This choice: Moss, formerly Alice Hawthorn! • Go Back...Chapter #3Moss, Formerly Ms. Hawthorn by: Keroro04   The woman known as Alice Hawthorn was no more.
In the past, Alice was a botanist who was born 61 years ago, decades before the Delta Event which changed her world. A genius who had graduated the University of Florida at the age of 19, she was studying ways on creating plant life which could absorb CO2 more efficiently, and thus help reduce the damages that factories were causing the environment. She had friends, a lover by the name of Jade, and even a beautiful house that doubled as a garden.
And then the Delta Event came three days after her 21st birthday.
A solar flare nearly hit the Earth, fucking it up rather severely. While telecommunications were damaged enough to outright ruin 50% of the world's phone lines and delay progress of the internet by a decade, the effects were very much more severe in terms of the radiation that hit the planet. A hundred thousand people died, and millions more suffered long term sickness, which while to a planet wide population was a drop in the bucket still left a deep scar psychologically on the survivors.
However, to those who survived and did not get cancer... the solar flare instead unlocked humanity's potential. A gene was formed in the human gene pool, one which connected to the very soul known as the Metagene, after a term in DC Comics known as the metahuman. The effects of the gene varied wildly. Sometimes, it did nothing but alter some people's hair colors or cause them to gain or shrink a few inches. For others, they'd gain amazing new powers such as the ability to fly or impressive super strength. For comic book nerds who wished for their superheroes to become real, it was like a dream come true.
For Alice however, it was a living hell. Her blood congealed into a green moss, followed by her hair. She had little time to figure out why she was even alive afterward before a huge explosion erupted from herself, a result of her lover awakening to radiation themed powers and dying in a large explosion from activating them. And yet, she did not die. As it turned out, she could never die again, so long as there was a small piece of moss left from her body from which it could rebuild through.
This made her a target of one of her so-called friends, who turned out to be a member of the FBI. Although she could regenerate from nearly anything, she was still only as strong as a regular human, and as such lacked training to protect herself. She was taken by the US Military and experimented on, testing the limits of her moss and testing every way to kill a man under the sun on her.
In those experiments, Alice Hawthorne died... and Moss was born.
Escaping in the dead of night alongside other experiments of the military following the Delta Event, Moss was the only one who lost her faith in the average person out of the whole lot. While they formed the original incarnation of the premier institution of heroics known as the Power Lounge, she hid out in Chicago and slowly amassed power until she could get vengeance against humanity for the suffering she had gone through.
She was stopped of course, time and time again by the Power Lounge. But as old heroes retired and newer and newer generations of superheroes showed up, Moss remained. She was even immune to the ravages of time, her moss supplying eternal youth so that she may live forever. In addition, while she was originally just as strong as a human, she had since learned how to control the moss within her body to increase her physical strength to be five times that of a ordinary human.
She had only improved with age, while her original rivals withered away. Well aside from Amaterasu, who besides being a founding member of the Lounge was a Japanese deity rather than a metahuman or alien and was thus also immortal. Besides that though, she was now facing off against a whole new generation of heroes, ones who's brains were rotted by TV and politics and a newly burgeoning thing called the internet.
Okay... maybe the internet wasn't that bad, she thought. It did bring her good fast food straight from Jersey Mikes, in the form of two giant pastrami subs, a couple bags of chips and a large soda. She had already eaten her way through the first one, and was part of the way through the second one when she felt a bit of meat fall into her ample bosom.
"Hmph, well at least I'm not in my uniform."
It was dinnertime for her, and she was currently eating said meal in her lair, seated in a large banquet hall. She wasn't wearing anything impressive, simply just a pair of sweatpants and the only sports bra she could find that fit. She'd never be caught dead outside of her own lair wearing something like this, but in the comforts of her home she didn't feel the need to put up a sinister image when she could just live like however she damn well pleased.
Still, the fact she had only one bra that fit was a slight concern. Admittedly with recent years and the rise of new fast food trends, she had... let herself go a bit. She didn't get as huge as her original nemesis Earthwake was when he had retired, but still at just under 250 pounds she could feel the rolls of flab on her body, and the ample bosom that her body provided. Even her ass was filled with a bunch of cellulite, acting like two small kegs that shook with each and every step.
There was no denying it. She was chubby in all regards, but it still didn't effect her average career as a criminal. She was still immortal, and she was still five times as strong as the average human. If anything, it just made it harder for her to fit into her glorious green villain costume. She'd need a new fitting soon for the suit to make it easier to fit onto her body, but before that she knew that she'd need to get actual measurements for her body.
"Hey, boss. Have you heard the good news?"
Looking up from her meal, Moss cocked her head to the left and looked to her newest second in command, Cider. She tended to replace her seconds in command once a decade, often switching to a goon who was both new and powerful, something the redhead with alcohol-based powers had in spades. The woman was eating through her own sandwich, a chicken bacon ranch with extra cheese and a large bag of Ruffles, not needing a drink and simply drinking a glass of wine that she had created herself.
"What good news?"
"Well, there's been a series of bombings in the state capital, targeting automotive factories with great success. I don't know who's been doing it, but it's causing them to divert power away from here to protect Springfield. I must say, that will make things a lot easier for us, won't it?"
"Yes, I suppose it will." Moss took another bite of her pastrami, before grabbing a huge handful of chips and munching it down hard. "It'll make tomorrow's attack across the city all that much easier, provided they also call the Power League over."
"You want me to ensure that?" Patting her pompous potbelly, the villainous heavy drinker let out a large belch before tidying herself up. "I can always make an appearance over there, and make a show of the place for you, luring everyone over there. Then when they catch me, I'll use our secret-"
"No using any Tetrafax Spores. Not yet at least." Holding her hand in a stopping gesture, she'd put her sandwich down briefly before clarifying. "Your idea is good and I do wish for you to travel down there first thing in the morning, but we still need testing on those spores before they're ready for combat. They still cause an insatiable hunger after all alongside the intended paralyzing effects. I just want them stuck in place, not stuck and constantly complaining for more food."
"Like we're one to talk." Cider said, poking to her own chubby cheeks. "But yeah, I won't use the spores then. At least while I'm in Springfield. I'll just bring some of our other plant-based bioweapons to protect myself."
"See to it that you do."
Cider may have been just as fat as she was, Moss thought, but one thing she did love was her intelligence. While she could create as much booze as she wanted, she was immune to getting drunk and was actually quite the tactical thinker. She often pretended to be drunk when facing heroes, only showcasing her true intelligence when she's got everything she needs to inflict the killing blow. She made the perfect decoy for those new heroes, and she trusted her to come back victorious after she finally laid claim to Chicago.
Still, said attack was tomorrow and she had many different things to do before then. She needed to give a speech to the Pea Pods who worked under her name, water all of her plant bioweapons, handle the bills of the lair (heating did not come cheap) and check on the imprisoned vigilantes she had captured to see if their wills were broken yet. Oh, and she had to get her suit refitted too. Being one of the top villains in the States was very much a difficult thing.
But this was not about being the best villain. This was about enacting vengeance against the world who had put her through hell. Sure, she was the tiniest bit out of shape, but she was going to achieve it. No hero was going to stop her, no military was going to slow her down, and no deity was going to smite her. She was going to have Chicago, and bring the city to it's knees...
And maybe explore some of Chicago's great tastes afterward. There were some good eateries on Yelp she hadn't checked yet after all.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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