In this Chapter: We are introduced to our hero as she takes aim at a hostage situation. 

Main Tags of This Chapter: Violence.  Growth. 

Harmonia City - 9:58am

Zoe – 23

Zoe stood in the slow-moving line of her favorite downtown cafe, hand-painted murals on the walls, the persistent smell of espresso and cinnamon.  She had started coming here as a grad student, before everything when she still found comfort in small rituals, a morning chai latte, a favorite window seat, a few pages of her latest novel before the day began.  Those comforts had become rare since the city learned her name, her alternate name at least…

She kept her head down, a white wool beanie pulled low over her hair, and a soft sage green scarf wrapped around her neck.  Her phone was clutched in one gloved hand, thumb absently swiping over the cracked screen as she scrolled through news headlines that all seemed to converge on the same theme… chaos in Harmonia, another incident, more damage, more awe, more fear.  The faces of the morning crowd were turned toward their own devices or toward the counter, impatient and oblivious.  No one recognized her.  That was the point, and Zoe relished the anonymity.

Zoe had her earpods in, hoping that nobody would talk to her on the cold winter morning.  The podcast playing in her ears was dedicated to coverage of Maxima, played at low volume so she could still hear the barista’s muffled shouts of orders.  The host was a young woman named Lizzie who identified under the less glamorous moniker, “Larky Lizzie”.

Zoe had never met her, but even through the dramatics of a podcast, Lizzie’s voice had a restless energy that reminded Zoe of the overcaffeinated students from her school days.

Lizzie was one of the few people who seemed to believe Maxima was trying to help, and who said so, repeatedly, on the air to a wide audience of listeners on every spectrum of split opinions.

“…and, let’s be so for real, that’s why the petition to ban Maxima’s activity is flatly, a stupid idea” Lizzie’s voice chirped in thought.  “But more to the point, it’s logistically impossible.  You can’t legislate away a force of nature that’s here to help, you can’t just tell a hurricane to go the other way… not that Maxima is a hurricane, but you get my point, right?” Lizzie continued.

Zoe curled her lips.  She knew all about the petition, it had around 5,000 signatures already and it had only been a few days since it went live on the internet.  She also knew Lizzie was being a little hyperbolic, Zoe wasn’t a hurricane.  She’d spent the last 2 years learning how not to be, ever since she became Maxima.

“But here’s what nobody’s asking” Lizzie continued, her tone shifting from performative outrage to something more intimate.  “If Maxima is really so dangerous, why does she keep coming back to help us?  Why risk her life, her time, her… well, you know… her reputation?  Nobody gets into this line of work for the thank you cards, Maxima does it because I think she believes it’s the right thing to do, at least that’s what I think” Lizzie said.

A ripple of guilt, sharp and familiar, ran through Zoe’s chest.  She hadn’t meant for any of this to happen.  She was supposed to be a researcher, maybe a future professor, play guitar in a band, go out with friends, go to pottery classes, learn how to knit, be a decent neighbor, a regular member of society.  Not a mascot, not a giant weapon.  She wrestled with the urge to turn the podcast off and walk out, leave her chai latte at the counter, but she couldn’t, she felt compelled to hear what Lizzie would say next, as though the right words might grant her some measure of validation for her alternate persona.

The line advanced.  Chatter swelled and ebbed around her as a pair of university students in front of her argued about whether pumpkin spice was a government conspiracy, and a man behind her coughed theatrically, hoping to shame the staff into moving faster.  Zoe’s phone buzzed with a notification, a string of numbers and abbreviations that she translated instantly in her head, there was a disturbance near the Riverfront district, Zoe keeping a close eye on any events that needed more than just first responders help, something that only Maxima herself could take on.

The barista finally called out her fake name.  “Emily! hot chai, almond milk!” the shout ended and Zoe flinched, instantly reminded of her childhood when her mother called her name from across the neighborhood to come home.  She hurried up, took the cup with a muttered “thank you” and slipped out the door.

Outside, the winter sun was blinding, the wind sharp enough to sting her eyes.  She paused for a moment on the curb, sipping her latte, the warmth pooling in her hands, her visible breath billowing out of her mouth as Lizzie’s voice continued a string of opinion pieces about Maxima.

Zoe plunged into the brittle air, boots crunching atop salt and ice as she cut across the busy downtown plaza.  In her pocket, the phone vibrated again, but she ignored it, savoring the city’s early-morning rhythm, the metallic squeal of streetcars, the click of distant crosswalks, steam wafting off rooftops, and the relentless, chatter of people going about their day.

The city wore its winter season well, crisp banners of blue and white stretched above shopfronts, LED snowflakes clung to every lamppost, and even the immense towers of the financial district were dusted with a coating of frost that made their sharp edges seem almost soft.  Pantheon Tower at the center, around 1200 feet tall and the city’s crown jewel, looked like a beautiful, icy monolith.

Between sips of her rapidly cooling chai, Zoe watched a group of schoolkids stampede toward the river crosswalks.  Every third stride, the smallest one in too big of a coat would slip on a patch of ice, arms windmilling, and the others would stop to laugh at him.

Zoe smiled.  There were mornings, rare but real, when she almost believed she could fade back into the city’s fabric, become an unremarkable woman on her way to an under-heated office to report to some mediocre boss, a mug of cheap caffeine her only shield against the world’s indifference to her life.

But the world never let her forget who she was now, not for long…

She ducked her chin into her scarf, feigning interest in the mural that ran along the bridge underpass, a swirl of local legends holding banners, a cartoonish Maxima painted at the composition’s heart with her fist raised.  The artist hadn’t gotten her costume quite right.  She found that comforting, in its way, but she hated when people made art about her, but Zoe hadn’t gotten much of a choice.

In her ear, Lizzie’s voice ricocheted between topics, her monologue pivoting from city politics to something closer to gender issues.

“…and look, it’s not just that Maxima is the only super heroine on record, though that’s a discussion in itself, but the entire discourse around her is obsessed with her body.  Not her character, her choices, or… god forbid… the positive impact she’s had on the city.  No, it’s all… look at the long legs, the impossible bust-to-waist ratio, the looming lips, the somehow sexual threat of being stepped on… sometimes I wonder if any of you people have ever talked to a woman before” Lizzie said, her pitch arched with subtle sarcasm.

Zoe almost choked on her latte, startled by the truth of the young podcaster’s words.  Lizzie's monologue hit with such precision that Zoe's cheeks flushed hot despite the winter chill.  It was as if the podcaster had read her mind, or scrolled through the same comment sections on Maxima “fan” pages.

Online and under-moderated cesspools where anonymous users relentlessly posted crude, edited images of Maxima bent low over skyscrapers, low angle shots of her ass, frame-by-frame analyses of her thighs or breasts as she walked between office buildings, elaborate fantasies about being crushed beneath her boots, or extremely graphic AI generated videos of her.

Buried beneath those were the occasional earnest thank you comments from families she'd saved, or a young girl saying Maxima was her idol, but those precious comments were like diamonds in a thick, oily mud that nobody had the patience to sift through.

She remembered a disastrous interview last year that she gave while in her costume, how the inappropriate reporter had spent half the time asking her if she would ever wear heels in her “giant form” and whether if she would ever strip down “to cool off in the summers” and if she would ever take her mask off.  Maxima doubled down on her costume as a result.  The rest of the article had been a speculation on the dangers of “voluptuous violence” in the hands of a giant woman.  Zoe had laughed at the time, but the bitterness had lingered.

Lizzie’s podcast continued in Zoe’s ears, “people forget, or maybe they just refuse to believe, that Maxima is a person.  I think that’s why the city can’t quite accept her, she’s both a myth and an unknown neighbor.  She’s a punchline and a paragon.  I think that’s why everyone projects their own issues onto her, whether it’s fear, sexual desire, or just the need to believe that someone so powerful must be fundamentally broken.  We can’t imagine a woman like that just wants to help… the world screams for strong women but then laughs in their face when one actually shows up” Lizzie finished her statement.

Zoe winced, an involuntary twitch of the face.  She didn’t want to think about the fact that every decision she made as Maxima was brutally dissected.  She had never asked to be the subject of a city-wide morality test, and sometimes she wished she never used her powers at all.

She turned down a side street, the curated chaos of the market district.  Food trucks idled at the curb, their windows fogged with breath, the sizzle of breakfast meats and eggs radiating into the slush of melting snow.  Someone had already shoveled the walkways and sprinkled salt, but the snow was refreezing in jagged little waves.

She sidestepped a patch of black ice, and as she did, a small child, maybe 5 or 6, walked into her shin, bounced off, and looked up, astonished at the encounter with a grown-up who neither scolded nor flinched.  The kid’s mother hustled over, apologizing profusely, but Zoe just flashed a shy smile, “it’s okay!” Zoe said and waved it off, her own childhood too full of similar collisions to take offense.  The mother blushing and smiling while she ushered off the kid down the street.

She was almost home, all she had to do was get to the train station, take the H67 to one of the last stops near the suburbs where she preferred to live.

Her home wasn’t much, walled with books and populated by two rescue dogs who treated her as part time furniture.  She longed for it, the warmth and the dark, the ritual of feeding the dogs and curling up with an old movie or book.  Her life was deliberately small these days, so unlike the stadiums and TV studios she was expected to inhabit.

But the phone in her hand wouldn’t leave her be.  Another vibration.  She checked the screen, 3 rapid-fire emergency messages.  She ignored the first two, routine vehicle pursuit, a structural fire in an abandoned lot with no civilians in danger.  Harmonia’s first responders were some of the best in the world; they knew when to escalate a serious alert.

But the third message stopped her.  A bank job, midtown, but with a twist… hostages.  Armed suspects.  SWAT already on scene.  The note at the end was stark, “potential for mass casualty event.  Maxima requested” the message read.

She stopped walking, the city’s soundscape going flat and empty in her ears.  For a moment, she just stared at the phone.  Every neuron in her body wanted to keep walking, to pretend she hadn’t seen it, to let the police do their jobs, to be a regular person that just goes about their day and hope nothing bad happens.

But then she pictured the inside of that bank, the terrified tellers, the parents with kids, the lone security guard.  She felt, with a jitter, the old, angry certainty that no one else could do this.  Not like her.  Not with the same blend of strength and caution, the math she did every second to avoid causing more harm than good.

She turned, ducked into an alley away from the buzz of people, and took a few ragged breaths.  The dogs would have to wait.  The movies and books on her couch would have to wait.  Maxima had work to do…

***

Harmonia City - 10:31am

Maxima - 23     

Maxima checked for cameras with a swift sweep of her eyes, fire escapes above, delivery vans idling just beyond the alley’s mouth.  Luck, contrived convenience, or perhaps the city’s indifference, had given her a 30-foot ring of privacy.

Not that it mattered much, even if her identity as Zoe was revealed, it wasn’t like anybody could hurt her, but she was more concerned with her privacy, the people she knew, her dogs, her family, her distant ex friends… people she didn’t want to lose because of a lazy moment.  So many people hated Zoe, or rather, Maxima, because of who she was, she wouldn’t allow the hate to spill over into her personal life, even if it meant being alone.

She slammed her unfinished latte into a nearly full recycling dumpster, then exhaled a string of whispering curses, “god dammit… fuck… fucking shit… fuckkkk” as she peeled off her outer layers with fingers stiff from cold and adrenaline, her body instantly freezing.  The costume was packed into a bundle at the bottom of her mini-backpack, a plain black and brown bag she always had slung over one shoulder.

She unrolled it with a practiced snap and stepped in, one foot at a time, careful not to let the synthetic mesh touch the slushy ground.  The fabric was a proprietary thing of beauty, polymer fiber, hyper-elastic gels, and woven with carbon nanotube meshes.

It shimmered a matte-grey in the shadows, shifting to an almost iridescent navy blue under direct sun, every seam bonded and flexible as her own skin.  The suit’s interior was mapped with a network of micro-actuators and sensors, designed to monitor both her vital signs and the ambient atmospheric pressures of her abilities, the suit instantly heating in response to her body temperature, feeling warm against her skin.

The cowl fit tight around her scalp and allowed her hair to fall out of the back, but the mask itself was only a half-face, a sculpted visor that shielded her eyes, nose, and cheeks, leaving her mouth unobstructed for breathing, communication, or the occasional shout, but most importantly, hiding her identity.

Everything else was designed for maximum efficiency, padded gloves, reinforced knees and boots, and a modular belt.  Maxima knew it made her look like a cross between a futuristic soldier and a giant nurse, but after 2 years, nothing else had proved as durable.  A designer she didn’t know, had omitted all insignias or branding… no “M” badge, no sleek star logo, not even a color accent to make it prettier.

She shoved her old clothes, earpods, and winter boots into the bag, shoved it into a pocket, cinched the belt tight, and checked the time.  A ripple of anticipation passed through her, the bitter-sweet of stage-fright and adrenaline, feeling the suit surge and hum as the micro-actuators primed for expansion, it was as if her skin had been overlaid with a second, smarter version of itself.

The next part was always the hardest.  She crouched, bracing a hand against the alley wall, and summoned the change.

The growth was not instantaneous, she’d trained herself to favor a controlled, deliberate escalation, a habit born of trauma and endless PR disasters.  Bones elongated with a sick, twisting pressure; muscles ballooned, joints cracked in sequence, blood vessels pulsed like overclocked wiring.

The suit kept up, expanding in perfect sync with every inch of her body, never tearing or lagging behind.  Years ago, she’d shredded dozens of suit prototypes, left herself half-naked and shivering in a secret, underground black-site facility, a memory she hated.  Now, the process took less than 10 seconds from start to finish.

By the time she reached the end of the alley, Maxima stood at 150 feet tall.  The city’s skyline shrank into a scale model, cars like toys, pedestrians the size of figurines, the gridwork of elevated trains and highways reduced to a child’s playset.  She felt the cold snap of wind against her exposed lips, the crackle of her own electrostatic field ionizing the morning air.

Below, a woman walking her dog stopped and stared, one gloved hand going slack on the leash.  Two young men on a delivery run dropped their dolly and gawked, phones already up and taking photos of the imposing figure.  Maxima tried to ignore them.  She had not grown for their entertainment or social media likes.

She stepped into the street, boots compressing, but triple padded and reinforced to not cause craters or cracks in the street.  Every sense was on high alert, the distant wail of sirens, the extreme care she put into not stepping on anyone.  She moved slowly, partly for her own dignity, partly to give the city’s civilians time to adapt to her looming form.  They did not disappoint.

Within 60 seconds, the pedestrian zones had cleared, food trucks closed their hatches, and even the most reckless cyclists steered wide, giving Maxima a berth as she started to walk toward the incident.  It became routine enough, people were trained, given educational videos to watch out for Maxima and what to do in her presence, students in school from a young age all the way to college were given multiple safety seminars on what to do when Maxima was in the vicinity, there were even certain bars and restaurants that had “Maxima Zones” for people to funnel onto patios to avoid her footfalls, offering discount drinks and lunch specials upon entry.

She passed a traffic cop near the crosswalk, his face a mix of awe and terror, he saluted out of reflex or maybe fear, and Maxima nodded back, refusing to meet his gaze fully.  If she made eye contact, she might see herself reflected in his panic, or worse, his wonder.

As she neared the river, the wind kicked up, carrying the air of news drones jockeying for position.  Maxima felt the intrusive buzz of cameras, the heat signatures of lenses tracking her movement, and a familiar spike of anxiety threatened to scramble her focus.  She forced it down and concentrated on the path ahead, a collection of police cruisers and SWAT vans ringing the target block up ahead, at her height, she knew it would only take about 10 steps, and every second counted.

She tiptoed with efficiency, dodging cars and street trains, ignoring the gawking faces of people pressed up against their glass office buildings as she strode by, interrupting meetings or work calls to see the giantess right outside.

The bank was a glass monolith about 500 feet tall, the building wedged between another office building and a high-rise apartment complex, both of which were already locked down.  SWAT officers only 2-3 inches tall compared to Maxima were dressed in tactical gear clustered behind their tactical vans and cars, their faces upturned as if a thunderstorm had suddenly spawned over them as Maxima’s shadow approached.

She advanced with calculated steps.  She knelt, sending a shockwave through the pavement, and opened her palm to the SWAT captain, a gesture rehearsed in dozens of drills.  The SWAT officer looked up and held up 5 fingers.  Maxima reached back up to her ear and switched to channel 5 on the radio built into her cowl.

The line crackled.  “Maxima, this is St. Brown.  We have eyes on 10 perps, possible explosives.  If you can get a visual, confirm threat level, we’ll breach on your word” the radio crackled.

Maxima responded, her voice a low rumble for the tiny people around her, trying to mask her real voice as much as possible, “stand by, I can get this” Maxima said with a practiced confidence that betrayed her inner feelings of stage fright.

She shifted into a low walk, crouching down, moving parallel to the building’s long axis.  Her mind raced through a thousand contingency plans, hostages as human shields, remote detonators, getaway vehicles.

The observers on the street had grown to a small crowd, their phones out, their faces caught between terror and enthralled expectation.  Maxima pretended they weren’t there, that the only people who mattered were the tiny trembling shapes inside the bank.

She reached the windows and peered in, careful not to shatter the glass with her breath alone.  Inside, the suspects had already noticed her, one dropped his weapon and bolted for a back corridor, the other two panicked and started shouting, guns waving in the air.  The hostages huddled, motionless behind a teller desk, Maxima spotting the security guard with a bloody face, but alive and tied up to a desk.

Maxima toggled her radio.  “Suspects are agitated, but no visible explosives.  Tell your teams to hold back at the entrances” Maxima said calmly.

She wrapped her hand around the building’s corner, feeling the structure flex but not quite break.  The suspects yelled.  Maxima raised her other hand in a “calm down” gesture, slow and deliberate, then used her pinky to gently tap the entrance door.  The glass buckled, fell inwards in a thousand twinkling pebbles.  She heard the hostages gasp, then the unmistakable sound of two men surrendering to the floor, weapons skittering away.

3 of the 10 suspects surrendered the instant Maxima’s face eclipsed the glass, hurling their weapons and sprinting like headless chickens for the doors.  They were met by a swarm of SWAT, cuffed and thrown to the concrete steps, already sobbing through their rights being read to them and dragged away to an armored van.

The remainder, 7 armed, terrified, skittish, too deep into their own mission, doubled down, retreating to the tellers’ desks and the armored steel of the vault entrance.  One, jittering behind a marble column, raised a gun and emptied the magazine into Maxima’s face, the bullets made the hostages scream and cover their heads, the SWAT about to rush in between and underneath Maxima’s legs to intervene, but the burly captain held them all back.

The rounds flattened against her mask or bounced off her lips, tickling, sprinkling her vision with brass and the faint pop of static, the spent cartridges bouncing on the floor.  If she had wanted to, she could have sneered, made a show of the futility of their actions, made a joke at their expenses, but she knew the trappings of power and humiliation over beings less powerful.

She let it pass without emotion, remaining professional and serious instead.  Maxima was practically indestructible anyway, sometimes bullets would pierce her skin, but they would usually fall out later.

Maxima toggled the radio and tried to sound both bored and comforting, “hostages still safe.  Stand by for surrender” Maxima said.

But they did not surrender.  Not at first.  Instead, one man in Maxima’s peripheral vision, seemed to be the leader by virtue of height and voice volume, began shouting, his words were like squeaks to Maxima, but laced with enough authority to keep the other suspects obeying his commands.  He was almost 2.5 inches tall compared to Maxima, his body covered in a vest and tattoos.

He barked demands, some real, some performative, each one more predictable than the last, a helicopter, 100 million dollars, safe passage to a bordering country, and a list of grievances with the city and country to be made national news.

Maxima recognized the script from a thousand lame action movies, but no one ever believed the city’s only superhuman would show up, but once she did, all bets were off.  She briefly wondered why people still committed crimes when she was around anyway, you’d think the threat of what was essentially a giant police officer would deter these people, but no, she thought.

The dynamic was never about the money or the escape; it was about event and attention, about defiance, about finding some crutch in a world where one would otherwise be unremarkable, ironic considering that was exactly what Zoe wanted for herself.

She tried, once, to negotiate.  She knelt, drawing herself as close to eye level with the lobby, which left her still towering but less overtly menacing.  “You’re surrounded.  No one wants to see this go bad.  If you let the hostages go, I’ll make sure you walk away from this” she said, amplifying her voice just enough to reverberate off the marble but not so much as to crack the windows again.  She used her calmest customer-service tone, which was almost funny in itself.

The leader spat back a string of “fuck you’s, fuck you giant bitch, fuck no, suck my fucking dick you giant cunt”.  His face slick with sweat and red with anger, the gun in his hand shaking.  One of his accomplices started to grit his tiny teeth.  Another pulled a scarf over his mouth and fumbled with a device clutched in his hands.  For a moment, the tension stretched.

It broke when the smallest of the suspects, Maxima clocked him as barely above 2 inches, skinny, maybe a college student on a very bad decision-tree, lunged for a hostage.   There was no warning, no shouted threat, just the lunge and the cold barrel of a pistol jammed against the head of a woman in a purple dress who was just trying to do her job as a teller.

The woman screamed.  The man screamed louder, demanding a vehicle or he’d, “do it, he fucking would”.  The leader, sensing his margin of control evaporate, turned his own weapon on the hostages and began shouting threats at Maxima, daring her to intervene or the hostages’ blood would be on her hands.

Maxima’s protective instincts kicked in.  She did not hesitate.  In less than a second, Maxima’s hands exploded through and glass shattered into the lobby making people duck from away from the falling shards.  Maxima’s index fingers and thumbs extended in what looked, absurdly, like a careful pinches.  She had done this maneuver before in a dozen other de-escalations, but it was never less than horrifying.  Every time, she had to overcome the deep, animalistic terror of crushing by accident, of excess force.  The margin for error was measured in millimeters, microseconds, and the slightest twitches of her muscles.

She moved with precision and quickness while they ducked away from the falling glass.  She traced the lines of sight, re-calibrated for depth of field, and plucked the gunmen by their torsos, lifting them up and away from the hostages with a grip that was firm enough to immobilize but not quite enough to break their ribs.

The men shrieked, their limbs windmilling, the guns dropping harmlessly to the marble flood of the lobby.  Maxima deposited them gently in the street, where the smallest of the two curled up and sobbed into the icy sidewalk while the leader was tackled and arrested by a group of officers.

Inside the bank was pandemonium.  The hostages recoiled, some diving for the floor, others clutching each other, their cries ricocheting off marble and glass, Maxima spotting a few people bleeding from the falling glass, but alive.  The remaining 5 suspects, for all their bravado, except one.

“Bomb!  Bomb!  Bomb!” the radio clattered and repeated in fear as Maxima could hear the screams of people.

One of the suspects, a wiry man with sweaty hair and trembling fingers, fumbled with a detonator strapped to his chest.  Maxima's vision caught the flash of copper wiring beneath his jacket, the telltale red light of an armed device.  She lunged forward, her massive hand closing around him like a flesh prison.  His bones creaked and snapped in her grip as she squeezed tight out of pure reaction.

He screamed in pain from his bones snapping within her grip, a high-pitched sound that reminded her of a teakettle, she could see his clavicle and scapula bones snap through his skin with a spurt of blood that shot out from the wounds, but she wasted no time to inspect the damage.  She cupped her other hand over him and pressed both fists against the center of her chest.  The explosion came as a muffled thump against her palms, hot and sharp.

Heat seeped between her fingers in wisps of acrid smoke that smelled of cordite and burning hair.  The explosion had reduced the crushed man within her fists into a fine red mist that found every crack between her gloved fingers.  A spattering of blood flung outward, painting her cheek with warm, sticky droplets that smelled like copper.

When she finally uncurled her fingers, all that remained was blood, a few bits of gore and charred bone that fell to the ground, and a fine gray powder scattered across her palm, still warm and hissing slightly, but she had saved everyone from a potentially horrific explosion by using her own body as a shield.

One by one, she reached back in and extracted the remaining suspects.  Her massive fingers delicately pinched the collar of a wild-eyed man in a ski mask who flailed, while another she scooped up in her palm as he cowered.  The 3rd emptied his pistol into her gloved thumb, the bullets no more bothersome than tickles against her reinforced fabric.  The other tried to run, his legs flailing comically before her index finger and thumb plucked him mid-stride like a cartoon.  Maxima deposited each on the sidewalk where SWAT officers swarmed around them, zip-tying wrists behind backs.

She ignored the news drones orbiting her head like angry hornets and focused on keeping her hands steady, her movements minimal, the showmanship dialed to absolute zero.  When the last gunman finally dropped his weapon and raised his hands, Maxima made sure to give him a long, calm look before setting him down, as if to say… you made the right call, even if you couldn’t admit it.

“It’s okay, you’re safe now…” Maxima said as gently as possible to the hostages.

The hostages staggered out a moment later, some weeping, others holding their phones aloft, already livestreaming their own survival to the world, others clutching at bleeding lacerations.  Maxima didn’t want to wait for the applause.  She half-saluted the SWAT captain, who returned it with a visible, almost comical, sigh of relief.  The crisis was over in less than six minutes.

Maxima shrank herself back down, the suit hissing as she returned to normal height.  “Let me know if you ever want to come back to the station for some more hand-to-hand training, Max” St. Brown said with a smirk, Maxima looking up to see him as she smiled and nodded.

“Maybe I’ll take you up on that” she said back in a friendly matter, she had worked with St. Brown almost since the start of her heroics, at first, he hated her, saying she was too unpredictable and too dangerous, then, after Maxima saved some of his officers from a drug bust gone wrong, he completely changed his tune.

Maxima, now returned to her normal size of 5’5.75”, the last 3 quarters of an inch a running joke for Zoe’s own amusement.  Unassumingly average underneath her purposefully unflattering suit that barely showed but a hint of her true body shape.  She lurched onto the sidewalk in search of quiet.  For a moment, she thought she could simply fade into the crowds of onlookers, anonymously slip away as if she were just another bystander.

But the world had other plans.  The applause began as a ripple, first a scattering of polite claps, then a rising tide of whoops, camera shutters… the collective exhalation of a city that craved justice but also begged for attention.

She braced herself for the first wave of hostages, their arms flung around her neck in uninvited gratitude to hug her, some cell phones held up for selfies, the trembling hands that reached out for a handshake or fist-bump of approval.  Maxima at her normal height noticed many of them had cuts or bruises, or broken noses, but alive, the security guard rushed to an ambulance for a large gash on his head but gave a thankful wave.

Maxima realized she still had the blood of the suicide bomber on the palms of her gloves as she quickly reached down and wiped it away on her thighs before returning her attention back to the thankful crowds.

She accepted each hug or handshake with the same blank professionalism, determined not to smile, not to let the fame go to her head.  That this was simply her job and she was not a celebrity meant to bask in the glory.

By the time she’d removed herself from the mosh pit of hugs, the media crews were already circling.  A local news van, spotless white and still idling illegally in the fire lane, spat out a field reporter in her mid-30’s wearing a suit, an overcoat, and hair lacquered to an unyielding sheen slicked over her ears that had fuzzy earmuffs on.  The reporter ran, wanting to be the first, intercepted Maxima before she could even finish saying, “excuse me”.

“Maxima!  Maxima!  Over here!  Can you please, just a quick word?” the reporter trilled, microphone thrust directly into Maxima’s space just beneath her lips and chin.

Maxima stopped, her left foot unconsciously bracing as if for a cross-examination.  “I really shouldn’t…” Maxima began to speak before being interrupted.

“Catherine Moore with HXAN.  Can you tell our viewers what went through your mind during the rescue?” the reporter asked, the reporter’s perfectly rehearsed smile bore into Maxima, the camera lens beside them already blinking red.

Maxima hesitated.  “I… was just trying to minimize damage.  The tactical team deserves most of the credit.  They kept the perimeter clear, followed every protocol…” Maxima spoke again before being interrupted.

“But you single-handedly disarmed the suspects and prevented a mass hostage catastrophe!  How do you respond to critics who say the collateral damage from your actions…” Catherine gestured at the glass-and-marble shrapnel field mixed with a few trickles of blood behind them, “is an acceptable risk?” Catherine finished.

Maxima stammered, caught between her impulse to defend herself and her disgust at the question’s premise.  “There were no casualties.  I regret the broken glass and it hurting people, but lives are always my first priority” Maxima said.

Catherine nodded solemnly, undeterred.  “For our younger viewers, could you share what motivates you, Maxima?  Is it true that you used to be… just like us?” the reporter asked and the question caught Maxima off-guard.

Maxima’s jaw worked.  She’d practiced a thousand responses in the mirror, all of them slipping her mind.  “I try to do the most good for the most people.  That’s all” Maxima said after a moment of hesitation.

As if sensing she’d reached the limit of Maxima’s patience, Catherine switched gears, eyes brightening with the promise of a scoop.  “One final question, Is it true you’re going to be running for mayor soon?” the reporter asked.

Maxima, who had been summoned to the mayor’s office more times than she could count, for “Appreciation Breakfasts” and public relations pictures shook her head no.  “Uh… no.  That’s just a rumor.  I’m not interested in politics” Maxima said.

The reporter beamed and pivoted to the camera for the sign-off.  Maxima realized she’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, the forced soundbite, the hero’s confession.  She wanted nothing more than to shrink down to the size of a dust mite and disappear, but unfortunately, shrinking smaller than her normal height wasn’t in her catalogue of superpowers.

She retreated with a tight nod, brushing off another round of applause and navigated through the maze of emergency vehicles where EMTs treated cuts and wounds, Maxima relieved when she didn’t see any serious injuries amongst the hostages.

“Hey, it’s Super Tits!” a random man from the side of the street yelled over toward Maxima before he laughed.  Maxima let the words fall on her, contemplating giving the man a lecture about respect, but it just wasn’t worth it… she kept walking… just wanting to get away from the comments, the people, the everything.

Halfway down the block, a widely grinning food truck vendor tried to hand her a “Maxi-Melt” hot sandwich, free of charge.  She couldn’t tell if it was a genuine gift or a viral marketing stunt, but she accepted it into her hands out of politeness and kept moving.  The eyes followed her.  They always did.

She ducked away into the first alley she found away from people, peeled off her mask, and took a long, shaky breath.  For a moment she let her head rest against the cool brick, eyes squeezing shut.  She could already hear the news anchors dissecting her performance, the pundits debating whether her presence invited chaos or quelled it, the armchair ethicists arguing about excessive force.  It was always the same cycle, scrutiny, shame, withdrawal.  Then, inevitably, the next disaster and emergency they needed her to stop.

Maxima straightened, changed back into her normal clothes, pulling them over her suit just in case, and wiped the sweat from her hairline before she slung her mini-backpack over her shoulder.

Zoe now prepared to loop back to her apartment by the least conspicuous route possible.  But as she emerged from the shadows, she caught sight of Maxima’s masked face, already plastered across every big screen on the avenue.  The city had made her into its favorite toy.

Zoe made her way down the avenue, handed the sandwich to a hungry homeless man who mumbled and “thank you, ma’am” before she pressed tight into the shadow of buildings, resisting the urge to dart into another alley at every intersection.  She kept her head down, but not so low as to attract the attention of police.  Still, she couldn’t avoid the enormous displays mounted to the sides of buildings, which now cycled through high-definition loops of her morning’s work, her own face behind a cowl and a mask, exaggeratedly serene and noble, rendered in digital displays.

She couldn’t decide if it was more horrifying or hilarious that every station’s highlight reel included at least one slow-mo shot of the glass shattering around her or her fist closing tightly around the bomber as he screamed in pain from his body cracking, as if the city had determined that the most exciting part of a hostage rescue was the carnage and not her actual saving of people. The images blurred some to not reveal the blood.

Right alongside the newsreels, an ad played on every screen at once, “Introducing Maxima Accident Forgiveness!  The only insurance policy that covers you from all Hero-related damages, with zero deductible!” The ad cut to a local businessman holding up a phone displaying the Maxima Insurance logo, then to a montage of citizens receiving novelty-sized checks for repairs to their homes and cars.  The jingle, so chipper it bordered on derangement, wormed its way into Zoe’s skull.  “Maxima insurance… for maximum protection!” She almost laughed.  Almost.

She hiked her green scarf up over her mouth, pulled down her white wool beanie, and cut across two lanes of traffic and into the train station, her mind numb from the whiplash of the day.  The train station was crowded with the usual blend of office workers, university students, and the occasional tourist wearing a Maxima sweater hoping for a viral sighting as if hunting for a celebrity, little did they know she was only a few feet away from them.

Zoe found a seat in the farthest corner of the platform and exhaled, long and slow, trying to ignore the distastefully vandalized poster that showed Maxima’s face and body in costume, a promo shot she had done 1.5 years ago against her will to promote cooperation with the city, the poster had devil horns scribbled on it as well as giant, oversized tits, then further down to see a large penis and pubes also scribbled between her legs via black permanent marker.

The train arrived with a squeal, and Zoe wedged herself into a seat by the window, keeping her eyes hidden behind a paperback romance novella until the carriage jerked into motion.

The journey was mercifully uneventful; no one recognized her, as impossible as it seemed, people had done deep dives on her body, analyzed her posture, her lips and chin trying to figure out who she really was, but there were tens of thousands of other women who it could have been in Harmonia alone as it was a crowded city to say the least.

The closest was when she accidentally caught the edge of her giant glove on a crane while saving a few men from falling off during a brutal windstorm.  Exposing her pale skin and a chipped black painted pinky nail.  But even with the identity narrowed down to fair skinned women with dark hair and black painted nails, it was only met with a trendy wave of women in the city suddenly getting black manicures and hairstyles similar to Maxima’s in solidarity with the giant hero, altering fashion for about 6 months straight.

Occasionally, Zoe saw taller women stopped in the street, watching as a pack of drunk men and women stopped a 6’4” swimmer from the university, accusing her of being Maxima, but as much as she refused that she was, they just kept pushing the issue until the swimmer was forced to run away… Zoe feeling the second-hand shame for her persona affecting other normal people just trying to go about their day.

She watched the blur of stations roll by, the city’s grime and glory bleeding together in a way that made her feel almost anonymous, almost safe.

She closed her eyes and tried to picture the evening ahead, hoping that her neighbor hadn’t let his cat into the hallway again, that her mail hadn’t been stolen, that her dogs would be content to simply curl up with her and nap.  That, she realized, was what she wanted most in the world, just one day where nothing happened.

Her phone vibrated in her jacket.  She fished it out, expecting the usual onslaught of news alerts or calls from city officials, but instead she saw a push notification: “Live now!  The Lark Report, Maxima and the Glass Ceiling: Heroism or Hysteria?” Zoe groaned but clicked anyway.

The screen filled with the face of Lizzie.  Lizzie’s hair was a perfect line of straight bangs that covered her brow, her teeth flawless, her voice the same intoxicating mix of sincerity and subtle sensationalism to draw in an audience.

“…and let’s be so for real” Lizzie was saying, her catchphrase, “today’s hero was not just breaking glass ceilings, she was literally breaking glass, everywhere.  I’m for girl power, and this was the perfect example of Maxima shattering expectations woman are put under.  Thoughts in the chat, please” Lizzie said.

The comments scrolled by in real time, a blur of venom and appreciation.  Zoe read them with a grim fascination.  Some viewers called Maxima an inspiration, others a menace; a few speculated about her dating life, and at least one recurring troll insisted she was a government asset designed to distract the population from real issues, whatever those were.  Zoe snorted.  Even her haters were getting more creative.

Lizzie’s virtual guest, a “crisis management expert” argued that the city, “needed stronger oversight on Maxima, that someone with that much power couldn’t be trusted to take matters into their own hands, that there needs to be stronger regulatory factors that monitor and approve the use of Maxima” he explained as Lizzie argued against the notion.

When the train finally reached her stop at South Willow, Zoe gathered her things and prepared to face the world again.  She had learned, over time, how to shield herself from the projections of strangers, to walk among them as both a symbol and a ghost.  But today, the mask felt heavier than usual.  She thought of her apartment, her dogs, and the cold quiet that awaited.  The city could keep its sandwiches, its opinions, and its insurance policies.  All she wanted was to disappear for a little while.

Zoe’s building, an unassuming complex in the icy suburbs was exactly as she’d left it, always standing, but just on the verge of always needing repairs.  She pressed the code into a small screen, the most advanced technology in the whole place, and ducked inside before anyone could clock her arrival.  The familiar lobby, with its flickering overhead lights and perpetually broken elevator, was comfortingly empty.

She bounded up the 3 flights of stairs, letting the physical effort push out the lingering tension in her shoulders, and was rewarded at her landing by the unmistakable sound of paws against the door.  Instantly, the drabness of the hallway dissolved, replaced by the riot of barking, leaping, and tail-thrashing that was her greeting from Willy and Duchess.

Willy, 90 pounds of mixed Pyrenees in a body designed for collision, nearly tackled her as she opened the apartment door.  Duchess, a chocolate lab, the partner in criminal mischief and another rescue who wore her mismatched ears and neurotic energy like a badge of honor, circled in tight orbits around Zoe’s knees.  They’d trashed their toy basket again, half the contents now tufts of fur and unidentifiable plastic, but she didn’t mind.  This was their ritual, a moment of unrestrained chaos, then immediate, absolute peace as both dogs flanked her side.

She dropped her bag, toed off her winter boots, and sat for a long minute, one hand tangled in Willy’s fluffy jowls, the other scratching Duchess’s favorite spot behind her left shoulder blade.  The stench of her melted candles and dog filled her nostrils, but it was the kind of smell that said one was home, and nobody expected you to save the world before dinner.

She let her head tip back and exhaled, only then noticing her phone buzz again.  Another round of emergency alerts.  She skimmed them, police pursuit, warehouse fire, a minor earthquake on the far edge of the county, but none of it strictly required her intervention.  She let the tension unravel a little further.  For the rest of the day, someone else could be the hero.

She set her phone aside and moved to the kitchen, stepping around a nearly empty bag of dog food.  The contents of her fridge were the usual, soaking oats, hummus, half a cucumber, a container of eggs, a suspiciously ancient jar of mayonnaise, and scattered leftovers from nearby takeout restaurants.

She poured the dogs their food and heated up some old noodles.  They ate in a contented, companionable silence, punctuated only by Duchess’s occasional hiccup and Willy’s deep, satisfied snorts.

After lunch, Zoe threw her suit into the wash before she wrapped herself in a cozy blanket, flipped on the TV, and surrendered to the comforting white noise of her favorite music playing over a cheap mini-speaker.  For a while she simply existed, warm and weighted and anonymous.

Inevitably, the adrenaline of the day caught up with her, and she nodded off into a nap, waking only when Willy let out a low, questioning whine.  She blinked at the clock.  Barely past 3pm.  She should do something productive, she supposed.

She wandered into her bedroom, stepped over a half-folded pile of laundry and scattered shoes, and sat at her desk by the window.  The surface was crammed with notebooks, sticky notes, and a small army of glitter pens.  She opened her journal and for a while just stared at the page.  Outside, the city groaned and chattered, but in here it was just Zoe and her scattered thoughts.

She began to write slowly at first, then faster as the words unspooled.  She wrote about the hostage rescue, the sick rush in her stomach when she grabbed the bomber tightly into her fist and felt his bones snapping within, the way the world had looked through a thousand tiny shards when she shattered the glass of the bank tower.

She wrote about the aftermath, the interview, the sandwich, the dogs’ wagging tails as if nothing had changed.  She wrote about Maxima, about Zoe, about how impossible it sometimes felt to be both at once and neither completely at the same time.

When her hand finally cramped, she closed the book and pressed it to her chest, listening for her own heartbeat.  It was steady.

It was enough… for now…