Toxic tattoo

"You have such a sexy body," Ms Kyoto said. "But I'm not accustomed to seeing it unclothed. You need to be naked, of course, as long as you're in the hospital -- we need swift access to your body in case of an emergency treatment. But I think we can make you feel a bit less exposed. Give you a bit more coverage, if you will. Now I'm not talking about clothes, of course. But maybe a little body art will help placate your modesty."

Body art? Melissa had never had a tattoo, she didn't really want one. But of course she could do nothing to stop Ms Kyoto from giving her one just the same.

Ms Kyoto had retrieved a tattoo pen from the briefcase. "I think you'll feel most at home in your traditional Rocketgirl garb. Don't you agree?"

This confused Melissa. How would Ms Kyoto replicate her Rocketgirl costume as a tattoo? The answer proved very slow in coming.

Ms Kyoto began by tattooing a silver collar around the comatose Melissa's neck. This took hours. Rocketgirl admired Ms Kyoto's patience and attention to detail; the collar looked seamless, and had a certain shadowing effect that gave it a trompe l'oeil. It genuinely looked like Melissa was wearing a silver collar.

But that was only the beginning. Gradually Ms Kyoto began expanding the collar down Melissa's torso. After about six hours, Melissa's clavicle and shoulders were completely covered in a shiny, silvery tattoo. Like the collar, this looked very much like the top of her real Rocketgirl costume.

Ms Kyoto left then, and she didn't return until the next morning. She watered Rocketgeranium, then resumed her work tattooing Melissa's body, not saying a word. This went on for more than a week: Ms Kyoto would arrive, water Rocketgirl, then expand the elaborate tattoo she was painting on Melissa's body. After two days, her breasts were covered; after four, her pussy. Once Ms Kyoto finished inking Melissa's ankles on the sixth day, she said, "About halfway through now. Just have to turn you over and finish up the backside."

Melissa noticed it took Ms Kyoto longer than previously to turn her body over. She appeared to strain more under the superheroine's weight, and even betrayed one or two grunts as she finished rotating the heroine and placing her back in the center of the bed. Maybe she's just tired, Rocketgirl thought.

"You know, you're handling this really well," Ms Kyoto said at that point. "Getting a tattoo can be a painful experience, especially for a first-timer. But you must have a very high tolerance for pain. You haven't winced, flinched, or screamed even once! Hahahaha!"

Over the next several days, the process continued in much the same way, Melissa powerless to do anything but watch as Ms Kyoto silently tattooed her body, the silvery ink "costume" gradually climbing up her legs, diving into her butt cheeks, rising up her spine, and finally filling out the "sleeves" down her arms.

Ms Kyoto struggled to lift Melissa's form, but was unable to do so. She pushed the heroine's body to one side of the bed, then began trying to rotate her body. It was a slow process, and Ms Kyoto had to rest a couple of times while Melissa's body was in strange, contorted positions. Finally she got her prey's body lying back as it had been the day she was wheeled into the room.

"Ta-da!" Ms Kyoto exclaimed, gesturing broadly to the heroine's freshly inked body. "All done. What do you think?"

Though Rocketgirl still really didn't want a tattoo, and wondered how she would go about her daily life as Melissa with a superheroine costume painted all over her body, she had to admit Ms Kyoto was a very talented artist. The tattoo looked exactly like her real uniform, the impeccable trompe l'oeil making it appear to ripple and shimmer, the shadows accentuating her fine figure.

"I think I really captured the essence of your Rocketgirl uniform. I went to a great deal of trouble to get it exactly right. You'd be surprised how hard it is to replicate the color of your uniform in tattoo ink. In the end, to make it really sing, I had to mix in quite a large quantity of lead."

Ms Kyoto allowed a couple of beats for that information to sink in. "I suppose that's why I had a bit of trouble turning your body back over. You see when you came in here, your body weighed only 120 pounds. But now that you've got that beautiful all-over lead-based tattoo, I'd estimate you probably weigh more in the range of 300 pounds. Not that you'd know it to look at that figure. You still look absolutely magnificent. Though I suppose it may be hard to run as fast as your superpowers once let you, now that you're substantially overweight. Could be a bit of a struggle.

"But if I were you, I'd be much more worried about the potential for lead poisoning. I understand it can be quite painful, not to mention inconvenient. I wonder, will your Rocketgirl tattoo -- the very symbol of your independence and power -- give you brain damage? Make you infertile? Kill you?" Ms Kyoto shrugged. "Time will tell. But if I were you, I'd consider getting that tattoo removed as soon as possible. Oh wait, you can't do anything about it, can you?"