I AM EMPOWERED, pt.22: The Twitter-based YEAR ONE prose dealie continues! (Patreon)

You can check out I Am Empowered's previous installment here, or check out the entire archive of this defunct project here.

In case you'd forgotten, or are a semi-recent Patron and haven't had the time nor the inclination to look back though this site's sprawling archive, I Am Empowered was a short-lived prose project in which I tried to flesh out aspects of Emp's story not fully addressed in the comic proper. I wrote Emp's first-person narration in (old) Twitter-based 140-character format, with the time-jumping narrative taking place roughly around the beginning of Empowered vol.1.

We've hit the point in this loose jumble of episodes that no remaining chapter is complete; all the remaining material from this abortive project is a series of fragmentary sketches that wheeze to a halt in an inconclusive manner.

Anyhoo, I thought you folks might like this particular incomplete chapter, which will eventually introduce a beloved character who didn't appear in the comic series until much later in Emp's story. Also, as you'll see, I strip-mined later scenes from this episode quite directly for an Empowered GN chapter.

UPDATE: In our previous excerpt, a new-to-the-team Emp was summoned to the Homeycrib's roof by Sistah Spooky.

ELISSA GETS SCANNED (Part 2)

"Shut up," Spooky hisses, abruptly breaking the silence.

Puzzled, I look over at her and mumble uncertainly, "Um, I didn't say anything, okay?"

Spooky turns away. "I wasn't talking to you," she says, her voice thick. She points upward with a vague gesture, but now I'm staring directly at her.

I'm "WTF"-ed to witness even a hint of a flaw in her perfect, icy hauteur. My emotional radar instantly locks on to the quaver in her voice.

All of a sudden, despite her not-quite-concealing-enough mask, I can see that Sistah Spooky just looks kind of, well, miserable.

As if on cue, Spooky's cloak gets caught by the wind and WHAPP, violently wraps around her head while she's distracted. Oopsies!

To my credit, I manage not to laugh outright, instead choking back an unattractively piglike snort and rather lamely coughing to cover it.

Spooky claws herself free, angrily gestures the cape-control spell back on (I assume), turns to glare at me as her cloak settles back down.

I hastily look away from her furious glower, belatedly remember her "up there" signal, and direct my flustered gaze to the sky.

I look up, but see nothing overhead, just the opaque, pearlescent haze of nighttime urban light pollution. I squint, then my suit glitters.

I blink, and a dazzling, planetarium-worthy display of perfectly clear, star-bejeweled night sky springs into view through my mask's lenses.

No, screw that. The stunningly beautiful starscape I'm gape-mouthing up at isn't just planetarium-worthy, but Hubble-space-telescope-worthy.

Then, against that insanely vivid, astronomer's-wet-dream tapestry, I notice a single bright star tracking across in visible motion.

"Holy crap," I breathlessly and newb-ily gush, while using a different, rather less refined vocabulary term in place of the word "crap."

I crane my neck back to watch the moving point of light arcing to the zenith overhead. "That's Joint Superteam Space Station 3, isn't it?"

In all the time I’ve spent gazing mouth-agape into the night sky using my supersuit’s vision options, I’ve never thought to look for this.

I squint, and the bright star resolves into a blurred, edge-lit polyhedron, sparkling with tiny lights and streaking across the heavens.

Not just any polyhedron, I know, but a decahedron specifically. This famous satellite’s nicknamed “the d10,” gamer-speak for a 10-sided die.

Make that a half-mile-long 10-sided die, of course, jointly leased by the Superhomeys and nine other superteams as an orbital forward base.

Ah, good ol’ Joint Superteam Space Station 3. This begs a question that, as a mere civilian, has never been answered to my satisfaction.

My voice goes all low and conspiratorial. “Um, now that I’m an actual member of the Superhomeys—”

“An associate member,” Spooky interjects, sharply.

“—I gotta ask this: What exactly happened to the first two Joint Superteam Space Stations? That’s never been made public, as far as I know.”

(Officially—and tersely—the civilian population’s been told only that Stations 1 and 2 are “no longer in use by the suprahuman community.”)

“That’s classified,” she replies, no little satisfaction in her voice. “That’s information well above your pay grade, associate member.”

Pause. Then she clarifies, “Let’s just say that the previous space stations were a bit too fragile for the outgoing suprahuman lifestyle.”

Then I’m gripped by the sudden, tingling, overwhelming sense that someone’s standing close behind me. I whirl around, but no one’s there.

Then it strikes me that I’m feeling a phantom presence not just behind me, but simultaneously beside me, in front of me, above me, below me.

A peculiar but cozily pleasant sensation of warm amusement washes over me for a few oddly sweet seconds, then fades away.

The strange awareness gone, I realize that Spooky is staring at me, mouth twisted in a comical pout, arms crossed again in a huffy gesture.

“Congratulations,” she says, a clear note of reluctance in her voice. “You passed.”

Alarm seizes me. Did I somehow blunder into yet another opportunity for failure? “Um, exactly what did I just pass?” I ask, a bit whinily.

“Our team’s resident telepath just scanned your mind,” she says. “No camouflaged sleeper personalities or booby-trap psychoses detected.”

She adds, “You get the standard new-cape recommendation that you’d be well-advised—very well-advised—to seek therapy or counseling, though.”

Under my mask, my eyebrows arch high. Therapy or counseling as a standard new-cape recommendation? That is, to put it mildly, news to me.

Before I can stop myself, I blurt out in astonishment, “Does that mean other capes are just as messed up as I am? Really?”

“You may rest assured,” she says with a haughty chin-raise and downward nose-look at me, “that not all capes are as messed up as you are.”

I’m thinking, hey, at least I don’t parade around in an impractically slutty costume solely to mess with other superheroines’ heads.

Speaking of thinking, a sudden realization belatedly dawns me as I glance up at the d10’s bright shape streaking overhead.

I blurt once again, “Was I just mindscanned all the way from orbit? Is that even possible?”

“Yes, it’s possible,” the sorceress sniffs, “no-duhh” style. “The d10’s current orbit brings it within only 150 miles of us on each pass.”

Spooky, I can tell, does not subscribe to the maxim that there is no such thing as a stupid question, at least as far as I’m concerned.

“So, does that mean our team’s telepath lives on Space Station 3 full-time, then?”

That’s a reasonable conclusion-jump, given that I’ve never met—or even heard a single teammate mention of—said unnamed telepath.

“Of course,” she says. “The cognitive babble of a few million minds in close proximity proves overwhelming for Mindf**k, otherwise.”

Oh, that’s right. I spotted the supranym “Mindf**k” on an internal SuperHomeys org chart last week, listed in the “covert assets” category.

Not surprising that a superteam would keep its neurosurveillance resources secret from the wider supracommunity—and the general public, too.

I’m a bit creeped, though, by the idea of anyone peeking into the mess of my mind’s psychologically untidy and emotionally issue-strewn bedroom.

“We’re done, here,” Spooky announces, cloak whirling around her again in a blur of darkness and glowing sparkles. “Enjoy your Skinny Mini.”

The cape-swirl collapses into a glaring sphere of energy, which in turn bursts into a hundred twinkling motes of light, and she’s gone.

I heave another BIG SIGH and awkwardly tug my windblown hair away from my face as I shift into girly-mode to mull over what just happened.

What was the dealie with Spooky’s earlier flash of misery? Might she have, say, a little something going on with our orbiting Mindf**k?

Color me intrigued, not least by the many emotional and logistical complications posed by a suprahuman hook-up like the one I’m imagining.

Tough to imagine anyone in a love connection with a drama-intensive diva like Spooky, whose maintenance levels must be stratospheric indeed.

Tougher still to imagine a relationship with a telepath, which would be wildly stressful and difficulty-fraught for both parties, really.

If Spooky’s even a teensy fraction as screwed up as I am, overhearing the relentless emotional churn would drive a telepath out of his mind.

Plus, knowing that one’s psychological flux is being eavesdropped upon would make it only flux-ier still. Emotional feedback loop, y’all.

Then I flinch in surprise as the glowing light-sphere reappears in front of me, cape-swirl flails out of it, and Spooky emerges once again.

“Almost forgot,” she says. “You have an appointment tomorrow morning at the Purple Paladin Memorial Hospital’s Suprahuman Treatment Wing.”

Almost accusatory: “You’re overdue for your baseline medical evaluation. Report to the Diagnostic Lab on the 32nd floor at 7:00 AM sharp.”

Cloak-whip, light-ball, twinkle-twinkle, and Spooky’s gone again.

(END PART 2)

NEXT TIME ON I AM EMPOWERED: Time for Emp to visit the Purple Paladin Memorial Hospital, in a scene quite directly recycled for Empowered vol. 10!

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, to be perfectly frank!  (I'm probably squeezing in at least one bonus post this week beyond the usual M/W/F schedule, though.)