Running at full speed down the crowded sidewalk, The Pouch wondered how the Fight Bulb had escaped from the authorities this time. He seemed to have quite a knack for escape, which was odd as he was far from the brightest bulb in the marquee. If fact, the Fight Bulb was a bit of an idiot. It was very unclear whether or not he even had a brain, the entirety of his head consisting of a giant light bulb. Did his thoughts travel along the thin filament? Where his thoughts so luminous?
"Sorry... superhero business", The Pouch said to the unfortunate businessman now wearing his coffee. It did not seem like the steaming hot joe would do much damage through the tasteful thickness of the gentleman's very expensive looking suit. Nonetheless, it was time to focus. This was no time to contemplate the inadequacies of a prison system clearly not calibrated for the type of mid-range miscreants The Pouch had to deal with on a daily basis.
Turning the corner, The Pouch ran directly into stopped foot traffic. The street traffic had also slowed to a crawl so he ran out there, dodging the slowly moving taxis as they attempted to rubber neck the scene ahead. There didn't seem to be enough commotion for a scene of super powered criminality. Where was the panic? The average person could only run and emote when faced with a criminal with abilities in excess of normal human potential.
Building up a good head of steam, The Pouch ran up a fire hydrant, launching onto a low branch from a well placed tree, only to catch his foot on a much smaller branch extending out from the one he landed on. He fell face-pouch first onto the sidewalk in the middle of the crowd. Looking up, he saw the Fight Bulb hog tied with uncountable threads, clearly the work of Mary Sew.
"Hey, are you okay?" It was in fact Mary Sew, reaching out a hand to help The Pouch up.
"Yeah, I... I've been experimenting with some new... um... unpredictable moves to... er... keep villains off balance. I'm... there are a lot of videos of me fighting online now and... well... the bad guys are probably watching these to get an advantage on me, you know?" She smiled.
"Well, you don't have to worry about that today; the Fight Bulb is neutralized. The police are on their way."
"Great."
"They should be here any minute."
"Yeah. Traffic is pretty backed up, and the sidewalks are a nightmare."
"I know."
"It's too bad the Fight Bulb started so early, now I have a whole day to kill, right?" The Pouch said.
"I'm actually relieved. I made plans to do yoga today and if these shenanigans started any later I would have had to miss out," Mary Sew said.
"Yoga, huh?"
"Yup. Yoga. Hey, have you ever tried it? I was going to go with the Myna Bird but she cancelled last minute. You want to come along?"
"Um..." The Pouch said, nervously looking around.
"Come on, you just said that you didn't have anything else to do today. Come on, it'll be fun."
"..."
"Great, let's go!" Mary Sew grabbed The Pouch's arm, dragging him through the crowd of bystanders. The police still weren't there but the Fight Bulb did look pretty secure. His eyes blazed with an extra hatred as the two heroes left.
Turned out that the yoga studio was on the same block, convenient, but that meant Mary let go of his hand all too quick, reaching for the heavy door of the Let Us Lotus Studio and holding it open as she gestured him in. Last thing the Pouch wanted to do was walk into a yoga studio, but the even laster thing he wanted to do, maybe the lastest, was to walk in first. He wouldn't know how to stand or where to look, luckily Mary grabbed his elbow and lead him down the dimly lit hall towards the slowly pulsating sound that he assumed was some sort of meditation music. It was sure nice, being led around by Mary Sew, perhaps he could fake an eye injury soon and ask her to lead him around a series of errands that would take up most of the day. It wouldn't be too hard to come up with a variety of locations specifically chosen to maximize the distance between them. Also, not having visible eye balls and seeing through a complex process that would take too long to get into and so we're going to skip it but let's just say he could see how pretty Mary Sew was and all of the other less important things in life, like oncoming traffic and bricks falling off buildings.
To the Pouch's very much sadness, the studio was crowded. Well, not exactly crowded, everyone was on a little mat and the mats were spaced out, about a mat's size apart, so it wasn't shoulder to shoulder or anything but it was definitely enough people to trigger the Pouch's social awkwardness, which he usually was able to conceal via saving the day or spending most of his time with the host's pets or pretending he had other more abstract powers that required him focusing and going outside to get a clearer vibe reading, there was always too much interference inside, where all the people were. What now? He thought. No way to avoid saying something incredibly stupid. Oh well, Mary Sew was going to find out he was a loser sooner or later.
"Shh, don't say anything, they put out my mat for me and my plus one, super hero courtesy, I saved the studio a few months ago from some villainy I don't want to get into right now, come on," Mary whispered into his ear pouch before again taking his arm and leading him over towards the far corner. Maybe things would work out. If he couldn't talk and they were just going to sit around like everyone else was. He could sit and be quiet with the best of 'em. As soon as they sat on the two empty mats, however, what the Pouch had taken as a bit of abstract sculpture at one end of the room untangled itself back into an older woman. she smiled before saying something that the Pouch did not catch.
"Downward facing dog... oh right, you're new. Just follow along with me," Mary Sew whispered just before shifting forward, putting her her hands on the ground, and then raising up her middle so that her body resembled a triangle. While the hands of the Pouch were no stranger to the ground, it was unusual for his feet to be on the ground at the same time. Most often he was either attempting a push-up, generally without success, or lifting himself up after an unplanned grounding event too often with alcohol involved. This was his big chance, an opportunity to if not impress Mary Sew, at least prove to her that he could go out with her and not cause a total scene, not completely embarrass both of them. So, he leaned forward, put his hands on the mat before him, and thrust his buttocks skyward.
Shockingly enough, his body obeyed! His form wasn't anything to write home about, but he was clearly doing the thing! He wasn't sure how long he would be able to maintain this position, but he had achieved it. His limbs were tiring quickly, but more concerning, he felt various pouch contents beginning to slide. He hadn't planned on any of this, didn't have time to make sure all of his various pouches were secured. More often then not, he left them unsnapped, for easy access and also to let anything that might have gotten in there escape whenever it wanted to so that he didn't end up with a bunch of little skeletons or dried and desiccated insect shells. Then he felt something, a number of somethings fall loose. Luckily the mat dampened the sound of the bottlecaps that started raining down onto it. He'd been meaning to drop off his recycling, the bottles were now taking up as much space as a roommate's belongings might, and the bottlecaps tended to find their way into a pouch as a subconscious habit developed over the years to avoid littering while drinking outside, but now he just did that no matter where he happened to be drinking.
The instructor said some more words that the Pouch couldn't make out, but he saw that everyone was shifting, bringing their right legs up near their hands. It took him a minute to compute how to get his leg to move like that while everything else stayed pretty much in place. He wasn't much of a move one limb at a time kinda guy, when he did something, he did it with everything, generally in an uncoordinated fashion. His fighting style was a good example of this. He'd pretty much just throw himself at his combatant hoping that one of the limbs made contact with one of the softer regions of the foe while also hoping that none of their limbs made contact with any of his softer areas. In general, all of his areas were softer, but not overly sensitive like the more rare softer areas of most foes. Also, he often had a bunch of stuff in his pouches which lent both some heft but also a lot of hardness. He tried to remember to slip a few horseshoes into random pouches if he felt like there was a chance of struggler later.
With this new shifting, the Pouch did manage to coerce most of the bottle caps into a few foot pouches while slowly dragging his right leg forward. He couldn't believe that he was mostly doing this thing. Mary looked over for a second and smiled. Luckily, she looked away just as a Nickleback CD slid out of one of the larger pouches on his right leg. The thing to do now would be to try to snap shut as many pouches as possible, but that was impossible in the current environment. All of his buttons snapped with a loud snap. While normally this was good for confirming that a snap was properly snapped, and the sound that rung out was pleasing to his senses, but the sound was far too loud to risk right now. The music like sounds were not very loud but did have a certain vibe and, if not a rhythm or timing, per se, a bunch of randomly occurring snap sounds would unquestionably fuck up the vibe. Luckily, the Nickeback CD was still encased in its shrink-wrap, it hadn't been opened. He could plausibly say that it was intended as a gift for someone else, a gag gift perhaps. The Pouch wasn't totally sure he could define what irony was exactly, but he knew that in the past he was able to get away with saying he was being ironic whenever someone gave him that look like they weren't mad yet, but could be soon.
Now the instructor had some how stood up without moving her legs at all and held her arms straight up. The Pouch felt like he made out what she said, which was either "warrior pose" or "oreo nose". By this point his legs were already getting a little shaky but he managed to just get mostly to a standing position, his abdominal pouches were going to hurt tomorrow, that much was certain. As he lifted his arms, a can of leather protector and some kleenex fell out of somewhere. The pile of embarrassing stuff was growing on his mat and he wasn't sure if he was going to fall onto the ground or what. Luckily, just then, someone ran into the studio.
"The Fight Bulb got loose! He's clobbering the cops!" At this Mary Sew gave him a knowing wink and headed for the door. The Pouch wasn't actually able to move, now that he was trying to, but Mary turned and came back, pulling his arm.
"Don't worry," she said, "we can come back to finish this after we kick the Fight Bulb's ass." Oh great, the Pouch thought, oh great.
No comments:
Post a Comment