adamwarren
patreon
I AM EMPOWERED, pt.9: The Twitter-based YEAR ONE prose dealie continues!
🕑 Added 2020-01-23 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 continues a lengthy account of a incident involving superheroic rooftop-to-rooftop (or "R2R") jumping: >
I AM EMPOWERED
Chapter 3: ABOMINABLEMENT DIFFICILE (pt.5)
<OUR STORY THUS FAR: In botched pursuit of rampaging supervills Trigger Troll and Quasarmodo, our heroine confronts the miscreants at street level, bereft of most of her supersuit and all of her powers. She's just challenged them into trying a difficult "R2R" run:>
Moment of silence #3. The vills once again trade, I think, Meaningful Looks. “What’ll it be, boys?” I ask, oh-so-innocently.
Smash cut to me 30 stories up, bound tightly with spare Trigger Troll wiring cables, slung helplessly over a leaping Quasarmodo’s shoulder—
—and we’re in midjump, the rooftop wind howling in my ears and clawing at my exposed skin, the sunset skyline swaying and blurring crazily—
—and I’m freefalling, anchored only by a meaty paw across my bare thighs, the rest of my body floating weightless in the churning airblast—
—and we narrowly miss Troll headed the other way, flashing past us in midair with a flare of jump jets and a roar of speaker-blare laughter—
—and I’m gazing down in vertiginous horror at the streets yawning far below, until the wind-whipped shroud of my hair thankfully blinds me—
—and we land heavily, unsteadily in a crunch of rooftop gravel, slamming me gut-punch hard against his shoulder, gasping and breathless—
—and five wobbly, tottering strides follow, then we launch out into the void again, the hunchback cackling as I shriek in wordless terror.
Never been glad for a baddie’s firm grip on my thighs before, but I’ve also never been “shoulder candy” for such an inept roofjumper before.
Quasarmodo’s strong enough for R2R, but his technique is appalling, freely violating every precept of my hard-won rooftopping experience.
His limping approach runs are way too slow, his brute-strength takeoff points much too soon, his rooftop landing choices far too random.
Repeatedly, I’ve had to backseat-drive his wildly doofus-y rooftopping, often shrieking, “Stop! STOP!” or, “Not that way! NOT THAT WAY!”
Not helping Q-Modo’s R2R: The fact that the soused goofball is countless Plutonium Blonde SuperHard Lemonades® into a daylong bender.
Amazingly, we haven’t yet missed a roofjump and death-plunged, but not for a lack of booze-breathed effort on the Hammered Hunchback’s part.
Okay, he might survive a 30-story fall—barely—but with my supersuit already ruined, I certainly wouldn’t. So, yeahp, I’m utterly terrified.
At least six bloodcurdly times so far, I’ve almost bounced right out of Quasarmodo’s grasp, off his shoulder, and out into the howling void.
The last time, I just barely managed to hook my bound wrists around his muscle-bloated neck in mid-bounce, before I could fall free of him.
Drunken idiot that he is, Quasarmodo just laughs at my screeches and yelps and cries. “You’re a riot, y’know that?” he slurs, chuckling.
“Really glad we didn’t gag you,” he adds, effortlessly slinging me back over his shoulder and giving my upturned bottom a too-friendly slap.
I shriek colorful and anatomically unlikely obscenities at him, he chortles indulgently, then we’re launching skyward on another superjump.
Early on, I was playing up the Distressed Damsel act a little, to help set up my Cunning Plan—but now, I am Puh-lenty Distressed, For Reals.
Roofjumping without my superpowers has—go figure—completely shattered my nerves. I haven’t wet myself yet, but the evening is young.
Stripped of my powers’ safety net, I’ve slid from confident invulnerability to abject fright, my life in the shaky hands of an idiot drunk.
I’m shivering miserably in the rooftop wind, naked but for a (retro) bikini’s worth of tattered hypermembrane and a whole lotta goosebumps.
(Good news, though: The stiff, bone-chilling gusts up here have blown most of the sheetrock gypsum dust off my skin, which is a nice bonus.)
Every landing drives Quasarmodo’s shoulder into my belly and knocks the wind out of me—I’m expecting that my lunch will soon follow.
But between jumps, when my mind isn’t blanking out with sheer terror, I’m wrenching my fear-scrambled thoughts back to clever-ish scheming.
I’m distracted, howeva, by exceedingly dark, bloody, PETA-offending speculation about that stupid pigeon that ruined my initial roofjump.
If not for Homer Simpson Pigeon, I’d have still had my superpowers when I confronted these dolts, and major asswhuppery would have ensued.
Instead, I’m reluctantly forced to use my Feminine Wiles to outwit them, when I’d much rather use my Feminine Uppercut to out-knock them.
Wellp, it’s Feminine Wiles—SIGH—to the main stage ten minutes later, when the reckless, reeling jump-for-joyride pauses for some refueling.
Time out on a Westside rooftop for a few more Hard Lemonades, icy-cold from the built-in cooler on the back of Troll’s exoskeleton. (Srsly.)
The boys are drunkenly exhilarated, all pumped and jacked to bro-tastic heights—hitherto unknown to Bro Science—from the thrill of R2Ring.
(You haven’t truly lived until you’ve witnessed a troll-shaped powersuit and a 7-foot-tall hunchback trying to give each other high fives.)
TT’s fuzzy, low-fi bray: “Dude, we gotta do thish mo’ often.” Q-Modo’s yawp: “Bro, we been totally missin’ out on th’ R2R experience, yo.”
Kneeling trussed and semi-naked on the asphalt at their feet, I’m similarly swilling from a Hard Lemonade clutched in trembly, bound hands.
I glance down at the image of the late superheroine Plutonium Blonde on the bottle’s label, looking all sexy and swaggery and badass.
Feeling none too sexy or swaggery or badass myself, I whisper, “Gimme strength, PB,” before taking one more pull of her Hard Lemonade.
Then I gaze out over the city’s early-evening panorama, the setting sun sinking behind the looming mass of the Hirsch-Rockwell Building.
Gosh, we just happen to have wound up between 1st and 3rd Avenues, site of the toughest R2R path in the city. Who’d have thunk it? (I did.)
Took me long enough—and cost me enough pride and dignity—to maneuver these lemonade-lit-up losers where I needed, but here we are at last.
“Check it out, my newfound R2R studs,” I coo with blatantly fake drunkenness. (Oh, like they can tell—they’re far more hammered themselves.)
“From here, crosstown east t’ the Purple Paladin Memorial Hospital, that’s th’ gnarliest R2R route hereabouts,” I explain, lemonade-slurred.
“Not an easy route, I’ll tell you that,” I confide. “Phallik and Major Havoc run it all th’ time, but they’re, like, hardcore rooftoppers.”
Trigger Troll and Quasarmodo stare blearily out in the direction I’m gesturing at with bound hands. Q-Modo: “Yeah? S’up with that, yo?”
Fake burp, then I honey-sweetly suggest, “Well, you boys maybe wanna consider a li’l wager? Like, a li’l rooftop race between all y’all?”
TT and Q-Modo glance at each other. “First one to R2R crosstown over to th’ Purple Paladin and back wins,” I announce, with a demure hiccup.
“Pretty sure y’all could do it, ’cause y’all seem like naturals,” I drawl, accidentally sliding my affect from Fake Tipsy to Fake Southern.
I hastily—and figuratively!—lower my voice’s Fake Southern Accent Level to zero, before its truly laughable bogosity can raise any flags.
(One of my many character flaws: A tragic fondness for a Fake Southern Accent so godawful that it’s arguably a white-on-white hate crime.)
“I’d be SUPER impressed if you fellas righteously daredeviled that route, first time out,” I gush, bobblehead-nodding sincere affirmation.
“And I’d be super-DUPER impressed with the winner, especially.” I’m head-tilted and smiling, inwardly seething at having to play this card.
Extra credit for my extra-sexy voice, rendered all throaty and husky and whiskey-drinking-ish by the last half hour’s incessant screaming.
I might possibly be the lousiest flirt in the history of Blonde Womanhood, but even I can pull off the “Who knows what might happen?” vibe.
Plus, um, it’s awfully cold up on this roof, and parts of me are, y’know, standing at attention, drawing THEIR attention in the process.
And both have just drunk-blurted how much they too—like Bro Office Drone—liked my stupid butt GIF. (I’ll explain that ref later, I promise.)
The vills take pensive swigs of Platinum Blonde, look at each other, look down at me, all kneeling and flirty and fleshy at their feet.
Trigger Troll and Quasarmodo: Girly-drink drunk, adrenalized from R2R, testosteronal from showing off for a chica. FISH IN A BARREL, Y’ALL.
Fast-forward blur-montage of the two morons trash-talking, downing one more round of SuperHard Lemonades, preening for smiling li’l me.
Then they’re starter-crouched forty feet from the rooftop’s edge, me kneeling submissively—and seethingly—between ’em. I drawl, “GO, Y’ALL!”
<Next week: Emp's account of a messed-up "R2R" misadventure wraps up. Did our heroine's Feminine Wiles prevail, or did she miscalculate badly? >
TOMORROW: No idea at the moment, to be honest. Let's find out together, shall we?
Comments
KranberriJam
The "white-on-white hate crime" line got a belly laugh out of me. I'm loving this!
Dean Reilly
Does Plutonium Blonde still collect royalties on that hard lemonade, or is that another downside of being a Superdead?
Strypgia
TBF to Emp, they do work fairly often... usually even more the more humiliating it is when they do. And we're at 'Pretty Bad' right here.
Jon
Such a cool experience reading Emp in prose form.
