2.5
Part 5
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I woke up with the grace and energy of a tranquilized sloth. Surging up to my feet with the similar but conflicting desires to drink coffee and finding a coke.
"uuughuaf?" I wondered aloud at the possibility of both.
Then I stubbed my toe on my backpack, incidentally tripping over and landing flat on my face, "AAAUF!"
"Gah! Fuuuuu-dge," I grit out, now very much wide awake.
Well that was one way to get rid of the grogginess.
I looked down at my feet, pulling the sock loose and checking my toes.
They looked intact, but you could never tell with these things. The nail might partially detach later or something.
Hissing between my teeth I got back up and started digging out a change of clothing. I was filthy and needed a shower before anything.
'Needing a shower' quickly became needing a shower and breakfast, which became needing a shower, breakfast and a fresh pot of coffee for working with.
"Alright no more procrastinating," I grunted as I drank the bitter, bitter liquid, "ugh... acquired tastes suck when you're still acquiring them." I mixed in more milk and sugar. Cream would taste better but the difference wasn't so great and it was a lot less healthy. Not every superhero could get away with Chubster's waistline.
"I really do need to find a local dojo or something," I grimaced. Maybe Todd could help? He was always big on being prepared for the worst.
"Gah! No more hero stuff! Student time now!" I still needed to do basic class work until I tested out after all. Also it wouldn't be fair to my lab partner to just cut out on the project.
So... how was I going to do this?
Okay easy enough place to start, I'd just compare comic companies open on Aleph to those still open on Bet.
The results were... pretty immediate actually. Marvel comics died pretty easily here, while DC stuck closer to its roots. Murder mysteries and stuff like that. It was also pretty small.
The Manga industry was pretty much dead thanks to the great sea dwelling jackass, and a bunch of smaller comic companies never even got off the ground.
What comic companies there were, tended to work more like political and historical comics. All drama, with more stuff about real heroes blown up as borderline propaganda. Even that seemed to be more the result of some clever little copy cat getting the idea from Aleph imports.
Interestingly the big sales of those 'cape comics' tended to be as Aleph exports. The idea of reading the stories of 'real life' superheroes was probably really attractive to the cape deprived world.
Though it didn't seem to be in risk of killing the big names like Superman just yet. Though there had been a considerable surge of more 'realistic' continuity reboot/spinoffs since Haywire managed to first start up the transdimensional media connection.
That made me grimace. That made my otherworldly knowledge even less useful for this. More importantly, it meant that while not utterly snuffed in its crib, a rather deadly blow had been struck to the greater imagination of humanity. The fantastic and the wonder of human creativity treated a little more as childish dalliances.
Even in another world, the soul of man was being slowly stripped of its innocence, and that was pretty sad to think about.
Letting out a groan and finishing the third mug of the first pot of coffee, I glanced at the corner of the screen. Lunch was starting shortly... Yeah this would be enough for today.
I started printing, and began unloading my bag from all my superhero stuff. Looking around for my schoolwork.
Only to feel my blood suddenly freeze over as the door clunked shut outside, and a loud and familiar voice boom out, "'m home!"