Chapter Text
It's Friday after midnight in the splendid city. Taxi lights are bustling around the freeways like lazy comets. Executives are staggering from bar to bar, so thirsty for their next drink they're practically lifting each other's credit cards. The breeze is alive with the friendly scent of frying oil and a dozen condiments. Summer's settling in. You can see it in the people's faces as they bustle around.
Even from a rooftop.
Or, from just off a rooftop.
The man falling from from the rooftop at the present moment could see some of this, and appreciate it, if he was falling by choice.
He intended to jump about five seconds before his feet actually left the ledge of the building he'd been standing on, and changed his mind about ten seconds after. But who's counting? What's important is he's about to die, he doesn't want to, and that's keeping him from paying attention to much of anything.
That includes the man who's about to save him.
One minute, he's looking into nothing but the blurring bright colors of the skyscrapers around him, so that he can avoid looking down at the street, at what he's going to connect with any minute now.
The next minute, the shadows have smoothed themselves down like clay, into the shape of a man. Before he knows it, the man has his arms and legs wrapped around him, and rhey're falling together.
"You wan—" the shadow-man says, but it's drowned out by the rushing winds flying through the falling man's ears.
"WHAT?!", he screams.
"DO YOU WANT - OK, LOOK," the shadow-man screams back. The falling man, whose name is Isaac (or was anyway), feels a great rush of warm air, and he closes his eyes, and
BLOOPF
He's still falling. They were almost at the ground - two people fall faster, clamped together - and about to become street pizza. Then that rush, and that sound, and…
They're back at the top.
"I SAID, DO YOU WANT TO GET SAVED?" says the shadow-man. Isaac stares at him, gasping, held too tight to wriggle.
The man holding him - definitely a man, not a shadow - is dressed as a big cat.
He's in a silky-soft black suit zipped up to the middle of his chest, the shoulders exposed and trimmed with silvery-white fur that ruffles in the breeze.
His black fuzzy tail is also ruffling - more bristling, despite the daring grin stretched over his flushed face. A face framed by a black cat mask, the kind you could get from any cheap costume store around October 30th.
"WHA - WHAT?!", Isaac bellows again.
"I'VE MADE THIS MISTAKE BEFORE," the superhero yells back. "I NEED YOUR CONSENT!"
"YOU NEED MY CONSENT?!" says Isaac, and notices a streetlight out of the corner of his eye, which means
BLOOPF
Which means he's still falling, and back at the top again. The other man's tight embrace envelopes him as they spin together, head over heels. Somewhere, car horns are beeping, a woman screams.
"I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY MORE OF THOSE I GOT IN ME," says the superhero in Isaac's ear.
"THOSE WHAT?"
"THOSE JUMPS. WE'RE JUMPING," explains the superhero. "I CAN JUMP YOU SOMEWHERE ELSE BUT I GOTTA HEAR YOU - OOP,"
BLOOPF
"SORRY, ALMOST HIT A BIRD, BUT ANYWAYS, YOU GOTTA SAY 'SAVE ME' OR I DON'T HAVE PERMISSION, AND IF THE COPS—"
"SAVE ME! FUCKIN' SAVE ME ALREADY, WHOEVER YOU ARE!"
"YOU GOT IT,"
BLOOPF
-and all of a sudden they're rolling again, side to side instead of end to end. Dust gets on Isaac's palms and face and bruises him. He smells that dust and it's familiar. It's…it's the same roof. The one he jumped off of.
His saviour is on top of him. They're both panting. Falling hundreds of storeys repeatedly tends to take your breath away.
Held once again by the force of gravity, Isaac can appreciate a few more details about this man in black. The silvery fringes of fur trim his calves, elbows and hips, flapping in the breeze. The small claws at the tips of his fingers have been digging into Isaac's back, not unpleasantly, this whole time. The flexible sneakers. The way his mask isn't a costume-shop mask, after all; it looks like it's custom-printed, with short wiry whiskers and shock-absorbing angles. An undermask makes his eyes look yellow-green and luminous, with the pupils tiny dark slits. Perky black ears stick out of his dark, red-tinged mullet and twitch. Probably motion-controlled.
But Isaac can't just see him. He can feel him, on top: the hot, pinning, clutching presence of him. It spreads out over his hips, puts pressure on his chest, smoothing his heart back to just a slightly quick resting beat. His breath tickles Isaac's chin as they take a minute, letting the danger dissipate into the night air. It's like a cosy, living weighted blanket: one that can stare into you with his luminous eyes and let a sheepish grin play over his cherubic face.
"All better?" says the superhero, after a minute.
"Y…yeah," breathes Isaac. "You can uh…get off me," he doesn't want to say, but does anyway. "Um, thanks."
The man in black pats him on the shoulder and straightens up. His tail swings lazily as he steps to the side and reaches out steadying hand. It occurs to Isaac that that tail must be some kind of accessory, like the ears. He's very...solid. With his grasp, Isaac finds it takes him no effort to get to his feet.
"Fun night," says the superhero. In the half-light of the roof, it seems like he's blending into the shadows again; like the minute they stopped touching, his solidity faded, and he became ethereal. With a dreamish look, Isaac reaches out, and notices his fingers shaking.
"Whoah there cowboy," the hero smiles. "I think you must be in, like, shock? Maybe? That was a super-duper intense sitch."
Isaac breathes out. This is a young man, much younger than his own 45 years. But all the youngs look like teens to him. Maybe he's…20? 22?
"Shock. Yeah. I, I, I must be. What was…that?"
"Teleport, my man. My secret sauce."
This makes sense? One minute you're falling off the roof of your workplace, wondering what you could have done different, and the next a…cat-man is teleporting you around? And sitting on you, the way cats do. It makes more sense than a cat teleporting. And wait a minute -
"W-why didn't you just teleport me up to the roof in the first-"
"SO, you're cool? I can call the ambulance if you sprained anything. Really I should call e'm anyway since you're in shock, and I so do not know first aid."
"You…you did enough," Isaac says, trembling as he gets to his feet. "Let me just…unh…get onto the ground."
"You sure you're OK? Not gonna take another dive?"
"I'm - no, that was unpleasant enough," says Isaac, (maybe stopping himself from adding "before you got here").
The superhero breathes a sigh of relief. "Cool beans. And I don't gotta frisk you?"
"Why would you do that?"
"Safety. You're packing heat, right?"
Isaac does not own a gun, despite being a fragile stockholder in a crowded city. He doesn't believe in them; always feared he might end up pointing it at someome without meaning to.
Perhaps he was right, because that fear has, somewhat, come true. He's not packing heat, but he is packing.
In the confusion of the next moment, it becomes important for him to pull his coat around his waist, and turn around but that means he's turned in the direction of the ledge-
BLOOPF
-when suddenly he's stumbling in the building's lobby, with the superhero's arms around his chest. On top of him again. He gasps, hearing a distant ripping sound. Those arms are pillowy, and what's sticking into his back is more pillowy still, like a well-beloved couch seat.
"We just discussed this, man!", the superhero scolds.
"I - I wasn't - I was just - just embarrassed," says Isaac, lowering onto his knees.
"Oh, really? Sh - shoot, my bad. I'm calling that ambulance for sure. And I'm taking that firearm."
"NO! No, I don't - that was my phone. Please, just call them."
In the brighter lobby lights, the man above him, already on call-waiting on his dinky burner flip-phone, is…not your average superhero. And not just because he's wearing one of those fanny packs that goes over your shoulder. He's imposing: rounded around the sides, where he could have edges. His plump arms are crowded by a buttery-soft chest, and his mullet frames a puffy face with full lips. That softness around his waist turns out to be a round tummy, sticking out where his suit was clearly crafted to show off chiselled abs.
And as he looks down - he notices what made that ripping sound.
"Yeah, emergency, already. I'm -"
Then the superhero looks down and sees it too. A tear, a pop in the seams of his skintight suit, along the hip; and an enticing sliver of skin has puckered out of it, standing out against the matte black of the material.
Not just skin. Pudge, bulging like cookie dough.
"Um, emergency in more ways than one? God! No, never mind, I'm at Elm Tower, I've got a suicidal guy who really needs a blanket. And I, uh…"
He places a gloved hand over the offending tear. Isaac realises he's been staring. The hero squishes his phone against his enticingly soft chest.
"Look, can I trust you to stay here and not shoot yourself? I have a total, like, superhero patrol duty starting in four minutes, and I can't miss it."
"I'm good," Isaac nods, though he probably means "I'll be OK" more than "I'll behave". He's not stopped staring.
"OK, and you definitely don't have a gun?"
"Absolutely."
"Good." He listens to the earpiece one more time. "They said they'll be here in 12 mins tops. Stay here!…citizen! Don't go up those stairs again!"
Isaac is still on his knees, and he wipes some sweat from his brow. And as his saviour folds away his phone and struggles to slot it back into the pouch on the back of his belt, the adrenaline begins to wear off, and his memory tickles awake.
"Say, I know you. Don't they call you the Bou—"
The hero leaps back, his belly wobbling under its' tight confines, as shadows gather around him.
"NuhUhNoTheyDon'tIt'sADifferentThingGOODBYEEEE—"
BLOOPF
Like he was never there.
Isaac's life was forever changed, that day. He realised that the drive that had been missing all that time, that pushed him to take drastic action? That was because there was something missing inside of him, something that he'd never…
Aw, I can't keep that up. I don't know why that guy fell off a building, or what was going through his head before, during or after. I don't even know if his name was Isaac. He kind of looked like one, you know? In that squareish, frazzled, stressed-out way?
But yeah, I guessed all of that. Didn't stick around to find out. Had to 'port myself home and bury my head in a pillow and shriek a bit until the shame died down.
Oh. You get that the gorgeous and dashing chubby superhero catboy with the wardrobe malfunction is, uhhh, ME, right?
Anyway! I started the story here because this, here? Was the first time? Since getting my powers? That I knew I had a capital-p Puh Roblem.
I was not retaining water or getting summer allergies. Not just stuffed into a tight suit, neither.
Since I got my powers, I was getting slowly…imperceptibly…fat.
So that was one of the two mysteries I had to solve! And it's not like I got into this business from being any kind of detective!
…uhm? Right, yes, right, the other mystery.
Yeah, at the time, that one was a real headscratcher. I think it was on my mind for maybe the whole rest of the night.
I could not have been clearer: cat theme. Teleporting. Jumping on the bad guys out of the shadows and tackling them to the ground!
My codename was "The Pounce". Very active, very fierce, maybe a lil smidge playful, because I can give that to myself, can't I?
So that was how come I was up at 2 in the morning, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror with a mouthful of cupcake and wondering why? WHY?
WHY DO THEY KEEP CALLIN' ME 'THE BOUNCE'?!?
Written by a human in Ellipsus.