Molly's Superhero Fantasy, Part 2
By mcmann.molly
Molly could have teleported again to extricate herself from Annie’s grasp, but she decided not to because it was too late to avoid being seen and Annie was so distraught.
“It’s okay, Annie,” she said, stroking the younger girl’s hair. “I was never in any real danger.” Annie slightly loosened her grip and slid back down to a seated position, but for a moment still kept her arms locked around Molly’s hips, her hands on Molly’s butt and her face mashed into her stomach.
Molly tried to pretend the men were not there, but that was impossible because they would not shut up. “You were incredible, Molly!” they were saying. “Absolutely amazing! What a hero!”
Annie finally let go, but when she saw the wet streak of tears she’d left on Molly’s body she began to apologetically wipe it off with her hands – starting with Molly’s breast.
Molly allowed Annie to carefully wipe her tears from her skin. Annie mattered to her; the men didn’t. They were just an annoyance and by the time Molly was free to grab for her pink panties and step into them, she was more irritated than embarrassed.
“Why don’t you start your meeting?” she said testily, slipping her arms through the straps of her bra and arching her back as she reached behind to clasp it, “instead of just watching me dress.”
“Oh right, the meeting,” Dr. Crittendon said as Molly pulled up her skirt. “We really don’t have time now. Let’s reschedule. Friday okay with everyone?”
There were noncommittal mumbles of probable agreement, but the men did not want to take their eyes off of Molly to check their calendars until she was finished buttoning her blouse.
When the show was over, the men began reluctantly filing out of the room, all of them repeating their words of praise and admiration. Molly knew they were sincere, and she was proud of what she had done. She just wished she did not have to do it naked.
Molly still had a class to teach that afternoon, so she and Annie climbed the wide marble stairway to the third floor where Molly’s classroom and office were located. The physics building was one of the oldest on campus and all of its interior surfaces were marble, polished wood or brass. Molly’s classroom had tiered rows of wooden seats and a heavy oak door that led to her spacious paneled office.
They had 20 minutes before class was to start and needed to get a lengthy theorem written out on the chalkboard for the class. Annie volunteered to do it and insisted that Molly just relax.
Molly stretched out on the old leather couch in her office and closed her eyes, thinking of what her life used to be like. Only two days before Molly was “famous” only within the relatively small circle of other theoretical physicists – among whom her papers on spacetime were getting some attention.
She had, in fact, been in the middle of presenting a paper on that topic on the 70th floor of the downtown conference center when through the windows she saw a section of scaffolding collapse on the building across the street. A construction worker fell, his yellow hard hat dropping out of sight, but his foot caught in the cabling of the broken scaffold, and he dangled upside down as Molly’s audience ran to the windows to watch.
Molly did not remember actually deciding to do it, but she teleported from the podium and reappeared on the ledge just above the fallen man.
Watching from the windows, the physicists who had just been listening to her speak saw Molly materialize across the street – naked. Even had the distance been greater they would have instantly recognized her incomparable mane of hair, which billowed nearly horizontal in the wind like a red-orange flag.
Securing a rope to a steel beam, Molly lowered the other end of the rope to the man. He climbed up to the ledge where Molly grabbed at his shirt and helped pull him up.
But just when he was safe, Molly’s bare feet slipped on the wet ledge and she fell, plummeting from the building as onlooker screamed. Keeping her wits, Molly transported herself from mid-fall. She did not have time to decide where to go and for a moment she appeared on the crowded sidewalk below.
Annie had been in the conference room helping with Molly’s slides, and she had been just as astonished as anyone when Molly appeared naked on the ledge across the street. Annie ran frantically back and forth from the window to the vacant podium and back again, unable to comprehend what was happening. When Molly fell from the ledge, Annie fainted.
Molly meanwhile had decided that materializing on the sidewalk had not been the best decision. She was there only seconds – but long enough to be noticed – before she vanished again in front of dozens of witnesses and teleported back to the conference room. Behind the lectern she tried to wriggle into her dress before anyone noticed. While her head was inside the dress and the lower part of her body still uncovered she heard voices yelling, “look, she’s back! She’s okay!” Pulling the dress down over herself, Molly looked at the staring faces and said, “um, should I finish my paper?”
Annie had by this time recovered and pushed through the crowd crying, “oh my god, you have a superpower! That’s why you’ve been working on your spacetime theorem.”
Molly nodded. “I was born with this ability and I went into physics to try to figure it out.”
“How does it work?” someone shouted. “Are you creating wormholes?”
“No, but I considered that. Here, I’ll show you what I’ve figured out so far,” Molly said, going to the whiteboard. The room became electric as she wrote out her partially formed theorem and physicists from across the country shouted out their ideas. Most of these she had already thought of and rejected herself, but others were fresh concepts that she found intriguing.
They spent half an hour doing this and Molly became so excited by the collaboration she forgot about having just exposed herself to who knew how many people (in more ways than one). But as they were wrapping up, someone who had left to go to the restroom returned with the news that dozens of reporters and TV cameras were set up waiting for Molly to emerge.
“Oh crap,” Molly said, finally realizing the implications of what she’d done. Stuffing her underwear and her purse into her tote bag, Molly handed it to Annie. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she said. “Meet me at my apartment and we’ll talk.” Molly disappeared and Annie watched the empty dress fall to the floor. She folded it neatly and put it into the bag also.
Two hours later, Molly and Annie were on the balcony of Molly’s apartment on campus, an empty bottle of wine on the table between them. Molly had consumed nearly all of it herself. Annie, who rarely drank – and legally was not supposed to – had barely touched her own glass.
Molly told Annie all that she remembered, from her first experiences as a child when her mother assumed she was just taking off her clothing and making up stories.
After Annie left, Molly drank Annie’s wine in a few gulps. As she set down the glass she heard a whooshing sound and looked up to see a man in red tights and a blue cape hovering a few feet from the ledge of her balcony. She recognized him immediately.
“Missile Man!”
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