The Still Incredible Miss Jones
Bria Jones sighed as she tugged at the itchy purple and silver spandex of her old IncrediGirl costume, the fabric stretching uncomfortably across her unsuperheroine-like midsection. The Missoula Comic-Con ballroom inside of the Airport Marriott reeked of stale popcorn, corndogs and traces of body odor. Only about half the seats were filled for the twenty-fifth anniversary panel of IncrediGirl, a far cry from the screaming crowds of her glory days.
“Thank you all for coming out to celebrate a quarter century of IncrediGirl!” the energetic moderator announced, his voice echoing through the mediocre sound system. Scattered applause rippled through the audience. A cluster of dedicated fans in the front row – mostly men in their forties clutching faded posters and trading cards – cheered enthusiastically. The forty-five year old Bria plastered on her patented “IncrediSmile” with the same bright energy she’d perfected as a nineteen-year-old breakout star.
The moderator turned to her. “Bria, it’s INCREDIBLE to have you here, pun intended! Tell us—what was it like playing a superpowered teenage heroine while you were still a teenager yourself?”
Bria leaned into the microphone, her highlighted brown hair catching the light. “It was a whirlwind. One day I was in high school drama club, the next I was flying on wires and punching aliens.” She, of course, glossed over the darker parts: the long hours, the pressure to stay impossibly thin, the executives who saw her as a commodity rather than a real high school girl.
A young woman raised her hand. “Do you think they’ll ever reboot the show? Maybe with a younger actress?”
The question landed like a punch to the gut, though Bria laughed it off gracefully. “Oh, they’ve floated the idea. But who could replace the original? Maybe I could play the wise mentor version now—IncrediMom.” The audience chuckled politely, but inside, Bria felt the familiar sting. After the show was cancelled abruptly after three seasons when she was still only twenty-one, Bria found herself relentlessly typecast. Serious auditions for movies and television were almost non-existent across every genre as she was relegated to make a living doing laundry detergent commercials, sporadic voice-over gigs, and these dreadful convention appearances.
As the panel wrapped up, Bria stepped off the stage, her knees already protesting the high-heeled boots that completed the costume. She made her way to the autograph table in the exhibitor hall, where a modest line had formed. Over the next two hours, she signed photos, posed for selfies, and listened to fans recount how the show had inspired them as kids.
Most interactions were innocuous, but one man bizarrely stood out – mid-forties, pale skin, stringy dark hair, and intense eyes magnified behind thick glasses. A lanyard with a clearly homemade “VIP Creator” badge hung around his neck. He placed a glossy photo from the show’s second season on the table—Bria at twenty, mid-flight pose, looking invincible and more than a little sexy in her skintight costume.
“You were perfect as IncrediGirl,” he said, his voice low and fervent, almost whispering. “Not just acted. You embodied her. The IncrediCrystal...the one that gave you your powers in season one, episode three…I studied every frame of that episode. I made one just for you.”
He slid a small black velvet pouch across the table. Bria hesitated, glancing at the con security guard a few feet away, but curiosity won out in the end. As she gingerly opened it, she found inside a crystal the size of a golf ball, pulsing with a soft golden light – undoubtedly LED lighting somehow embedded inside of it. Still, it looked eerily identical to the prop used in the series, the ancient alien artifact that had granted IncrediGirl her superhuman abilities.
“It’s… beautiful,” Bria said carefully, turning it in her fingers. The crystal felt warm, almost alive. “You made this yourself? It’s incredibly detailed.”
The man leaned in closer, speaking in a breathy whisper, “It’s more than a replica, mind you. I reverse-engineered the show’s lore, the science they hinted at. It’s real. Or it will be. You deserve to be her again, Miss Jones. She’s still inside you. She just needs a little push.”
A chill crawled up the actress’s spine as she slowly slipped the crystal back inside the velvet pouch. She’d encountered obsessive fans before— the ones who had a hard time separating fiction and reality—but this guy’s intensity felt different. Predatory. She signed his photo with a flourish. “That’s incredibly thoughtful, thank you. I appreciate the dedication,” Bria said with a forced smile, trying to keep the line behind him moving. After a few awkward seconds of silence, the mysterious man simply smiled and, without warning, just turned around and walked away.
He never even looked back.
The rest of the signing blurred together: forced smiles, repeated anecdotes, children who barely knew the show but came out because their parents did. By the time Bria returned to her modest hotel room on the con’s outskirts, her feet throbbed and her spirit felt paper-thin. She kicked off the heels, peeled off the constricting costume, and stood in front of the full-length mirror in her underwear.
Forty-five stared back at her without mercy. Her once-toned stomach had softened from years of stress eating between disappointing auditions. Stretch marks from her pregnancy with her two children lingered like faded battle scars. She sighed, running fingers through her hair. “IncrediGirl… yeah, whatever!.”
Pouring a plastic cup of cheap hotel merlot, Bria collapsed onto the bed. The velvet pouch the creepy guy left her sat next to her on the nightstand. With idle curiosity, Bria slowly opened the pouch and pulled out the crystal, still emitting that faint golden glow. Holding it to the light, Bria turned it slowly in her hand as memories flooded her consciousness. She was nineteen again, on the Vancouver soundstage, harnessed for flight sequences, laughing with the cast as green-screen explosions lit up the set. The show had been her everything—until it ended, and she became “that teenage actress from IncrediGirl,” forever chasing relevance in an industry that discarded actresses after thirty. Sighing, she set the crystal down,crawled under the covers, the crystal’s soft light the last thing she saw before she fell asleep.
In her dreams, Bria found herself soaring through skies as IncrediGirl, the crystal’s energy pulsing inside her chest like a second heart, unbridled superhuman power surging through her veins. She felt sexy…powerful…young. The crystal’s light intensified, bathing her in liquid starlight, burning away the weight of decades.
Bria woke with a gasp in the middle of the night, skin slick with sweat. A tingling warmth sending pleasurable tingles throughout her entire body. “What the hell…?” She clutched her chest, where the sensation was strongest. The crystal on the nightstand blazed like a star, filling the room with ethereal light before suddenly dimming to a subtle glow.
As she stumbled to the bathroom and flipped on the lights, Bria gripped the sink, staring at her reflection in disbelief. “That’s not me…” she whispered to herself incredulously. But it WAS her…just vastly improved.
Bria stared at her reflection, breath catching as the full extent of the change sank in. Her skin no longer looked tired and dull like it used to. It glowed now—warm, luminous, almost dewy—with the kind of healthy, youthful radiance she hadn’t possessed since her twenties. Every crow’s foot, every faint forehead crease had vanished, leaving her face smooth and softly radiant, easily two decades younger. Her brown hair fell thicker and silkier around her shoulders, catching the light with natural golden highlights that framed her face like they’d always belonged there.
She lifted a hand and touched her cheek. The skin was impossibly smooth, warm and supple beneath her fingertips. Her arms, once soft from years of desk work and quiet evenings, now presented a subtle and sexy muscle tone that made the lines of her biceps and forearms look clean and strong. The same quiet definition ran through her lithe legs—thighs firmer, calves more sculpted. Her stomach had flattened into a smooth and gently defined plane, her waist narrowed sexily, and her posture straightened unconsciously – shoulders back, chest raised as she now suddenly carried a new, quiet confidence.
Then her gaze dropped lower to the succulent hemispheres on her chest – at least a full cup or two larger… fuller… heavier in the most delicious way. They sat high and proud, the soft weight of them no longer subject to the trivial laws of gravity or time. She cupped them slowly, fingers sinking into the warm, dense softness, and a soft, involuntary gasp left her lips. They were so firm yet exquisitely sensitive. When she squeezed gently, the flesh yielded just enough before relenting, nipples tightening against her palms through the thin fabric of her now-snug sleep shirt as a low, warm pulse of pleasure rolled through her.
“Oh Goddddd…” she whispered huskily, voice unsteady, still half in denial that the woman in the mirror could possibly be her and not look a day over twenty-five.
She flexed her fingers experimentally, then again, slower. Something else moved beneath the surface of her skin. A low, constant hum of energy, vibrant and restless, like electricity held just
under the surface. It wasn’t just youth or beauty. It was power—alive…hungry… thrumming through every muscle – every part of her – begging for release. The yearning made her thighs press together subconsciously, a soft, liquid heat beginning to ebb inside her as her body quietly, insistently reminded her how very alive it had suddenly become.
Gingerly, Bria adjusted her grip on the heavy marble-patterned bathroom countertop and gently applied pressure. Instantly, a loud report echoed inside the hotel bathroom like a gunshot as the hard stone cracked under her fingers with minimal effort. No pain…no strain…just raw power.
Her eyes widened in amazement as she looked down at the fractured countertop and grabbed a larger fragment that had splintered off. Without hesitation, Bria closed her fist as her dainty hand slowly pulverized the oblong piece of granite into smaller fragments… then smaller shards… then literal sand as she opened her palm and let the grains fall from her superhuman hands onto the counter.
“Superstrength… no way!” she whispered to herself in disbelief as she moved to the main room, heart racing with a mix of terror and exhilaration. Taking a shallow breath, Bria dashed across her hotel room to grab her phone from the charger. The world blurred around her; she moved faster than her eyes could comfortably track, leaving a faint visual afterimage. The motion felt natural, like stretching a long-dormant muscle. When she blinked she was incredibly in the same position from where she started – now with her phone in hand!
“This can’t be happening!” she said excitedly as she focused, willing herself upwards. After a few seconds, Bria’s feet left the carpet. She hovered a foot off the ground, arms outstretched for balance, a wide grin splitting her face. The sensation was pure freedom—weightless, exhilarating, powerful. Tears welled in her eyes. For the first time in years, the chronic ache in her knees and lower back had vanished completely. The constant fatigue from poor sleep, stress, and the grind of commercial gigs was gone. She felt twenty-five again and better than she ever thought possible. “I’m incredible!” she declared as her hovered gracefully in her hotel room before correcting herself, “No…I’m IncrediGIRL! I still got it!” She giggled to herself as she amazingly realized IncrediGirl was back. And this time, she was real.
Dr Gomez “Mez” Murr sat quietly in his darkened, lair as he viewed the blinking text on his 72” monitor:
“IncrediCrystal Online. Do you wish to initiate mind control uplink?”
The man his mid-forties, with pale skin, stringy dark hair, and intense eyes magnified behind thick glasses grinned mischievously as he reread the blinking message onscreen. With a superpowered heroine under his power, he knew nothing could stop him. He laughed to himself as he extended one finger and pressed the ENTER button, whispering to himself, “I still got it!”