Madame Haste
The trouble with being a perfect superhero is that you eventually make your job obsolete. Vanessa Vamonola, aka Madame Haste, spent nearly a decade turning Sentinal Bay into a crime-free paradise. When you can move at the speed of thought, it becomes a simple matter of having a plan and carrying it out. Once the major players were taken care of, a few kingpins and mob leaders, followed by corrupt politicians and cops, all Madame Haste had to do was keep petty crime low while the city implemented policy changes to address the root causes.
By the time the Mayor commissioned a statue of Madame Haste to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of her arrival in Sentinal Bay, Vanessa hadn’t had to personally stop a crime in over a year. Every unhoused person had shelter and food; unemployment was virtually non-existent; the armed police force was less than a tenth of what it was, replaced instead by counselors, mediators, and clerks. Every citizen had access to medical care, and every child got the specific education they needed. In fact, things were going so well in Sentinal Bay that Vanessa decided to use Madame Haste’s anniversary to announce her retirement.
The Mayor gave Madame Haste the Key to the City, and the crowd cheered. Many cities became safe with the arrival of a superhero, but only their city became damn near perfect. It was so perfect that it no longer needed a vigilante hero. Vanessa waved to the people, accepted the key, and went home. Sentinal Bay could take care of itself now; all Vanessa had to do was kick back, relax, and let her hobbyist chef girlfriend take care of her.
***
Vanessa’s girlfriend, Marcy, had been lowkey obsessed with cooking even before the two of them started dating. In fact, it was a big part of what attracted her to Vanessa in the first place. Most dishes were rarely worth the hassle of cooking for just one person, and every girl Marcy dated before Vanessa had the appetite of a sparrow. But a speedster uses their body’s metabolism to propel them faster than human eyes can track, and Marcy quickly found no upper limit on how much food she could make for Vanessa and still have no leftovers. For the first few months, it seemed like a match made in heaven. A perfect confluence of amateur chef and godly metabolism. Marcy could cook dishes that served six, and Vanessa would wolf it all down, never going above a thirty-inch waist. After about six months, Marcy started to get suspicious; nobody’s metabolism was that good. At the time of Madame Haste’s retirement, Marcy was the only person who’d figured out her secret identity—aside from a certain drug kingpin, who’d met his timely demise at the hands of one of his lieutenants.
“Hey… babe? I made too much spaghetti again. Sorry.” Marcy held the large pot in both hands and glanced over her girlfriend’s once-lithe frame. Vanessa had put on nearly twenty pounds in three months since Madame Haste retired as Sentinal Bay’s hero. Marcy wasn’t delusional enough to believe that any partner of hers would stay skinny forever, and they’d been together long enough that her feelings for Vanessa transcended such superficial things.
“Don’t apologize, hon. You know I love your spaghetti.” Vanessa pointed at her unfinished bowl.
As Marcy scooped the pasta, glistening with bolognese and peppered with golfball-sized meatballs, Vanessa watched the mound of delicious goodness rise back to its full roundness. Her eyes gleamed, and the tip of her pink tongue peeked out between her lips.
Marcy had only hesitated and apologized for her girlfriend’s benefit. She would have loved her just as much if she were obese but assumed that Vanessa wanted to stay thin. Watching her happily swirl pasta onto her fork before stabbing a dripping meatball and stuffing the whole lot between her teeth, Marcy supposed her girlfriend didn’t mind putting on a few inches now that she wasn’t burning it all off dashing around the city.
If Vanessa was happy, Marcy was happy. She loved cooking, and watching her girlfriend enjoy her food was what got her out of bed in the morning. It didn’t hurt that Vanessa’s body stored the excess weight in the best way possible. The former Madame Haste had gotten almost imperceptibly thicker in the thighs, she got a tiny bit more jiggle in her bottom, and the rest all went to her chest. The C-cups that were once just big enough to draw the eye whenever Madame Haste appeared on magazine covers now overflowed Marcy’s hands. If she didn’t love her so damn much, Marcy would be annoyed at how perfect her girlfriend’s body was.
“I have half a loaf still,” Marcy said. “Want some more garlic bread?”
Vanessa nodded eagerly, her mouth too full of pasta to speak.
***
Knock, knock, knock
Marcy wondered who could be at their door unannounced. They rang the doorbell three times and banged their fist as if they wanted to break the solid oak from its hinges.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!”
She twisted the deadbolt and pulled the door open to find the Mayor of Sentinal Bay panting and red-faced.
“Madam Mayor?”
“Marcy! Is Vanessa home? She’s not answering her phone, and we need Madame Haste!”
“But… she’s retired,” Marcy said. “Retired for almost three years.”
“I know, I know. But there’s a new villain. A tech CEO siphoning resources from the city’s social programs. He has really good lawyers, and we can’t get to him. We need her!”
Vanessa, of course, could hear the entire conversation from two rooms away. She jumped to her feet and used her Speed for the first time in nearly three years.
She moved superhumanly fast… for her size.
When a full three seconds had passed before Vanessa cleared the corner of the couch, she decided to forego changing into her costume (it would never have fit, anyway) and ran to the front room instead. Marcy and the Mayor watched with expressions of lust and horror, respectively, as the once Madame Haste walked into the room. With crackles of Speed energy surrounding her, she moved slightly slower than Marcy had. Her hips were nearly as wide as the doorway, and her dump truck ass quaked with each step, curving out over a foot behind Vanessa’s spine. She cradled her enormous breasts in each arm, the jiggling, wobbling, caroming flesh spilling over her thin arms and threatening to send the speedster crashing to the floor.
“I’m –huff– here, Mayor,” Vanessa wheezed. “Tell me where I –haa– can find this –kaff– villainous fiend.”
The Mayor grimaced as she looked at the overfed former hero. “Uh… never mind, Vanessa. I’m sure we can handle it. Maybe we’ll call Metropolis; see if they can send someone over.”