Chapter 1 - "The Insult"

Françoise Moreau lounged in her chair, her long, elegant legs crossed with the effortless grace of a woman who knew she was the most beautiful person in any room. The professor droned on in that hateful language... the ugliest, most awkward, most insulting language ever to exist. English. Every word that fell from his lips grated against her ears like a fork scraped across a plate, crude and unrefined.

She sighed, inspecting her perfectly manicured nails, as if they were infinitely more interesting than the dull, gray-haired man standing before the class. Which, of course, they were.

"Miss Moreau," the professor called, his tone heavy with tedious disappointment. "I assume you've been listening?"

She rolled her emerald eyes, shifting her weight lazily, the movement sending a cascade of chestnut waves down her back. "Ah, mais oui, professeur. I listen... always. With... passion." She let the last word roll off her tongue with thick mockery.

A rustle of stifled laughter ran through the room, but the professor merely sighed, adjusting his glasses before holding up the dreaded document. Her exam paper.

"Then you’ll be pleased to know the results of your English comprehension test have arrived."

Françoise flicked her gaze at the pathetic sheet of paper, noting how ugly the printed text looked. English. Of course, even their exams lacked elegance.

"Let me guess." She smirked. "I am... 'ow you say? 'Brilliant' again?"

The professor’s silence was answer enough.

Then came the final insult. The ultimate betrayal.

"You failed. Again."

Françoise blinked. Once. Slowly.

"Impossible."

"I assure you, Miss Moreau, it is not only possible, it is consistent. You have failed every English exam for the past two years. And the faculty has made it clear. If you do not improve your English comprehension, you will not be permitted to continue your degree."

The words settled like an insult in her stomach, twisting into something between outrage and sheer disbelief. She, Françoise Moreau, was perfect. She excelled at everything. The idea that some ridiculous, hideous, absurd language could stand in her way...

Her lip curled. "C’est une blague. A joke. I refuse."

"You have no choice, Miss Moreau."

And then, the real punishment was revealed.

"If you wish to continue your studies, you will be required to undertake an immersive two-week English language program... in London."

Her stomach turned.

London.

A shiver of pure horror ran through her flawless, sun-kissed skin. London. The land of ugly, pasty men. The land of rain. The land of food so disgusting it was almost an insult to call it food.

"No," she said simply, dismissing the idea with a wave of her delicate hand. "Non. I will not."

The professor smiled apologetically, but it was the smile of a man delivering a death sentence.

"Then, Miss Moreau, you will not graduate."

A crack of thunder rumbled outside.

Françoise exhaled sharply through her nose, a sound of disdain, of disgust, of absolute contempt.

London.

She had never been, and she already knew.

She was going to hate it.

She could already see it. Her future two weeks of pure suffering, trapped in that dreary, uncivilized island, surrounded by everything she despised.

Gone would be the beauty of Paris, the soft golden light spilling over idyllic streets, the scent of fresh bread and roasted chestnuts drifting through the air, the elegant murmur of French conversations, the effortless chic of the men and women alike. Paris was a city of grace, art, and style, where every step she took was a masterpiece, every glance in her direction a silent hymn to her perfection.

But in London?

Everything would be offensive.

The weather? A permanent state of damp misery. Grey skies, endless drizzle, the kind of cold that crept into one’s bones and refused to leave. The air itself would be thick with the stench of fish and chips, fried things soaked in grease, and the indistinct aroma of rain-drenched wool coats.

The food? Mon dieu, she would starve! These people thought baked beans on toast was a meal. They boiled their vegetables into grey mush. They slathered mint sauce onto perfectly innocent lamb. And their tea obsession! Why!? Where was the wine? The quality cheese? The delicate pastries?

The people? The men would be unbearable. Pale, awkward, fumbling with their ridiculous accents, droning on in their nasal, unpleasant voices, thinking that their stiff politeness counted as charm. They would stare at her, of course they would, but in the wrong way. Not with the suave admiration of a Frenchman, but with clumsy, nervous awe, as if they had never encountered true beauty before. And the women? Pfffft. The fashion? Non-existent. They wore shapeless, colourless sacks and practical shoes, as if femininity was something to be ashamed of. Their hair hung limp, their faces pale, and worst of all? They had no presence. No confidence. No allure. Just a sad, desperate attempt to blend into the background.

And the mere thought of having to spend two whole weeks - fourteen endless days - immersed in the English language? It was going to be a crime against her perfect, irresistibly plump, naturally pouting lips. French was poetry, elegance, music. English was a brick through a window. A mess of unnecessary letters, ridiculous endless nonsensical spelling abominations... And as for the way the natives spoke their ugly language! Flat. Monotone. Lacking passion. Just like everything else about them and their country.

She already knew. Everything about England, everything about London, would be an ordeal, a two-week-long punishment designed specifically to torment her.

Her only consolation? That, bien sur, she would endure it with her usual impeccable grace, exquisite beauty, and innate sense of superiority. And when she returned to Paris, she would have stories to tell. Stories of the ugliest city she had ever seen. Stories of the least attractive men in the world. Stories of the worst two weeks of her life.

-oOo-

When the dreaded day rolled around, Françoise arrived at the Eurostar terminal inside the Gare du Nord. She had seen no reason to make a special effort for the trip, and certainly not for her hosts. She simply met her normal standards in her presentation. This, naturally, meant that she was a masterpiece made flesh, a walking work of divine craftsmanship. She did not merely exist. She commanded the attention of all who had the privilege to breathe the same air as her. As she stood in the grand terminal in Paris, she was not just dressed. She was adorned, every stitch of fabric a deliberate tribute to the perfection that was her body.

She wore a perfectly tailored white silk blouse, the delicate fabric sculpted against the impossibly full, proud curves of her breasts, the gentle weight of the material settling against her smooth, flawless skin. The cut of the blouse was sublime, high enough to be elegant, yet precise enough to suggest the unapologetic magnificence of her large, firm, splendidly high bust.

Cinching her exquisite, wasp-thin waist, a high-waisted burgundy pencil skirt embraced her flawless curves, moulding like a second skin over the soft swell of her hips, accentuating the contrast between her narrow, delicate midsection and the sumptuous width of her divine femininity. The hemline ended just above the knee, the sleek material clinging to her long, sculpted thighs, a celebration of idealised proportions brought to life.

Her legs, so very long, toned yet effortlessly feminine, were encased in sheer, shimmering stockings, the kind that caught the light with every devastatingly graceful step she took. Cradling her feet, Louboutin heels, blood-red, sleek, weapons of elegance, elongating her already unreal silhouette, amplifying the way her hips swayed with an almost divine sensuality.

Her face defied reality. It openly challenged perceptions of what was possible in terms of human female beauty.

Her emerald green eyes were living jewels, hypnotic, alight with amusement and disdain, framed by thick, dark lashes that swept upward like a painter’s final, perfect stroke. Her lips, plush, perfectly heart-shaped, were painted in deep Parisian red, the colour of indulgence, seduction, confidence. When she smirked, and she smirked often, it was a work of art, the sharp curve of amusement tempered only by the overwhelming sensuality of her mouth.

Her hair, chestnut waves of pure luxury, cascaded in silken perfection down her back, bouncing with an effortless volume and glossiness that lesser women could only dream of achieving. Her neck, long and elegantly poised, led down to her collarbones, which peeked just enough through the open collar of her blouse to hint at the divine canvas beneath.

And then there was her scent. A fragrance so deliciously subtle, yet utterly inescapable. A blend of delicate French perfume and the intoxicating natural essence of her own flawless body. Soft, warm, luxuriously feminine. The very heat of her perfection gently lifted it into the air, surrounding her in an invisible aura of seduction. It filled the space around her, weaving into the senses of those nearby, invading them, lingering in their minds like a presence they could never escape. The English men who shuffled past her caught hints of it, their bodies reacting instinctively, a hopeless biological surrender to the overwhelming superiority of her being.

And then she moved. Not walked. Glided. Her hips rolled with a lazy, devastating confidence, her long, shapely legs carrying her forward with an effortless, fluid grace, as if the air itself were privileged to part for her passage. There was no hesitation, no awkwardness, no wasted movement. Each step was deliberate, sensuous, hypnotic, an unspoken declaration of power and femininity. The rhythmic click of her heels against the polished floor was a melody of dominance, the natural music of a woman who had never known what it was to be ignored.

She was untouchable, unapproachable, devastatingly above most others.

Amongst those others... so very much amongst those others... there were... them. The comically obviously English travellers who dared to pollute this space. The contrast was insulting. Pale, awkward tourists, ill-fitting jeans, scuffed trainers, their posture slumped with the weight of their own mediocrity. The men, oh, the men, were a tragedy. Awkwardly built, lacking grace, fumbling, their expressions a miserable mix of obliviousness and quiet desperation. Their postures weak, their bodies unimpressive, their clothing dull and uninspired. She could already feel their eyes crawling over her, but not in the confident, admiring way of a Frenchman. No, these Englishmen gawked, gaped, their jaws slack, their attraction clumsy, pathetic, embarrassing.

And the women? Mon dieu! Drowning in shapeless beige coats, so-called "practical" - another word for "ugly", as far as she was concerned - shoes, their hair limp, their faces devoid of style or grace. They were frumpy, colourless, utterly unremarkable, their presence so unimpressive that they seemed to fade into the very walls of the terminal itself. They lacked everything—poise, charm, sensuality, even the most basic understanding of how to carry themselves.

Françoise clicked her perfectly manicured nails against her designer handbag, her lips curling into a smirk of silent superiority.

London awaited. It did not deserve her beauty, her effortless style and grace.

With a glance of bored arrogance, Françoise approached the boarding gate, the very act of stepping forward an exhibition of elegance that no other woman in the terminal that morning could ever hope to replicate. With each step, her heels clacked assuredly, confidently against the polished floor, each click a note in the symphony of her movements, her hips swinging majestically, her large, round, firm breasts bouncing hypnotically to the same irresistible rhythm.

As she moved through the queue, time itself seemed to slow. She did not jostle, did not shuffle like the miserable herd of English travellers around her. No, she drifted, a vision of effortless grace and style, untouched by the mundane concerns of lesser beings, leaving minute traces of her intoxicating perfume-infused scent in the air behind her that stimulated the desires of even the Frenchmen in the queue. Their English counterparts, less accustomed to such exquisite multisensory experiences of femininity, struggled to hide their obvious arousal.

As she reached the platform, the murmurs around her faded, as though her beauty itself, aligned with her unshakable confidence, was reducing the surrounding crowd to a background of insignificance. Men stared, some in awe, others in helpless, silent surrender. Women tried not to look, their expressions twisted in something between envy and self-loathing. The train doors slid open. Françoise climbed on board.

The next time the doors opened, she would be in London. Unworthy, pitiful London.

-oOo-

The moment she stepped inside the carriage, it began. Eyes. Everywhere. Helpless, awkward, unworthy eyes. The soft click of her Louboutins against the sleek train floor shattered the dull murmur of the carriage. It was as if the very air inside stilled, rearranging itself to accommodate her presence, the sheer force of her beauty, her scent, her aura, spreading like perfumed conquest.

The English passengers were so depressingly predictable! Some men gawped instantly, their dull, unimpressive eyes snapping toward her with clumsy hunger, their mouths parting slightly, as if they had lost the ability to function entirely. Weak. Unworthy of her beauty. Others tried to be subtle, casting furtive glances over dog-eared newspapers, through the reflection of grimy windows, or beneath the pretence of checking their phones. Cowardly. Pathetic. Did they truly believe they could sneak glimpses of her face... her body... without her noticing?

And then there were the women. The moment their tired, uninspired faces registered her, the air between them crackled with resentment, jealousy, and insecurity. Their expressions tightened, their shoulders drew inward, their hands subconsciously tugging at their drab, ill-fitting clothes. One woman, wearing a trench coat so offensively beige it was practically an admission of failure, lowered her gaze immediately, a pitiful act of surrender to the sheer magnitude of Françoise’s superiority. She had not even taken her seat, and already, she had changed the entire dynamic of the carriage with her mere presence.

She moved through the aisle like a queen surveying conquered lands, the sway of her astonishingly perfect hips casting shadows of inadequacy upon the seated passengers. She did not rush, did not fumble, did not touch anything as she passed. While the others hunched, shuffled, clung desperately to armrests and luggage, she remained effortless, untouchable, poised.

She reached her seat, business class, of course, although, mon dieu, even this supposed "luxury" appeared ordinary. Lacklustre. The seats were wider, yes, but still... disappointing. A tragic attempt at sophistication, so very, very English in its mediocrity. She sighed, not in frustration, not in effort, but in subtle, casual condescension, before lowering herself into place with a fluid, graceful motion, her posture impeccable, her legs crossing in a slow, deliberate display of effortless elegance.

A thin, middle-aged man in an unfashionable, wrinkled suit and a loose tie had the misfortune of suddenly finding himself sitting opposite her. He was staring. Of course. His hand twitched as if he wanted to adjust his collar but had suddenly forgotten how. His eyes, small, dull, pitifully English, darted to her legs, to the impossible curves of her body, to her mouth, and then away, as if he had been burned by the pure, unbearable heat of her presence. She almost laughed.

She recognised the pattern. Men, when faced with something so vastly beyond them, usually react in two pathetic ways. Either they become insufferably flustered, clumsy, sweating, shifting uncomfortably, their words faltering and ridiculous, the very foundation of their weak masculinity crumbling under the sheer weight of the overwhelming beauty facing them. Or they stare, frozen, as their primitive instincts betray them, their faces flushed, their hearts pounding with something between arousal and absolute intimidation.

The man in the suit was clearly the latter. He gripped his newspaper too tightly, the paper crinkling under his fingers. He was holding his breath, his Adam’s apple twitching as he tried—so desperately—to compose himself. It was neither cute nor adorable nor flattering. It was pathetic. Françoise smirked, slow and devastating, letting her emerald gaze settle on him like a predator toying with a lesser creature. She tilted her head slightly, the cascading waves of her rich chestnut hair catching the soft train lights, the combined scent of her delicate perfume and her flawless feminine skin drifting toward him.

His lips parted slightly, his pupils dilated. She had barely done anything but sit down and he was already a ruined man. She uncrossed and recrossed her legs, an action so slow, so casually seductive, that she heard the near-silent hitch of his breath and saw the way his knuckles whitened against his crumpled newspaper. How... easy! She turned her gaze to the window instead, utterly uninterested in whether or not he survived the next two-and-a-quarter hours of his pitiful existence.

The train lurched into motion, departing Paris, leaving civilization behind. Françoise sighed once more. This time, out of pure disappointment. She had seen everything she needed to see. Her worst fears were already confirmed. She was trapped on a train full of unattractive, awkward, unsophisticated English people for the next two hours.

And at the end of that deeply unpleasant chore, London still awaited.

Truly, this was going to be the longest, most miserable two weeks of her life. She stared morosely at the French countryside streaking past the train window, ignoring the other passengers trying to steal glances at the reflection of her stunning, pouting face, the striking profile of her body and her long, flawless, immaculately-sculpted, sheer-stockinged legs. But even the beauty of nature could not bring her distraction and comfort.

Françoise was hungry. Not famished. She was too elegant to ever experience something so vulgar as desperation, but there was a distinct absence of the refined satisfaction she was accustomed to. Normally, she would have dined properly before travel, perhaps a delicate plate of freshly baked pastries, a slice of the most exquisitely aged cheese, a glass of wine to cleanse the palate. But no. The day’s indignities had conspired against her. And now, she was here, marooned on an English train, surrounded by English people, facing the horrifying realization that she would have to eat something from an English buffet-car.

She had put it off as long as possible, but the gnawing in her stomach could no longer be ignored. She rose from her seat with effortless grace, the subtle shift of her body sending another ripple of stolen glances through the carriage. She ignored them. She was on a mission. To find sustenance. And so, with all the poise of a queen descending from her throne, she drifted toward the so-called "buffet-car".

The moment she stepped inside, she knew. The smell struck her first—a tragic assault of mediocrity, an oppressive fog of lukewarm milky tea, cheap bread, and stale oil that seemed to have seeped into the very walls of the train. She winced. It was worse than she had feared. Behind the narrow counter, a man in a dull uniform stood, utterly unimpressive, bored, his posture slouched, his expression dead-eyed with resignation. He barely lifted his gaze as he lazily wiped a rag across the counter, a meaningless gesture that only spread the existing grime.

And then she saw them. The offerings. Or, rather, the insults to the very concept of food. Crisps. Bags and bags and bags of crisps. Thin, oily slices of over-salted cardboard, sitting in garishly coloured plastic packaging, each flavour more disgraceful than the last. "Cheese & Onion." "Prawn Cocktail." Prawn Cocktail? She nearly gagged. Pre-packaged sandwiches. Trapped behind a foggy plastic shield, stacked in miserable little triangles, their bread already dry, their fillings limp and flavourless. Egg mayonnaise? Tuna and sweetcorn? The thought alone made her shiver with revulsion. Further horrors lay in wait of discovery. Sausage rolls, sweating in their plastic prisons. Pale, lifeless pastries, their edges sagging, their contents an unidentifiable mush of disappointment. And, of course, the tea. The endless, miserable, milky tea, its weak aroma clinging to the very air, an offence to every sophisticated palette in the world.

Françoise stared, her expression frozen between horror and disbelief. Was this really what they considered food? Were they even human?! Her gaze flickered sideways—to the English passengers who were, to her utter astonishment, happily consuming these tragic excuses for sustenance. A man with a badly ironed shirt and an unfortunate face sat at a table, methodically chewing a soggy-looking ham sandwich, his expression entirely neutral, as if he was consuming nothing more than edible wallpaper paste. Across from him, a woman in a floral dress so offensively shapeless it was an act of violence against fashion itself was dipping a teabag in hot water, her expression one of pure contentment, as if this sad, beige ritual was something to be enjoyed.

Françoise nearly gasped. Were they... satisfied? She had known, intellectually, that the English had no concept of cuisine, but to see it in action, to witness their complete lack of expectation, their numb acceptance of food that should be illegal—it was too much. She studied them closely, as if examining an alien species, a mixture of scientific curiosity and unfiltered disgust twisting through her thoughts. What did this kind of food do to a person? Surely, it rotted them from the inside. Not just physically, but mentally! This was why they looked so terrible. Their pasty skin, their lank hair, their sallow complexions—how could one expect beauty when one lived on boiled vegetables and bread so white it contained no actual nutrients? This was why they moved so awkwardly. Their weak postures, their slouched shoulders, their complete lack of elegance. How could their bodies function properly when they were fed nothing but starch, sugar, and sadness? This was why they sounded so dreadful. Their flat, nasal voices, their clipped, graceless tones, their painfully dull accents... surely, this was the result of a lifetime of consuming nothing but boiled, bland tragedy. This was why their humour was so idiotic. Their constant need for self-deprecation, their obsession with misery and failure, their complete inability to project confidence. Surely, this came from generations of nutritional suffering.

She exhaled sharply through her nose, forcing herself to look away before the sight of yet another ugly awkward Englishman eating yet another depressing sandwich made her physically ill. She would not, could not, eat this. She would rather starve than allow such an insult to her body to pass her lips. She turned, gliding away from the counter, leaving the sad little English passengers to their pitiful meals, and returned to her seat.

As she sat, crossing her long, perfect legs with a controlled sigh, she made a decision. The moment she arrived in London, she would find the nearest French-owned-and-ran bistro and order enough food from its menu to banish the very memory of this tragic, culinary disgrace from her mind forever.

Across from her, the man in the wrinkled suit was still staring, still trying to process the sight, the scent, the sheer presence of her perfection. She ignored him. She had bigger concerns. Already the English had done her an injustice, trying to poison her with their beauty-destroying food.

And London still awaited.

Françoise was already suffering. The train itself was offensive—filled with the scent of cheap upholstery, the stale stench of packaged sandwiches, and the ever-present, suffocating fog of milky tea. But as she sat, her emerald gaze coolly studying her reflection in the window, a new, more vulgar assault approached. She smelled him before she saw him. Beer. Not the refined aroma of a well-aged Bordeaux, nor the delicate whisper of a finely crafted champagne. No. This was thick, crude, British beer, a cheap, bitter stench soaked into the sweat of unwashed fabric, clinging to stale breath, curling through the air like an offence against civilization itself.

And then—the voice. "’Ello, luv."

Françoise did not react. Not immediately. She let the words hang there, let them taint the air like the foul scent of his drink-drenched existence. A drunken Englishman. How predictable. He lurched forward, and finally, she turned. Her emerald gaze landed upon the creature who had dared to address her—and mon dieu, it was worse than she had imagined. His face was flushed pink with alcohol, nose and cheeks almost incandescent red, damp with sweat, his pores struggling under the weight of a lifetime of poor dietary choices. His hair was greasy, thin, an unfortunate patchwork of strands attempting to cling to an already vanishing hairline. His shirt, naturellement, was crumpled, creased beyond forgiveness, the cheap polyester fibres suffocating beneath a layer of spilled beer and the lingering remnants of some tragic pub meal. His breath, an especially displeasing mix of lager and fried food, came in shallow pants as he swayed slightly, his bloodshot eyes blinking unevenly, constantly attempting to focus on her.

And yet, despite every indication that he was a man who had been defeated by life itself, he had, somehow, reached the deluded conclusion that he could speak to her. "You French, then?" he slurred. "Need someone to show you around London?" A smirk stretched his bloated, unshaven face, revealing teeth that had lost their battle with tea-staining years ago.

Françoise let the moment stretch, as if considering his words. Then, slowly, luxuriously, she tilted her head—a small motion, but devastating in its effect. Her chestnut waves cascaded over one shoulder, catching the light, glossy, perfect. Everything this man was not. She let her gaze drag down his form, taking in every pathetic, offensive detail. The beer stains. The belly pressing against his shirt buttons. The desperate, glassy-eyed hope in his bloodshot stare.

Then, her lips parted, revealing a flash of her perfect feminine teeth, and she spoke. "Quoi?"

The drunken Englishman paused, as if trying to process the foreign word. His inebriated brain responded weakly, throwing the few tiny scraps of long-forgotten school French lessons it could find at his tongue. Incredibly, it seemed as if he still thought he was in with a chance of... something. "Er... voolay - voo..." he began, every syllable an insult to Rimbaud, Zola, Proust... to the majesty of the French language itself, "um... aveck... moi?"

She waited a few seconds, long enough for the silence to become awkward and then deeply uncomfortable. Then she leaned slightly forward, her blouse shifting just enough to remind everyone in proximity that perfection had a physical form, and it was hers. Her voice, softer than silk, smoother than the finest Parisian chocolate, slid through the tense silence like an imperial decree. "I think… you should rest. You are… what is the word…? Un moment..." She tapped one perfect nail against her lip, mock contemplation on her devastatingly beautiful face.

"Drunk?" suggested the man, with huge, inappropriately-satisfied grin.

"Repugnant." Françoise found the word she had been pretending to search for and delivered it as though passing a sentence of execution. She let the word settle, let it sink into his drunken, beer-soaked mind. He blinked, opened his mouth, perhaps to protest, perhaps to try one final, pitiful attempt at recovering his dignity, but it was already over. She had dismissed him, her gaze already returning to the window, her attention too valuable to be wasted further. Defeated, he staggered slowly, shamefully away down the carriage, carrying the smell of stale beer with him as he went, like the stench of failure itself, much like Françoise carried the smell of perfumed femininity.

She sighed. She had expected disappointment from England. She had not expected this level of tragedy before the train had even crossed the Channel. The English passengers stared, some in shocked admiration, some in second-hand embarrassment. Françoise crossed her perfect legs once more, and turned back to the window, as if already forgetting the creature who had dared to address her.

And London still awaited.

After what felt to Françoise like an age, the train entered its defining undersea tunnel, the sudden blackness that monopolised the windows an ominous portent of the impending moment of gloom when she would cross the line that marked the northernmost extent of her motherland. The moment she would be, against all her wishes, in England.

With nothing but cables to view out of the window, she turned her stunningly beautiful face momentarily back towards the interior of the carriage. Across the aisle sat a plain, uninspiring Englishwoman, one of those featureless, forgettable creatures who blended into the background of existence, leaving no impression, no legacy, nothing of value. Her face was a study in mediocrity, neither youthful nor aged, neither striking nor outright offensive, just... unremarkable. Her eyes lacked any kind of shine, their dull greyish hue reflecting nothing but the tiresome monotony of her existence. Her hair, limp and defeated, was tied back in a practical but lifeless ponytail, as though she had long ago given up on the idea of being beautiful. And yet, for some reason, she could not stop stealing glances at Françoise.

The target of this furtive attention sensed it immediately. The way the woman tried—desperately, pathetically, to restrain her gaze, to pretend she was not captivated, awed, utterly consumed by the presence of something apparently beyond her comprehension. But her posture betrayed her. She sat stiffly, her shoulders hunched, the cheap, mass-produced handbag in her lap clutched tightly, as if it might somehow protect her from the overwhelming reality of Françoise’s beauty. Every few moments, she would shift slightly, pretending to adjust her seat, or glance at the window, or check her watch. Pointless, pitiful distractions to disguise the truth. And yet, each time her gaze found its way back to Françoise, like a helpless insect drawn to a deadly, mesmerizing flame.

Françoise said nothing. She let her existence do the work. After a few minutes, the Englishwoman’s resistance broke. Her phone appeared, almost trembling in her hands, as she angled it just slightly too high. A hesitation, a breath held, a moment of guilt flickering in her dull eyes... And then, the faintest click of a camera shutter. Françoise did not react immediately. Instead, she let the moment stretch, let the woman sweat, let her believe, for just one, fleeting instant, that she had escaped detection. She waited, poised, effortless, allowing the woman to feel the weight of her own guilt, the suffocating realization that she might've been caught.

And then, without bothering to turn her head to look directly at the Englishwoman, without even the slightest acknowledgment of effort at all, Françoise spoke. Her voice dropped into the kind of liquid, velvety purr that could have been mistaken for sensuality, if not for the razor-edged condescension woven into every syllable. "C’est pathétique, non?"

The words landed like a slow, deliberate blade, sliding into the suffocating silence of the carriage. Françoise took a single breath of a pause, enough to let the woman realize what was happening. And then she delivered her final, merciless blow. "To steal a photograph of a woman… because you stupidly dream of being able to look like her."

The Englishwoman froze. Then, immediately, completely, irrevocably, she crumbled. Her face ignited in red, blotchy, panicked, mortified beyond salvation as her hand shot to her phone, clutching it like a lifeline, fumbling in pure, undiluted terror to lock the screen, to erase the evidence of her failure. "I—I wasn’t..."

A stammer, a plea, a desperate attempt at salvation. But Françoise let her know it was already too late, her stunning face, along with the gaze of her sparkling eyes, turned away, her interest evaporated like morning mist. She had returned to the window, as if the woman no longer existed. The dismissal was absolute, crushing and irreversible. The Englishwoman sank into her seat, her posture folding inward, her very soul retreating into itself, crushed under the weight of her own inadequacy, exposed so effortlessly. Françoise sighed softly, the sound of bored superiority.

Around half an hour later, a faint shift in the cabin’s atmosphere told Françoise everything she needed to know. The train, smooth and effortless in its passage beneath the sea, had been enveloped in darkness for what felt like an eternity—a merciful abyss, shielding her from the inevitable tragedy that lay beyond. Now, the iconic tunnel’s embrace had released them. The train had burst out, back into the open air. Not into brilliant sunshine, but into some kind of poor imitation of it. A pale, washed-out... almost apologetic version of daylight. They had crossed beneath La Manche. And now, they were on the other side. On land. In, to Françoise's palpable disgust, England. Where she had been sent, against her will. Sentenced to two weeks' punishment. Harshly... no... cruelly exiled for her entirely understandable disdain for learning a stupid, ugly language.

She made the unfortunate error of glancing upwards through the window. The sky was immediately offensive. A murky, grey expanse, thick with the promise of perpetual drizzle, utterly devoid of the golden brilliance of Parisian sunlight. Her stunning emerald gaze flicked downwards in sheer revulsion. Another unfortunate error. The landscape was a soggy smear of green and brown, the fields drowned in moisture, the trees twisted and forlorn, their branches reaching out in defeat, as if even nature itself had given up. The buildings, scattered in the distance seemed low, sad, and unimpressive. Dull slabs of brick, their windows tiny and miserable, as though the architects themselves had been ashamed to design them.

Françoise exhaled through her nose, a long, deliberate breath of pure resignation. England. It was worse than she had imagined. Even the air was wrong. It carried a strange dampness, an almost musty weight, as if it had been filtered through centuries of tragic weather and bad decisions. The train roared through a small station at speed. Françoise wondered how the English could make even an indistinguishable blur appear miserable. The station came and went within seconds. Yet, somehow, that was enough time for her to catch the unmistakable smell of tea. That infernal, omnipresent, milky plague. It seeped through the train, an invisible fog of boiled leaf-water, clinging to clothes, upholstery. Even conversation. It was not the refined, fragrant tea of Asian ceremony, nor the delicate floral blends found in Parisian salons. No, this was English tea. Boiled into oblivion, drowned in milk, utterly joyless. She could feel it, thick on her tongue, a phantom offence against good taste.

Weirdly, the passengers reacted as if this assault on the senses was normal. A man near the window sighed contentedly, gazing at the endless stretches of damp nothingness as if he had just returned to a land of splendour and majesty. A woman in a floral blouse so offensively frumpy that Françoise nearly gasped, turned to her husband, grinning, as if there was anything worth smiling about. Françoise watched them with the cool detachment of an outsider witnessing the customs of a lesser civilization.

This? This was what they cherished? She turned back to the window, but not to admire the view. No. She was memorizing this moment, this precise, tragic second when she truly understood the extent of their delusion. The English did not know how miserable they were. That, she realized, was the greatest tragedy of all. Françoise shifted, crossing her long, perfect legs, letting the soft sheen of her stockings catch the weak English light, as if reminding the universe that beauty still existed, despite her surroundings. She adjusted the cuff of her silk blouse, allowing a single bare wrist to catch the air, a silent contrast against the uninspired backdrop outside.

The train continued forward, cutting through the endless gray. Towards London. And Françoise was ready to hate every moment of it.

It wasn't long before the mood in the carriage began to shift. A growing sense of the approaching need to gather belongings and stretch legs. The anticipation of arrival. The train pressed onward, its smooth, mechanical grace at complete odds with the rapidly deteriorating scenery beyond the window. Françoise had not expected much, but still... This? Endless rows of tired, identical houses, small, cramped, uninspired brick boxes, huddled together like shivering peasants, their roofs sagging under the weight of decades of miserable weather and bland existence. Patches of green that barely deserved the name 'parks'. Thin, scraggly trees, their leaves an uninspired shade of lifelessness, the grass uneven, speckled with patches of dirt and neglect. Graffiti. Not artful rebellion, but lazy, pointless scribbles, as if even the vandals of outer London lacked the ambition to do something beautiful.

The city was announcing itself, but not with the grandeur of Paris, with its golden avenues and majestic architecture. No. London arrived in a slow, dreary wave of concrete, smog, and mediocrity. Françoise tilted her head slightly, exhaling softly, letting the disappointment settle deep within her. This was it. This was what the British considered a capital.

She did not need to look away from the window to know what was happening around her. The English passengers stirred, sitting up straighter, as if this grey, lifeless sprawl of concrete and congestion was something to be admired. A middle-aged man yawned, stretched, and muttered, "Nearly there," in a tone of tired satisfaction, as if they were returning to something welcoming, something warm, instead of this eternal miserable dampness. A woman dug through her bag, pulling out a folded newspaper, preparing herself for whatever dull, unremarkable routine awaited her beyond the train doors.

Françoise observed them with cool detachment. They saw nothing wrong. They had been born into this, raised in this, conditioned to believe that this was what a city should be. They did not look at the sky and see the permanent stain of gray. They did not see the drab, lifeless streets and wonder why the very concept beauty had been so utterly abandoned. They did not question why everything felt so… sad. So suffocating. So entirely without elegance. They were blind to it. And that, she decided, was their greatest flaw. It was not just that England was ugly. It was that the English did not know it, did not see it. They had accepted this, loved this, embraced this with their dull, uninspired hearts. She adjusted herself, smoothing the fabric of her skirt, crossing her legs slowly, effortlessly, as if to cleanse herself of the city’s dull presence before she even arrived.

The train began to slow. Françoise sighed, closing her eyes for a brief moment, savouring the final moments before she would have to endure what lay ahead. Paris was behind her. London was here. And it was exactly as awful as she had expected. They lurched to a final, inevitable halt. A soft jolt ran through the carriage, followed by the muted hiss of hydraulic brakes, a mechanical sigh of disappointment, as if the train itself regretted reaching this miserable destination. An automatic announcement crackled to life, a clipped, dreary English voice informing passengers of their arrival. "Welcome to London King’s Cross. Please mind the gap when leaving the train."

"Mind the gap," Françoise sneered internally. "Of course." So typically English, to issue warnings instead of creating solutions. But she had no time to dwell on their endless incompetence. Because now, she was truly, painfully, unforgivably hungry. However, she did not rush to stand, as the English passengers did, fumbling, gathering their sad little bags, stretching their uninspired limbs, sighing as if their lives held any significance at all. A man bumped his suitcase into someone else’s legs, muttering an automatic, half-hearted "Sorry" without even making eye contact. A woman wrestled with her coat, her movements graceless, clumsy, as though dressing herself were an unsolvable puzzle. The passengers shuffled forward, a herd of damp, beige, exhausted creatures, pushing themselves toward the next phase of their grey, unhappy existences.

Meanwhile, Françoise remained seated, calm, composed. Waiting. She watched them struggle. They wanted to be first. They needed to get off, as though desperate to continue their featureless lives. Only once the worst of them had cleared, once the most desperate had scurried away like frightened rodents, did Françoise gracefully rise from her seat, smoothing down her immaculate silk blouse, adjusting her skirt with the barest flick of her manicured fingers. She stepped into the aisle, moving with such effortless poise that a man, already fumbling with his suitcase, froze in place, his eyes going wide at the vision before him.

She ignored him. She ignored all of them. They were not worth her attention. As she stepped onto the platform, London revealed itself fully. The air was immediately offensive. A heavier dampness than before, not fresh and cool, but stale, as though the city itself was sweating. She wrinkled her perfect nose at the scent of bodies, old stone, and the faintest, ever-present smog, an invisible weight that clung to the lungs. And everywhere there were voices, the flat, grating tones of English conversation, words spoken without music, without elegance, without beauty.

King’s Cross was everything she had expected it to be. Grey. Crowded. Indifferent. "The architecture is trying so hard," she mused, but it could not compete with the elegance of Gare du Nord. Somehow, despite the huge scale, it lacked the grandeur of Parisian design. There was no warmth, no artistry. Just steel and stone, tired travellers, and the eternal misery of English commuters.

But the greatest, most unforgivable crime of all were the food stalls. Now that hunger had settled deep within her, an ache that could not be ignored, demanded her immediate attention. She had not eaten since Paris, and that had been hours ago. She turned, her gorgeous green eyes sweeping across the concourse, searching for salvation. She found a sad sandwich shop which had the cheek to give itself a French name as if that would somehow elevate its soulless glass display filled with sad, lifeless offerings to a level of acceptability. Next door, a chain shop that clearly focussed on selling endless magazines and dreary looking books, but which also presented a few shelves stacked with bags of crisps and plastic-wrapped chocolate bars, as if food itself were not so much an afterthought, but something to be avoided, or at best, substituted. Substituted for, well.. de la merde!

The horrors continued. Another chain outlet, ridiculously claiming to be a "baker" that emitted the unmistakable stench of lukewarm sausage rolls and disappointment. Brightly-coloured, plastic-looking, greasy fried chicken outlets, making their own, unique contribution to the polluted air with endless wafts of bad frying and stale cooking oil. Françoise stared. She had to blink, once, slowly. Not out of exhaustion, but out of pure, unfiltered disbelief. This was what they ate? This? Plastic-wrapped shame. Deep-fried regret. Soggy bread stuffed with mediocrity. She pressed her lips together, composing herself before the nausea could fully take hold.

And yet, just like on the train, the English around her seemed entirely unbothered, clustering around the horrendous offerings that the various shops sold, stuffing unpleasant products into their mouths, chewing without expression. Without passion. Everything about their expressions, their actions, seemed to say - or perhaps to awkwardly mumble - that they were fine with this. It was adequate to them, and that meant their expectations were being satisfactorily met. Françoise wondered if any of them had ever tasted real food, ever experienced the delicate textures of freshly baked bread, the explosion of flavour from a fine cheese, the perfect balance of a dish prepared by someone with actual talent?

"This is not a country," she thought to herself as she took in her surroundings. "It is a condition."

What was on offer all around her were not "meals." It was sustenance for people who had given up on pleasure. The kind of food that erased ambition, that numbed the senses, that made people tolerate lives they should have abandoned. But her hunger was gnawing. And it would only get worse until it was addressed. She exhaled sharply, adjusting her handbag over her shoulder. She metaphorically held her nose, wishing she could do it for real as she lowered herself just long enough to enter the least awful looking establishment. The menu was an abhorrence. The most promising items on it were unappetising. The worst made her fight not to retch.

The other customers were ugly and poorly-groomed. They slouched in their seats, dressed as if they had made a conscious effort to offend the eyes of the world. Even the waiter moved like he was dragging his body with every step, his uniform drab, creased, and stained. In desperation, Françoise ordered a salad. It arrived, poorly-presented, shoddily prepared, an apology on a plate. A cowardly culinary insult, limp, bland. Uninspired. She ate it because she had to, paid - again because she had to, as charging for such an abysmal effort seemed a crime to her - and left as quickly as she could. She shuddered at the thought of a whole two weeks of having to chose between forcing down equally awful food, if that could even be called "food", or starving.

There were many things Françoise despised about England already. The ugliness of the people, the uninspired architecture, the tragic food and the oppressive, eternal dampness of the air. She immediately added another item to her growing list as she entered the Underground station to travel to the place her University had arranged for her to stay. The signs led her downward, into the depths of the city, an underworld beneath an already dim and dreary surface-world. Françoise was sure she could hear the endless descending escalator groaning under the weight of the tired, broken, uninspired masses of London. The walls lined with offensively beige, purely functional tiles, appeared to be declaring war on beauty itself. And the smell! A layered assault of stale air, warm bodies, the lingering metallic tang of ozone, and the distant but ever-present stench of fried food.

By now, she was not even surprised to see that the locals did not seem to notice the unpleasantness that surrounded them as they moved forward, in their hoards, expressionless, dead-eyed, accepting the hideousness of everything as part of their miserable existences. Even the inanimate contraptions were cold, ugly, uninviting. The same unpleasant font, even more offensive to the eyes on a digital screen, offering fares that made no sense and zones that blurred together in a cruel joke against logic. Françoise stared at the ticket machine for a moment, her lips curling slightly in disdain. She worked it out eventually, and carefully, but still with a ballerina's grace, made her way through the filthy barrier, taking care not to let any part of her clothing, or even her suitcase or handbag, touch the sides, as if she feared contact carried the risk of becoming infected with poor fashion sense, or something even worse, such as a tolerance of crisps.

The platform was a tragedy, packed uncomfortably with people standing in silent misery, staring blankly at the digital screens, as they waited. After a few minutes, a train, painted, of course, in the most dull shade of grey possible, rattled into the station as if it, too, wanted to be anywhere else. The doors slid open and as the crowd around her began to robotically surge forward, Françoise hesitated for the first time since arriving in England. Inside the train, people were packed together, pressed against one another, shoulders hunched, faces blank with suffering. The air was thick with heat, breath, damp wool, and desperation. All The seats were already taken, filled with bored, tired commuters, their heads lolling against the windows, their hands gripping their bags like lifelines.

Reluctantly, she stepped inside. She was forced to stand with her suitcase, enduring the unwanted closeness of strangers. A man bumped into her shoulder and Françoise turned angrily. He stammered an apology, to which Françoise responded by letting her gaze burn into him for a excruciating second before wordlessly turning away. She could feel the gazes of several men of all ages ogling her stunning face, her beautiful body, so well displayed by her perfect poise. All of them cowards who quickly flicked their eyes to the floor or the ceiling whenever she looked their way, scared of being caught staring. "They behave like they have never seen actual beauty before," she thought, slightly sickened, "Half hypnotised, half terrified. And wholly pathetic!"

It had been a horrible first hour in the city, during which all her very worst preconceptions had been confirmed. And from that low point, things just got worse. She hated the hotel. Not because she had expected luxury from an establishment booked by her University. Besides, this was England, after all. Excellence was simply not within its nature. But still… mon dieu. The place was a tragedy of poor design and misplaced ambition. A monument to mediocrity. The lobby was small, its beige walls lined with the kind of uninspired generic landscapes often found in waiting rooms and dentists' offices. The floor was carpeted, a mistake in any country, but a crime in one so damp as England. A receptionist greeted her with the dead-eyed politeness of someone who had given up many years ago was now going through the motions in an almost zombie-like manner.

And then... she found her room. The door creaked when she opened it—as if its hinges were moaning at the misery of their environment. The bed was too small, the pillows too flat, the sheets crisp in that way that suggests stiffness rather than comfort. A small, dirty window overlooked an ugly, narrow street, with grey pavements along which shuffled a never-ending slow-moving river of people who had long since accepted that beauty of any kind was not for them. The bathroom was best-described as barely functional. The water pressure was a particular insult, a weak, pitiful drizzle, barely enough to wet her skin when she turned on the shower. The obligatory complimentary tiny toiletries smelled aggressively of synthetic lavender, as if the hotel was trying to mask its own failures with cheap fragrance. And even though the tiles had been scrubbed clean, nothing could erase the feeling that thousands of miserable English travellers had stood in this exact space before her.

Worst still, were the breakfast offerings. She braced herself the first morning, thinking she now knew what to expect. The hotel kitchen staff somehow still managed to find ways to disappoint her. Deeply. Coffee so weak and flavourless that even with a cup held to her lips, centimetres beneath her nostrils, she could still smell the other guests' hateful milk-drowned tea, fighting with the odour of fried fat for domination of what passed for the air in the room. No actual, proper bread. Just toast. Tasteless, mass-produced. Synthetic. Grey bacon and greyer sausages that she avoided in the same way she would have avoided a bottle labelled "poison".

And yet... the unspeakable breakfasts were the highlight of each day. The least bad experience. She could have predicted what turned out to be, by far, the nadir of every loathsome day of her stay. But even in her most pessimistic predictions she had not anticipated the sheer, endless misery of the daily, morning-till-evening lessons that made up the intensive English language course. The reason for her unwanted visit.

It was the same classroom every day, a plain, uninspiring little box of a room, its walls painted in the dullest shade of brown-green imaginable. The chairs were uncomfortable, the tables scratched, the windows small, allowing only the weakest hints of daylight to seep in. A stale scent of paper, instant coffee and dust hung in the air, as if the very essence of English academia was one of mild decay and wasted ambition. And then, of course, there was the teacher. A middle-aged Englishwoman, round-faced, enthusiastic in the way that only the truly passionless can be. She wore floral-patterned blouses, the kind that screamed mediocrity, the kind that suggested she had no greater ambitions in life than to instruct foreigners in the horrors of the English language. Her voice was shrill, nasal, every vowel stretched out in that uniquely graceless way that only an English accent could achieve. Worst of all, the woman insisted on speaking slowly, as if the problem was Françoise’s comprehension, as opposed to the real culprit, the inherent ugliness of the language itself.

"So the correct sentence would be 'The weather in England is very unpredictable!'" she might drone. "Françoise, can you repeat that for me?"

Françoise’s stunningly attractive full lips barely moved as she mumbled "Zee wezz-air… in… Eeng-land… is… pfffft..." The class waited. The teacher waited. Françoise sighed. "Un-pre-deect-ah-bull."

"Ah, not quite!" responded the teacher, as if Françoise actually cared. "'Un-pre-dict-a-ble.'" Françoise’s emerald eyes blinked, once, very slowly.

"It is… an abomination." she declared, under her breath, but loud enough to be heard by many of the other students who tittered with laughter. The teacher sighed. And the lesson dragged on. And on. Grammar drills. Endless pages of rules that made no sense. Spelling exercises. "Why do they need so many illogical combinations to make the same, ugly sounds? There were also listening tests. Françoise did not need to listen — she already hated every word. Listening to them again merely served to confirm the fact.

On one occasion, the instructor thought it would be a good idea to go around the class, pupil by pupil, asking each to express their impressions of London. Françoise seized her turn as an opportunity to showcase her distaste rather than any linguistic ability. "I am afraid..." she sneered, "I do not have ze words... in your... how you say... 'language of suffering.'" The class laughed again. The teacher sighed once more. And the misery continued.

Every afternoon, they were forced to do role-playing activities. A cruel, repetitive game where the students had to pretend to be English. "Let’s practice ordering food in a restaurant!" declared the teacher, in her simultaneously passionless and insincerely enthusiastic way. "Françoise, what would you like to order?" she asked when it was the stunningly beautiful Parisian student's time to be tested. A long, heavy silence followed.

Françoise lifted her gaze, letting it settle on the teacher with unbearable slowness. "Do you want... that I lie?" she asked, drily.

The teacher laughed weakly. "No, no, just pretend you’re in a lovely little café in London!"

Françoise sighed deeply, resting her chin against her hand. "Zen I order... an aeroplane ticket back to France."

The sense of relief each day when the classes ended, was matched only by the sense of disappointment brought on by each evening. This was free time. When the students could do whatever they wanted. Most of the rest of the class saw the hours before sleep as "fun time". To Françoise, "fun" and "enjoyment" were what she had left behind, in Paris.

London awaited her each night, stretching itself before her like an endless sea of tragic experiences. She dined in a few fine restaurants, spending her wealthy parents' money with the lack of thought of one who has never had to earn. Of course, even in those establishments, she was disappointed. A fish dish that cost more than many people earned in a day was barely even acceptable. An expensive steakhouse produced meat that lacked the delicate tenderness and perfectly-judged seasoning she was used to at home. And the most heinous betrayal of all. A bistro that went to huge lengths to disguise itself as French, only for the first bite of her starter to reveal the horrible truth: it was run by English chefs. Such blatant sacrilege!

And everywhere, everywhere, all evening, the smell of beer. She walked through the nocturnal streets, past the grand but lifeless architecture, past the people who scurried through the rain, past the ever-present haze of mediocrity. She stood on Westminster Bridge one evening, looking at the city lights, realising that millions of English were already in their bland homes, content in their own dull lives.

The other students, perhaps thinking her amusing snide remarks in class were an indication that she might be someone entertaining to hang out with, perhaps simply wanting to be near someone so effortlessly stylish and indescribably beautiful, invited her to come out clubbing. Françoise did not want to go with them. It was obvious that the male pupils only saw such outings as a prelude to a night spent getting acquainted with her perfect lips, her glorious breasts, her firm round thighs and, most of all, what lay between them. None of them attracted her sufficiently for her to consider inviting them to her room. Besides, the idea of an English nightclub, rammed with English people, English music, and English drinks, was about as appealing as sacrificing her evenings for extra language lessons. But, with nothing better to do after an invariably disappointing evening meal than lie on the uncomfortable bed in her horrid hotel room, she let the other students persuade her.

"You have to experience London nightlife!" they chirped, as if the very concept was something worth enduring. And so, with immeasurable reluctance, Françoise allowed herself to be dragged into the neon-lit underbelly of English social life. She already knew she would hate it. And, as always, she was right. The moment she stepped inside the first club, she knew. The music was deafening, but not in the powerful, sensual, intoxicating way that it was in Parisian clubs, where the rhythm pulled you in, where the bass wrapped around you like silk. This was English music. Blunt, aggressive, repetitive. Loud for the sake of being loud. Voices shouting meaningless lyrics over a soulless beat. No elegance, no seduction, no artistry. Not music, just noise.

And yet, the English danced. Well, they said they were dancing. The people on the dance-floor moved, but there was no grace to it. They flailed, they jumped, they jerked and they staggered. Young men in wrinkled shirts, their faces already glistening with sweat, threw themselves into the music like fools, fists pumping in some grotesque ritual of misplaced masculinity. Young women in too-tight dresses and cheap heels wobbled as they tried to stay upright, their expressions stuck on a setting somewhere between excitement and drunken regret. Françoise watched from the edge of the dance floor, her arms folded across her wonderful chest, her expression unreadable. Eventually, one of the other students pulled her toward the bar. The smell of spilled beer and desperation seemed to grow as they got closer. Sticky counter-tops awaited, shattered ice, the clatter of cheap glasses. Drunken voices shouting orders, hands slamming against the bar, as if volume was the only way to communicate in this country. The stench of lager nearly made her vomit.

She ordered a cocktail. Something simple, something elegant. And yet, when it arrived, she knew instantly it had been made by an Englishman. The proportions were wrong. The balance of flavours was non-existent. The garnish was lazy, an afterthought, a tragedy in citrus form. She took a single sip. Her expression did not change. She merely placed the glass back onto the bar and did not touch it again for the rest of the evening.

Inevitably, men began to notice her. It was impossible for them not to. She was a vision of effortless perfection in a sea of mediocrity. She didn't need to speak, or move. She was simply there. And that was enough. At first, they stared from a distance, then with growing, drunken confidence they nudged their friends, whispered in their hideous language - even whispers sounded harsh in English - as they decided who would be foolish enough to approach her.

It wasn't long before one of them managed to scrape together the courage. He was tall, but not in a way that mattered. His shirt was too tight, as if he were trying to compensate for a lack of personality with a desperate display of biceps. His smile was forced, his air of confidence a thin mask over the unmistakable scent of insecurity. "Hey, love... haven’t seen you here before!" She could tell he was finding it difficult to address his cliched words to her eyes, fighting to resist the urge to flicker his eyes downward and feast on the glorious vision her her chest. Françoise turned her gaze to him, slow, deliberate, devastating. Her emerald eyes swept over him once, assessing, categorizing, rejecting. She let the silence stretch.

Finally, she spoke. "Non. You have not. And you will not again in the future." Then she turned away, making it abundantly clear that the conversation was over. He had been dismissed.

Despite the awfulness of everything that evening, Françoise let herself be talked into visiting another club a few nights later. Not because the unpleasantries of the first experience had diminished in her mind, but because the prospect of spending the hours in her hotel room instead was, she decided, even worse.

The music was just as bad. Just as loud, just as... unsexy. The dancing, she quickly judged after an imperious sweep of the floor with her lovely green eyes, was... somehow... even less graceful, even less fluid, even less attractive. The shouted conversations in English sounded more like a demolition site than the expressions of individuality and passion she would expect in an equivalent, albeit much more stylish - obviously - venue in Paris. However, the place did have a single saving grace. The bar stocked wine. French wine. Mediocre, unremarkable French wine. At a price that would have bought her something exceptional back home. But, even the sheer humdrum ordinariness of the wine could not diminish the fact that it was better, so very, very much better, than anything else. She finished her glass.

Françoise stared icily, disapprovingly, at the various men she spotted stealing lustful looks at her. She flatly turned down a couple of deeply unattractive, badly-dressed, graceless, hopeless males who, for reasons she could not even begin to fathom, seemed to believe they were capable of flirting with, or even - she shuddered at the mere thought - seducing her. They were walking apologies masquerading as real men, and their approaches left a nasty taste in her mouth. She countered that with another glass of the bar's nondescript French wine, enjoying the glow it seemed to radiate in her sculpted, flat belly.

The other students who had brought her to the club wanted to dance, to join with the hideous, jerky throng. Françoise turned down their invitations to follow them onto the floor, and instead, passed the time coldly observing, silently awarding each of her cohort a score out of ten for their gyrations. Most of them she rated with negative numbers. She gave an Italian girl from the group her highest mark of deux virgule cinq, awarding her an extra half point for at least trying. It was not her fault, Françoise mused, magnanimously, that she had so little work with. She rewarded her silent, internalised generosity with another glass of wine.

Now she was relaxed. Not drunk, but warm, loose-limbed, amused in a way that she had not been since arriving in this country. And that was when he approached. The one Englishman in a million. Françoise had turned down many men that evening. Some repulsive, some merely dull. One or two had even been almost tolerable... until they spoke. But this one was different. He was tall, broad in the shoulders, and lean in a way that suggested he had some vague understanding of physical fitness. His hair was dark, slightly tousled, but not unkempt. His jawline sharp, his skin clear. His clothes... mon dieu! His clothes were not entirely offensive. A crisp shirt, well-fitted. Dark trousers, expensive leather shoes that were not an insult to her vision. No ridiculous, ostentatious wrist-watch. No tacky jewellery.

His voice wasn't nasal or flat. It was almost smooth. It could possibly pass for confident, even. Not immediately repellent, for once, even speaking English, the language of dispassion. His smile was... not entirely unattractive as he approached.

"You look like you’re waiting for someone who will never arrive." he said.

Françoise blinked. She was almost shocked. It was not a terrible line. Not the usual, witless "Do you come here often?" or "Where are you from?" or "You look French" or any of the cringe-worthy, pathetic attempts at flattery that had been thrown her way. She hesitated for a moment.

"Let me buy you a drink whilst you're waiting," he offered, warmly, with a sense of timing that she had to admit was far from clumsy.

"Per'aps," she murmured, the single word silken, drawn out, an invitation wrapped in ambiguity. "If it is the right drink." The glass by her hand still contained traces of what it had previously been filled with. More than enough of a clue when considered in conjunction with her thick accent.

He ordered two glasses of the French wine. Then introduced himself. He had one of those boring English names... Brian or Ryan or something... she didn't register it fully. He asked her questions. Not too many, not too intrusive, about her. They drained their glasses. He offered to buy another round, and she did not refuse. For the first time since leaving Paris, her thoughts were not full of distaste and disgust.

And so, when he leaned in, she let him. The kiss was OK. Not great... not one of those fabulous explosions of wild passion that she had experienced in the clubs of Paris. Just OK. His hand found her narrow waist, fingers pressing into the silk of her blouse, the curve of her body. Again his touch was no better than acceptable, competent. Not magical or breath-taking. But not unacceptable. The wine swirled in her brain.

"You're so beautiful," he whispered.

"For an Englishman, you are quite nice," she murmured. They finished their drinks.

"I should go back to my hotel now," she announced, giving him a now-or-never moment to see how he would use it. He leant in for another, reasonably competent kiss.

"I can accompany you, if you like," he smiled. He couldn't hide the obvious fact that he wanted nothing more in all the world than for her to say she would, indeed, like that. But he managed to keep the desperation, the yearning, sufficiently hidden not to repel her. He also managed not to say or do anything catastrophic on the way to her hotel. Or as they climbed the stairs to her floor and traversed the corridor to her room.

And so, for one night, in an act of pure indulgence, Françoise allowed an Englishman into her bed. She was not expecting the poetry of French seduction, the artistry, the effortless understanding of touch, of rhythm, of anticipation. She did not receive it. Instead, foreplay was the same level of just-about-acceptable, barely-competent, scraping-a-pass-mark-by-a-single-percent as the kissing at the club had been. Just enough for her to tolerate, to allow, progression. He was gentle, respectful, attentive, yet somehow very English, terrified of doing something improper, desperate to prove himself a 'modern gentleman'. He took his time, not because he was skilled, but because he had been taught that slowness equalled care. He watched her closely, responding to her movements as if checking for permission at every stage. She was grateful that he did not speak in the moment. She had already endured enough English words for one lifetime.

He managed to provoke a response from her body. A small, timid orgasm that was almost embarrassed to exhibit itself too openly, and faded quickly as though the pleasant feelings it had briefly unleashed were something to be ashamed of... a dirty little secret that needed to be hid away, out of sight, at the first possibly opportunity. An English orgasm.

Françoise had given him something rare, something the rest of his countrymen could only dream of experiencing. Her body. Her sexuality. He had given her his care, his attention, his adequate body, his adequate sexual organ. She had wanted all that, plus fire, as a bare minimum.

"Of course," she thought, as they lay in the dim light of her uninspiring hotel room, her naked body half-draped in the dull, scratchy sheets, her perfect skin far too exquisite for the setting, "being English, he had no fire to give."

His breathing began to slow beside her as he recovered, his body warm, his energy spent. There was a silence that stretched between them, not unpleasant, but pregnant with the weight of what had just transpired, what they had both just shared.

And then he spoke. "That was brilliant!"

Françoise felt the last of the remnants of pleasant sensation evaporate from her perfect body. For a long moment, she did not react. Her irresistible full lips parted slightly. Not in pleasure, but in pure, unfiltered disbelief. Her green eyes blinked, once, very slowly. Then, finally, she turned her head, her gaze settling on him with an unreadable expression.

"Brilliant?" she sought confirmation that he had truly used the word.

He smiled, oblivious, foolishly unaware of the gravity of his crime. "Yeah. Really good."

Françoise felt something in her soul wither and die. "Really good." "Brilliant." As if he had just finished a well-made cup of tea, if such a thing could exist. As if he had just watched a decent film. As if he had merely played an above-average round of golf. Not "breathtaking" or "exquisite" or "magical" or "unforgettable". Brilliant. The least sensual word in the English language. A word that belonged to exam results, to football matches, to casual compliments about sandwiches. Not to this. Not to her.

Françoise turned away from him, her back now exposed, a landscape of flawless skin that he no longer deserved to look at. She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and exhaled with a slow, deliberate finality. This had been a mistake. Not because he was unattractive. Not because he had been unkind, or sexually incompetent. But because he had proved, in the end, that he was utterly, inescapably... English. Utterly... no, chronically... lacking in passion, in verve, in style. She did not doubt that he would remember her forever. She also knew with equal certainty that she would forget him by the time the first light of grey, damp day crept apologetically and awkwardly over the ugly street outside. He wrote his telephone number on a piece of paper, and made a point of showing her that he was leaving it on the table in her room. When he leant in for a goodbye kiss, she turned slightly, offering him a cheek, rather than her lips. Then, with a slightly too-prolonged backwards glance - or stare - at her stunning face and figure, he exited. The instant the door closed behind him, she screwed up the note bearing his contact detail and tossed it contemptuously into the rubbish bin.

The remaining days and evenings, even the nights, passed tortuously slowly. Like a prison sentence. Françoise had been counting the hours until going home since her train had pulled out of Paris, 13 days ago. At times she had thought she would not get through the ordeal of England and its language and people. At times she thought the moment would never arrive where she would finally, finally... finally... look at her watch and realise that in less than twelve hours, she would be back in civilisation, breathing Parisian air once again. Enfin!

Tomorrow, in the morning, she would leave this metropolis of gloom, and return to the City of Light. It seemed a lifetime had passed since she had arrived in this apology of a nation. But, she had survived. The awful English lessons were behind her. The last supper in London had been endured... barely. The final evening in this wretched vast conurbation was almost done. She had walked, aimlessly, around the area where her hotel was located, a faceless part of London, a place that could have been anywhere in this drab, uninspired city, taking one more look at how dreary and dull and unstylish everything and everyone appeared. Not because she needed any confirmation by that point. She studied the awfulness of it all purely so that Paris would seem even more beautiful, even more full of passion and life, by comparison, when she stepped off the train in time for lunch. A proper, delicious, skilfully-prepared lunch, accompanied by an ideally matched, fine wine.

And that was the moment it happened.

Above the Earth, beyond the clouds, in the thin, unbroken silence of the stratosphere, a fracture appeared. A disruption in the delicate weave of existence that had remained unbroken for over ten billion years. It was infinitesimally tiny, a microscopic tear in the cosmic balance. But size, in this instance, was irrelevant. Because from that fracture, something leaked through. It was not matter. It was not energy. It was something in between. Something exotic, unclassified, unknowable. Dark plasma. An anomaly in reality itself. A force that did not obey physics, did not acknowledge the laws of nature, did not recognise time as a constraint. It had no form, no structure, no will.

And yet, it searched. It expanded, unravelling into the void, shifting, flowing, rippling in a way that no human eye would ever be able to comprehend. For almost all of time itself, it had been locked away, sealed within the unseen layers of the universe, dormant, waiting, unseen by mortals, untouched by gods. But now, the fracture was open. And the dark plasma was free. Its effect was subtle at first. A disturbance in the planet's upper atmosphere. A hint, a suggestion, of shifting pressure, a ripple in the unseen forces that governed everything. It was marked by a small, localised, shift in Earth's magnetic fields, an anomaly that would go unnoticed by all but the most sensitive of instruments. Then, it began to gather what it needed. It coiled, condensed, folding into itself, expanding outward and downward, a strange storm forming where no storm should be. The air warped, shifting around it, an invisible wave pressing outward from the sky. Lightning flickered within its depths, unnatural, glowing with a light that nothing on the surface had ever seen.

From below, it looked very much like an approaching storm. But it was not weather. It was, in certain ways, alive. It was not intelligent. It was not mindless. A force with only one instinct. A force that, having existed without purpose for aeons, was suddenly, now, in this moment, filled with one absolute, undeniable truth. It must bond. Find a host. Merge with something worthy.

It had been trapped for eternity in the fabric of space. Now, it was free. And it was seeking. It moved. Not with the wind, not with gravity, not with any force that science could track or measure. It descended, stretched, reached, flowing downward through the layers of the sky, its form expanding and contracting, searching, feeling. It could sense the world beneath it. It felt the oceans, the endless churn of water, ancient and deep, but too formless, too unworthy. It felt the mountains, massive, immovable, but too lifeless, too still. It felt the cities, the endless masses of human life, billions of souls. Most meek, uncertain, dull. Unworthy.

The night sky darkened. Not in a normal, gentle way, but abruptly, unnaturally, as though something vast, something unseen, was stretching its fingers across the heavens. The clouds above roiled, thickening, deepening, shifting from the usual grim grey of London’s eternal misery into something far stranger. It was purple, but not a colour that belonged to the world. A shade that looked alive, shifting, pulsing, not of Earth's sky, but of something beyond it. The air changed, a strange pressure settling over that part of the city, charged, waiting.

Then the rain began to fall. At first, it was gentle, a sprinkling of drops, light, uncertain, probing. But then, it thickened. It became heavy. And sticky. Unnatural. Thick, syrupy droplets slapped against the pavement, coating the streets in a strange, glistening sheen. It wasn't like normal rain. It clung. Françoise wrinkled her nose, lifting a delicate hand to examine a drop that had landed on the back of it. It felt wrong. Not quite liquid, not quite solid. A strange, viscous texture, faintly iridescent in the sickly light of the streetlamps. She flicked it away with a look of pure revulsion.

"And what is this horrid, sticky, strange-coloured, English version of rain anyway?" she muttered, her voice laced with contempt. "Zey even ruin ze rain. Incredible."

The moment the rain turned from drizzle to bizarre, viscous downpour, the people all around her reacted in exactly the way she, or anyone, would have expected. They ran. Umbrellas snapped open, a sea of black, cheap, mass-produced plastic domes, their fabric flapping pathetically against the wind. Taxis swerved to the curb, doors flinging open as desperate commuters leapt inside, throwing crumpled banknotes at the drivers in their rush to escape. People sprinted, some cursing, some shrieking, darting into the nearest pub, the nearest doorway, the nearest shelter.

They all looked so ungainly. So clumsy. So English. Françoise watched them, and in that moment, something in her resisted. She did not want to be like them. She did not want to run. She did not want to fumble with an unstylish umbrella. She did not want to flee into some dingy, rain-and-beer-stained pub, huddling inside like a frightened peasant. She would not act like them. She would not be like them. She would not do as they did. Let them sprint, let them panic, let them scramble for their miserable little shelters. She was not like them.

Instead, she stood still. She folded her arms, tucking them beneath her magnificent breasts, making her stunning, big, firm curves appear even more prominent than usual, presenting them to world, to the universe, in a pose that was arrogant and defiant. Her body language reflected her thoughts at that moment. Unwavering, utterly indifferent to the chaos around her. She held herself with her customary perfect poise, her chin slightly lifted, her back straight, her awe-inducing chest thrust forward, as if daring the sky itself to offend her further.

The rain pattered against her, but she refused to react. Not a flinch. Not a step back. The strange substance slid down the flawless silk of her blouse, beading against the fabric, soaking into her hair, but she remained motionless. All around her, people moved like insects, darting, fleeing, scattering, while she remained still, a monument to effortless superiority. Françoise tilted her head back slightly, gazing up at the unnatural sky with a slow, deliberate exhale. Her lovely, plump lip curled in disgust. Her emerald eyes rolled toward the heavens in exaggerated irritation.

"Pfffft," she scoffed. "Of course zis disgusting city would send me away with its terrible, miserable weather. A final insult before I leave. Typical."

She heard the sound of a loud shriek but did not react, did not turn to see the source - a woman, running for shelter. In the periphery of her disinterested vision, a man tripped over the curb as he tried to escape into a café. Françoise exhaled sharply through her nose. "Oh non! Quick!" she sneered. "Everyone run for cover! Ze sky is crying disgusting purple tears because England is so ugly! Hah!"

She folded her arms tighter, standing alone, refusing the city’s final insult. Far above her, directly overhead, the storm tightened its grip on the sky, shifting, pulsing, reaching. It had found its host. Its purpose.

The storm tightened, the dark plasma pulling itself inward, gathering, shifting into something more focused, more directed. Clouds swirled above, unnatural, hungry, a force that did not belong in this world. The rain intensified, clinging to her flawless skin, not like normal water, not cold, not chilling, not carrying the sharp bite of typical English drizzle. It felt thicker, almost alive, as if the sky itself was trying to touch her, to pull her in, to claim her. And yet, she remained unimpressed. She flicked her long, chestnut hair over her shoulder, the motion slow, deliberate, almost bored. She sighed, deeply, luxuriously, as if even the heavens were nothing but a minor inconvenience to her.

Then, with lazy irritation, she observed "Tsk. Now my dress is wet. Mon Dieu... I will look as scruffy as zese English girls. Zey never care about zeir appearance. 'ow... inferior!"

The maelstrom overhead churned faster, the swirling vortex of clouds tightening, condensing, as though something deep within it had made a decision. The atmosphere around her thickened, pressure building, an unseen weight settling over the street where she stood. Françoise was now alone, her arms still folded beneath her wonderful chest. A rumble of thunder shook the air, so deep, so unearthly, that it seemed to come not from the sky, but from the fabric of reality itself. The ground vibrated beneath her heels. The streetlamps flickered, dimmed, then surged back to life. For a second it seemed as if the universe itself was holding its breath in anticipation.

A spear of near-blinding, extraordinarily purple lightning split the sky, arcing ground-wards. It did not strike a building. It did not hit a tree, or a car. It struck Françoise. Directly. In the very centre of her perfect bust. The world flashed purple, a deep, dark, impossibly rich shade, an ancient, unnatural hue that did not belong to Earth. The force of it should have destroyed her. It should have sent her flying. It should have torn through her bones, her nerves, her skin, her heart, leaving nothing but scorched flesh. But it did not do any of those things. Françoise did not fall. Or scream. She did not even flinch. The world around her vibrated, the air still buzzing with the raw power of the strike.

She raised a single, elegant eyebrow, a slow flicker of mild curiosity. She glanced down, lazily, disinterestedly, toward her immaculate cleavage, where the lightning had struck her. Her blouse, damp from the rain, clung to her body, but it showed no sign of damage, no burn marks, no rips, nothing. The flawless, smooth, round, womanly flesh of her breasts was unblemished, untouched, as perfect as before.

Finally, she moved, slowly, deliberately. She unfolded her arms, her posture shifting not because she had been shaken, but because she had simply decided to adjust. She placed her hands on her hips, slightly widening her stance as she did so, her body now open, dominant. The soft glow of residual electricity flickered over her skin, dancing along her collarbones, trailing down her arms before apparently fading away. Not evaporating into the air, but sinking into her divine body.

She exhaled. Softly. Almost... bored. Then, she pouted. A genuine pout, her plush lips pursing, her emerald gaze flicking toward the sky with mild irritation. "Hmm. Typical," she commented. "Even ze lightning in zis country is bland and passionless." She rolled her sparkling, disdainful eyes, shifting her weight slightly, adjusting the way her hips curved, the way her damp hair cascaded over one shoulder. "A bolt of proper French lightning would have killed me instantly. But zis feeble English version… pfff. It just makes me feel... how you say..?" She let the question hang, savouring the moment, her perfectly manicured fingertip trailing downwards, over her collarbone, tracing the spot where the universe itself had touched her. Her lips pursed, her lashes lowered. She considered. Then, she smirked. "...tingling."

But "tingling" did not really begin to describe the sensations within her, Françoise realised. The bolt of bizarre lightning might have left no visible trace on her perfect skin, but she was aware that something, somehow, had penetrated the smooth, silky exterior of her lovely body. Something amazing. Something almost... limitless. And it was within her now. She could feel it... sense it. Deeper, richer, more intimate than mere tingling. Like a caress of pure power running through her, not simply warming her from within, but actively worshipping every glorious inch of her. Some kind of energy... Cosmic energy. Embracing her. Empowering her. She sensed that. But there was more. The strange force inside her... making her feel so good... Making her better in every way... Making her more and more powerful. The way it was improving her, allowing her to become so much more than she had been before... it wasn't cold, detached... scientific. No. The energy, the endless, wonderful energy that now filled every part of her being... It adored her! It was worshipping her, flowing sensuously around her curves, embracing them, desperate to be close to her, to give itself to her entirely.

The rain thinned, then stopped altogether, retreating as suddenly as it had arrived. The air, once thick with unnatural tension, lightened, the oppressive weight lifting from the streets. The sky above, once swirling in cosmic fury, drained of its deep, impossible purple, fading into the dull, lifeless grey that belonged to London alone. Within a few moments, it was almost as if nothing had happened.

Almost.

Françoise stood exactly where she had before, her flawless body still damp from the rain, her clothes clinging to her curves in a way that only enhanced their perfection. And yet, something was different. Her green eyes flickered. Not in the usual way, like they did when she rolled them at English incompetence, or when she flashed them in mockery. This was different. More intense. More... divine. Not just sparkle. Something cosmic.

She liked the sensation. The slow hum beneath her skin. The warmth spreading through her limbs. The power. Something new. Something undeniable. Something that had never belonged to anyone else before, which appreciated her, loved her. Adored her. She exhaled again, slow, sensual, a breath that rolled over her lips with a degree of confidence that was beyond - vastly beyond - even the woman she had been a minute before. Françoise let the moment stretch, savouring it all. The feel of energy, of potential, swirling beneath her skin, worshipping her, perfecting her. Everywhere.

After the frantic chaos of the sudden downpour, the people running, the drama of the lightning, there was a moment of quiet. Of stillness.

And then, she laughed. A low, effortless, sensual chuckle. Her lips curved into a slow, wicked smirk. "Of course," she breathed. "This is what I was always supposed to be. And now, reality has realised it."

A series of deep purple sparks danced over every centimetre of her, arcing through her hair, over her evening dress, her legs, her shoes. Instantly, her chestnut locks shone brighter than ever, no longer damp but soft, and silky. Immaculate. Her dress dried out too, the fabric somehow appearing better than it had when she had first seen it for sale in her favourite boutique. Yet somehow, it continued to cling to every glorious curve of her body, as though an army of seamstresses and tailors had rushed by, adjusting it with exquisite precision to fit perfectly across every tiny bit of her that it adorned. As though the fabric, like the energy inside her, was worshipping her beauty. Her shoes became spotless, just as they had been when wrapped in tissue paper in their original box, even the marks on the soles, the inevitable result of even a few steps on a hard surface, vanished. Microscopic flaws in her tights, too small to be seen by human eyes, repaired themselves. Then the purple sparks faded into her once more, their work seemingly done for now.

She exhaled, satisfied. Pleased. It was an enjoyable feeling. It seemed to Françoise that a cosmic injustice had been addressed. A balance adjusted. Rectified. It was not that the universe had randomly given her a gift. It had merely handed her what should have been hers all along. Her magnificently restored, exquisite heels lifted from the still-wet street. Smoothly, gracefully, her hands still resting with perfect, effortless, natural poise on top of the heavenly curves of her hips, her flawless fingers serving to accentuate the divine femininity of her tiny waist. Her face had always been stunning. Now it appeared far beyond that. Her breasts, somehow sitting even more proudly than ever, and now displayed by her dark-plasma-energy-tweaked dress in the most appropriate, most flattering, most devastatingly sexy manner conceivable, redefined womanhood, placing it, in the form of Françoise, above all of existence.

She rose. Ascended. Imperiously, until her incomparable body was floating, motionless, a metre off the ground. And then she laughed. Not a chuckle this time, a full laugh. Of delight.

 

Conceptfan, March 2025.

Chapter 2 - "Revelation"

Françoise did not move. Her hands remained planted on her hips, not clenched, not posed, merely resting there, as though that exact position had always been their rightful place since the beginning of time. The curve of her stance was untouched, by choice, the natural shape of supremacy made manifest in silk and flesh. Her spine was a line of unbroken poise. Her long, luxurious legs held the air beneath her with the casual intimacy of a goddess who had never known gravity’s tyranny. She floated, but, as she did, she seemed to possess the space she occupied. The air did not lift her. It accommodated her.

Only one eyebrow moved. Not her lips. Not her arms. Not even the intoxicating swell of her chest. Just a single eyebrow, impeccably shaped, chestnut brown, exquisitely feminine. It rose. A few, immaculately-judged, millimetres. No more. And yet, the world responded. The air around her shifted, folding itself around her like silk sheets on sun-kissed skin. A breeze that hadn’t been there a moment ago formed and eddied, not daring to touch her, merely circling her form in reverence. Dust, fine as flour, lifted from the cracked pavement below, swirling in spirals, caught in the invisible rhythms of her presence. A traffic light eighty meters away flickered, red, amber, green, then off completely. As if confused. As if trying to recalibrate its understanding of reality. A puddle, left behind by the strange rain, shivered. It rippled outward in perfect concentric rings, though nothing had touched it. The water trembled as though sensing what now floated above it. It quivered, as if it, too, had realised what she was.

But she was not merely the cause of nature's reaction. She was also the observer. Because now, Françoise sensed everything. Every molecule of atmosphere tasted different. Every layer of the world now opened to her, stripped itself bare, offered up its secrets unasked. She did not try to listen. She simply heard. The hum of insects in a rooftop garden, their wings vibrating at high frequencies, each pattern now as familiar to her as music. The heartbeat of a man three blocks away, hammering fast, irregular, overwhelmed by the memory of a goddess stepping off a train, her heels clicking, her hips swaying. The soft shifting of wet clothing as a breeze she had caused wound through a nearby alley and slipped beneath a woman’s raincoat. The rising heat of arousal in the groin of a teenage boy, hidden behind a curtain five floors up, his breath catching in his throat as he watched her, convinced that his desire was private, secret. The world reacted to her. It simply had no choice. And she noticed all of it. In perfect, exquisite clarity. She smiled. The world had changed. And she was at the centre of it now.

Françoise sighed. Not loudly. Not theatrically. She was far beyond such petty things now. The sound that slipped from her lips was not even meant for the world. It was a moment of private pleasure, of effortless contentment, a sensual exhalation from the very core of her being. It began in her chest, a lazy, luxurious ripple of motion beneath the dark-plasma-kissed silk stretched across her magnificent breasts, a motion so subtle that time itself seemed to slow in deference to its unfolding. Her large, round bosoms became momentarily even more prominent than ever, their fluid, tide-like rise and fall testimony to the fact that she was no longer human. She was divine.

Her full lips parted with infinite grace, the lower lip pushing forward by a fraction, forming a shape so wonderful in its elegance that the act itself became art. Her throat didn’t tighten. Her diaphragm didn’t strain. There was no effort, no force. Just a thoughtless sigh. And yet the world beneath her was thrown into chaos. The air that flowed from her lungs was not simply part of the atmosphere. It was warmth, it was scent, it was pressure, it was her. The breath of a goddess, exhaled without thought, without aim, without physiological need. Nevertheless, the effect was catastrophic. From the gutters and pavements, a swarm of litter exploded into the air, caught in her sigh. Dozens - no, hundreds - of crumpled crisp packets, those hateful symbols of English mediocrity, took flight like insects fleeing a predator. Their garish colours, their sickly plastic sheen, flashed as they spun, twisting in the gale, dancing like confetti in a hurricane. Empty drink cans rattled like wind-chimes. Receipts, fast food wrappers, discount leaflets... every scrap of English rubbish was lifted into the air, spiralling upward and away from her in a cyclone of contempt.

A bicycle, old and rain-rusted, sat chained to a lamppost. For a moment, it hovered at a diagonal, front wheel raised, the rest trembling as if torn between gravity and reverence. The lock that held it, a fat, coiled chain, groaned. Then snapped. The clang of metal against metal echoed like a shot. Freed, the bicycle soared, spinning wildly, its wheels still turning as though pedalled by invisible legs, before vanishing into the airborne mass of litter and destruction. Two shop signs, battered but defiant, held out for a moment longer. One, for a kebab shop, tore free with a scream of screws and splintering wood, cartwheeling end over end before smashing against the side of a phone repair kiosk. The other, a faded, flickering panel advertising "The Best Fish & Chips" snapped clean from its mount, lifted in a single swoop, and vanished beyond the rooftops, hurled like a lie into the void. A nearby bench, bolted to the pavement, tore free like it had been made of paper. It spun twice in the air before slamming into the side of a van. The vehicle's alarm screamed once, then died, crushed by the settling weight of the street furniture that had triggered it. An instant later, another impact rang out as a bin, made of metal, full, and heavy, torn free of its mounting, flew down the street and embedded itself in the wall of a betting shop. A compact car, abandoned by its driver during the earlier rain, rocked on its axles for a heartbeat, then lifted, slow at first, as if reluctant to obey. Then it spun, tires squealing as they left the road, windows shattering in a rain of safety glass, before the entire vehicle crashed roof-first into a lamppost, upside down, like some offering to a sky that no longer deserved her presence.

Her sigh was brief, the rush of wind soon ceasing. Anything that was still held in its power was released almost as if a switch had been flicked, the larger objects instantly falling back to the street. Somewhere in the distance, the bicycle crashed to earth with a sound of twisted metal and civic failure. The papers and lightweight debris started to drift, slowly, downwards towards the damp ground in limp defeat. An effortless exhalation, now passed. But the damage remained, a statement of its might. Françoise saw it all and blinked. Just once. Then she smirked. The corners of her mouth curved with perfect disdain, her emerald eyes glittering with curiosity, amusement, and something far more dangerous. Her head tilted, just a little, her hair shifting over her shoulder in a ripple of soft, impossible luxury, as though the strands themselves were responding to the resonance of her pleasure. She had done nothing. She had merely sighed. And yet the city had shuddered beneath her.

"I zink... " she purred, her accent a velvet razor, her voice thicker now, soaked in satisfaction, "... I am going to like zis."

Not even the wind dared answer her. It had already been tamed. Already claimed. And the silence that followed was not absence. It was submission.

Watching all this, semi-hidden in the shallow shelter of a narrow doorway, protected from the worst of the hurricane that had just momentarily torn through the street, a man stood, staring. He thought he was safe. He thought the recessed brick entrance, half-obscured by shadow, which had sheltered him from the storm, was also keeping him hidden from her. He believed he was unnoticed. Just another anonymous English face, blurred by distance and drizzle. One among millions.

He was wrong, of course. Françoise spotted him instantly. Her emerald gaze, more powerful now than any telescope, more precise than any military satellite, locked onto him the moment he moved. She saw everything. The twitch of his shoulders, the tremble in his chin, the rise and fall of his damp chest. The uneven parting of his greasy hair. The dullness in his pale, flaccid eyes as they struggled to process what they were seeing. But her eyesight was only one of her five now-inescapable senses. Her hearing, too, had been improved to a level far beyond comprehension. Just as she saw, so she heard.

A single word slipped through his lips. Not loud. Not clear. Not screamed in fear or admiration. No. It came from him as a whisper, a helpless, instinctive muttering. Not designed to travel, to resonate, to reach another being's ears. A barely-whispered verbal reaction, offered by his primitive, overwhelmed brain.

"Fuck!" A single syllable. Possibly the ugliest one of them all in a language saturated with unpleasant sounds. A lazy, catch-all expletive. The worst of English. Thrown in the direction of divinity.

She decided to respond, so she moved. But not as the rest of the world might understand moving. She simply changed her location. One instant she was floating alone in the aftermath of the devastation wrought by her sigh. The next, she was still hovering, but suddenly hundreds of paces away, just a single meter in front of the foul-mouthed witness, motionless, suspended in the air like a celestial verdict. There had been no sound, no trail of motion, no churning of limbs, no flash of displacement. She had used the gift of flight bestowed upon her by the Dark Plasma energy that swirled, worshipfully, inside her perfect body. A thoughtless deed that cost no energy, no difficulty. She had not acted with urgency, she had merely travelled at her leisure. Yet, to his perception, she had vanished and re-appeared in the same moment.

Her hands remained unmoved on her hips, her feet the same distance from the damp street as before. He had to tilt his head back to look at her. Slowly. Fearfully. And what he saw shattered what little composure he had left. Her legs, long and bare and smooth beneath the cling of her dress, extended endlessly beneath the hem, thighs tight and sculpted, knees relaxed in regal indifference. Her hips, flared wide and feminine, formed the beginning of a silhouette so flawless it seemed impossible. Her waist, narrow and utterly perfect, led upward into the magnificent swell of her chest, held in by nothing but fabric that now served only to accentuate, not conceal. Her arms, bent at the elbows as her palms rested on those glorious hips, framed her torso with imperial symmetry. Her neck, smooth and elegant, rose in a perfect line toward a face that defied the known limits of female beauty. Surpassed those supposed limits. Left them shattered.

Françoise looked down at him with utter contempt. Her eyes sparkled, like a cat discovering a spider crawling too close. Her lashes cast flirty shadows. Her brows arched in exquisite condescension. And then she spoke.

"Is zat all you 'ave to say?"

Her voice was low, velvety, French, so French, and every syllable was shaped to perfection. Her lips, full and soft and sinful, moved with devastating control. Every flick of her tongue, every flash of her white, feminine teeth sent a fresh pulse of arousal through the man’s gut. He didn’t process her words properly because his brain ceased full function the instant her mouth had begun to move.

"A typical, pathetic Englishman," she continued, slowly, luxuriously, "who, for ze first time in 'is inadequate life, 'as ze undeserved 'onour of looking at true beauty, true style... and all 'e can say is zis 'orrid, over-used, monosyllabic, English obscenity?"

She didn’t gesture. She didn’t lean. She didn’t so much as tilt her head. She hovered, still as a sculpture, speaking with the unhurried grace of a woman who had never once known the need to raise her voice. She paused for a moment, surprised, not by him, of course, but by herself. The English words she had just used... "monosyllabic"... "obscenity"... Where had those come from? Moments ago, her English had been clumsy, limited to basic vocabulary and a sultry French accent that made even her errors sound like elegance. But now... now she could feel it. Something had changed. Her mind was clear. Like Parisian sunshine. As though a veil had been lifted. Every word of English she had ever heard, even once, snippets of conversation in the streets of London, overheard phrases in classrooms, dialogue from dreadful British films she had mocked or ignored, was now laid out, ready for her to use as she saw fit. She remembered them all. Their definitions. Their usage. Their nuance. The Dark Plasma had perfected her memory, just as it had perfected everything else.

She smiled. Not in appreciation, but in mockery. Because the truth was... she still didn’t care. Yes, she now remembered all the words. But the grammar? The structure? The proper pronunciation? Pfffft. What was the point of speaking such a grotesque language correctly? Let the English trip over their clumsy, illogical rules. Françoise would speak English her way. Slow. Lazy. Seductive. Drenched in superiority. A language like this did not deserve to be spoken properly by someone like her. It was beneath her. Just like the country that invented it.

Meanwhile, the Englishman in the doorway just stared at her, unable to look away, unable to breathe properly, unable to think. Because her mouth was moving again. And that was more than his biology could bear.

"So, zat is ze total of your words, then?"

Her voice descended like silk dipped in acid, soft, slow, but cut with amused disdain.

"Just zis... 'fuck'?"

She didn’t laugh. She didn’t need to. Her intonation alone wrapped the syllable in so much ridicule it collapsed under its own weight. She let the word hang in the air, letting him hear it from her lips, exquisitely shaped and vibrating with contempt, making it sound uglier, more pitiful, more English than ever before.

"Mon dieu."

She sighed the words like a disappointed aristocrat surveying the peasantry. Her emerald eyes swept over him again, this time slower. Not assessing. Confirming.

"En France..." she said, her voice tightening with purpose, "on fait l’amour."

The way she spoke the French phrase turned the alleyway into an altar. Soft, breathy, suggestive. Sacred. Her lips glistened slightly as she said them. Her tongue brushed the inside of her mouth with slow affection. Her words felt warmer, richer, more intimate than touch.

"You people just, as you say... 'fuck.'"

The last word hit him like a slap. She spat it with a theatrical shudder, her whole face briefly twisting in distaste, like she had found it under her perfect fingernail.

"Like ze animals."

She didn’t blink. She let him feel the weight of it, as if the very concept of British intercourse was so base, so grotesque, it barely qualified as human.

"You do not even begin to understand ze meaning of passion."

She lingered on the last word. Passion. Her lips wrapped around it, slow and sinuous. It sounded foreign coming from her mouth, but only because she was too exquisite to use such a word so easily. But she was beginning to become aware of something new. Something electric beginning to stir within her. It wasn’t like the earlier warmth. Not the glorious hum of cosmic energy bathing her limbs in superiority. This was something else. Something focused. It gathered in her mouth. Coiled in her chest. Saturated her breath. Her tongue tingled. Her heartbeat didn’t quicken, it intensified. And her lips, her perfect, heart-shaped, Parisian lips, changed hue. The rich red she had painted them with shifted to a deeper, more luxurious, more commanding shade. A visual promise of something extraordinarily sensual, impossibly intimate. Françoise blinked once, slowly. She could feel it. Instinctively. Not taught, not explained, just known.

"Hmm... strange..." she murmured, thoughtfully, almost to herself. "But I believe... through my lips, I now 'ave ze ability to control ze passion of others."

Her companion did not move. He was frozen. Staring. Already trembling from a new storm. One that hadn’t started yet. A storm not foreshadowed by gathering dark clouds this time, but by the shift in the tint of her gorgeous pout. She felt her power gathering. Sharpening.

"Ah... oui." Her smile returned. Wicked now. "C’est vrai..."

The colour of her lips became a vibrant crimson as she deployed her new discovery.

"Comme ça."

Françoise's Passion Power radiated outward, not in a beam, not in a blast, but like heat from a lover’s skin, slow, luxurious, inescapable. It enveloped him like perfume. It slipped into his lungs, soaked into his skin, invaded his bloodstream. He didn’t understand what was happening. Not at first. He merely found himself... noticing her. Her face. Not just beautiful. Perfect. A symmetry so flawless, so hypnotic, it burned itself into his mind like an after-image on the soul. The way her lashes curled like fine calligraphy. The impossible softness of her lips. The smirk, subtle and cruel, etched with aristocratic disdain. The glow of her skin, warm and golden even under the grey London sky.

Then his gaze dropped. Her body. Oh, God. Her body. The swell of her breasts, bound in divinely-clinging silk, now somehow more present, more alive, as if the fabric itself worshipped her shape. Her waist, so narrow, so impossibly feminine it made him ache. Her hips, flared like the mouth of a trumpet heralding apocalypse. Her thighs, long, firm, spread just enough to dominate the space she hovered in. His heart began to race. Fast. Then faster. Then faster. Not fear. Not awe. Lust. His mouth went dry. His skin flushed hot. His trousers suddenly felt tight, unbearably tight, his breath catching as his eyes traced her once more, then again, then again, as if trying to drink her in before dying.

He trembled. Not just his hands. His knees. His shoulders. He made a brief, pitiful sound, caught somewhere between a gasp and a whimper. His legs buckled. And then he sank. To his knees. It wasn't graceful. It wasn't a choice. It was the collapse of a system. His muscles had simply abandoned him. And still, the waves of lust came. Not gentle waves. Not teasing flickers. Tsunamis. His entire body was ablaze now, throbbing, pulsating, consumed by a need that wasn’t his own. He wanted her. Needed her. Worshipped her. Feared her. Couldn’t live without her. Couldn’t survive looking at her. And then he shuddered. The orgasm came without warning. Without invitation. Without permission. Untouched. Unkissed. Unbidden. His body convulsed, hips jerking forward once, twice, a third time, until the release broke through him like a dam bursting. He let out a low, broken moan, shameful, guttural, helpless. He couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t hold it back. Couldn’t hide it. It wasn't erotic. It wasn’t masculine. It was humiliating. He shuddered, on his knees, now both hands on the pavement to support himself as his spine curled, his face grimacing with the violence of his own climax. He drooled. His thighs twitched. His breath became a series of ragged, panting gasps, as if he’d just run a marathon through hell and ended it at her feet. He didn’t know who he was any more.

And still, Françoise had not moved. She remained exactly as she had been, hands planted on her divine hips, feet slightly apart, floating a metre above the street, head tilted ever so slightly to one side, watching him like a museum patron watching a boring installation malfunction. Then, wordlessly, she released him. The grip of her Passion Power vanished, not with a sound or a flash, but with effortless disinterest. The spell broke. The current stopped flowing. The man slumped to his side, whimpering now, limbs twitching, utterly depleted, soaked in his own disgrace, gasping for breath like he’d survived a drowning. Françoise lowered her eyes to him. Not out of concern, out of judgment. She let the silence stretch. Let the echoes of his moans, his panting, his writhing, hang in the air. She let him squirm, watching the pathetic tangle of limbs at her feet gasp and twitch on the dirty pavement.

Then, with a slow, velvety smirk curling her dark crimson lips, she purred "Feeble Englishman. Completely unable to 'andle even ze sight of French beauty."

She paused in her judgement. Just long enough for him to hope she was finished.

"Imagine if I 'ad actually touched you... Pfffft. Probably all your organs would 'ave exploded. Not just ze pathetic one between your legs."

She rolled her eyes, slowly, dramatically, then looked away as if even continuing to gaze upon him might stain her. Her disdain was the last thing he saw before his eyelids closed and he slipped into a humiliated, exhausted, spent, unconsciousness.

The street was quiet again. Behind her, twisted wreckage, a broken man gasping through the last moans of ruined dignity. Ahead, another stretch of London’s grey lifelessness. Empty shopfronts, damp brickwork, the distant wheeze of a city trying, and failing, to remember why it mattered. And then, without ceremony, a black taxi turned the corner. It slowed as it approached, the headlights flickering across the glistening pavement, illuminating the sight of a woman hovering one meter above the street, motionless, radiant. The driver slowed. And then, of course, of course, he honked. A single, sharp, aggressive little blast of the horn. Françoise did not look at the car. She did not flinch, or turn, or show the smallest sign of alarm. She just lowered herself gracefully to the pavement, her heels kissing the ground like royalty arriving at a coronation.

She walked, although perhaps 'glided' is a more accurate word, toward the cab. Not fast. Not with purpose. Her hips swayed. Her heels clicked against the wet concrete with perfect rhythm, each step a metronome of disdain. She reached the car. Paused. Tilted her head. Inside, the driver, a middle-aged man with an angry red face and no visible chin, was shouting and gesticulating furiously.

"Typical," she muttered. "Ze English man reacts to beauty like a boar with a toothache."

She lifted one perfectly manicured hand. Not in violence, not in anger, just to make a point. She extended a single fingernail, long and glossy and exquisite, and lightly tapped the front of the taxi’s bonnet with it, not expecting to create anything more than a gentle sound. And yet... the metal parted like warm butter. Her fingernail, delicate, feminine, immaculate, sliced clean through the steel, carving a dainty digit-sized groove deep into the vehicle's bodywork with a wet metallic Shhhhlick!, as though the taxi had been manufactured out of nothing more than wrapping paper. Françoise blinked once. Then slowly withdrew her finger from the narrow hole. She examined the damage, then her nail. Not a scratch.

"Hmm." she murmured, almost lazily. "Per'aps I am also... stronger now."

Her smirk deepened. She reached down again, this time lowering her hand to the very edge of the taxi’s front bumper. Not bracing herself. Not adjusting her footing. Her other hand remained firmly on her hip, her posture still flawless, elegant, commanding. Then she hooked her fingers under the car, and lifted. Not with a grunt. Not with a brace of muscles. But with absurd, lazy ease. The taxi rose off the ground. Front wheels dangling in the air. Bonnet tilting up like the world itself was curtsying to her. The cab groaned. The engine sputtered. The frame bent slightly under its own weight. But she, with just one hand, held it high above her head, as effortlessly as if it were a handbag. The driver screamed. From inside the cab, his arms flailed wildly. His mouth opened in silent panic. His hands slapped the window. But Françoise barely noticed. Her gaze drifted up the length of her raised arm as if admiring the line of her own bicep more than the miracle she was performing.

Across the street, a few onlookers had emerged from the shadows, mouths agape. A man pulled out his phone. A woman gasped audibly. Françoise didn’t care. She was beginning to bore of this display. With her arm still extended, she curled back one of the perfect, delicate fingers supporting the vehicles weight. And with just a flick of that fingertip, she gave the suspended vehicle the most casual, dismissive push imaginable. The taxi toppled. It flipped upward, twisted slightly in the air, then came crashing down onto its roof, turning over completely and landing with a thunderous, rumbling boom that echoed across the street, shattering a shop window. Metal screamed. Glass exploded. The taxi rocked once on its roof... then fell still. By then, her hand had lowered, gracefully, fluidly, to once again mirror its counterpart, resting atop her magnificently feminine hip. The fingernail that had sliced through the front of the taxi and then flicked it with the power of a pile-driver now lay on her abdomen, its varnish as perfect, as unblemished, unchipped, unaffected as before.

Françoise did not need to look. She could hear it, the change in rhythm, the absence where life had been. The scream had choked. The heartbeat had stopped. There was no breath. No heat. Just the scent of leaking fluids and the faint, undignified finalities of death. He was gone. Because of her fingertip. She stared at the crumpled black coffin, one eyebrow faintly raised. No sorrow. No surprise. But a flicker of something else. Satisfaction. The corner of her lip curled.

"Zat was not murder."

She let the pause stretch, long enough to let the onlookers think she might claim remorse.

"I just expressed my opinion."

Another exquisitely judged pause.

"I almost feel a bit sorry... for ze vehicle."

She turned, hair bouncing, heels clicking. Done. She was already walking away. The black taxi lay behind her, ruined, silent, crumpled around the corpse of its driver. Her heels tapped against the wet street, slow, measured, imperial. Her hips swayed with effortless grace. The wind still hadn’t dared return.

And then came the voice. "Oi! You think you can just walk off after that?! What makes you think you’re above the law?!"

She stopped. The accent. The tone. The sheer nerve. Slowly, she turned. The speaker stood just beyond the growing ring of stunned, paralysed onlookers. A man, perhaps mid-thirties, dressed in a football shirt, soaked through and stretched over a soft, shapeless torso. Badly-fitting jeans, damp and clinging awkwardly to his pale, misshapen legs. His face, blotchy, indignant, alarmed, betrayed no real courage. Only confusion. And a badly misplaced belief that his voice, his words, his sense of justice, mattered. Françoise blinked once, slowly.

"Zat is what speaks to me?" she muttered to herself. "Zat... creature?"

She did not respond to his question. Because the answer was already obvious. Of course she was above the law. She felt it in her blood. In her skin. In the air itself. The English law, pfff, a dreary set of compromises written by tired, unattractive men on soggy paper, debated in grey rooms filled with flat voices and flabby chins. She didn’t just feel above it. She felt cosmically removed from it. And just at that moment, something stirred inside her. Something hungry. Power, pure and focused, was waiting inside her. Not diffused like her breath. Not seductive like her Passion Power. This was sharp. Direct. It wanted instructions. It wanted to be used. She turned her gaze fully on him. Her emerald eyes flared, deep, pulsing Dark Plasma purple, like storm-light trapped in amethyst.

The man who had challenged her began to rise. He didn’t leap. Didn’t jump. There was no wind. No sound. Just a slow, steady lift, as if gravity had grown bored of him. His eyes widened. His arms began to flail. His trainers scraped at the air. His voice cracked.

"What the... what the hell’s happening?!"

He rotated awkwardly as he floated, just three feet above the ground. His knees kicked. His head jolted left and right. Then he saw her, really saw her. The glow in her eyes. The stillness of her body. The perfect, unbothered curve of her hips. Her hands, still firmly planted, unmoving.

"It’s you!" he gasped. "YOU’RE doing this!"

And that’s when she realised it too. Her smirk deepened. She truly was doing this. Not with a gesture. Not with a raised hand. Not with effort. With her mind. She didn’t test it with hesitation, she tested it like she tested shoes in a boutique. Curiously, lazily, pleasurably. She lifted him higher. He screamed. She dropped him slightly. He yelped. She raised him again, then made him begin to rotate. Slowly. First horizontally, his body spinning like a rotisserie chicken. Then vertically, slow somersaults in the air, his arms and legs flailing wildly with each nauseating revolution.

"Non, non... quiet, please," she murmured, grinning. "I am concentrating."

He screamed louder. She laughed. Not delicately. Not reserved. A full, rich, luxurious laugh, as she explored the finesse of her control. She straightened his body mid-air like a rag-doll. Folded his arms across his chest. Then, just for fun, made him punch himself in the face. Once. Twice. Then, using only the force of her will, she folded him into a tight, unnatural ball, legs pressed to chest, arms locked tight, and began to spin him faster. And faster. And faster. He was shrieking now, sobbing. She was grinning. And then, without warning, she released him. The purple glow immediately vanished from her eyes. The connection broke like a cut string. The man fell. Fast. He hit the pavement with a sickening thud, knees and neck twisting at the wrong angles. His body crumpled in on itself like dropped laundry. He did not move again.

He was dead and she hadn’t even touched him. Her laughter slowed. Faded. She bit down, gently, on her bottom lip, her gleaming white teeth grazing the plush fullness with idle sensuality. And every terrified onlooker saw it. That look. That telltale flush in her cheeks. That faint spark in her glowing eyes. That satisfied tension in her pose. That perfect lip still caught between her teeth. She was aroused. By what she had just done. By what she had just discovered. By how little effort it had taken.

The crowd began to scatter, screaming, fleeing into side streets, into cars, into alleys. The street quickly became almost empty. Footsteps pounded in retreat. Car doors slammed. Tyres screamed. Shouts echoed into the mist, shouts of fear, of disbelief, of men and women trying to convince themselves that if they ran fast enough, far enough, they might somehow outrun a goddess. Françoise didn’t follow them. She didn’t move. She didn’t have to. Because she already knew, knew in the deepest part of herself, in that newly awakened layer of consciousness forged by lightning and plasma and superiority, that if she chose to stop them, she could. She could catch the fastest runner before his second step hit the ground with her speed. She could pluck them from the air like dolls and dangle them upside down until their screams bored her with her Dark Plasma telekinesis. She could exhale, just once, and send a hurricane down both ends of the street, sweeping the cowards into the horizon like dry leaves. She could chase down every one of them, pick up their cars, tear them apart with one hand using her strength. And, somehow, she knew there was more. She knew that she had discovered only some of her gifts. She had barely begun.

And yet, even with the fraction of her new power that she had experienced, she was too much for them. For all of them. She could stop them. But she didn’t. Because... why bother? They weren’t worth the effort. Let them run, pathetic and helpless. Let them continue to breathe. For now. Her hands still rested on her hips. Her gaze swept lazily across the broken street. She had killed two men, but there had been no effort, no challenge to overcome. She tilted her head slightly, her sparkling, emerald eyes half-lidded, almost pensive.

"What else can I do now?"

The thought wasn’t hopeful. It wasn’t excited. It was idle curiosity. She stood in silence. Hands still poised dominantly on her hips. One heel slightly forward. Her weight shifted luxuriously onto one leg. Her lips, still glistening with the faint moisture of her recent, biting satisfaction, were parted ever so slightly. Her emerald eyes were half-lidded, not with fatigue, but with thought, curling lazily through her mind like smoke through a velvet lounge. Two men dead. A street in ruins. And she felt nothing. No remorse. No guilt. Only the faintest trace of warmth curling through her lower abdomen.

Above her, four storeys up, behind the closed double-glazing of a narrow window in an ageing red-brick block, someone was watching. A young man. Pale. Bearded. Trembling. He had stayed in place. Not out of courage. But fear. Obsession. Fascination. He’d been filming her for almost two minutes. A two-finger gesture on his phone-screen now zoomed the camera image tightly in on her perfect face. He saw the lips. The gleam. The look in her eyes. And suddenly, he realised. She wasn’t in shock. She wasn’t processing trauma. She was pleased. A shiver ran down his spine. His voice broke the silence in his small, cluttered room, not a shout. Not even a raised voice. Just a muttered whisper. A thought spoken out loud.

"My god... She’s a fucking monster!"

His words were inaudible even in the same room, let alone behind glass, four stories up. But Françoise was not merely beautiful. She was not merely powerful. She was a god now. And she heard him. Every syllable. Every tremor in his voice. Every cowardly vibration of judgement trying to slither from his lungs. To her superhuman hearing, it might as well have been shouted through a megaphone. From inches away. Her expression shifted. The pout vanished. The lip was released. Her head turned. Fast. Sharp. Elegant. She raised her eyes to the window without changing posture. Her hands remained exactly where they had been. Her shoulders relaxed. Her legs motionless. Only her eyes moved. And they flared. Deep purple. Blinding, for an instant. A corona of pulsing Dark Plasma energy igniting from her pupils like twin blades of divine fury.

There was no warning. A sudden, silent beam of violet heat erupted from her gaze, crossing the entire distance in an instant. The window didn’t shatter. It evaporated. The glass turned to dust, mid-air, as the beam passed through it. Then the man. He didn’t even have time to scream. His body ignited, instantly, violently, completely. The flame wasn’t orange. It was white-hot, wrapped in arcs of plasma light, reducing skin to ash, bone to vapour, his phone melting into slag before it could fall. The building shuddered. The beam had lasted barely a second, but the damage was colossal, instantaneous, irreparable, obscene. The window frame, once white and rusting, was now nothing but a halo of glowing metal, buckled and sagging from the heat. The entire brick façade surrounding it, three metres wide, two storeys high, had gone dark and soft, the outer layers of masonry blistering, then sliding downward in molten ribbons of scorched red clay.

The room behind the incinerated man burst into flames, not spreading from furniture, but sprouting, as if the walls themselves had decided to burn in tribute. Wallpaper curled and blackened, then disintegrated. Wooden beams cracked and collapsed, spraying embers into the air like a dying firework. Bricks, actual bricks, began to fall, tumbling loose from the compromised structure in slow, stuttering cascades, some crashing through lower windows, others raining down onto the street in chunks the size of skulls, shattering into sparks and dust on impact. One landed on the roof of a parked car. The car caved in. Alarms shrieked now from multiple flats, not just the one she’d obliterated. Sirens within sirens. Sprinkler systems failed to activate. A fire door on the ground floor swung open in panic and was immediately swallowed by smoke. A balcony above the blast site tilted, its supports buckling, the metal rail glowing orange at the edges. A flowerpot on the ledge ignited without fanfare, spilling soil and flame onto the pavement below. And amid it all, the heat, the sound, the glow of building-wide combustion, Françoise just watched.

The glow faded from her eyes. She blinked once. Tilted her head. Then her lips curved slowly... delightedly.

"Oh. Zat was new."

She observed calmly as the flames climbed the ruined brick like vines. Watched the smoke rise in thick black plumes, coiling into the sky like incense from a burnt offering. Heard the building groan, shedding bricks like dead skin, as windows burst from heat they were never meant to endure. She took it in, the scale of the damage, the sheer violence of it, and tilted her head slightly. It had felt so... easy. No build-up. No preparation. Just one glance. One moment of mild irritation... and that piece of the world had burned. Unleashing such a devastating blast of energy hadn't strained her, or tired her. She felt no heat in her face, no tightness in her chest. Just... satisfaction.

"Now..." she murmured, lazily, her voice low and soft, as though speaking to herself between sips of wine, "'ow did I do zat?"

Her gaze wandered across the street, unhurried, casual, as if scanning a boutique display for something tolerable. Her eyes settled on a Mini Cooper, parked just across the street. The roof was decorated, boldly, stupidly, with a giant Union Jack. The red, white, and blue stretched clumsily across the small metal frame like an accidental afterthought of nationalism. Françoise stared at it. Her lip curled.

"Such an ugly design."

Her eyes sharpened. A violet flicker shimmered behind her irises like a predator unsheathing its claws. And this time, it was intentional. Twin beams of Dark Plasma Heat Vision burst from her eyes, controlled, precise, slicing through the air like divine laser-cutting. The rays struck the Mini’s hood just above the grille. The car detonated. Not like a movie explosion. Like an instantaneous erasure. A globe of orange and violet fire erupted upward, shattering every window on both sides of the street. The sound, a bone-snapping, ear-pulping whumph!, was followed by a shock-wave that knocked dust from the rooftops and sent loose signage flying like blades. Twisted, flaming debris rained down. A blackened chunk of bumper embedded itself into the wall beside Françoise. A side mirror bounced once before rolling into a gutter, still steaming. What remained of the Mini was scattered, smouldering, and completely unrecognisable. The flag had not merely burned. It had ceased to exist.

Françoise smiled. "Mieux."

The last of the fireball’s heat was still rippling across the street when the first screams began. Not from the street. Anyone previously on the scene had already fled. These came from above. Within. From the buildings that flanked the devastation, now shuddering, smoking, awakening in panic. Windows that hadn’t already exploded from the blast now creaked open or shoved upward in terror, revealing confused, terrified faces, blinking into the ruined street below. From shattered balconies and fire-blackened doorways, people began to emerge, dozens of them. Women clutching phones and bathrobes. Men staggering in boxer shorts and novelty t-shirts. Bare feet slapped against cold concrete as neighbours screamed at one another, half-dressed and half-aware of what was happening. The confusion spread faster than the flames. Shouting. Crying. Barking. Wild speculations on the cause of the explosion. Panic. Fear. Uncertainty.

Françoise didn’t move. She simply watched. And then, slowly, her eyes drifted up, across the faces now pressed to broken windowsills, the figures now running across the street, wide-eyed and shrieking. Her gaze was not one of concern. Not even curiosity. It was appraisal. Her lips parted. A small sigh escaped, this time without an accompanying hurricane. Not a display of power, just bored aesthetic disappointment.

"Mon dieu..." she muttered. "Zis is what you sleep in?"

She swept her gaze lazily over them, striped pyjama trousers, faded t-shirts with cartoon characters, ratty dressing gowns, sagging elastic waistbands, socks and sandals, flannel monstrosities in tartan and neon.

"C’est tragique."

A woman in a bright pink fleece robe with a hood shaped like a bear’s head stumbled out of a side door, tripping over her own slippers. A man in a 'Keep Calm and Carry On' T-shirt clutched a mop handle like it might save him. Françoise tilted her head, her eyes narrowing.

"Hmm..."

A faint shimmer of violet returned behind her lashes.

"Should I test it again...?"

She didn’t raise a hand. She didn’t move. She simply stood there, considering. Not whether she should incinerate one of them. But which one. Her eyes were still drifting over the sea of dreadful nightwear when she heard a new sound. Not from the crowd, not from the crumbling buildings or the flickering fire alarms, but from beyond. In the distance. Behind layers of London pollution and burning rubber. Sirens. Most would barely have noticed it yet. A warble. A tremor in the air. The city made so many sounds it barely recognised danger when it screamed. But Françoise heard everything. In less than a second, her mind, flawlessly upgraded, darkly perfected, calculated it all. Five police cars. Two riot vans. Three ambulances. One fire engine. Twenty-nine men. Four women. One overconfident commander with a voice that carried too far inside the lead vehicle. Eighty-four seconds away. Approaching at sixty-two kilometres an hour.

She blinked. She did not turn. She made no change to her stance. Her hands remained planted on her hips, her weight still resting on one heel, the other foot turned out slightly, perfect posture, impossible curves, eternal contempt.

"Hmm."

The smallest possible acknowledgement of the civil response army racing towards her. The noise of the approaching authorities meant nothing to her. It was background. Ambient. The equivalent of a leaking tap in the next room. She had already destroyed more than they could ever comprehend, and they weren’t even on scene yet. They weren’t a threat. They weren’t even a distraction. They were merely... soon to arrive. Her eyes returned to the crowd, still panicking, still hopelessly underdressed, still criminally uncoordinated. A man in a pair of sagging tartan pyjamas was shouting something about his dog. A woman in a pastel-green onesie shaped like a frog was weeping next to a suitcase on wheels. A teenager in a towel was recording everything on his phone, his hands trembling so much the footage was surely unusable. Françoise smirked.

"Zey are coming..." she murmured, barely above a breath. "And yet, I still 'ave plenty of time to deal with this."

The violet light began to gather in her gaze again. She was not finished. Not by far. She didn’t hurry. The world around her was rushing, panicking, trying to make sense of things far beyond its comprehension. But Françoise remained absolutely still. The fire still danced behind her. The building continued to shed bricks like burnt petals. The alarms shrieked. The sirens grew louder. But her pose did not change. Her stillness became an act of pure contempt. She let her gaze drift slowly back to the crowd, the hopeless assembly of half-dressed, bleary-eyed civilians gathered in a loose, shivering cluster across the street. Most had stopped running. Not because they felt safe, but because they had no idea where safety existed any more.

She took her time. A woman sobbed into the shoulder of a stranger. A boy dropped his phone. An older man clutched a tiny, trembling dog to his chest. A teenager began to pray. And then she saw him. Early forties. Vest. Boxers. Crocs. A bulging belly protruded over the waistband of his novelty underpants, upon which the words "Daddy Pig" were printed in a cheery font. His vest was stained. His body hair was visible in places that offended geometry. His face was red. Too red. Worst of all, he was staring at her. Not stealing appreciative, flattering glances at her beauty. Just staring. Slack-jawed. Like a dog salivating at the display in a butcher's shop window. Françoise’s eyes settled on him with all the ceremony of a queen spotting a particularly unclean stain.

"Quelle horreur."

And that was all. The violet light bloomed behind her lashes. Her pupils narrowed into radiant pinpricks of molten power. And then, without moving her head, without lifting a hand, without even changing her weight, she turned her eyes fully on him. Dark Plasma Heat Vision arced from her gaze. The beam struck him in the sternum. He had just enough time to gasp. Not scream. Just, gasp. And then he vanished into flame. The blast was immediate and intimate. Not an explosion of billowing cloud-like flames. Just a focused, brilliant ignition. Like a match dropped into petrol. His body lit up, a living torch for a quarter-second, and then collapsed into ash and cinders on the spot where he’d stood. His Crocs remained, part melted, smoking. Some of the crowd screamed. Others fled.

"Zat one offended me. Aesthetically," she explained.

Too late to save Daddy Pig, the first police car rounded the corner, tyres screeching, sirens flaring, lights strobing in panic blue. It squealed to a halt seconds after the blast had lit the sky, its windscreen momentarily catching the full glow of the plasma flare. The officers inside, the driver and his partner, could only sit there, mouths open, watching the smouldering remnants of a man collapse in on themselves. Françoise blinked, the lethal glow long faded, her eyes once again brilliant green jewels. She turned her head slightly, finally acknowledging the new arrivals with a slow, deliberate smirk. She waited, her hands still on her hips, still flawless, superior. Mildly inquisitive towards what might happen next.

The ash of her last target was still curling into the air, smoking softly from a pair of partially-liquefied Crocs, when Françoise turned her gaze, at last, toward the police car, its lights still flashing in frantic pulses, siren now muted but still throbbing faintly, like a migraine that had learned to blink. She didn’t hurry. She simply shifted her gaze, one degree to the left. A half-tilt of the chin. A slow blink of emerald lashes, and the car changed. Her eyes didn’t just look at the vehicle. They slipped inside it. At first, she thought it was a trick of the smoke. But no, she could suddenly see the engine beneath the hood, the curled tangle of wires, the flicker of warmth in the battery housing, the faint glow of heat where the exhaust met the block.

"Hmm."

Her gaze sharpened. The engine faded, became translucent, like steam, and now she was looking through it. Beyond it. Into the interior of the car. At the two men sitting rigidly in the front seats. She saw their torsos first, then their legs, the way their knees twitched with nervous anticipation. Fingers clenched white around the steering wheel and the passenger-side door respectively. One was mouthing something. The other was trying not to breathe too loudly. They hadn’t moved. They hadn’t exited the vehicle. They had seen her, and they had stopped. She blinked again, and the uniforms disappeared. Now she saw skin. Flesh. Hair.

"Oh."

She saw one had a scar on his chest, another had a faint tattoo on his thigh, something tribal and sad. They were sweating. One had goosebumps across his arms. Both were trembling, though they tried so hard not to show it. And then she looked lower. And sighed. Because both of them, of course, had begun to stiffen beneath their belts. She could see it. Clearly. Their arousal was not something they intended. It was not chosen. It was simply... unavoidable. A biological inevitability. The final failure of their training. Their professionalism. Their gender. She rolled her eyes, not in disgust. In amused dismissal.

"Even ze police."

Her lip curled faintly, her voice barely above a whisper, her tone smooth as satin and twice as cutting.

"Zere uniforms cannot hide zere pathetic male weakness from me."

The silence between them stretched. Inside the police car, the two men hadn’t moved in nearly thirty seconds. But now, finally, as if waking from a shared nightmare, they began to shift. Doors opened. Boots hit the street. Françoise did not react. She didn’t even look at them as they stepped forward, slowly, cautiously, trying to mask their terror beneath training. Each officer raised a taser, yellow and black and pathetically optimistic in their hands. One of them shouted.

"DOWN ON THE GROUND!"

The other followed suit, as if they’d rehearsed it.

"NOW! ON THE GROUND! DO IT!"

Their voices overlapped. Repeated. Trying to form a wall of sound. To shock. To intimidate. As if volume could compensate for inferiority. Her expression was somewhere between amusement and disgust. She blinked once, then finally turned her gaze toward the little plastic weapons pointed at her. She recognised them instantly. Electrical discharge. A tiny dart. A wire. A battery. She tilted her head slightly, considering.

"I 'ave cosmic lightning inside me. Surely zese little spark-makers cannot be a threat!"

Then, she spoke out loud, flatly, absolutely, as if replying to an offer she hadn’t asked for.

"Non." Then, after a typical, surgically-precise pause, she added "I will not move for you."

They didn’t lower their weapons. They barked again.

"GET ON THE GROUND!"

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Didn’t remove her hands from her hips. She let them stand there, voices cracking, hands shaking, arms extended in textbook posture, aiming electricity at a goddess.

"So dramatic..." she murmured. Somewhere behind her eyes, a glint of mischief shimmered. Because in that moment, she wasn’t afraid. She was deciding.

The officers shouted again, louder now, their voices cracking under the weight of adrenaline and disbelief.

"FINAL WARNING!"

As if warnings mattered any more. Françoise remained still, infuriatingly, breathtakingly still. And then it happened. Two subtle twitches, fingers tightening on triggers. She saw them. She heard the plastic click of contact points arming. She sensed the tiny chemical pop as compressed nitrogen propelled twin barbed darts forward, each trailing its wire like a leash of desperate intention. In the time it took for the barbs to travel one metre, she could have moved out of the way, melted the weapons with a glance, blown both men into unconsciousness or lifted them into the air and spun them like toys. But she didn’t. She couldn’t be bothered. The darts struck her, one on her bare upper arm, just below the shoulder. The other, shamefully, against the plunging neckline of her dress, catching uselessly on the silk above her breast. A soft click, then a pulse. Voltage surged. The wires shivered. The tasers hissed their pathetic defiance. And Françoise barely blinked. She tilted her head slightly, as though puzzled by the sensation, not in pain, but in confusion, like someone being asked a riddle in a language they’ve outgrown.

"Was zat... it?"

The barbs hung there, impotent. The charge fizzled against her skin like champagne bubbles. Her hands remained on her hips. Her posture remained perfect. Her expression revealed that she was deeply, profoundly unimpressed. She slowly raised her right hand, her fingers brushing the wire at her shoulder, and plucked it loose, the dart falling to the ground like a dead insect. Then the other. Flicked away with a lazy finger.

"Your toys..." she smirked. "Zey are just... stupid."

The officers stood frozen. One of them dropped his taser. The other took a half-step back. Françoise’s smile grew wider. She was still deciding what to do next.

The silence that followed the failed taser strike was thick with disbelief. One of the officers, on the right from Françoise's perspective, the younger, angrier of the pair, sweating through his uniform, seemed to reach his limit. Training gave way to panic. Or ego. Or some cocktail of both. With a sudden shout, he charged. Straight at her. His arms extended. His hands ready. His plan, if one could call it that, was to grab her, force her to the ground, restrain her, cuff her. The way you would a drunk. A shoplifter. Françoise didn’t turn to face him. She didn’t tense. She simply let the faintest of appraisals escape her perfect lips.

"Pfffft."

And then, with all the urgency of flicking lint from couture, she lifted one hand, just one, from her hip, and without so much as shifting her weight, she extended two fingers toward his midsection. Her gaze remained fixed elsewhere. Her body still pointed forward. And with a casual tap, she pushed him. Not a punch. Not a swing. A lazy shove, delivered with two delicate, unbothered fingers to his belly as he reached her. The result was cataclysmic. He didn’t fall. He launched. His feet left the pavement as though gravity had been deactivated. His body rose, fast, too fast, his arms flailing uselessly, his scream cut off by acceleration. He flew backwards, upwards, like a rag doll fired from a cannon. Across the street. Over the heads of the fleeing crowd. Over the squad car. Until he hit the side of a building. Fifty metres away. Four storeys high. The sound of impact was... wet. Final. Sickening. A long moment passed as what remained of him began to peel away, gravity reclaiming its prize. The remains slurped downward, limp and red, and splatted onto the pavement below. Françoise's hand had already returned to her hip.

Her body never moved. But she watched his flight with mild amusement, her lips curling at the corners, a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. And when his body finally hit the wall, she let out a soft "Mmm" as if she’d just sipped something agreeable.

The only sound now came from the surviving officer. He was backing away, slowly, shakily, his taser forgotten, arms raised in a trembling, useless gesture of surrender. His mouth hung open, trying to form words he no longer remembered how to say. His boots scraped against broken glass. His breath caught in his throat. Françoise turned. Slowly. Lazily. Her hips shifted with sensual grace, her heels pivoting against the debris-littered concrete as though she were on a polished ballroom floor. Her hair gleamed in the flickering orange light of nearby fires. Her eyes, those impossibly green eyes, settled on him with the kind of calm that terrified him more than anything he had witnessed so far. She tilted her head, as if browsing options on a menu. She hadn’t yet decided what to do to him. She was still considering... fire? air? a flick...? when the world rudely interrupted her.

There was a screech, the metallic wail of tyres slamming against asphalt at speed, followed by the sharp, bitter stench of burnt rubber curling into the night air. Françoise turned her eyes languidly toward the noise. A black van had skidded into view at the far end of the street, tactical headlights slicing through smoke and chaos. The words POLICE – ARMED RESPONSE UNIT were emblazoned in white across the side. Its engine choked to a halt. And then, chaos. The front doors slammed open. The side panel slid back with a metallic snap. And out they poured. Eight of them. Dressed in black, head to toe. Helmets, visors, tactical vests, gleaming with utility. Boots thudding. Commands shouted. Pistols drawn. Pointed. Raised. They formed a semi-circle around her in seconds, perfect formation, barrels locked on target, hearts pounding, trigger fingers ready.

To them, this was the moment. Everything they had prepared for, trained for. To Françoise, it was an mild inconvenience. Her hands remained on her hips. Her chin lifted a little. Eight guns. All pointed directly at her chest. Not her head. Not her legs. Her chest. Of course. Her majestic, divine spheres, rising high and proud beneath the fabric of her dress, outlined in satin that clung to her with the loyalty of worship. Each curve unapologetic, each bounce and sway a glimpse of perfection. They didn’t merely exist, they commanded awe. And now, eight pistol-barrels hovered before them, trembling slightly in the smoky air.

Françoise remained still. Perfectly still. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t lift her chin. She simply allowed her thoughts to drift, luxuriously, silently, through her mind. "Zey are going to shoot me. All eight of zem. At close range. In ze chest. How flattering." She let the thought linger, then continued her internal monologue. "I could move. Easily. Zey would not even see me vanish. Or I could stop ze bullets with my mind. I zink I will be able to do zat. Besides, I could crush zem. Melt zem. Burn zem to ash with a glance. I could take away zere guns. Break zere arms. Fold zere armour like paper."

In the end, she elected not to intervene in any of the ways she had considered. Instead, she did something else entirely. She lowered her eyes. Not her head. Just her eyes. A signal of comfort. Of ease. Of indulgence. And, since her gaze now hung over their black body-armour and tactical vests, it was only natural that her X-ray vision slipped into use. She let it drift, idly, judgmentally, through zips, through Kevlar, through thick, overbuilt padding. Eight men. All armed. All protected. All still, somehow, pathetically vulnerable. Because she saw everything. Saw their very maleness. Of course, they were all responding to her pulchritude. A few more than others. Some hardening. Some already hard. One twitching visibly. A variety of sizes, of shades. None memorable.

"Tsk." She didn’t sigh. She didn’t smirk. She just observed. "Such average men. Unimpressive. Unworthy."

And still... she did nothing. No gesture. No threat. Just the same, slow, silent thought-process.

"But I ‘ave not experienced ze bullets... Not yet. And so... I zink... I shall stay right ‘ere. And see what happens."

There was no command. No warning. Just the smallest, sharpest sound, a click, a twitch, a decision made in fear. And then, the shot. The first bullet, fired by trembling fingers behind reinforced gloves, left the barrel of the pistol with a burst of fire and a desperate howl of pressure. It tore through the thick, smoke-laced air of the ruined street, cutting a perfect line toward her. Time slowed. Not because the bullet was weak, but because she was ready. She was watching. Her mind, her senses, her entire body had already begun tracking its motion before it moved. She felt the ripple in the air the moment the firing pin clicked. She heard the spin of the metal. She saw the shape of its path. And she didn’t move.

The bullet travelled. Over fractured concrete. Through the heat-haze of a burning car. Between the drifting ash and sparks. Until, it reached her. It approached, aimed true, towards where the shooter had assumed it would find her heart. Her vital life-force. And then... it met her. Contact. With the sheer silken perfection, the immaculate, glorious, divinely feminine curve of Françoise's left breast. And that was the moment that the world changed forever. The bullet slowed, as if realising. As if understanding, far too late, the mistake it had made. It touched her skin. And at that point, the Universe, the Dark Plasma force, a whole plane of existence beyond the minds of anyone on Earth, manifested by Françoise's staggeringly desirable, smooth, warm flesh, decreed that it could pass no further.

It had no choice now. No option. It stopped. It did not bounce. It did not deflect. It simply... ceased to matter. It began to flatten. Right there, at the precise apex of her left breast. It deformed, crumpling like cheap foil against a statue of silk-wrapped steel. Its point blunted. Its shape twisted. Its velocity drained. For a moment, it tried to spread out over her magnificence, as if desperately hoping to embrace as large an area of possible of flawless, irresistible female glory. The heat of it radiated out across her skin like the touch of an over-warm lover. The lightest, softest kiss imaginable, accompanied by a whimper of failure. She felt it. Registered the touch. And that was the full extent of its effect. There had been no pain. No sting. No force to absorb. No threat to overcome. The bullet failed even in its attempt to hug her breast. It crumbled, folded on itself, deformed almost beyond recognition and then it fell, pathetically, spent, broken. Humiliated. Slowly, it slid down the perfect curve it had tried to violate, tracing the slope of her chest as if in apology, bounced once off the satin edge of her dress, and landed at her feet with a delicate, puny, useless 'Plink!'.

Finally, she looked down. At the spot where the bullet had struck. At the unblemished perfection of her skin. At the unmarked curve of her breast. At the place that should have, by every law of man, shown some trace of the pellet's lethal force. But there was nothing. Not a smudge. Not a bruise. Not a change in temperature. She looked up again, unhurriedly. And now she smiled.

"Ah." A soft exhale of recognition. Not surprise. Not shock. Just... confirmation.

"So. It is as I thought," she mused to herself, "Zey cannot 'urt me. Not even a little."

The Armed Response team had seen it too. She smelt the shift in chemicals in the air. The change in the trace notes in the eight men's perspiration. Arousal was still present. Of course it was. But now there as a surge of what had previously been only barely detectable. A rush of fear. The silence that followed the Plink! of the defeated bullet was barely a second long, but inside that second, everything changed. They saw her smile. And they broke. Eight men, trained beyond fear, chosen for their steadiness, their reactions, their willingness to act under extreme pressure, all of them opened fire. It wasn’t planned. It didn’t need to be. It was instinct. It was desperation. A staccato thunder of gunfire tore through the street.

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

Dozens of rounds in seconds. Shell casings spun through the air. Muzzle flashes lit the smoke in electric bursts. The sound bounced off buildings, echoing down alleyways like war drums. To the world, it was a blurred chaos. To Françoise, it was dawdling, sluggish. Each movement, each shot, each flash of steel and fire... she saw it all with absolute clarity. Their fingers curled. Their triggers depressed. Their weapons bucked. And she watched it unfold like a slow-motion dance of failure. The bullets came. Not one. Not two. All of them. A deadly stream of hot metal cutting through the fog of panic and debris. Dozens of rounds, all aimed at her. At her chest. Her abdomen. Her throat. Her face. A steel storm, created by men doing their very best to destroy her.

She remained still. Not from defiance. Not from arrogance. But from certainty. She had already learned the truth. The first bullet had told her everything. Now she simply stood, and let the others learn it too. The bullets struck. And failed. One after another, flattening, shattering, skidding off her skin like raindrops on marble. They hit her fabulous breasts. Her beautiful collarbone. Her sexy, flat stomach. Some clanged off her hips. One caught the sublime curve of her jaw and disintegrated. Another struck her throat, right at the hollow where vulnerability might have once lived. There was no reddening. No flicker. No reaction. They hit her like tiny, localised breezes. Some fell at her feet. Some bounced and rolled into the gutter. One ricocheted off her collarbone and shattered the headlight of a police car twenty feet away.

The noise, the flashes, the hail of metal, it was apocalyptic. Yet she merely lowered her eyes again. Not in fear. In boredom.

"So loud," she thought. "So messy. So emotional. So inelegant. Is zis really ze best zey can do?"

The bullets kept coming. But they no longer mattered. After only a few seconds, the gunfire slowed. Not because she’d stopped it. But because their weapons had run dry. The thunder tapered into sporadic, sharp cracks, then clicks. Metallic clacks of empty chambers, the stutter of slides locking open. Then... silence. Françoise did not speak. She hadn’t moved. Her hands were still resting on her hips. But her mind was already cataloguing. "Nine to ze left breast. Seven to ze right, très gentil. Six to ze stomach. Four to ze sides. Five to ze arms. Three to ze throat. Two to ze cheek. One to ze fore'ead. Zero pain. Zero damage. Zero concern."

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she continued her reckoning. "One almost struck my eye. I wonder what zat would 'ave done... Nothing, probably."

The air still echoed faintly with the scent of cordite and panic. Before her, the men had stopped shooting. Some were staring. Some breathing hard. One had dropped his weapon entirely. But most were now fumbling, reaching into tactical belts, loading magazines with shaking fingers, trying to force bullets into place while their minds tried to reconcile what they’d just witnessed. Every shot. Every bullet. Every effort. Useless. And she... She was not even ruffled. No blood. No torn fabric. No change in posture. Not even a scuff on her dress. Françoise looked down again, just briefly. She admired a bullet that had struck her throat, now lying softly at her feet, curled in on itself like a wilted flower. She made a soft sound in her throat. Not a sigh.

Just... "Mm."

Then her eyes rose, slowly, inevitably, back to the men. Back to the reloaders. The ones still clinging to hope. She tilted her head.

"Zat’s it? You have all shot your loads?" she mocked cruelly. Her voice was calm and confident. Terrifyingly calm and confident.

They moved now, not in formation, not in control. Franticly. One dropped his pack on the street. Another struggled to align a fresh clip with his weapon. A third, trembling, reached toward the ground where he’d dropped his pistol, his body hunched, knees bent, his arm stretching awkwardly as he scrambled to retrieve it.

Françoise tilted her head. "Tsk."

Her lip curled, not in rage, but pity. He looked absurd. Bent over like a drunk at closing time. His armour creaked with effort. His fingers stretched for the fallen weapon. He never reached it. With no visible effort, no raised hand, no spoken command, Françoise simply lifted him with her mind. Ten meters into the air. One moment, he was crouched like a fool. The next, he was weightless, suspended above the chaos like a puppet with invisible strings. He screamed. Loud. Pathetic. His arms and legs flailed wildly, his pistol far beneath him now, his body twisting mid-air in a useless panic dance. The others froze, staring, paralysed, silent. Françoise’s eyes glittered. And then, without looking at the man above, she turned her head slowly toward the nearest of the remaining policemen. She didn’t speak. She didn’t even pause. Her eyes flared. Twin beams of Dark Plasma Heat Vision erupted from her gaze, sharp and surgical, like glowing scalpels forged in hell. The lasers struck their intended victim mid-chest and he simply vanished in an instant. No scream. No resistance. Just a bloom of flame and a puddle of ash.

The next pair of beams followed half a second later. Another target. Another victim. Another instant annihilation. Both men she selected had been disintegrated before their weapons were even halfway raised. The remaining five officers moved, but barely. They had decided to flee, and were starting to turn. Perhaps they intended to regroup. To survive. But to Françoise, their motion was pathetic. Sluggish. Laughable. Like watching swans paddle through syrup, in slow motion. Their boots dragged. Their limbs tangled. Every action delayed by the weight of fear and futility. She could see the way their hearts pounded in their chests, useless, overworked muscles trying to drag them away from something unavoidable. They were intending to run, for sure. But, Françoise realised, they could only do what she allowed them to. And she had not given them permission to run.

She allowed them a few steps. Not as mercy. Not as kindness. But because she hadn’t finished admiring the scene. Above her, the suspended man twitched and wailed, dangling ten metres up like a broken marionette, forced to witness the unfolding performance. His visor was fogged with sweat. His legs kicked in vain. His scream caught in his throat as Françoise finally moved. Not her legs. Just her waist. She rotated, slowly, with a languid twist of her hips that made her dress shimmer across her thighs like liquid satin, her hands remaining comfortably seated as she turned. Her heels barely shifted. And then, she exhaled. A simple breath. But from her lips, that breath became a storm. A precise, targeted, hurricane exhalation of Dark Plasma-charged air, condensed, compressed, controlled. Her power, expressed as something casual, something almost sensual. It instantly overwhelmed the nearest policeman. His feet scraped against the pavement for half a second before he was snatched skyward, howling, his arms flailing as he was spun mid-air, his body contorting as he slammed into the second-floor windows of a betting shop across the street. Glass exploded in every direction. His body disappeared through the façade.

She turned her head slightly. Another effortless, feminine exhalation. Its chosen victim was caught mid-step, dragged backwards through the air, rotating so fast his legs whipped around his body like wet rope. He slammed into a parked van with enough force to crumple the entire side, then bounced upwards, backwards, and vanished from sight beyond a rooftop. The next one she targetted tried to scream. She didn’t let him. Just the gentlest puff of her breath. His body was launched like a thrown doll, spiralling away as he tumbled end-over-end across the sky. He cleared two lampposts and smashed into the fourth-storey balcony of a nearby apartment block. The tiny porch partially collapsed under the impact.

The fourth victim of her blowing did not even make it that far. She exhaled through pursed lips, as though extinguishing a candle. Her hurricane violently tossed him sideways into a lamppost, his body impacting with an audible Snap! For an instant, it seemed to bend around the metal pole at the waist. Then it fell in two different directions.

She waited a moment before dealing with the fifth. She let him think he had escaped, let him reach the mouth of an alleyway, let him believe he was just a few strides from freedom. Then she turned her face in his direction, slowly, as if acknowledging a minor curiosity.

"Non."

And then a lazy sigh. Her warm, fragrant breath caught him like an onrushing bus, lifting him, spinning him backwards, dragging his screaming body upwards through the air until he hit a neon sign with such force the entire frame detonated in sparks, his body bursting through it like a cannonball through a chandelier.

Quiet followed. Flames crackled. Dust fell. Bricks cooled. Above her, the levitating officer remained, trembling, staring, unable to look away. He had watched every second. Françoise let the relative silence stretch. Then she turned her eyes upward, finally returning her attention to the one man she had saved... for last. Her smile was soft. Not kind. Just... mildly satisfied. He hung in the air above her. Still trying to understand what was happening to him, and what had happened to the others. His visor was fogged from the inside. Sweat poured from beneath his helmet. His arms shook violently, every muscle in his body confused, exhausted, helpless. Françoise looked up at him like one might look at a spoiled fruit.

Her tone was light, mocking, laced with something resembling pity and dripping in superior amusement.

"You are sweating a lot, no?"

The man said nothing. He couldn’t. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged, only breath. Only panic.

"Per’aps... I can cool you down."

Françoise raised one perfect brow, pursing her lips in a mock kiss. And then, slowly, obscenely, she puckered. This was not like when she had disposed of his colleagues with effortless little puffs. This was deliberate, sensual, lethal. Her lips pushed out like velvet pulled over a blade. Her chest rose with elegance, the swell of her breasts lifting as she inhaled, purely for theatrical effect. And then... she blew. Again, not like before. This time, the air that emerged was different. It was ice. Not metaphorical cold. Not mere wind. But a blast of pure, sub-zero, elemental chill, laced with Dark Plasma energy, honed into a focused stream of instant freezing death. It hit him mid-torso. He didn’t fly away. He didn’t spin. He simply froze. Instantly. His limbs jerked to a halt. His scream, half-formed, became crystal in his throat, locked in time as his entire body went stiff, skin turning pale blue, then white, then clear. His visor frosted over. His gloved fingers solidified mid-clench. Even the vapour from his final breath turned into sparkling ice crystals, floating like glitter around his immobilised form.

The body hovered there above her, utterly motionless, a statue in mid-air, a perfect corpse, the latest sculpture in her gallery of death. Françoise took a moment. She admired him. There was something... aesthetic about the way the ice refracted the firelight from the ruined street below. His body caught the glow like a chandelier made of failure. He glittered. Like diamonds. She smiled softly. And then, she let go. The invisible hold vanished. The body dropped. It fell hard and fast, the weight of frozen limbs pulling it straight down in a dead plunge. And when it hit the street, it did not bounce, or crack. It shattered. Into a million pieces. A million glittering, twinkling fragments, bursting across the pavement like smashed crystal, skittering into gutters, dusting car roofs, settling into flames like ice in a glass of whisky. Françoise tilted her head, and smiled fully. The broadest, most delighted grin her stunning face had displayed since she had stepped onto the Eurostar in Paris.

"'Smashing!' as you English like to say!" She chuckled at her own joke.

Her surroundings seemed eerily still. Only the crackling of fires now, no voices, no weapons, no explosions, no hurricanes. Not the kind of stillness that comes with peace, but the kind that follows obliteration. Thick and unnatural, pressing down on the world like a velvet-gloved hand. The street, once a functional artery of London traffic and sleepwalking mundane existence, was now a graveyard of ash and ruin. Cars burned where they had been parked. Shopfronts gaped open, glassless, bleeding smoke. Bricks had spilled onto the pavement, blackened and cracked, some still warm to the touch. Overturned bins leaked flame. Fluorescent signage sparked and fizzled like dying insects. Shattered body-cam lenses blinked weakly from crushed helmets.

The bodies, what was left of them, were everywhere. Some had become ash piles, scattered across the street like forgotten chalk outlines. Others were half-embedded in walls. A corpse hung four meters above the ground, arms and legs splayed as if in flight before it had hit the sign that now hung twisted and melted above the betting shop. Across the street, blood had sprayed up the side of a van in a blooming red arc that still glistened wetly in the flickering firelight. The pavement was coated in a thin, glittering layer of frozen human debris, dusted like powdered sugar across an open-air cathedral of death. And in the exact centre of it all, Françoise stood. She had not moved. Her hands still rested perfectly on her hips, as if she were modelling in a high-fashion shoot rather than standing at the epicentre of an apocalypse. Her posture had not slackened. Her hair, tousled only where she had allowed it, shimmered under the glow of flames like chestnut silk kissed by starlight. Her dress, though slightly dusted with ash and shimmering ice crystals, clung to her body like a living thing, perfectly framing the curve of her hips, the impossible lines of her waist, the proud, unscarred swell of her breasts, the very place where the bullets had first failed.

Her smile was all that had truly changed. No longer a smirk. No longer a knowing curl. Now, it was a full, delighted grin. As wide and as wicked as the devastation around her. As radiant as a bomb. The fires danced. The wind died. The world around her waited. She was the only thing left alive in the middle of it all. And she was pleased.

She stood among the ruins and felt nothing. No weight. No pain. No resistance. Just the soft warmth of flame-touched air curling against her skin, the tickle of ash settling on her collarbone like powdered praise. The silence pressed in, but it didn’t touch her. Nothing could. Not any more. She had killed so many men. Erased them. Crushed them. Shattered them into ice and ash and mist. She had scattered their bodies across the skyline like confetti made of failure. And it was not simply the case that she hadn’t broken a sweat. It was far beyond that. She had expended nothing. No exertion. Not one hair was out of place. Her skin was untouched. Her body was still humming with unspent energy.

"What 'ave I become...?"

The thought rose in her mind, not with fear, or horror or accusation, but with a kind of silken curiosity, like running her fingers along a new gown. She didn’t feel different. Not exactly. She felt like herself, only now... Now, the universe had caught up with who she actually was.

"I only touched one of zem!"

It was true. She had kept her hands, both of them, firmly planted on her hips since the moment the armed van had arrived. She hadn’t so much as lifted a digit. Other than the taxi she had overturned, and the taser-wielding policeman she'd dismissed from existence with two casual fingers, everything she’d done, every death, every scream, every ruinous display, had been achieved through breath, through glance, through the laziness of thought. There had been no effort. No cost. Only amusement.

"Is zis all I am now?"

No. It was not all. And she knew it. She smiled again, her tongue running lightly across her upper teeth, savouring the aftertaste of incinerated uniforms and shattered testosterone.

"Zis is not all. Zis is only ze beginning."

Because what thrilled her wasn’t so much what she had done. It was how easily she had done it. Every power, every discovery, had revealed itself like an afterthought. Like something meant for her. Like a part of her body that had always been there. Everything felt... right. Not overwhelming. Not unfamiliar and new. Just correct.

"I was always meant to be zis. Ze universe has only now realised it."

She raised her eyes again, surveying the wreckage, the smouldering ends of what men had tried to call order. And whispered, just to herself: "So easy."

The silence remained. But only because she allowed it. The street around her was broken, lifeless, burned. A museum of masculine failure, exhibits encased in smoke and shattered glass. And now, at last, she turned her gaze beyond it. Her emerald eyes lifted toward the skyline. London, dull, grey, offensive, waited on the horizon. Unaware. Unready. She saw it all. The riverside towers. The office blocks. The monuments to mediocrity. The entire city, cowering in its routine, pretending it still mattered. She took a single step forward, letting her heel click against the fractured pavement like the first beat of a funeral march.

"Zey sent me 'ere to learn your language. Instead, I discovered what I truly am. And now, you will learn from me."

Her lip curled. Not just at the skyline. At the very idea of it. At the people in their homes, the ones watching from their windows, the ones hiding behind laws and uniforms and doors that could never hope to stop her.

"Zis is not a country. It is a playground. A lesson waiting to be taught. A mistake waiting to be corrected. And I... I am ze correction."

She smiled again, slow, decadent, deadly. Then she looked up, eyes glittering with hunger, with satisfaction, with intention.

"It is time zese English found out what zey are really worth."

 

Conceptfan, March 2025.