Collie's New Career

Written by HikerAngel

Commissioned by The First One

Collie’s Career was spiraling down the drain, and fast. Her latest album was a complete flop, panned by critics as meandering and boring. She had already fired three rounds of ghost writers when they failed to produce her a single hit. Now, she was half-submerged in day-old bathtub water, lazily bringing a champagne bottle to her plush lips for a drowsy sip that sent more of the amber liquid dribbling down her small chin and supple chest than down her throat.

Ten years ago, Collie Flowers was hot shit, and everyone knew it. Her pop songs took the world by storm, topping charts and going triple platinum even in the streaming era where the music industry’s relevance was floundering. Her concerts sold out months in advance and she needed fifteen different decoy tour buses just to not be swarmed with fans. Yet, as the years went on, her stranglehold over the top 100 began to dwindle until she wasn’t even on the charts. She still had a dedicated following of twenty-somethings addicted to reliving the glory days and enough money to last the rest of her life, but that wasn’t enough. She wanted to be relevant forever!

This confounded her at first—she had done everything right! She’d made powerful industry-wide connections, secured brand deals to strengthen her relevancy in the vulnerable minds of younger consumers and even signed up for a loveless marriage with a superhero to turn her celebritydom into something more tangible than mere music.

“Collie, are you really going to spend 24 hours in that tub?” spoke said superhero, in as loveless of a tone as ever.

“Bite me, Brock,” she shot back in between sips of the bottle. The words “babe”, “honey” or “dear” hadn’t left either of their mouths in years.

Brock floated over the tub, his bathrobe rippling in the wind of a nearby window like the cape he so thoroughly despised. While Collie resented her job as a pop star, Brock absolutely detested his job as a superhero. To say he had grown misanthropic over the years would be a gross understatement. Once a bright-eyed hero, the man saw the cyclical nature of humanity for what it was, and hated every second of society once he found out. He’d burn it all down if he didn’t like the food so much.

And yet, he could not say he hated humanity more than anything else, because Collie existed. His loving facade that was once on life support had slipped completely, and he didn’t even show up with her in public anymore. Even with a vast mansion for him to avoid Collie in, he still preferred the quiet solitude of the guest house.

He hated the world too much. She loved herself too much. They were a match made in hell.

“Look, I think it’s time we discussed the direction our marriage has gone in over the years.” Brock demanded.

“What’s to talk about?” Collie replied, her eyes refusing to shift one iota from the thousand-yard stare they had committed to. “I know you want a divorce, and that you’d want to drag it out for years to extract as much misery from it as possible.”

“You really think that barbiturate-brain of yours understands my motives, hmm?” Brock said, shaking his head as if talking down to a child.

“That’s the only thing it knows for sure, I’d say,” Collie fired back, pausing to take another long sip from her endless bottle. “Ten years might’ve not taught me much, but I know you’re a sociopath. You don’t even hide how much pleasure you take from tormenting me.”

“As if you don’t torment me every waking hour with that godawful music of yours. You know that having super hearing means that even the studio soundproofing can’t spare my ears from your wretched voice.”

“I think I should have that super hearing. You could at least save the travel time on your daily shift of verbally abusing me.”

“Christ, here we go again. Pulling out all the fancy terms like you’re some sort of therapist.”

“‘Verbal abuse’ isn’t some fancy term, dumbass. You’d know if you weren’t disconnected from society and reality.”

“Pot calling the kettle black.”

“Fuck you, I’m more in-touch with the average person than you are.” That seemed to have really struck a nerve with Collie, as she sat up from her statue-like soak in the tub and stumbled out of the porcelain prison, her long, shapely legs shivering from lack of use. “If I had that power stone of yours or whatever it’s called, I could wield that shit better than you ever could.”

“The Puissance Stone doesn’t just activate for anyone,” Brock said once more with condescension. So confident that he was right, he descended until his feet touched the ground and plunged his fist into his chest. The skin parted gracefully like water, vein-like constructs of energy forming and pulsating around the entrance point as he retrieved the glowing blue meteorite from where it had embedded itself long ago. “Only those who can capture the will of the masses are allowed to wield it, and your moment in the spotlight was a long time ago, Collie.”

Yet, his spiel fell on deaf ears as Collie continued to stare, unblinking, at the foreign rock before her. It called to her with enticing whispers she could just barely make out, the kind of enthusiastic, genuine applause she’d been sorely missing over the last few years.

Slowly but surely, her trembling hand reached forward towards the Puissance Stone, a trance-like state overcoming her as she did so. Brock attempted to rescind his hand, but found the rock held within it resisting his pull as if it were somehow superglued to the air around it.

Collie placed a passive hand atop the baseball-sized stone, coming the closest to actually touching Brock’s skin in months. Despite his white-knuckle grip on the rock, she effortlessly slipped it from his grasp, the meteorite phasing through his fingers like it had his chest.

“Hey! HEY! What the fuck!? Give that back!” Brock shouted. He channelled all the speed he could muster into attempting to snatch the stone back, but her hand expertly maneuvered around his grabs with a level of finesse that clashed with her muted, almost drunken expression.

“I… need… this…” Collie droned, and the Puissance Stone seemed to agree, glowing brighter as it drew closer and closer to her body. She could feel the essence of her remaining fans swelling around her, the space she took up in their thoughts and emotions converting into raw power. Brock had spent the better half of two decades killing a lot of his goodwill with the public. All it had taken were a few less-than-savory videos surfacing of his attitude towards humans to tank his public reception, and while the general public still saw his actions as a net positive, no one was fully in his camp for risk of social ostracization.

The rock craved tangible human connections, no matter how parasocial they were. Some theorized it had been sent here to unite humanity, though its execution was rather flawed. Regardless, in this area, Collie had Brock beaten.

A soft moan escaped her throat as the stone began to slowly improve her as it once had him. While the magic within didn’t have much to work with, it saw potential, no matter how misplaced it possibly could be. Perhaps it was simply tired of existing in the same body of someone who so thoroughly despised human connections.

Collie bit her soft lips, the plush red flesh disappearing into her mouth for a moment, only to reappear fuller and more luscious. Her cheekbones were sucked in as she performed the action, only for them to not puff back out, remaining thin and defined. All the damage her unsavory diet had done was undone in an instant, exceeding the young, spry beauty she possessed over a decade ago. The new contours of her jaw were perfectly complemented by the flairs of natural mascara that now adorned her face, creating cute black wings that accented her beautiful asian-american eyes.

Her hair, once coiled demurely at the nape of her neck, flared out into wild, luscious locks that befitted a supermodel in a shampoo commercial. Many fans had gifted her wondrous things, but the Puissance Stone was easily her biggest fan, providing her with gifts no mortal money could purchase. She found the fog in her mind clearing, able to make more conscious, nuanced decisions faster and more efficiently.

More significantly, the stone warned her that Brock was attempting to seize it back. She lifted her hand high on instinct, but knew that wouldn’t be enough. He was taller than her by a whole head. If she wanted to keep this power for herself, she’d need to outpace him. In the instant it took for Brock to reach for her held-high hand, her rapidly-improving mind redirected what little power the stone had left to give into the most efficient way to hold him back. At first, she thought flight would be a good solution, but that was an active drain on the meteorite’s power. What she needed was something a bit more permanent.

Right as Brock’s hand was about to connect with the stone once more, Collie’s hand suddenly moved higher up, just out of rage for a swipe of his fingers. Panicked, he tried a jumping leap for the blue prize, only to be blue-balled again as her hand rose higher still.

Brock’s tunneled vision was then expanded upon once her other hand shoved his face away with a force not dissimilar to a schoolyard bully. However, when his body was known prior for being quite unshoveable, this shook him greatly to his core. The distance he was sent away forced him to get a better look at Collie’s improved body, and just how much more of it there was now.

Not only had Collie matched Brock’s height, she had far surpassed it. His eyes looked up to meet hers, which were over a full head taller. This revelation didn’t slow down his determination to grab the stone back, but Collie’s hand certainly did. Like a child in a cartoon, he continued to aimlessly push against her outstretched hand, which was placed firmly on his forehead. For all the intelligence the stone had given Collie, it had taken an equal amount away from Brock. He grunted and gnashed his teeth, his body weakening more and more by the second as stone psiphoned more and more to what it saw as a new, rightful owner.

Presence is power. Three words that had been forever etched into Collie’s gray matter. She couldn’t even recall the name of the hiring agent who had told her that, but that man couldn’t have possibly known how true those words would become for Collie’s future.

She could feel the stone hemorrhaging power, screaming for more to feed her like a depleting engine. It would take her too long to write, produce and release a song for the masses, and with Brock’s bullish behavior breathing down her neck, she’d have to whip up an alternative method to draw a crowd and fast.

A livestream. An impromptu livestream where she came up with a new song on the spot.

Her rapidly-improving mind had generated a brilliant idea. She knew that her bewitching beauty combined with her already stellar singing voice would surely drum up enough word of mouth to satiate the Puissance Stone’s endless hunger.

Knowing she needed a second hand to reach her phone by the bathtub for live streaming purposes, she channeled what little power still remained within the stone into increasing her height further. Two extra heads worth of size were added to her spectacularly sexy form, and with it she was able to substitute the hand reserved for holding back Brock for her dainty foot. He continued to aimlessly reach for a stone that only got further and further away from him, his well-worded objections having long since devolved into barely audible sputtering, which Collie appreciated as it wouldn’t distract her viewers from a show sure to stick in their minds for decades.

She positioned the front-facing camera so it would give her freakier fans a tasteful—or more accurately, barely censored—window of her naked cleavage, the nipples just out of frame. A perfectly-manicured thumb languidly tapped the record button, and the pop star watched with glee as the number of concurrent viewers quickly climbed into the thousands, exciting the stone once more as it gleamed with radiant blues.

“Hell-oooooooooo my fellow Flowers!~” Collie spoke into her phone, instantly changing her tone to a brighter and peppier one as she called upon her fans by their unique title. “As you know, I’ve been a bit slow in the whole “release” department, but that’s just because I’ve been in a bit of a creative rut lately. However, that’s all about to chaaaaange! I’ve been hard at work with a brand new single that’s sure to impress! Hurry up and tell your friends to join, because they’re not going to want to miss this!”

On the spot, she improvised a gorgeous pop ballad about how her life had spiraled down, only for an uplifting third reprise of the chorus that unleashed a level of optimism about her future even she didn’t know she was capable of expressing. The comments poured in too fast for any mortal to read, but Collie was no longer a mortal. She knew they were all positive, all filled with love for her from fans old and new alike. Even the thirstier ones stopped watching with one hand and simply appreciated the brilliant vocals. She had created an evergreen cultural touchstone with just her voice and a vertical video.

Thousands became millions as she sang the song again, refining the melody to a level of perfection never before seen in the music world. Collie became so lost in the melody that she neglected to notice the stone powering up her body again, treating Brock and millions of other eyeballs to a front-row seat to her ascension. While a slim figure was one she attempted to maintain, the stone had different plans in mine, swelling her burgeoning muscles with glorious power that befit the goddess she was becoming.

The hills and valleys of her limbs became mountainous as her already-towering height became that much more colossal. With her body running out of space for the stone to fit the influx of power surging from her exploding audience, the magical meteorite simply made more space for her to occupy. Feminine definition complimented her muscled frame and she would definitely need to hit up her tailor for a new custom wardrobe for posterity’s sake—then again, her far larger hand didn’t exactly keep up the camera’s position as her phone fell to the floor. Millions of people became fans for life as her front-facing camera showed the world her hefty, beautiful form from a bug’s eye view. Despite the hulking, 30-foot-tall mass of bodybuilder perfection that her form settled at, her body language was still very demure and friendly as she gave a cheerful wave to her fellow Flowers.

“I hope you all enjoyed the short stream! I’ll be trying to do one of these every single day for the foreseeable future. After all, it looks like I’m now the replacement Brock Lee!”

She tried to recall her husband’s superhero name, but came up short. It didn’t matter. The stone knew now she was the real star of the show here. Brock attempted to speak, but his words failed. Sure, these words exited his lips, passing through the air as vibrations which anyone with an understanding of the English language could comprehend, but no one wanted to hear them. Whatever he had to say simply didn’t matter when Collie Flowers, pop star extraordinaire, was also there. Even as this stream would be archived for generations beyond to study the exact moment when humanity’s savior awakened her truest potential, Brock’s words were lost to time even as they were immortalized alongside his wife’s ascension.

Then, with the stone looking brighter than it ever had, Collie knew it yearned for her body. She gingerly pressed the stone in between her basketball-sized breasts, her rich, milky skin parting to slot the Puissance Stone firmly in her chest. A blue aura emanated from her body, perfectly outlining her hourglass musculature like a heavenly light.

She didn’t say farewell to Brock, she didn’t need to. Her feet simply took off from the ground, not caring that the once-cavernous ceiling of her bathroom was only about three inches above her head. With such power, flight was a mere footnote of what Collie was capable of. The roof caved to her presence like a sponge cake, allowing her titanic form to rocket into the sky like the cylindrical machine of the same name. Only her perfectly unblemished skin far surpassed the strength and durability of a device meant to escape earth’s atmosphere.

The monolith of pop stardom casually broke the sound barrier as she traveled to where her husband used to work. Lady Zephir, a heroine who prided herself on her ability to detect anything that resided within the open air, was blindsided by Collie as the singer seemed to spontaneously appear before the entire team of heroes. Collie was forced to duck as even the meeting room that was the heart of this team couldn’t match the opulence of her own bathroom.

She didn’t need to do anything fancy to get their focus, all seven of the present heroes couldn’t help but force themselves to dedicate one hundred percent of their attention to her.

“Alrighty, listen up, people! I’m sure I don’t need to introduce myself because I think you all know who I am already, so I’ll just cut to the chase: I’m here to become the new leader of your little ragtag team of heroes. I already know how to turn this into a fruitful enterprise for all of us!” She smiled confidently after her pitch, assured that once these fellow, but still lesser, titans heard her pitch, they couldn’t help but fall in love and graciously thank her for their salvation.

“Y-you’re just a pop star! You wouldn’t know the first thing about stopping crime!” Phospus, the current—and soon to be former—leader of the strongest Superhero team in the world spoke. “And you’re not even a particularly relevant pop star anymore!”

Collie narrowed her eyes, bending everything above her waist at a perfect ninety degree angle as she sized up the puny little hero who dared to question her authority on any subject. He took a step back out of fear, but still could not escape her imposing shadow. Even as a seven foot mountain of muscle, Phosphus’ head could only reach her knees.

“Clearly, you’re not a fan of my work, because if you were, you’d know about my passionate pop ballad about ending discrimination. It charted at number five the year it dropped, so I think you’re just out-of-touch like my husband was. Maybe all superheroes are…”

She crossed her bulky arms under her prodigious breasts in defiance, complete with a haughty “hmmph.” While her assertion perhaps wasn’t 100% correct, no one was about to defy the monolith of a girl who stood tall enough to match the own future statues soon to be erected in her greatness.

“B-but this job isn’t a business! W-we’re just public servants who help people!” Man-Moth spoke up, a certified beast of muscle in his own regard. Of course, he couldn’t hold a candle to Collie.

“Yes, public servants who help people become acclimated to the brand. Think of how easy it would be for those beneath us to recognize our purpose if they see my—I mean, our—image plastered everywhere, every single day. I see no conflict of interest in that.”

Others attempted to get a word in about the situation, but Collie was already done with this conversation. Her super-hearing had detected a growing cluster of excitement, one forming around the perimeter of the very building she was standing in. Word spread fast in the digital age, and all it took was a high-speed camera capturing a blur that resembled her impossible to ignore form for a single frame for her most dedicated fans to piece together where she had travelled to.

Collie quickly donned a makeshift outfit—which ended up consisting of two massive control room map monitors for her bra and the team’s massive flag for a loincloth—and went outside to greet her fans. The metal of the flagpole effortlessly bent for her like a pipe cleaner, allowing the flag to comfortably rest along her waist without any chance of it snapping.

“Helloooo my beloved flowers!” Collie shouted with glee as she arose from the building like an inflatable air dancer. She was instantly greeted with thunderous applause, the impromptu crowd quickly overtook an entire block, stopping traffic. The cars didn’t mind, the drivers quickly joining the masses. The pop star gave her fans an adorable, beaming smile, alongside a powerful double bicep flex, the resulting shockwave bringing everyone to silence.

She heard several people calling out her name, a name which she liked, but it didn’t seem to fit her expanded stage presence anymore. “Collie Flowers” was soooo last decade, anyways. No superhero would be caught dead sounding like a vegetable. Her new name, however, would inspire people for generations to come.

“StarFlower. Please, call me StarFlower,” she spoke with a patient smile, descending into the middle of the masses. Several people snapped photos of her exposed ass, and she encouraged the public exhibitionism, shooting a knowing side-eye behind her as she struck a more sultry pose. She bent one of her tree trunk legs to flaunt her shapely ass better, any fat present on her body going directly to it and her perfect breasts.

Her fans accepted her new name with flying colors, shouting it out with more gusto than they ever had before. Collie flashed a knowing smirk to her new co-workers, who were all nervously gawking at the crowd surrounding the place. They knew they couldn’t kick her out now with how much public support she had garnered. That would be career suicide.

~

“And for the 52nd consecutive week in a row, StarFlower’s hit single ‘Sun In Bloom’ has charted number one, a historic record for someone sure to be all over the history books!” the cheerful news anchor declared, her beaming smile a reflection of her truest feelings. There was no longer any war, any poverty or any strife on earth, the legendary StarFlower made sure of that. After all, it helped her career immensely.

The all-powerful pop star watched the broadcast while multitasking, as she often did. In one hand, she used her ‘spoon’ to eat a hearty cereal breakfast out of a ‘bowl.’ Of course, at her size, a shovel and a metal bin served as analogues for her spoon and bowl. In the other hand, she held up a box containing a concentrated black hole, one she personally scooped up by the constellation Ophiuchus just to show off.

“I-I can’t believe it!” Phosphorus called out, walking out into the kitchen from his and Collie’s shared bedroom. He was getting used to saying something like that every day since he moved in with Collie. This had definitely upped the ante since yesterday, when she was complaining that the strongest weight in the superhero training room wasn’t giving her any trouble despite every other hero of the team struggling to do more than five reps with it.

“Are you really holding that with just one hand!?” he exclaimed, blinking twice to make sure he was actually seeing what he thought he was seeing.

“Yep. And that’s just because it’s less awkward to hold it this way, babe,” Collie responded with a cheeky wink, casually shifting the black hole box from her splayed hand to just a single finger.

“Wow… You’re… you’re just…”

“The greatest pop star in the whole wide world?” StarFlower said, finishing her new husband’s sentence for him. That wasn’t exactly what Phosphus was going to say, but he wasn’t about to say no to his wife who could obliterate him with a flutter of her eyelash. 

“More like, the greatest in the universe!”

“Aww, you always know just what to say to a girl,” Collie said, making the Black hole vanish back to where it belonged using her latest superpower—summoning portals. “I may have captured the will of the masses, but you managed to capture something even more important: my heart.~”

With her free hand, she scooped up her new lover and brought him into a long and loving kiss, knowing that she’d be able to write a thousand chart-toppers about him once she’d inevitably break up with him for the clout. Or maybe she wouldn’t. She was really starting to like this guy… Maybe her sappy era could last a little longer…