kate, Mark, Eddie and even Jack all sat around the table.  They were meeting 
at Kate’s apartment to discuss further plans.  The location had been chosen 
to make sure no one pushed their way in uninvited.  On the table was a large 
stack of papers detailing the success rate of Kate’s arrests and the drop in 
crime in those areas.  The criminals and gangs in the area had finally wised 
up.  The media sure as heck hadn’t helped anything in this matter; the 
criminals had their chance to speak to reporters.  The constant reports of a 
red-haired cop with incredible strength had eventually given things away so 
that it was now commonly believed that the cops had at least one super femme 
working for them.

It had been a good operation while it lasted, but as more people heard and 
believed the stories, attacks on redheads decreased.  It was a good thing 
that at least the red heads were now safer, but reporters were beginning to 
ask the police just who the female cop was.  Kate had managed to avoid any 
reporters so far, while some of the other redheaded cops in the city had 
been questioned.  A few of them had actually had some fun with the 
reporters.  The operation lasted only a short while, but had decent results. 
  At least they had more of the criminal element arrested.

With the plan having finally been cut, they found themselves having to think 
of another way to put Kate’s abilities to good use.  "I could return to 
being a normal patrol cop."

"True enough; I do miss my partner after all, but there's got to be a better 
way to make use of your abilities."

"It's too bad that increased sense of smell of yours isn’t at a higher level 
yet.  I agree with Eddie though, there's got to be something you can do 
other than regular patrol."  Speaking up a little reluctantly, Jack finally 
managed to speak out.

"Well, her increased sense of smell isn’t the only thing Kate has at her 
disposal.  She could also make pretty darn good use of her hearing, since 
that is actually far sharper than her sense of smell.  I mean, I bet she 
could listen in to a conversation pretty darn easily."  Kate clapped her 
hands together.

"Yeah, I could stick to hanging around the neighborhoods but now I could go 
into the bars and listen in on conversations.  And even though I've got them 
a little scared of redheads, I bet they would still be willing to sell 
things to a redhead."  Smiling, Mark spoke up.

"That's quite true, and we could probably send you into some houses to buy 
drugs as well.  Unlike a normal officer we wouldn’t have to worry about them 
finding out who you are and attacking you.  And even if your nose isn’t a 
match for a dog’s I bet you could sniff anything out if it was in large 
enough quantity."  Kate was grinning by now.  She had expected to be out of 
commission for a while, but with one brainstorming session they had already 
come up with several things that she could do.

"Hey, and that means I won’t have to wear such fancy clothing and can cut 
loose more often."  Mark gave Kate a worried look.

"Actually, I would appreciate it if you didn’t cut loose any more than you 
have.  While you were in the right with the injuries you have been handing 
out, they are still an issue."  A sort of regretful grin formed on Kate’s 
face.  It was true that she hadn’t killed anyone, no matter how much force 
they had used against her, but she had dealt out some serious injuries.  The 
police had been able to keep her abilities a secret, at least so far.  When 
it came time for the trials, they knew that Kate would most likely have to 
come to the stand and explain what had happened.  That is if the news 
reporters didn’t find out about her before then.  At least for the moment 
though, she could continue working in secret.

"Alright, I'll try and go easier on them, though I do think they deserve 
it."  Mark gave a slight nod.

"Alright then.  Now Kate, I've been wondering, just what do you plan on 
doing once everyone knows your secret?  I mean, you'll probably be getting a 
good deal of media attention as the newest super powered being on the scene, 
and I doubt the normal crooks will try mugging you."

"No I imagine they won’t, but I could still do regular patrols and hopefully 
you'll keep me on the force.  I don’t have any intention of becoming a 
masked heroine; I likes me paycheck after all."  Jack grinned, knowing full 
well that Kate didn’t really need her job to make money, though he imagined 
she enjoyed it all the same.  "But I was hoping that I could change my 
uniform to something that would let me use more of my abilities."

"That sounds fair enough, and to be honest I'm glad you're planning on 
staying.  We could really use someone on the radio regularly.  Who knows, 
maybe we can even get you a fatter paycheck."

"Oh, that would be nice, and I'm glad you're going to let me stick around."  
Mark nodded his head, then let out a sigh.

"Well, we hope to keep you for as long as we can, but I don’t think we'll be 
able to keep you as a normal officer for very long.  I mean, if you stay 
with us we'll have someone who can fight on even ground with at least a few 
of those monsters.  I don’t know how the media is going to respond to that, 
and I'm sure some other government agencies will want to talk with you as 
well."  Kate grinned as she nodded her head.  Mark was probably right, 
though she wondered what form her future employment would take on.  She was 
determined to remain in law enforcement and not become part of some separate 
entity.  "I guess we'll just have to enjoy having the help of our very own 
super lady while we can."

******************************************************************************

Kate was quiet as she sat in the bar, listening in on the various 
conversations with a pad of paper sitting in front of her.  She was glad 
she'd been able to get a booth near the back of the bar instead of having to 
sit up front.  Her enhanced digestive system was coming in very handy as she 
ordered another drink, appearing to be nothing more than a young lady trying 
to drink away her concerns.  Picking up the glass and taking another gulp of 
the liquid, Kate suppressed a shudder.  She had never acquire a tasted for 
alcohol, and she knew she wouldn’t be doing it now.

She and Jack had tested earlier that week how much alcohol Kate could 
consume before getting drunk.  On the fifth bottle of hard liquor they had 
finally resolved that however much she could consume before getting drunk 
was more than enough.  The amount she had drunk at home had been more than 
enough to kill a man, especially considering how quickly she drank it, but 
she hadn’t even been buzzing.  At least it allowed her to keep up her image 
as she listened to the various people in the bar and took down notes.  Her 
enhanced hearing allowing her to zero in on any conversation in the bar.  
While she couldn't understand every conversation at once, she was at least 
able to listen for certain terms.

The only problem was, no one was talking about anything illegal or 
interesting enough to really get her attention.  But she did scribble down a 
few notes about places she might want to be or at least have another cop at 
later on.  What she was really hoping for was something bigger, someone 
looking for men for a major crime or bragging about a few of the recent 
robberies.  She had gotten some pretty good information in previous bars, 
actually allowing the cops to catch a few people in the act of a crime.  But 
this bar was proving fruitless.  There was, of course, some drunken boasting 
and general language which Kate felt warranted the speaker getting the crap 
knocked out of him, but that wasn’t her job, or legal.

Finally Kate resolved to move on.  Calling over a waitress, she got her bill 
and paid it before leaving the bar.  As she began to head down the street, 
she glanced over the notes she'd taken down.  There were a few things that 
might pan out; the mention of a stolen vehicle and where it might be located 
as well as a possible chop shop.  The man's drunken slurs had been hard for 
Kate to understand, so it would take some checking into.  As Kate was caught 
up with looking through her notes, she didn’t notice the three men who had 
exited the bar after her and were now following closely behind.  At least, 
she didn’t notice them until they were only a yard away.  A grin lit up 
Kate’s lovely features as she realized that the night might not be a total 
waste.  Slowly she began to pick up the pace, deciding to act as if she was 
panicked.

Sure enough, as she began to move more quickly the people following her did 
the same.  Her excitement grew to the point that she found herself having to 
be careful to keep her running speed within human ranges.  Scanning the 
streets, she finally found what she'd been looking for.  Quickly ducking 
into the alley, Kate was delighted to find that it was a dead end.  A few 
moments later the men entered the alley just behind her.  "Ah, what's the 
matter, lost?"  Kate had to control herself from turning around and simply 
beating the crap out of the three of them right there.  They hadn’t gotten 
on her bad side yet; it was just that since she'd begun using her power she 
had developed a taste for beating the crap out of people who she felt 
deserved it.

"Why are you following me?"  Kate attempted to make her voice as scared as 
possible as she turned around to face the men.  "Leave me alone."

"Now is that any way to be?  We just want to help you.  Come on."  As the 
men neared her, Kate backed away until she felt one of their hands take hold 
of her arm.  Pretending to struggle, she made sure that each one of them 
managed to grab her.  Then she got an arm free and smacked the largest of 
the group.  Kate only used the tiniest portion of her strength to hit the 
man, not wanting to let on that they were already in over their heads.  Much 
to Kate’s delight the man immediately reacted, drawing back his fist and 
slamming her in the face.  "Stupid move.  Now behave and you won’t get hurt 
much more."  As the men approached, Kate a bit of laughter coming from her 
lips made them stop dead in their tracks.   Slowly standing up, Kate 
couldn’t help but find the situation amusing just thinking of the fun she 
was going to have with these men.  She had to remind herself that she wasn’t 
allowed to break anything.

As the men looked at Kate, the one that hit her was surprised to see that 
there wasn’t a mark on her pretty face.  "Oh thank heavens, now we have 
assault.  I could've probably got you for assault the moment you grabbed me 
but, well a physical hit does so much more."  The men backed away for a 
moment as if realizing something.  They had of course heard the rumors of 
the redhead busting people and seen the video feeds, but hadn’t taken them 
seriously.  Now, as they looked at Kate and considered her demeanor, they 
had to worry about it being real.  Slowly they began to back away from her.

Kate, realizing from their pace that they weren’t sure about who she was but 
were sure enough going to try to run, decided to confirm their fears.  
Easily moving 100 mph, Kate ran around the group and blocked the exit to the 
alley.  "Now now, I can’t just let you run away; after all, I haven’t gotten 
to have any fun all day.  Let's see now, just what should I do to you 
three?"  Walking towards the,m Kate sighed and decided to give them a way 
out.  Reaching into her back pocket, she pulled out her badge and id.  
"Alright, here's your chance to surrender.  I will read you your rights and 
then you can go to the police station in one piece.  If you fight me, you're 
only going to end up getting hurt.  Oh, and I don’t recommend trying 
anything that would normally be considered lethal force.  That would allow 
me to do all sorts of horrible things to you."

Kate couldn’t help but grin at the look of fear in the men’s eyes, hoping 
against hope that they would decide to continue the attack.  Perhaps one of 
them would even use a gun on her.  "Come on miss, please just let us go.  We 
weren’t going to kill you, just rough you up a little."  The men began to 
back away.  A frown appeared on Kate’s face, soon replaced by a twisted grin 
as she began to wonder if she could provoke the men into attacking her by 
playing on their fears.

"Oh really, you were just going to rough me up a little, and rape me no 
doubt?  How would you like it if I roughed you up a little?  Maybe broke 
your arms or legs, showed you what it felt like to be helpless?"  Kate began 
to advance on the men, even more grateful that she'd managed to find an 
alley with only one exit.  Kate’s hope was to get the men to stop acting on 
rational thought and simply to attack her.  At the moment she couldn’t 
seriously injure them unless they resisted further.  After all, she had 
promised Mark that she wouldn’t push it anymore.

Which meant she had to somehow get these men to attack her.  They were 
beginning to feel like caged animals; they had heard the stories and knew 
that this woman had dished out some serious injuries to people already.  
Though it had all apparently been within legal limits, the thought of 
getting beaten to a bloody mess didn’t sit well with any of them.  At last 
they reacted, laying down on the ground and placing their hands behind their 
backs.  A long sigh came from Kate.  "Well blast it, you do have a brain.  I 
guess I won’t get to beat you all into a single bloody pile."  Taking a few 
moments to search and restrain the men, Kate finally pulled out her cell 
phone and dialed up some backup.

*****************************************************************************

"This so sucks."  Looking up, Jack turned his attention in the direction of 
Kate’s voice, watching as Kate maintained a light jog to cool down after 
exercising.  Of course, a light jog for her meant that she was only going a 
bit over 300mph, her speed having increased greatly over the last few weeks.

"What sucks?"

"Oh, the fact that the criminals have suddenly quit attacking me.  I swear, 
it's really beginning to tick me off that the moment they find out who I am 
they give up.  I don’t get to smack them around anymore."  This got a 
chuckle from Jack.

"Well, can you really blame them?  You don’t exactly deal with them in the 
normal way.  I hear that guy whose bullets you returned is still in the 
hospital having his leg reconstructed after you shredded it."  Jack didn’t 
bother to accuse Kate of overdoing it, mostly because he agreed with a good 
deal of her methods.  She hadn’t killed the man, which she could have done 
very easily and legally.

"I suppose you're right.  I guess that's one problem with having a 
reputation."  Thinking for a moment, Jack pushed the keyboard on the side of 
the benchpress, turning the machine off.  Standing up, he walked over to 
Kate and began to pace around her.  "Now just what are you planning?"  
Jack’s first notion was to try and tackle Kate, but he knew she might hurt 
him accidently considering the speed her legs were moving at.  Instead he 
made his way over to some of the free weights and picked up one of the 
twenty pounders.  Returning to Kate’s side, he hefted the weight as quickly 
as he could and gave Kate a sharp smack to the forehead.  Kate could have 
avoided it of course, but chose not to.  A giggle escaped her lips as Jack 
staggered back a bit.  "Oh, so you want to be the person I rough up a bit."

Shutting the machine off, Kate hopped off the device at which time Jack 
immediately tried to tackle her.  Easily holding her own, Kate took hold of 
Jack’s waistband and lifted him from the floor.  A grin formed on her lips 
as she brought him closer to herself and gave him a light kiss on the lips.  
Jack, for his part, didn’t miss a beat and continued to kick and struggle 
against Kate with all of his might.

Placing both hands on the single arm that supported him, Jack began to 
strain against it, attempting to break Kate’s grip.  Finding this impossible 
as he knew it would be, he continued to struggle as Kate carried him over to 
one of the mats.  Dropping Jack on the mat, Kate quickly moved on top of him 
and pinned him between her thighs.  Knowing that Kate’s legs would be even 
harder to move than the rest of her, Jack instead reached up for her breast. 
  Taking hold of her right breast, Jack squeezed with both hands, applying 
as much pressure as he possibly could.  This got a light moan from Kate, who 
was actually tempted to remove her shirt to allow him better access.  At the 
moment though, she had resolved to keep her shirt on during their little 
fondling sessions.  She hadn’t actually torn her shirt open since the first 
time she had allowed Jack access to her breasts, feeling that she had gone a 
little too far that day.

Kate was careful to keep her body relaxed as Jack continued to resist her, 
not wanting to harden her muscles for fear that he would hurt his hands.  
She let out a delighted squeal as he bit her shirt, trying to sink his teeth 
through it and into the skin of her nipple.  Biting down as hard as he 
could, he proceeded to bite on her nipple for a few moments until Kate 
placed a hand on his forehead and easily pushed him to the ground.  As he 
lay there she began to lean down, only to have herself suddenly lifted off 
the ground.  Jack had realized that in that position Kate couldn't exactly 
hold herself down, and since she didn’t have a limb around him any longer he 
was able to flip her off him.

Kate burst into a fit of giggles as Jack managed to get his arms around her, 
then proceeded to bite her flesh along her legs.  The sensation was 
different from his hands but quite enjoyable, especially when she thought 
that he was putting all his strength into each one of those bites and yet 
they could do nothing more than tickle her.  Kate wasn’t the only one 
enjoying herself; Jack relished the taste of her skin as he bit down upon 
it.  The fact that Kate was enjoying herself added to his pleasure as well 
as the feel of her soft flesh.  Making use of his prior experience with 
Kate, he knew she enjoyed it when he used all of his strength.  The biting 
was something he had decided to try on impulse, and she seemed to enjoy it 
enough.

Finally Kate took hold of Jack and pulled him to herself.  Forcing her lips 
against his, her tongue pushed its way into his mouth.  Kate had to be 
careful not to do this too quickly as she didn’t want to risk hurting him or 
worse yet knocking out any of his teeth.  The moment her tongue entered his 
mouth, Jack bit down upon the muscle with all his strength.  Kate, letting 
out a light moan, moved her tongue around within his mouth.  Realizing that 
Kate wasn’t guiding his hands, Jack reached down and gave Kate’s rear a 
healthy squeeze.  A moment later he felt his right hand guided to one of her 
breasts.  Once again squeezing the soft globe, he did something out of the 
ordinary with his left hand and proceeded to strike Kate a few times.  Each 
blow to her side didn’t hurt her in the least, and he knew it.  Kate, for 
her part, was enjoying the fact that he was actually punching her, though 
had it been anyone else it would have no doubt cost them some serious pain.

The fact that it was Jack and that he knew that she enjoyed it when he 
resisted her only made the experience more enjoyable for Kate.  Searching 
with his fingers for a moment, Jack was finally able to locate the twenty 
pound weight that he had hit Kate with earlier.  Using this he proceeded to 
strike her several times in the side until her hand took hold of his.  
Removing the weight from his grip, she easily slid it across the room, then 
brought his hand back down to her butt.  Realizing that Kate was done 
showing off her strength, at least by taking hits, he simply focused on 
biting her tongue and squeezing her breast and butt as hard as he possibly 
could.  Kate’s hands were not idle during this but continued to explore 
Jack’s toned body.  Though he hadn’t increased in strength since they had 
left the mountains, he had worked on keeping his body at the level it had 
been at when they departed.

He had succeeded at this, but Kate still enjoyed the thought of how his 
strength seemed to be fading away in comparison to her own.  At last when 
the two of them tired, Jack detached his lips from Kate's and gave her a 
kiss on the cheek.  "You know, we're going to have to come up with a system 
that will let you know when I really want to stop."  Kate gave Jack a 
questioning look before nodding in agreement.

"Yeah, I hadn’t thought about it before but I guess you're right.  I might 
end up hurting you, plus I wouldn’t want to force you when you truly didn’t 
like what I was doing to you."  Jack chuckled for a moment.  Normally he 
could have just used more force than normal to signal that something was 
wrong, but with Kate’s increasing strength they both knew his best efforts 
would still seem like he was just trying to please her.  "Well, one way you 
could tell me you don’t want to continue is by simply not doing anything."  
Jack gave a nod in agreement and bit down on Kate’s ear for a second.

"Yeah, I guess that would work, though we might want to come up with a more 
active signal later on.  Just in case I really need to get your attention 
for one reason or another."  Kate nodded in agreement and began to consider. 
  There wasn’t really anything physical Jack could do that she would 
recognize as a request to stop, at least not actively physical.  She could, 
of course, name a certain body part that meant he wanted to quit, but that 
wouldn’t work out; she liked feeling his hands traveling over her form and 
she liked it when he bit her.  Running her hand through her hair for a 
second, she grinned.

"I know, just give my hair a good tug if you ever want me to quit.  That's 
one thing that I don’t recall you having ever done before.  Though keep in 
mind it has to be a tug, not a pet."  Jack considered this for a moment.  
While he had run his hands through Kate’s hair, he'd never actually tugged 
it as she had said.

"Alright, that sounds like as good of a means as any.  Well now, I think 
that counted as my workout for the day, so I'm going to take a bath."

"Now how was that a good work out for you?"  Jack grinned down at Kate.

"Are you kidding?  While you were holding back I had to use every last bit 
of my strength the whole time.  Wrestling with you has got to be one of the 
most intense workouts I go through.  Though I will say it's also the most 
enjoyable."  Kate giggled as she watched Jack leave before standing up 
herself.  Stripping away her clothing, she more or less skipped out of the 
room as she made her way to her own bathroom and prepared to steam clean 
herself.

******************************************************************************

Kate sighed as she looked down at herself, once again back in her regular 
police uniform with Terry driving her around the city.  Her bar hopping had 
proven useful, but lately things were beginning to get a little hotter than 
anyone would have liked.  No one realized that the information for several 
arrests had come from the pretty lady sitting in the corner, but the media 
had begun to put on extra pressure to find out just who the young redhead 
was.  They had actually managed to get enough information to track Kate to 
the station where she worked.  The chief didn’t find that too surprising, 
but Kate still regretted it.  Now the police themselves were beginning to 
ask just who the special lady was.  Of course Kate had been asked, but she'd 
denied it.  She also made it a point to use regular martial arts when 
someone would try to tackle her to test the theory.

She knew that it was all in good humor of course, but she had accidentally 
lost her temper while dealing with a cop who just wouldn’t back off.  He 
left her alone only after she had given him a bloody nose and a sharp kick 
to the groin.  Having already had the look and reputation of a strong lady, 
she was able to hide her strength fairly well.  But in order to further help 
the situation, she was now working the regular beat again, and had been 
instructed not to use any of her abilities that would be obviously super 
powered so long as the situation didn’t require it.  Which meant instead of 
running into a room and simply taking the gun away from a criminal, she now 
had to actually shoot him.  A remarkably easy task, since she could still 
make use of her accelerated reaction time and senses which were growing ever 
sharper.

Heck, she could actually watch a bullet as it left the barrel of the weapon, 
and her eyesight was to the point that she could shoot 1 out of 3 bullets 
out of the air with her own sidearm.  She had hoped for better, but the 
chief had pointed out that the odds of anyone else shooting a bullet out of 
the air were fairly impossible.  She knew it, of course, but the simple fact 
was that she could snatch 19 out of 20 bullets out of the air with her 
hands, and the only reason that blasted twentieth got past her was the 
weapon was an automatic and they had intentionally missed her.

"Aw, is it that bad riding with me?"  Turning, Kate saw Eddie giving her a 
mock sad face.  He knew that Kate regretted having to give up her solo act, 
but they couldn’t allow her to wander around by herself forever.

"Well, you do drive awfully slowly."  Eddie rolled his eyes, speeding up to 
ten miles over the speed limit to try and appease Kate, though they both 
knew that wasn't going to happen.  She could run several hundred miles per 
hour, so cruising around at 60mph wasn’t even a true walk to her anymore.

"Ah well, I'd love to let you walk but the chief wants you keeping your 
abilities in check, and I don’t think having you running around the city 
would qualify."  Kate sighed and nodded her head in agreement.

"Can I at least take off this seat belt?  It isn’t like getting thrown 
through the windshield would hurt me."  Eddie grinned, recalling how Kate 
used to torment him by insisting that he buckle up the moment they got in 
the car.  Now that she was the one wanting to ride without her seat belt on 
he saw his chance to get even.

"Sorry Kate, but we have to try to look as normal as possible, so you have 
to wear your seat belt."  Kate puffed out her cheeks and leaned back in her 
seat.  They both knew that a good deal of police officers didn’t wear their 
seat belts, at least enough that it wouldn't seem strange.  Now here he was 
making her pay for what she had done to him over a year ago.  Sticking her 
tongue out at Eddie, Kate simply closed her eyes.  At least if she did that 
she wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that the vehicle seemed to be moving 
so very slowly.

She perked up a bit when the radio came on.  The two of them were to head to 
the Metropolis bank.  Apparently someone had noticed a suspicious looking 
vehicle and felt it should be checked out.  Looking over at Eddie, Kate 
shrugged as they turned in the direction.  They both felt that it would end 
up being nothing, but they knew it never hurt to look into things.  As Eddie 
got his vehicle turned around he grinned and flicked on the siren before 
speeding off.  He wouldn’t normally have been in much of a rush, but he knew 
how much Kate hated going slow and this at least gave him a reason to put on 
some more speed.  It wouldn’t last very long, since the bank wasn’t far from 
their current location.

Kate sighed as she looked up at the building.  It looked so strong and safe, 
and yet she knew in the current world that it was nowhere near.  Eddie 
walked up to Kate a second later, having taken the time to get his rifle out 
of the trunk.  "And what are you bringing that for?"  Eddie gave Kate a 
funny grin.

"I just like to carry it around."  Kate rolled her eyes, remembering that 
Eddie came from a long line of gun nuts.  Walking over to the door, Eddie 
peered into the building for a few moments.  "I can’t see anything, how 
about you Kate?"  Kate wasn’t overly worried at the moment, though she 
thought she smelled something strange.

"Well, there is a odd scent and hmm...hey wait a second, did they try to 
call the security guards?"  Eddie blinked for a moment.

"Ah fuck, I bet they didn’t bother to think of that before sending us out 
here."  Touching the radio on his shoulder, Eddie got a hold of dispatch.  
"Hey, did anyone try to call the guards?"  Both Eddie and Kate were 
surprised to hear that no one had picked up, but the alarm hadn’t gone off 
either.  Shrugging his shoulders, Eddie turned to Kate.  "Maybe they were on 
the can and didn’t hear?"

"What a vulgar explanation, but could be.  Hey Eddie, is a security systems 
light supposed to be green?"  Kate turned to look more intently into the 
room, getting a better view of the security system’s control pad.

"Uh nope, not to my knowledge."

"Didn't think so.  Kate wrapped her fingers around the doorknob and simply 
opened the unlocked door.  Eddie immediately gave Kate a concerned look.  
"Why don’t you call and wait for back up?  I'm going to have a look around."

"By yourself?  It could be dangerous."  As Eddie said this he looked at Kate 
and noticed the grin on her face.  Smacking himself on the forehead, he 
realized that it would be more dangerous for Kate if she had a normal person 
hanging around.  Giving Eddie a moment to leave, Kate proceeded to walk into 
the building.  She noticed the scent getting stronger as she approached one 
of the security counters.  Looking over it, Kate almost gagged right there 
as she realized she had been smelling the guard's blood, currently pooled 
around his shattered head.  Kate stepped back and took a moment to compose 
herself.  While she had seen corpses before, it was rare to see a shattered 
skull.

Drawing her sidearm, Kate proceeded into the building, careful not to make 
too much noise.  As she checked the first floor she found another of the 
security guards in the hall.  Walking over to the corpse, Kate bent down and 
looked it over.  At first she didn’t see anything unusual, until she noticed 
some bite marks upon the throat.  The marks were odd, like the ones you 
would see in a vampire movie except whatever had done this hadn't sucked out 
all the blood.  Curiously, Kate rolled the corpse over onto its back.  While 
the first had had its head shattered so that she couldn’t get a good idea of 
how old he was, it was clear that this had been a young man.  Kate began to 
feel a mixture of fear and anger building within her.

Resolving to continue onward, Kate made her way up the stairs, trying to 
keep her eyes and ears open to the slightest sound.  Gripping her sidearm, 
Kate remembered that the chief wanted her to use her gun.  This only lasted 
until she made her way into the wreck.  Laying on the floor were three more 
corpses, all of them guards.  The room was an utter mess.  Bullet holes 
lined the walls where the guards had clearly been trying to hit something.  
Whatever it was, they hadn’t hit their mark, meaning it must have been 
moving very quickly.  From the broken bones it was also apparent that it 
must have hit the guard extremely hard.  Walking on into the room, Kate let 
her weapon slide from her fingers and struggled to keep her fear in check.  
She didn’t know what had done this, but it wasn’t human.  No, it most 
assuredly wasn’t human.

As Kate thought about this she felt her anger building to surpass her fear.  
"No, whatever did this was a creature, a beast."  Kate was looking at five 
more men murdered by who knows what.  Her anger continued to grow.  As she 
walked out of the room she absently slammed a fist into the wall, easily 
turning a section of it to powder.

"Hey, what was that?"

"Never you mind what it was, I'll go have a look."  The man looked over his 
shoulder at his boss for a moment before getting back to work.  The inhuman 
yellow eyes glared at the man for slowing; they needed to get out of here 
before anyone showed up.  Silently the copper figured walked out of the 
room.  Making use of his agility, he slipped his slender form easily through 
the vents, having used them to get into the building and ambush the security 
officers.

Kate attempted to keep herself under control as she continued through the 
floors, though she had forgotten to pick up her sidearm.  At the moment that 
wasn’t her main concern; rather it was checking the entire building to see 
if anyone was still in it and if they were to blame for what had happened.  
Her mind was distracted to the point that she didn’t even notice the figure 
moving through the vents and coming down behind her.  A moment later Kate 
felt a terrific impact slam into the back of her neck.  Though the blow 
didn’t actually hurt her, it easily lifted her 180lbs from the ground and 
send her sliding across the floor.  The sound of a figure jumping down from 
the ceiling and approaching her got her attention a moment later.  "Well 
blast it all, it looks like I missed one.  Too bad you didn’t stay wherever 
you where hiding sweetheart, you wouldn’t have had to die."

"I'm not dead, you son of a bitch."  Kate slowly rolled over, her anger 
clearly showing in her eyes as she caught sight of Copperhead.  No wonder 
the guards hadn’t seen it coming.

"Oh my, you are a tough one.  I guess we will have to fix that."  Stalking 
towards Kate, the arrogant villain had no idea how much danger he was 
currently in, while Kate knew exactly how much danger she was in.  If his 
sneak attack had failed to even stun her, she doubted he had anything that 
could hurt her badly.

"So you were the one that killed those officers?  And you couldn’t have just 
knocked them out?"  Kate’s voice was cold as she struggled to contain 
herself, recalling how much trouble this smart ass had caused the police.  
This wasn’t the first time he had killed innocent people and Kate doubted it 
would be the last.

"Well of course I could have, I just didn’t want to.  But don’t feel sad for 
them; you'll join them shortly."  Kate had heard enough.  She brought 
herself into her accelerated state as Copperhead lunged at her.  Her hand 
shot out and caught his throat, the sudden stop causing him to choke.  
Twitching with anger as she held the villain aloft, Kate felt his tail 
slamming into her side several times, the impacts not even able to harm her.

"You son of a bitch."  She gave Copperhead a light toss, though she put 
enough force into it to crack the wall.  "You simply chose to kill those men 
for no reason other than kicks.  You didn’t even have to kill them to take 
the money."  As Copperhead lay against the wall, Kate began to advance on 
his downed form, fighting a losing battle to keep herself under control.  
Copperhead, recovering from the impact, slowly rose to his feet.  An evil 
grin appeared on his face as the arrogant villain recalled the news reports. 
  He had thought they were just kidding until now.

"Oh, it is Super Cop I see.  Well don’t get your hopes up sweetheart, I've 
tangled with the League.  There's no way you're taking me back to jail."  An 
evil grin slowly spread across Kate’s own lips as he boasted and then lunged 
at her.  Apparently he had forgotten what happened last time he did that.  
She would have to make sure he remembered this time.  Lashing out with her 
hand, Kate easily backhanded the villain, once again sending him into the 
wall.

"You only survived those encounters because they let you.  I on the other 
hand have no such intentions."  Kate could feel her anger taking hold of 
her.  The feeling was very similar to what she had felt when she and Eddie 
had been shot at.  She had managed to control herself then by rationalizing 
that the men couldn’t kill her, though that had turned out to be a mistake.  
She had also told herself that they hadn't yet killed anyone, at least not 
to her knowledge.  This creature,  on the other hand, was a known villain 
who had not only escaped from jail numerous times but been responsible for 
several deaths.  Determined to prove his ego, Copperhead lunged at Kate once 
again.  This time he was able to get ahold of her, latching onto her arm.  
He proceeded to drive his fangs into the skin of her arm, and hurt his jaw.

Kate’s eyes showed utter contempt as she easily threw the creature from her 
arm.  She could have shattered his skull at any moment, but she wanted to 
make him pay for what he had done.  Copperhead realized that he was 
outmatched the moment his teeth failed to make it through Kate’s skin.  
"Damn you, whore!" the villain roared as he once again leapt into the air, 
this time going for the vents.  Moving quickly, Kate was able to take hold 
of the beast's tail before he could reach his escape route.  Giving it a 
good tug, she sent him slamming to the ground.  There was no way she was 
going to give him a chance to escape.  After all, what chance had he given 
any of the guards?  The thought of the young guard she found downstairs was 
the most upsetting of all.  She tried to imagine what it would be like to 
die from a toxin running through your veins.

"Now are you sure you should be calling me that?"  She gripped the tail 
tighter.  Copperhead let out a scream of pain before once again attacking 
her.  As he pounded and bit her for all he was worth, Kate just stood there, 
allowing him to tear away her clothing.  The grin upon her face remained 
unchanged.  She wanted to let him expend his energy, to really let it sink 
in just what was going on.  At last it began to happen; as the furious 
attacks continued Copperhead found his strength draining away.  At last, 
when he was left panting, Kate spoke.  "Is that all you have for me?"

"H--hold on, aren’t you a cop?  You can’t just kill me."

"No, I suppose you're right, so I guess I'll get to reading you your rights. 
  You have the right to shut the fuck up."  Kate’s anger had nearly doubled 
when the creature mentioned legal system.  The very system he mocked he was 
now trying to hide behind.  Well, she would make sure his vile tongue never 
spoke those words again.  Reaching out, Kate forced her hand inside the 
villain’s mouth, much to his surprise.  Releasing the hold on his tail she 
took hold of his lower and upper jaws.  Slowly Kate began to pull down with 
her right hand, pulling his lower jaw out from his face.  The screams of 
pain that came from the creature actually managed to reach the man upstairs, 
though he couldn’t tell what it was.

Kate’s fingers easily sunk through the bone and muscle, reptilian blood 
beginning to gush over her fingers.  Finally, with a horrific crunch and the 
sound of ripping flesh, Kate pulled Copperhead’s lower jaw from his body.  
The gurgle that came from his throat spoke his pain.  Grinning, Kate let the 
jaw drop to the ground as well as the villain.  "Ah, I see that you choose 
to remain silent.  Well then, let's get these cuffs on you."  Copperhead 
started to try to crawl away from Kate the moment he hit the ground.  Never 
before had anyone done this kind of damage to him.  The pain was almost 
unbearable, and to make matters worse, the whole time she had worn the same 
look of complete contempt.  Even in his throes of pain, Copperhead’s 
arrogance showed through as he couldn’t believe this girl would dare do such 
a thing to him.

After allowing Copperhead to crawl along for a moment Kate finally pounced 
on his back.  Taking his wrists in her hands, she wrapped her legs around 
the struggling snake and put his wrists in cuffs.  She began to tighten 
them.  At first it seemed as if she was only going to handcuff him, but soon 
it became clear that wasn’t the case as she continue to apply pressure.  The 
steel began to cut through his muscles, pushed forward by Kate’s incredible 
strength.  Kate didn't seem to mind the blood that began to flow even as it 
continued to coat her hands and body.  Slowly the room was beginning to look 
even bloodier than the one with the three cops.

At last the cuffs stopped as they met his bones.  Kate teeth showed as she 
noted this and couldn’t help grinning.  The power she felt at this moment 
was just too thrilling; this wasn’t a normal man she was so easily handling 
but a creature many would have considered super powered, though a low level 
one.  And here she was tearing him apart so very easily.  A moment later 
there was the crunch of bones as the cuffs went through them, Copperhead’s 
gargled screams continuing the entire time.  "Whoops, hehe, it seems that I 
applied a little too much pressure.  Ah well, I guess I don’t need to cuff 
your arms anymore.  That does mean I better cuff your legs to make sure you 
don’t run away.  You're such a slippery person after all."  Kate was so 
caught up in this that she didn’t even notice the man peek into the room 
before running back upstairs, a look of total terror in his eyes.

"WE HAVE TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!"  The other men turned in the 
direction of the voice as their colleague burst into the room.  They all 
knew he had gone to go and check on their leader.

"Why, what's going on?"

" There's some one downstairs, she's taking the boss apart, literally!"  For 
a moment the men blinked, unable to believe what their partner was saying.  
"What are you waiting for?  We have to go!"

"Are you sure you weren’t seeing things?"  The man gasped for a moment as 
they questioned him.  He wasn’t in the mood to be questioned; he wanted to 
get out of the building.

"Fine, stay if you want!  I'm getting out of here before that witch comes up 
here to take us apart too."  Quickly dashing out of the room, he left his 
partners to consider their situation.  Without the sound of the drill they 
could now hear something of what was going on just one floor down.  Some of 
them began to walk absently away, others to check on what was going on.

Eddie was waiting impatiently at his car, wondering what was taking so long. 
  Pacing back and forth, he was surprised to see a man running out the front 
door of the building wearing a mask.  Quickly he leveled his shotgun at the 
man, who immediately stopped.  "Freeze and get down on the ground."

"Please, you have to get me out of here, she's going to kill me!"  The man 
seemed hysterical.  Wondering what was going on, Eddie wondered if Kate was 
in trouble, or if she had managed to scare the man this badly.  Deciding to 
go along with it, Eddie waved the barrel a bit.

"Get down on the ground and then you can wait in the nice safe police car."  
Much to Eddie’s surprise, the man almost fell face first in order to comply 
with his request.  Walking over to him, Eddie quickly handcuffed the man and 
gave him a quick check over.  Just as he was putting the man in the car, 
three more came running out of the building clearly panicked.  Once again he 
put them through the same procedure, grateful that he kept extra cuffs in 
the vehicle.  Looking towards the building, he wondered what had happened to 
them to scare them so badly.

Kate grinned as she looked down upon Copperhead's writhing form.  He was 
still alive, but he didn’t have a limb that hadn’t been damaged.  His hands 
and feet were cut off, his jaw was ripped out and even his tail bore deep 
imprints of Kate’s fingers.  All she needed to do now was to put the 
creature out of its pain.  The thought of how the security guards had looked 
flashed into her mind, the brutal blows that had killed them so easily and 
the blood that covered the ground.  Looking around, Kate noted the amount of 
blood that now covered the room, and herself.  Then slowly, with the same 
dark grin on her face, Kate, her clothing torn and her entire body covered 
in blood, walked out of the room.  She could hear the sound of sirens; the 
backup that Eddie had called for was finally arriving.

As the other police cars and ambulances pulled up, Eddie finally rushed 
towards the building.  But he stopped short, shocked to see Kate walk out of 
the building with a wide grin upon her face, a grin that even made him 
shudder a bit.  Her clothing was torn and blood was running from her 
fingers.  He didn’t get to her in time though, as the ambulance crew, 
noticing the state she was in, quickly rushed to her side.  "Copperhead is 
in the building."  A few of the cops turned in Kate’s direction before 
quickly rushing in, thinking that she had managed to just escape him.  They 
hadn’t heard the men screaming about a woman.  The ambulance crew looked 
perplexed as they cleaned up the blood, exposing more and more of Kate’s 
flawless skin.  Slowly they began to realize that the blood that coated her 
body was someone else’s.

Turning in Kate’s direction, Eddie formed an idea of what had happened 
inside that building.  Making matters worse was the grin he had seen her 
walk out of the building with, now fading slowly away.