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Superheroines & Their Needs

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by anonymous

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Vignette One

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“We must be quiet…"

Power Girl would have rolled her eyes if she did not respect Wonder Woman so much, though it was clear that she had somewhat more experience than Power Girl did when it came to things. Experience that even made taking care of the needs of her body easier on her than Power Girl found it. But that wasn't the sort of thing that she was going to let her mind go to when they were out on the spaceship, one commandeered by Cyborg Superman, though it was teaming with his army of cyborg robots.

She frowned, pressing her lips together. At least Superman was not there then. She still didn't know what to think of him, though Wonder Woman seemed to, at least, have worked with him more in the past. But she was more comfortable around Wonder Woman than she was Superman, slipping down the grey corridor, ignoring the shine of doors that they didn't want to go down.

“Has he found him yet?" Power Girl asked, referring to Superman, who was flying around the ship and using his X-ray vision to find Cyborg Superman, something that she rather wished she could do too. “In and out, that was our mission."

Wonder Woman sighed, her black hair spilling freely from her shoulders, her lasso coiled neatly in one hand.

“Yes… This mission is more of a trial than expected."

A distraction came in the form of the cyborgs, plain and in Superman's image, though none could be mistaken, of course, for Cyborg Superman himself. Wonder Woman threw the lasso with a hiss of it passing through the air, coiling it around one cyborg's neck at a corner of the corridors and knocking him off his feet.

He was quickly dispatched with a swift punch to the cover concealing his instruction panel, where the kill switch was located. Even cyborgs, after all, had to have such a thing, for which Power Girl was grateful. If not, she was unsure that she would have been able to dispatch the earlier ones as easily, though, to be fair, with her powers being quite similar to those of Superman, it was not as if she was incapable by a long shot. Just a newer member of the Justice League, figuring out their norms and what was acceptable within the League, sort of. But that was a matter of superhero politics and the mission itself, at least that time, was clear.

She slipped to the side, cape fluttering from her shoulders, though it did not hinder her in the slightest as she dispatched another robot, crushing the connectors at the back of its neck. It sputtered and sparked and she twisted her lips in disgust as it crumpled brokenly to the ground. Even though it was not human, it was still disconcerting, as if she was disabling something that had more intelligence than she wanted to consider.

But the cyborgs themselves were not why they were there and Power Girl had to concentrate on their mission, to the exclusion of all else.

Wonder Woman brought up the rear as Power Girl took care of one more cyborg, slipping up on him from behind in flight, her feet not even touching the ground. Her arms went around his neck, crushing his control system, the communications that ran through his cyborg body, exposed wires sputtering and sparking as she silenced them with a swift crush of her hand, strength far, far beyond that of any human, neatly and quietly dispatching that one too.

“Here."

Power Girl smiled, her heart leaping in triumph. Wonder Woman paused with her, two cyborgs guarding a rather obvious blue door at the end of the hallway with a blue sheen. It was different to all the rest – partly as it had guards and no other doors that they had passed had those either, not so far.

“I think the engine room is close," Power Girl, not raising her voice above a whisper. “Come on… We've got this."

Power Girl's lips quirked up into a more obvious smile, more at ease around Wonder Woman now that they had spent a greater amount of time working together. That always helped.

Wonder Woman nodded, joining her in a smile, though there was no humour in it, only a gritty determination to do her job and do it well. She did not speak, hushing Power Girl, though they did not know yet how sensitive the cyborgs were to noise, gesturing with a series of hand signals that were known between them that they would attack the two cyborgs together at the same time. That, at least, would run a lower risk of not raising the alarm when they were taking them out simultaneously, but it was still a risk.

Power Girl took a breath…and then there was the signal, Wonder Woman and her streaking down the short hallway with the gold of their outfits flashing, flying at full speed. The cyborgs' eyes glowed, ready to attack, but they crushed them before they had even a chance to raise their guard truly and sound the alarm, their systems still too slow for the true might of superhuman speed. Their superhuman strength made quick work of them, able to crush essential systems with their fingers alone, though finesse was not required in a moment like that, truly. It was all about practicality as the cyborgs dropped to the ground in a rattle of metal parts that, even then, was too loud for Power Girl's liking.

But they were gone and they could proceed unhindered.

The door slid open at the press of the button and Power Girl pressed her lips together. Another hallway, but a large door awaited them with a sign on the right of it reading, “engine room". That was as obvious as anyone might have liked.

Perhaps too obvious…

Power Girl's stomach twisted, but it was not because of the marked engine room, but something else, something that she had taken care of before the mission, but rumbled in her guts all the same. It was always a problem, so very often catching her unawares, a rise of heat flushing her pale cheeks pink even then.

Not now…

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“Ugh…"

She muttered to herself, trying to suppress the feeling. The timing was all wrong – they were almost at the engine room, if it was through there! And, frankly, she didn't need to worry too much about it being too obvious, after all, for cyborgs loved labelling things, everything clearcut and in exactly the place where it belonged. It had been the stirring need to use the bathroom that had set such a sense of unease into her, although it was not something that even she could easily set aside. Such was the problem for so many superheroes and even humans with powers or out on missions that, well, took them away from the needed facilities.

She sighed, the pressure on her lower abdomen growing and growing, a pumping, aching need. It wasn't one that she could ignore, even if she wanted to get the mission over and done with. Yet she was just about to turn to Wonder Woman and let her know that she would be right back (after dealing with the obvious, yet again) when Wonder Woman cut in.

“I must use the bathroom," Wonder Woman said plainly, as if it was merely an everyday occurrence for her, even in the middle of a mission. “I will join you in a moment."

Another door on the left beckoned and Wonder Woman chose that for her manner of privacy, even though Power Girl had been around her before when they had both had to relieve themselves at an inopportune time. Power Girl shook her head, not moving for a moment, surprised that Wonder Woman needed to go at, well, pretty much precisely the same time as her. What were the odds of that? That wasn't something that she wanted to all that much think about.

Even though she needed to use the bathroom too, the pressure of her needed bowel movement growing increasingly urgent with every passing second, she dithered, waiting, not knowing whether she should, in fact, join Wonder Woman. She needed to go, but she didn't want to do it in front of someone…

Still, the other option of relieving her bowels before entering the engine room would have revealed her need to Wonder Woman anyway, so…

“I'm coming with you," she said quietly, blushing too heavily and hoping that Wonder Woman would not see. “There's nowhere else for me to go."

Wonder Woman nodded, but didn't see anything odd about it – that was something that Power Girl knew already. She had done it all before and gotten used to pooping in public, even if Power Girl had always had more private facilities before joining the Justice League. If there had been any other doors there, any at all, besides the door to the engine room and the one that Wonder Woman was going through, she absolutely would have chosen another option.

Alas, sometimes things didn't always work out that way, much to her detriment, though there was nothing wrong, technically, with her pooping in the same room as Wonder Woman, having been in many situations just like that one with Wonder Woman before. She sighed, going through Wonder Woman through the door, though the room beyond it was simple with various digital readouts on many screens, alongside a large control panel. It must have been for the engine room, she deduced quickly, though it was not the object of their mission. Doing anything to it could alert Cyborg Superman, so it was best to do what they came to do and continue swiftly.

However, there was one caveat: a robot sitting at the control panel, monitoring the engine room and ensuring that all there was in good working order. Wonder Woman smiled, motioning to Power Girl to wait, which, for once, she was more than happy to do, considering the rumbling in her stomach, how it gurgled and ached to be relieved. That was just why they couldn't wait to relieve their bodily needs when they had to go: it just wasn't comfortable and, well, there was a big problem there too with simply moving and attacking too.

Wonder Woman moved silently, levitating very slightly so that she could more easily sneak up behind the robot, which was completely unaware of her presence. In a single swipe, her hands latched onto either side of its head, ripping it off in one clean motion, spattering sparks flying in the absence of the head, though there was nothing more the robot could do, no signal it could send off.

Power Girl nodded to her, turning her back on Wonder Woman as she deftly paced to the other side of the room, determined to do what she came there to do as if she was completely alone there. She never wanted to think about relieving her bowels when someone was there with her, but it was hard to forget it when they both had to remove or move items of clothing to allow their bodies to do what they needed to do.

Whereas Wonder Woman was wearing her form-fitting, skin-tight black leggings that moved and flexed with her, Power Girl had bare legs and a leotard-like outfit with full sleeves. Her blue boots and gloves completed the ensemble, accented with gold, though it did mean that it was her leotard that had to be pulled to the side so that she could go to the bathroom.

She bored down, wishing that her stomach did not hurt so much. Of course, the time she had gone to the bathroom had been a good many hours ago and, frankly, she should have used the bathroom in the time between, maybe even when they were flying and catching up with the spaceship. But she had been constipated for a while, which made things more difficult than normal and, unfortunately, would most likely make that bowel movement larger than usual too.

“Damn it…"

She muttered under her breath, too quietly for Wonder Woman to hear her, though trying to focus on pooping by herself. Power Girl swallowed a light grunt at the effort it took as she worked on the first, very large, bowel movement, which she would come to find was roughly seventeen inches when it dropped to the ground. She bored down, squeezing and pushing, reassuring herself that it would feel so much better when she had gone, when she didn't have to relieve herself anymore.

The pressure on her stomach eased quickly as the first bowel movement dropped, the log of waste firm and cracked slightly in appearance, though it was harder than she would have liked it to be. That was annoying, but she followed it up with three more bowel movements, each one a little softer and easier to pass than the one before, allowing her to breathe a sigh of relief. The colour of those was a little lighter and she breathed more easily, though her neck flushed with heat, embarrassed, even then, to be checking her bowel movements for health. Oh, how she hated having to do that! But it was one of the quickest ways that superheroes like her could identify any health problems swiftly, nipping them in the bud, with how quickly food moved through their digestive tracts. Eating more to sustain their powers certainly had some surprising effects.

The three bowel movements were pretty close in size, but Power Girl, very roughly, approximated that they were between thirteen and fifteen inches in length, thick around. But that bit was expected, the softer waste plopping more easily to the floor, though there was nowhere really for her to hide it in there.

The large pile grew as she added to it, thinking about the mission, about where she would have rather been, anything to keep her mind off somewhere else and away from the present moment. That was all she wanted, to find a way to make it easier for her, something to make things, well, just a bit better. They were not that bad, but it was just how her skin crawled as she added some smaller, round, plops of poop to the pile that made her stomach churn and squirm in a way that she hated, finishing with one, big log of waste that lay curved on the floor, pushed out in all its glory. That log was softer with a narrower end where she had pushed it from her body, though it was mighty at, at the very least, seventeen inches, probably closer to eighteen. Even in her state of frazzled embarrassment, Power Girl was impressed.

Finishing up, she re-dressed herself, making sure that her outfit was all in place, nothing that she didn't want to show hidden away once more. However, Wonder Woman still was not finished as Power Girl turned around to face her, still going with a very large, thick, twenty-inch bowel movement that made Power Girl take half a step back.

Of course, she had seen just what Wonder Woman could produce before, but she'd always tried not to look. Yet she stared in a sense of morbid fascination at the, frankly, huge pile of poop on the floor, four other logs of waste down there already. She just couldn't take her eyes off it, much to her own embarrassment, still staring.

Wonder Woman was usually quicker than her, but maybe it was her prior constipation that had made her quicker, Power Girl reasoned, though she shook her head. It was strange, very strange, Wonder Woman shifted over to the left, shuffling in a squat, seeming to know that she couldn't deposit any more onto the pile without causing trouble to herself. But she didn't even look down, going through everything swiftly and efficiently, even as the final bowel movement coiled on the ground.

And…it just kept going. It was firm, clearly, but soft enough that it could be wound around and around, coiling and twisting very neatly under Wonder Woman. Power Girl held her hand over her mouth so as not to make a sound as the thick pile of waste coiled up so high that Wonder Woman had to lift her buttocks, if only slightly, just to make sure that it did not touch her skin. Even then, Power Girl could not have been sure quite how long it was, but it was most certainly bigger than the rest, revealing just how much Wonder Woman must have had to consume that day to fuel her powers.

What was it… Maybe twenty-four inches? No… That was a conservative estimate and Power Girl gulped to think of that, one day, becoming her normal.

Maybe not.

And, still, Wonder Woman was not done! She stepped back, not wanting to intrude, though Power Girl did not feel as if she could just leave either. That would have been too awkward and, frankly, she still did not want to be caught staring at Wonder Woman going to the bathroom, as much as poop was, evidently, something that everyone had to deal with. Three smaller bowel movements, coming out in easy, firm logs of poop, followed that giant coil, landing easily on the ground beside the coil of poop. Those were more manageable, something around six and eight inches long and a little thinner too, though the last was even more sensible at five inches.

“Hmmm…"

Wonder Woman sighed as if relieved – Power Girl didn't blame her! Yet she realised that she had been looking and staring for entirely too wrong as she stared, heat rushing to her already flushed cheeks. Fortunately, Wonder Woman did not notice her stare and dressed easily, sliding her trousers back up into place, clinging to her thighs as if they were tailored precisely for her body. They probably were. But Power Girl didn't want to be rude, half turning away and waiting, though that made it so that she had to think about not looking at her pile of poop too. Suddenly, it did not seem as bad as before, despite the strain that it had put on her bowels, though she was greatly relieved to not have to worry about that anymore. At least, for a little while. She'd need to go to the bathroom again, after all, soon enough, but she wouldn't mind too much if the constipation was gone too.

Wonder Woman shifted, recalling Power Girl's attention.

“We should keep moving," Wonder Woman said with half a shrug. “Sorry for taking longer than usual. I haven't had the chance to go to the bathroom for quite some time, longer than is normal for me."

Power Girl smiled faintly, hoping that her embarrassment was not all that obvious.

“Oh, that's okay," she said easily. “I'm glad to be back on the mission."

Wonder Woman nodded in agreement, though probably thought that it was because of Power Girl's evident awkwardness around pooping, though that was a conversation that they had had several times over with each other before: not something worth digging into.

Leaving the room, the door slid closed behind them, eyes fixed on the engine room where, if Superman's guidance was correct, they would find Cyborg Superman.

Despite needing to poop, the mission still had to be completed.

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Vignette Two

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Mera swam freely, the water streaming past her, Gotham city to her back. Bane had raised an army, which was nothing new, but attacking Gotham at such an early stage, well… That was forceful, even for him. She had been fortunate enough to have been close to Gotham city and able to help Batman, though she much more appreciated being out in the quiet of the water in the early morning. Her long, red hair flowed behind her, though she moved fluidly through the water, her form-fitting outfit giving her the illusion of fish scales from head to toe.

She would need to rest soon, she knew, but she enjoyed her time out there, at least for the moment. Yet something came up that, perhaps, should have been addressed earlier, but the battle had caught her off-guard and, well, she'd hurled herself into the frame, somewhat selflessly, all to help back then.

The pressure in her stomach grew and grew, the need to use the bathroom rising inside her with a shudder. It was awkward timing, to say the least of it, for she had plans to swim to Atlantis and she was quite sure that she would not make it there, deep in the ocean thousands of miles away. She sighed, a silvery stream of bubbles bursting from her lips underwater.

It is always the way…

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Checking her position, she popped back up to the surface in a spray of seawater, though it was tainted around there by the pollution of the water, of course, being that there were so many ships around there. Some were bigger than others, but not even the newer ones were more proficient, sometimes, at not exuding their pollution into the water that Mera called home.

That was a discussion that she would have to have with Batman another time as she slipped from the water at the docks and tucked herself into a little culvert that she knew. With a big waste pipe, it poured drainage water into Gotham Bay, though was private enough for her to know that she would not be disturbed there. Mera still took a quick look around, even if it was still very early in the morning. Surely, she would be fine there at that hour.

“Best get this over with…"

Her skin glistened with water as she squatted close to the edge of the water, lapping at the concrete, soothed by its soft lull. There were no other sounds there besides the water flowing from the culvert, spilling out into the main body. That helped a lot as she eased down the bottom half of her outfit, the trousers, though they clung to her body even more fiercely when she was wet. It wasn't something that usually bothered her all that much, though could be a little difficult when she had to go to the bathroom in something of a hurry.

She grumbled faintly, though wasn't too bothered as she began to relieve her bowels, glancing up at the forty-foot wall of concrete, away from the activity of the docks. It was good that she had found the culvert when she had needed to poop before, working on the first of her bowel movements. The problem with needing to go in rather inconvenient places was the awkwardness if she was caught, though that had already happened on more than one occasion. Mera may not have been embarrassed about the needs of her body, it was just something that happened, but she didn't really want to cause anyone else any trouble by catching her. Embarrassing others was more her concern than taking care of her needs, quietly and efficiently.

Still, she understood the tide would rise in the culvert in time too, washing away her waste and all evidence of her bathroom activities. The first of many logs of waste pushed out, a thick sausage that squidged softly from her backside, though she was glad that all was coming easily. It helped when she had a good diet, content with her health. To be honest, everything was going rather well for Mera at that time, things that she had not even considered before coming neatly together, falling into place. It was good, exceptionally so, to be in a stage of her life where that was the case, though she did not concern herself all that much with difficulties. Like the ocean, they would come and go with the pull of the tides.

Another bowel movement slipped from her, smaller than the first at six inches, but there were bigger ones to come, squeezing down carefully to push out another that was seven inches long.

“Oof…"

It didn't help that she had not been able to go to the bathroom for a while before the fight and, well, it had been quite the fight with Bane. It was only a shame that Bane had escaped them both, she thought, pushing down and easing out a rather firm, hard log of poop, the waste dropping onto the top of the pile, balancing there a little precariously. She tried to be neat as possible, just as a matter of pride, letting another larger bowel movement drop down, harder as it pushed out, ending up at ten inches long. A softer round of poop followed, but the logs of waste were the majority of her regular bowel movements as she strained to press out the biggest yet at eleven inches.

That day, every one that she bore out was at the higher end of the scale, between eight and eleven inches long, though Mera did not mind, the need to go to the bathroom decreased with each one that she added to the pile. However, what she produced easily reached seven, then eight, then nine – all the way up to twelve as she let out a soft grunt at the last.

“Oof, come on…"

As patient as Mera wanted to be with her body, it was starting to take a little while and she glanced about, content again that there was no one there, though she felt like she had to always keep an eye out. Such was the way of needing to use the bathroom in more public locations like that, her mind wandering back to how Batman had helped get the civilians to safety, all while she had worked on his minions, defeating them. No wonder it had drawn on for so long, all while her poop must have been a lot more backed up than even she had realised.

She worked on another larger log of poop, pushing down as she eased it out, not putting any undue strain on her body. It would have felt wrong, in a way, to speak up, to disturb the peace of the morning. That was a good size poop, thick around and firm enough for her to squeeze harder as she pushed it out, though her eyes closed in her focus, as if there was no one else left in the world but her.

However, with her eyes closed, she did not realise that there was something different, something that was very interested in her and her body, though not in any way at all that Mera would have been pleased to know. She sighed softly, relieved as that ten-inch bowel movement plopped down, sliding to the side of the healthy pile, though it was considerable, even for her.

Opening her eyes, she started, for there was none other than Harley Quinn herself there before her – not any kind of person that Mera would have wanted to come across!

“What are you doing?" She yelped, struggling to keep her balance in her squat, though what Harley was doing should have already been obvious, with her red and black trousers yanked down, the jester swaying her hips jovially back and forth. “You can't be here!"

Harley too, of course, was very much not on the same side as her and she glanced up anxiously, half expecting to see even more of Bane's minions coming for her, though there was only her and Harley, even as another thicker log of poop, softer and taking longer to push out, eased from her. The jester clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shook her head at Mera as if she was disappointed in her, though Harley was too much of a mischievous soul to truly be disappointed in anyone for all that long. She'd be plotting revenge, quite honestly, before such an emotion had the chance to truly form in her.

“What does it look like I'm doing?" Harley quipped with a scoff and a roll of her eyes, her blonde pigtails bobbing. “I'm popping, silly! Come on, keep with the program, girl!"

And that was true, even if Mera should have asked what she was doing pooping there with her, when she really should have never been trying to intrude on her space, considering the sides of the fight they were on. Harley swung her hips lightly from side to side, without a care in the world, working on a very thick fourteen-inch bowel movement, though the first nine-inch sausage of poop was already sitting plainly on the ground as if it had any right to be there.

Harley cocked her head, raising an eyebrow at Mera, to which she sighed.

“I realised what you were doing," Mera said, choosing plainness over the embarrassment, for that bit was not all that bad, of course. “But…here? This area? Really?"

Harley shrugged.

“I saw Bane a few hours ago," she explained. “Near the docks. I jumped down a manhole to escape him, he's no fun. I played a very excellent prank on him a few weeks ago!"

Harley scoffed, the poop dropping on top of the nine-inch log, softer, smaller nuggets of waste, still in a smaller log-like shape, dropping down to surround the first two. But, like Mera, she still had her own larger bowel movements to work on. The little bits that came between the larger ones just proved the health of her body and digestive tract.

“Yeah, it was the best of pranks," Harley went on, unconcerned by how close she was to Mera and the private moment she was intruding on. “And he didn't even see how funny it was – he's so odd! A giant cake, like, came out of nowhere and smashed on his face – all while he was lifting weight…in his…secret…base!"

Harley shrieked with laughter, barely able to get her words out and squeezing out the poop as it dropped down, eight inches, though it seemed that she was already working on a larger one as Mera pursed her lips. Of course, she'd still had to keep pooping through Harley's story, for it was not exactly something that she could just stop halfway through.

“Anyway, this base of his…" Harley went on. “It couldn't be all that secret if I could find it! I knew the brute would be angry at me, no sense of humour in that one, and he seemed furious earlier, like…last night. So, I'm not dealing with him! And down I went into the manhole and came up down here! Funky, huh?"

Mera would have rolled her eyes, but Harley grinned, leaning in, her eyes dark with makeup, though Mera had seen her in many a get-up over her time.

“Thought you could use some company down here," Harley giggled. “I saw you pooping and, well…yeah!"

Mera sighed, glancing back at her pile of poop, which already seemed like too much for one of her more regular bathroom breaks. It seemed that, even then, she was going to be there a while. Working on a larger, eleven-inch, bowel movement, she shook her head. Harley's logic, as ever, didn't make a lot of sense, but Harley wasn't the most logical person either.

But she didn't have to say anything, glancing away as Harley continued dropping logs of waste, humming a tune to herself that might have come out of a circus at some point, though Mera tried her best to tune her out. Harley wasn't on any side in a fight, more often than not with the Joker, but, well, everyone knew what that relationship was like. Mera would do well to remember that Harley's allegiances were all over the place, namely in the place of causing the most wickedness in Gotham. One thing was sure, however, and that was that the law just didn't apply to her.

Mera breathed a sigh of ease as she finished dropping her final three bowel movements, quite thick at ten inches long and with a lighter surface, signalling a little when she must have had more water in the day. Even though she spent a lot of time in the water, she still had to take care to drink enough, something that she tried to be as cautious about as she could. But, as was the case with so many, there was so much to do that sometimes that was more of an issue than others.

Harley hummed a tune that Mera recognised, at least in part, for Harley seemed to have put her own spin on it, the jester still going, still relieving her body. It sounded kind of like Seven Nation Army, though Mera could not be sure. It was something at…sports games? She'd been to a couple of those, but they were so far from her world in the ocean that, frankly, Mera could not say that they had captivated her all that much. The human world was a very different one than the one she lived in and that was not something that she could see changing anytime at all soon.

But there was something about Harley that, even then, caught Mera's attention as she frowned minutely. Harley was a human, not like her, and had let go of six bowel movements…but they were all so big. They weren't at all like what she had thought that normal human beings should have produced, especially that huge first one, though there was another even bigger than that one at fifteen inches, lying beside the pile with a light curve in the length of the poop.

It wasn't her body though and not something that Mera had to worry about, half-shrugging it off mentally and putting it from her mind. She did not feel best pleased to have part of her body exposed around Harley, but if the jester meant her no harm, then she wasn't going to worry about it all that much. She took a moment to check her bowel movements for health, doing it automatically, for in her world they would usually be covered by sand and the tides, or washed away in the water itself, quickly. It was just something done out of efficiency, though she had learned to, when able, to check when she was going to the bathroom too. It only allowed her to get on with her life and her day even more quickly, which Mera preferred.

Re-dressing herself neatly, she noted Harley in the corner of her eye doing the same, hitching her trousers up with a wiggle, her tongue sticking out from the corner of her mouth. The thick belt slotted back into place with the giant buckle, Harley turning to Mera with a straight, neutral face and her hand extended.

“Well, it was sure nice doing business with ya!"

Her cheeks puffed out, the jester shaking lightly, and Mera smiled. Even then, it was obvious that Harley was, strangely enough, trying to hold in a laugh. What was with it, with her? Even her thoughts trying to make sense of the jester didn't make sense, but, like so much else, it was not something that Mera had to worry about. She was so amused at her own joke, however, that Mera could not help, however lightly, playing along with her, shaking her head even as she shook Harley's hand.

What an odd person indeed to take so much entertainment from things. Even if she was a murdering jester, well…okay, maybe murder was not what Harley got up to the most, but perhaps even with all the crime, to be more accurate, Harley was not the worst companion in the world. Mera didn't even think there was any risk of her location getting back to Bane, not with how Harley's relationship with him seemed to have come out.

Perhaps, despite everything, she had misjudged Harley, just a little bit. And she was entertaining, to say the least of it all…

Harley giggled and snorted, still amused by her own joke as she doubled over, rocking back and forth. Though once she was done laughing, Mera raised an eyebrow and inquired about something that had been on her mind.

“Harley…" She started. “The walls here are rather steep… However are you going to get back to…wherever it is that you live? They're forty feet down from street level and I can't see you crawling your way back through the drains and sewers."

Mera wrinkled her nose, though she tried to be polite, for upsetting Harley most certainly was not on any list of things that she wanted to do, no, not at all.

“Wellllll, I didn't think you would be so worried about me!" Harley teased, popping her hip out cockily. “I'm glad you asked!"

Pulling out one of what seemed to be Batman's grappling Bathooks from her utility bag, strapped onto her right hip via her belt, she swung it around casually as if it was something she used every day.

“I stole this from Mr Batbrain when he wasn't looking," she laughed, clearly very pleased with herself, though she still had not stopped spinning the grappling hook around, handling it as deftly as a jester with a set of juggling balls. “I got it right out from under his nose when he wasn't looking. Anyway, see ya!"

Just like that, she was gone, swinging her arm to launch the Bathook with surprising accuracy and skill to latch onto a metal guardrail, high above. Checking that it was secure, she leapt, climbing the wall with the skill of an acrobat – which was perhaps a more accurate term for her, her pigtails bobbing in flashes of red and black as she ascended. For all her jokes, Harley was still an acrobat to be feared at heart and not merely a jester that could be set aside at the drop of a hat, forgotten and passed over while others took precedence.

Harley worked on all walks of life and it seemed that she had no shame in pooping in them too.

Mera waved back at her as Harley's hand lifted jovially, ever cheerful, though Mera wondered if there was anything that would ever actually wipe that smirk off her face, so easily and readily given. She almost didn't want to find out.

Even Mera had to laugh, shaking her head at the thought of Batman realising that one of his prized Bathooks, so useful and utilitarian, was missing, though she was sure that more, for him, could be manufactured at the drop of a hat. It was not as if he was struggling for security in that side of his life, though she only knew a little of that, as mysterious as he was. Some that were closer to him, perhaps, could have known more, but Mera could not say that she was all that interested in him.

Harley Quinn, on the other hand… Well, she was an enigma. And one that Mera would be forever curious about, more and more so.

Batman would just have to be more careful about securing his equipment, she thought with a laugh, turning and leaping into the bay, only to disappear with barely a splash. Swimming away, Mera could not help but wonder what mischief Harley Quinn would get up to next and if they may meet again someday.

Maybe. Maybe not.

That was up to fate.

---

---

Vignette Three

---

Zatanna pursed her lips, concentrating, her powers flickering about her mind, held ready and waiting in the wings for her to be used exactly when needed. Tracking Felix Faust was proving to be more difficult than even she had expected, though he had to be brought down, considering that he had been attacking various cities on Earth over only the past month. The magician frowned, wondering just when this had all become her fight, though it was not something that she wanted to spend much mental energy on. Her resources were already limited as they were.

Things were too dicey to worry about what she should and should not be doing, how far she should be going to help, in short.

She tracked him to a secret magical realm, sensing his presence through the cord of her magic connecting her to him, though tracking had its limits and benefits at the same time. In a deep underground cavern, the veil between realms was thin, though there was no telling if she would be able to come back as easily from a strange realm to her as she had entered the first time. In such things, there would always be a risk.

Zatanna took a deep breath, dark hair swept back from her face, hands raised before her with her palms facing each other, preparing the magic. Moisture trickled down the dark cave walls, yet the underground caverns held no true fear for her. Zatanna had met those monsters in the world worth fearing already.

“Latrop," she muttered, opening the portal with a quick, easy spell. “Mlaer nepo."

The crackling portal opened before her, wide enough for her body to easily fit through, and Zatanna wasted no time, the tails of her magician-like jacket floating behind her. What she wore was perhaps not as apt for such a mission as one might have liked, but one in such situations could not always be choosy.

Stepping through the portal, she allowed it to fizzle out behind her, magical reality encasing her. She floated – and then was standing again, the physics of the world she had slipped into so easily all “out of whack", though that was not a very technical way of looking at it, not even with all that she had done already in her so-called line of work.

Zatanna frowned, a sense of instability around her. Her magic probes slunk out with a muttered spell, getting a read of the realm, though it was not all as easy as she might have thought. Nothing worked as it should there, not even within the rules of magic that she had spent years upon years honing, all for herself. There, time could speed up or slow down, objects could become heavier or lighter, things could shift without warning, even her perception of the world around her. In short, physics did not work as they did, so…

…she was in for a less-than-fun ride there.

“Great," she muttered under her breath. “The only good magic is magic that is controlled."

Once upon a time, Zatanna might have revelled in a world where she could let everything fly free, where she could operate without limits. But her time assisting the Justice League had changed her, even if joining up with them had not been all that much of something that she had wanted to do. She might have said that she had matured, but rather thought that she had grown. People didn't tell you that sometimes you don't like your own growth, even if there were others that, at least, understood her conflict on the matter.

A room blossomed around her, flickering and shifting, though it was a cave-like room, perhaps like another part of the cavern that she had been in before stepping through the portal. Zatanna, not even then, could not be sure if it was a trick played on her eyes and mind, however, her perception of that reality, and threw up a gleaming, blue shield around herself.

“Dleihs…"

It thrummed, tingling with energy, strong and firm, protecting her while her attention may be elsewhere. She was unsure if it would stop everything that reality would throw at her, sometimes quite literally, but she could, at the very least, put up some kind of protection so that she had what she needed at her disposal.

A set of stairs beckoned her, roughly hewn into the rock, but as if magic had been used to carve them out, smoothly and seamlessly, everything about them deliberate. Her feet moved quietly, not making a sound, lips slightly parted.

Of course, she was not really in a cave. That was evident as she came straight out the top of it into the open air, blue-green sky twinkling above, stars sparking into existence and disappearing again a moment later. In a world that was both day and night at the same time, she took a new flight of stairs, sharp and metallic, the kind of stairs that one would very much have not wanted to fall on.

“Why is it always stairs?"

She shook her head, but there was nothing and no one there (or not there) to tell her not to talk to herself. Honestly, with how solitary things had become, so very often taking on missions alone, sometimes it felt like she had become her best and only company. Zatanna wasn't all that sure what to think about that, but it did not quite feel like a good thing when her voice was more familiar to her than the voices of those that she had used to spend so much time with.

Even with disasters happening and fiends trying to take over the world, or even just smaller chunks of it, perhaps it was time that she spent a little more time focusing on herself too.

Easier said than done…

_ _

Alternate, magical realities had a way of tipping the mind into ways of thinking that were not normal, but she tried to remain focused on her task. If there was truly something to be addressed in her life, she would confront it later.

Up and up and up, she climbed. Up into the sky where the light of the day gleamed, stars gone, the sky glowing as if the dawn had just passed. That looked normal, too normal – except for the five suns set in the rapidly bluer sky.

She shook her head. Things changed quickly there… Maybe she should have taken note of the moons there too. But, in that world, it was already daytime. Maybe in a few moments, reality would shift to night-time all over again.

A platform bid her to stop, though there were still stairs, more stairs, but up seemed like down and down seemed like up, so she didn't let her gaze linger on them for long as her stomach leapt and roiled. She put the sensation down to being disconcerted by the world that, somehow, she had ended up in, wondering just where he was hiding, how she could find him and get back to some sense of normality.

But it was not that easy – and the pressure in her stomach that she initially took to be nausea was not so easily swayed and dissuaded, oh no. For it was something far more familiar to her than twisting realities and physics shifting, though the world around her, at that point, seemed quiet and normal, which only set Zatanna quietly more on edge.

Her stomach gurgled and she glanced down as if surprised that that part of her body was making itself known at quite that time. Of course, she had not gone to the bathroom in quite some time, but Zatanna had thought that not having eaten for some time too might have made things easier in that regard. Apparently not as the needs of her body well enough made themselves known, gurgling and groaning, though it was louder and more obvious to her than it would have been to anyone standing even right next to her.

It always felt worse when it was her body that needed to use the, ah…facilities. But Zatanna was not usually one to put it so delicately.

Sighing, she grunted in the back of her throat. Maybe she should have gone earlier, but, well…it had been a few days since she had last pooped, now that she thought about it. How annoying. But it was her fault for not looking after her body's needs and neither was it as if she could simply ignore it and it would go away. Maybe she had already been ignoring the push to use the bathroom and that was just what had led to her ending up in such a situation in the first place.

Such bad timing… She grumbled inwardly, hearing her voice in her head as she thought. But if I need to go, I need to go. It must be dealt with.

_ _

At least, even when she was frustrated with how things were going, Zatanna could always rely on and lean back on her sense of practicality. Reinforcing the large shield around herself with another protective layer, she took a good look around her before squatting down. It seemed to be a meadow of some kind, though she didn't put much stock in that, as it was only vaguely like the land outside the cavern that she had logged mentally, just to know where she was going back to, before delving into the bowels of the earth. In that reality, for her surroundings, it was more than likely her mind just filling in the gaps, all to make the world around her make sense. Minds were clever like that.

The shield pulsed with energy, though she did not have to focus to hold that one as she squatted and pulled her leotard to the side. The netting of her attached stockings, which fixed to the leotard, were stretchy enough for her to not have to worry about them tearing or anything as she shifted her weight, bearing down to easily push out the first firm log of waste.

It was better when they came easier, she thought to herself, even when she was clearly more than a little constipated. She had to focus on it, trying, that time, to get everything over as quickly as possible. She had things to be doing and she didn't want to be caught out in the open if something shifted around her or if he appeared. Still, she reckoned well enough that he would remain hidden, if he was even aware that she had entered the magical realm where he was hiding out. A tiger would never lose its stripes, after all, or so she thought the saying went, one way or the other.

The first log of poop dropped quietly with a soft thump, firm enough to have a good weight to it that her ears picked up on. It was thirteen inches long, but she knew that her body could do more than that, a lot more than that, especially after she had been using her powers so much during the last few days. It always meant that she had to eat more to fuel her energy, which had to come out of her one way or the other. At least she wasn't like some of the superheroes that she dealt with, occasionally, who had to eat so much that they produced several times as much as she did. She couldn't imagine dealing with the awkwardness of always finding a place to poop, which was perhaps why she held off when she did, when she was so focused on a task that everything else seemed to slip to the side.

She grunted softly, not caring to be quiet in such a dimension, bearing down on the next bowel movement, though something caught her attention. Like a spark, off in the distance, though it did not quite seem possible to fix her attention on the horizon, as if the line of it was always shifting. That was strange, very strange, but she tried to hurry things along as a fifteen-inch bowel movement joined the first, softer that time and darker in colour. She checked back as she went, making sure that everything looked healthy, though clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth in impatience at how long everything was taking.

Why wouldn't it all just hurry up?

But perhaps it was that very impatience that, ultimately, was her undoing as she didn't catch the change around her. It would have taken magical probes and tabs, to be fair, that were constantly in place for her to keep track of such things, but Zatanna still felt that she should have caught the shift in gravity before it happened.

“Wait…"

Zatanna sucked in a breath. Her feet no longer connected with the platform, the ground no longer within sight, only the sky, the empty stairs, her breath light in her lungs. Her heart pounded, but her mind worked more quickly than her frantic emotions, clawing her back to the platform as, unbidden, a spell left her lips.

“Ytivarg erostser."

That helped, restoring her own gravity and bringing her feet back to the platform with a solid thump, though it didn't quite help that she had been crouching initially, struggling to balance. Even though she had her own gravity back again, Zatanna was struck by a sense of heaviness that had not been in place upon her before, wanting to stagger, to sway, her stomach turning over.

But her gravity had been restored while the gravity of her poop very much had not. She didn't know quite how to claw those back without losing her grip on the gravity spell and, of course, still trying very much to go to the bathroom and put her whole body in a greater state of comfort. Her heart beat too quickly as Zatanna muttered a curse under her breath, though inwardly there was a tiny part of her that marvelled at the weird sensations that she ended up twisted into so very often.

She had not realised that she had squeezed out a fourth firm, thankfully, log of poop when gravity had abruptly shifted like that, all four floating around her, between fourteen and eighteen inches. She shook her head as they froze in the air before her, gravity shifting again, though they were slower to float back down to the platform, as if they had taken on a kind of weightlessness all their own. It didn't make sense in there, but a world like that, even then, especially then, was never meant to make sense.

She pursed her lips, ever so slightly amused by the ridiculousness of it all as they landed there, settled as if gravity was all back to normal again. Though Zatanna knew that it could never be that simple as she let go another seventeen-inch bowel movement, though keeping an eye on her surroundings, for any stranger shifts in physics, made it harder for her to turn and look at her own poop. Checking her health, however, might have to be done right at the end, if she even had time to properly look then at all…

Sometimes, the reality of a situation overruled all else and, well, that would have to be okay, one way or another.

Zatanna shook her head, unable to ignore how odd it was as her poop became lighter too, but her own body heavier, working with her shield to carefully counteract the annoying physics. Frankly, she didn't want to see what more that realm had to offer, for it was going to be weird enough as it was if her super light poop was floating or rolling around there with the slightest breath of air to shift it. It rolled across the platform as she made a face and shuffled back out of the way, a bubble of laughter that was not born from true mirth bubbling up where it had no place to be.

This is so weird…

_ _

And perhaps one of the weirder situations, to be fair, that Zatanna had found herself caught up in, though it was most certainly not one that she was going to repeat to anyone else. No, it wasn't that kind of story, just something that she would remember, most likely, at inopportune moments, grimace and shake her head at, glad only for the fact that it was over.

She bore down lightly, hustling things along and letting go of another fifteen-inch bowel movement, which, thankfully felt like the last one. That was a relief, so much so that she even exhaled a little of the tension that she had, inadvertently, been holding inside. She had not realised just how much she had needed to go, not until her stomach had gurgled and the pressure there had grown so great that not even thinking of her mission and everything left to do there could stop her from going to the bathroom.

That time, she didn't pause to check her poop, more than content in the feeling of settlement in her stomach, that she was comfortable again and had nothing to worry about there. Re-dressing herself, she settled her leotard-like top back into place, ensuring the mesh of her tights (or leggings, depending on how one looked at them, considering how they were sewn on) was even, that she was presentable. A magician, even one completion a very strange mission, should always look her best, after all, one way or the other.

Zatanna stood, avoiding her bowel movements as they floated again, gravity shifting while they danced back and forth, almost comically, in the air, though her own spell kept her feet, firmly, locked to the platform, except for when she wanted to move. It was difficult for her to maintain that spell and the shield, however, even though she felt like she had to. At the very least, holding onto the shield meant that she didn't have to worry about any of the poops floating around bumping into her. That would not have been pleasant in the slightest…

Heading up the stairs, though the world changed and shifted around her with no real sense or meaning, she climbed higher and higher, more resolute in her mission than ever.

But she still wondered what would happen to those floating poops left behind…

---

---

Vignette Four

---

Bleez sighed, frustrated with the manner of things, yet again, but at least fighting off the Manhunters allowed her to work off some of her rage, which was inherent to her abilities. Working with Arisia, another so-called alien just like her – though it was others that had termed them alien, not them – and a group of other Green and Red Lanterns, she called on her powers, red, crackling energy rippling around her.

“Be gone, Manhunters!"

Of course, Bleez took the eradication of them into her own hands, red rage power cutting through them in swathes, though the robot race had been hijacked, controlled and forced to attack the village. That didn't mean that she could employ too much mercy when there were very real lives at stake, calculating and striving to take things forward in the most efficient way possible. Vexos was well inhabited and the residents there did not deserve to suffer further losses, innocent victims against Anti-Monitor, who was controlling the Manhunters. But the robots had done no wrong either, hijacked and forced…

Like so many missions that she had to work on, often with Arisia, it was a moral conundrum and, even then, she chose the best option that she could to get through it. Bleez smashed through the Manhunters, one after the other, red hammers raised above her head, powering through them with true rage, though her weapons that day leaned towards the larger and heavier, the more unwieldy kinds. There was no time for finesse as they sought a way also to disrupt the signal, skidding through the dirt and lopping off the head of a Manhunter with a giant sword, sending metal and bodywork scattering everywhere.

Bleez did not stop, sharing a look with Arisia, who had shoved several Manhunters into a pit with her powers, too far down to climb back up, choosing a method of attack that got as many of them away from the villagers as possible. However, Arisia paused, catching something that Bleez did not. At least, not until her stomach twisted in mild pain, something on her face telling Arisia that all was not well even before Bleez herself understood. Sometimes she was too caught up in rage to see what was going on around her, but when it was her power it was not something that even she could turn aside.

The need to go to the bathroom though… That could not have possibly come at a worse moment, grunting in the back of her throat as she smashed yet another giant axe, blistering with rage-power, into a Manhunter. Cursing under her breath, she raised her voice, the red-rage of her flaring, bone-like wings extending to call Arisia's attention.

“I need to…go!"

She shouted, but Arisia had only just paused, not quite catching what she'd said. Bleez rolled her eyes. There was nothing that she hated more than having to repeat herself.

“I'll be right back!" She hollered. “Back – soon!"

Arisia nodded, though shot in closer, light on her feet as she closed the distance between them.

“We've defeated most of the Manhunters around here anyway," she said, though Arisia's chest rose and feel a little more quickly, proving her physical exertion. “Go ahead, I'll mop up the rest of them."

Bleez nodded, not letting anything further cross her expression as she took flight, barely moving her wings as she flew, for they were merely a carrier for her power, all in a way that she could still fly, soaring high above. The fight had most certainly taken it out of her, but she still needed to use the bathroom, flapping her wings a little more strongly, just to feel the cup of the air shifting through the bones and the rage-power.

Even on that planet, everything was there for the taking and needed protecting from those that would take and take and take, all indiscriminately. She'd understood that, in time, that it was not right, though the idea of it was still fraught within her, as if Bleez couldn't quite find a way to settle it all within her mind.

She set down in a nearby forest, though the trees were bright blue and actually what Bleez would have called alien, preferring a more barren, open landscape herself. It was better than anywhere in close confines to expend her rage, to train her powers even further.

But, under the rich blue of the deciduous trees, shifting through so many divine shades of blue, she was concealed and protected from prying eyes, taking the modest approach to relieving her bodily needs. She ran her fingers over the branch of a tree, millions of tiny leaves layered over the surface, leaving them looking like needles. Yet she knew those would shed their leaves at one time of the year only, though it was not at all like Earth's seasons. Out there, it was different.

A small clearing beckoned her and, glancing back to ensure her privacy, Bleez headed for a little dip in the ground: a cave opening. There must have been a network of caves under her or something. Either way, it seemed like the perfect place to relieve herself and she squatted down over it. It was not hard to tug her outfit to the side, a narrow strip of black fabric sliding down between her legs to ensure her flexibility and, of course, to ensure she did not grow too warm in battle. That left a good section of leg and hip and higher still exposed, so she revealed what she had to only, long, black boots coming up to her thighs.

“Come on…"

Bleez muttered to herself as she pushed, easily and quickly dropping the first bowel movement. It must have been very ready to come out, though she hadn't noticed herself in the thick of battle, which couldn't be helped. Steadying herself with her wings, she dropped the first, not caring for the size, though she knew it was a big one, a very big one. That was the problem when she did not use the bathroom enough – well, just one of the problems. She didn't much mind having to go, considering that it was just a fact of her life, even if the pressure could rise at very awkward times, but she liked to do it quickly, efficiently, all so that she didn't have to think about it all that much.

But the size of her bowel movements made her poop even harder to pass, though they were firm enough logs. They were huge though! And it just took time to push through every one, even though they dropped neatly into the cave below, landing somewhere down in the darkness. Bleez didn't much care for that, but she shifted her weight back and forth anxiously, flapping her wings as she balanced.

“Hurry up… Ugh!"

Her anger flared, red energy crackling around her like flames, though it neither hurt Bleez nor burned her, for her rage-power did not work like that as a Red Lantern. She gritted her teeth, grimacing obviously, no longer even bothering to try to school her expressions in the slightest, not when there was so much going on. It was not as if anyone was there to see her!

Yet they just kept coming and coming, the volume of them obscene, though Bleez also didn't bother to keep count, no. It didn't seem worth it, not when she wanted to get back to the village, to take on the next task, shifting her hips back and forth as if that would help her bear down even more. But pushing out such thick bowel movements too, the girth of them needing attention paid to them also, took time that she simply did not feel that she had, gnashing her teeth and growling savagely.

Sometimes, when she was far away from everyone, she could let out her anger, though it was really frustration at being so held up by something that should have been quick, that should have been easy. It didn't have to be as difficult as it was!

Grunting through the final squeeze, she exhaled in a rush as she dropped the final bowel movement into the hole, heart leaping. Finally! It took only a moment to settle her outfit back into place, nothing remaining of her relieving her waste and emptying her bowels, taking flight with a flap of her might, red-crackling wings.

“Damn this… Always coming…unff…at the wrong time!"

The timing was bad and she loathed having to miss the end of the battle, something that she should have been integral in, considering how much of a role she had had in it. But she would be back soon enough and that would have to be enough.

_ _

Alien villager, Xervia

_ _

Xervia hunkered down, hiding from the Manhunters, shaking in place. Oh, how she hoped that none of the awful robots found her down there! They were being protected by Red and Green Lanterns, yes, but sometimes even that was not enough as she whimpered and tried to forget the world outside the cave. She'd stumbled across it when fleeing the villager and horde of Manhunters, but only a patch of light in the cave gave her any idea at all of what was going on outside. Fighting rang in the distance, though it had grown fainter and fainter, as if the battle was being won. Xervia could only hope that it would end soon, before twilight, so that she could grope and feel her way back to the entrance to the cave that she had walked in through.

If she had to try to climb out the opening in the top, well… Xervia did not consider herself to be the most agile of her people, to be fair. But not everyone was good at everything.

Footsteps! She crouched, slinking back even further into the darkness, backing up against the dirt wall with her heart pounding painfully against her ribcage. There was someone there, someone coming! She put her hand tightly over her mouth, silencing her whimpers, though it was not a large came and the entrance was down a narrow tunnel – a tunnel that could still be traversed. She shook in place, praying to their god that it was not a Manhunter, not a giant robot, yet…through the hole in the cave roof, all she could see were bright red wings.

That didn't look like a robot?

Xervia blinked, less fearful and more horrified as what she could only describe as a blue set of buttocks dropped into the hole, immediately beginning to drop several extremely long, thick bowel movements! She reeled, disgusted by it, but if she wanted to escape, she would have to brave the outside world – and face the robots and whoever was up there relieving their bowels. Neither was all that much of an attractive option, as much as she might have liked to get far, far away from the rapidly growing pile of poop.

The poop dropped loudly and obnoxiously to the cave floor with a loud thud that echoed in the cave as she held her hand tightly over her mouth. It was all Xervia could do not to gag, hiding her position, still wanting to be hidden away, to not have to be discovered, for she could only see that going worse, so much worse, than anything else. Four bowel movements, the smallest of which had to be around twenty-one inches and the largest topping out at twenty-eight inches lay on the ground, a huge pile residing just a few feet in front of Xervia.

She breathed evenly, closing her eyes. It was not the worst thing that could happen, though the unexpected horror of watching someone else, completely unsuspecting, go to the bathroom had put her situation in a sort of comedic light. There was death and destruction going on and she didn't know just how many of her villagers she would have to go back to…and then something like that happened, as if it had any right to, right there before her. It was ridiculous even though she was disgusted, her mind reeling with the strain of the day, for it was not the kind of experience that anyone should have had to go through. And yet the planet was so often under attack that her people had learned to flee, had learned to hide. Only, that time, they had not been able to fight the huge Manhunters.

Her stomach twisted, though Xervia didn't know what to look at or where to focus as another big bowel movement, coiling partly over the top of the pile, landed, completely the stranger's poop. Clothing rustled and the person or alien or whoever was up there quickly seemed to put their outfit, whatever it was, back on, wings flapping, flying away.

Xervia stayed very, very still, not even trusting herself to move yet, though she was light-headed. She would have sat down again of her own free will, though she did not dare go out again yet, even if sitting weakly in the cave accompanied by a massive pile of poop was…rather odd, to say the least. At least she was there and alive, she guessed, though a weak giggle broke her lips, shaking her head.

If she was alive, everything would be okay.

---

Vignette Five

---

Arisia and Mera had teamed up with both Power Girl and Superboy, even though the latter was not a member of the Justice League. He'd said that he was trying to learn how the Justice League worked to potentially join in the future, being a clone of Superman. Superman had been endeavouring to get him to be “more mature" – as Superman had put it – to learn how to take on more important missions, where a level of trust would have to be placed in him. That, however, was sometimes a big ask for him, still learning.

Power Girl sighed. She'd said she was happy to take him on a mission and, well, she had agreed, though she still very much had her doubts about the whole thing. They were tracking, at that time, Lex Luthor, after the Justice League had received information from a spy that he had been secretly building a new weapons research factory – deep underground, of course. It would never have been somewhere easy for them to access. But that was most likely the whole point of it being secret, as much as it irked her, in the back of her mind.

At least she had Arisia and Mera there to keep an eye on him too, patiently waiting near the entrance to an abandoned mine – or a mine that was supposedly abandoned. It had been suggested as an entrance to the facility and, well, that would become clear once they saw people coming and going, hiding at the top of the cliff nearby. The land around them was arid desert, barren with little to conceal them, though they did have the rocks there. She would have been more comfortable with foliage or something, but they had to work with what they had.

She breathed out, using her super vision to try to lock onto any human activity through the rocks, but there was nothing.

“Something is blocking my vision," she muttered, Mera and Arisia perking up to listen. “I can't see underground…"

Still, she tried to look further, to find the people, to move forward with their mission. And yet it was right at that moment that s certain need of hers made itself known, stirring in the pit of her stomach as tension rode, a mild pressure that reminded her that there were things that she also had to tend to.

Ugh, now?

_ _

Power Girl would have rolled her eyes if that would not have made it more obvious what was going on with her, though that was not so much a bad thing. Of course, it was more annoying than usual because Superboy was with them – and that was very much going to pose a problem.

“Superboy," she said, addressing him directly. “Take a flight down to the mine and look inside to see if there's anything suspicious. But be discreet about it."

Superboy paused, though his body had already moved as if to do as she said.

“Are you coming with me though?"

Power Girl shook her head, thinking quickly as the pressure in her stomach and bowels increased. Whereas the women there would know what the problem was, it wasn't something that she wanted to share with Superboy.

“No," she said simply. “This is a test to see if you can follow directions correctly."

She kept it plain, waiting to see if he bought it.

“We can't tip off Lex that we're onto him," she added, just to make it a bit more believable, for she was getting a rather strange look from Superboy. “So… Be very quiet."

It was not much of either an explanation or an order, but it seemed to do the trick as Superboy nodded. They were still getting used to being around him and working with him, though Power Girl privately thought that having a man around, even then, was going to cause more problems for them than realised. Namely with needing to go to the bathroom, even though it had to be so that the males amongst them had similar issues…

That wasn't something, however, that she wanted to go into all that much as Superboy nodded and flew down, slipping along the rockface with an impressive sense of stealth. She exhaled a breath that she had not knowns he'd been holding, even as Arisia and Mera gave her a decidedly odd look.

Power Girl shrugged. They'd understand, even if she didn't want to be all that obvious about it.

“I need to use the bathroom," she said simply, not needing to say anything more than that. “So… he had to go off someone. You two can continue scoping out the mine, I won't be long."

“Ah."

Arisia and Mera looked at one another, half-shrugging.

“Yes, that makes sense," Arisia said, standing and brushing off her thighs from the dust that had stuck there. “We should go too, while he is away. That's almost good timing, for once."

Mera grimaced, though Power Girl only rolled her eyes. She'd grown a little more comfortable with the subject of defecation over time, but that did not mean that it was still natural for her to talk about it as if it was nothing at all, when it was something that came up so often for them. But she was the one leading, if only for the moment, so she felt like she had to take charge and arrange things, at least making sure that they had the privacy in which to go to the bathroom whenever it was needed.

Arisia however, was nodding too, as if she agreed that she too needed to go, though that was not something that Power Girl was going to pry into, not when she knew so well that it was simply something that all of them had to deal with, daily.

“Okay," she said, keeping it simple. “We should quickly do our business, if that is the case, and go back to the mission. Before Superboy comes back."

They nodded, for that was a bit of a time constraint that they had to be aware of, even though they could probably keep him away for a bit longer. It was just embarrassing to have “the talk" about their bodies and bowel movements in front of someone not in the know about them and something that they would all, clearly, prefer to avoid if it was at all possible in any way.

Heading back behind some rocks for a little extra cover, Power Girl shivered. Even out there, it still felt like everything was a bit too exposed, but she could let her body get on, more or less, with what it needed to do.

They all took a little space from each other, sort of knowing each other's bathroom routines by that point, and they all liked a little distance, which was all fine between them. Power Girl squatted down and tugged her leotard neatly to the side, exposing a little more than she would have normally, but, well, even though she didn't like going to the bathroom in comparative public, it was easier that day to remain fresh and clean. That helped her feel a lot more like herself rather than struggling with only revealing as much as she needed to an not a millimetre of skin more. What could she say? Over time, despite the rosiness in her cheeks, she had grown. Maybe Wonder Woman had something to do with that.

She breathed out softly as she eased out the first of her bowel movements. They were going to be as large as they always for, in relation to what she usually pooped, but she had grown more comfortable with that. Still, she was aware that Superboy was going to be back soon and still did her best to hurry things along as much as she could, bearing down to squeeze out a larger bowel movement at fifteen inches.

She grunted softly. Maybe she had been a little more constipated than she had realised, flushing heavily. Wow, that was embarrassing, though she shifted her hips from side to side, trying not to think about it too much. Even if she was going to have a larger bowel movement than normal, she had to constantly remind herself that it was normal for the others and, well, there was no one amongst the superheroines there that would not understand her rather strange predicament.

Power Girl breathed out, her back still to the other two, minding her own business. Another bowel movement eased from her, quite hard and difficult to push out, but she relaxed the best she could. Just another event in the life of being a superheroine, she supposed, though Power Girl could not honestly say that she had ever liked that term. Her mind tended to wander, however, when she was pooping, knowing that it was going to stake a while, despite how her stomach churned. That was not from her constipation, however, but the embarrassment still of being around others while she was pooping. It couldn't so easily be swayed, as if the awkwardness of it all was so deeply ingrained into her psyche that it was something that she would forever live with.

It was not, however, as bad as it had been before, so that was something, in its own way, that she would have to be content with, pushing out another bowel movement that was eighteen inches in length, thicker around and a little softer, though still quite firm. She would have to take care to drink enough water, she thought to herself, glancing down to check her waste, but she did not studiously check her bowel movements as she went along. Sure, that was more efficient, but it was still just a little bit more embarrassing, even then, to have such personal attention focused on it.

Power Girl sighed heavily, though regretted it instantly. It could have drawn attention to her, but, really, there wasn't anything all that much to worry about with the others. It was okay, even if they saw her, for they had all seen each other in various stages of undress, and pooping, before, even if they had not intended to. It was kind of like something of an unspoken secret between them all, something that no one wanted to say aloud, but, well… It didn't matter, in the end.

She pushed down, ignoring the rumbling of her stomach, though it was much, much fainter than before, letting her know that her body, at the very least, was settling back to normal. Glancing down to her third poop, she hummed lightly, a little more satisfied that that one was softer and easier to push out. That felt better, making her feel as if everything was back on track again, that she had less to worry about.

It was a good-sized poop though, at least sixteen inches, and plopped down lightly with a gentle sound of it landing on the ground. Her hearing was just too sensitive to miss it, though Power Girl wrinkled her nose, trying to jostle her hips and hurry everything along, even though it was not as easy as all that. The pressure in her stomach tightened for an instant, reminding her of her need, and she squeezed down again, a smaller log of waste emerging.

That one was easier, only ten inches, though she was surprised by how thick it was. It only plopped down gently because she had been pushing so hard to make sure her bowels were nice and clear, startling a light grunt from her lips. Well, even if it was not the most comfortable of things, at least it was out and done. She took her time with the rest, reminding herself that her body needed time to do what it needed to do, pushing hard for another bowel movement. It came out smoothly, allowing her to quickly glance and check, around fourteen inches. It still felt like there was more to come, so she tried to cool her heated cheeks and embarrassment about taking so long.

Well, the others were not yet done, but it still felt like it was taking forever.

Power Girl blew out, puffing out her cheeks, the cool of the evening air licking at where her bare skin was exposed. That was just another annoyance to being out in the desert like that, but it was something they all had to deal with as superheroes too. It was funny how something as small as slightly inclement weather still could be annoying to them, considering all else that they had to go through.

The pile of poop under her grew as she pushed out a sixth bowel movement, feeling the tension in her guts ease again. Ah, she must have been almost done, she thought to herself, though that was good, very good. She didn't want to be out there for too much longer at all, pursing her lips and hoping, yet again, that Superboy did not come back too quickly. Even if he did, the embarrassment of being caught out surely would be shared between them.

When she was done, a sense of ease settling over her, there was a pile of seven large bowel movements on the ground where she had been squatting, everything as good and as healthy as Power Girl would have liked. She didn't too often check her poop for health until she'd started teaming up with Wonder Woman, but the more experienced member of the Justice League had managed to impress on her the importance of such things. Quick changes in her body could be identified through her waste and, even though the colour of each log of poop was different, everything looked healthy, the latter ones softer and lying gently over the harder first couple.

Next time, she said inwardly to herself, making a mental note as she re-dressed herself, she'd make sure that she didn't go too long without. She had to take care of herself, even if it meant pooping more often. Like so much else, she just had to live with it and get on with it.

Power Girl didn't pay too much attention to the others, but strictly keeping her eyes on her own business was no longer as much of an issue as it had been in the past. While she finished up, she glanced over, noting the six smaller poops that Arisia dropped, with the largest being ten inches longer, on a rough estimate. The thing was, when Power Girl had to defecate so often, she'd become a rather good estimate of size, so she quite thought. No one was ever going to call her out on that one, however, whether she was or was not.

Mera was an odd one though, but Power Girl shook her head at the fact that she had only pushed out two exceptionally large and thick bowel movements. If they'd been a little closer than they were, she might have teased her about only eating fish or something like that to make her bowel movements up to nineteen – sheesh! – inches long and so round and thick around. But her embarrassment over pooping had not faded to such an extent that she honestly felt confident joking around with things like that yet. Maybe one day she would get to that stage, but she did her best, right then and there, to be professional enough to sweep the rosy glow of embarrassment from her cheeks.

It was good, regardless of everything, to have the quiet settlement in her of being around people that simply understood where she was coming from, however. People, other superheroes, who had to go through the same thing that she did at the very least made it something more normal for her. She could only be glad too that she did not do the strangely long, thick bowel movements that Mera did, though Power Girl still had to admit that she had seen stranger still during her time in the Justice League.

She groaned, stretching her arms above her head, drawing both Mera and Arisia's attention to her as they dressed themselves again, finishing up all that they needed to. Everyone looked a little more comfortable after relieving themselves, though not even Power Girl would have recognised their need before she had brought it all to the forefront of their minds.

“Power Girl? Superman here, we've got a lead on Braniac, can you hear me?"

Her communicator crackled at her hip and Power Girl's eyes widened as she snatched it up.

“Yeah, I'm here," she said quickly, pressing it close to her ear, the signal being weaker than expected, perhaps due to their proximity to the mine and certain interfering forces underground. “What's the lead?"

Mera and Arisia crowded in close to hear, though it looked like they wouldn't, at that time, be flying down to the mine after all to assist Superboy.

“Not a lead, an attack. All team leads," Superman said through the Justice League communicator, “are to fly immediately to the coordinates I will send right after this, to fight Braniac. He's attacked New York City. Is that clear?"

Power Girl swore under her breath, her tone low. Did everything have to go wrong at once? It was likely that the mine and all that fiasco was just a false lead if the attack on New York City was happening right then at that very minute!

“Got it," she said, trying to remain professional, even as adrenaline kicked in. “Arisia, Mera – we've got to go!"

The communicator cut out as they agreed on their plan, though she churned with worry over what was happening. Just another false tip-off, that's all their mission had been – all to keep the Justice League distracted while Lex Luthor and Braniac planned an attack. How convenient for them and frustrating for the Justice League! Did they not realise that innocent lives were at stake?

Perhaps so, though those of that ilk did not care for who was innocent and who was guilty in the world. Power Girl grabbed Mera's hand, for Mera, of course, could not fly, and they took flight together, Mera clinging onto her tightly, though she had flown with them previously and knew just how to hang so that Power Girl's power of flight did not leave her swinging too awkwardly. It was something that they would have to get the hang of, however, in practice, over time.

As they flew away, not a single one of them remembered the man that they had been observing and teaching there, training, in a way. Superboy was left behind, scoping out a mine that held no threat at all to them.

At least he wasn't left in harm's way…

Superboy's perspective…

_ _

Superboy sighed, having completed a full sweep of the mine, even within, his vision penetrating deeply. There was nothing – nothing at all! Only empty tunnels with all rail lines and mine shafts, nothing at all that suggested any kind of strange activity. Sure, there were some metals and minerals buried around there that could cause some problems, but, well, those would be expected in any mine that had been dug out of useful materials. They had, before, of course, been mining for things useful to human beings.

“This whole mission…" He muttered to himself, flying back out the main entrance to the mine, not a soul in sight as the day darkened to evening around him. “This whole thing has been a huge waste of time!"

He shook his head, flying up and back to the rock at the top of the cliff. They were probably all laughing at him up there – there was nothing at all going on in the mine at all! And they had probably known all about it, all in it just to play a trick on him! Anger stirred in his stomach. He knew it, he just knew it, they all thought him so much younger than him, even though he'd hit twenty! But how on earth or off earth was he supposed to prove himself to anyone, least of all the Justice League, if he was never given a chance?

That was a question, even brindling in his inexperience, that anyone would have been hard-pressed to answer fully.

He'd intended to give them a piece of his mind, failing to see the humour in the trick they'd clearly played on him, but…there was no one there, no one at all. There were a few footprints and scuff marks in the hard-packed dirt where they had been, but, other than that, it may as well have been that the superheroes had never even been there at all.

His brow furrowed, anger and words dying on his lips as if they had never been, for there was no one there at all for him to direct his frustration at.

“Hello? Power Girl? Arisia? Mera? Where are you?"

Maybe something had come up, he thought, or another entrance to the mine had been found. But, no, that could not be true, for he had scoped out the whole thing and found nothing, even logging and marking the other entrances when he had become sure there was no one there and flown inside too. So, where were they?

He flew further back, another chunky lump of rock calling his attention, though Superboy could not imagine why they had retreated there. He touched down and looked around, though it was all an exercise in futility as he turned his head too obviously back and forth, nearly stepping in something in the fading light.

“What the…"

Superboy's lower jaw fell slack and he took a step back, for there were no superheroes there, only three really large piles of poop behind the rock! One was steep with two giant logs of poop lying neatly crossed over one another, while another had lots of varying, yet huge, poops in a neat, towering pile that somehow seemed stable without toppling over. In that pile, there were seven, all so long that there was not a single one under ten inches, though most were closer to eighteen inches, shocking big. The final pile was not all that curious, not in comparison to the other ones, containing several smaller poops and softer rounds of waste too, depicting a bowel movement that could have been normal if not for the sheer number of them.

To say the very least of it, they were far, far greater in number than should ever have come from a body that he was familiar with. They seemed to still be warm, his powers sensing that, though he kept his distance, on high alert, eyes sweeping from one pile of poop to the next as if he thought something was going to change there. Yet it was there that they stayed, cooling quickly, the night of the desert swiftly dropping around him.

But why were there so many piles of poop there? It looked kind of like human waste and yet Superboy could not imagine that coming from a person, no! But what if an animal of some kind had left it there, chasing away the other superheroes? That was likely the most plausible thing, if they had still not wanted to alert anyone to their presence, though he still found it ridiculous that they had not even tried to alert him to what was going on. And there was no trace of any animal there either, nothing in the dirt, no sign of something bigger and scarier than even them coming up on them. He could only hope, with his minimal experience on the attacks of the world and all the crazy creatures that, before, had come through from other dimensions, that something more sinister was not at play.

He took a deep breath, turning away from the befuddling piles of poop, lest he gawk and stare at their size all night long.

“Okay… Whatever is going on here, I've got to get back, they'll know what to do."

Without knowing where anyone was and having no direct communication link with any of them either, the most sensible thing for him was to head straight back to the Justice League Watchtower. There, he could get further instructions.

And maybe find out where the heck the rest of them had disappeared off to.

But perhaps he would leave out the piles of poop that he had found there, sitting out in the open as if they had merely been waiting to be found, one way or the other…

---

Vignette Six

The Flash moved, quicker than the speed of light, a red and yellow blur to those that could perceive him at his breakneck pace. It was a normal speed to him, having been so familiar with his superpower for so many years, though it never failed to exhilarate him, his skin tingling as the laws of physics bent around him for his super speed.

Metropolis spilt out before him, the Legion of Doom heaving, snarling, the fight raging across the city. The Legion of Doom had attacked Metropolis a short time ago with what could only be depicted as a large mind control ray, though it was mounted up on a spaceship. To say the least of it, the civilians had gone wild, making life much more difficult for the superheroes trying to keep them stay safe, while posing a significant danger to themselves and to others. But that was putting it politely, for the thought of harm coming to innocents turned his stomach in a way that he didn't want to address.

He tied up another bunch of civilians with their eyes glazed over, controlled by the beam, ensuring that no harm would come to them. In the Speed Force, the world around him appearing to be in slow motion, he could get it done more quickly than anyone else, but it still seemed like an endless, thankless task, too much to do and, even in the Speed Force, there were still so many out there wreaking havoc, even if it was against their will.

“Come on…"

He muttered under his breath, his voice sounding strange in the Speed Force, the world around him with an uncanny edge, looking the same but not the same, so still, so quiet. He tied up a civilian, leaving them in the safety of an empty apartment, but then it was straight on to the next, racing out the back of the apartment into a typical back alley. The Flash sped down, swiftly checking that there were no civilians who had left their apartments in the area, though even keeping up that kind of pace did not drain him. If his mind had not been so busy elsewhere, he would have taken pleasure in it.

Yet at the end of the long alleyway, he realised that he had passed someone that was very much not a civilian, her white outfit, touched with gold accents, and red cape catching his attention in a burst of colour. In the otherwise dank and dark alleyway, it should have been hard to miss her, though she very much had not seemed to be in any kind of pain and distress.

He turned around and zoomed back down, for Power Girl herself was right there, crouched behind a large, overflowing dumpster in the alley. His attention had been so far ahead of him that he had raced right by her, looking for danger, but it didn't seem normal at all that she was squatting down on the ground in a dirty alleyway, not when there was a fight raging on too.

I should ask her if she's okay, he thought to himself, preparing to exit the Speed Force. Something must be wrong if she's back here, even if I didn't notice immediately. What if she's injured?

_ _

And yet, just as he was about to exit the Speed Force in front of her, he saw something that gave him serious pause. Even though the world practically appeared to be standing still around him while he was in the Speed Force, he could still see movement, shifting through different levels of the Speed Force, depending on what was happening at any one moment in time.

He stepped back, eyes wide, shocked to see her – to him, of course, in slow motion – going to the bathroom. A very large bowel movement, a log of poop that had to be sixteen inches long and thick around with crackling along the length of it where it had firmed up for excrement, pushed from her. Yet he got to see it in all its glory as it eased from her, so tortuously slowly, even though, well, to Power Girl it was all probably at a very normal pace. It just seemed different to him in the Speed Force, even if he was used to being in there.

He couldn't look away, even if he knew that he should have done so. The Flash could not honestly say that he had not seen so very many things, all in the Speed Force, that he should not have and that was about to make the top of his list of shocking things to see. Going to the bathroom should have been done, well, in a bathroom of some kind or a place designated for defecation – he could have understood if they were out in the wilds, but there were plenty of bathrooms that Power Girl surely could have used all over the city!

There was not only one poop either, despite its shocking size. It was swiftly followed by another that turned out to be thirteen inches long, thicker around and seeming to take even longer than the first to press out from her body. The Flash shook his head, amazed that all that had come from her, though it didn't make sense to him at all that she was producing so much waste.

He had been so fixated on Power Girl, however, that he noticed something further as his eyes followed the second log of waste as it dropped to the ground – right on top of a neat little pile sitting there as if it had merely been there all along, waiting to be noticed. There were five, including the one that she had just pushed out, poops already on the ground, so obvious in their big pile now that his eyes had landed on them.

His face heated up, embarrassment clawing at him. Goodness… Oh, he'd never walked in on someone in the Speed Force in such an embarrassing situation before and, not knowing what else to do, he dawdled there, looking away. It was easy to advert his eyes, at least, once he realised what he was doing, though he could only be excessively grateful that, even then, there was no way that Power Girl could have realised he was there. What a horribly awkward situation to catch someone in! The only small, tiny, minuscule saving grace there was the fact that she was covered up enough that her modesty was preserved, her back to the alley wall so that he only saw her excrement, not any part of her body exposed where it should not have been – at least not to his perspective.

And yet how could so many poops have come from her all at once? It didn't make sense to him, the sight of them all lying there, between nine and seventeen inches – shocking! – long, a good three of them so thick around that The Flash honestly didn't even know how on earth they could have come from her body. It wasn't his problem or his mystery to figure out, however, as he turned on his heel.

The only option left to him, in that moment, was to exit the alleyway as quickly as possible, making good his exit. Without slowing down in the Speed Force, she would not even have seen the red and yellow blur that was him, moving as if he was invisible, which suited The Flash just fine. If no one ever had to mention or know about the incident with Power Girl, he could live the rest of his life quite happily, pretending that nothing had ever happened.

He raced – and that was his undoing. For, alas, The Flash had expected the way to be clear, forgetting to keep his attention ahead of him as he sprinted, zooming through the Speed Force at full speed, even for him. The trash bag seemed to leap out at him from nowhere, ensnaring his feet and sending him tumbling, face first onto the ground and skidding several long feet across the ground.

The Flash grunted, eyes wide, all air knocked from his lungs as he gaped like a fish, struck by that momentary terror of not being able to breathe, lungs working furiously as a sense of tightness closed around his ribcage. He turned, rolling, though that only shifted him onto his back as he skidded to the end of the alleyway, right at the entrance to the main street.

No, no, no!

_ _

In his shock, he lost his grip on the Speed Force – the absolute worst thing that he could have possibly done! The world flickered around him as if glitching, but it was only returning to normal speed, his body no longer in the Speed Force, pain racing through him.

The normal flow of time around him resumed as he groaned, air returning slowly to his lungs, though he took short breaths, slowly expanding them again. But things were not that simple as he raised his head from the ground, a deep, resounding ache spreading through his skull, barely even daring to look back behind him.

For, outside the Speed Force, he was once again visible, as if he had been there all along – frankly, as far as Power Girl was aware, he may as well have been.

He was only lucky, in a small sense, to have an increased rate of healing, due to his powers, his headache fading swiftly, though the same could not always be said for embarrassment, not like that. He grunted, turning his head slowly to properly look back behind him, though…Power Girl was no longer there.

His brow furrowed.

That was strange, very strange. Where was she? He tried to stand, but found the ache still in his body from going flat out like that – that was, at least, until a pair of long legs, clad in boots, and a white outfit with gold edging came into his line of sight.

Of course, The Flash would not have seen Power Girl, for the superheroine was floating above him like she had every right to be there.

“Here, let me help you."

There was no reading the expression on her face, though the Flash should have worked with Power Girl for long enough, at that point, to know that there was something more to her. He should have been able to tell what was lurking behind her stare, but he could not read her quiet eyes, the way her lips were held neutrally in a loose line.

If she had shouted at him or sworn or even screamed, perhaps that would have been more obvious. But he very much doubted that he would ever, in his lifetime, see Power Girl reduced to that level. If he was the one to put her there, after all, it would have been The Flash who was severely amiss.

He tentatively took her hand, not wanting to put too much weight on her hand, though he knew well enough just how strong her powers were. Power Girl was far from fragile and yet he caught himself not wanting to put her out further, especially not after he had caught her in such an embarrassing situation. Heat and humiliation coiled in the dirty pit of his stomach, though he tried not to let it show on his face, not even as he allowed her to, very graciously, help him back to his feet.

She floated as if gravity had no effect on her and, even with his Super Speed, that was not something that The Flash would ever honestly get to seeing superheroes do. He could cross chasms, of course, with his speed like that, but it was not the same, not even then.

He wiped the dirt off his red and yellow suit, with the logo emblazoned across the front, hopeful that something worse had not come. If she did not know that he had seen, maybe everything would be alright, maybe everything would be okay. And yet The Flash could not help but know the truth of it all when he lifted his head to meet her eyes squarely, just as a superhero should, to find the pink of embarrassment colouring her cheeks. There was no denying just how the heated flush spread down her neck in pink patches, even colouring the very tips of her ears. In that climate, there was no blaming it on the weather either, not when the day was as comfortable as it was.

Truthfully, after having caught her pooping in the alleyway, The Flash did not think that anything there was very much comfortable, after all.

She didn't know, however, or did she? There was no way to tell without broaching the subject and he didn't know what the best thing to do was! He clenched his jaw, shaking mildly with panic, for it was hardly the kind of situation that he had ever before been faced with, not even as Power Girl stared, not saying a word. That, in a way, made it worse than anything else.

If nothing else, she must have suspected it. But he didn't have to say the truth of the matter, ultimately, if she did not know.

“I'm sorry about that," he said, clearing his throat and standing up tall with more of his usual smile on his face. “I was looking away, back to the fights, and tripped… Well, you saw what happened there. I didn't even see you, where did you come from?"

He hoped that that would be enough to cover himself and The Flash swore that he saw a little something ease in Power Girl, a tension line in her jaw softening just a little. Maybe that was enough.

She smiled, but he would never know that, behind that smile, Power Girl fully understood that The Flash was simply trying to be respectful of her unfortunate situation. In pacts between superheroes and the line of work that so very often put them into those very situations, she could respect that.

“Let's forget about it," she said lightly, breezier than usual, as if she really was set to move on and forget all about it as if it had never happened. “We have a city to save, we can't dawdle around here. What do you say we get back to work?"

The Flash exhaled, a rushing sigh of relief that he had been fully aware of holding slipping from him. Nodding, he smiled, his attention already back on the battle, the civilians that were still yet to be saved out there.

“That sounds like a plan to me. Let's go!"

Power Girl flew away without another word, superheroes like them more than used to rather abrupt endings to conversations, considering that they didn't always have time for pleasantries and the like either. Sometimes, they had to be direct and they had to be blunt – but, as The Flash had seen that day too, there was a time for indirectness and tact too.

Pushing into the Speed Force, he drew out a length of rope and raced down the street. It was easy to ignore what he had seen, as he dove for a civilian hiding behind a car.

After all, there were far more important things for him to focus his attention on than Power Girl pooping in an alleyway.

---

Vignette Seven

---

Arisia made a face as she moved back and forth in the shower, under the stream of water, though it had been a long time since she had been in a communal shower. She remembered the Justice League saying that there were showers there for use when needed after missions, but, well, she hadn't expected to be showering there with multiple lady members of the Justice League, even after fighting a swamp monster.

However, it had been the ruthlessly stinky, gross fight with the swamp monster, all while helping out Swamp Thing, that had rendered them all in such a state, too many of them loudly complaining about the reek of the monster that had attacked them.

The water streamed over her, almost so hot that it was uncomfortable, yet it felt like it was the right temperature still to get the reek of it all off her. Her hair slicked down to her scalp and she felt the strange weight of it at the moments when it was completely sodden with water, hanging heavily, even though she kept her blonde locks on the shorter side. Long hair, after all, was apt to get caught up in things that one would rather avoid. She'd learned that lesson long ago and the way she kept things more usually meant that it was easier to keep clean too.

She tried to keep her back to the room, though there was a part of her, with the long line of showers, along the two longest walls of the communal shower, that didn't want her butt on show either, her blonde hair slicked down to her skull. It was good to feel cleaner, yes, but it felt like being clean, even then, came with a cost to it too, all that she was not particularly sure about. She shook her head lightly, the flow of conversation around her at least something that she could allow to lull herself into a more comfortable state.

Although it was very much not that she was insecure about her body, as she inadvertently glanced around, but that she knew she was different – well, everyone was. Every one of the superheroes was different in their own way, from Wonder Woman to Zatanna to Power Girl and Star Sapphire. Amongst those that she had worked with previously, there was also Bleez and Mera, though the latter of them seemed to be the most comfortable in the water. Arisia, however, could not speak for how it was for Mera, when she was deep in the ocean and Atlantis itself, for she had not visited there yet.

Still, it felt good to let the slick mud and filth slide from her, leaving her pale skin clean and fresh, soap suds swirling down the several drains there. Her eyes flicked over the other superheroines, taking in their measure.

Whereas she had always been conscious of her large breasts, she couldn't help but take in, one more, just how tall Wonder Woman was, just over six feet tall. Sometimes it looked like more than that with her boots, but everything changed on the battlefield, her sense of presence more than Arisia thought that she was ever going to be able to encompass for herself. After Wonder Woman, Mera was the next tallest, along with Arisia herself, though sometimes she didn't feel very tall. She also leaned a lot into flight and levitation, taking control in other ways, though things in her confidence had been flaring brightly of late. She thought that represented a change in her life, but was more than happy to let it come naturally.

“Ugh, this stuff just won't come out of long hair!"

She wasn't sure who that was, but it might have been Zatanna, who seemed to have let her dark hair grow out a bit more of late, Arisia turning again so that her eyes didn't wander. As soon as she thought that she shouldn't be looking at something or someone, that was all that her eyes wanted to lock onto. Still, she wanted to be respectful, even though Arisia, still, even with everything, could not help but marvel that they had all come together from so many different walks of life, all fighting for the same cause in the end.

Well, maybe they had different agendas and things pushing them forward, driving, motivational factors, but they all worked together, one way or the other.

Maybe, after all that, it was not so bad to stare, not when it could not be helped. She tried to be discreet, but she returned to Wonder Woman and her height, the superheroine's long, dark hair slicked down and wet. Her figure was powerful, though still came with a hint of femininity, though many would have said that her muscles were too much. Most of them, truly, had muscling of some kind that was more obvious than standard human women or even females from other planets, and Arisia admired that Wonder Woman's strength rang through so strongly.

She did not have hips that came off as wide as the others, though the low level of fat on her body, from her physical activity and her natural genetics, of course, made her waist tuck in even more than it did when she was outfitted up. Arisia had wondered, just a little, if her wrist was naturally that small, though it seemed to give her an even greater sense of power in the sharp, driving lines of her body.

No one was to mess with her, not with the firmness of her buttock betraying her glutes, cutting straight in where her butt was lifted to her hamstrings. The lines of them ran down to the backs of her knees where they were greeted by strong calves that, surely, needed custom boots to slip into. With a figure like that, it was sure that everything that Wonder Woman wore was tailored and made just for her, though Arisia thought that she was a little more fortunate in having more flexibility in her outfits, preferring white most often, paired with the traditional green of her lanterns.

Even the muscles of Wonder Woman's biceps and triceps seemed to beg attention as Arisia grew a little bolder, trying not to stare and, well, completely failing. It didn't seem that anyone else in there was being as discreet as her, laughing and exclaiming and even grumbling as they went about the business of cleansing the swamp slick from them. It ran down Wonder Woman's body as she washed it out from her hair with a distasteful grimace, though the lines of slime oozing down her only further highlighted her muscles, following the definition between her shoulder blades down the line of her back to her buttocks and hips.

She wondered if she was being too forward in next allowing her eyes to wander to Zatanna, the magician, though she was deadly in a way that Arisia had to appreciate too. The woman was curvier than she had realised, for her outfits and the fishnets especially had hidden her curves from view. Or maybe it was that Zatanna was so very often cloaked in magic that it was hard to see the woman behind it, her eyes blazing intensely. Her hair was kept a little shorter and it framed her moderate shoulders well as Arisia's eyes grazed down the line of her neck to those shoulders, the rise and fall of her breasts drawing the eye.

Everything about Zatanna was hypnotic and efficient as the water ran over her, leaving a glistening sheen to her body as the light glanced off it. It was too intimate, too personal, for Arisia to be looking at her backside like that, but she couldn't take her eyes off the round of it. It was softer than those of the other superheroes, but that was just from sight alone; it was not as if Arisia was actually touching her. Yet Zatanna could use the power in her long legs, her calves leaning down and her hips wider than her shoulders, to leap into move after move, all so that she could use her powers to the very best of her ability.

Zatanna could have looked bedraggled with her hair plastered to her head, but came off as elegant, still defiant and forceful through it. Her lips were, for once, without her dark makeup, and Arisia realised with a start that those that did bring further accentuation to their faces were missing it too. That was different… She didn't typically use that, but it was interesting to see different faces come to the forefront.

Power Girl, on the other hand, was powerful, even if shorter than Wonder Woman. They could have been cut from the same cloth, yet Power Girl's body still gave a sense that she was growing into herself and her power – only when compared to Wonder Woman and standing next to her. There was a sense that Power Girl looked to Wonder Woman for guidance, set in the curve of her body and how Power Girl looked over to Wonder Woman too, as if she was admiring Wonder Woman as Arisia was admiring her comrades.

Power Girl's shorter hair, cropped around her hears, was slicked back to her head as if she meant for it to be there, her legs slightly apart and braced, as if she embodied all the confidence in the world. Maybe that was because she was sure she was not being watched in there (and was wrong), facing the wall and giving a little wriggle of her hips that brought Arisia's eyes down to them as the water and swamp slime ran off her. She could see where the muscles used to balance and steady herself in flying came into play with Power Girl especially, even the smaller supporting muscles defined, where otherwise Power Girl's physique may not have been as strong as it was right then.

Star Sapphire was not one that Power Girl had worked with before, but her quick thinking impressed Arisia and she did not doubt that there would be many more missions with her in the future. Devoid of her purple outfit, which had covered most of her body, she was smooth and supple, feminine with large hips and a backside that rounded out well. It was not a part of a woman that Arisia tried to stare at all that often, but, even then, she felt powerless over her own voyeuristic will.

It was thrilling to let her eyes trail up Star Sapphire's smooth stomach, the lines of her abdominal muscles and her obliques, in particular, catching her eye as the superhero turned, letting the water flow over her. She was settled as she stood, comfortable in her stance, black hair plastered down her shoulders and back, seeming to lose its volume, though the superheroine did not lose her presence. Arisia had to be more careful when looking at her, for her body was facing her, even if Star Sapphire's eyes were turned away, as if she was lost in thought.

She wouldn't have liked to have breasts as large as Star Sapphire's, though there must have been something in her outfit that kept them flatter and perhaps more aerodynamic for fighting too. Without seeing the superhero without her clothes before, how was Arisia to know that her breasts rose with a sultry peak of a nipple to each? The skin there blossomed a bit pinker from the heat of the shower, for Star Sapphire seemed to have the temperature turned up more than the others, tilting her head back into the stream, her neck and the rest of her body long and lean.

Still, the running theme throughout the superheroes was just how they radiated power, as if energy emanated from them even when they were doing something as simple as showering.

There were only two left and, considering her fiery temper and force, Arisia carefully looked over Bleez, Bleez and her rage. It fuelled her and powered her, though her skeletal-like wings were spread to get the water over and between the spokes. Bleez made a face as she ran her fingers around every spoke, all to get them as clean as possible. For once, the flames were not blistering around her, though, to be fair, Arisia very rarely saw Bleez outside a mission. Maybe that would change?

Bleez turned, allowing Arisia to take her in from the side, though her breasts seemed to perfectly suit her lean, muscled frame – moderate, but perhaps she was keeping Star Sapphire's chest in mind a little too much there. Naturally perky, perhaps it was the rage in Bleez that kept them lifted, the tint to her skin reminding Arisia of where she came from. The water running over Bleez seemed to be coloured by that hue too, as if it streamed over foreign lands, through the channel between Bleez' breasts, down the lines of her abdominals and obliques, framing the mound of her sex…

Arisia blushed, looking away deliberately. She didn't want to think about it too much, where her eyes had been going. Looking between someone else's legs was too much! Though she wanted to see, merely because she was curious. There was nothing sexual in her voyeuristic looks, the long, lingering glances, she was just more curious than ever about all the superheroines, especially those that came with such a formidable and often unapproachable nature about them. Bleez was most certainly one of those, though Arisia's relationships were developing further with the strong-willed, incredibly in-shape women.

It was not wrong to appreciate their forms.

Mera was the last of them and one that Arisia had found an affinity in working with, even though they, very much so, came from different worlds. Mera was of the water and the water seemed to move around her even then in the shower, despite her not actually being underwater in that instance. Even then, Mera had an affinity with it, being one with the water in a way that no one else could ever even hope to match up to – no one that Arisia anticipated that she would work with, of course.

The underwater superheroine's breasts rose proudly before her, surely enough to slow her down in the water, but that never seemed to cause Mera any issues at all. Her figure was sleek and curved as if she was a creature of the water itself, though Arisia chanced that there was still a light patterning of scales on her backside, the roundness of it flowing so smoothly that Arisia could imagine just how the water would cup and curve around her.

In their own way, everyone there was unique, something that could never be turned back. They took their characters personally, the power in their forms, all as they were meant to be.

Even though she had not been there for as long as, say, Power Girl and Wonder Woman, she still felt a sense of belonging and “odd family" to them, though Arisia wasn't even sure that that made sense to herself. Sometimes, however, things did not need to make sense, not as water ran down increasingly clean, naked bodies, even Bleez' hair out for once, not tucked under her fitted cap. If others had known her better, they would have teased her, though Arisia wasn't quite on those terms with her. The “bat-like" wings on either side of her cap, however, were kind of cute.

That was just another thing, however, that she would not have dared say to Bleez, for fuelling her rage was not something that anyone wanted to ease into.

There, however, showering with everyone, even though she was exposed, she was safe. Arisia smiled, letting their grumbles and, occasionally, laughter bubble over her.

In that corner of the world and the Justice League, everything was fine.