10:00 PM

Mullet staired wide eyed from his booth, occasionally taking a drag from his bong. I slammed the three remaining guys trying to dog pile me into a nearby table, all with one arm.

I don't know if he recognised me. Apart from the mask covering half my face, I naturally stood taller, smiled a lot more, and could fight rooms and rooms of druggies, armed with whatever they thought would hurt me. Glass bottles, chairs, there was even a girl who pulled a shoe on me. Might have reacted a little strongly to that one, hope her arm's ok.

There were some customers who didn't interfere with the fights, like Mullet, or those who were too out of it to care.

I made a stride over to my classmate; he panicked a little as he took a final drag from his bong. I stretched out a single worn glove to him. He looked at it, then up at me, uneasily jerking the bong into my hand.

Only for me to crash it into the ceiling with an over shoulder throw. I heard him groan, and say, "Aaron's gonna kill me!"

I didn't leave anybody bloody, or unconscious; sore and defeated is more my style. Some of them were still antagonising me with curses, but I don't fall for stuff like that, not when I could blow their heads up with a back hand.

Probably. Not going to risk it.

I walked towards a door I hadn't yet tried, the last I knew of. I found where they kept their drug stock and that green stuff, at this point I was really wondering what it was. Was it really just… beer? Irish tourist trap, gimmicky booze?

Find the boss, find what's up. I reached out for the door-

"Wu-wait…" one of the guy's stumbled at me, grabbed my cape. "I don't care… if 'ou bust my fooken nose… don't open that…"

I jiggled the handle. Locked.

"Take… take it all… the blow… green… you open that, she…" He trailed off, but he got upright.

"I won't lose." I told him sternly.

"I'm going to be a hero, if nobody else will. Get a job, mate. A straight job. I'll help you find one, if you want."

His grip slipped, and he let out a "Fuckin… Bitch…", before slinking away.

I knew the type of response I'd get, still, disappointing. I looked up from the handle at the thick glossy red door. Seeing a warped reflection of myself in it.

The first world: Those who do not know.

The second world: Those who know

The third world: Those who …

Those who…

I broke off the handle. Little harder than expected. This part of the building, second floor, maybe third, was the opposite end of the building from where I entered. There might have been another room after this one.

Fuck, stop analysing. Open the door, no more shit. Let's get this bitch.

I opened the door slowly, shouldn't have done that, in retrospect.

If anyone was going to have a gun it would be 'her'. My heart skipped a beat. I raised my foot-

And tripped.

Fell flat through the door, on my face. First thing I thought was, 'I've been shot'. There was a stillness in the air, like when a character gets blasted in a movie, they don't feel it till they look down.

Then she laughed, a giddy roar. For a moment, I felt... comfort from it, comparing it to the insults slung at me earlier. I can see why my primate brain thought this was a good thing. It sounded kind. That's how i heard it at least.

"By fuck! The mythical 'junkie monkey'?! Well, if you're on your knees outta the gate, I guess I can make you my bitch."

I looked up, noticing now a stiffness and tiredness in my joints. The first thing that struck me about her was how different she seemed to other denizens of the Quarter. She wore a short green cocktail dress, which I could tell from a glance, was expensive. She sat cross legged, her arms dangling over the back of the throne she was sitting on. She had a thin smile plastered across her face, wider than I could manage in my position.

"Don't bother getting up." she was nearly singing, "I'll just put you back down, again."

Again?

It was weird that I had tripped. You know Michal Jackson? Smooth criminal music video? My feet are so strong they can support my body from a ten-degree angle off the floor. I should have caught myself.

"Close it, cum stains." I felt the door bump into my leg as somebody pulled it back.

"Feckers. You didn't snort all the coke, 'junk monkey'?"

This time I answered, "Course not. I'm Shamrock, and I'm gonna kick your ass."

She cringed a little before saying, "You've been giving Taytay trouble?"

I wanted to taunt her. "I've taken down worse than you!"

I lied, felt really stupid in front of the boss fight too, trying to say something cool and flopping it like a fish. Could I have picked a more over used line?

"Ok, let's just skip to the shooting." As she stretched behind the chair, I noticed how flawless her skin was, it was in stark contrast to the sickly-looking workers, she was a pretty girl. At this point it clicked that she was also around my age. I know I've said there's a lot of kids involved in this, but in charge? Unless she wasn't in charge.

"Wait, you are the boss, ri-?" Something shook me bad.

From my face down my spine. I felt a numb spinning.

When I was a lot younger, I picked a fight with a guy double my age, (I was seven or so). He kicked my shit in, and when I was down, he stomped my head into the concrete.

My everything tremored.

After a while I could make out some laughs from- everywhere really, but I knew I hadn't lost consciousness so it was probably from behind or in front of me.

I raised my head, to the chair lady, and shouted, "It's gonna take a lot more than that!" Another pretty basic line, but it gets the message across.

I barely made out what she had said, "Shit. He is tough."

I let out a wheezed 'heh' to that. Now that I know that my super strength comes with super endurance, I don't have to freak out at every knife, or even guns.

Maybe that's only half true. I might actually be dying, I realised. But then if my body is strong enough to survive the backlash of my strength, then it should be strong enough to resist a rifle blast, let alone survive it.

Slim chance, probably next to none this early on, not even a chance, but maybe… Maybe she's-

10:10 PM-ish

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A succession of slaps brought me back to the current situation. I was out of it for a long while, only now starting to come to. The Lady leaning in front of me seemed sort of pissed.

I smiled wide at that.

"Okay I'm 100% now! Say what you got to say!"

She wanted me alive a little longer for some reason.

I figured this out because in the time I was lost in delirium she had moved me to her chair, and wrapped rope around me.

That wasn't going to do much.

I shifted my face about to feel if either layer of my masks were off, they weren't, but I felt a numb sort of pain on the right side of my head.

"Why the fuck didn't anyone tell me about this?? If I'd known your dumbass was here, I'd have parked in Limerick. What's up with you anyway, cunt, robbing my men?? Do you know who I work for?? Don't you fuck with me!" She seemed only annoyed by the end of that ramble. I introduced myself.

"Heya! My name is Shamrock! I'm a new superhero that just got his powers around a week ago, so that's probably why nobody has ever told you about me. Also, yeah I actually have super powers, like in a comic book. Pretty weird at first, but you know. Oh, I actually made this costume myself! The brown bits on my arm are to restrict blood flow so I don't hurt people much, and the tassle on my head is for people to grab onto when I rescue them!."

She eyed the two white eyes of my mask, and then the part of my head that felt weird.

"Fuck up you psycho. Cut the crap and tell me your name. Not your shitty- roleplay- fetish- bullshit!" She started to load her rifle. I wanted to test something out.

"OK, OK!" She lowered it slightly. Well there was no way I telling her my secret identity. So, in an appropriate voice I started to mess with her.

"My name is Christian Weston Chandler age 22 at this time, I will be 23 on February 24th 2005, and you know, uuh, anyway, for over a year now I-uh have been trying to attract a boyfriend-free-gir-"

I let out a howl. Clenched my teeth to stop myself from breaking my bonds.

She shot him. She freaking shot my mini-me! My wiener!

She was already cocking it again.

She hummed to herself, "Tom-fucken-foolery, ain't fucken cool with me, got it??"

I had been hoping for this. Not getting the little buddy blasted, but to get shot one more time. It was too weak. Softer tissue, but I was sure it hadn't even pierced skin. Unlike up top, as I noticed specks of blood stuck to the fabric of my cowl now.

It was the same gun as well, long silver barrel, army metallic stock. Ok, maybe I didn't need to get shot again to piece it together, but I was a little hazy, what with the gash in my head.

"You have super powers! Critical hits or something, right?" I was excited in that moment, to finally have a lead!

She was puzzled by this, it was clear on her face, "Yes?? I have powers do you-??" she trailed off before piecing things together.

"Ahe…Ahehe. Hahaha!"

She Mussed up her poorly dyed-blonde hair, the only part of her that looked trashy. She narrowed back at me with her eyes and a toothed smile, "I'm your first. Aren't I?? God, I thought we were gonna have a problem there."

She let out a sigh. "Okay. Join or die loser, which is it gonna be??"

I was confused. "Wait-wait-wait. I'm sorry am I missing something here? I feel like I missed a pamphlet back at the banner."

I joked but I really needed an explanation on how this worked.

"Sure, why not. You don't really have a choice right now but to become my underling, limp dick. What do ya need to know?" She didn't seem nearly as manic as before, nearly normal, if it weren't for the rifle and blood.

"Why do I need to join you now? Opposed to when you thought I was, I don't know, experienced with this stuff?" Had bigger questions but might as well open with something that made sense to ask.

"Because you have no friends, no syndicate, and because you're a nobody. No one'll even question me when I say this was my town first. If you were somebody, I'd look like an ass for moving in, wiping you out- but that wrong is righted, muscles."

I gulped a little at that.

I asked, "So, are there only supervillains? Because I feel like if that were true, somebody would have conquered the world by now."

She looked at me like I was a child that had hurt their knee.

"Fucking America. The cape and mask make a lot of sense now."

She spoke to me like a child now too, "Sweet heart, people just have powers. That doesn't make them want to play dress up, make up dumb names, or grow a sense of absolute morality. You should know that. You took a fuck ton of my shit before coming here, and hate to break it to you, doing all that coke isn't legal. Or healthy."

I could feel my smile fade. "I'm not high, I- I threw it away. Burned it."

She leaned in and that crazy look in her eyes was back, "You- So you stripped them for the cash? I find that really hard to believe." I shook my head, "No, I used that to buy food for the homeless."

She sort of spazed out for a second, "Youfefecwha?? Is your second power, like, super brain cancer?? You thought you were literally the most powerful being to have ever existed for a solid week-" She paused and smacked her face with the palm of her hand, "and decided to be Ronald-fucking-Regan??!"

I didn't answer the question, I was more concerned with something else she said,

"How did you know I had a second power? And by the way, its not super tumors. I think." I had super-strength and endurance, that probably counted as a single 'power'.

On top of that, there was SP2.

She turned away from me, trying to comprehend my decisions, "A human can cosmologically only have two powers, primary and secondary, mutant fucks don't count, they usually have one, or a ton that can be catalogued as 'bizarre biology'."

Too much, too much! Is there not some sort of system to this? Is this like Marvel or My Hero?

That's what I wanted to ask but didn't. "How do you get powers?"

She calmed down a bit by now, "There's no one way of doing it. Could be some advanced science, but usually only the guy who comes up with it understands what any of it means. Could be some weird chemical, but nobody can reproduce the exact reaction. Could be the will of some unknowable entity, but they're more likely to dissolve you into goo when you talk to them."

"Born with it, found a space sword," She lifted up her palm, "or maybe a magic four leaf clover."

Her palm was marked with not a four-leaf clover, but a three-leaf one. She dropped her arm to her side and covered the mark. Did that mean something? Fading power? Limited stamina? Only four uses total? Pretty sure I understood the basics of her powers now.

"Luck manipulation? And you make that green stuff, like, with your other power, and that gives other people good luck?" A whole lot of little things started to make sense. That's why I tripped at the door, that's why one of the shots hurt a hell of a lot more, it was a lucky shot to a weak point in the human body. My temple maybe? And that's why Mullet was drinking the dew before that test!

God I am the world's greatest detective.

"It's not like I'll tell you, not till you become my subordinate. Shit, I feel like I gotta put this out there now. I'm not gonna, like, be your 'dommie mommy', calling you my bitch was just to seem hardcore, you know about putting on airs in a fight- I swear to god, I'm not usually-" putting two finger tips to her dirty blonde hair she seemed to catch herself, "Shit, bad job interview, my name is Clover, you still haven't told me yours."

She seemed to honestly have a warm smile here.

She paused for me to tell her, and-

"No."

She seemed very confused by this.

"No??"

She seemed really confused.

"Clover, I'm not going to even consider joining you. You hurt people for profit, that's not right. If I was a kid cracked out of his head, you would have sprayed my brains against that door. So, the answer is, and will always be, no, I will not join you."

Wish I could read her expression in that moment but while I was talking she covered her face with her marked hand, and tilted her head back.

"You're right kid, I will fuckin kill you, like, I don't care."

I offered, "If you want, you could join me."

"WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU??" She declined.

She smacked the barrel of her rifle into my nose, I commented on the overwhelming scent of gunpowder from the weapon.

"Eww, smoky…"

"FUCK. UP."

She jerked it into my face with force, "This thing is on a high-way through that thick skull of yours, cunt, do not encourage this .70 round to go over your speed limit!"

"I've never won a fight before." I interrupted.

I spoke with a nasally filter, "I don't count me confiscating drugs on the street, or the guys outside, they never stood a chance. A fight is when you go against the odds. 1 to 99 billion. That's what it means to be a superhero. Sorry. I don't go back on me word." I smiled.

Clover looked like she was in pain for some reason. Before she pulled the trigger for the last time that night, she said to me, "We could've done anything you've ever wanted to. I would have been more than happy to have a guy my age who isn't a crack head working here.

She paused and gave a fake smile, at least, I hope it was.

"Goodbye, Junk monkey."

You know how people's lives flash before their eyes when they're about to die?

Mine didn't. Had a 'premium rush' moment though. I felt the gun jerk a little as Clover reacted to the force of it, droplets of sweat that had formed in the past half-hour. And the impulse to use 'Super Power 2'.

Baba O'riley ended, and my brains were splattered against the chair.

.

.

.

Then it started back up.

"What the SHIT??" I heard clover shout from behind the red door, my warped reflection looking back at me.

I ran through the door, tackling the drug lord from behind, making sure the gun barrel was pointed away from both of us. "Freaky Cunt!" she shouted through her mess of hair. As something forced me off of her and into the empty chair, breaking its legs. I hadn't had the chance to inspect the room. Good choice of wall colour, nice art on display, and, as I thought, a second room, the door of which I leaped to like a panther, the bruised girl shot off another round at me. Grazed my ass as I smashed through to the final room.

"Come on Clovie, when the tables were turned, you said I wasn't a 'crack cunt', can't you let me off just this once?" I felt bad for giving her a spider-man-villain-esque nickname, but I don't know if she even heard me over her own furious growl.

The room I had entered had a huge sky light to let sun in for a bunch of green plants in large baths of dirt. I thought I knew what this was, but the more I looked at the room the weirder it got. The plants were in fact not cannabis, but clovers, in retrospect not too surprising. In one corner was a toilet, my first thoughts to that were, hey can't blame the girl for wanting a personal toilet in this petri dish for chlamydia.

To my left I could see a ladder leading out through the glass roof, must be her emergency exit. As I was thinking of destroying her stock of clovers before I made an escape, I heard her shout to me. "Bold fucking assumption that my other power is making the shite-ing dew, limp dick!"

As I stopped to consider what it was that had smashed me into that chair, the masses of green extended from the tubs, and writhed throughout the room. Although they couldn't hurt or restrain me, I still wanted to have some sort of success on this adventure, so I fought those baths of clovers for as long as I could before I heard Clover screeching over to the door, I smashed three of the nine baths before clover could use her chlorokinesis to direct them properly, using her now established line of sight.

"Something I learnt from back home, and that Bastard King of mine, junk monkey, is that if someone isn't on your team, they're an enemy, and when he finds out how you fucked with me on MY turf??"

Did she forget I have no clue what's going on? I wanted to ask her before I left, but I really didn't want to get shot in some weak point I don't know about, so I squeaked out,

"It'snotjunkmonkey,it'sShamrock!!"

I squatted as quickly as I could, I was lucky she was loading her rifle slower than before. Just as I leaped into the air, I was thrown off my trajectory. Maybe I slipped on mud, maybe clover had used her secondary power, she definitely would have been using her luck. I was aiming for the glass roof, but I smashed into the wall on my left, two-thirds on the way to freedom.

I made an attempt to cling to the crumblings of the wall, but it broke off under my weight. Damning gravity, I tumbled down from the wall. The crash brought me away from lucidness, helped by my gun wound no doubt. I pulled my body together, bracing for the landing.

I heard the cocking of the gun not far behind me.

Shit, one more try.

Scrunching up my body for one final try was torture. My joints ached, and blood rushed to my head, but if I stayed still any longer…

I could hear the now dirty cocktail dress cussing out her rifle loading skills as I blasted myself as hard as I could into the air, smashing the glass above. I hit it hard enough to bust through the brick wall, just in case I had to due to the bad luck, or dizziness. A down side of doing so, is that I was fired far higher than I've ever tried going before. I held my breath for the ascent and descent, not because of fear, (though, yeah, I was shitting my suit.) but when you're moving as fast as that, it takes your breath out of you.

Mid-air, I tried to undo my leg restraints to let as much blood into them as I could. From there I struggled to try and get my body into a sort of zigzag shape? At the time I had remembered a video I watched on how to survive a sky fall without a parashoot. Although I now knew I was durable, I still had no clue if I was tough enough to survive. But, from the fact that I'm posting this, you probably realised I did.

None of that stuff mattered. I couldn't get my shit together. I ended up landing with a bounce and a long tumble down the where-ever-I-was.

It took me a while to start breathing again. I was freezing my balls off. I definitly wasn't prepared to go rocketing through the winter night sky.

But eventually I made my way back home getting changed along the way. I inspected my costume clearly under a street light. Sure enough, both my masks were torn on the right-hand side, around where my ear was. I instinctively reached up to my temple and sure enough, flesh was torn up, thick skull saved my thinker. I couldn't actually feel the wound, but then again, I couldn't feel much of anything. I knew my left arm had to be badly bruised, what with the wall smashing and the fall crashing.

There were tons of questions spiralling through my head now, the thing she said about a king, mutants, entities, not to mention the thing about 'syndicates'. I doubt she was talking about groups working in Ireland.

But at the centre of it all was one desire that kept me grinning through the pain.

I have got to do that again.