BOTH Deviance: the Bombshell origin story

[FFAscinated]

Yay! I love it when FIN doesn't quite mean "final."

 

[Tad]

I really liked how this one tied everything together so well. Makes a nice trio with the other two

No real speculations though, I'm more of the wait and see what happens group.

 

[stevita]

Thanks! There's a lot more Sparkverse coming, and I'm super stoked to get back to Spark and the rest of my future installments. You already know Martika will be back--and now I guess you know what she means when she says she was "a close friend of Oriana's," hehe. A bunch of other minor characters from this installment will also be making comebacks at some point, and not to be an egotistical tease, but--

Ah, screw it. I know I'm nothing but an egotistical tease, so I might as well drop the...well, the bombshell:

Voltage ain't dead. In fact, you've already met her. But right now you only know her by her civvy name.

 

[mp7251]

((TW: marijuana use. Also, remember Martika?))

He had to know, too, that she could never harm him. He'd been nothing but gentle to her, and in her fantasies, she pictured herself gingerly opening his shirt, rubbing the ache out of his belly...washing him in the bath...quieting his darkest memories with feather-light touches and offering her own body to him, vulnerable and naked, for him to cradle in his thick arms, like a comfort object he could use to cuddle all his pain away...


While they were at the restaurant it had started to rain. He covered her with his jacket to walk her back to her dorm. They exchanged numbers on the walk, but parted ways at the threshold. "Apologies," he said, "for leaving you at the doorway."


"It's okay," she said, handing his coat back to him. "I understand. You gotta talk to your primary." Yes, she knew the lingo that pertained to polyamory. You picked up quite the vocabulary when you were mildly addicted to fetish porn. But he would already know that about her, wouldn't he?


"Til we meet again, baby doll."


What she wouldn't have given to lead him to her bed and meticulously peel his clothes off.


***


"Let's see...you've already met our school requirements for classes involving practical power use," said Paula, Oriana's new academic advisor, who sat sideways at her desk with her legs crossed, leaning back to examine her transcript from Rivington. Perhaps in her middle age, the farsightedness was beginning to set in. "Combat theory, martial arts...marksmanship?"


"It was a requirement," said Oriana. "I really don't even like guns at all."


"Stunt driving? They're offering that as a class?"


"Now that one I kind of liked."


"Let's see," Paula went on. "You had top marks in programming, but you still need three more hard science credits before you graduate, and you're missing all of your social sciences and humanities credits. You'll need to declare a major as well, and start thinking about your career path."


"What if I wanted to register a persona and be a superhero?"


"That would be your prerogative," said Paula. "But it wouldn't exempt you from studying mathematics and literature. We want our graduates to be well-adjusted, well-learned, normal people first, and superheroes second--but to tell you the truth, most of them just get jobs."


***


Oriana's roommate moved in the Saturday before classes started. It was this perky, chubby blonde girl named Ingrid Zales with the power of hydrokinesis whose belongings consisted mostly of brightly colored outfits, waterproof electronics, and houseplants. She was a bit of a motormouth, and Oriana found herself tuning her out as she made small talk. She was still thinking about the boy she'd met.


"Hel-lo! Earth to Oriana!" said Ingrid, snapping her out of her daydream.


"Sorry. Repeat the question?"


"I asked you what your power is."


"I'm an offensive biomanipulator."


"Whoa," said Ingrid, "don't go advertising that."


"Why not?"


"O-bios have such a bad rap. And I get it. It's scary, being in a room with someone who can hijack your bodily autonomy. But you seem cool so far. Hell, I don't even really see you as an o-bio. I don't see powers; I see people first."


Oof. So it was one of these wannabe woke bitches.


"It was never like this at Rivington."


"Well, duh. That's military school," said Ingrid as she arranged her plants. "They probably valued you for being dangerous. I mean...not that I think you're a danger to me. Just don't bring it up."


"I met a telepath," Oriana said. "He had to know what I could do, and he wasn't scared."


"Because you're cool. I'm just saying...maybe don't lead with that."


***


Despite her distaste for sitting at desks, Oriana filled her schedule with computer science courses, along with an English course, a history course, and a course on costume design. She had a knack for computers, so it would be the easiest way to get her hard science credits out of the way. Her first week was a breeze. Then, on Friday night, she got a text from Dante:


>Martika says you're welcome to come over. We're in #466


Her cheeks flushed with heat. She wanted to rush over there straightaway...but her mother had taught her better manners than that. So, she swung by the Taco Shack and picked everyone up a large fountain soda, plus twenty tacos for them all to split, before heading to the room.


She assumed it was Martika's, what with the lace-trimmed 'welcome' mat, and knocked. "It's open," called a woman's voice from within, so Oriana let herself in.


Martika was even more radiant than in pictures, her smiling face seeming to emanate a certain glow. The photo Dante had shown Oriana failed to do justice to the inviting swell of her chest and completely left out the ass-to-die-for. Not to be outdone, her belly strained the buttons of her top, soft and pliable underneath the constricting fabric. What's more, she and Dante had already gotten started. She was straddling his lap on the sofa and hand-feeding him a slice of pizza while a soap opera rerun played on the TV. The pizza boxes were stacked three high on the coffee table, which also supported several bottles of liquor and three shot glasses.


"Good thinking, bringing chasers," said Dante before Martika crammed his mouth full of pizza.


She gave Oriana a slow look up and down. "So you're the biomanipulator?"


"Oh ****...how much he told you?"


"He said you're a Class O," said Martika. "You already know about the hate you're gonna get. But you should never be ashamed of your powers. They're beautiful. They make you who you are."


How refreshing it was, to be called beautiful instead of dangerous.


"He also tell you about…y'know…"


"The feeder stuff? Girl. When I learned this **** had a name, I felt so seen. So known. I think we're gonna get along just fine. And it's totally okay that sometimes you need to think about murder to get off. Honestly, **** Steve. **** Dr. Hastings. **** Jared Flemming. If they're anything near as awful as Dante says, they all deserve to burst, or choke, or sink to the bottom of the river, and it's no crime to get off on the thought. Trust me, I'm majoring in criminal justice."


Oriana shifted her weight from one foot to the other.


"Sit down if you want, pretty girl," said Martika, beckoning her forward with a head gesture, never moving from Dante's lap. "You're welcome to anything on the table."


"Likewise." Oriana walked over, added her haul from Taco Shack to the table's burden, and took a seat.


"You need a drink, honey?" Martika asked Dante. When he nodded in response, she took one of the sodas and held the straw to his lips. When he was done drinking, he squirmed for a moment, trying to get comfortable, before letting out a deep burp.


"Sorry," he excused himself.


"Better?" asked Martika, gingerly rubbing the upper swell of his belly.


"Hot," muttered Oriana, excitement building in her core.


"Round of shots?" Martika offered, pouring them each a hearty measure of vodka and handing them out.


After they'd chucked them back, Oriana said, "You know alcohol's a smooth muscle relaxant?"


"A what now?" asked Martika.


"It relaxes the muscles in your digestive tract. Meaning you can eat more." The things you learned on feedfrenzy.com.


"In that case…" Martika poured Dante another shot, tipped it into his mouth, and had him chase it with another mouthful of pizza. "Good, baby?"


The blissed-out expression on his face said it all. He nodded, moaned, and swallowed. "More?"


"Coming right up…" She held the pizza to his lips, but at the last minute, pulled back and took a bite herself, laughing.


"Damn, girl! Saw that one coming, but still! The betrayal!"


"Here, I got you," said Oriana, unwrapping a taco to offer it to him. He took a big, greedy bite, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her close. Biting her lip, she snuggled against him--so soft!--and let her free hand rest on his squishy side.


He swallowed, took a sip of soda, and said, "At least someone round here wants to take care of me."


"Oh, shut up," Martika teased, filling his mouth with pizza once more. As he chewed, she turned to Oriana and said, "Take over for me for a minute?"


Oriana was all too happy to oblige, feeding him the remainder of the taco as Martika retrieved a glass pipe from her dresser, and loaded it full of weed. Lighting the bowl, she took a big hit and passed the pipe to Dante. He took a big hit and held the pipe in Oriana's direction. "You want some?"


"Do you already know what I'm gonna say?"


"Not until you do, baby doll. I can't divine the future. Well, I had a grandma that could, but the whole family thought she was nuts, too."


She considered the decision at hand. She'd never smoked pot before. D'von said it just made him paranoid. Then again...maybe if she experienced the high, she'd be able to replicate its effects on anyone she might have to fight in the future. How cool would it be to be the superhero who incapacited bad guys by getting them stoned?


So she took the pipe and sucked down a big hit.


"You have to hold it in," said Dante. She did, for a solid five seconds, until he told her to breathe. didn't feel anything. She joined the other two in a few more rounds of hits while feeding Dante, and then…


Then it knocked her over like a freight truck.

Oriana thinks cops "are abusive and morally bankrupt " so for her to call Ingrid a wannabe woke is a pot calling a kettle black.

 

[stevita]

Oriana thinks cops "are abusive and morally bankrupt " so for her to call Ingrid a wannabe woke is a pot calling a kettle black.

I know! That's what's made her such a fun character for me to write

I've always been bored trying to create characters who are always perfect and morally good, so I default to creating ones like Ori/Bombshell, who (hopefully) have the sex appeal that the feedees in my audience have come to expect, but once you start tugging at their threads you realize just how tangled up in their own hubris they are. None of my protagonists are supposed to be role models, and Ori is no exception. You shouldn't attack cops. I never said you should attack cops.

But I would probably have a giant, insufferable ego too, if I had superpowers.

And that's Ori's fatal flaw. She has a giant, insufferable ego. Partially because I feel like it makes her more human--we all have our flaws. And partially because I feel like it makes her the perfect puzzle piece to complete Big Tech.

IDK if you've read Chimera Conspiracy or Spark, but, spoiler alert, Bombshell eventually does wind up with BT. But he's also very far from perfect. I know everyone loves to feel sorry for him, because he's a lonely horny sadboi, but I'll be the last to deny that he spends the majority of his origin story being incredibly emotionally abusive to everyone around him. He used his life as a bargaining chip to hold Tegan as his emotional hostage, and when that didn't pan out the way he wanted it to, he schemed relentlessly and attempted to implicate not one, but THREE unwitting people--Mickey, Marion, and Bombshell--into his convoluted suicide plot. And it all had to happen that way. He had to deserve the five-hundred-pound forced fattening he got. Otherwise, his whole arc would have been ridiculously self-indulgent. (If you think about it, Chimera was kind of justified in some ways.)

So, in backtracking and putting together Bombshell's revised origin story, I had to think: what kind of person falls in love with a self-destructive basket case like Eddie Salvidar, and is willing to help him get better?

Well...someone who's just as flawed. Someone whose giant, insufferable ego and constant self-righteous bullshit will protect her from any bullshit he might dish out, whether he does it on accident or not. Someone with a secret killer instinct to balance out his secret shameful death wish. Someone who meets fun-loving, adorkable Ingrid, who really just wants to enjoy her college experience and make friends, and immediately has something negative to say. Someone who literally jacks off to the thought of stuffing people full of concrete and throwing them in the river.

It's a dark story. I've written fluffier, and I've written darker. Hell, the main villain in Spark is literally based on a real-life WWII war criminal. If your motivation for reading feedist fic is solely for titillation, then best keep shopping, because I'm afraid I don't carry what you're looking for. But if your critique of my work boils down to "your protagonist is a hypocrite and kind of a yikes person"...

YEAH, she is. I'm so glad my point came across. I know my material comes across as offensive to some readers, but that's why I try and use trigger warnings, but I'm always on the lookout for ways to improve my tagging system. Moving forward, I may start specifically warning readers not to engage in some of the reckless behaviors my characters exhibit, in case some people can't tell the difference between a moral example and a little problematic fictional woman I made up in my head to explore my physically impossible sexual fantasies about making guys instantly gain hundreds of pounds

 

[stevita]

Anyway, if anyone's still hungry for more Bombshell, there's loads more on my AO3. Some of it is stuff I can't post here yet because it's incomplete and on hiatus until I finish Spark, and one piece in particular is a crossover fanfic with an existing fandom, but I do have anonymous comments enabled!