I AM EMPOWERED, pt. 25: The YEAR ONE prose experiment continues (with DRAFT DAY, pt.2)! (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.

Just in time for the upcoming NFL draft, here's another incomplete but interesting fragment from the project that depicts a superheroic analogue for pro sports drafting. The only previous hint of this procedure was the panel above from Empowered vol. 9.

As our next excerpt kicks off, after failing to be invited to the National Superteam Draft's main Scouting Combine, Emp had journeyed to a lower-status Regional Combine and joined a whole bunch of other, less heralded wannabe superteamers in trying out:

I AM EMPOWERED: DRAFT DAY (pt.2)

Speaking of mercilessness, it's easy to smirk from afar at the hapless goofs of, say, a TV talent show's selectively edited early auditions.

I assure you, howeva, that it's exponentially more painful and heartbreaking to see hopes being dashed in real time before your very eyes.

I'm entirely unprepared for how often and how thoroughly I'll have my aching heartstrings yanked by my fellow capes' gritty struggles.

In the four long hours before my own evaluation, I find myself constantly gasping and cheering, clapping and moaning, yelling and "aww"-ing.

Swept up in the alternately upsetting and inspiring dream-chasing of gutsy first-timers and resolute last-timers, I forget my own troubles.

I shout myself hoarse when salt-and-pepper-haired Veloci-T outflies all the young aerobucks to post the fastest time in the 4-mile shuttle flight.

I'm on the verge of tears again when Husky Siberian doggedly(!) limps across the finish line, trailing a clearly defective prosthetic leg.

I scream my fool head off when tiny, painfully shy Prodigal Sun unleashes a blast that nearly vaporizes a nigh-indestructible target drone.

Hogwild falters during the 400-yard dash, clutches awkwardly at her hamstring, tumbles to the muddy turf and writhes in gasping pain.

Agonizing, skin-crawling five-count as the entire stadium wordlessly gawks at the spectacle of a Big, Beautiful Woman squirming in the mud.

The cringiness—and sympathetic sense of humiliation—is too much for me. I shoulder my way through the crowd and dart out onto the field.

I clumsily help Hogwild to her feet, cooing "It's okay, it's okay" over and over again as I half-drag, half-carry her to the sideline.

Both of us are simultaneously crying and laughing by the time I finally haul our mud-sputtered selves back into the safety of the crowd.

From the sidelines, we plucky less-than-elites stand in the rain and cheer on our fellow delusionals with increasingly outsized enthusiasm.

I'm startled by how warmly bonded I feel, at home among the other hopefuls in this impromptu tribe of wannabes, has-beens and never-weres.

(I'm thankfully—indeed blissfully—unaware that this is also the very LAST time I will ever feel quite so comfortable around my superpeers.)

Thus, I find it almost anticlimactic when my number is finally called, and I mince out onto the practice field for my physical tests.

Already exhausted from an all-night drive, I'm now emotionally wrung out from all ecstatic highs and agonizing lows of the last four hours.

I'm feeling swollen and puffy with a queasy, roiling bellyful of gas-station chili dog and chocolate pudding pie and off-brand energy drink.

I'm breaking out these mewl-y excuses because, as one might surmise, my workout does not work out breathtakingly well.

Out in the open before the eyes of a hundred fellow capes—and the hundred eyes of PanoptiConnie, the head scout on site—my anxieties return.

As I sprint the 400-yard-dash, my worry-warped mind can blare nothing but DON’T FALL DOWN and DEAR GOD I WISH I COULD WEAR A SPORTS BRA.

Difficult to focus on peak performance when parts of you are bobbing merrily about and you can only think THIS IS GOING STRAIGHT TO YOUTUBE.

[NOTE: This was written before I decided that Emp's supersuit would eventually have used its inertial damping powers to stabilize the movement of her chest. Might be, here, that the hypermembrane hadn't yet elected to do so.]

Non-comforting thought: HEY, AT LEAST YOUR BOUNCY, BOUNCY BEWBS MIGHT DISTRACT UNWANTED ATTENTION FROM YOUR FUNCTIONALLY NAKED BUTT, CHUBBO.

Yeahp, my 400 time kinda blew. The vertical and broad jumps went decently, though, as I'm both figuratively and literally a very jumpy girl.

But halfway through the shuttle run, my feet become confused as to which is supposed to go first, and I ignomaximously faceplant in the mud.

("Ignomaximously"—if you'll pardon the neologism—is when you perform an ignoMINIous gaffe at the moment of MAXimum possible embarrassment.)

Frantically clawing to my feet, I'm buoyed by the cheers of Hogwild and Husky Siberian and my other newfound capebuds from the sidelines.

I perform only a teensy bit better in the power-specific drills, as my Deadly Jazz Hands do not lend themselves well to pinpoint accuracy.

Supersuit sparkling, vein undoubtedly pulsing on my forehead, I VORPP repeatedly at that g-d elusive target drone with mounting frustration.

By the time I stagger off the field, I'm quite glad that I wasn't exposed to the harsh scrutiny of the higher-profile main Scouting Combine.

I'm happy that Heronet wasn't here to breathlessly document all of my blunders for live, real-time analysis by blowhard draft gurus.

On the other hand, I'm all too aware of the numerous camera drones dutifully recording my struggles for future draft-related reference.

Then, for added humiliation, I'm hustled off to the automated scanning booths for a degrading series of physical measurements and analyses.

Like a piece of (fat-marbled) meat, I'm robotically poked and prodded and laser-mapped and HD-videoed and med-scanned from head to toe.

Out of the corner of my eye, smears of high-res images and wireframe topography and cutaway views rapid-stream across a monitor's display.

Yes, ultra-tech makes possible an even more mortifying experience than staring at myself naked in a full-body mirror under florescent light.

The scanning gear even sees fit to briefly flash my CLEARLY MISTAKEN body-fat percentage, in a final, evil-robot attempt to crush my spirit.

(For the next two weeks, whenever I even think of putting food in my mouth, the appalling figure "31%" flashes in neon red before my eyes.)

Fairly certain that I do well at the subsequent ÜberWondralic Cognitive Ability Test and its goofy battery of suprahuman-skewed questions.

"When the functionally invulnerable alloy Impregnium X is selling at $100 million per pound, how many pounds can you buy for $6 billion?"

Then again, not like a solid ÜberWondralic score historically boasts any statistical correlation with future success in the capeclad field.

I've even heard that too high a score can be perceived as a drawback by superteams, who speculate that a prospect might be "too heady."

If you're too brainy, these douchecape collectives feel, you might not be as much of a "team player" as a dimmer, more tractable prospect.

Given the many horror stories about superteams' cretin-tastic political maneuvering, such an anti-intellectual bent seems entirely possible.

Regardless, my often-embarrassing round of tests is finally done. For good-ish or ill-ish—or in-between-ish—my time at the combine is over.

Honestly can't tell if I made any impression whatsoever on any of the assembled draft scouts, from stone-faced PanoptiConnie on down.

Kinda challenging to read expressionless scoutcapes like the dog-faced Slamhound or the mechanical Phlegmatron or the bodiless Cloudburst.

Part of me quails to think of scornful superteams watching my workout footage—or, even worse, viewing the mortifying scans from my physical.

[Missing or never-written segment here]

On the long drive back home, this warm, unaccustomed elation slowly balloon-leaks out of me, leaving me emotionally deflated and dog-tired.

[Aaaaaand we close out this excerpt with another series of tweets about an Emp-relevant bit of draft terminology, as she later consults combine results online:]

Then I stumbled upon a rather alarming term, apparently imported from football terminology: "Big bubble," a.k.a. "bubble butt."

In NFL draft terms, "big bubble" refers to a burly offensive lineman's hefty, muscular heinie, connoting mo' power for blocking and pushing.

However goofy and comical, the phrase "bubble butt" indicates respect for the physical power represented by a NFL prospect's backside brawn.

I quickly noticed that, on the less reputable superhero draft reports, the term "big bubble" appears ONLY next to the names of female capes.

You guessed it: Certain douchebro draft analysts feel free to declare whether or not draft-prospect superheroines have big ol' booties.

Close-up on my masked face, frowning a Stern Frown of Scornful Disapproval as I peruse this new example of blatantly sexist objectification.

SMH time: I Shake My Head in a weary yet righteous manner, expecting no better from the perpetual fratboy mentality that plagues my field.

Then, close-up on my masked face's Stern Frown slowly melting into an expression of anxiety as a disquieting thought belatedly dawns on me.

Then I'm scrolling frantically through the draft listings down to my own name, where the last term appearing is, of course: "Big bubble."

[END Part 2]

Wellp, that's all I wrote for this incomplete chapter, folks. The long-defunct I Am Empowered experiment has one more fragmentary segment remaining, which I'll excerpt here in a month or two, okay?

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, to be perfectly frank! UPDATE: In fact, our next post will almost certainly be some form of Distressed Damsel content, which I haven't yet had the time to scan due to an alarming Empowered vol. 12 issue that just cropped up. Whoops!