And now, my latest attempt to paste in an excerpt from another chapter of long-defunct prose experiment I Am Empowered, a Year-One-ish first-person account from Emp in 140-character Twitter format detailing her earliest days as a superheroine.

We join the desperate capefight already in progress downtown, as I'm battling the trio of supervills who have (appropriately) dubbed themselves the "Cash Crime Cartel."

I'm rapidfire-VORPPing with spectacular but low-power Deadly Jazz Hands zaps, pinning Money Master and Kap’n Koin down behind some parked cars—

—which, for the record, I am trying not to directly blast, as gratuitous destruction of civilian automobiles is one of the caped community's most obnoxious tendencies—

 —but nonetheless, I'm wincing as I hear sheet metal denting and car-window glass expensively breaking from VORPP shrapnel, imagining how pissed I'd be if that were MY car.

Cartel weak-link Card Charger slips around behind me, though, hauling the heavy, card-controlling hardware—"cardware"—he uses for villainy.

His gear boots up, and his namesake weaponry—a swarm of deadly-ish, electromagnetically (I think) manipulated credit cards—takes to the air.

I duck and dodge and yelp as a sudden storm of razor-edged, keening Visas® and Mastercards® whips and buzzes and swoops around me.

I was already getting buttkicked by credit cards in civilian life. Now, I'm getting buttkicked by credit cards in my superhero life, too.

So, when Charger's cards begin slashing rents in my supersuit, a sudden, irrational, unreasoning surge of credit-triggered anger grips me.

I, um, totes lose it, and furiously fling out my Deadly Jazz Hands, VORPPing in the general direction of Card Charger and his Visa®storm.

The Mother of all VORPPs, way more powerful than I'd intended, roars down the street in a blinding, all-consuming flash of ravening energy.

Before the churning dust, roiling smoke, airborne debris, tumbling cars, and blasted-up pavement can stop moving, I frantically rush in.

I'm terrified that, thanks to my seething, berserker-like hatred of credit cards, I've just vaporized a hapless supervillain by accident.

Relief knee-weakens me when I finally locate Card Charger slumped unconscious in the wreckage, battered and bruised but, yay, non-vaporized.

His bulky, card-controlling hardware pack—now a mangled wreck—clearly took the brunt of my inadvertent overVORPP, I notice thankfully.

Sadly, I'm so relieved that I fail to notice the nearby row of parking meters, the only street artifacts still upright after my VORPPery.   

Parking meters are surprisingly durable, often the "last men standing" in battle zones. Less surprising? They often contain plenty of coins. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Kap'n Koin in the distance, his beefy arms flailing and gesticulating bizarrely. "Oh, crap," I blurt.

The nearest parking meter detonates explosively, sledgehammering me in the belly with a staggering shotgun blast of coins and metal debris.

Ouch: Kap'n Koin is using his currency-based psychokinesis from afar to turn the parking meters into a row of numismatic claymore mines.

The next parking-meter explosion knocks my legs out from under me. Blasts 3 through 6 mercilessly, brutally coin-kick me while I'm down.

In the blink of an eye, my poor, wildly sparkling supersuit expends most of its surface area protecting me from the coin-blast claymores.

The shredding membrane's fading powers shield me from the full impacts, but I'm still beaten, pummeled, and knocked around ragdoll-ishly.

Battered, stunned, my suit in tatters, I'm dizzily struggling to my knees when a duffel bag overflowing with cash thumps down beside me.

I look up, briefly catch a glimpse of Money Master grinning at me before a seething mass of $100 bills erupts out of the duffel bag.

Money-Master-animated greenbacks whip out at me, magically bonding together into banknote chains that lash themselves tight around my body.

Swarming bills quickly pin my arms to my sides and cinch dollar-link straps taut around my thighs and knees and ankles.

Blur of Benjamin Franklin, sharp sniff of moneysmell as bills plaster themselves over my eyes and mouth, firmly blindfolding and gagging me.

About $50,000 later, I'm helpless, cocooned from head to toe in an unyielding, skintight shroud of supernaturally self-adhering greenbacks.

Semiconscious, I make a few weak, faltering attempts to struggle against my currency cocoon, but soon slump back down to my knees, defeated.

The last things I hear before passing out? Money Master's victorious guffaw, and the click of his cellphone camera immortalizing my pwnage. 

I wake up briefly in the back seat of the Cartel's getaway "Cashmobile" SUV, I think—still blindfolded by banknotes, I can't be certain.

I can hear Card Charger groaning beside me, and I feel what has to be the wreckage of his cardware gear pressing uncomfortably against me.

Not a surprise that the Cash Crime Cartel have taken me with them, given that I'm trussed up with the equivalent of twice my yearly income.

I ruefully contemplate that I've gone from helplessly struggling with money, figuratively, to helplessly struggling with money, concretely.

Then I pass out again, in the midst of considering that my present predicament is far less stomach-queasy than my actual financial situation.

<END OF EXCERPT >

Today’s Patreon update: Originally done as a means of scratching out more worktime to complete the long-gestating Empowered vol. 12, I've switched over to a Monday/ Wednesday/ Friday Patreon posting schedule that won't feature the fixed content format I previously used. However, my vast archive of years of Patreon posts—extensive Empowered previews, vintage con sketches, work stages on covers, "damsel in distress" commissions, life drawings & much, much more—remains available for Patrons' perusal.

-Adam Warren