Isekai into a World of Supers

A particularly sadistic gust of wind seems intent on mugging you for your hat, coat and satchel bag as you wrestle a door open to claim sanctuary from it's grabby, phantasmal fingers in the musty confines of Uncle Pete's Wonderful World of Comics and Collectables. Cursing loudly as the wind whips around catching the door and pushing it bodily back into you making you stagger off balance, squinting at home goal and clutching your meagre possessions tight to your chest.

Stupid goddam Autumn gales, you have played right into my hands!

With a triumphant cry you quickly recover your shaky equilibrium and dive for the opening that the wind has left you as the door bangs open against the outside doorstop. Only for it to rebound then smack you on your proverbial, and literal ass as you all but crash into a sales display at the front of store. It's a plastic mannequin and if the ignominy it might have felt from being dressed up as Girl Glamour; super heroine extraordinaire ...and questionable owner of about 3 handkerchiefs worth of colourful fabric for a costume... wasn't enough, you clumsily pawing at it sure wasn't helping.

"Mind the door Dummy!"

Straightening yourself up with as much dignity as you can muster, then straightening up your poor plastic savior with significantly less dignity, you turn to face any audience you might have attracted with your over-dramatic entrance to this dusty, musty place of peace. You needn't have been too worried...

Uncle Pete's Wonderful World of Comics and Collectables is quieter than usual, if that were at all possible and small surprise given the beyond blowy weather outside. The back and side walls of this hole-in-the-wall comic book store are covered in once-bright posters, ancient book racks brimming with the yellowing paper of misbegotten comics and dusty shelves of "collectable" ...note the air quotes... memorabilia so old that some of it might actually be worth something by now. The rest of the store is much, as anyone familiar with the trope might expect, more of the same.

The trestle tables are covered in neat rows of narrow cardboard storage boxes, all filled with comic books, each book snugly put to bed in a protective plastic sleeve. The broken 1950's jukebox in the corner that doesn't even light up anymore, much less lend any kind of assistance to creating any manner of ambience . The obligatory aged mannequins in costumed dress-up, much like the one you had finished indecently proposing too just now and the stained wooden front counter polished by an age of greasy hands reaching for it's proffered chip and candy packets.

Aaaaand... let's not forget the angry-faced young man behind it.

His name was not Uncle Pete but rather his chipped plastic name tag read "Alex" but that wasn't his name either. Rather "Alex" had been the last employee that the store owner ...who was probably not called Uncle Pete either if you really think about it... had felt inclined to humanize by buying a name tag for them. Thereafter it had been handed down from store clerk to store clerk like a curse and a reminder that it had probably been the last time the owner bothered humanizing anyone.

Nope, internal ramblings aside, you knew the young man in front of you was named Josh and Josh was an unhappy, unfulfilled, minimum-wage ; much like yourself. Perpetually stuck at a dead-end fast-food job in a daily grind so mundane and repetitive that could have made the film "Groundhog's Day" look wildly unpredictable by comparison.

Scene: it is ten past four in the afternoon on a Thursday, cue overly windswept protagonist entering comic book shop to meet obligatory nerdy friends after work.

It could have been a scene grabbed directly from the television series 'The Big Bang Theory" ...except their comic book store was nicer, they all had real careers and I don't see any hot blondes coming in here. Ever... you shoot an apologetic glance over to the blonde plastic figure of Girl Glamour by the door then feel decided weird about doing so.

Walking past "Alex" you wordlessly search out your comic contemporaries in every sense of the phrase. It's not hard to do, they are the only customers in a store so small that should a passers-by turn to sneeze by the front door they had a positive chance of gobbing on the opposite far wall. That... and well, they are not exactly following library rules by arguing loudly with each other.

"Oh please, Solar is a pajama-man from out of space only put in the Wonder Comics' universe so he can turn up at the end and save the day as though it were a big twist every single time he does it. If anything he causes more trouble then he solves just by being on earth!"

Here we go again, Dan is on his Solar rant again...

"That doesn't make sense, Solar is one of the most powerful Supers there are! Super speed, super strength, flight, solar eye-beams..."

...and there is Jason vehemently defending the worlds most boring superhero... again. But that's kind of my life, it's all just... "again". An endless procession of "again" after "again" followed by "again" then trailed by "again" and oh, don't forget "again"...

"Yeah, until he's within half a mile of a piece of Lumatrite and then he has all the superpowers of my poor ailing Nana. Who the hell is deathly allergic to the rock they rode in on by the way? Can someone please explain to me how that makes sense?! Never mind the fact that every child in day-care and their dog can seem to get their hands on the stuff, how is exotic meteoric rock so readily abundant?! Hell, I bet even I could kill Solar if I wanted!"

Dan was really getting up steam now, his overweight frame shaking with righteousness as he raised a pudgy finger in oratory fashion. Jason, in response, is growing outraged within his own bubble of geeky zealotry coming right back at Dan with a sneering rebuttal on his far-too-pale and far-too-pimpled face.

"Yeah Smart Guy? How? ...and not another Lumatrite Bullet argument, mind. We all know that shit doesn't fly with Solar."

He delivers this stunning blow with the air of a grand master chess player announcing "check" and a singular fact which hasn't escaped your notice is that in all the time since you had entered this insignificant store with it's insignificant store clerk and your insignificant friends, is that they haven't taken the slightest notice of your very existence. What does that make you?

Never-mind, don't think too hard about it! Stop thinking about it!! Maybe just grab that copy of Mecha Maidens, issue #121 with Tina Tankbuster on the cover and leave. Take it home to your shitty shoebox apartment, then bust out some lotion...

"Pffft, a bullet! Don't bring that weak sauce around here Dude. I say gas him! Lumatrite is still a mineral like any other; so you grind it down real fine…” You zone out on another one of your friends mad plans to kill a completely fictional character so you can sexually fixate on another completely fictional character without feeling a shred of hypocrisy. Ironic? Nah, you are probably looking for some other word.

“...BOOM!" Dan slaps two fleshy palms together in victory, "He's too late, it was already released into the air and now good luck getting that shit out of his lungs. He's down and dead in minutes. Good riddance."

Zoned in as you are you can't help but to notice that Tina Tankbuster was certainly trying to bust out of something in that front cover art and it appeared to be the front of her slinky silver hero costume, man but she was really packing some up-top ordinance! With her long dark curling hair, smooth perfect flesh bulging from between... So yeah, let's grab that and go before you get caught up in this beyond stupid argument again ...urgh, another "again".

Course plotted and action set, You pluck the comic book off the flimsy display rack then turn to head back towards "Alex" and the door.

"Nick... Dude! Jesus man, help me out here..."

You should have known better, Jason's eyesight is predicated on movement like a goddam dinosaur. NOW they decide to acknowledge you? Oh sweet and fluffy lord; why now?!

Looking back and forth between the two arguing “Agains” with the endless, repeating future of looping dolorous nothing that they represented and then at the comic book in your hand with the admitted short but mildly exciting change it represented in your immediate future - it suddenly feels like at all.

Your crusty little heart soaring with this petty but personally potent epiphany; you decide to try out a manful stride! The first three manful strides takes you to the front counter in this tiny closet of a store. “Alex” rings up your order with a look of dry judgement that completely bounces off your newfound and completely directionless optimism then you continue to practice your new man-striding right out the front door…

Oh shit, that fucking wind!! Tina Tankbuster! NOOOooo~!!

The new focus for your changing fate is whipped from your hand at the same time as the hat is torn from your stupid head. Not prepared to give up on the object of your affection- ummm inspiration - you begin chasing it as it flaps wildly down the wind scoured streets like a drunken seagull with a broken wing... oh and with a sexy boobilicious super-heroine on the cover.

Don’t forget that, that’s the important bit… isn’t it?

That is coming more and more into question as the wind tears at your open jacket flapping your own collar up into your face momentarily blinding you as you stumble mightily after your latest purchase. The howling gale buffets your entire body with powerful gusts as though some ancient angry storm god has taken offense at your innocent desire to spice up your evening a little. Your evening alone you would have like to point out to the cock-blocking prude of a deity in question. Just then you see poor Tina plastered against a traffic light pole at the intersection ahead.

Seriously, what is up with this fucking weather?! Is there a damn hurricane blowing in… and why am I the only idiot dumb enough to be out in it?!

You push down your self-recrimination but one fact is true. Despite the lack of any rain or even heavy cloud cover, the more rational public ...sans yours truly… has taken to the less turbulent life of the indoors. Well good for them, the cowards. Real men chase fucking comic books down the goddam street in the middle of dangerous wind storms, didn’t they? Uncertainty and a new ominous sense of foreshadowing begins to creep back up on you again.

“Never fear Tina Tankbuster, I am coming for you! Just hang on for a hot... second... longer!!” You scream defiantly into the wind. It doesn’t really accomplish anything but at least now you feel like you are on a surer footing decision-wise. Because you are certainly not on one physically.

This is made instantly apparent as you seize your prize, unwrapping it from about the traffic light pole. Your cry of victory turns into a squawk of anguished surprise as your damn collar is flipped up into your damn face again, half blinding you as your footing unexpectedly finds the gutter instead of the sidewalk. Tumbling into the intersection all you can hear is the wind howling and your own blood roaring in your ears as you raise your eyes from the heavenly face and form of Tina Tankbuster ...jesus those TITS… into the steely gazing grill of the eight wheeler city dump truck that is bearing down right on top of you. The poor driver is impetantly flashing the headlights at you as you realize you cannot hear the horn, cannot hear anything as with one final flash, your whole world becomes one of light and screaming.

Wait... Is that MY screaming?