I AM EMPOWERED, pt.19: The Twitter-based YEAR ONE prose dealie continues!

Note: You can check out I Am Empowered's previous installment here.

And now, back to Emp's first-person narration in (old) Twitter-based 140-character format, 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. 

This next tale, incomplete though it might be, relates Emp's real-world financial woes to a battle with a trio of (typically doofy) bad guys, the "Cash Crime Cartel."

STRAIGHT CASH, SUPERHOMEY (part 2 of 3)

 What can I say? As an oft-downtrodden and disrespected heroine, I rock mad skills in the "exploiting bitterness and resentment" department.

Plus, let's face the cruel, insensitive, "don't-say-this-to-their-masked-faces" facts: Bad guys are not always the brightest of folk, okay?

Supervillainy, by and large, is a field with a reverse Bell curve, tending to attract either geniuses or, well, extremely non-genius-y guys.

When Money Master returns to the room, sounding happy after setting up my ransoming, events quickly take a turn for the testosterone-iffic.

No point in recounting their conversation in detail, given that it rapidly degenerates into heated exchanges of compound-word profanities. 

Kap’n Koin accuses Money Master of cutting him out of an Atrocity Clique windfall. MM: Puzzled and defensive, before going on the offensive. 

CC: Escalates the tension first with accusations re: MM's sexuality and maternal relationship, then overt threats of grievous bodily harm.

MM: Responds with similar allegations re: CC's sexuality and maternal relationship, then issues his own counterproposals for bodily harm.

Me: Slowly, stealthily, inchworm-crawling away from the zone of intensifying conflict, hoping to get out the line of currency-related fire.

Counterpoint to the obscenity-laden, ape-tastic chest-beating: Quiet sounds of currency fluttering and coins jingling. Capefight: IMMINENT.

Then, all hell breaks loose as open civil war sunders the Cash Crime Cartel forever, and I hastily try to roll myself away from the mayhem.

I strain my ears to decipher the srsly loud but frustratingly uninformative sounds of a villain-on-villain supertussle's audiobook version.

Whoosh of banknotes, sharp crack of quarter-fed blasts hitting concrete, grunts and roars from both capes, stray coins chiming and ringing.

Money Master screams, gets cut off abruptly, goes silent. Kap’n Koin bellows triumphantly, if incoherently. Card Charger snores, oblivious.

Then, just as I'd hoped, the cocoon of currency enshrouding me suddenly loses all magical cohesion, instantly loosening and falling apart.

$100 bills fall off me en masse as I hurriedly stagger to my feet, brushing off Benjamins and swiftly taking in the scene around me. 

Bloody-faced and unconscious, Money Master slumps limply against a projectile-pocked wall, coins tinkling and rolling all around him. 

Cursing bitterly, Kap’n Koin swipes at a flinch-y welter of papercuts festooning his arms and face, bloodied bills fluttering to his feet. 

While he's distracted, I dart over to the corner where snoozing Charger sprawls on a ratty couch, and snatch up his cardware's bulky debris. 

I'm too flustered and frantic to think of a badass, action-movie line when I run back over and began clubbing Kap’n Koin with the cardware.

Even with all my superpowers gone, I still have a remarkable talent for sucker-bludgeoning goons with foreign objects of the hefty variety. 

Note: You can easily pull a muscle thumping hapless bad guys in this manner. If possible, you should try to stretch and warm up beforehand. 

Cut to all three members of the Cash Crime Cartel beaten-down, trussed-up, facedown on the floor, gratuitous gags stuffed in their mouths. 

While I had no need whatsoever to muzzle these idiots, I still did it out of spite, for all the times I've been gagged for no good reason.

"Have a taste of your own sexist medicine, boys," I plan to crow, once the groggy doofi awaken and begin "mmph"-ing in muffled protest. 

I recover Money Master's phone, flop down on the lair’s lone, decrepit couch, and compose a text to the Homeycrib’s rapid response line. 

Limiting myself to only a few triumphalist emoticons—okay, a half-dozen—I alert the on-duty Superhomeys that I need a supervillain pickup.

Naturally, I send along a humiliating photo of the defeated, trussed-up Cash Money Clique as proof of my villain-vanquishing awesomeness.

Also naturally, my text fails to mention that I was defeated and trussed-up first—no point in burdening my teammates with trifling minutiae!

(Alas, as I am nothing if not a good girl—SIGH—the after-action report I file that night fully and honestly details what happened to me.) 

After that, I open the camera roll on MM's phone and delete all his embarrassing photos of me, kneeling and dollar-cocooned. Priorities!

Then I spent a constructive few minutes scrolling through his phone’s address book, harvesting any useful-looking names and contact info. 

Phone numbers and email addies for each member of the all-villain supergroup Kollateral Damaj? Why, thank you, Money Master’s Contacts list!

Street addresses for what must be Old Dirty Blaster’s heretofore undiscovered Top-Secret Lair and Quark Queen’s new apartment? Yes, please!

I’m humming quite happily to myself as I tap “Share Contact” repeatedly, emailing oodles of intriguing bad-guy info to my Homeymail account.

Raiding a villain’s smartphone: Less fun than rooftop recon or surveilling from the shadows, but arguably more useful for gathering intel.

We’d be screwed if most supervillains ever thought to set Passcode Locks on their phones—even the Evil Geniuses rarely seem to bother. 

Ah, but once I finish my dataharvesting and set the phone aside, the Cash Money Clique’s final—and toughest—challenge suddenly confronts me.

I look up, start to glance idly over the hideout’s grubby mess, and all at once the full impact of the surreal environment hits me.

For lo and behold, a metric fuckton of scattered cash carpets the lair's floor, a bank vault—or two—worth of loose bills strewn underfoot. 

The two-minute civil war between Kap’n Koin and Money Master has left every last dollar of their bountiful loot littering the battlefield.

Snowdrifts of cash, unraked leaf-piles of money, wads and heaps and handfuls and armfuls of bills festoon every horizontal surface in sight.

(Somewhat less impressively, Kap’n Koin’s numismatic rampage has also cast thousands of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters far and wide.) 

I'm staring, gape-mouthed and drool-y, at what looks like more money than my entire student-loan and credit-card debt put together.

Andrew Jackson, that slut, gives me a blatant, unmistakable come-hither look from a hundred different $20s. “You know you want me,” he coos.

A-Jac’s hotter friend—hotter and he knows it, the arrogant douche—Ulysses S. Grant says nothing, just winks knowingly at me from the $50. 

Then, in my imagination’s fevered nightclub, Ben Franklin elbows Mandrew and Uly aside, gets all up in my face with his undeniable hawtness.

A male-cougar legion of B-Franks sizzlingly lock eyes with me, whispering oh-so-seductively, “$100 says we’re going home with you, Emp.”

(Abe Lincoln and whoever the hell’s on the $10 bill are no doubt kissy-facing at me, too, but at the moment I only have eyes for Big Ben.)

Of course, I'm not likely to scoop up a whole armload of Benjamins and scamper villainously off into the night, gibbering maniacally.

Howeva: I have to (shamefully) confess that I am deeply, acutely, intensely and profoundly tempted to snatch a quick handful of $100 bills. 

Will anyone really miss a few lost B-Franks? After all, in the battle outside the bank, a fair number of bills must've been left behind.

Wouldn't the bank maybe be happy to toss me a few crumbs—that is, a few Benjies? I did save the rest of their cash-stash from theft, y'know.

I must admit, at times like these—with $100 bills scattered around me like a green snowfall of cash—I'm glad my suit doesn't have pockets. 

I'm beginning to wish that the Cash Crime Cartel weren't all still unconscious, that they could be awake and watching me suspiciously.

No way could I go all larcenously light-fingered and feloniously thief-y under their judgmental gazes. "Not in front of the bad guys, dear."

Now I'm pacing back and forth on an honest-to-gawd carpet of cash, agitated and flustered, wrestling with my own whiny, self-entitled greed.

I’m timidly chewing my supersuit-coated nails, their peculiar, licked-battery taste oddly soothing as my squirrelly jitteriness worsens.

I'm thinking that, of course, A Real Superheroine would never, ever entertain the idea of snagging any stolen money from a foiled robbery. 

NEXT WEEK ON "I AM EMPOWERED": This incomplete chapter wheezes to a halt after a lengthy discussion of Emp's financial woes. Whoo, exciting!

TOMORROW ON THIS HERE PATREON:  Possibly another installment of Vintage Con Sketches, though I'm not 100% sure about that.