adamwarren
patreon
I AM EMPOWERED, pt.7: The Twitter-based YEAR ONE prose dealie continues!
🕑 Added 2020-01-09 14:00:03 +0000 UTC<Note: You can check out I Am Empowered's previous installments with this tag.>
And now, back to Emp's first-person narration in (old) Twitter-based 140-character format, taking place roughly around the beginning of Empowered vol.1. In this chapter, Emp is kicking off a lengthy account of a incident involving superheroic rooftop-to-rooftop (or "R2R") jumping: >
I AM EMPOWERED
Chapter 3: ABOMINABLEMENT DIFFICILE (pt.3)
Shall I spin you a tale of exactly such giveth/taketh WIN/FAIL contrastiness, which happens to involve R2R mishappiness? Indeed, I shall.
Late last month, I'm holding down the Homeycrib fort all by my lonesome, while the other on-duty 'Homeys are off chasing after GammaGibbon.
I'm not at ALL pouty 'n' peeved to be left out of the posse, despite my Defcon Level 2 Frowny Face or the stream of BIG SIGHS I'm issuing.
Not sure what I was doing, but I definitely WASN'T catching up on Top Chef when a supercrime alert popped up on the giant Homeyscreen.
Trigger Troll (semi-competent C-List supervill) and Quasarmodo (notorious D-lister) on a rampage? Those two doofi, I can definitely handle!
Top Chef—which I totally wasn't watching—can wait! I darn near break an indoor land-speed record running to the nearest Lotus Node gateway.
A quick dose of solo villain-vanquishing would SO boost my godawfully bad superstats. Hello, Superheroic C-List! (Seriously buzzing, here.)
I'm careful not to fantasize about victory, which is delusional and bad, and instead am VISUALIZING victory, which is aspirational and good.
A Lotus Node portal deposits me on a rooftop two blocks away, so I can sneak up on 'em. (Portaling directly into a battlezone? Bad tactics.)
Dang if the city isn't awash in the "golden hour" before sunset, with warm, angled, Hollywood-y light flooding the scene just like a movie.
For once, positive anticipation grips me. I'm getting the chills—in a good way!—and grinning like a fiend as I sprint across the rooftop.
Asphalt crunches under my feet as I charge to the roof's edge, prepping for an easy 60-foot jump over to the neighboring building's rooftop.
Textbook-y! My last two strides line up perfectly. My footstrike is correctly flat. I launch myself off the roof in a power-sprint takeoff.
For a teeny fraction of a second, I'm golden(-lit), everything's going perfectly, I am an awesomely badass leaping ladycape, then BIRDSTRIKE
Blur of feathers and a blare of squawking and a sudden, fluttering impact as I collide with a pigeon—I think—JUST as I leap off the rooftop.
Instantly, I'm destabilized and tumbling out of control, the city whirling and streaking into a smear of golden light and feathers and sky.
The collision throws off my leap’s arc just enough to make me miss the neighboring roof. I come in low, crash through an upper-floor window.
In a single second—or less, but who's timing?—of stunning sensory overload, a whole lotta violent, noisy, messy impacts batter me around.
Plate glass booms, envelops me in a sudden wash of keening shards and tinkling fragments that tug and tear and claw at me insistently.
Then I'm slamming off a desktop, BAM, going facefirst into a big ol' flatscreen monitor, KRAKK, more keening shards and tinkling fragments.
Then, blinded by a faceful of shattering monitor, I feel crunching, splintering impact as I crash into—and through—the far wall's sheetrock.
Then the roaring stops. Silence, interrupted first by the small noises of skittering debris, then by a puzzled voice. "The fuck was THAT?"
The bitter taste of shattered drywall's gypsum plaster stings my tongue. Coughing, still blinded, I wrench against the crumbling sheetrock.
Yanking the crumpled monitor from my face, I stagger back out into the ruins of the office, dazed, confused, no longer awesomely badass.
A chubby, white-shirt-and-tie Office Drone is staring at me dumbfounded, before his gaze drops down my body, never to return to my eyes.
I look down, too, and see that my supersuit's membrane has been badly shredded by the window glass, leaving plenty of doughy flesh exposed.
In fact, I'm now more naked than clothed, not that my suit's gossamer film does much to clothe my puffy expanse of body in the first place.
Shreds of my supersuit litter the office's desktop and drift in the blast of air from the open window, glittering brightly then evaporating.
I look up, and Office Drone's cell-phone camera is panning up and down me, stopping to record for posterity that I do indeed have breasts.
Mumbling an incoherent apology, I turn and flee the wrecked office, knowing that Office Drone's camera is now trained on my escaping behind.
Time for my Superheroic Walk of Shame to the floor's elevator, past the gantlet of office workers' gawking eyes and leering camera phones.
As seen on YouTube minutes later, I do make quite a sight: A blushing, half-naked girl trying to cover herself as she darts down a hallway.
Adding to the hilarity: I'm caked in white gypsum powder from the drywall, giving me that extra je ne sais quoi air of comedic incompetence.
At the elevator, I'm so gripped by the prickly heat of utter embarrassment, it's all I can do not to start scratching furiously at my scalp.
The wait for the elevator? The longest of my life. Soundtrack? The office workers' whispers and muttered jokes, the clicks of their cameras.
The elevator ride down? Not much better. It's quitting-o'-clock, so I'm crammed into a car with a very, very amused swarm of Office Drones.
Ladies: Think that being crowd-squeezed in an overloaded elevator is mortifyingly uncomfortable? Try it when you're mostly naked, sometime.
I hastily begin mumbling apologies once I realize that, oops, my coating of sheetrock dust is rubbing off on everyone pressed up against me.
Behind me, a male Drone stage-whispers, "Wow, she looks even more naked in person." A female Drone hisses, "Nice stripper-wear, honey."
In a flurry of "excuse me" mutters and businesswear-fouling gypsum dust, I arrive on the ground floor and yank myself free of the elevator.
In the lobby, a reasonably cute but marginally douchey-looking Bro Office Drone approaches me and asks, "Hey, can I get a picture with you?"
I start to refuse, then think better of it—with my suit shredded and my powers gone, why rush to get into battle?—and sighingly acquiesce.
Bro Office Drone crowds in a little too close to me, raises his camera phone to frame us both, says "Big fan, big fan," then reaches around—
—and claps his free hand over my mouth, like countless bad guys have done before. I sheep-bleat "MMPH?!" in startled protest, right on cue.
Camera flash, I'm immortalized being hand-gagged by a Big Fan, then I'm shoving him back as his fellow Bro Drones' fratboy laughter erupts.
Red-faced under my mask, I storm away with what little dignity I can muster, feeling the eyetracks of everyone in the lobby sliding over me.
I cringe at the sounds of Big Fan snapping shots of my retreating backside, then flinch at his parting shot: "Loved your GIF, by the way!"
(More about my infamous GIF—and how frequently douches of the male variety profess to love it—later. For now, a hint: My butt is involved.)
Fuming, I stomp out through the lobby's revolving door—and emerge into a shrieking, turbulent crowdflow of panicked, fleeing civilians.
Fuming, I stomp out through the lobby's revolving door—and emerge into a shrieking, turbulent crowdflow of panicked, fleeing civilians.
I'm buffeted, body-blocked, and almost trampled by the escaping, shout-y masses, until I finally manage to claw my way over to a lamppost.
As I hang on for dear life, the civilians' screams and yells are drowned out by the earsplitting din of rending metal and shattering glass.
Across the street, the hulking, armored mass of Trigger Troll has just landed on a poor little Prius, crushing its roof and blowing out its windows.
Dangling daintily from the troll-patterned exoskeleton's claws is—no kidding—a girly-drink bottle of Plutonium Blonde SuperHard Lemonade®.
When Troll pops his helmet to take a swig of Plutonium Blonde—and belches majestically, a bonus—I begin to deduce that he's srsly hammered.
A wreaked-havoc trail of randomly wrecked cars and haphazard property damage stretches down the smoke-swirly street, eliciting Deduction #2:
Clearly, this isn't an organized supercrime in progress. Instead, I'm witnessing a day-drinking idiot supervillain's drunken mecha joyride.
<Next week: Emp's account of a messed-up "R2R" misadventure rolls on, as she confronts a pair of drunken supervills whilst bereft of any superpowers whatsoever.>
TOMORROW: No idea at the moment, to be honest. Let's find out together, shall we?
Comments
KranberriJam
Dude, seriously, that guy who hand-gagged her? I am so happy to see how Emp has grown more confident over time. I'd pity the guy if he did that to current-Emp.
Strypgia
Starting to wonder if Emp's supersuit is _powered_ by her body image issues.
