I come from a broken home. My parents split when I was 5, dad died when I was 8. They never did find the cause of death. Ruled as natural causes. Before he died, he lived with my granny in a small town out west called dingle, with a lower case ‘d’, and I would come down on the weekends.
I don’t think that was decided by a court, because dad wouldn’t exactly getting any favours for full custody, what with him not having a permanent place of employment or a house of his own. My mum isn’t much better, so I guess it’s true what they say about fathers being second-class parents in these situations.
Sorry. I just thought that was a little relevant for this story. I still go to my granny’s for the weekend, Friday night to Sunday. I only need to bring a change of clothes and homework so I usually travel pretty light. Last week a lot changed. Got a costume, got a phone, got a hobby. The added load might have made a difference, if I wasn’t as strong as whale. Pretty much everything feels weightless now, including my body. After leaving my house in Tralee, I forwent getting a bus in favour of traveling the 25 miles on foot. I got changed into Shamrock and started running.
I thought maybe running at a decent speed for nearly an hour would put some strain on my body, but I guess the strain comes from pushing the weight of your body forward, meaning I can’t wear down my muscles from exercise. Is working out just impossible for me now? Am I gonna lose my six pack? Wishful thinking is telling me that there is a chance of me having a super-metabolism. Though I doubt it. My body isn’t burning through calories when I use my powers, meaning I get my strength from some foreign power source, like, I’m just magic.
Guess I should give a little backstory for dingle? There’s more to tell then Tralee, despite this being a far smaller town. It’s a pretty well-off tourist destination, it’s beside a nice beach, there’s trails and ‘historic sites’, and there’s even a mascot.
dingle is a harbour town, but that’s all the coast offers really. There isn’t much of a beach to speak of, but not too far away there are these sand dunes just pure natural beauty, mother nature’s good side.
However, you aren’t allowed to go near it, due to the fact that walking on the dunes destroys them, buries the animals that live beneath them, and you can fall into a sand pit if you’re unlucky. The military trains there sometimes, and I’ve got to say their equipment looks weird. Plastic sheen to it. That normal? Sort of makes the stuff look like toys. Well, I guess to me they are toys.
Anyway, like I’ve said before, everywhere has historical sites and walks and tours, and blah blah blah. Let’s just skip to the mascot.
Fungus the dolphin. Lives in the harbour. Known to be incredibly friendly with fisherman and humans in general. I myself, have never seen it. I’ve never found any proof of its existence except word of mouth, and tourist traps. This is due to the fact that Fungus is always doing something or unable to come to shore for whatever reason. The excuse now was that he had caught “Dolphin flu”, and had to be “shipped to a dolphin hospital.”
I was quoting my grandmother there. She’s a short bony woman, crude and bad at cooking like many other elderly people, don’t know who made up the thing about grannies baking cookies, mine only makes boiled kelp and potatoes. For lunch. For dinner she makes the same but with mashed potatoes as well.
Don’t go thinking that I’m the type of guy that’ll make their family cook while they sit on their ass, I’ve tried cooking for her before but she won’t eat it and she won’t let me eat it at the table. All because it isn’t a “weekend meal”. I’m sorry gran, but where in the bible does it say that you must eat boiled potato and mash on the sabbath?
Once I got to my gran’s, I unpacked my bags and talked to her about the local gossip for an hour. By her tales I surmised it had been a slow week. Some stuff about a fence blowing down in a storm, a spelling bee, nothing important in the grand scheme of things, nor in the context of this post.
It was early in the day and I was looking forward to super-heroing in the day light. Never had myself figured as a dark knight, you know? However, as I was patrolling town I realised-
There is no crime in dingle.
I mean it. Low druggie count, there is no Clover, and it’s not like I’m gonna investigate the Fungus conspiracy.
Maybe I can find a new super-villain here? No, that’s just improbable. As far as I had been made aware, there were three people in the north and the republic that had super powers, and one of them lived on the opposite side of this rock. I only started thinking about it then, but to get a rough sense of how many super people there are, I took the population of Ireland and found that with the information I’ve been given, 0.00005% of the population has powers.
Applying that to the world, you get 4000 super people. But Clover said that her group had near 100 people, and the way she described it, she made it sound like they were the big dogs. Is there some sort of fermi paradox? Is Clover lying to me? Am I just shit at math? While I was walking around town in my newly repaired costume, I decided to do something. So, I phoned Clover.
“Eww, why do you not have snapchat?? What the fuck are you doing phoning me??” She sounded irritated, but she always was whenever I talked to her- “That’s right! You’re cow-shit poor! Fucken work for me already, get some green, green-boy!.” -until she flipped to manic, – “Listen Clovie, I’m curious, did you lie to me about-” “DON’T LISTEN TO A WORD THOSE INTERNATIONAL BASTARDS SAY!” -before finding a middle ground.
“This isn’t about them, but that response does concern me. Questions for some other time. You got any numbers on the super population? I’m just curious what the chances of me running into another person with abilities are.”
She squeaked through the speaker, “You’re bored with me already?? Looking for a new best friend?? I get it, you want someone you can talk to about spider-man comics or whatever.”
“I fucking hate Spider-man.” I said bluntly.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever, there’s nobody else on this rock except for me that can kick your ass got it? The number of Powered Units in this country is 3, and I doubt that’ll get any higher any time soon, adrenaline junky.”
“You keep saying ‘Powered Units’ what does-” She caught me off, “I’m not calling them super people, that would be moronic. Powered Units is a term started by those International cock-a-doodle-dandies. One human with two powers is worth 1 Unit, a sub-human mutant with powers is worth 1 ½, and a m-” She was cut off.
My phone beeped loudly into my ear. I ran out of call time. I didn’t think too much about her saying “and m-” at the time, but looking back that’s a little freaky. It implies that there is something worth more arbitrary units than a mutated human.
I just sort of bummed about town for an hour, only thing I really did was take a few pictures with some tourists, they gave me 2.56 Euro, so that’s neat. Some kids were littering and I told them off, but they said mean things to me and hurt my feelings so I wouldn’t count that as a win against crime. I spent most of my time thinking about whether I should stay in Ireland, let alone Kerry. If I want to be an actual superhero, I’ll need to do things that’ll make headlines. I don’t know how much longer I can live in this none cape world.
I want a league. I want a Xavier’s school. I want a misunderstanding where another hero thinks I’m a villain and we fight till we’re friends. I want comic relief, I want heartbreak, I want a golden age, I want a 90’s. For god’s sake, I want an era in time where no blood, violence, drugs, or occult creatures can be shown on panel.
I don’t know. Do good intentions and powers really make you a hero? Can you even understand what I’m typing? I guess this feeling hasn’t changed since I started dressing up, that every thought and emotion I have is pointless, like I’m just killing time.
Back to the story. By this point I’ve decided I don’t want to fuck around here anymore. I needed a break from thinking. I knew it wouldn’t be warm or remotely pleasant, but I decided to go to Inch beach, it’s called that because the beach shrinks an inch every year (I think?). It’s winter so it’s freezing, and it’s Ireland, so it is really freezing.
I was probably sat on that beach for another hour. The sun moves pretty quickly across the sky in winter. I collapsed back into the sand at the thought of the world I wanted being impossible to build. Maybe this is why Clover only knows super people who are assholes. Maybe the only thing that can motivate people is personal gain. That was a depressing thought. Am I only motivated by a childish adoration of super heroes?
I was so caught up in my own head that I almost didn’t hear the screaming.
I got off my back to see a guy flailing a good distance from shore, the screams came from the onlookers that had seen him struggling, the man himself was completely silent, his gasps for air quieting.
I did a few jumps on the spot to wake myself up a little. Get into the zone.
Let’s hope I can swim. Despite living near the ocean my whole life, this was my first time going into it. I focused myself on him and jumped into a dive towards the splashing.
Diving in, I had a better sense of direction then I thought I would. I was at the bottom he was at the top, maybe 20 feet from the surface. I jumped up to meet him. I couldn’t make out whether he was injured or not, but all I was thinking about was getting him out of danger.
I dolphin dived out of the water for a moment grabbing him in the process, before falling back under. I’d heard of cold-water shock, but now I could feel it, both the struggle to stay above water, and the drowning man himself fighting to save himself even if it might mean pushing me down to get higher. I’ve gotten a little better around the cold since starting this, and I think that helped me resist the urge to thrash against the man.
Holding the man’s nose, I dived back down. Don’t know how to swim, but I know how to jump.
I tried to go sink as quickly as possible, while making an attempt not to break the body in my arms. I managed to jump us out into the shallows again, barely keeping the swimmer from being submerged as he stood on top of me now. There was no way he’d be able to walk, no matter what his condition was, most people get queasy from the Cuchulainn coaster, imagine what rocketing in and out of the water feels like when your organs aren’t as tough as concrete.
Shit, Ireland lore update, Cuchulainn coaster is a big wooden roller coaster in tayto park, I want to go there before I die, you should too.
It was at this moment I realised I hadn’t breathed in a while, so I breathed.
Holy shit, I’m under water!
That’s right. I forgot.
I instinctively jumped to get us out of the water, landing us in a tumble. I sputter and spout for a while trying to cough up the salt water. I look around to see a small crowd of people forming around us.
Seeing them I felt… moved. Looking back, this is the first heroic thing I’ve done in this costume.
I shouted to the crowd, my lungs still sore, “GET HIM FIRST AID!” pointing towards the nearest lifeguard station. A few onlookers grabbed the victim keeping his leg held high. I quickly guessed why.
My arm was covered in blood. His blood. In terror I looked back at the leg, noticing now the stab wounds along his thigh and in his side. A rock? A shark? I was just glad it wasn’t me, I couldn’t think of anything it could have been. I broke into another coughing fit as I rose to my feat.
“Are you alright kid?” A skinny blonde-haired woman in the crowd leaned in to help me. I laughed like a psycho, in an attempt to shake off the helping hand.
Heroes help people, then people look on and cheer for the hero.
“Didn’t you see me a few –cough- seconds ago? I’m the toughest bastard that ever lived, it’ll take more than drowning to bust my balls!” I smiled to the crowd as a few people laughed and one old dude clapped me on the back. “Good on ya, yah boy ya. Yah saved Chummer yah did. One less shark attack case for tha pile-ya.”
I turned to ya-man, and asked him, “Tha pile-ya?”
“Uck, Yah know. Ten ar so people washed up dead. Shashrks got em’. Covered in teeth marks. I tink it’s cause ‘ol Fungus got carted off ta tha ‘ol doctors shop yah know.”
No. I didn’t know that Yah-man. Granny decided it was more important to tell me about how her bingo buddy’s granddaughter came in 5th in a baking competition than the fact that ten people have died. I’m going to have to talk to her about her priorities.
“Don’t worry. I can’t swim but I know how to jump a shark.”
Yah-man poked in, “I’yah’you’n’urblu lady.” I stared for a while, trying to process that. “Sorry?” The blonde chimed in, “You and your friend dressed like avatar.” As I turned behind me, I said, “James Cameron or-“
The tip of a boot smashed into my face. I reeled from the impact but caught myself.
I actually felt it. It wasn’t how a good kick would have felt before I got ripped, hurt, but I didn’t feel all too damaged by it. I looked at the attacker and realised it was Avatar.
I locked eyes with a tall, entirely speckled sky-blue woman, about 6 feet tall, with a lean build and great muscle definition. When I started working out, I thought I’d get great abs within a month or two. I have a six pack, but it’s not nearly as well-defined as the meat grater in front of me. She might have just assaulted me but I can respect the grind to get those
Her hair looked dirty and wet, like seaweed, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t literally. She wore a chitin-like mail over her ribs, with the midrif exposed to the air. There were no straps or buckles visible on it so I wondered how she would get in and out of that thing. Around her waist dangled a raggedy looking skirt, though as a costume designer I could hardly call it a skirt. It seemed like the sort of place you’d conceal weapons. And sure, enough she pulled a heavily serrated knife on me.
I tried to step back and observe my opponents moves but she swayed into the gap like a fish through water, stabbing at my throat. I’ve tried learning a few martial arts, not that I have a knack for that stuff. I did find out that in armed combat that sort of swaying motion was effective. Hides your moves, confuses your opponent, simple stuff, but I never got the hang of that. She obviously did, she moved quicker than I could process. Then again, I’m slow.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“I just fixed this costume, and no, that didn’t hurt me.” She ripped through the fabric near my neck but slid over my throat. Guessing her strength doesn’t affect the sharpness of the dagger. She ebbed back as quickly as she came in. I was ready to fight the stranger, physically and verbally. “So which Atlantean princess are you? Definitely not Ariel, you don’t have the legs for it. I’m thinking along the lines of Namorina or Mera. You’ve got that icy look in your eyes.” I don’t think she understood what I was saying, but her cold glare harshened.
This time she darted in with a low blow, to the kidney. I really felt that one. When I was hurting from that she got my neck in a head lock, and I felt her try to twist it. Clever. If you can’t cut it, snap it. But she didn’t count on me being able to overpower her.
Barely.
I aimed a punch for her nose, felt a connection, then knocked her back with an elbow.
“Now would be the time normal people consider running away from the blue bitch!” I shouted to the crowd that was still in good numbers.
“Tough. Juvenile.” Final I was getting something out of the royal pain in Chummer’s ass. “Right, you can talk, but you can’t help yourself when you see an innocent person, can you, ya shark faced murderer.” While I didn’t expect to get a confession of guilt from her, I thought I’d try to make it clear that it wasn’t me doing this either. Way I saw it, this was a misunderstanding, she thought I killed them or something. There’s no way she killed all those people. No way.
“Didn’t bite them. Stabbed them.”
Just like that. She admits to killing 10 people like it doesn’t even matter? What delusion could someone put themselves under to make ’em think that isn’t psychotic?
“Shit. Looks like I’m kicking the fuck out of you. Gotta get payback for their families and all. What the hell makes you think killing people is cool?”
She raised her guard and began to circle me slowly. “You are strong. You will challenge me, and bring me greater honour then four-score of your foul kin. For this, you deserve to know the director of your destruction.”
I cut her off, raising my hands, “No, no, I don’t care about that, you-” I enunciated my words, “-you kill people. You need help lady. Whether it’s from a shrink or a prison sentence, I don’t care, so long as your crazy ass is off the streets.”
She was quiet for a moment before beginning. “My name is Feoli Bhean, of the autochthonous fomorian federation. Millenia ago, your ancestors with the aid of your so-called ‘gods’ drove my people to the depths of the ocean. However, you did not count on the immense power of our druids. My people grew in power, speed, and skill, while your ilk grew weak, complacent.”
It was something along those lines. I knew the game she was playing, trying to get me to lose focus by talking crap, this, I’m a master in. “Listen blue meanie, I don’t give a shit!”
I took a step back, positioning my foot in a way so that I could leap forward and crack her head open. Not that I was trying to kill her. She could probably take a restricted punch. Probably.
She looked ready to strike, but to throw me off she continued monologing, “I understand you are a powerful creature. But you are out classed. As a child I was raised to be a terminator. Others were enlisted. Only I survived. Only I could withstand further druidic augmentation-“
A sail fish smashed into my face, literally coming out of nowhere. It didn’t hurt me, wasn’t meant to.
I tried jumping in to the air to avoid whatever attack she would follow up with, but she is quick. By the leg, she threw me into the fore dune, now the sand was sticking to the wet cloth on the front of my body. I didn’t want to jump, in case the ground collapsed beneath me. I got to a crouch and slid down to her as the warrior quickstepped to close the gap between my face and her knuckles.
That was gonna bruise. It sent me tilting back, but not before I could grab her by the scalp. She dug her nails into my grasping hand, to try and pry me off of her, while I rocketed my fist into her nose. As quickly as I could, I repeated the action, and I would have done it a third time, had she not used her freaky fish ability to make a creature with a single long whipping tentacle that made an attempt to asphyxiate me.
I tried to claw its suckers from my throat and jaw, but as I did so, it’s mistress wrapped her arms around my torso, much like I had done to her victim, the only difference being that she lifted me above her head, and bent her body back into an ‘n’ shape. My head was stuck in the sand with this creature sucking at me.
Realising that I really needed to breath again. I didn’t make the same mistake as in the rescue, instead I slinkeyed my body into a better position to pull myself out of the pit.
I realised she wasn’t attacking, and that was definitely a bad sign. Either she called it quits and went back to Pepperland, or was currently attacking the crowd I’d made.
It was neither of these, actually.
I decided to just crush the creature to rather than rip it. As it squirmed to death, it slowly lost its solidity and turned to water. Was that her ability? Turning water into monsters? When she threw that fish at me, she must have transformed the water on her body, same as with the sucker. This told me that she only recently got this ability, because if she was more used to using it in combat, she would have just covered me in a skin suit while I was dripping wet from my swim. Or maybe there was a limit to how much she could transform in a period of time.
After that seconds worth of thinking time, I scanned the tide for her, and sure enough she was on one knee hanging over a rock pool and it got gory. It bubbled with viscera as muscle tissue began to form. I ran over to her and without looking she stretched out her leg and kicked my little man. I nearly crumpled, but my other injuries helped drown out the pain.
I took a deep breathe and threw a haymaker at her general direction it connected blasting her to my right with a tumble, from which she quickly recovered.
She again kept me in her gaze, as cold as it had been before, seeming almost bored, “You were strong. Strong enough to keep going against my own might.” She lowered her brow, “But, in one hundred scenarios there is not a single one where you can best my skill.” I heard the cracking of rock or maybe bone to my left, as from the pit that once was a pool, came a scaleless, pale eyed deep-sea creature. It was as big as a van and its teeth were uncountable.
I couldn’t make out what really happened while my upper half was in the mouth of the rotten thing. It thrashed like a dog with a chew toy, and the shifting lights only disorientated me while I struggled against its jaws. I was sure it didn’t have the force to pierce my skin, it was a half-baked sea monster, and I was still cold from the sea water, there was no blood to warm my skin.
Eventually its movements got slower as it reared its head back, like it was doing a shot, and I was plunged into the thing’s gullet. I beat against the muscled beasts rubbery hide, but I was tired, and there was a good chance this thing was cutting off my oxygen supply, the lights were gone anyway.
I lay there for a while, trying to think away out of this.
I don’t know for how long.
…
Until.
I saw a light. My phone. The hardy little brick was still working. I had a call. For a second, I wondered who it was.
“Motherofacocksucking pillock! I’m the one who hangs up, got that??”
“Hey, Clover.” my words came out strained. “Sorry. I ran out of data, Haha.” Laughing wasn’t a good move, especially since I didn’t know if this air was breathable.
“What’s that sound?? Are you fucking a whale right now??”
Fighting a whale was closer to the truth. “Sure, I’ll tell you ’bout it later, what’s up?”
She replied to my joking dismissal, “Those are some details I don’t need. Well, I just found out they’re bumping down the price of the deal meal in that place you like to 2 Euro, that’s something your poor ass would care about, right?? Figured we could head there to grab a bite, you into it??”
While we were talking, I used the phone light to look around the creature’s insides, finding a stony protrusion that the flesh had hastily formed over. I replied to Clover, “Shit, can’t right now, not in town. Monday? Promise to pay.” The drug lord I was getting lunch with, and for, joked, “Holy shit, are you actually getting some Sham? Sounds like you’re tearing into a girl right now.”
Did this thing even have a sex? Pretty sure it couldn’t reproduce.
“Ok, ok, Monday’s fine, just promise me two things, never hold your phone that close to some bitch when you’re talking to me again, and be there.”
I had to undo two of the five restraints on each arm. I dug my fingers into the lining of this stinky bastard, one foot on the rock for leverage, “I’d never break a promise.” The brick was stuck between my head and shoulder as I pried the creature in half, audibly groaning in the process.
“Uhh, I thought you were joking about having sex with a fish, but I’m gonna hang the hell up now. See yah, Rocky!” She hung up before I could say bye, was she really bothered by me ending it last time? I brought the tear up to the length of my lower leg before giving a final push to burst the bastard.
The smell dissipates, and my eyes adjusted to the light of the sun, now setting over the ocean. I stopped to take it in and think of a plan of action. I look around me only for my enemy to be nowhere in sight. She couldn’t have gotten far, and it gave me time to think of a plan.
…
Thing about being a seaside villain? You leave foot prints in the sand. Easy enough to track, especially since those boots aren’t in vogue.
I was perched on the roof of the lifeguard’s shack. She had been looking to finish the job on ‘Chummer’. Fat chance I’d let that happen. There were far, far more innocent people at risk in this area, she’d moved nearer to the built-up part of the beach.
“Well.” Her eyes seemed unimpressed with me appearance, “This is unexpected.”
She hooked a dagger to her side, “I was going to finish this dimwit, before returning to a good night’s sleep, but if you insist on perpetuating this poor excuse for a man’s li-”
I skipped a rock at her face before dropping my foot on her like a hammer.
I insisted, “Stop perpetuating this poor excuse for monologue, shell tits.”
After backing off from my attacks she once again glared at me, only this time there was a little heat to her glare, maybe the blood running down her brow helped that image. Funny, thought it might be blue too.
“Only cowards throw stones.”
I grinned. “Good thing I don’t give a shit what you think about me. But if throwing rocks make you a coward, what does throwing fish mean? A scallywag?” I paid attention to the shifting of her stance and responded as I had planned. She threw forth something slippery, didn’t get as good a look at it this time. This time, I ducked and ran at her.
Telegraphing a punch to the face as planned. In one hand I had had a stone, in this hand was sand.
I took advantage of her second of blindness and hit her in the ear with a left hook. She stumbled enough for me to grab the foot she was teetering on and pull it out from under her, forcing her to collapse. She grabbed at where she thought I was, but I had already leapt behind her and pulled out my last trick.
She could feel the cold steel press into her throat and instantly her struggles stopped. She knew that this was my win.
“Your fancy blades are cool and all, but if you’re strong enough, the key to my backdoor can do the same job as any weird bio-bone-blade. Right now, you’re at my mercy. The same position you put eleven human lives into. Did they freeze like you? Did they flee? Did they beg you for mercy? And did you answer them? Did you even think of them as people when you riddled them with holes?”
She replied with a short answer.
“Dolphins make better beggars then your ilk.”
I shot in, “Right, these people are irredeemable. An event happened 1000s of years into the past, and you decide to punish them simply for being loosely related to some asshole you never met. How can you possibly think that doing what happened back then to the other side is in anyway a just conclusion?”
“It isn’t. I am an instrument of the dregs, a debt-collector, it is my duty. I do not relish in it, but morals cannot stop me from doing what is right.”
I gave up for now. If the police did haul her off, then what? Could they even keep her? Would some organisation use her to further their goals? Like Bastard’s or the internationals? I had one way to reason with her. To keep everyone safe.
“You’ve killed ten people. I don’t know how long you’ve been doing this, but you’d still need to kill around 8 million people before you wipe out my mongrel race. So, how about killing me instead. You did say something earlier that rang true. Compared to you, Irish people are weak. We have a crap economy, the soils only good for potatoes, yet most people are farmers. And we have a serious alcoholism problem. It’s even encouraged. I and I alone have the power to oppose your people. Wipe me out, and bingo.”
I was counting on this unreasonable extremist to find some logic in my proposal. I hoped the mention of murder might hook her.
“You have me by the throat. I am in no position to argue. But why not end me?” I let out a sigh, the air in the throat a little hoarser than I’d’ve liked. “I don’t want your dumbass to make me the creature you see me as. I’m a man. Trying to be a hero. It’s more challenging than being a bottom feeder like you.”
“Deal…”
I took my makeshift shiv away from her throat, standing myself up and pacing back a few steps. She shifted herself to a rising position. I don’t mean this in a demeaning way, but the way she backed herself up seemed like a beaten beast, a predator denied its prey.
“I’ll fight you twice every weekend. That’s when I’m available. Not tomorrow though. I need a rest. And heck, it’ll give you the chance to get together a plan to-”
She had backed herself up to her ankles in the sea foam, it was enough to wet her feet. She threw a kick into the air, fine droplets lashed at me transformed into needling fish.
I saw it coming. My hands were empty, I had nothing to throw at her, had accounted for the scenario. I swung my foot into the ground like a wrecking ball and creating both a barrier and a vision obscuring cloud. She wouldn’t fall for a blinding trick twice, I knew that. I made the judgement that she would dodge to her right, based on the foot she had used to kick up her barrage. I shot forward and swung blindly with a low lariat.
It connected, and once again she was thrown to the ground. I didn’t follow up my attack.
“You are more skilled at this then me. That was one thing you were right about. I can’t beat you with might. So, I used the only thing I have over you. I have far greater experience with a powered fight. I’ve only fought one person, but I’m thinking that’s more than you, judging by your sloppy use of your homunculi. But that isn’t what I’m talking about. I have experienced so many superhero stories, that I know what you can do before you do. You won the first round, obviously, but now that I know your abilities, I can strategize. You haven’t seen my Primary yet. Think of every creature you can conjure, every fist you can throw, technique you can use to fool me. You said I wouldn’t win in a hundred attempts. I thought up fifty-six ways to win on my walk here.”
The heat in her eyes went cold again, she icily looked through me. “Next week.” She slitherd.
I smiled wide and waved, “See ya then! Same place!”
She disappeared into the ocean.
I turned to walk back to my granny’s, but realised there was still a crowd. My smile faded in surprise, but I pulled it back on and said, “Yeah, she was too small to eat, just a catch and release folks.” I have never been shouted at so loudly by so many people. It only served to widen my grin. They circled me round, familiar faces among them, Yah-man, skinny lady, I made my way out of the crowd, though they cascaded behind me, to Chummer. I got a better look at the guy now; he was in his late-30’s had an athletic build, and by the looks of his muscles, he was a long-distance swimmer. Explains what he was doing out there.
I asked him with a little volume in my voice to keep over the questionings and congratulations of the crowd, “You won’t be out for a while will you, Chum?”, he laughed weakly, if you ignored the first aid supplies applied to his body, you could still see the damage on his face. The colour was drained, even as he smiled, weakly. “Aye, yeah, think I’ll spend my Saturdays with the kids for a while, thanks to you.” I was a little concerned that the crowd may impede the first responders, so I tried to part ways with him, waving at him.
“Wait, lad!” I turned back, to see if he was all right, “You didn’ even tell me your name.”
Perfect. This was too good. I didn’t even believe he was saying this.
“Sorry mate, that’s a secret, but you can call me Shamrock.”
Pretty lame line, but the possibly not lucid man laughed so that was good.
Clover was definitely wrong. I can be a superhero.
…
“UUGH. Can’t believe you had to deal with a dirty ass Fomorian.” Clover picked out a Lucozade sport from the refrigerator. “And before you tell me that’s racist, I’ve already had this argument before, they aren’t human, so they aren’t a race. They’re an infestation is what they are.” I raised a corner of my mouth. I didn’t feel like arguing with her on this, I was in agony.
“You’re gonna have to pay for yours Clo, I’ve just about got enough for my meal deal.” She squealed in my ear like a brat, “Cheapskate! What are you spending that money on, you steal your crack, Junkey.”
I made a point to correct her as I pulled out an egg an’ mayo refrigerator sandwich, (it was either that or ‘chicken sauce and corn’ and I’m not touching that.) “It’s Shamrock and your gonna hear about it a lot more. There were a bunch of on lookers with phones there. I’d like to see anyone plausibly deny that evidence.” Maybe I was a little too prideful.
“Shrink it up before I smoosh your little man down to size, Sham.” Clover rolled her eyes and shook her head in faux exasperation, “Remember CGI? Anyone who sees that will chock it up to that, and “Chummy” will probably look back and think he was delirious during all that. Besides it’ll never leave that town’s internet sphere.”
I cocked my head at the last bit, “Their internet sphere? The heck’s that supposed to mean?” The northerner stopped her stride to the tills to use the groceries in her hands as props , “Ok, you know how youtube videos and instas gain traction through likes and shares? Well videos containing weird content like fish people or gruesome groined green boys getting groped or whatever, that stuff never takes off.” She returned to her path to the cashier, while I shook my head in confusion, “Hold on, that doesn’t make any sense, there’s no way that they never get recommended to anyone, that’s just not statistically possible.”
The stout lady working at the pay point looked at us with a side eye as we loaded it up. “Sure, it doesn’t make statistical sense, but neither does the fact that every powered Unit has two powers. There’re all sorts of stuff in the 3rd world like that, most likely theory is that some God or organisation is editing what you get recommended to fulfil some malcious purpose.”
Shit. I just sort of got hit with the existential realisation that beings beyond my power exist. Beings beyond creation that could blink me out of existence at any moment.
“The ad outside says it costs 2 Euro though! You can’t charge 3!” Clovers words snapped me back. “WHAT?” My jaw was wide.
“I-I’m sorry that’s the weekend meal deal, It’s full price now.”
Dammit Clover!
“Oh well, I can still afford mine, go leave your crap back, Hero, unless you want little ol’ me to give you an extra pound.”
For the last time in this post, I painfully inhaled; marching myself back to the fridge.