Chapter 3
"How are things, Herman? Anything new?" Samson set his water glass aside and gave his magnificent hair a shake. I'd been staring at it with barely concealed envy, and he caught me. One eyebrow went up. "We haven't seen each other in person for a while. Sorry about that — I much prefer in-person sessions to a quick video call check-in. Want me to knock something off the rate?"
"Sure, thanks…"
"You seem exactly the same, by the way."
"Your sessions run two hundred dollars an hour. Of course we haven't been meeting in person." I settled onto the couch out of habit, already falling into the familiar rhythm. Several months had passed since the incident at the store and my up-close introduction to this world's brand of superheroics. Not much had changed — but some things had. "I should've listened to Amanda and spent that money on four girls from Figueroa Street instead."
"Well now," Samson said. I braced for a joke about my newfound bravery, but the crafty doctor had caught something else entirely — the slip I hadn't even noticed making. "So you're still in contact?"
"With who?" The attempt to play dumb collapsed immediately when Samson leaned forward and poked his right index finger through a circle made by his left thumb and middle finger. "Oh, for — do I look like a Catholic priest to you?"
"Sometimes. Just the mannerisms, really. But mostly no." He shrugged easily and settled back into his chair. The relaxed posture used to be a deliberate technique for my benefit — it wasn't necessary anymore. Over the past couple of months, my fears had gotten smaller, and so had the problems with controlling my ability. "Besides, I don't see anything objectionable about it. On paper she's a legal adult, and honestly, *she'd* be the one with a problem if you two… so to speak. Rubbed tummies."
"Please stop—"
"Did the horizontal tango."
"Leo—"
"Got each other nice and wet."
"I'm asking you—"
"Had sex."
"That's it, I'm leaving." Under the thunderous laughter of my therapist, I went for the door and found it locked. This was a first. I'd somehow forgotten that Samson treated supers, and that escaping his office by force would require being at least as strong as he was. "Unlock the door."
"Sorry, sorry, couldn't help it." He was lying. Shamelessly, directly, while looking me straight in the eye. Something in my expression must have communicated exactly how I felt about that, because Leo raised his hands in surrender — still smiling, not remotely apologetic. "All right, truly, I'm sorry. But… do you not see your own progress?"
"What progress—"
My voice trailed off as it dawned on me.
I wasn't scared. I hadn't soaked through my clothes — which sounded deeply unimpressive stated plainly, but there was no better way to describe what used to happen to my entire body. More to the point: I wasn't shaking. I wasn't stuttering.
"There it is," Samson said, reading my face without effort. He ran his palm across the surface of the couch — dry — and patted it slowly. "Shall we continue?"
"But how? Why?"
"Which part specifically, Herman?" A perfectly ordinary cookie appeared from his desk drawer, which the benevolent uncle Samson began offering in my direction. "Cookie? For the glory of the Dark Side?"
"This is starting to feel like the opening of something very inappropriate…" I took it anyway, because I wasn't going to turn down a free cookie, but I couldn't let it pass without comment.
"Sorry, kid — you're not my type. I prefer big guys."
"*What?*" I processed that for several seconds before staring at him with the eyes of a deer in oncoming headlights.
"What?" He seemed genuinely confused by my confusion, then reached into his back pocket and produced his wallet. Without a trace of embarrassment, he showed me a family photo — himself with a petite Asian woman, both of them hugging a small boy. "That was a joke, Herman. I'm into small, slender, adorable Asian women. I *love* it when Tatsu puts on her old superhero demon mask and dominates me. She steps on my—"
"I don't want to hear this, oh my God." The first drops of moisture formed on my palms. Sheer willpower was the only thing holding the rest back — another few seconds of this particular stress and I'd have burst like cheap plumbing in a roadside truck-stop diner. "Why do you *do* this?"
"Honestly?" I gave a small, cautious nod. Leo's face shifted back to something focused — genuinely signaling that the jokes were actually over this time. "I'm stress-testing you. Have you not noticed? Your progress is remarkable. In just a couple months of spending time with Amanda, you've gained more ground than in all of our sessions combined. You're holding your own. Pushing back. Showing actual personality."
Samson's words weren't exactly a revelation. Somewhere deep down, underneath all the grumbling, I'd known it — two months of whatever this strange friendship was had changed me, and visibly for the better.
"Maybe…"
"Not maybe. Definitively." He raised one finger in a teacherly gesture and let it sway side to side, his expression warm. "I think we no longer need to meet as frequently. Once every two or three months is enough. I laid the groundwork, we've talked through your problems — what's left is solving them. And time spent with someone like Amanda is an excellent way to do exactly that."
"You're sure?"
"When have I ever lied to you?"
"Constantly!" I shot up off the couch and pointed triumphantly at the grinning idiot. "Like the time you handed over your notebook and it was nothing but caricatures of superheroes!"
"Those were perfectly good drawings," Samson muttered, but let it go. "On a serious note — never. And you know that."
My cheeks went slightly pink. It was embarrassing. The old echoes of Herman's habits whispered that I should apologize — I fought that particular reflex down, held myself together, and—
"Bleh."
"HA! Nearly fifteen minutes! That's my boy!" He clapped me on the shoulder before I could dodge, and with a magician's flourish produced a piece of gummy candy from his shirt pocket. "Lemon slice?"
"You complete bastard…"
"Don't pout — it doesn't suit you." He looked me over from head to foot, and handed me my personal towel, which now lived permanently in his office. He waited patiently while I dried off. "All right, enough fun. I've been deliberately not pressing on this so I wouldn't spook you, but now… Let's talk about Amanda properly. I remember your first meeting in the store — how exactly did the two of you end up friends?"
---
Exactly how much time had passed after two separate women had struck me in the same sensitive location in a single day, I couldn't say precisely.
Work, training, helping Grandma around the house — all of it consumed the hours, and I had no particular desire to dwell on what had happened. It had happened. Fine.
So when I stepped out of the house one morning and found a familiar grumpy face waiting outside, my first response was instinctive.
"Don't come any closer!" I cupped both hands protectively over my most vulnerable assets and raised my voice from sheer panic, pressing my back against the locked front door. She stood there, lips pressed together, watching me. "Once wasn't enough for you?"
"What are you *talking* about, you idiot?" Oddly, in that moment she didn't seem so terrible. Her cheeks had gone slightly red and she was looking off to the side — though on reflection, that was probably because the neighbors were watching and strangers were passing by. "Keep shouting like that and I'll scream that you're a pervert!"
"That's not fair! You're the one who t-touched my—"
"Shut *up!* I didn't *touch* anything, I *hit* it. Like *this.*" She threw a short, sharp punch at the air in the approximate region of my groin, and I swallowed a mouthful of spit. "And anyway, that's not why I'm here!"
"Then what do you want?!"
"I came to *apologize,* you idiot!" She advanced on me, then seemed to shrink slightly as she got closer, and ended up looking away — just far enough that I'd still hear. "You got hurt because of me…"
"Of course I got hurt!" The stutter retreated, replaced by genuine indignation. I dropped my hands and took one confident step forward — and froze as my breathing started coming apart. "You *kneed* me."
"Not that! I meant the Invisible Bitch." Her eyes shifted to that unsettling yellow-and-black, and her skin took on a faint green tinge. She stamped one foot against the pavement — the asphalt made a sound of quiet complaint — and spent nearly ten full seconds getting herself under control, during which I slowly, steadily backed toward the door. "Sneaky, underhanded — I would've *destroyed* her if it weren't for those cheap tricks!"
"Okay, you're forgiven." Her skin was still hovering on the edge of green, and my body was sending urgent signals to get inside immediately. After the weeks of explosive aquatic diarrhea, those signals had developed strong opinions and expressed them forcefully. "I'll just be going—"
"*Stay.*" She grabbed my elbow with strength that had nothing to do with her size. And that was when my body finally gave up.
"Oh, for—"
"Again?! What *are* you? God, that's disgusting—"
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and actually felt a twinge of sympathy for the poor kid. I reached into a sealed pouch on my belt, pulled out a dry paper towel, and began patting her hair.
For the first sixty seconds she just stood there with her mouth open, blinking at me in absolute bewilderment — lips parting and closing like she was trying to form words and repeatedly failing. Then I made the critical error. The one I didn't fully understand until later.
I unfolded a fresh dry towel, began gently blotting her face, and smiled — and actually felt calm. Peaceful, even. She was just a kid who'd gotten splashed, nothing more. If she were an adult woman, I never could have done this. But this was fine.
"There we go, little one," I said, without thinking. "All clean again… Oh. Ugh — *oof* — *why?!*"
A fresh blow caught me — in the stomach this time, mercifully, rather than lower — and while I was still processing that, she kicked me behind the knee as well. She was crimson from her ears to her collar, shaking like a kettle on high heat.
"Who the *hell* are you calling 'little one?!' I'm twenty-four!"
"My mistake… you've aged well." I should not have said that. If I'd thought she was angry before, this was something categorically different — but then, after ten seconds of deep, controlled breathing, she hauled me upright with one hand like I weighed nothing.
"…Thanks."
"Don't mention it." She shook water off her own hand and looked me over one more time. "Fine. Come on."
"Where? I think I'd rather go home—"
"I'm buying you lunch, you hopeless virgin." She clicked her tongue and started walking, apparently assuming I'd follow. After about ten steps she glanced back at me over her shoulder from under her brows — an expression that could only be described as aggressively threatening. "How long do I have to wait? *Move.* This is me apologizing."
---
And that was how my personal tally of green monster acquaintances got its third entry. First the Hulk, then Samson, and now Amanda.
What could you say about Amanda?
Before I'd met her, I'd been fairly convinced I'd drawn the short straw in the superpower lottery. After she told me her story, I kept that opinion to myself — tucked away quite deeply, if I was being honest.
She could transform into a green giant. Stronger, faster, tougher, and dramatically harder to kill. She could level smaller buildings with her fists and bring down skyscrapers with a well-placed kick. Sounds incredible, right? And unlike the Hulk, she had complete control of herself in that form, fine motor skills included.
But every power worth having costs something.
Every time Amanda transformed, she paid for it in years of her life. Every transformation took a week off her age. On paper that sounds manageable — just be careful, don't use your abilities unnecessarily — but Amanda described it as being cursed. The way she laughed when she said it was desperate and hollow enough to make me uncomfortable. She looked genuinely broken in that moment.
And when I asked the obvious question, she answered it.
"No matter how many times I try to live a normal life…" She shoved a full spoonful of ice cream in her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut, clearly hit with brain freeze — and then people wondered why they kept mistaking her for a teenager. "…trouble always finds me. Meteorite falls here, supers brawl with a villain there, someone robs my uncle's store around the corner… It's relentless."
So she'd used her power again and again, until she'd gone from twenty-four to not quite fifteen. She showed me her documents and her old photos — a very attractive, well-built young woman smiling back from the pictures. Very well-built. Exceptionally, even. Ahem.
But the situation wasn't entirely hopeless. This world had more than its share of scientists, sorcerers, and magical entities, so finding a solution to her problem had at least been possible — and Monster Girl, as the Superhero Dispatch Service apparently called her, had managed it.
She'd found a way to freeze her aging in place and let it move forward at a normal rate from there. A small enchanted belt that stored her age data from before each transformation and restored it once she returned to her human form.
"I used to look twelve, can you imagine?" She slurped noisily through a straw and flopped back against the booth seat, kicking her feet up onto the empty chair across from us. The café was quiet — just the two of us — so nobody commented on the rudeness. Or maybe they just knew she could turn into a three-meter nightmare and reduce the furniture to rubble. "That was a rough stretch. Though I did build a pretty solid career during that period."
"What do you mean?"
"Luring pedophiles as bait." She shrugged, totally untroubled, and casually reached over and lifted my juice glass out of my hand. She sipped through the straw, cheeks coloring faintly. "You should've seen their faces when I transformed. Heh-heh-heh."
What a disturbing laugh. Somewhere between a villain's cackle and a delighted child.
"Okay, good talk," she announced abruptly, cutting off the conversation mid-beat. She stood and extended a hand toward me without looking at it. Not entirely sure what I was supposed to do with that, and deeply unwilling to find out the hard way, I placed every bill I had into her palm. It was barely enough to cover the check. "…What is this?"
Her surprise was completely genuine. Disarmingly so. I froze. Maybe I hadn't given enough — she was looking annoyed again.
"Money. Sorry, it's all I have—"
"Are you *serious?!*" She clenched the whole wad and threw it directly at my face. She was blushing furiously, gaze redirected to somewhere that wasn't me. "Do I look like some kind of school bully to you? Why would I want your lunch money?! Give me your phone!"
"Sorry, sorry—" I fumbled the phone out with shaking hands and pushed it into hers. She took it with a satisfied nod and I just stood there, frozen in place. She unlocked it with practiced ease and started doing something in my ancient button-phone, until—
She handed it back?
"All right, see you around — I'll call when I have a day off." And without another word she practically jogged out of the café, leaving me staring after her.
I sat at the table for a few more minutes before a polite cough came from beside me. The waitress — a sweet-looking girl — shifted uncomfortably when our eyes met, then bowed slightly and held out the check.
"I'm so sorry — I can see this is already a difficult situation, and I do feel for you, but…" Right. The waitress had watched the whole thing and concluded I was on a date with a minor who had just dumped me. "Please, could you settle the bill? I really can't afford to lose this job."
"Bleh."