Epilogue: The Ballooning of Harley Quinn

Slim, strong hands ran down the wet clay. Beneath Lois Lane's sure touch, the unformed block of brownish-grey potter's clay took shape. A long, slim leg, each muscle carefully defined. Small, pert buttocks, fit for an athlete. Her middle finger traced the bald slit between the thighs, and then she was pushing with thumbs and palms to give the shape of the flat belly, digging out a thin scar for the shallow navel. Slim, waspish waist; her fingers traced the shape of ribs pressing through the skin. Two handfuls of clay splattered on the torso, her clay-stained fingers swiftly shaping them into the small, half-teardrop shape that hung limply on the bony breast, the nipples small, areola wide...

Lois stepped back.

An anorexic Venus, headless and armless, in the shadow of the studio. Coke-thin as a supermodel, elegant and yet so terribly ****, like a photograph of a starving woman.

The reporter licked her lips, suddenly taken by inspiration. There was more clay at hand...a lot more...hundreds of pounds. With a manic grin, heart thundering against her breastbone, Lois gathered a sticky mass with both hands and pressed it against that flat stomach. Swiftly, panting, a wet drip running down her leg, Lois Lane's fingers were a blur as she draped a swollen stomach onto that thin frame, love handles bulging over the hips; a drooping dimpled ass to balance it out, the slit almost lost as the thighs thickened and grew to rub against one another. By the time the clay tits began to swell, Lois wasn't even shaping the clay, just pressing her hands against the distended gut, black lightning crackling down her arms as the clay grew and shaped itself...until she bent forward and pressed her tongue into the deep depression that the belly button had become, pushing her face into the soft mass...

With a gasp, Lois Lane awoke, panting and flushed, her nightie sweat-stained and sticking to her. Her phone buzzed, and she grabbed it.

"Hello? Yes, this is she. Good evening, warden. How can help you?" Lois struggled to gain control of herself, one hand stealing between her legs to cup her hot, throbbing box as the older woman spoke. Unable to keep a smile of excitement off her face as she answered. "Yes, of course. I'll be there as soon as I can."

Throwing aside the wet sheets, Lois clambered out of bed, shaking with excitement. It had been weeks since she had healed Catwoman...weeks in which the images and sensations of that night had slipped into her dreams. Lois had never felt so excited, so turbocharged since the time she was a young woman and first discovered sex. Now...now the warden had called on her help again.

Lois was dressed and out of the apartment so fast she forgot to lock her door. A crimson figure stepped out of the shadows and kindly locked it behind her.

Once again, the grey-haired old warden walked Lois through the security checkpoints, where the reporter gave up her keys and smartphone.

"Selina Kyle is responding very well. She's really committed to regaining her old fighting trim, but even with intense regular exercise and a specialized diet, weight loss is gradual...and she's been responding to our therapy treatments. Getting to the root of her kleptomania. Harley Quinn, on the other hand..."

The Clown Princess of Crime lay in a padded cell, naked except for the straight-jacket. The dye-job on her hair was growing out, and Lois could see the dark circle of bruises around her eyes, two front teeth missing. She lay with her head against one padded wall, drooling, listless, eyes unseeing. Dark blue and black marks covered her legs, one ankle contained in a plaster cast.

"A breakout attempt," the warden said. "Her sixth in as many weeks. One of the guards shot her...it severed her Achilles' tendon...and she fell off the roof into the exercise yard. We had to dope her up just to immobilize the ankle, but she may never walk again."

Lois licked her lips. Her heart went out for Harley, but that wasn't why the warden had called her here in the middle of the night.

"It would be...convenient...if she were immobile. For a while," the warden said carefully. She swallowed heavily. "She injured eight guards in the last breakout attempt. One of them is still in critical condition. They had to put him on a respirator. He has a wife...children..."

The reporter took a deep breath. She knew what was being asked of her. Lois rubbed her palms together. This was bigger than anything she had done before...and the very challenge of it felt...so exciting...

"Okay," she said, accepting the warden's reasoning, the tacit permission. Harley Quinn was a ward of the state, after all, and the warden was the state as far as Gotham was concerned.

Lois kneeled down beside Harley Quinn. One hand went to the cold, clammy skin, so unnaturally pale, just above the plaster boot. The other touched Harley's hair. The reporter closed her eyes and looked deep within herself, for that pit of desire...all the things that had opened up inside her mind after the last time.

Extending her senses came so easily now. It was as though Lois Lane's self was larger than her own body. She slipped easily into Harley Quinn's bound form...and there were all the old injuries, the scars on skin, muscle, and bone, and other more terrible and subtle damage to her lungs and liver from ****, ****...and yes, here and there the tell-tale signs of cancer, subtle and terrible in their potential, so instinctively wrong, yet a part of her.

Lois felt like one being in two bodies...and she allowed herself a small smile as she opened that gate within her mind. Anticipation shivered down her spine, a wet heat spreading up between her legs...and it was so different this time. There was no digging, no effort. The desires inside of her wanted to be unleashed. It was all that Lois could do to ride the wave of darkness as it howled out of her soul...all the strange, erotic imagery that had been hers...

Like joining two pieces of clay, Harley Quinn's flesh flowed and mended. The ragged ends of her Achilles' tendon rejoined as if new. Breaks and cracks, the scars and pieces of years of crime healed in an instant; bits of shrapnel pushed their way to the surface of her skin and broke free, the unnaturally pale integument closing behind them as if there had never been a wound. With ruthless efficiency all those precancerous cells burst and died, taking their deadly potential with them.

Cancer, Lois Lane thought, as something huge rose up within her. She remembered how her grandmother had looked, at the end. The woman had always been fleshy, but a the end she could no longer walk. Five hundred and fifty pounds on a frame barely 5'6"...the same height as Harley.

Sweat dripped down the warden's face as she saw a subtle shift come over Harley Quinn. To outward appearances, the kneeling reporter was barely touching her, yet the dark bruises around the eyes and along the bare legs swiftly vanished, and fresh, new teeth pushed out of pink gums to take their place in Harley's mouth. Then...it was as though the pale chemical simply swelled.

One moment, the straightjacket was cinched tight about the trim form—Harley Quinn had been an Olympic-level gymnast—but in the space of a breath, the fabric was drawn tight, bulging from within. The bare legs, once lithely-muscled, were now two pale tree-trunks of smooth flesh, the plaster of the cast cracking from within.

The reporter was just getting started.

Veins stood out on Lois Lane's forehead as Harley Quinn's gut bulged forward, pushing the straightjacket up, briefly exposing a bare muff before a mass of soft, pale belly hid the puffy pudendum. Lois Lane's arms shook as the seems grew tight and began to fray. The familiar features of Harley Quinn softened as the flesh of her neck swelled, cheeks billowed, even her forehead began to subtly soften as fat accumulated in her brow.

The buckles finally ripped through the fabric and Harley Quinn's arms flapped free. The warden grabbed at the alarm...but stopped, as she saw that the figure made no attempt at movement. Still dazed on her ****, Harley had rolled onto her back, her massive gut above her jutting out like a pregnant woman's...except there was no sign of pregnancy. It wobbled and shifted, her thick thighs spreading as her soft, fleshy ass thickened with cellulite, years of hard-earned muscle buried in moments under pounds of flab.

The last buckle on the straitjacket gave and it ripped down the middle, so that the warden caught a glimpse of great, sagging tits that flowed down on either side of Harley...and then, with a gasp, Lois Lane broke contact. She opened her eyes and panted, dripping with sweat as she surveyed her handiwork.

Harley Quinn, still sleeping off the last of her ****, wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Not without a mobility scooter.

"It...might be...a bit of a shock for her. At first," Lois swallowed hard. She stood up, and the warden saw a dripping puddle where the reporter had been kneeling. "Maybe...keep her under for a bit? Liquid diet."

"Yes...yes of course," the warden said, and let out a sigh. It had all happened as Blaze had said it would, when she had laid the gold bars on the warden's desk and told her what to do. She thought of the gun with which she had shot Harley Quinn, after the guards had safely sedated her. Officially, it had been a breakout attempt...and Lois Lane would never know otherwise.

"Thank you," the warden said sincerely.

Lois turned to her, and there was a look in those violet eyes that made her feel queasy. It was a hungry, wanton look, and the strange half-smile on Lois Lane's lips felt like the reporter was trying it on for the first time. A grotesque kind of Mona Lisa smirk, as if she knew secrets no one else knew...or as if the world was a chunk of clay, waiting to be shaped.

Instinctively, the warden kept her distance from the reporter as she escorted Lois out. Lois didn't stumble, exactly, but she gave an impression that the warden had seen before, when the prisoners saved up their meds for a little party. High as a kite. Tense with excitement.

"Do...contact me again. If you need my help," was the last thing Lois said to her, and the warden had nodded mutely, her bladder suddenly ice-cold as she thought about what that reporter could do to her, if she had even half a mind.

Lois Lane walked out into the night, drunk with power...the gate was open now, wide open, the dark energies pouring through her. Her body felt like a hollow vessel for the strange and terrible energies she channeled. She could change anyone...anything...the entire world...

...and she just might.