We Could Be Heroes

by Harmon Cooper

  “Sam?” she asked, her eyeliner runny, red blemishes on her cheeks.

  And regardless of the fight taking place, Sam went to her, totally ignoring the rapid-fire kicks Helena was giving to the final guard, ignoring the fact that a portal had opened up on the far side of the room, and that a mohawked man with furious red eyes was just about to clean house with them.

  All Sam cared about was freeing Zoe, and his concern for his ex came at the cost of a blast of kinetic energy cutting Helena down.

  “Shit!” Sam cried, just as he managed to free Zoe, who instantly went to work on a small device they’d put around her wrist so she couldn’t call a teleporter.

  The last thing he remembered was smashing into the wall, his breath knocked out of him, everything going dark.

  Chapter Nine: The Breast Deterrent

  (Let’s hope our sort-of heroes aren’t dead while we check back in with Ms. Ozella Rose.)

  Ozella Rose was running late for work, again, again again, like seriously the fifth time this week. Maybe the sixth. No fifth, definitely fifth. For someone who was so good at keeping tabs on others, inventing entire lives and personalities through her statkeeping and modification, she was pretty much shit at keeping track of her own life.

  And as Ozella waited for the trolley that would take her to the cosplay cafe, knowing that she could also take a teleporter but teleporters cost money, Ozella opened her cute red backpack and took out the book she used for people that she was more familiar with.

  Once Ozella gave someone base stats through the several templates she’d already created in the Book of Templates, she would put the subject into her Book of Known Variables (as she mentally christened it), and modify the stats over time using pencil.

  For her boss, a shitty non-exemplar with a braided mullet named Bobby Gass, Ozella had started with “Chester the Molester” as her base stat, and had been modifying it over the last six months once Bobby reached the Book of Known Variables.

  And like anyone in the Book of Known Variables, she’d compiled even more information about her manager.

  Bobby Gass

  Cleverness: 3

  Charisma: 2

  Corruptness: 8

  Gullibility: 2

  Attractiveness: 1

  Kindness: 2

  Neediness: 9

  Known Trigger Points: Being late to work, lunch breaks, wearing conservative clothing, paid overtime, vacation days

  Exemplar or Non-Exemplar: Non-Exemplar

  Astrological Sign: Ventas

  Temperature Preference: Cold

  Family Relations: Lives with mother, sister is an attorney

  Idiosyncrasies and Nervous Ticks: Likes to bite his nails, distracted easily by large breasts, wheezes and huffs when taking stairs, farts after lunch (avoid), does laundry once a week (freshest on Wednesday), mother makes his lunches and doubles the onions on Thursday for onion sandwich day (avoid), likes to talk politics but is easily swayed by tabloids and the opinions of the janitor

  Known Lovers and Sexual Preferences: Still a virgin; tits

  Willingness to Try New Things: 1

  Public Awareness: 1

  And as Ozella normally did when she was running late, she unbuttoned her white blouse two buttons further down than she normally would, her schoolgirl uniform tie hanging loose, her breasts barely contained by the soft cotton.

  She almost felt sorry for the single button still keeping her mammaries from spilling out, but if this would keep Bobby off her ass (and onto her tits), it was worth it.

  It was almost comical to Ozella how easily men were swayed by breasts, especially because Ozella’s had come seemingly out of nowhere, poor (or lucky) Ozella going from A cups to perky Ds in her second semester in high school. From zero to hero, as one of her classmates had said at the time, much to her embarrassment.

  And even as she loosened up a bit, making sure her breasts were in place, she sensed one of the guys waiting for the trolley staring at her with lustful eyes.

  Ozella felt the urge to rate the guy using her Book of Templates, but decided against it because eye contact with this creep would likely bring more attention than she wanted.

  The thing was, she needed to see someone to rank them, and just sensing them didn’t quite do the trick. And sure, her senses told her he was a Chester the Molester type, but he could easily be a Smarty Arty or even a Bland Stan, the way he was ogling her making it impossible to get an accurate measure.

  No matter.

  The trolley came, and Ozella quickly found a seat away from the guy. Once the trolley started back up, she took a mirror from her small red backpack and made sure her makeup was done right, that her tits weren’t too exposed.

  Chapter Ten: Three-Way Death

  (Evidence that we really have no control of where our minds go when we’re tied to a wind turbine.)

  “Yes, Sam. Yes, Sam. Yes, Sam!” Helena gasped. “Harder! Please, harder than that! Harder than that! Yes! That hard! Perfect hardness! Exemplary work! Level up! So hard!”

  Legs spread wide and her hands under knees, Helena moaned even deeper as Sam slipped in and out of her. He could still taste her on his lips, a sweet tangy scent that had his nostrils spinning, making him sigh deeply as he stopped for a moment, looked down, noticing the lips of her vagina quivering as he moved in and out.

  A hand came to his chest, the woman’s nails digging into his flesh.

  “She said harder,” a deeper, female voice said into his ear, her tongue flitting against his earlobe. A voice he instantly recognized.

  <>

  “You want both of us, Sam?” the deeper voice asked.

  They were on his bed, except that the bed was like twice its normal size and covered in velvet blankets.

  The woman with the tiger ears, otherwise known as Zoe Goa Ramone, who cosplay modeled under the name Tiger Lily, was sitting on her knees, her large breasts swaying ever-so-slightly as she rocked back and forth, as she bared her teeth, as lean Helena Knight came up from behind and draped her hands over Zoe’s shoulders, Zoe tilting her head to the right and locking lips with Helena.

  Sam watched them kiss for a moment, Zoe eventually moving away just a bit, her tongue coming out of her mouth and licking Helena’s face, only Helena’s face was now covered in Sam’s sticky white seed (holy shit he didn’t remember doing that!), and now they were playing with…

  <>

  “This is it,” Sam thought, as Zoe came into his arms, Helena off to his left, her lean body at odds with Zoe’s curvy features.

  Helena touched herself as she watched Zoe and Sam make out, Zoe’s erect nipples pressed into Sam’s chest, her ass accentuated by the fact she was sitting on her knees, a resting twerk ass if there ever was one. And sure as that thought came, she started moving each cheek individually like a wave as she kissed him, Sam hypnotized by the movement.

  Sam wasn’t going to be able to do much from his current position, on his knees, which Zoe intuited as she shifted around, moving her pear-shaped ass to the perfect mounting position, Sam counting his blessings, Sam pressing the head of his penis into her vagina, Sam gasping as he entered Zoe, as Helena moved to her elbows to make out with the tiger-eared woman.

  Flesh moving all around him; the sensations; the forbidden nature of what they were doing; Helena’s gray eyes locked on Sam, her pupils big and black as she kissed Zoe
; Zoe’s body vibrating as she put more weight onto her forearms, her dark hair in her face as she arched her back even more, curved her neck back just a little…

  <>

  Chapter Eleven: Turbine

  (Three is company, four is a crowd.)

  Ozella Rose managed to stop her manager, Bobby Gass, from giving her too much shit.

  It was amazing what a flash of cleavage could do, and it was equally amazing that this strategy had worked for so long.

  (What Ozella didn’t know was that Bobby Gass often hoped she’d come in late because it gave him great spank bank material the moment she left his office. He wasn’t as dumb as she had originally anticipated, even if he lived with his mother and had barely passed high school.)

  “Just don’t let it happen again,” Bobby said, his beady eyes jumping from Ozella’s chest to her face.

  “I’ll try not to…”

  The power cut out and quickly turned back on.

  “Shit, again?”

  Ozella shrugged. She was a woman of few words, her shy nature always getting the best of her even if the person around her was someone she was familiar with.

  “We’d better go check it out,” Bobby said, leaning back in his chair. Yep, there was a half-chub in the shitty khakis his mother had recently ironed for him, but it wasn’t like it would be large enough for Ozella to notice anyway.

  The power flickered again.

  After getting a reno expense account from corporate to do some work on the building, Bobby had done the green thing by recently replacing the wind turbine on the roof, which generated most of the cosplay club’s power.

  But the turbines Bobby had selected were cheap, easily disturbed.

  And yes, there was backup power through a crate-sized battery that the Eastern Province (damn techies) had invented, but Bobby’s latest readings told him that the backup power had been drained, that their electricity was coming straight from the turbine right now, and all the flickering lights were bad for business.

  Something was definitely up, and rather than call the damn turbine company and get charged a fee just to teleport one of their technicians out, Bobby figured he’d go up there with Ozella to see if there was an obstruction causing the turbines to act up.

  The odds that he’d be able to fix something were slim, but at least he’d get to watch Ozella take the stairs in front of him, and with proper lighting, he’d get a peek up her schoolgirl skirt and possibly a sweet shot of her snatch.

  And that was exactly what he tried to do as the two took the stairs to the top of the establishment, Ozella being sure to press the ends of her skirt down, but failing a couple of times and allowing Bobby to catch a glimpse.

  The urge to send a heel back and into his jowly face was strong in Ozella, but she needed this job, so she focused on just making it up to the tops of the stairs as quickly as possible.

  The next time she modified Bobby’s stats in her Book of Known Variables, she’d have to put a note in there to avoid going to the rooftop with him. Pervert, Ozella thought as she opened the rooftop door, her eyes settling first on the dark night and stars above, then onto the well-lit turbine, seeing…

  “I know them!” she gasped, instantly recognizing the Good Guy Dave and Gym Rat Pat that had visited the cosplay cafe the other night.

  “What are you talking about?” Bobby asked, brushing a little too close to Ozella, his fingers lightly touching her exposed waist.

  “Hey!”

  “Accident,” he started to say, his dumb eyes falling onto the three people tied to the turbine, each person affixed to the inside one of the three blades. “Holy shit! Are those really people?”

  “Yes, you idiot.” Ozella pushed away from him, in the direction of the emergency shut off switch. She flicked the cap open, brought both hands onto the red lever, and was just about to pull it when Bobby told her to stop.

  “We need to call law enforcement,” he grunted. “And don’t shut off the power, there are people cosplaying down there!” A befuddled look came across his face. “Wait, did you call me an idiot?”

  “Screw you!” Ozella shouted at the gropey forty-something who gave new definition to the word ‘loser.’ Her hands now on the lever, she yanked it down, a clicking sound indicating the wind turbine was shutting off.

  “Now wait just a minute,” Bobby started to say, “I’ll tolerate you being occasionally late, but I damn sure won’t have one of my employees talking to me like that!”

  “Shut up,” Ozella said under her breath as she took to the protected ladder on the back of the turbine. Damn it felt good getting those words out, even if she knew the repercussions could be severe, even if he probably hadn’t even heard them.

  Ozella could always blame momentary panic, or she could own it, and tell the piece of shit where he could shove his googly eyes and his probing sausage fingers.

  Ignoring Bobby’s shouts from below demanding she come down, that their insurance wouldn’t cover her if she acted without his authority, Ozella braved the heights, climbing to the top of the twenty-five-foot-tall structure.

  Once she was at the top, she heard a cranking sound as the turbine made its final rotation, stopping in place. Straightening the ends of her skirt yet again, she carefully walked along the swath of space that led to the top blade, coming to understand how the people had been tied up in the first place.

  Whoever had tied them had used loops on the sides of the turbine blades meant for swaths of canvas to increase wind dynamics. She didn’t recognize the person tied to the top blade, a shapely woman with curly black hair, but the other two were definitely the pair she’d seen the other night.

  “Listen,” Ozella said, finding a voice she rarely found. “You will die if you don’t listen to my instructions!” She cleared her throat and shouted even louder. “I’m going to untie one side, you’ll swing to the other side, and I’ll help pull from there. This will work! Nod your head for ‘yes,’ and shake it for ‘no.’”

  The black-haired woman in tiger print tights nodded her head frantically.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Bobby called up to Ozella. “I’m calling an exemplar!”

  “Do not call an exemplar!” Ozella shouted down to him. Rather than continue arguing, she loosened the knot holding the woman’s right hand, the black-haired lady immediately falling, and using her momentum to swing to her left. The woman caught Ozella’s waiting hand, Ozella able to bring her to the plank.

  The black-haired woman tore the gag out of her mouth, her eyes opening and shutting as she tried to get her equilibrium.

  “Fuckers!” she cried as soon as she could speak. She was on her hands and knees now, dry-heaving as she tried to get her bearings. “And tell that ASSHOLE DOWN THERE not to call any exemplars!”

  “I’m not an asshole!” Bobby shouted back up at them, a gust of wind whipping past, the blades creaking.

  “Let’s get the others,” the black-haired woman said, wiping her mouth. “I’m Zoe, by the way, Zoe Goa Ramone.”

  “Ozella Rose…”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Disregarding Bobby’s cries from below, the two of them carefully pushed the turbine to the right, where they were greeted by the man, the same one who’d come into the cosplay club a couple of days ago.

  “Okay, Sam,” Zoe called out, “we’re going to untie one hand, and you have to use your momentum to swing up here without tearing the knot. Only one shot. Well, maybe more than one, but your initial… hold on, I want to barf, sorry, I won’t.” Zoe took a deep breath. “Your initial fall will have the most momentum. Here we go!” she said, her voice slightly hoarse.

  Ozella undid the kn
ot and Sam swung around, where Zoe just barely caught him, her feet closer to the edge until…

  Ozella reached out for her just in time, grabbing Zoe’s elbow and using her weight to bring both Sam and Zoe onto the small swath of space between the ladder and the back of the turbine blades.

  Sam’s eyes filled with panic for a moment until Zoe got his wrist free from the second rope, his left arm dropping to his side. Once his gag was out, Sam placed both hands over his mouth, his eyes closed as Zoe kept him steady.

  “We need to help Helena! She’s been upside down all this time,” he said once he could speak again.

  “Just stay here,” Zoe said, taking charge as usual. “We’ll get her. Don’t get in the way.”

  Ozella and Zoe spun the blade until Helena was front and center.

  “Can you hear me?” Zoe asked.

  Helena nodded, just barely, her eyes blinking slowly.

  “You know the drill,” she said. “We’ll untie one arm, and you need to use all that ballerina grace of yours to get as far to your left as you can, where we’ll catch you. Understand?”

  Helena’s gray hair shook as she nodded again.

  “Here goes!”

  Ozella untied the rope and Helena swung to the left, her feet coming up and her hand reaching out for Zoe.

  Zoe caught her, brought her onto the platform, where she was able to untie Helena’s second binding.

  Helena immediately fell forward, causing Zoe to bump into Ozella, sending the statkeeping woman in the schoolgirl outfit flying over the side of the ledge.

  The next thing everyone heard was the smack of Ozella’s body hitting the ground below, her fatass manager crying out in shock.

  Chapter Twelve: Ozella is Dead, I Think.

  (Too bad she died. I was just starting to like her.)

  “She’s the one that told us we needed to use the Unholy Matrimony room,” Sam Meeko told Helena as he looked down at Ozella, whose legs were splayed out, her eyelids pressed shut.