The golden lasso sort of tingles. It's not unpleasant. Well, the tightness is, but not the tingling. I knew that going shadowy would get me out of it, but I didn't think that would be helpful right now. A tug turned me around.
When you meet one of the most beautiful women in the world, it helps not to have your hands covering your exposed junk. From getting caught peeing on a rooftop. I figured she was after me for the other things, but my timing has never been great. "What are you doing here?" she said. There was the authority of a demigod there, but also a sense that she would judge me fairly. I knew I wouldn't get anything past her even without the lasso of truth.
"I was taking a... urinating, Ma'am. I can't do that in my shadow form." while the lasso compelled truth, it did let you choose how to say it. Her eyes let me know that that wasn't what she was asking. "I was waiting here because the alley below is known for muggings. I got changed recently and I wanted to help, but didn't really know how to go about it. Can I zip up?" She let me regain a bit of dignity and I told her my story.
I'm Tim Simpson, a student at [TBD] college. Financially, we're on the edge of starvation. We being me, Eric and Paul. Roommates in a crappy apartment down on 6th. I work delivering Chinese food from Fortune Dragon's Garden. That way I get money and a good meal every day. Of course it also mean that I'm working whenever people are doing something interesting, but it beats starving.
I was delivering to the Associative Elements building around 11:30. Eric thinks that they're a secret division of Star Labs because of the security. You gotta go through this airlock type thing to get into the lobby, and then you've got to wait for the person to come down and get the food. A pain in the ass, but they tipped well.
So I was waiting in the lobby with Carlos, the guard on duty. We were both looking up at the odd metal sculpture hanging above the lobby. I thought it looked like a starfish riding a seven-legged horse, but that's not important anymore because the wall exploded next to it and everything came down on us. Carlos couldn't have been hurt too bad because he was asking if I was alright. I heard it and though about answering, but just keeping breathing was hard enough. I had ben bashed by part of the wall and some of the metal rods from the sculpture were sticking through me.
It hurt in a way that was sort of detached and I got the feeling that that wasn't a good sign. That was when the lab table came out. The table missed me. But the glassware and chemicals hit pretty spot on. I don't know what it all was but one of them was this clear gel that slowly dripped down the rods into me. It was weird. My nose kept twitching as if I was smelling something strong, but my brain couldn't figure it out, so it smelled like nothing. Really smelly nothing.
That's when Hawkman got thrown out of the hole. There was something black attacking him. Blacker than anything I'd ever seen. It was like there was nothing there. There seemed to be more fighting going on, because some sort of laser came out and seemed to hurt the black thing. Part of it fell down and it was fluttering like paper or something. It landed on me, because today was obviously "Things falling on Tim day." Well, into me as it fell into the hole in my gut.
That's when things got weird. Weirder. I felt like I was falling into the floor. Like I was completely flat. I saw the metal that had been in me fall down. And I felt it hit. Carlos kept asking about me. I wasn't hurting anymore, but I couldn't speak or move. The floor had been cracked and I sort of puddled into the crack.
By then the Shadow-Thief had gone away and Hawkman was down trying to help Carlos. He'd broken both his legs and one hip. He asked Hawkman to look for me and he saw where I was. He looked right at me, but he didn't see anything. Or at least didn't recognize me as a person. So he focused on getting Carlos' legs stable and flew him out of there. I was left alone for a while. That's when I figured out how to move. I got out of there. Not knowing what else to do, I went home.
Eric and Paul were just joking around. They sort of got freaked out when I flowed over the TV. It took a bit to figure out how to speak and eventually I figured out how to get back to normal. I wasn't hurt at all anymore.
Over then couple of weeks I figured out what I could do. The guys knew I should be a superhero, but there's no good information to how to start that. Which leads to the whole waiting for bad guys and peeing on roofs thing.
