Sportfish Independent Backer Update #14
(transcribed from video log)
Hello again friends and supporters. Thanks to the mention I received in yesterday’s The Daily Pills, my donations are up sixty percent. That means many of you watching this are new to the Sportfish program; I’m going to give a quick history lesson to catch you up. If you’re a veteran at this point you can just click here and skip ahead to my big news.
If you’re wondering if my operation has any relation to the eastern and western superhero teams called the Justice Backers, the answer is yes. The creator of that program, Alpha Dog, is my uncle. About a year ago I flunked out of college. I will not work retail. I will not wait tables. I will not make beds. I will not sit at a desk and help people who don’t matter make appointments that don’t matter. I am an adult human being in the twenty-first century and I refuse to let my life get flattened and paper-clipped that way.
I expertly ignored every single thing my parents said and called my uncle Eben. I told him about my situation. He did not judge. He didn’t even sigh. He asked what I cared about and I answered ‘the ocean’. He asked what my favorite animal was and I answered ‘pilot whale’. Then he said he was going to build me a robot whale and it would solve all of my problems for the rest of my life. So far he’s been right.
I was to be a nature-conscious superhero with the main goal of protecting the oceans and coasts from illegal fishing, whaling, dumping, and resource exploitation. Eben, being the brilliant inventor that he is, supplied me with the super powers. My insulated and armored neoprene suit is fully equipped with synthetic wing membranes and water jet pods that allow controlled flight under and over water, two wrist-mounted cavitation blasters based on the predatory techniques of the snapper shrimp, and enough compressed air to keep me submerged for up to seven hours.
Uncle Eben had much more fun building Marcy, my robotic pilot whale assistant. She is twelve feet long, black, nearly indistinguishable from her organic counterpart at a distance, one and a half times smarter than any of my uncle’s dogs, and a big sweetie. She can swim at speeds of up to thirty-four miles per hour, scan vast areas with her sonar, and store an additional fifteen hours of air for me. If it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be here to make this update, but I’ll get to that.
I sort of lied to uncle Eben. He built my identity as Sportfish under the assumption I would immediately come to join his team of Backers in the Backer Bay. While living in the world’s first organic aquarium was tempting, I wanted to be even closer to my great blue ward. I already had a secure and secret location allowing me to be based in international waters. I broke his heart a little bit, especially since I took Marcy before telling him. We ended up striking a deal that I would act as the first independent Backer: a hero without a team who was still allied with the rest of the Backers and still used the Backer ethics code and crowdfunding methods. Guess you could call me a freelancer.
They haven’t needed my help and I haven’t needed theirs, until now that is. Early this morning I was patrolling just under the surface of a very ecologically vulnerable area, the location of which I will not reveal. Marcy and some of my equipment had detected unusual seismic activity on the seabed and I was looking for the cause. At first everything seemed normal. The water was thick with plankton and not much else. I slowed to a stop and switched my jets to tread mode. I stuck my head above the water to watch the red sun’s light wash over the sea. I got a face full of garbage instead.
I sputtered and spat and flailed until I peeled a big wet bag off of my face. I’m a superhero now, but there was still basically nothing I could do about the bag. My suit doesn’t really have storage and ripping it into smaller pieces only multiplies the problem. I can’t defeat litter, just the litterbugs. It could’ve been floating for ages, but I decided to analyze the current and make a guess as to its origin anyway. Then I sealed my helmet, dove, and headed in that direction.
My sonar pinged back with something massive. It was bigger than most industrial ships. Out of the foggy cerulean came black columns the size of buildings, crusted with barnacles and brown seaweed like the hair of a thousand drowned women. A parasitic umbilicus of pipes and cables connected it to the sea floor. Drillers. Drillers in water not cleared for drilling. I shifted my jets into flight mode and rocketed toward the surface. I broke through and opened my visor expecting salty morning air and instead getting a nose full of toxic smoke. The oil drilling platform rose into the sky: a colossus of green, yellow, and red metal bars. Men scurried about on its paved deck. The ones that weren’t carrying equipment were busy scratching their asses and tossing food containers over the side.
Attacking an active drill might have caused a rupture, so I first needed to find someone in charge and threaten them until they shut everything down. I decided to find him or her by making the workers scream and scatter like sand fleas. I swooped in low like a manta ray or an eagle, firing my cavitation blasters behind the feet of the men as they scattered. Above water their concussive force is only strong enough to knock a man down and maybe cause a mild burn. Below the surface they can blow a hole in the side of a submarine.
“Who is in charge here?” I roared through a voice modulator that made me sound like a cross between a bass opera singer and a gargling snapping turtle. “Who is bleeding my ocean?” A man who tried and failed to squeeze himself under a metal ridge caught my eye. I dropped onto the platform next to him and watched silently while he pulled his grimy self away from it. The half that had made it under was covered in grease. I flapped my fin-wings menacingly and sprayed him with water. I asked again where the leader was. He pointed me towards a boxy red building across the platform.
I launched back into the air and made for it. Before I could set down, the top of the building groaned and split in half to reveal something like a helipad with yellow markings everywhere. There was something perched at its center, but it wasn’t a helicopter. It was some sort of armored exoskeleton like the ones the military so frequently experiments with, except it was much bulkier and seemed entirely sealed from the air. If you count the oddly pointed glass helmet it was nearly eight feet tall. It was dull green in color, with some kind of logo printed on its left shoulder. I touched down near it and tiptoed closer for a better look.
It was a picture of a cartoon baby wearing a cowboy hat. The baby was riding a handheld power drill like a mechanical bull and swinging its cord like a lasso. I’d seen the image before; I knew who was in that suit before the helmet even opened. Drill Baby. Every time he was called to testify in front of congress he used his legal name: Kenny Bittumer. Kenny likes to poke holes in the world and suck its life out like a mosquito. He gets paid in the billions to do it. I assume he used those billions to build the illegal drilling platform I was standing on as well as the man-shaped tank he was nestled in. One of my favorite hobbies is firing a toy dart gun at his face on my TV when I watch him drool lies into congress’ microphone.
The helmet on his strange suit was a combination of transparent panels and metal ones, so I could see the shape of a human head inside. When the two front panels slid open I was proven correct; there was Kenny puffing away on some kind of electronic cigar. Apparently pouring poison gas into the atmosphere is fine, but his lungs are too sacred.
“Hiya,” he chirped. “You looking for something missy?”
“It is illegal to drill here.”
“That’s why I aint going to tell nobody. You aint going to tell neither.”
“Shut down the equipment.”
“Shut down your mouth.”
“Have it your way.”
“I will, much obliged.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
I launched myself back in the air and started dealing perfunctory damage to the rig with my blasters. It didn’t take much to goad him into a fight. When his helmet closed its various bars and panels started to spin around at high speed. Drill bits loaded into place around his ankles and wrists, revealing the suit’s main purpose as an exploratory drilling unit. Its secondary purpose appears to be kicking my ass.
He shot me out of the air with a chest-mounted machine gun. Its bullets tore straight through one of my fins. The fin collapsed and sent me into a spiral back into the ocean. I reoriented myself upward in the water and hit the sonar distress beacon on my wrist. Drill Baby splashed down next to me and propelled himself through the water with the drills on his ankles. I put my limbs flat against my body and hit the booster on my jets to get away, but his suit kept pace. I tried leaping out of the water and gliding periodically like a flying fish, but I couldn’t pull ahead. His suit just tore across the water like a speedboat, sending fountains of spray off to each side. His guns continued to fire and take bites out of the water around me.
With no other options, I dove straight down and then put my back to the seabed to get a better angle. I returned fire with my blasters. Each shot was an explosion of bubbles and bright cavitation light. A direct hit might have won the fight for me, but his suit proved more nimble than it looked. He spun out of the way expertly and came towards me drill bit first: an intelligently guided torpedo. I couldn’t outswim him. The drill ripped through my other fin and spun me around so fast I nearly lost consciousness. All I could see was the world turning around me like I was in a tumble dryer. Daylight, seabed, daylight, seabed…
He pulled us both to the surface. The force of the spinning ripped my helmet from my head and tossed it all the way back up to the deck of the rig. Water shot down my throat, up my nose, and into my mind. One thing I should have considered about my hero name is that sportfish tend to get caught and served up with tartar sauce and a lemon wedge. My body stopped spinning, but my head kept going. Drill Baby pulled me into an industrial strength bear hug and pressed my face against the gun on his chest plate. The edge of the barrel burned my cheek.
Marcy breached the surface, flipped through the air, and smacked Drill Baby back under with her tail. His arms loosened. I couldn’t see anything in the column of bubbles, so I held my hands forward and let a hopeful wish bubble out of my mouth. Marcy’s dorsal fin slid between my wrists. Little hooks on my suit extended and locked onto her back. She pumped her tail and pulled us away from Drill Baby. I freed one of my hands and fired behind us continuously until the blaster’s battery was drained. It kept him off me long enough to make an escape.
As you can see I’m pretty banged up. I sent Marcy back to check and as I suspected, the rig is gone. The entire thing is awfully large to move like a submersible, but all the evidence suggests it can. I think it was intended to always be at sea, far away from any environmental or safety inspectors.
I won’t let him continue, but I’m going to need help. I’ve called my uncle and am currently waiting for a reply. Drill Baby won’t be able to crack the Justice Backers.
Backer Update #164 (Swap Meet)
Happy four-and-a-half year anniversary backers! That’s right; we’ve now been at this for nearly five years. I went ahead and got the five year balloons since they don’t make this particular interval. I figured we’d celebrate now-ish since we’re having the big swap meet tomorrow.
For those of you who haven’t kept up with your old pal Alpha Dog, we’re having a bit of a roster exchange with the western Backers. It’s been a few years so a couple of us are ready for a change. I’m really hopped up because we haven’t had a change-up in more than two years. The last time was shortly after our slightly excessive victory party when we defeated Deckard and turned his hand into a blob of fruitcake. During the party Salt Shaker and Pawn got a little slightly excessive with each other and she wound up pregnant. Pawn’s been filling in for her ever since while she handles little Sugarcane. They must want her to be a hero too, because a girl named Sugarcane doesn’t have too many other career options.
As for the particulars of the swap, it’s two for two. We’re handing over Electric Eel and Opossum Player for a while, while Golden Boy and Monkey Girl are coming back to the team that started it all! I’ve been working hard on two new puppies as a welcome present. It wasn’t too hard since I had some extra parts lying around from that whale fiasco.
If any of you are patrons of Electric Eel and Opossum Player, your donations will automatically be moved to their new pages on the western section of our site; you don’t have to lift a finger. That’s where their vlogs will show up now too. The same goes for Monkey Girl and Golden Boy.
What a four-and-a-half years it has been huh? We’ve brought down so many villains that I’m starting to lose count: Woman’s Touch, Wing King (like a dozen times), Trifecta, Toxic Violet, Deckard, Game Master, Wildlife, the Quadkillers, the Great Pretender, the Kissimmee Coroner, Bloato, Judge Mental, Dr. Malice, Metal X, Metal Y… the list goes on. Still no giant monsters though. I’m sure you remember that we’ve established the official Backer definition of what counts as a giant monster:
giant monster – (noun) – Any organic, mineral, or energy-based creature of sufficient strangeness as determined by the internet, with a length, height, or width totaling more than twenty feet.
We came close with that mutant starfish that was attacking beachgoers, but it was only seventeen feet across. Besides, it only moved at two miles per hour or something like that. People just need to pay more attention when they’re tanning. That reminds me, we’re now selling a plush toy of Pentazar the starfish on the site. He comes in three sizes and if you put in your e-mail before this Friday you’re entered for a chance to win the one life-size version we had made.
The acquisition of Backer collectibles brings me to the next topic: the acquisition of more Backers. We’re not looking to expand the size of either team right now, but we’ve got several candidates who could perhaps work well as independent Backers like my niece. We considered a third team, but nobody really wants to lead it and most of our candidates say that they would prefer not to move. What do you guys think? We’ve got a rowdy discussion about it going on over on Thinkitch; go join that if your opinion is ready to throw a few chairs to get heard. Some people think too many independent Backers will turn us into some kind of corporatized fast food heroes, but I think our operation is still small enough to avoid that.
There’s also some voting going on over there about which potential independent Backers are the best candidates. Here’s the three who are polling highest right now:
Armigo – He’s a mechanic about my age based in Mexico. Like every other aspiring inventor he got his hands on some exoskeleton specs on the internet. The difference is that he actually knows how to build on that foundation. His harness is covered in hundreds of tiny machining tentacles that can rip, shred, melt, and weld pieces of his surroundings into an instant suit of armor. His demonstration video, which you can see here, has him disassembling a car door and converting it into armor, a shield, and a club in less than twenty seconds.
Sacred Queen – So far she’s the only one from the so-called ‘prehero’ community whose powers decided to show up. Her body converts the positive and hopeful psychic energies of those around her into strength, reduced vulnerability, and a blinding halo of light that coats her. She’ll be most effective as a mascot for a particular area, that way the trust of the people she protects can enhance her abilities.
Islander – He doesn’t have any powers per se, but his story is certainly gripping. He was part of a group of Polynesians kidnapped to be used as slave labor on a crazed billionaire’s private island. The island itself was entirely artificial and mobile, outfitted with state of the art security disguised as plants and wildlife. Somehow they managed to overthrow the guy and then they voted Islander to be the head of their new mini-nation. They’ve been doing great work providing transportation for all kinds of refugees across the oceans.
If any of them sound like your kind of hero go ahead and toss them a vote. I just want it to be clear that I am not building robots or suits for any more independent Backers. Don’t spam me with E-mails telling me how you’re such a wonderful, compassionate, and brave soul and all you need is a mechanical riding ostrich to prove it. The answer is no. From now on our operation is BYOP: bring your own powers. Got it?
A lot has changed for us in the past years, but I want to remind everyone that we’re still the same organization. Your money is still converted into positive acts of justice for the world. We still want to connect with you and hear what you have to say, even as it gets a little more difficult to hear you in the crowd. There is always a way you can contribute more and it doesn’t have to be financial. We even appreciate the crazy stuff; if you want proof just check out this image gallery of the one hundred best Justice Backer tattoos. I can’t decide if my favorite is the one with my dogs forming a pyramid on some guy’s back or the one of a full hand of Justice Backer Secret Shuffle cards on that woman’s thigh, with every picture flipping the viewer off. Those are definitely classics.
So please add your voice to the clamoring welcome we’re going to give Monkey Girl and Golden Boy tomorrow. We’ll be livestreaming their arrival free of charge and I’ll make sure they at least say hello to a lucky handful that show up in the chat. I’ve got to get back to work and let’s face it… you’re probably looking at this in a tiny window when your boss is across the room, so you should too.