Molly and Star at home

“You got a package,” Star said to Molly as she came in the door of their apartment. Molly looked over the package, glanced at the address, and grimaced.

“What?” said Star. Star seldom missed anything. “You didn’t want to hear from this guy Henry Steinman?”

“That’s an alias for them,” Molly said with a sigh. In answer to Star’s look, she continued: “The Confederation of Mercy. They still get mail for me there, and every so often they forward it to me like this. It’s never anything good, half of it is junk mail they could throw away. I think they just send it here to annoy me.”

She tore it open and dumped it on the table. Star’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, a superhero’s mail,” she said mischievously. Molly made a face at her. “Look,” said Star, undeterred. “This one looks like an actual personal letter!”

“I don’t know who that would be,” Molly said. “What’s the address?”

“Someplace in Iowa,” Star said. “Can I open it?”

“Sure, who cares,” Molly said, eyeing the rest of the mail with trepidation.

Star opened the letter. “Dear Mistress Lightning,” she began.

“Oh no,” Molly said. “Give me that!”

“Nuh uh,” Star said gleefully. “Dear Mistress Lightning, I feel that this would be a far better name for you than Lightning Girl. I worship your strength and beauty – ”

“What beauty, I wore a full face mask!”

“A full face mask with a skin-tight green and white suit that had a diamond cut out over your cleavage. Now hush up,” Star continued. “‘I worship your strength and beauty and I know I have no right to ask anything of someone of your status, but Mistress, I beg you to send me some of your urine – ‘”

“STOP!” Molly said.

“No, this is too good! ‘I beg you to send me some of your urine so that this lowly worm might pour it over himself while he imagines your highness urinating on him, which is all he deserves…’ ” At this point Star dissolved in giggles.

“Oh, laugh it up, Sabrina the Teenage Bitch,” Molly grinned in spite of herself. “I used to get those all the time.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean, lots of them. All the female superheroes used to get them, all the time. Any time one of us kicked someone’s ass and it got on TV they would come flooding in.”

“There are that many subby guys out there?”

“Oh yeah,” Molly said. “There was this one guy that kept writing me and begging me to kick him in the nuts. He wrote this 15-page letter about his fantasy of me tying him up and kicking him in the nuts repeatedly till he passed out. He started calling the Confederation of Mercy after that and one day he showed up.”

“Did you go out and fulfill his fantasy?”

“Oh hell no, we sent security out there and they had him arrested.”

“Superheroes have security?”

“Yes. I mean, we’ve got stuff to do. I mean, they had stuff to do.” Molly corrected herself. She wasn’t on the team any more. “It’s not just sitting around. We have to check the computer and there’s a lot of paperwork to fill out.”

“Paperwork?” Star said incredulously.

“Yeah, we used to get sued all the time. We kept lawyers on call. There was the whole thing about whether metahumans had the right to apprehend human criminals. That’s still on its way to the Supreme Court.”

“Well, you could hardly blame the guy though,” Star said. “I mean, big strong women going up against big ugly guys and thrashing them. Admit it, you were all dommes, weren’t you? And the biggest one was the Golden Lasso, right?”

“Her?” Molly laughed. “Oh God no. She was a total sub. That Navy man she was connected with was totally her top.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Star said.

“Of course it does,” Molly replied. “You’re super strong, you can fly, you’re one of the most powerful women on earth and you’re responsible for protecting humanity from aliens, mad scientists and evil beings from the 12th dimension. The last thing she wanted to do is be dominant in bed.” Molly leaned in conspiratorially and Star perked up. “He used to use her own lasso on her. We got drunk one night and she talked about it. I mean, think about it, he could spank her as hard as he wanted, it wasn’t like it was going to hurt her. They were pretty kinky.”

“Oh, this is wild,” Star said with a gleam in her eye. “You should write a book!”

“God, no, they’d flip out.”

“So, no dommes?” Star said slyly. “Not even you?”

“NO,” Molly said firmly. “And besides I am not getting back in that game again. There was one domme out of all the girls.”

“Tell me! Tell me!”

Molly grinned. “It was Pearl Light.”

“The one whose power was manipulating light and wore the shiny dress and heels all the time? Her?”

“Yep, she got a letter like that one you just read and contacted the guy. They kept up a relationship for five years until it got too weird for Captain Megaton and The Black King.”

“So that’s why she retired,” Star said.

“Yeah, they’re kind of hung up there in the Tower of Mercy. But the exercise thing is working out for her. ‘Sculpt your body like a superhero!'”

Star shook her head. “Like regular people,” she said.

“Yeah,” Molly replied. “Exactly like regular people. Even though they try to bullshit you that they’re not. They bullshit themselves. Even though they might say ‘Oh, it was nothing,’ or ‘Well, I couldn’t have done it without the Army,’ or ‘my teammates,’ or whatever. Deep down inside all of them, even the best of them, think that they’re gods. That’s part of why I left.”

“All of them?” Star asked. “That’s pretty scary.”

“Not all of them,” Molly said. “A lot of them.” She thought of her sister, and then stopped that thought. Not fast enough, because Star saw it in her face.

“Hey, look at this.” She snagged another letter off the table and ripped it open. “Dear Lightning Girl, my name is Reg Preston and I am the president of International Inc., publishers of Busty Gal Magazine, and I would like to offer you a unique opportunity…”

Molly growled, “I swear, they send me all that shit to drive me crazy,” and looked at the letter. It promptly caught fire, and Star dropped it.

“OW!! No fair using your heat vision, beeyotch. And we didn’t get to the part about how much he was going to pay you!”

“You pose for him,” Molly said. “Maybe there’s a Nekkid Witch Magazine.”

“Yeah,” Star said. “It’s called the Internet. We’re naked all the time, nobody cares.”

Molly stood up and stretched. “OK, that was sordid enough that it gave me an appetite. What do we want to eat?”

“I say Mexican, because that cheese in the fridge is becoming something that you might have to fight some day.”

“Very funny,” Molly said. “Mexican it is. Be back in a little bit.” With that, there was a faint blur and she was gone.

“Showoff,” Star said to herself. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.”