V is for Victory

Written by HikerAngel

Commissioned by Rory Syers

By the late 1930’s, Hitler’s Nazi party had put together one of the most dangerous war machines Europe had even seen. His delusional visions of German domination in Europe had eventually made its way outwards, the roots of his hateful ideology spreading across the continent like a cancer. Austria was the first to succumb, Czechoslovakia a year later. When Poland found itself under Nazi rule a year later, it was clear that a second world war had begun.

When they invaded France, even with militaries clashing, the outcome proved to be a trend for the Germans. The French people were quickly overwhelmed, three-fifths of their country falling under Nazi occupation as locals feared for their livelihoods.

One such local was a girl by the name of Juliette Durand, daughter of the local butcher. Even at a young age she had aspirations for computer technologies after reading a book about the Babbage difference engine in her local library. Soon, she was hooked. Ada Lovelace, the woman who wrote the first computer code in the world, was her personal hero. She wanted to be just like her. No, she wanted to be better.

But she was quickly hit with a cold dose of reality when the Nazis invaded. The library where she first discovered stories of such revolutionary technology had been burned to the ground, with the very computing technology she was fascinated in being used to assist in carrying out unspeakable horrific atrocities.

The Maquis, one of the largest French resistance groups, had employed her as a nurse in a church-turned-hospital, her dreams slashed as she was forced to help fight for the greater good. For three whole months she was subjected to cruel and inhumane situations, amputating arms and legs, disposing of bodies, attempting not to gag as disease and rot plagued untreated wounds. It was a lot for a young woman like Juliette to be put through, even more so for someone to witness their greatest fantasies turn to their greatest fears as they witnessed man-made horrors beyond their comprehension.

On a particularly cold and brutal winter of ‘41, it looked as if the Maquis was on the back foot once more. Bodies were piling up. The church more closely resembled a morgue than a place of worship. Americans were added into the fray, but they seemed no different to her dead. She had grown quite the dead-eyed stare these days, her dark brown pupils staring right past the humanity of the situation as she clinically tagged deceased body after deceased body.

And then, just as Juliette was beginning to wonder if there was any nearby end to this occupational tyranny, a sight far up in the sky managed to tear her jaded eyes away from the assembly line of death.

Victory Girl.

The unwilling nurse had heard of the superhero in passing. The blonde stunner was British, that was about all Juliette was sure of. A rather recent phenomena; while few were publicly known about, they seemed to exist more for promoting their countries of origin than actually going out and “fighting the good fight!” as their slogans often boiled down to.

This was different. Juliette abandoned her post and ran outside the church to get a better look, several of her surviving frenchmen acting in much the same way. If that really was Victory Girl, then she was actually using her powers for fighting evil! If she was anything like the legends surrounding her, the Nazi scourge would stand no chance against a woman of her caliber.

So why wasn’t Juliette all that excited?

She watched in awe like everyone else, struggling to make out a battle between a single woman and an entire army where the latter was the one at a supreme disadvantage.

Even at a street level view, Victory Girl kept the battle visually interesting. Ooo’s and ahhh’s escaped the crowd’s mouths as tanks flew into the air above the buildings that obscured the fight, only for Victory Girl’s impervious body to meet them up there, flying straight through their iron-clad hulls and erupting them into shrapnel. She performed this stunt several more times, creating a fireworks display of exploding weaponry until only scattered infantry remained.

Reinforcements were surprisingly quick to arrive, not that it mattered with a superwoman on the Allied Powers side. Messerschmitts appeared over the horizon, the rippling roar of their engines signaling what would have been certain doom had the planes been given a chance to actually arrive in France.

Victory’s Girl’s impenetrable abs told a different side of the story. The fighter planes were picked off one by one like flies as Victory Girl flew in front of their flight paths and simply let her impassable form do the rest of the work. No matter how the highly trained pilots attempted to outmaneuver her, they found their cone-shaped noses scrunched under the might of her feminine musculature all the same.

With the reinforcements thoroughly unenforceable, all that remained were the unorganized ground troops, who ironically found themselves in the position of being unable to escape France’s border due to the panopticon-esque existence of Victory Girl. She was lightning fast, she could be anywhere, lift anything, whatever weaponry they had was nowhere near enough to even slow her down.

One of the Nazi men grew desperate. With nowhere left to turn, he put a gun to the head of the nearest civilian he could and attempted to use her as a bargaining chip to flee. This civilian, by complete coincidence, was Juliette Durand—and she was pleading for her life.

“Back up! Back up, all of you!” The German spoke in broken French as he began to make his way to the border, Juliette still wrapped in a chokehold by the officer, the cold steel of the gun barrel pressed against her head. She said nothing, not bothering to try and resist her fate. Reality had already beat her down this much, her being near death just made sense. If anything, she was surprised it had taken this long.

“Halt, Fritz scum!” came a very peppy, british-twanged voice before the two of them. The Nazi soldier tensed up, digging the barrel of the gun further into Juliette’s head out of fear. Victory Girl stood in the way, floating slightly above the ground on the opposite side of the street, roughly ten or so meters away. Sporting a skin-tight aerodynamic suit that left very little to the imagination, the bulkiest item of clothing on her whole body were aviator goggles that kept her perfect shoulder-length mahogany hair somewhat under control. Despite the fact her lengthy locks should’ve been windswept to hell and back, her brunette curls remained modelesque in their unwavering style.

“B-back up! Or I’ll splatter her brains across the cobblestone!” The terrified soldier spoke, his mind racing too fast to translate his demands from German.

“Surrender now, and your life will be spared,” the superpowered woman replied in perfect German, not even a hint towards her accent of origin remaining. “Your forces are scattered. Germany will lose this war. Give up.”

Juliette could hear the man’s teeth chattering, his breath unregulated as stress and fear consumed his thought processes. He was frozen, his mind trapped in a loop of uncertainty like a machine, a loop that was broken by a light tap on his shoulder. Instinctively, he turned around, only to find his teeth shattered by a superhuman punch to his jaw. In mere milliseconds, Victory Girl had managed to bridge the massive gap between her and the German adversary, ending up behind him, all without him even noticing!

“Are you alright, madam?” Victory Girl spoke in French, turning her attention to Juliette. She didn’t respond verbally, simply nodding her head subtly as her body remained stiff from the shock of the situation. The superheroine wanted to stay longer to ensure Juliette’s safety, but there were more situations where her assistance was needed, and so she reapplied her goggles and took to the skies, kicking up a shockwave of dust as she blasted off in search of trouble.

By the end of the day, as the sun set on a freed France, parties erupted in the streets. Everyone of every creed is celebrating, booze is flowing. The locals attempt to teach the English speaking soldiers dirty French drinking songs and watch with snickering glee as they butcher every other word. Fireworks reminiscent of the destroyed planes are ignited in Victory Girl’s honor, the usual reds and blues of the colorful explosions are replaced with gun metal grays—this would become a tradition that stuck around for generations to come, even after the specificities are lost to time.

Everyone wanted to meet the goddess who saved them, yet Victory Girl was nowhere to be found. No one really complained, they understood she was probably busy. Most of the drunk men merely wanted to lust over their savior, to confirm what little glimpses of her sinuous feminine musculature were accurate or merely optimistic interpretations.

Sitting atop a rooftop, perched like a depressed gargoyle, Juliette didn’t feel like celebrating with everyone else. Much like the grotesque carved animal-human, she felt useless, mere set dressing to a greater world that simply no longer needed her. She had failed as an inventor, failed as a nurse when the world needed her the most. She couldn’t even rely on herself to save her own life when it had been put in peril.

“Something still bothering you, friend?” came a familiar peppy british voice from the sky, one quiet enough that only Juliette could hear it. The raven-haired Frenchwoman’s head whisked around in surprise to witness Victory Girl slowly descending upon the roof, her dainty feet touching the ground without making a sound.

“Don’t you have a war to win?” was all Juliette responded with, a hint of disgust in her voice, though one that was mostly directed inwards. She then kicked at the ground, sending a small pebble flying off the roof down to the streets below.

“Not much of a war to win if the people I save aren’t happy by the end of it. I understand that facing down the barrel of a gun must be terrifying for someone without my powers. If you need someone to talk to, I’m here for you.”

Someone without her powers… Victory Girl probably hadn’t intended that to sound condescending, but Juliette couldn’t help but feel that there was an inherent disconnect between her superheroine savior and reality.

“If I had your powers, I could’ve actually helped this town. Instead, I’m useless,” all Victory Girl’s words had done was cause her to wallow further into self-pity.

“Don’t say that, you’re more of a hero than me,” the supergirl replied, which did get Juliette to actually look her savior in the eye. Realizing there was a sense of animosity, Victory Girl attempted to diffuse it. “You know, you’re not the first person to have mixed feelings about me.”

“What do you mean?” Juliette asked, raising an eyebrow at the brunette.

“I think there are a lot of people who could use these powers of mine more effectively,” she said, looking down at her hand as she clenched her fist into a ball, with Juliette taking note of a bulging bicep flex on the supergirl’s arm that resulted from the action. “I was born with these powers, I’ve never known a world outside of them. Sometimes I think of what would happen if someone with a more human experience for most of their life were to have powers similar to mine. How they would approach situations differently from me.”

That final sentence was like a brainworm for Juliette, a concept that simply refused to leave her mind once it had nestled within her gray matter. The two women continued to talk through the night, with Juliette gradually becoming less guarded and distant as time passed. Victory Girl almost couldn’t believe her superhuman ears when they detected laughter escaping from Juliette’s mouth.

The British girl beamed as she sat beside Juliette, her body inching closer and closer to the raven-haired nurse with every passing minute. Soon, the two of them were holding hands, though Juliet was receiving mixed messages as to what Victory Girl was trying to convey with her actions. Still, the raven-haired wartime nurse was enjoying herself overall.

“What do you think you’ll do now? Perhaps return to the butcher shop?” The superheroine asked.

Juliette paused, her eyes avoiding Victory Girl’s and her hand pulling away slowly. “He—he was there, during the first Nazi bombing. He didn’t make it. I searched the rubble for hours but I couldn’t find his body. I couldn’t make any headway on actually moving any of the debris, but I knew he was under there and I couldn’t save him. My hands clawed at the stone until they bled, and yet he still remains under there to this day. I don’t want him to be unearthed, it’s probably as good of a grave as he’s going to get. That butcher shop was his life’s work, and now he gets to be buried with it.”

Victory Girl’s haunted expression was a sufficient enough response unto itself.

“It’s… really no big deal,” Juliette replied, downplaying her trauma. “Either way, I refuse to work in a butcher’s store ever again.”

“And why is that?” The brunette superhuman asked. Her hand remained where it had been, awaiting but unsure if it would ever feel the return of Juliette’s hand.

“I am done with blood.” Was all she replied with, staying distant.

“That’s understandable. But are you sure you won’t want to pick it up, even as a hobby? I know that classic shop really brought so many people of this community together… and I mean, that’s sort of the whole shtick of my existence.”

Juliette mulled it over for quite a while, then she spoke. “If I want to bring this community together, it’s going to be on my terms, following a job I’m really passionate about. I’m going to make sure that a war like this never happens again, whatever it takes.”

“And I’ll be there with you every step of the way, Juliette. I promise,” Victory Girl assured, leaning forward. The Frenchwoman then reciprocated this action, her hand rejoining the superheroine’s, fingers interwoven, as she leaned closer of her own. The two women felt their hot breath brushing against each other’s faces as their lips hovered mere centimeters away from one another.

Were they in love? Was love even attainable for them in this time period? Neither woman was quite sure, and this uncertainty prevented their lips from locking. Their faces pulled away, and yet their eyes were only filled with a palpable sense of longing. Victory Girl flashed Juliette a patient smile, though one which was clearly damming a tidal wave’s worth of feelings from being unleashed.

“Have a good rest of your night, Juliette,” the superheroine spoke definitively, slowly beginning to float away from the building’s roof into the sky. “I know we will meet again…”

Juliette responded in kind with a smile of her own, though it was not as confident as her brunette compatriot.

That night and the subsequent discussions made from it would stand the test of time as the most important moment in Juliet’s life.

~ Eighty years later ~

Juliette Durand awoke with a new sensation of pain, as she often did. Her machinated exoskeleton attached itself to her spinal column as her brain chemistry commanded it with neural synapses. Inharmonious coughing came to her lips as she sat up. All the technology in the world and she still did not possess a device that could flush snot and phlegm from her throat without a tissue and a hearty bout of hacking up a lung in the bathroom sink.

Technology had improved with the times, and while it had kept her alive far longer than any of her contemporaries, the agony of turning one hundred and five years of age in two days could not be supplemented with the latest robotics. Sure, it was a miracle that she could still will herself to walk, but when the mere act of walking outside brought severe nerve damage from the sun’s rays attacking her skin, locomotion of her limbs seemed more of a novelty than a useful feature.

“Nexus, read me the headlines of today’s news, read my gray matter to see if I find any of the titles stimulating enough to read, you know the drill,” she spoke aloud in a heavy French accent, hobbling to the kitchen to continue her morning ritual.

“Yes, Madam Durand,” came a peppy British AI voice that permeated the room she was in, obeying her orders without question. Why wouldn’t it? After all, she personally built Nexus to do so. Finding its contemporaries ethically questionable at best and spyware at worst, it was easier to simply build her own personal disconnected robot assistant with its own features than risk her personal secrets being sold to advertisement companies.

As the artificial voice read aloud the newspaper, the feed transmitting directly into her hearing aids, her various “chefbots”—a central CPU that operated her entire kitchen, manifesting as several well-articulated robot claws that resembled human left hands—poured her a cup of coffee. Sure, she could’ve just purchased a coffee maker, but that wasn’t how coffee was made growing up. Her chefbots instead placed medium granulated coffee in a pot with cold water, boiling it during the five minutes it would take for her to pull herself out of bed and make it to the kitchen.

She took a sip. It barely tasted like anything.

Just the way she liked it.

Then, an interesting article caught her attention, of which she promptly asked Nexus to read to her as she contemplated her next move and drank her flavorless coffee. Taking a deep breath, she reached into her mouth and scanned her fingerprint on a device she had personally built into her dentures, following the action by slowly and meticulously using her tongue to input an algorithmically generated 56-digit passcode on a miniscule number pad embedded in her gums that she had committed to memory many years ago.

Today was the day. There was no turning back now.

Ahead of schedule, though not by surprise, the built-in cell phone on her hearing aid began to ring. The melody was an orchestral rendition of a certain dirty French drinking song, the very same that had been sung on the very day that France was liberated from the Nazis and Juliette’s life had changed forever. She would only ever assign such a song to one person in particular.

She answered the phone not with a ‘hello’, but instead a “looks like you weren’t fast enough to beat the local news. Seems they figured out where you were heading and it made it into at least the third page story. Not too shabby, wouldn’t you agree?”

“If you really want to see how shocked I am,” came a familiarly peppy Cockney accent from the other side of the receiver. “All you need to do is turn around.”

Juliette did as she was instructed, only to see Victory Girl floating in midair outside of the massive wall of window that overlooked the older Frenchwoman’s kitchen. The 20th floor view was usually home to the beautiful hilly vistas of California, but now there was an especially gorgeous sight that Juliette didn’t mind seeing one bit. The last 80 years had been overwhelmingly kind to the superheroine, as she didn’t look a day over twenty. And it wasn’t just looks, Juliette knew that the British wondergirl was just as spry and intelligent as she had been back during that second world war.

“Ah, lovely, the face of a failed surprise,” Juliette joked, a creaky smile pushing up years of wrinkles like a compressed accordion. “I’ll be with you in a moment at the front door. First, I must change from my nightgown.”

Victory Girl nodded in affirmation from the window, slowly descending from view with a silly hand wave goodbye like some sort of superhero vaudeville act. If there was one thing about her superpowered compatriot Juliette appreciated more than anything, it was the brunette’s similar love of humor from the era. One could argue Juliette adapted to the modern day far better when it came to tech, but Victory Girl was a social pariah. A bonafide social media darling, the press just couldn’t stay off her tail, much as she often tried to avoid them.

Thanks to Juliette’s state-of-the-art privacy borders that used microscopic lights to disrupt camera feeds, not even satellite images could produce high-quality photos of her hillside mansion. Google maps could only display her plot of land as a messy white blob. With how often Victory Girl complained about the media’s obsession with her over the phone, Juliette was surprised that the superheroine did not visit her more often.

“Been a while, hasn’t it?” Victory Girl spoke as Juliette’s automatic double doors opened to the grand foyer. “Last time we met face-to-face, your company was only valued in the millions, I think.”

“Yes, and that was twenty odd years ago, if I’m not mistaken,” Juliette clarified, her memory proving to be as sharp as ever. “That was before I pioneered breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence and body modification technology, especially for other superheroes looking for an edge on you. Heh, back then I was holed up in that little shack over there living off NASA and Microsoft money.” She pointed a shaking, wrinkly index finger past Victory Girl to a massive mcmansion on an opposing hill.

The superheroine looked around what should have been a clean introductory room for welcoming guests, though it instead was a glorified storage facility for miscellaneous inventions Juliette and her staff had been working on.

“And I see you still haven’t lost that inventive spark, either!” Victory Girl remarked, even someone of her caliber was wowed at the technological prowess on display. She couldn’t make heads or tails of what half of the machines were even supposed to do, but she could just tell that every single one would be revolutionary. At least, she hoped that Juliette’s other scientists would be able to finish what she had started.

Both women knew why Victory Girl was here today, even if they were both beating around the bush in talking about it. After five or so minutes of casual small talk, there was a noticeable lull in the conversation, of which the superheroine reluctantly took advantage of.

“So… it’s really happening, huh?” The supergirl said. Even for someone who could break through a steel vault with a single punch, breaking the ice was never easy. “Even with those cybernetics, you said you didn’t have much time left.”

Juliette was less restrained. “Yes. Liver failure. Doctors say I could live three more months or three more hours.”

“You seem quite comfortable with that fact, it seems,” the immortal of the two replied.

“I am. I did everything I could within my given abilities. I made the world a better place.” She then giggled softly. “And I did it all without working in a butcher shop.”

Immediately, the two felt their minds thrust back to that night on the rooftop. The initial spark that had ignited their near century-spanning relationship, specifically a certain moment that Juliette realized she had never received proper closure on.

“Back then. All those years ago back during the war… What did you mean when you said I was more of a hero than you?”

Victory Girl smiled warmly, popping a seat in midair as she crossed one leg over the other. “It was a matter of principle. While I saved millions from persecution at the hands of an evil empire, I was never actually in any danger myself. Ha, that’s because no one’s actually found a weakness to exploit!”

As the superheroine expressed her opinion with a surge of confidence, Juliette’s expression twinged with an imperceptible dash of animosity and dramatic irony for what was to come.

“But you, Juliette, you knew you could die at any moment and you still did the right thing anyway. Even when your life was on the line, you still did everything. I may have ended that war, but you held on long enough until I was able to arrive.”

That last part. It irked Juliette. “Doing good and nothing changing just wears people down… and all you’re left with are hands covered in blood.” She said cryptically.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the brunette responded, raising a sculpted eyebrow.

But Juliette didn’t respond to the superheroine’s inquiry. Instead, she turned her head away, the silence loudly proclaiming that something was amiss even though Victory Girl had no clue what it could be. Desperate to prevent the same mistakes on that fateful night, the ones that had left the superheroine with a lifetime’s worth of regrets, she did not back down.

She zipped around Juliette’s body until the two were locking eyes again. The elderly woman once more attempted to look away, but Victory Girl once again denied her this choice. Eventually, the Frenchwoman conceded, not attempting to avert her gaze any further as she waited for what the superheroine had to say.

“Look, Juliette, I… this…”

The raven-turned-gray-haired woman sighed, knowing the disconnect between the two of them could not be repaired. Though if her plan were to succeed, she would need to humor the heroine’s point of view. “Yes?” was all she responded with.

“Well, I keep thinking about how that night could’ve gone if things were different. If I stayed a little longer. If the mood hadn’t been soured through natural means.”

“What are you saying?”

“I mean, we could’ve been happy together. You and I, Juliette. Back then… I was a public figure, it was the 1940’s, the British government would’ve never let us…”

Victory Girl inched closer to her old friend, softly placing her lithe hands on Juliette’s shoulders. Time seemed to slow as the Frenchwoman reciprocated the action, the two women embracing in a more intimate way than even their hand touch eighty years ago had been.

“It’s just… I love you, Juliette. I’ve always loved you. And now I’m about to lose you. I’ve spent so long wondering about what we could’ve had, and yet you’re right here in my arms. We could still make this work. I-I don’t care that you look old, I don’t care that I’m setting myself up for a lifetime of heartbreak when you inevitably pass away, I just want to know that I didn’t waste an opportunity that was right there in front of me. I think I finally understand what you mean by ‘nothing changing.’ Even though I’ve been doing good this whole time, now is finally the chance to make a difference.”

Juliette said nothing, but she didn’t need to. Leaning forward, she puckered her lips in anticipation. Victory Girl’s heart skipped a beat, her breath caught in her throat. This was it. This was really, actually, finally, happening. The heroine didn’t hesitate to reciprocate, locking her fuller, plumper lips against Juliette’s frail ones. While the kiss was objectively nothing impressive and even a little awkward, it was heaven to Victory Girl.

But heaven couldn't last for an immortal.

The superheroine was so caught up in the moment it took her quite a while to notice that the roof of her mouth had been pricked. Only once she found a profound dullness emanating from that same spot did she begin to ponder if something fishy was transpiring.

Unfortunately for Victory Girl, by the time she attempted to break the kiss, it was too late.

“What the…?” She attempted to speak, though her words would come out muffled and distorted as Juliette’s lips prevented a proper escape. Confusion became panic as the numbness spread throughout her body, only increasing in voracity until her entire nervous system felt foggy and unresponsive. It was like a nightmare made real.

Victory Girl attempted to free herself from Juliette physically, but the first thing she could not influence with her mighty strength also turned out to be the being who was physically sucking the endless pool of energy out of her body from the soul-stealing kiss. Her eyes opened to a blurry world, her various sight enhancements stolen from her retinas as they failed to adjust in time. They did catch one particular sight, that of Juliette’s lips thickening with each passionate glom onto Victory Girl’s muzzle.

Juliette, on the other hand, knew she should remain analytical about this. She was doing this for the greater good, after all. But she could not help but savor the fucking brilliance of her blossoming transformation. Her muscles tensed, clenching tightly under the overwhelming onslaught of Victory Girl’s impossible strength. There had been many superheroes before and since VC’s historic rise to the upper echelons of superherodom, but none of them could compare to her sheer potential as a force—and now all of it was being added to the smartest woman in the world. Juliette’s biceps surged anew, every part of her body absolutely erupting with strength as they gulped from the peppy British heroine’s vast pool of incalculable power.

Each wriggle and writhe of Juliette’s lengthy tongue brought new change to her burgeoning body, transitioning rapidly from pretty... to beautiful… to breathtaking… to absolutely jaw-dropping. There was no scientific consensus on who the most attractive woman in the world was, nor was there agreed upon terminology to describe her, yet Juliette was ready to change that.

Regal cheekbones and pillowy lips were quick to replace her crow’s feet and molasses-like wrinkles, her loose skin filling up with Victory Girl’s impenetrable bone and musculature. A crick, crack, crick could be heard at unpredictable intervals as Juliette’s machinated spine broke under the pressure of her new, youthful, superpowered spine.

This was not a trade-off by any means, this was a robbery. Juliette did not leave the former superheroine with any of the Frenchwoman’s intelligence, only a small present of debilitating liver failure. Only once a small metal rod had retracted from the brunette’s mouth back into the restored raven-haired woman did Juliette finally break the succubus’ kiss with a powerful “mwah!”

Now a shriveled husk of a woman, Victory Girl collapsed backwards onto the ground. Every facet of her body was screaming at her for something different. Her overwhelmed mind wanted to collapse from exhaustion, her heavy eyes eager to obey, but a persistent explosion of pain from every facet of her body kept her awake and in agony.

Before pressing a button that would wrap her new buxom body in a skin-tight kevlar-laden supersuit, Juliette’s hands rose to cup her swelling breasts. The electric touch of her slender fingers against her most sensitive flesh sent shudders through her gorgeous, still-improving body. The Frenchwoman’s lengthy eyelashes fluttered shut, and she moaned more loudly than she ever had in her entire century of life. The new suit of hers was like a thousand fondles.

All Victory Girl could utter from her cracked lips between hoarse breaths was a simple inquiry. “Why?”

Juliette found a sultry, devious smile come to her face as her body floated effortlessly off the ground. “You want to know why? Why would I take all the hoarded power from a woman who only uses it for the sake of her country? Who uses her power to uphold its unfair grip on the world? The Nazis were bad, but the British? An unchecked, colonizing monarchy! How are they any different?”

Her triceps swelled with feminine musculature as she bent forward, looking down upon Victory Girl as if she were a child. “You once told me that I could do your job better and the thought has haunted my mind for over half a century. You had become such a public figure come the age of public television that it was only a matter of time that I discovered your weakness before any other, as you had mentioned once in an interview with David Letterman that the roof of your mouth once burned from consuming an overcooked meatball. A bit of a shot in the dark, but one that obviously paid off greatly.” She emphasized her point with a flex of overdeveloped biceps.

Using her newfound strength, Juliette compiled together all of the seemingly unrelated massive machines within her foyer. “If I had failed to kiss you there, or perhaps perished before given the opportunity, I would’ve been able to hide my true intentions of world hegemonization under my one rule of peace. When separated, these machines appear to be unfinished and do absolutely nothing…” She then placed them all together like Jenga pieces, crafting an absolutely monolithic machine, of which she promptly piloted by resting her body in a formulated mold. With her calculations correct, she fit perfectly. “But when put together and powered with the infinite battery that is your beautiful body…”

She concentrated and unleashed a powerful flex of her muscles, the sheer clenching of her insanely muscular profile was enough to bathe the freight-train-sized machine in blinding light of pure energy. The mere sinuous coils of muscle that flowed the length of her back would’ve been enough. A full-body flex was overkill.

Juliette’s mansion began to crumble around her as the sheer extent of Victory Girl’s former power was given form. She didn’t need it anymore. No longer the aging, decrepit woman of a bygone era, she had been reborn into an ageless goddess, one who deserved a far grander display of shelter according to her recently-updated Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Victory Girl was so weak she couldn’t even bring her hands before her face to uselessly shield it from the encroaching rubble, but she would find herself protected by Juliette’s machines, their metal bodies protecting the prune of a former hero from certain death.

While her senses were weak, she could’ve sworn she heard Juliette’s voice being carried along the faint wind. “No more blood will be shed. Not even yours, little lamb.”

Local superheroes in the immediate area came to investigate, but they were too late to stop the final step of Juliette’s plan. Not that they could stop her at this point, but they couldn’t even figure out what was transpiring in time to slow the inevitable before Juliette’s Year Zero enveloped the earth.

Using a complex formula of bee queen pheromones and oxytocin, her brain’s powerful ideals erupted from the machine, quickly coating all of North America. Now airborne, it wouldn’t be long before every human on earth realized that they weren’t so different after all. That was, with one exception. Juliette had used this power to end all wars and hardships, creating a new era of people that cared not of greed and pride, but community and scientific advancements, but she sneakily left in a little contradiction. Not a huge one, after all, they would grow to accept her soon enough anyways.

While all were equal, Juliette was the one above all. Her mind enveloped all as her superiority remained unquestioned and unopposable. She was determined to remain benevolent, that her existence would be seen as a goddess guiding humanity toward a better future, one without war or starvation or facism.

One where she could love Victory Girl without the guilt of it all.

With the mind to guide scientific progress to new heights and the body to achieve it, she was able to craft technology which far surpassed her previous feats. This included an endoskeleton which ensured that the human body would never expire and a malleable skin that would prevent age lines—unless the user was into that style.

Of course, Victory Girl would never know about the betrayal that had to unfold to achieve a better world, that part would be conveniently scrubbed from her mind. As far as she knew, Juliette had always been a goddess that she was simply fortunate enough to be in love with.

After all, that night all those years ago was the first time she had ever been in love. She just knew she had to bend the rules her way to get it.