The Stupendous Springer

Episode 1: Exposure, Chapter 1

Sophie Ritchie stretched her arm across her bedroom to pick up her phone from her desk. Yes, that was a thing she could do. The creaky, slithery sound of her arm extending and retracting, as brief as it was, drew the eyes of her housemate and best friend, Holly Andreas, who caught the event just in time to see her friend's arm manifest an elbow as it pulled back into its original shape.

Sophie met Holly's eyes as she slid her sleeve, which had ridden up her arm during the retraction, back down to her wrist. "What? Just grabbing my phone," Sophie asked with a slight smile.

Holly sighed. "I'm just noticing how comfortable you are with it, which, good on you, but that brings with it the chance you'll do that accidentally sometime today."

"It's fine," Sophie assured her, packing up the netbook she used for class materials into her backpack. "What are you worried about anyway? I'm the one who might get outed."

Holly frowned. "I'm worried for your sake, you dork. I'm simply suggesting that you might want to start cutting back on that now rather than later, so you can be 'in the zone' as far as keeping yourself under control before we get there. That way it'll be less of an adjustment after this past weekend."

The past weekend had been a crazy one. Friday night Sophie was involved in a science project gone wrong, Saturday morning she woke up with an elastic body and pastel-red hair, and Saturday night she saved a kidnapping victim and stopped a supervillain - not a gentle escalation at all! Still, even Sunday had been rather unusual, as Sophie had been growing accustomed to the new method of movement she now possessed.

"All yesterday you were encouraging me to just get used to it, though," Sophie countered, leaning against the wall to wait for Holly to finish dressing. "'If you feel like stretching, stretch!' that's what you said. I'm stretching."

Holly rolled her eyes as she tied her shoes. "Obviously that was to help you better control it so you could keep it in check today, but if you're just going to keep doing it without thinking about it, then I think that defeats the purpose."

Sophie gave Holly a perplexed look, but shook her head, deciding not to go with her first instinct when replying. Instead, she said, "Holly, I'll be fine. Sure, it's as natural as flexing muscles, but the maybe-muscles are still under my control. It'll be a challenge, but today's review day in two of my classes, so it's not like I'll have that much distracting me, you know?"

Holly took a deep breath and let it out. "You're right. I should calm down. You know how happy I am for you in all this. It probably won't even be that big a deal if you are outed. Supers aren't the most outlandish things in the world."

Sophie held up a hand and twisted her fingers around each other as her hand crept towards twice its natural length, before relaxing and letting it snap back. "Definitely not," she agreed sarcastically.

"You're just a weird one, that's all," Holly teased as she grabbed her own backpack.

"Hey!" Sophie snapped.

"Weird, but awesome," Holly corrected.

Sophie raised an eyebrow and smiled as the two left their bedroom. "I guess I'll let that slide. You watch yourself though, mortal."

"As you command, Goddess of Elastic Hair Ties," Holly joked back, eliciting a giggle from both of them as they made their way to the front door, and her not-normal normal day that lay ahead.

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Arrived at school on time via Holly's car, kept pace effortlessly in math, and nearly passed out from boredom in that history class she regretted choosing, it was another typical Monday. However, this Monday was different in ways only Sophie perceived. The seats were comfier, the walk between classrooms was more fluid, both her cheek and hand were softer as she rested the former on the latter, and her shoes never once felt too tight.