MISC: Super Stomach Girl #3 - I Like To Watch

[Jerry]

Super Stomach Girl #3 - I Like To Watch

by Jerry Shaw

I pounded on the manager's door as hard as I could. It seemed like ages 
(though it was probably only seconds) before the door opened.

"Can I help you Roz?"

"Yes," I said. "Punch me in the stomach."

Kara was the apartment building's manager, and the owner. Her father 
had left it to her when he died. And with her keen business sense, she 
ran it most efficiently. It was rumored that he had left her with more 
than just the apartment building, though no one had confirmed it yet.

Kara was the same age as me, our birthdays within days of each other. 
We had developed a friendship since I moved in a year ago, though not a 
close one yet. But it was close enough. And it was about to get closer.

"Punch me in the stomach," I said as I barged into her room, closing 
the door rapidly but softly behind me. "I want you to punch me in the 
stomach."

"But... but... Why do you want me to..."

"Look, I don't have any time for explanations now. Just punch me in the 
belly as hard as you can."

"But I'll hurt you if I punch you as hard as..."

"JUST DO IT!" I almost screamed. "I'll be OK. Just do it. There's no 
time to argue!"

"OK, if you want. But you'd better tell me what's going on afterward."

She pulled back her fist, and punched me in the stomach, right at the 
navel. It wasn't a particularly hard punch, though it still hurt bad. I 
responded with a classic, "Oof."

"Harder! I want you to punch me as hard as you can! And keep doing it 
until I tell you to stop."

"But..."

"As hard as you can!" I said, and steeled myself for her next punch.

She shrugged and pulled back her fist, not a lot, but just back even 
with her own stomach. She let fly with a punch that was so fast I 
barely saw it coming. It landed in my solar plexus, sending that 
familiar shock of pain radiating all throughout my body.

I awoke on a bed, not my own. Kara was just coming into the room. 
"Good, I'm glad to see you're waking up, Roz."

When I realized I had been out, I was in a panic. "Quick, help me up. I 
need to..." I said as I tried to sit up. But my body collapsed back 
down from the pain that her hard punch had caused.

"Lie back down. You'll need a couple more minutes to recover."

"But I can't! I have to help her! She's being attacked back there!" I 
said, still in a panic, forcing myself to sit up against the pain.

"Oh, you mean that girl being mugged in the alley behind the apartment? 
I'd already called the police before you knocked. They caught him. And 
she's OK.

"I saw it all on my security cameras. I've already burned a DVD from 
the video, with two different camera angles, and given it to the 
police. With that, they said they'll have no problem prosecuting him 
and putting him away for a nice long time. And they won't even have to 
involve the girl he attacked either, so they let her go."

"How many hours have I been out?"

"Oh, about ten minutes."

Ten minutes! I was flabbergasted. And a little embarrassed.

I had seen him stalking her out my back window. And it was my job as 
the superhero Super Stomach Girl to stop this crime.

Ever since I found out I had super powers, I'd been thinking about 
them. Very briefly, I thought about conquering the world with them. I 
think that phase lasted all of about five seconds. Then, I thought 
about all the good I could do. And since my super powers were only good 
in a fight, that left the obvious, fighting crime and criminals, 
villains if you wish.

All the really big crimes and criminals and villains were already being 
handled by all the other more well-known superheroes. So, I decided to 
pick up the smaller crimes, the ones they wouldn't even hear about. I 
was going to thwart crime throughout our small town.

"Villains of Fresno, beware Super Stomach Girl, and her Amazing Super 
Powers!"

Yes, my powers. They were a mixed blessing. Once my powers were 
activated, I could deliver a punch that could hurl a villain 50 feet 
through the air. Of course, that was only if I punched them in their 
stomachs. My punches were just a little above average if they landed 
anywhere else, such as on their jaw. I could take punches to my own 
stomach that would incapacitate a pro wrestler, and not even feel them. 
But I didn't know if I could take the same level of punishment to other 
parts of my body yet (after all, it had been less than a week since I 
got my powers).

Once my powers were activated, that was.

Of course, activating my super powers came with a price. In order to 
get the power to deliver a pile-driver stomach punch, I had to let my 
own stomach be punched, lots of times, hard, in order to store up the 
energy to transform into Super Stomach Girl, to be able to deliver 
those devastating stomach punches to others. But even this power faded 
abruptly after I had been using it for a while.

All this I had gathered from that one fight I had so far, so a lot of 
it was guesswork. But I knew I was going to try to make a difference in 
the town of Fresno. "Criminals beware," indeed.

The mugger in the alley was going to be my first real villain. My first 
real fight. Of course, I couldn't just run out into the alley and 
subdue him. And I was pretty sure he wouldn't consent to standing there 
punching my stomach until I had gained the power to fight him. So I did 
the only thing I could think of. I went to see Kara, to get her to help 
me release my super powers. So I could save that girl. 

But of course, she had already handled it without any super powers at 
all. And she had given me another lesson. I had a weakness. Yes, 
punching my stomach would release my powers. But if I was punched too 
hard, such as her really hard punch to my solar plexus, the fight would 
be over before it had begun, before my powers were released. 

I was embarrassed.

"Well," she said. "Are you going to tell me what all that stomach 
punching thing was about? Why you wanted me to punch you in the 
stomach?"

This was the down side of my plan. I knew that even a good liar like 
me, (though I liked to think of myself more as a storyteller than a 
liar), couldn't come up with a plausible story that would satisfy her. 
So I did the most devious thing I could think of. I told her the truth.

Leaving out details left and right, I told her about the initial fight 
with the girl gang where I had been killed, the alien who had brought 
me back to life, and obviously gave me my super powers, and the fight 
this last Monday with the same gang, where I had discovered what my 
powers were.

"... And the red suit," she muttered quietly to herself.

"What was that?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing. Tell me more about this. Have you been able to test your 
powers, to find out exactly how much power you have? And how much abuse 
your stomach needs to take before your powers appear? You know that 
you'll have to know all of this of course."

I hadn't thought of that at all. But of course, she was right. 
Especially in light of my newfound weakness. I told her as much.

"Well then, we're going to have to get you in shape. I have the perfect 
place in the back. And I want to see that red bullseye on your stomach 
up close."

Now that shocked me. I knew I hadn't mentioned that in my story. And I 
could feel the suit still tightly tucked under my belt, covering my 
stomach. "How do you know... about my bullseye?"

Now it was her turn to pause. And she turned a bright red. "Well..." 
and she hesitated.

"Well, you've been honest with me. Let me show you instead. I hope you 
can keep a secret, even one that may shock you. Come on." 

And with that cryptic pronouncement, she led me to a back door in her 
apartment. I had a door in the same place in mine. My door opened into 
a closet. Her door opened into another room, bigger than the whole rest 
of her apartment. And it was filled with equipment. Gym equipment. 
There was a light and heavy punching bag, a complete weight set and 
bench, and a whole lot of training machines, like the things I'd seen 
in the gym where I had my aerobics class, but didn't know how to use. 
These were all clustered on one end, leaving the rest of the gym free. 
And this free area was covered with a thick matting, seamless, custom 
made for the area I noticed. So I guess the gym was for training, and 
the free area was for tumbling practice or something, I surmised. But 
this wasn't as shocking as she had made out.

Kara had obviously used the gym a lot. Most of the equipment had that 
darkening to the leather covering, the darkening caused by sweat and 
hard use. And it showed on her. Today, she was wearing her usual baggy 
T-shirt and shorts. But I had seen her in a bikini, and could attest to 
her fitness. She was shorter than me. But she had a flat stomach and 
trim thighs, hard as a rock they looked. She carried herself like she 
had some kind of gymnastics training. And I should know, after three 
years of college cheerleading and gymnastics myself. So yes, she looked 
fit, no doubt from the frequent use of her gym equipment. And I would 
have to do the same, I knew. I'd have to look into doing more at my gym 
than just aerobics. I'd have to learn what all that equipment was and 
how to use it. And hopefully, my stomach muscles would be built up to 
the point that hers seemed to be.

"Back here," she said. She continued across her gym to a small door on 
the other side. Right next to the door was a big, red button that she 
slammed her fist into. It didn't have any effect as far as I could 
determine. If it was a lock of some kind, it couldn't have been a very 
good one. Anyone back here would automatically press the button to open 
the door.

She turned the handle and opened the door. It was dark inside, at least 
compared to the harsh glare of the overhead lights in the gym. But she 
didn't turn on any lights.

Rapidly my eyes became accustomed to the dark. The room was shallow but 
wide. It had a long desk up against the far wall, running the complete 
width of the room, and a single swivel chair pushed up against the desk 
in the middle, sitting in front of a single keyboard, wireless I noted. 
But that was ordinary. What wasn't was the large, High Definition flat-
panel TV above the desk, flanked on either side by row upon row of 
smaller flat-panel monitors mounted on the wall, stacked four high. 
There must have been around 40 or 50 of them. And they were all dark. 
So she was a video freak. This still couldn't be her deep, dark secret, 
I thought.

Kara pulled a chair out of the corner and pushed it against the desk. 
Then motioning me to sit down, she sat down in front of the keyboard 
herself. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. If she were actually 
typing words, she was as good as I was.

"Look," she said. Suddenly, the main screen came on. I squinted at the 
brightness for a couple seconds. "I recorded this earlier this week."

It was me! It was the fight I had with the girl gang, wearing the red 
suit. So it must have been Monday. I most certainly hadn't seen a 
camera crew in the area, so she must have used a hidden camera to tape 
it. But how had she known where I would be? How had she known where the 
fight would be to put a camera there? I most certainly didn't know I 
would miss my bus stop that day. And get off at that particular stop. 
And I most certainly didn't know which alley I would be dragged into. 
So how had she? Then it hit me.

"Uh, Kara, how many cameras do you have covering the city?"

"Oh, a few hundred by now," she said in an offhanded way, as she 
concentrated on her typing. One of the smaller screens had been 
activated showing her a list of some kind, one with icons that were 
obviously small thumbnail pictures of videos. She scrolled through page 
after page of them, selecting a few and dragging them to one side of 
the screen.

The video on the main screen showed a wide-angle shot of the fight. It 
had started just as I had transformed. I had wondered what my 
transformation had looked like, and I saw it now. A faint bluish glow 
formed around me. Then there was a flash of light that only lasted a 
second. Then there I was, in the red suit, my bare stomach bullseye 
showing prominently in contrast. The main screen showed the whole 
fight, showing me driving my punches into the other girls' stomachs, 
sending them flying. And by the time the main fight was over, Kara was 
ready, skillfully editing the videos on the fly, displaying piece after 
piece, camera after camera to form a continuous movie.

After the fight, I grabbed my blouse and skirt and pulled them on over 
the red suit, not really hiding it. I crept through the back alleys, 
peering around the corners to make sure no one would see me. I went 
into the alley behind the apartment, to the back door. I crept up the 
back stairs to my room, grateful that no one had seen me. Inside, I 
stripped, throwing my muddy skirt and blouse into the hamper. And 
peeling the red suit off, I went into the shower, throwing the suit 
into the tub as I had last time, to let it clean itself.

I looked at myself in the shower. The bullseye was still there. But 
there was no other mark on my stomach. The knuckle-knives should have 
ripped deep into my stomach. But there wasn't even a mark there. I ran 
my soapy hands over my stomach, massaging it, and didn't even feel the 
pain of the punches. My stomach should have been aching like the devil, 
or at least be a little sore. But digging my hands deep into my stomach 
didn't elicit even a slight twinge of pain.

Suddenly, it hit me. I was watching this on the TV screen. A video! So 
how did Kara get these pictures? And where was the camera, the one IN 
MY BATHROOM!!

Kara must have been a mind reader. "Well, I told you I had a secret. I 
told you it would shock you. Here, let me show you," and her hands flew 
across the keyboard once more, bringing up a realtime shot of my living 
room, my bedroom, my bathroom, all on separate screens.

I looked at her, and she was beet red and sweating. I had never seen 
Kara sweat before, even on the hottest days. "So why, of all your 
tenants, did you wire up my room?"

"I think you missed the point. The whole apartment building is wired 
up, though I only look at the girls' rooms regularly."

"You mean, you're a... you're a..."

"Yes," she said, lowering her head. "I'm a thespian."

I couldn't take it any more. I sat down in the chair and laying my head 
on the desk, broke out in howls of laughter. It didn't take her long 
either, before we were both laughing so hard tears were pouring out and 
streaming down our faces.

And as our mutual laughter died down she continued, "And in college, I 
openly and frequently matriculated," drawing another round of laughter, 
as long as the first.

When our laughter died down a second time, she looked at me and said, 
"So, what now?"

What now indeed.

The shock of the cameras, recording my most private moments, made me 
think. "You've obviously been looking at me for a long time. Why? And 
your comment about only watching the girls. If you're not a lesbian, 
what was that all about? What are you?"

She blushed. Not the beet red she had turned earlier, but a blush of 
embarrassment just the same. I studied her face. I could see the 
indecision on it. Would I understand her motives? Would I still be her 
friend afterward? How much could she tell me? How much SHOULD she tell 
me? All this was evident on her face (she would have made a lousy poker 
player). Then, she made her final decision.

"OK, I'll tell you. I have this fetish. You may think this weird..." 
(as weird as watching all her apartment tenants on video, I wondered), 
"... but I like to watch. I like to watch... girls."

So then, that explained a little.

"I like to watch athletic girls, ones with hard bodies. I..." She 
paused.

Prompting her, "So, you like to watch girls. What else?" I knew there 
was something else she wanted to say, but was still too embarrassed to 
speak up. "Go ahead, you can tell me. After all, you know my Deep Dark 
Secret already. How much worse could yours be?"

"Well, I like to... like to... punch them."

This threw me for a loop. I had only known Kara for a year. But in all 
that time, I had never ever imagined this. "You mean, you're into whips 
and chains?" I hadn't seen anything like that out in her gym, but there 
could very well have been another closet somewhere.

"Whips and... No, no! Nothing like that! What do you take me for!" (At 
this point I had no idea what I took her for.) "Just... I like to punch 
them... in their stomachs... their hard little stomachs. I fantasize 
about it all the time."

"So you haven't actually done it? Only fantasized?"

"No, excepting of course in my Karate classes." (And lots of times 
outside of Karate Class, after the class was over, but Roz didn't need 
to know about those. Not yet at least, Kara thought.) And Kara's 
statement had the effect she was hoping for, indirection.

"You go to Karate class? I didn't know you had any training like that. 
But I guess I should have known when you put me out with that punch 
earlier."

"Yes, I've been training on and off for over ten years." (No need to 
tell Roz that she already had black belts in a half a dozen martial 
arts. She needed to get her confidence up. And she would find out soon 
enough anyway.)

"Well that's perfect. I wanted you to punch my stomach earlier, and 
here you are. We need to do this some more, if you're up for it."

 "Great!" said Kara. "I like to punch girls just like you, with flat, 
wide stomachs, and you want me to do it! It's a marriage made in 
Heaven!"

I couldn't help myself. "Marriage? But I thought you said you weren't a 
lesbian?" I said with a straight, slightly puzzled face.

She turned beet red, redder than ever. "But I didn't mean... That's 
not... But it's only a figure of... But... But..."

I couldn't keep a straight face, what with her sputtering like that, 
and burst out laughing again. She followed when she realized what I had 
just done to her. She would get me back, and in spades.

After our mutual laughter died down again, she said, "I have a business 
client I need to meet in a few minutes. Why don't you come over 
tomorrow, and we'll start. I can see we're going to be good friends."

She showed me out.

On the way back up the stairs to my apartment, I thought, "Were going 
to be really good friends. Good friends indeed."

Epilog:

After Roz left, Kara went back into her video room. It was 6:30. Time 
for her favorite TV program. There was a flash and the main TV screen 
flickered on with its High Definition picture. The camera looked down 
on a girls' locker room. The local college cheerleading squad had just 
completed their practice for the day and were undressing to shower off. 
Their sweat-drenched bodies glistened with a healthy sheen, 
accentuating their hard, muscular bodies, and especially their flat, 
solid stomachs. There wouldn't be any all-out brawls today, ones where 
they would trade stomach punches until only one was standing. Kara 
hadn't arranged it. But there may be a couple good-natured old 
gutpunches, the ones between competitive friends, the kind that would 
leave one of them gasping and holding their stomach. With a flick of 
her fingers on the keyboard, the scene changed to the shower, where the 
harsh, single, overhead floodlight accentuated their muscular, slick, 
naked bodies, each muscle striation of their hard little stomachs 
standing out in relief as they sensually rubbed the soap all over each 
other. 

And as she watched this most erotic of shows, she idly typed a number. 
On a small side monitor, a large figure appeared, a man in a business 
suit with a Sumo wrestler's build.

"Ah Kara. It's you," he said in a deep, commanding voice. "What can I 
do for you today?"

"I have a task for you. The police just arrested someone as a mugger. I 
want you to get him off. They also have a video disc that has him 
committing the crime. I want that destroyed. He's a good business 
client of mine, and I may want to use him again for another job."

"Consider it done. Do you have those incriminating photos of that 
congresswoman I asked for?"

"Yes, they'll be on the way to you tomorrow."

"Excellent," he said, a broad smile crossing his face. "A pleasure 
doing business with you, as always," and the screen went blank from his 
end.

Another flurry of keyboard activity brought up the picture of a young, 
thin, tight woman in a business suit, just the kind of girl Kara liked. 
"Senator, I just made the arrangements. Make those nude pictures of you 
and that male stripper tonight. Send the pictures to the address I sent 
you earlier. And make sure you use that special photo paper I gave you, 
the stuff that can be traced anywhere he goes. You'll always be able to 
track him, and know his every shady move."

"Thank you Kara. I'm in your debt."

The screen went blank a second time.

As the drama of the cheerleading locker room scene came to a close, 
regretfully without any belly punches today, a monitor on the other 
side of the TV lit up of its own accord. A fuzzy, out-of-focus gray 
blob of a figure appeared.

Kara addressed the screen. "I made contact with her today. She'll be 
back tomorrow and we'll start her training then."

A lilting mechanical-sounding voice said, "Good. Train her well. I will 
put the amount we agreed on in your bank account."

And as suddenly as it had appeared, the screen went black.

Not bad for a day's work, Kara thought to herself. I have a mob boss 
and a congresswoman who now owed me a favor, and I'm several thousand 
dollars richer.

No, not a bad day at all.

Copyright 2006 Jerry Shaw