Elasticity

By Mark “Lucky” DeGregorio

When Nonie woke up, her roommate, Stephanie, had already left the apartment. No doubt, she had gone either to work, or to get her Alan, brother, out of yet another jam. Stephanie always said that he was to smart for his own good, and it would get him into trouble someday. If he was in trouble, she wondered what it was this time.

Nonie had spent the last twenty-four hours going through hell. She acquired the abilities to stretch and to shape change her body into anything she wanted. To top it all off, Nonie even fought a super villain and won. Nonie was the newly made super heroine, Elasticity.

She yawned and ran her slender fingers through her red hair, then, brushed away her pink bangs out of her eyes. Nonie stretched her pliable arms outwards, momentary forgetting the distances she could stretch, causing her to knocked over a lamp. As the lamp fell and shattered on the floor, she pulled her arms back and slowly stretched her neck to peek down at the broken lamp and sighed, “Oh man, Steph’s going to kill me for this.”

Nonie lay back onto her bed and sighed, “This day is so, not going to be a good one.”

She pulled her neck back and collapsed herself back down on her bed, flattening herself onto the mattress, “I am flat-out bored!”

Nonie popped herself back into her normally rounded form, “I wonder what on T.V. right now,” she said aloud, and then began to search for the remote control.

When she could not find it in her room, she remembered that she left it in the kitchen when she came home after the restaurant incident. Nonie stretched her arm across the apartment, bumping it against things along the way. When her arm finally reached the kitchen, she began to feel around for the remote control. After locating the remote, she pulled back her hand and turned on the television. A moment later, Nonie realized that she could have just simply stretched her arm over to the television and pushed the ON button on the set.

She still cannot believe it was only yesterday since she became the occasional super heroine “Elasticity”. She will never forget an event like this…

* * * * * * *

It all started like this…

Stephanie came home ranting about her brother’s stupid antics. Nonie never met him, and anyone who could rattle Stephanie’s cage was all right in her book. If it meant Stephanie placing her attention on him rather than her, the better it was for her. Nonie hoped she would get a chance to meet him sometime.

Just to hear her rant and rave, Nonie asked, “So…what did he do this time?”

“Oh, Alan hacked into the college’s computer and changed his grades. And would you believe that lunk-head got himself caught!” Stephanie flusters around the room and continued, “I had to talk the school into not throwing his sorry butt out of college!”

Stephanie glanced at the calendar and noticed that the rent was due and thought, how would they pay it this month. Then she remembered, wait, what’s this WE crap, Nonie’s unemployed. She thought, and then she saw Nonie playing a video game and said, “Nonie, the rents due.”

“And you point being.” Nonie replied without looking away from the game.

Annoyed by her response, Stephanie nagged, “I would like very much, if you would get off your dead butt and go out and get a job!”

She’s always yelling about something, Nonie thought. Then Stephanie stormed to the PlayStation 2, pulled out the power cord, and successfully shutting off the game. Nonie angry asked, “Why did you have to do that for?”

Stephanie failed to remain calm, yelled, “Look, I can’t be pulling your dead weight around. How many times can we trick our landlord with not paying our rent?”

“You mean, Franklin Cummings, our landlord…Indefinitely.” Nonie joked.

Stephanie was not amused by Nonie’s joke, grabbed the newspaper, ripped out the wanted ads, threw it at Nonie, and demanded, “I want you to get a job before I get back from work!”

After Stephanie left to work, Nonie began to look over the wanted ads in the paper. She scanned through the ads and about ninety present were jobs for waitresses. She gripped, “No way am I going to be a waitress. There has got to be something in here that doesn’t requires me waiting on people!”

Then, she saw it…

Top Dollars; No experience necessary;

Test Subject at a research facility;

Must be female in early twenties; Apply in person at

Galaxy Research Institution; 5523 South Bay Dr

“Hey, I found the perfect job for me.” she said.

* * * * * * *

After getting herself cleaned up, she took the bus to the address in the ad. It led her to a science research lab. A scientist approached Nonie and said, “I’m so glad that you could come, my name is Jason Flemming, but you can call me Beaker, everyone else does.”

The two walked into his office as Beaker asked, “So, Nonie, have you done anything like this before?”

Nonie looked at Beaker in puzzlement and asked, “How did you know my name?”

He paused a moment and then answered, “Uh, It was on your application.” Then he took her application from her and showed her name to her.

“Oh, my bad.” She responded.

Beaker gave a sigh of relieve and started the interview. He began with the stander questions. “What is your height?” Beaker asked.

“5’ 6” Nonie answered.

“Your weight?” he asked.

She replied, “102 lbs.”

Beaker concluded by asking, “And your Age”

Nonie was at that part in her life where that question would not rattle her, “22.” She answered.

Beaker jotted down the information, and he handed her a clipboard with some papers and said; “Now I need you to sign these wavers and then we can get started.”

Nonie signed it and excitedly said, “You mean I got the job!”

“Yes, right after you sign these papers,” Beaker said, “You’re a shoe-in for the job.”

Nonie wasn’t sure what her job title was exactly and thought, Gee, I wonder what a test subject is supposed to do.

* * * * * * *

In their apartment, Franklin came to fix the drippy kitchen sink. He inserted his passkey, and entered their apartment. “Yoo-hoo, anybody home?” he called out.

He lugged a little haft-pound wench into the living room and sighed, “Hugh, why do they have to make these wrenches so heavy?”

As he made his way through the room, he saw the computer on. Franklin set the wrench down and looked at the computer. A pop-up ad came up with a dating serves, so he clicked on it.

A picture of a beautiful brunette woman flashed onto the screen. She was in a blue bikini and her name was Elizabeth Marvel. Franklin then E-mailed her and the two started talking. Elizabeth was wanted to find a husband, and Franklin was lonely. Franklin thought, if Lyle Lovit could marry Julia Roberts, then why can’t I marry Elizabeth. After the two instance messaged each other, Franklin proposed to her, and she accepted.

* * * * * * *

A short time later, the two were in his laboratory. Beaker handed her some purple stuff in a vile and said, “Here, drink this if you please.”

Wondering what it was, Nonie asked, “What is this stuff?”

“It’s a serum I’ve been working on. Now if you'd just drink-up.” He said.

“What does it taste like?” she asked.

Beaker let out a sigh and quickly said, “It taste just like cherries, Now Drink!”

“Cherries aren’t purple…” Nonie said, as she sniffed the serum, “and that definitely doesn’t smell like cherries.”

“Don’t worry, it tastes nothing like how it smells.” He reassured her.

Nonie downed the whole contents of the vile into her mouth, and struggled to swallow it. He lied! It so, did not taste anything like cherries, she thought, what it DID taste like was indiscernibly horrible!

If you mixed caster oil and Robitussin cough syrup together, it would taste better than this crap, she thought. The room seemed to be moving in funny ways as Nonie began to feel sick to her stomach, said, “I don’t feel so good. I need to lay down.”

“That’s okay, you will have to stay here for the night for observations anyway.” Beaker commented, then Nonie blacked-out.

Beaker carried her to a room and laid her down on a bed. Before he left the room, Beaker turned to look at Nonie and said, “I know your mother would be proud of the way you turned out.” Then he exited the room.

Beaker had some things to prepare for before she wakes up.

* * * * * * *

Nonie woke to find herself in a bed. It took her a few minutes to realize that this was not her room at home, and another to remember where she was. Nonie got up and staggered out the door and down the hall to find the bathroom. She was still a little dizzy from that god awful tasting crap that Beaker had her drink earlier.

It was dark in the laboratory. Nonie came to a door at the end of the hall and entered into the room. It was dark in there also, so she started to feel around for the light switch. When she did found a switch she flicked it to the on position, but nothing happened. “There must be a power failure.” Nonie guessed.

She felt her way across the room, and found another door and entered it. The room was small like a phone booth. Then suddenly, the door had close behind her with a click. “What…Oh No!” Nonie cried.

She tried to open the door, but it would not open. Shit! What now? She thought. Again, Nonie tried to open the door, but she could not get it opened.

“Well, maybe I can call someone to get me out of this phone booth.” She sighed.

By this time, the switch she flicked moments earlier, had warmed up. The power came on. The lights came on. Nonie now had a chance to view her surroundings. She was not in a phone booth, but rather a testing tube of some-sort-of machine with a plasma beam gun pointing right at her.

Nonie whole life flashed before for eyes. Everything from her first encounter with her rival and nemesis, Patricia Connling, in kindergarten, to getting stuck in a booth with a plasma ray gun about to go off.

Nonie fearfully screamed, “Holy Shit!” as she was the blasted by the plasma beam.

Moments later, Beaker ran into the room and shut off the machine. Nonie took a full dose of the Delta-Gamma rays. Not wanting to see what had happen to Nonie, Beaker slowly approaches the booth. Slowly he opened the door and peeked inside. There was nothing left of her except for a pink and red blobby glob with eyes on the floor.

“You Lied!” said the glob.

“You’re Alive?” Beaker asked.

“You Lied! You said that Crap would taste like cherries!” said the glob.

Beaker did not have the heart to tell her, that she looked like a pile of crap. Her body was very warm, so Beaker brought out a fan to cool her down. Nonie's body cooled down to a normal body temperature, after about ten minutes in front of the fan.

Beaker watched as Nonie started to reform herself back into her normal shape. First came the head from the red portion of the glob. Next, her arms shot out and then, trunk of her body. Finally were her legs, and then she stepped out of the booth and said, “Where’s the lousy bathroom?”

Beaker pointed and said, “Over there to the right.” Nonie ran pass him to get to the bathroom.

It was not until she got there that she had realized that she was naked. “WHAT HAPPEN TO MY CLOTHES!” she excitedly screamed.

Institutively Nonie tried to wrap her arms to hide her lack of clothes, but was amazed when both of her arms had wrapped around her body at least twelve times apiece. She then ran back to Beaker in the lab to get some answers.

* * * * * * *

Nonie felt better after Beaker got her something to put on. Beaker gave her a green sports bra, yellow spandex bicycle shorts, and white tennis shoes.

After she was dressed, Beaker said, “I would like to run some tests on you to see what effects that the combination of the serum and the plasma energy had on you.” That really scared her.

First, he wanted her to reach for an object some thirty feet away. Instantly Nonie stretches her arms to grab the object. It was simple, and she was successful. Next, Beaker asked Nonie to roll herself into a ball. When she did, Beaker approached Nonie, lifted her up and started to bounce her on the floor.

“Hey! Ooof! Ouch! That hurts! Ow Ow Ow! Stop it! What are you doing?” Nonie protested.

Beaker responded, “I’m testing the bounce ability of your body.”

“Well cut it out! It Hurts!”

“All in the name of science.” Beaker laughed. When he finished dribbling her, he tossed her into a near-by waste paper basket. She stretched her arms and legs out of the trashcan, grabbed a light fixture, and pulled herself out of the basket. Nonie then dusted herself off and gripped, “Oh, I suppose he thinks that was funny…Not!”

Beaker had the next test ready by the time she got out. He directed her to stand on a little X mark on the floor. When she was in place, he went behind a glass observation booth. Nonie asked, “So, what is this test going to be?”

“Testing your damage resistance,” He responded, “Just stand there and look pretty.”

Beaker pressed a button on the control panel and two eight inched, steel walls came rapidly together smashing Nonie in between them.

Beaker pushed another button, and the walls pulled back. He looked out to see Nonie, but she was not there. "Where'd Nonie go?” Beaker wondered aloud.

Then the answer to his question was answered when he notice a thin filmy wafer sticking out in the middle of the room. The "wafer" flips around, revealing the flattened image of Nonie crushed paper-thin. Nonie then fell backwards to the floor with a plop!

Beaker rushes over to where Nonie had fallen. He notices that Nonie looked like a cardboard cutout of herself and asked, “Nonie, are you alright?”

“Yeah! No thanks to you.” Nonie said very flatly and started to lift herself off the floor. In her flattened state, it was hard to coordinate her two-dimensional body, “How do I become Un-Flatten?”

Beaker responded, “Oh, that’s the next test.”

He then placed a tube between Nonie’s flat little lips and turned a value and she popped back into her three-dimensional self. Then she began to full up like a balloon with air and started to float up into the air. That is when she realized that Beaker was using helium to blow her up.

When she was about twenty-five feet in the air; Beaker yanked the hose from her mouth. The helium gusted out of her mouth and sent her flying around the room like a balloon after you let the air out of it. Nonie then, flew straight into a wall, hitting it so hard that she had been flattened-out again.

Nonie was face down against the wall with her arms and legs spread apart. She slowly started to slide off the wall and to the floor. Her body had overlapped onto itself, as she resembled a bed sheet that was thrown on the floor. “Well, that test went well.” Beaker laughed.

Nonie said in a funny helium voice, “Not for me!”

After three hours of these ridiculous tests, Beaker gave Nonie his findings. “Nonie, I’ve come to the assumption that you have acquired the ability to stretch, and to shape change.” Beaker concluded.

Nonie couldn’t believe her ears. All that punishment she endured to find out what she already knew, that she had rubber-like powers. Therefore, she used her newly acquired elastic powers to beat-up Beaker and stormed out of the lab. Then, she turned around went back to Beaker and asked, “I still get paid for this, don’t I?”

* * * * * * *

Nonie was still a little pist off after what happened at the lab, but she was feeling a little guilty about the way she pounded Beaker. He could have done a simple test or something, or tell me something that I did not already know, she thought, then she saw her bus coming.

The bus arrived and she got on. She got the check cashed and was on her way to the mall to spend it. “If Stephanie knew I got this money, she would make me do something stupid with it; like use it for the rent.” Nonie sighed.

The bus stopped along with every car on the road. There was a commotion at a restaurant. People were running out and she could hear some crashes coming from the restaurant. Nonie got off the bus to see what it was.

There was an enormously fat man tearing the place apart. He was so fat that he made sumo wrestlers look like Calista Flockhart or Lara Flynn Boyle. He looked like he was about 6’7” and his weight; she could not even begin to guess that, but could be around 800 lbs. She heard someone in the crowd cried out, “Juan Tun is tearing the place apart! RUN!”

Nonie stopped one of the waitresses to find out what happened. The waitresses said, “He ordered the all-you-can-eat buffet, and when we ran out of food, well…”

Nonie thought that, with her elastic powers, she could stop his rampage. She turned and said, “Leave fatty to me.”

The waitress scratched her head and wondered, what is a skinny little girl like her going to do to a guy like Juan Tun? Nonie walked over to Juan and said, “Hey fat-so, you can’t go around tearing this restaurant apart!”

Juan stopped and looked at Nonie for a moment. Whom is she kidding, he thought and then he asked, “Do you know why I’m called Juan Tun?”

“Uh, no?” she responded.

Juan Tun answered his own question, “Because, I weigh a TON!”

He jumped into the air, doing a belly flop on top of Nonie, ironing her petite body under him. Juan got up, looked down at the now flattened Nonie, and laughed, “Haw-haw I squished you good! That’ll teach you for messing with me!”

Nonie laid on the floor as she thought; he weighs a lot more than he looks.

She peeled her two-dimensional form off the floor and proceeded to inflate back into three dimensions. When she had finished, Nonie decided to attack him head-on, which turned out to be a big mistake.

Nonie jumped onto his back wrapping her arms around Juan’s chest and head. “Hey ya stupid rubber freak, Let go!” he cried out.

“Freak? Look who’s talking, Fat-so!” Nonie responded, “You should really consider going on a diet!”

“DIET!” Juan shouted, “I hate Diets!”

He tried to shake her off and then he had an idea, he simply just let himself fall backwards and let gravity do the rest. Nonie felt a shift of balance as Juan Tun started to fall over. When she fell on the floor, she felt Juan’s massive weight pressing down on her. Nonie could sense her body being squeezed out flat as Juan’s body came to a rest on top of her. She was in the same predicament she was in earlier; flattened under Juan.

After he got up this time, he joked, “Well, I can see this Paper-Heroine is a very slow learner.” This time he pulled her off the floor, crumbled her like a piece of paper, and threw her into a garbage can.

“That should take care of the stupid elasticity-girl,” he laughed again.

Nonie un-crumbles herself and glared at the fat blimp and said, “Well this elasticity-girl is going to kick your butt”, and then inflated herself back to her normal shape.

Nonie was getting ready to go back out there and try again to stop him, she guessed that Juan was your typical tough-but-dumb villains and was going to outsmart him. Nonie was about to go back out there, when the waitresses from earlier stopped her and said, “Are you stupid or just plain crazy? You can’t stop him like that.”

Nonie looked at the waitress’s name tag, and responded, “Penny is it, and why not?”

Penny answered, “If you haven’t figured it out yet, he’s invulnerable to all physical attacks.” Nonie had a blank look on her face; you could almost hear the crickets in her head. A moment later, Penny continued, “You can’t hurt him.”

“Oh…so how do I stop him?” Nonie asked.

Penny explained, “His fat areas protects him from harm; the top of his head doesn’t have fat on it. If you hit his head, you can knock him out.”

“Oh, I get it. Bop him on the head?” Nonie smiled.

Nonie shaped her right hand into a mallet and started to run towards Juan Tun. Penny grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back and said, “Run out there again and he’ll just flatten you out again. We need a real plan…here’s what we’ll do…”

* * * * * * *

The two girls started to make plans, and in a few minutes, Nonie came out holding two 32oz bottles of diet coke. Penny started to pour cooking oil over the floor after Nonie left the kitchen. When Nonie was close enough to Juan Tun, she removed the caps on both bottles, stretched her thumbs over the tops of the bottles, and began to violently shake them.

She then yelled, “Hey fat-so! Have some diet coke, on me!” She popped her thumbs off both bottles, which sprays all over Juan Tun, “Oops, I guess it’s on you.”

Nonie turned and ran towards the kitchen. Juan Tun was soaked in sticky diet soda. He looked at the bony little rubber girl and roared, “I Hate DIETS!”

Juan Tun angry and proceeded to chase after her. Nonie ran into the kitchen and started to slide across the cooking oil, which Penny had placed, on the kitchen floor. Nonie slid to the other side of the kitchen and when she came to the pantry, she stretches herself across a doorway.

Juan ran into the kitchen and slipped on the oil. He slid crossed the kitchen into the stretched-out Nonie and into the pantry about eight feet. She held on as best as she could to keep her trampoline-like body for what was to happen next.

Nonie’s rubber body threw Juan back into the kitchen. He slid again on the oil, and with the velocity his massive body moved, he was thrown head first into the freezer’s metal doors, knocking himself out cold.

The two girls ran to where Juan Tun laid. Nonie noticed the large dent in the freezer doors and said, “Wow! He left a crater in the door!”

“That takes care of Juan Tun, serves him right.” Penny added.

Nonie looked at her new friend and said, “I still can’t believe that plan really worked.”

They gave themselves a high-five. The two walked out of the restaurant as the police came to take Juan Tun to jail. After trying to lift him, they had to call for a bulldozer to move him.

Nonie said to Penny, “I guess you’re out of work for awhile, what will you do?”

Penny responded, “That’s okay, my husband James has a good job. I was just doing this to keep busy.”

A batch of reporters rushed over to the girls to get the story. They started to ask dozens of questions about the battle with Juan Tun.

“Where did you come from…How did you get your powers…who are you…are you going to be a crime fighter?”

One reporter asked, “So…what’s your name, what are you calling yourself?”

Before Nonie can answer, Penny replied, “Her name is Elasticity.”

“Elasticity?” Nonie thought about the name and said, “Elasticity, I like it.”

Nonie, now dubbed Elasticity, gave an interview with Penny helping with the hard questions.

* * * * * * *

…And that was how it happened.

She was now to be known as, the sometime super heroine, Elasticity. Nonie looked at the clock and saw it was getting late. She knew that if Stephanie found out that she had spent most of the day goofing off in bed and not looking for a job, she would blow a gasket. She hurried and got up from the bed and got dressed. She was eating a bowl of Cocoa Puffs when Stephanie came in and said, “Would you believe that imbecile-of-a-brother disappeared from school.”

Nonie saw that all-to-familiarly vein bulging on her forehead; always meant she was pist. “Where did he go?” Nonie asked.

Stephanie glared at Nonie and said through clenched teeth, “If I knew where he was, do you think he would be missing?”

Nonie decided to change the subject, “So, how was your day?” she asked.

Stephanie stopped in her tracks, turned to face Nonie, and said, “Peachy, did you find a job, or even looked for one today?”

Nonie could only think of how stupid that was, changing the subject from Alan to her. Now Stephanie was asking questions she did not want to answer. What she said did not help her cause. “Well, yesterday I stopped a guy called Juan Tun.”

Stephanie crossed her arms, lifted an eyebrow, and asked, “I see, and that paid how much? Enough for the rent?”

When Nonie did not answered, Stephanie began to nag, “I would like very much, if you would get off your butt and go out and get a job! Is that too much for you to comprehend?”

Nonie spent the rest of the day listening to Stephanie’s nagging.

* * * * * * *

Alan was at an Internet coffee shop when a pop-up ad interrupted his web search of bikini babes, where he was downloading pictures to insert himself into the pictures. The ad claimed adventure, excitement, fame, and most important…MEGA BUCKS!

Alan stared at the monitor for a moment and thought, what the hell, how could it hurt just to find out. He clicked onto the sight. So Low Conglomerates, a major company was looking for thrill seekers to explore and retrieve a medical device from an unknown alien crashed spaceship.

“An alien spaceship? Who are they kidding?” Alan mumbled to himself.

He clicked onto the FAQ to see what that would tell him. Jonathon Solow, the CEO of So Low Conglomerates, is offering ten thousand dollars to retrieve one device; anything else on the ship is up for open salvage.

Alan thought for a moment, and then said, “If this is on the level, I could make a shit load of money.”

He then wrote down the address, and called Solow on his cell phone and made an appointment with him. He had eight-thirty appointment for the tomorrow morning.

Next: Attack of the Seam-dress