Poem: "Snappy Action"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem is spillover from the June 3, 2014 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from rosieknight. It also fills the "first person narration" square in my 6-1-14 card for the genprompt_bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette. It belongs to the Polychrome Heroics series.

By the way, this was my mother's favorite poem of the last batch I sent them; she said it made her laugh. We have some family stories about snapping turtles. My grandmother got chased by one. Honestly, I probably would have skedaddled too.


"Snappy Action"


At first it was funny when
we found the snapping turtle
in the little employee park
behind our factory.

It got strange when she
started climbing up
the chain-link fence
to get back to the pond
where the wastewater collected.

We all laughed
when she fell off the fence.

Duke just had to go over
and poke her with a stick.
She hissed at him
and bit the stick in half.

It was a two-inch-thick stick.

Then she started chewing
on the chain-link fence.

Tink.
Plink.

She was cutting through the metal
as if her jaws were wire snips.

"Okay," I said, as I
backed slowly away
from the super-turtle.
"It's time to call SPOON."

* * *

Notes:

Ironsides -- She is a Common Snapping Turtle, about 20 inches from nose to tail tip. Rescued from a factory pond, she is now the mascot for the SPOON base in Easy City. She lives in their rain garden full of brightly colored plants.
Super-Durability means she is tougher than most things around her, so she can bite through wires, and she has survived having a truck backed over her. Super-Intellect for a reptile with a small brain means she's about as smart as an ordinary dog, so she can figure out simple puzzles and is difficult to contain. Super-Strength is not as much as a human's, but she can dig through concrete or lift fallen logs. She is smart and strong enough to climb or chew through most fences. Also she once bit the forefinger off a supervillain who teased her. Yeah, that's on YouTube.
Origin: Hatched in a polluted pond full of runoff from a Louisiana factory.
Qualities: Master (+6) Snapping Turtle, Good (+2) Agility
Powers: Average (0) Super-Durability, Average (0) Super-Intellect, Average (0) Super-Strength

* * *

Ironsides is a common snapping turtle, one of Louisiana's native reptiles. If you're surprised by the smooth shell, you're thinking of alligator snappers, a distantly related species.



Factory pollution is a serious problem with many negative effects. In Terramagne, mysterious chemicals form one of the commoner causes of superpowers. There are ways to prevent pollution and things you can do to fight it.

Animals can be quite smart and many excel at solving puzzles. Chimpanzees, like humans, may solve puzzles just for the fun of it. Some reptiles show complex and flexible behavior too.

Comments

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

whoa... you mean Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could exist in Terramagne?! Radical!

Seriously though, I like the way you're considering the fallout of pollution in a world where you can gain super-powers by exposure to 'mysterious chemicals'. I bet the Terramagne version of the EPA has a bite worse than Ironsides!

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>> whoa... you mean Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could exist in Terramagne?! Radical! <<

Square root, dude!

So far, I have not found anthropomorphic animals. They are almost certainly present, given their prevalence in comics and the dynamics of Terramagne as established. I wouldn't be surprised to see them as a minion race. But sewer people would be a possibility too. It's a thing people could prompt for, if they want to see it.

>> Seriously though, I like the way you're considering the fallout of pollution in a world where you can gain super-powers by exposure to 'mysterious chemicals'. <<

Yay! I've been enjoying the exploration of origin stories, which I've always loved. They cluster a lot. One of the most common is innate ability, which can be simple family inheritance or a result of environmental exposure. Both chemical and radiological agents feed into the latter. Both can also cause later manifestations, which is more typical of mainstream comics. Chemical can be either deliberate -- people who were experimented upon or modified themselves on purpose -- or accidental, and there are a lot of accidents. And sometimes the changes can be passed down to offspring, not just from germline alterations, but epigenetic ones.

Then there's another large group of people whose talents grow in slowly as they push the envelope in a specific direction. I'm starting to think that's what you get if a latent person throws their whole weight at mastering a skill, it can ramp up to super level. Intelligence becomes Super-Intellect, Gizmology becomes Super-Gizmology, etc.

Some people are directly given their superpowers; this has several subcategories including gifts from higher powers, artifacts or technology from a person who makes those things, and the Power Bestowal ability. I haven't done aliens yet but it's on my list.

Beyond that are the weird-ass ways that only show up for one person.

>> I bet the Terramagne version of the EPA has a bite worse than Ironsides! <<

SPAZMAT does. They're not as indifferent to human suffering as the Men in Black -- they have to do a lot of casualty care -- but they can swoop in and take over a scene. They are pretty effective at containing Gizmology or Super-Gizmology mishaps, and if someone reports a supercritter in conjunction with pollution, this is who gets called in to deal with the root cause.

The EPA is still trying to catch up, hampered by corporate interests. So people know that this sort of thing is possible but they think of it as very low, like a cancer risk (which is often grossly underestimated also).

One serious problem is that the results are erratic, sometimes hard to replicate, sometimes impossible. Take an Average (0) Metagen, and douse a hundred people with it. One of them will turn into a soup. Ten or so will drop dead. Most of the rest will just get sick, and recover. Some metagens have worse effects; for instance, the ones Judd had in the wagon killed everything they touched except for him. Nasty stuff. Metagens intended for human use -- makeup, tattoo ink, etc. -- are less likely to kill, so you'll see a pattern where most people have unpleasant reactions and one or a few will gain superpowers. Most metagens work by activating someone's latent potential.

Far less common are metagens with a higher rate of manifestation. These may work by creating a power where no latent potential existed, although some of them also bring latents into manifestation. It creates a different shape of transformational footprint in the population exposed.