Empowered

Chapter 9:.....Emerge Part II

Empowered struck her fist against the glass, but there was only a crack. She felt the liquid seeping into her mouth and down her throat. Her lungs filled quickly, but she had to keep going. She had to get out of there. She didn't leave her dream life and Morgan or was that Mrs. Extant – for no reason. She struck against the crack she made and kept going even though momentum wasn't really a thing being completely submerged like that. The damage kept expanding, but she could feel her strength and consciousness diminishing. She couldn't keep fighting, and she gave the glass one last feeble hit and then passed out, letting the fluid consume her, knowing that she would surely die.

However, after all her attacks, the glass slowly gave way, and she and the blue liquid spilled out of the tube she previously found herself confined in. Still, Empowered was very much not breathing right then and there. She kind of just lay there on the floor, not moving, and M.W., although he was still wrapped around her in their previously agreed-upon design, wasn't doing a goddamn thing to help her. Here's the perfect opportunity to give you a few details about M.W. and Ember's agreement. (1) M.W.'s only real goal is to eat by consuming Ember's excess energy and is not to eat more than is necessary; (2) M.W. is to never interfere in Ember's life EVER unless she asks him to; (3) and this isn't really part of the agreement but has come to characterize their relationship, and that is M.W. reserves the right to be a total bitch when Ember doesn't appear to be giving him the time of day. At this moment, as she drowns, all it seemed to M.W. was that she was ignoring him. It wasn't his job to monitor her vital signs, after all. Pretty screwed up, right? M.W. is that self-absorbed he didn't even notice his meal ticket was dying? On the other hand, the blue liquid Empowered had been in had also affected M.W., and he was out of commission for the moment, so there really wasn't anything he could do to save her anyway.

"Maybe I'll just let go." Empowered reflected as she released her final thoughts. "I'll just drift off and never – look – back –" she said as she accepted her fate. Then, something happened in her head; suddenly, she heard Morgan or Mrs. Extant's voice and repeated the last word she had said to her in the dream world: "Fight." It was either from shock or the fact that she had promised her friend she would do just that, but whatever it was, Empowered's eyes shot open, and she hacked up about a couple gallons of blue-colored juices.

"God." Empowered hacked. "That was probably the most alarming thing I've ever woken up to." She continued to cough. "And I'm counting the time that Sabby woke me up by slamming me into the concrete ceiling. It took two days for my fucking nose and jaw to heal – that bitch." After she finished barfing, she noticed that nobody seemed to notice that she had broken out of her liquid-y prison cell. There was either no alarm system in place in The Bastille, or the alarms had been disabled.

"How did I end up in there again?" She thought aloud as she scanned over the cold room. "Well, it looks like all my commotion didn't interrupt somebody's beauty sleep." She said as her eyes were finally drawn to Erin's glass tube. "Hey, wait a minute. Don't I know you?" Empowered thought aloud again. She recognized Erin not from The Bastille but from her own dream. She had indeed been the super pushy trigonometry substitute teacher. Empowered would have recognized Erin if she had remembered her dream, which had faded substantially the moment she woke up. However, the feeling of recognition still dangled over her head. "Hmm. I have the feeling you would make a great trig teacher, Erin." She smiled.

"Anyway, back to the matter at hand. What the fuck is going on here?" She said aloud to herself and the sleeping Erin. "I remember the Halloween dance, and everything getting super screwed up, including mind control, alien robots, and that intergalactic turd-Monger Maahes, and I was singing in a band super awesomely, and then Abraham showed up to do what he does best buzz kill the hell out of everything. Then I had to give up Lamby because Abraham said I wasn't responsible enough for a pet, and we made our way to the above-ground E-Corp. facility because the elevator near my house still wasn't working, and we had like ten trucks with us filled with E-Corp. soldiers who arrived waaaaaaaay too late for the battle, and it was like as soon as we all pulled into the facility and got out of the vehicles, everything just goes blank – well, not everything." she said, rubbing her head, trying to remember. "I remember – I remember that creepy smile of his." She said with a frown. "Well, Bob, I guess we know who the mole is."