Penny woke up groggily. She felt like she'd just forgotten a really vivid dream, and she was sure that something had woken her, even though her room was pitch black and quiet. She groaned and turned herself over, blindly reaching for her phone. She found it next to her pillow and unplugged the charger. It showed her that it was 5:23 a.m.

Some incoherent thoughts of frustration and disappointment cascaded through her, and her desire to go back to sleep fought with the certainty that she wasn't going to be able to. She sighed, and turned on the light on her bedside table.

She pushed herself up against the backrest, and started checking the news like she did every morning after waking up. She knew it probably wasn't healthy. There was so much opinion-mongering and toxic comments to convince her that it was pretty much unavoidable for all of society to collapse into a bickering mess of hate and animosity within a decade.

But on the other hand, she couldn't keep herself away from it. It was all just too exciting. Some part of her realized that the world would be a much better place if there were no weekly battles between metahumans and aliens, or monsters, or literal magical gods. But when the American nuclear program had shaken loose the latent supernatural energies of the multiverse seventy years ago, there had been no going back.

It was a domino effect, it seemed. Every year, there were more reports of people being infused with powers, more people born with mutations, more rifts and tears and portals and apparitions of heroes and villains from across the dimensions.

And Penny couldn't get enough of it.

She opened /r/metahumans on reddit, and immediately saw the stickied post created less than five minutes ago:

Reuters: Elementa destroys Negatron, ends dark energy resonance.

Her heart jumped in excitement. She opened the thread immediately. The top comment had already linked a LiveLeak-video of the battle. Penny watched it twice, and she felt absurdly proud. She knew it was ridiculous. It shouldn't have mattered which superhero defeated this latest potentially world-ending threat. A world saved was a world saved, even if it was by someone as lame as Powerman or Ballistic, who had the most uninteresting powers of them all: Being strong and having a big gun.

But Penny was on team Elementa, ride-or-die. As far as she was concerned, her girl stood head and shoulders above any of the metahumans in the League in terms of coolness, looks, charms, wits – everything. She skimmed over the other comments, scanning for news of a statement or a press conference by the most awesome metahuman herself. It seemed it was still too early for that. News had just broken after all. She'd probably be on all major networks later. Either that, or someone would get an exclusive interview. Whenever that happened, Penny would be ready to watch it – at work if she had to.

When the comments ran dry at the end of the page, she went back and browsed to /r/Elementals, her official fan subreddit. Elementa's AMA was still stickied from five months ago, with tens of thousands of upvotes. Below that, there was already a fresh megathread on the breaking news.

She left a few comments, refreshed the other subreddits, and checked the BBC's page to read up on the live-ticker she'd missed when she'd been sleeping. She watched the BBC's version of the video coverage, frustrated with the blurry, stabilized footage taken with telephoto lenses and digitally zoomed in even further. Elementa's white suit was little more than a couple of blown-up pixels darting and dancing across the screen. She shut it off before it even reached the part where the color-bending reality-glitch on top of the spire cut out.

Instead she opened her YouTube app and looked up the video of Elementa fighting the Red Dame in 2014. It was the highest-quality video that existed of a fight between metahumans. An amateur videographer had happened to live right next to the place where the battle had come to end after a bloody chase across the whole of Seattle.

It was heavily edited and censored for violence of course, but it still showed the dramatic ending. Every time Penny came back to this video, she could feel a knot in her throat. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like for Elementa to fight her own sister. But she'd had no choice. 

After four minutes, the video reached the quiet moment near the end when all the noise had died down, and Elementa had ripped the corrupted blood-stone from the Red Dame's chest and smashed it into dust.

No one knew what they had said to each other in that moment, when Elementa had held her dying sister in her arms. Elementa had never publicly spoken about whether or not her sister had been freed from the curse in those last moments. It hadn't stopped every blog and magazine from speculating. Penny, for her part, believed that she had been freed, and that they had used those last moments to apologize and say goodbye. It was beautifully tragic.

Penny looked at the time. It wasn't even seven a.m. She'd have to be at the store at quarter to noon. She still had hours left. With a grunt, she got out of bed and went to the bathroom to take a shower and brush her teeth. She returned to her room half an hour later, a piece of buttered toast in her mouth and a cup of black tea with milk in her hand. She was carrying her laptop under her other arm.

She put it on her bed and drew open the black-out curtains. It looked like it was going to be an overcast day. From her window, in the dull morning light, she could see the inner courtyard of her apartment building – a squat, dirty cauldron of bricks,  broken up by clotheslines and satellite dishes.

She planted herself on her bed, put her tea on the bedside table, and crossed her legs. She booted up her laptop; she didn't like typing on her phone, and there was a lot of typing to be done today. She had some unread emails, but no important ones. She opened her tumblr and started to open new tabs with news images, video clips, twitter posts. When she had a bunch of sources to draw from, she started writing:

May 5th, 2020 

Elementa is my girl!

You already know what happened, Elementals! Everyone knows! Our girl did it again, saving the world, proving that shes the coolest and most awesome meta human there is!

[img src='elementa_winking_cute.gif'] 

Heres what the League of Heroes has to say:

"The League is very pleased to have learned of Negatron's defeat at the hands of Elementa, the paragon of earth, wind and fire. We celebrate her victory as a triumph of humankind over the malignant forces of the multiverse, and we wish her continued success in the face of all adversaries. Despite our past differences, she is a valuable ally to the forces of good, and we ask all our supporters to remain respectful and recognizant of that fact."

Do you hear that, Bro-force one? In your face! Even your league of super-jocks has to admit that Elementa kicked they're ass. Maybe you should of tried some other strategy than *punching* for once! And maybe – just maybe – keep the sexist, mysogonist hate comments to yourself just this once! Its not Elementas fault that your a virgin living in your moms basement!

She kept writing for a while, inserting pictures and links where appropriate. She gave it a quick once-over to check that it was ready to publish. When she was satisfied, she finished up the last paragraph with her signature sign-off. 

Stay save, Elementals! It's a dangerous world, and she can't always be there to catch you in her arms ;)

She hit 'Post'.

The page refreshed and displayed her writing. She read it again, smiling.

Her fingers still itched – and her fingers weren't the only thing. Collecting images of Elementa always made her feel this way.

She looked at the clock on her task bar. There was still enough time. More than enough time, in fact. She closed the curtains again, and pulled down her panties as she got back into bed.

She was on her side, her laptop next to her. She shifted back and forth until she had found a comfortable position to lie in. Then she licked her fingers and stroked them gently across her lower lips, bending and raising one leg to spread herself open and touch herself.

With her free hand she opened the folder on her hard drive where she kept the scavenged sexy pictures of Elementa. There were quite a few red carpet pictures in which she wore elegant, deep-cut dresses. The one from the 2016 Met Gala was especially sexy. She also had found some photoshopped ones that were more explicit, as well as drawings and comics done by some very talented people. Elementa was easy to draw recognizably. Her pale, pearlescent hair and the magical runes that softly shimmered through her skin were striking and iconic features. Her white suit was iconic, too, but almost none of the drawings had her wearing it.

Penny flipped through the pictures, gently pleasuring herself.

She was so beautiful. So perfect. More perfect than human. Strong and self-confident and literally magical.

Penny imagined her window opening with a gust of wind, and that perfect woman sailing in on a warm current of air, shedding her white suit invitingly, and baring her shimmering skin.

Penny imagined that touching her would send little sparks of magic jolting through her, tickling and exciting them both. Elementa would smile and encourage her. "Don't be afraid, Penny," she would say. "I'm with you now. I'm sorry it took me so long to find you. I've been looking for you for so long. You're special! Soon, your powers will awaken, and we'll be together! I need you!"

And then, their lips would meet, and she'd be warm and tingly in her mouth, and Penny would feel her body. She would get to cup Elementa's beautiful breasts with her hands and her mouth, and feel her naked nipples against her tongue – and Elementa would smile and moan softly as she nipped on them and sucked on them. She would shiver. She would push Penny over on her back, and Penny would spread her legs and see Elementa's desire in those beautiful green eyes. She would feel her shimmering hair brush against her belly as the heroine descended down her body, between her legs. First, she would summon a gentle breeze to play across the wetness of Penny's pussy lips, to tease her. And then, she would go down on her, and Penny would feel her tongue on her clit, pushing and rubbing, so warm and wet and perfect. Hers. She would be hers.

Penny let out a sharp breath, and the exhalation of air turned into a high-pitched moan of pleasure as the arousal under her fingers erupted in a warm swell of tingling, trembling joy, and she climaxed.

Two thousand miles away, high in the air above the ocean, Elementa – paragon of earth, wind and fire – felt a tiny jolt of pleasure. She gasped in surprise. A soft shiver had just rippled through her, as if someone had gently brushed their fingers over her lower abdomen.

"What the fuck?" she mumbled, and kept flying.