Synopsis:

One slightly geeky high school kid, one heartless corporation, and one vat of pink goo. A recipe for the ultimate superhero... sorta. Now with 30% less fat.

Story:

Max Summers had never been good at Friday night outings. More often than not, he would stay in, enjoying the majesty of late night chatrooms and incredible humor provided by ABC’s TGIF block. (See, that’s funny ‘cause ABC sucks. Just FYI.) And even when he did go out, he and his friends always ended up stuck in the classic Activity Conversation Loop. For those not familiar with the ACL, it tends to go as following.

“What do you wanna do?”

“I dunno. What do you wanna do?”

“I dunno. What do you wanna do?”

“I dunno. What do you wanna do?”

Repeat ad nauseam. And even when Mac could overcome the dreaded ACL, he still had to contend with its variants, such as “I dunno, where do you wanna eat?” or “I dunno, what movie do you wanna see?” Dreadful stuff. Not dealing with this was part of the reason why Max favored the Friday night chatroom. At least there, you know where you stood. There, you knew you were pretending to be a twenty-three year old lesbian painter sharing a loft in the Village with your beautiful but emotionally unavailable German girlfriend. And you liked it, too.

Currently, Max’s skill with the Ars Friday-Nightica was still pretty low. Instead of spending the night doing something cool like seeing a movie or hanging out in the parking lot of a large retail center, he was flying through the city on a stupid glider thing while being chased by a crazy electricity guy. And he was a she. And she didn’t even have an emotionally unavailable German girlfriend.

Max zipped about down the streets on her glider. She was actually getting pretty damn good on it. Having huge bolts of electricity shot at you every five seconds really helped one learn to keep one’s balance. And hurt like hell.

Electrode was propelling himself behind her by shooting twin blasts of electricity at the ground, thereby pushing him into the air and allowing him to move at great speeds. Or something. Max thought that it didn’t seem physically possible or even probable. Just stupid really. She hadn’t found the time to ask about it, what with the constant almost dieing and all.

“Can’t we talk this over?” called out Max, completely ignoring the fact that at the speeds they were going, it would be almost impossible for Electrode to hear her.

“No. No we can’t,” said Electrode, likewise ignoring the fact that it would be impossible for him to hear such a thing.

“Why not? We’re both reasonable people, aren’t we?” said Max, ignoring how her hearing it would be even more impossible, considering how Electrode was behind her and how he only- You know what? Fuck it. If these characters don’t want to follow the rules of physics, let them. And when it all ends in tears, you know whose fault it’ll be? Not mine.

“Uhh, not really. I’m a dashingly handsome rogue with amazing electrical powers, and your some crazy chick with hair that changes color. I think the possibility of a reasonable conversation between us ended years ago.” He shot out another energy bolt at her to accentuate his pint.

“I’ve explained this several times. I didn’t know my hair could do that,” said Max after narrowly avoiding the blast. Her dedication the ’hero’ thing was dropping by the minute. “I’m just saying it might be nice. I’ll start. I’m sorry I made fun of your sack. It was very nice. I’m sure your mother put a lot of work into it.”

“Thank you,” replied Electrode, shotting. “I accept your apology. And let me add, I will kill you and feast on the blood of your ancestors!”

“What? That’s stupid. Nobody sticks to theme anymore.”

“Huh?” uttered Electrode. He shot another blast, this time to accentuate his confusion.

Again Max zipped away from the bolt, but not without it coming close enough to singe a bit of her hair. “You’re, like, an electricity guy. You should say something like, ‘I’ll put a shock to your system,’ or ‘Time to get charged up!’ or something like that.”

“That’s dumb. Can we just get back to fighting?”

“Not until you get back on point thematically.”

Electrode rolled his eyes and sent another blast Max‘s way, which she dodged with a flipy-kicky-jumpy move thing.. “Nag, nag, nag. Jesus. Is that all you do? You’re not my girlfriend, y’know. You’re just my arch-nemesis.”

Max looked back at her foe with a worried expression. “Arch? Isn’t it kind of soon for that kind of commitment? I mean, we just met and all. I barely know you.”

“But we had that long conversation earlier. And the banter. What about all the banter?”

“That’s all it was. Just banter.”

“Just banter?! So you banter like that with all the villains?”

“Well…You were my first, but still. It takes a lot of hate and distrust to be someone’s arch-nemesis. I just don’t feel that way about you yet.”

“Really? So all of this meant nothing to you?”

“Not nothing,” said Max. “We’ve had some fun times. Why can’t that be enough?”

“Fine. Whatever you say. So what now? We go back to being enemies like nothing happened?”

“I guess. We should probably start killing other people.”

Electrode breathed a long, heavy sigh. “Whatever.” He began to turn so he could fly in the opposite direction, but was stopped by the sound of Max’s voice.

“Wait…“ she began softly. “I’ll always remember how I made fun of your dumbass money sack. Always.”

“Yeah,” said Electrode with a nostalgic smile. “Yeah.”

And with that, Electrode flew away. After seeing that he was sufficiently far away, Max landed her glider on a nearby building and did the only thing she could do in such a time of emotional stress: the cabbage patch.

“It worked! I can’t believe it!” she exclaimed as she stepped off the glider and started getting funky with her bad self. It had worked. She couldn’t believe it. She had actually tricked Electrode into letting her go. And it was easy, too. She was the best superhero ever.

Maybe that could be her theme. She could outwit criminals with her awesome super-intellect. She could be like the Riddler, only good and without the stupid riddles. Or the Shadow. She couldn’t remember exactly what he did, but she thought it had to do with being smarter than people. Either that or fog. She remembered there being something about fog.

“Go me! Go me! I’m awesome! I’m awesome!” said Max as she continued with her exuberance. She stopped for a moment and looked down at her chest. “Good job, girls. I don’t think that would’ve worked without you.”

“Yeah right!” yelled a voice from behind Max. She didn’t even have to look. It was Electrode. Without missing a beat, she continued her conversation with her lady bits. “I give you a damn compliment and this is how you repay me? I hate you guys.”

“Did you really think I was stupid enough to fall for your little trick?” asked he.

Max turned around and shrugged. “Well, yeah. Pretty much.”

Electrode was now surrounded entirely by a bright electrical glow that dwarfed the displays of power he had put on before. Max guessed that he wasn’t so good at anger management. “Well you were wrong. Dead wrong!”

“Thank you, Mr. Movie Tagline.”

“Hey! I thought we were through with the bantering! What happened to slowing down and killing other people?”

“That joke stopped being funny five minutes ago. Get over it, man.”

“Okay,” replied Electrode with a devilish smirk. He suddenly threw his arms upwards towards the sky. The electricity around him began to focus into his hands. “I believe this is checkmate”

“Uhm, how so?”

“I finally have you right where I want you. My ultimate attack is nigh.”

“Ultimate?” asked Max.

“Yes,” said Electrode with a nod. The energy in his hands was growing larger and larger. “A blast of electricity so powerful and so pure that it will ultimately decimate you.”

“How can electricity be pure? I mean, have you been using impure electricity this whole time.”

“Shut up. I’m not done explaining why this is an ultimate attack yet.”

“Because it will break me into ten parts?”

“What?”

“That’s what decimate means. The word you’re looking for is obliterate. They’re not really synonyms.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I never knew that. Interesting.”

“Now you know.”

“Cool. But as I was saying, this attack truly is an ultimate one. Even with your flying thing, you will not be able to escape this blast. For I was summon forth a might bolt of lightning that will utterly ‘obliterate’ you. Prepare for doom.”

After all the unnecessary conversating, the energy around Electrode’s hands had grown pretty large. Max found it easy to believe that his attack would probably do a lot of damage. She needed a way out, and fast. Electrode was just standing there, gloating and gathering power. There had to be a way to escape. Freedom was so near, yet so far. The glider was right next to her, but so was Electrode. Even not fully charged, she guessed that whatever he would do would sting quite a bit. She needed a plan.

And suddenly she had one. The kind of devious plan that usually only graced the last five minutes of any given detective show. She just needed to implement it, and she only had one chance.

“Holy shit! It’s Captain-o-Matic and his arch nemesis, Evil Chef Tony!” shouted Max.

“Where?” said Electrode, turning his head.

Then, in one fluid motion, Max picked up one end of her glider and swung it in all its pink metallic glory at Electrodes. He dropped like a baker’s dozen of cupcakes at an Alaskan luau. And that doesn’t even make sense.

“Snap fool!” said Max as she reached down and grabbed the bag of money from her now unconscious foe. “Once again, good triumphs because evil is really, really stupid.”

There was a dent in her glider where it had hit Electrode’s head, but now she had something better than an intact personal flying device: a moral victory and a sack of money. And can anyone ever put a value on that? The sack of money I mean. The moral victory ain’t worth shit.

“Perhaps now you’ll learn a lesson,” said Max to her fallen foe. “Crime doesn’t pay. Give a hoot, don’t pollute. Only you can prevent forest fires, douchebag. Who‘s bad now, huh? Who? Ultimate attack my ass.”

Max’s celebratory gloating was interrupted by the sound of a groan from Electrode. He seemed to be recovering from his unconsciousness faster than Max had anticipated.

“Oh shit,” said Max. Without hesitation she jumped onto her glider. Now she would make her daring escape. She would fight this clown later when she was better equipped. Her glider would fly her away like the graceful and majestic eagle.

There was only one problem. After flying her about five or so yards, Max’s graceful and majestic eagle decided to explode. It was a big one too. If Max had been conscious for the whole thing, she would’ve been impressed.

***

“Time to wake up, Sleeping Beauty. Sweet! I finally got to say it.”

Max groaned. She had one hell of a headache. Being in the middle of huge explosions tended to do that to her. She slowly began to open her eyes, allowing them to adjust to the light. As she saw her surroundings, the truth quickly dawned her. For the second time in a month, she was waking up in the Zerotech infirmary.

Her erstwhile mentor, Steve, was standing over her with a self-satisfied grin on his face. “So you’re finally up. Excellent. I was afraid that you might melt again.”

“What…what happened?” said Max. Once again she was lying down in a hospital-style bed in a hospital-style gown talking to a hospital-style idiot.

“The Jet Glider somehow suffered immense damage to its fuel cells, leading to a chain reaction which caused the craft to explode after being activated.”

“Oh…” said Max. She was guessing that hitting some dude in the head with a piece of complicated, physics-defying technology that she didn’t understand was not such a good idea after all.

“You were pretty messed up afterwards. Luckily, we were able to send the strike force down to bring you back here before things got too serious.”

“Zerotech has a strike force?”

“Strike force, group of interns that we don’t allow to sleep. Same thing. The point is, we got you back safely, and the interns got to touch a girl. It was win-win. Except for your injuries and all.”

“So how’d you know I was hurt? It’s not like I sent out a distress signal.”

“Oh, but you did,” said Steve with a smirk. “The chip in your head sent out a signal as soon as you went unconscious. That’s how we were able to find you so quickly.”

“Wait, what?! There’s a chip in my head?!”

“Of course. You don’t remember? We put it in when we were doing all that brain stuff that day.”

Max stood straight up. She was not amused. “Brain stuff? You did something to my brain? What the hell did you do?!”

“Uhh.” Steve paused for a moment, looking down at his protégé with a slightly worried expression. “What? I didn’t do anything? Why are you talking about brains? I didn’t say anything about brains.”

“I’m not kidding, Steve. What the hell did you do?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t say nothing about nothing. You must’ve been dreaming or something.”

“Seriously. What did you do to my brain?”

“This is more serious than I thought. You appear to be suffering from a case of Post…Explosion, uhm, Dementia. Yeah, Post Explosion Dementia. Or PED as we doctors. That’s a real thing. You can’t prove it isn’t.”

“That’s not a real thing!”

“How do you know? Did you go to medical school? I don’t think so. I graduated at the top of my class, y’know.”

“You totally just made that up.”

“No I didn’t. You just think that you’ve never heard of it. That’s the insidious effect of PED. It temporarily wipes out any and all memory of its existence. Nobody knows how or why. To the uninformed, it may even seem nonsensical or contrived. But I assure you, you should stop asking questions.”

“You’re not going to tell me about the brain thing, are you?”

“Nope.”

Max crossed her arms and frowned angrily. That was what she was going for, anyway. It came out as more of an exceedingly cute pout. “Fine. But if I get any weird brain diseases or anything, you guys are getting super sued.”

“Actually, if you read clause seventeen of your contract, you’ll see that-,” Steve stopped mid-sentence and paused for a moment. “Y’know, don’t worry about it. You’ll see eventually. But on the lighter side, I’ve got good news.”

“You figured out a way to give me back my man parts?”

“Even better.”

“You’ve figured out a way to give me back my man parts and got me a girlfriend.”

Steve chuckled. “Yeah right. I’m a doctor, not a genie.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that after your successful test run last night, I’ve gotten you full access to the fruits of Zerotech’s weapons division.”

“How could what went on last night be considered successful by anyone?”

“You didn’t die. That’s pretty much the only watermark for success we have around here.”

“That makes me feel real good about this place.”

“I know.”

“Wait a tic, isn’t this a drug company?”

“Yeah.”

“Why the hell does it have an weapons division?”

Steve shrugged. “I don’t ask questions like that. I think it has to do with people’s hands in foreign honey pots and the lagging economy and stuff like that. You know how it is.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, regardless of that, you’re going to be much better armed the next time you go out. It’ll be sweet, I assure you.”

“Great,” said Max as she lay back down. “That’s just what I wanna do. Go fight loonies in tights again.”

“Aww, don’t be so jaded. You’ll feel better about it when you recover from all the severe internal damage.”

“Whatever,” said Max with a roll of the eyes.

“I’ll just leave you here to heal for a while. Briar Rose needs her rest, after all.”

“Just leave, dude.”

“I’m going, I’m going. Just one more thing.”

“What?”

“Is there any particular reason why your hair is green?”

“What?!”

***

What did Zerotech really do to Max’s brain?

Why is Max’s hair green and why didn’t she notice?

Whatever happened to Electrode?

When will medical science finally stem the rising tide of PED?

Why is Taco Bell so damn delicious?

Why does this story have so much pointless dialogue? Damn. It’s not funny anymore. It’s just stupid.

If a train leaves from Cleveland at 5:00 going 75 mph and another train leaves from Baltimore going 80 mph, how long will it take for anyone to give a shit?

Why was that last question such a ridiculous non sequitor? Seriously. Not funny anymore.

What sort of weapons will Max be receiving?

How come Samantha from Bewitched always took Darren’s shit? She was a witch. He was just some advertising dude. I know they were in love, but he was just a bastard. I always hated him.

I’m not even going to pretend this is a question. That last one was just stupid.

Why did it take so long for this chapter to come out? It’s not even good. And it’s shorter than the other chapters to boot. What a rip-off.

For the answers to these questions and more, get a job you dirty hippie. Do it now before I call the cops.

Notes:

Readers, Please Remember to Leave a Comment