Normalized (The Complete Quartet)

by David Bussell

  [57] My ‘no dating normals’ rule. Back in the day I’d sworn off of relationships with civilians. ‘Too much aggravation,’ I used to say. ‘You try creeping into bed at 4am with claw marks all over you and telling your sweetheart “It’s not what you think; Madam Minx used her hyno-lipstick to subvert my free will!” Good luck pulling yourself out of that bucket of molasses.’

  [58] ...and maybe learn some fitness lingo.

  [59] I’ll need to plug a gap in the narrative at this point, so here goes…

  Having completed my induction I went back to Powerhouse that night for phase two of the regime. I figured the place would be a ghost town at 3am, but not only was the twink instructor still there, so were Strong-Man and his gang of merry meatheads. There was no turning back. If I tucked tail I’d have looked like a frock made of limp dicks.

  The twink signed me in and told me he’d be coaching my warm-up routine. I told him hell no, but he said those were the rules and ordered me to lie face down on an exercise ball and go to work. I caved and he started counting off my abdominal crunches, nice and loud so everyone could hear. It was demoralizing to say the least – I looked like a chimp humping a goddamned water balloon. Next thing I knew, Strong-Man and the meatheads were gathered around, cracking wise and chuckling into their muscles.

  I’d had enough. It was time to show those pups I was still top dog of this pound. Somewhere inside of me was a superhero – the greatest superhero the world had ever known – I just had to shake the bottle and wake the taste. I marched over to the weights and wrapped my grip around the barbell Strong-Man had challenged me to lift earlier. Meeting his eye, I took the weight across my back, hoisted it off its stand and gave it everything I had.

  And that’s how I wound up getting rushed to ER for emergency surgery.

  [60] Unmasked magazine ran the story too, though the center spread of that issue went to The Inevitable Bulk’s wedding. According to the story, the ceremony had passed without incident, at least until the bride smooshed the cake into her newlywed’s face. Misinterpreting the tradition as an attack, the groom reportedly flew into a tantrum that sent a half dozen guests to this very infirmary.

  [61] Although the Mite Mites were originally conceived as a sort of friendly Hitler Youth, the fan club soon became inundated with senior members. In the end I decided to form a separate club for them, as it turns out mixing minors with adults who dress up in identity-concealing masks = bad idea.

  [62] Intimidation by Paco Rabanne. The market for ‘super scents’ was a lucrative one, and I was by no means the only cape to muscle in on the racket. Doctor Octomom already had eight perfumes to her name, Girl Man had a long-standing deal with Calvin Klein, and even Fish Face had gotten in on the enterprise with his mystifyingly popular toilet water, Delish Fish, which smelled like an open tin of cat food left outside on a hot day.

  [63] The book was eventually recognized as worthy of publication after being described as “A crucial record of a pivotal moment in human history.” Described by me, but still.

  [64] Did you hear about baby Zorro? He was born by Z section. Ha! That’s one of Birdy’s. I swear, if he hadn’t been so busy with the city-saving stuff he’d have made a great comedian. Every time we passed by that superhero stand up club I’d try talking him into doing a turn. You know the place: The Fortress of LOLitude.

  [65] Don’t bother looking for it, the video got taken down. Not for violent content, mind you, but for unlicensed use of the Benny Hill Show theme tune. This is the very definition of what’s wrong with modern society.

  [66] Crime scene forensics would later reveal that the explosion was Miss Fortune’s doing; a mystical hellstorm summoned straight out of Dimension 666. After she was done obliterating the place Fräulein Frigid made good the gang’s escape route, icing up a helter skelter so they could chute on home. Among my destroyed possessions were various items of contraband that had mysteriously found their way from the C.H.A.M.P evidence room into my apartment over the years. They included the time-freezing Universal Remote once owned by Man-O-Pause, the Helmet of Calamity worn by the original Headbanger, and a D-Cup Brassiere belonging to Super-Model (a recent acquisition). Among the few things that did survive the attack were my tibonium handcuffs and a shrink-ray I snatched from Professor D’eath after he tried turning me into a pawn piece for his living chess set (a plan he might have gotten away with if I hadn’t made my escape on the back of a teeny tiny horse).

  [67] Although I’d logged thousands of hours in the air, this was the first trip I’d taken that had earned me Air Miles. The only time I’d been on a jet before this was when I hijacked the wing of one dressed like the Twilight Zone gremlin from Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Boy, that was a punking Ashton would never forget.

  [68] Normals: civilians; regular folk; the clock-punchers; me.

  [69] As far as our births go, it’s fair to say genetics took a pass on Birdy. While I was born a healthy weight, Birdy came in at just under three pounds, which is dangerously feeble for a newborn. It’s no record though – in fact there was another baby born at the hospital the exact same day that weighed an absolutely miniscule two pounds. It died obviously, but to this day Mom holds a grudge against the kid over her stolen thunder.

  [70] For further evidence of this, look up ‘Captain Might Smash Hands,’ a brand of giant, hard-plastic gloves that might as well have been labelled ‘Junior Skull Fracture Devices.’

  [71] I’d flown to The Bunker by jet of course, but that was a totally different beast to flying au naturel. What with it being my first time on a plane I really didn’t have the hang of air travel either. It was two full days after I landed before my bodyguard pointed out that I was still wearing my neck pillow.

  [72] The backspin routine was a trick from my younger days, before I’d grasped the potential, universe-shattering consequences of temporal paradoxes and whatnot. Rest assured I never reversed time to engineer any serious historical changes. Sure, I’d made a few little tweaks here and there (to avoid stepping in a puddle, or to clean up a marinara spill, or to correct a presidency), but never anything major. Another reason I’d wind back the clock occasionally was to revisit sexual conquests. I’d sworn off of that though after I went back in time to watch me shtupping an ex and found myself sharing a spying closet with a version of myself from another timeline. The pervert.

  [73] I’m aware this metaphor doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

  [74] A fair point. I mean, what else have man’s technological advances been for if not to expedite the consumption of pornography? Sure, we might have started out with big ideas about curing cancer or figuring out a source of clean energy, but that went out the window the second we realized we could watch nekkid folk bobbing around on our computer screens. Porn really put a kink in mankind’s ambitions that way, didn’t it? It really makes you think. Makes you think about nekkid folk bobbing around on each other anyway.

  [75] C.H.A.M.P had taken away my Amex black card and ‘transitioned’ my assets to maintain my cover. After all, it wouldn’t do to have a handicapped shut-in dropping cheddar like a coked-up stockbroker.

  [76] Further investigation revealed that the malfunction at the Supermax was no freak occurrence. Unbeknownst to us, somewhere just off-camera, a diabolical plan was unspooling like a really evil ball of twine.

  [77] Part man, part donkey.

  [78] Don’t ask.

  [79] The actual supervillain named Ringleader (founding member of the Murder Circus) had passed away a few years previous when one of his lions used him for lunch. It was tragic, yet darkly comic, sort of like being violated by a slide whistle.

  [80] We wouldn’t see this much focus on a cloud-based image again until Jennifer Lawrence’s phone got hacked.

  [81] Did I ever tell you that Daphne from Frasier used to be in the Benny Hill Show? Crazy.

  [82] A flock of migrating geese knocked the ‘HAPPY’ out of the sky (which made the message more matter-of-fact than congratulatory) but the thought was
the main thing.

  [83] Note to Hollywood: In the movie adaptation of this story be sure to use that line used in the previews, preferably delivered straight down the camera lens.

  [84] After Mimix sprung the Supermax he went back to work as Professor D’eath’s button man. Despite The Bunker’s location being a matter of national secrecy, the Prof was able to track my digital footprint via one of my eBay auctions – specifically, the one pertaining to his confiscated shrink-ray. There I was thinking I was being discreet, but the whole time I was raw dogging an electric socket.

  [85] Or they had a stutter.

  [86] That and the glasses. The way those things worked you’d think they were forged by Merlin out of a jar of fairy dust and a pocketful of starlight.

  [87] Technically it wasn’t so much a “breach” as it is was a fart that tore a hole in the seat of my pants then crashed through the building’s exterior wall like the Kool-Aid mascot. On balance, I decided it was better to report that I was the victim of a sneak attack than let the world know I’d blown up my own apartment with a supersonic rear cheer.

  [88] Technically, it was CM™, thanks to my Piranha Lawyer taking the International Bureau of Weights and Measures to court a few years back. After that, if anyone so much as put a tape measure to their dick, I got paid royalties. I literally took an inch and got a mile (or whatever the metric equivalent of that is – what am I, French?)

  [89] Another reason I never went in for a secret identity in the past was so I could avoid the aggravation of all those costume changes. So long as you only wore the one outfit you never had to find a phone booth to switch clothes in, which was a huge bonus, what with phone booths becoming such a rarity. The disappearance of those things really did a number on superheroes with alter egos. You could plot a pretty steep line correlating the increase of emergency response times against the dwindling supply of phone booths, making Verizon one of the greatest villains of the 21st century.

  [90] Before Professor D’eath clipped my wings I tended not to trouble myself with street-level crime like drug stuff, which is why I didn’t know the first thing about illegal substances. In fact, the main source of my familiarity with drugs was a Very Special Episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. The one where Carlton accidentally doses himself with speed and does this crazy dance that looks like a riot (and sure gets some laughs) until Will Smith shows up crying to remind everyone there’s nothing funny about tripping major balls.

  [91] My apologies, that line’s so old it belongs in the museum I just trashed.

  [92] The workers didn’t strike right away. At first, on the advice of their union, they employed work-to-rule tactics, refusing to issue citations and demanding their right to an eleven-hour rest period between shifts. Management condemned the tactic, branding it ‘malicious sleeping.’

  [93] Who, much to the annoyance of Doctor Obsessive Compulsive (aka the D.O.C.), refused to stand in alphabetical order during roll calls.

  [94] Not literally, there hadn’t been an actual clown in the Murder Circus since the Ku Klux Klown went to the big clown car in the sky (which would of course by quite small).

  [95]I’ve had a chance to think about this and I reckon what makes puns so attractive to ice villains is the practically unlimited amount of possibilities available. Don’t believe me? Then crack open a thesaurus and look up the word ‘cold’ – the options for that alone are staggering. Personally, I find the whole business a bit self-centered. I’m not saying I’m anti-pun – far from it – but mix it up a bit, you know? Quit shoehorning your own superpower into every little thing. Does it always have to be about you? Imagine if I was all “I’m gonna pop a Cap in yo ass,” every time I squared up to a bad guy. You’d want to stretch my nutsack over the legs of an upside down table and play trampoline.

  [96] Okay, so cold puns are kind of addictive, if you catch my... drift.

  [97] Carver was the jock who used to bully me back in the eighth grade. Nothing I could do about it at the time – back then I barely had hair on my balls, let alone superpowers. Carver was a mean son of a bitch too – the kind of kid who’d raise a Tamagotchi for meat. He used to love messing with me. One of his favorite games was tossing my study books onto the roof of the cafeteria then pulling my pants down when I climbed up to get them. One time he flushed my retainer down the toilet after I made the mistake of carrying his girlfriend’s backpack to Math class for her (the high school equivalent of ass to mouth). Still, the bullying soon stopped after I popped my hero cherry. The next time he gave me grief after that I set his hair on fire with my eye beams and broke his arm in fifteen separate places. I guess it wasn’t what you’d call a proportionate response, but it does make me chuckle to this day.

  [98] Metaphorically speaking, not literally smaller. This wasn’t some shrink-ray deal.

  [99] He says it’s a “cave,” I say it’s his parents’ basement.

  [100] Truth told, I was never a fan of animal-themed capes; be they Rat-Man, Gnat-Man, Cat-Man, Sprat-Man, The Milit-Ant or even Invisi-Bull. If I had my way I’d have penned them into one big manimal farm and charged admission.

  [101] What is it with prisons and bars of soap? I swear they could put an end to half the bad things that happen inside if they’d just let inmates use shower gel.

  [102] Birdy was a smart cookie, always had been, even when we were kids. Back in school I’d pay him my pocket money to do my homework for me. He did a great job too – scored me an A+ on my Ethics paper.

  [103] Given Love’s powers I’d have spent the whole of my time messing with street mimes. “Let’s see you get out of that invisible box, Frenchie!”

  [104] I didn’t tell her it was only a few days after Gary got that Porsche that I received a call from him in the middle of the night begging me to bail him out of a prison cell after he was caught nailing a male prostitute on its hood.

  [105] Much as I wasn’t immediately taken by the franchise I did later buy stock in the company. Just call me Commander of the Starship Integrity. What can I tell you, it puts food on the table (literally, if I drop by outside of peak hours).

  [106] The following day, Unmasked magazine ran a photo of the pair of us with the headline ‘Paging the Love Doctor.’ Love wasn’t exactly thrilled about being caught in the middle of a celebrity crossfire – a woman with a doctorate reduced to arm candy for the purpose of some crass headline. I wasn’t exactly bowled over either if I’m honest –flash photography always shows up my ear beards. In other Unmasked news that day, superheroines Flameout and Flashpan showed up simultaneously to bust a bank stickup using the same superpowers (the cape equivalent of turning up to a party in matching outfits), and the ensuing argument caused them to set off the building’s sprinkler system, turning a bust into a very visible pair of busts.

  [107] Secret Mandroid factories dotted strategically around the city had churned out an army of robots, all thanks to the self-replicating nature of the process; Mandroids building Mandroids building Mandroids. As far as plans for world domination went, this one was slicker than two eels doing it in a bucket of lube.

  [108] I’d learned about all that waxing and waning stuff from Dr Rune’s widow when she explained how Legerdomain was synched with the lunar cycle. Lord knows what piece of information had to tumble off the conveyor belt of my brain to make room for that knowledge. Hopefully one of the Star Wars prequels.

  [109] The barrage didn’t prove fatal thanks to the high-impact tibonium alloy lining Baptiste had insisted on incorporating into my new outfit. I couldn’t afford to take any chances he said, not as Mister Normal. It made me miss how uncomplicated things used to be, back when I had my invulnerability. An encounter with an armed perp in those days would have gone something like this:

  Me: Nice piece, I hope you remembered to shave the sight off it.

  Perp: Why would I do that?

  Me: Because it’ll hurt less when I shove the thing up your ass.

  *Cue shenanigans*

  [110] I wasn’t su
re how to use the Prof’s gadget at first, after all, what exactly is the protocol for deliberately shooting yourself with a shrink-ray? I suppose the ideal situation would be to have a friend do it for you, but being as that wasn’t an option, I was faced with the sobering task of having to blast myself to the size of a Pez. Where I was meant to take aim was anyone’s guess, but a headshot felt a touch dramatic. In the end I shot myself in the foot and prayed the effect wouldn’t localize and leave me having to wear a Ken doll shoe.

  [111] I think concentration camps are a bad thing. There, I’m on record with that now. That said, I do believe there are some people who deserve to be rounded up and caged off from the rest of us, namely Creationists, people who use the word “methinks,” and whoever it is watching 2 Broke Girls.

  [112] A shortlist of the second-stringer superheroes would include Horse Majeure, Catastrophe Lad, Blowhard, Strong Suit and Super-Visor (an eye-beaming mutant formerly known as The Gaze before he heard his name said out loud enough times). The C-list villains included Crazyface, Nitpicker, General Malaise, Cornhole, Donkey Punch, Judge Mental, Nuclear Arms and The Tongue (I’m telling you, if you took all the lame-ass hoods in this town, laid them down and lined them up end to end… I’d probably have driven a truck over them).

  [113] That’s ‘guerrilla warfare’ not ‘gorilla war fair,’ which is how I used to hear it as a kid. I can’t even describe how disappointed I was when someone put me straight on that.

  [114] Turns out the reason D’eath had let me put him inside was to backdoor a computer a sub-routine that he could trigger at a later date. That’s how he was able to get Mimix free and send him after me in the boonies. It also allowed him to release a whole other bunch of bad bastards, creating enough confusion on the ground to distract C.H.A.M.P from the final stages of his master plan. What can I tell you; villains be villaining.