Meeting up with your benefactor, doing a "little" messy business

You walk away from a pile of groaning, battered men in hooded sweatshirts and other urbanwear, dusting your hands casually. Your first patrol, slow at first, has you to take a little initiative and pick a fight with some suspicious looking fellas hanging out on a streetcorner like they were trying to sell something. Surely they were, or else they wouldn't have had guns on them. Yet, even seeing you showing up dressed as only a superheroine would, they didn't even try to shoot you (even though, little did they know, that would've worked... well, enough to be painful, if not life-threatening), but instead threw their pieces away in favor of an attempt to mob you unarmed. Instead of keeping their heads down with a veritable army of new superpowered women stalking the streets, looking for trouble, their sort seems to only see it as an opportunity. Oh, sure, you've heard rumors of other 'Millenium Girls' getting tied up and violated in all kinds of terrible ways, but that's not the kind of thing that could ever happen to you!

Cowboy boots thudding rapidly as you weave through crowded sidewalks and busy streets, you nearly cause a lot of traffic accidents (both from coming too close to the road, and from the way your chest tends to bounce when you're running at full tilt) on the way to your first meeting with your sort-of mentor. Alas, it is not for reasons of altruism that she is helping you. This particular woman had crossed your path when she'd needed your help taking down a villain from her past who'd set up shop in your home turf, a preachy half-plant eco-terrorist calling himself "Marécageuse".

You stop at a phone booth and dial a number with blinding speed. It rings quite a few times before anyone picks up, by which time a small crowd of lechers has already gathered around it to peer in and ogle you under the guise of waiting their turn, no doubt hoping that you're coming in here to change outfits; you can sense their disappointment when they see that a heroine has entered one of these things to actually use the telephone, for a change.

"Yyyyesssss?" the very annoyed female voice on the other end comes in. "Anyone IMPORTANT would know to send any communique through my personal transceiver.... so this must be that newly-arrived putain with the cowboy boots and the atrocious name. Very well - here is the name of the warehouse..." It takes all your willpower not to toss a comeback at her.

When you get to the studio apartment at the provided address you terrorize yet more bystanders by tearing up the stairwells at inhuman speed (what kinda heroine uses an elevator?) and throw the door open. There, sitting on a loveseat in the generically furnished apartment is a very short and petite woman young woman in a lacy black dress, a purple pillbox hat atop her unkempt, stringy black hair. She is a few inches shy of five feet tall and looks like she probably weighs quite a bit less than a hundred pounds - there are certainly no curves on her chest. Her skin is unhealthily pale, and her eyes have black circles under them making it look like she doesn't get much sleep. She has a lit cigarette in her mouth.

"Petite Mort-y! Glad to make yer acquaintance again, darlin'!" you say, coming in for a hug and picking her up like a feather in the process. She doesn't seem like she appreciates getting nearly suffocated in your cleavage, and shrinks to the side of a barbie doll to drop out of your grip and scurry between your legs before re-sizing.

"Shut up! It's bad enough that you are blackmailing me like some kind of villain, but it is worse yet that you are thereby forcing me to meet with you in the place dedicated to my... side business. We don't have much time for it so you need to pitch your absurd ideas and explain your pathetic ploys for popularity quickly... I only have an hour off from being on watch at the League today, and my latest co-star is going to be here soon..."

You giggle. "Really, I was just pullin' yer leg the first time I mentioned holding it over you, Mort-y. I know I might be shootin' myself in the foot by asking but would any of the other heroes really think any less of you if they knew you were ack-shully from a small town in Louisiana? I reckon you ought to be proud of those humble beginnings! If you warn't such an unpatriotic snob, I might feel a little guilty about holding it over you like this. Heheh... a 'little' guilty. That one wasn't on purpose."

Mort's response to your words is a withering glare. "I would rather have my shameful past than a shameful future, which is what I see for you. But never mind. I have used my nanomolecular tracking devices to infiltrate and pinpoint the locations of a highly efficient and so-far untouchable set of chop-shops which I was going to raid myself - but if it will buy your silence you can go ahead and get the glory that my hard work and patience would have earned. They are operated by a technologically savvy branch of carjackers known as the-"

"Oh heck no!" You stomp your foot - the exaggerated motion causing your excessively tight leotard to ride up your butt-crack again and you to awkwardly pull it a little lower with a finger. "I told you, no small time crumbs like that! I want a supervillain! And, and a team-up with a hero a lil' more publicity-friendly than, ah... anyway. C'mon, you do gadgets for everybody and his cousin, I know you can make it happen, darlin'!"

She pinches the bridge of her nose as she goes to a coffee machine and starts it up. "Mon dieu... If I send you to get captured or worse by letting you jump in line like that, I'll never hear the end of it. Fine, fine, but you must promise that you will be equally cautious, both around any heroes that I saddle you with the burden of, and whoever their nemesis du jour happens to be. Contact me again in a week-"

"A WEEK?!" you pout, waving your hand dramatically. "This durned Millenium Challenge is gonna be over sooner than you think, I ain't got all the time in the world like you do! I'm sticking right here until you're ready to deliver what you promised."

She starts to blush, strangely, and her eyes dart to the floor. "F-fine, but... you... fuck! Would you just leave for the next half-hour, at least?"

"So you can duck me by hidin' out in a mouse hole or something? Fat chance!" you cross your arms over your chest.

The door suddenly swings open, and the petite super-genius in front of you groans and buries her face in her hands. Turning curiously you see a balding man in a hawaiian print shirt with a sketchy looking mustache, followed by several other large men in sweatshirts and other gym attire, a couple of them carrying lights and cameras. "Hey baby! You ready? We've doin' a double feature today, with a scene for a new series after we knock out the last scene for 'Super-Duper Facials #6'. Sorry I'm late, we had a couple delays and we were only able to get about half of our usual supply checklist. The drugstore had plenty of astro-glide but they were sold out of- Hey, why are you shrinkin' down and hiding between the couch cushions like that?"

You yourself had unobtrusively stepped out into a bathroom hallway but one of the muscular young guys who'd come in with the group runs into you on his way to the bathroom and gives you a very uncomfortably pleased look up and down, making you wrinkle your nose. "WHOAH! Hey, Frank!" he says to the guy in the tacky shirt with the skeezy moustache, "Looks like she changed her mind about bringing us some new talent to work with! Fuckin' a, look at her popping out of that skimpy swimsuit number!"

Glaring over at where Petite Mort is being pulled out into the open and reluctantly reassuming her normal size, you squint your big, watery blue eyes at your fellow heroine suspiciously. "What the heck? You're just doin' glamour shoots? Shit-fire, Mort-y, you've got a lot of nerve trying to ditch me for that! I was doin' a round of those this morning! If it really can't wait then I'm coming back with you to your lab or whatever, afterwards!"

Mort's eyes bug out as she glares with contempt and surprise at your reaction, then she smiles unsettlingly. "You know what? If you want to stay, 'Lynn', go right ahead. It isn't like my shame can get any worse... And you, you contemptible excuse for a man... you had better have brought payment in CASH this time, you know that the kind of people I get lab supplies from don't want a fucking electronic bank transfer, and I don't want my colleagues asking why I'm making large withdrawals from the bank!"

"Sure thing honey. No withdrawals for you today... Just... a whole lot of deposits." 'Frank' says in a tone of voice that is ineffably oily. You're starting to wonder if you ought to leave after all... but you have to stick to your guns, right?