Quantum Dissolve: Chapter Eight. (Jade Shade vs The Prodigious Mass)

The Mayor wasn't angry at all.
Apparently.

Something was fishy though, the guy was WAY too smiley.
He didn't mention Phidippus-Dude at all, he just gave JS his next mission.

Find some missing persons, one of them, yet another superhero.

This time, The Prodigious Mass.

A bodybuilder/wrestler type, painted himself green, claimed his strength and the coloring were from radiation.

JS knew that bit had to be bullshit.
Radiation doesn't grant powers, it'll just fucking kill you.

Well, radiation in the frequency and doses needed to cause significant changes in the body anyway.

He had read as a kid, back in his bookworm days, that all electromagnetic energy was technically radiation.
Radio waves, microwaves, infra-red, the rainbow of visible light, ultra-violet, X-rays, and then, gamma rays.

He always envisioned it like a cosmic radio dial.
Crank up the channel, you head toward gamma, crank it back down, you head toward regular radio.
Everything else of normal every day experience was in between.

Infra-red to ultra-violet, no way would that do anything exotic to you.
Otherwise, people would be getting powers all the time from tanning beds.
Wasn't happening.
It would've been on the news.

Radio to micro, again, everyday life would have made stadium crowds of superheroes by now.

That only left gamma.
And people exposed to extraordinary doses of that...envied the dead.

On that mental note, JS requested a Geiger counter for this one.
Maybe it was paranoia, but why leave things to chance?


David Peterson's life flashed before his eyes....

1993, bullies kicked sand in (the handsome and svelte) David Peterson's face.

That afternoon, he was hit by a mysterious bolt of energy that would later turn out to be a test firing of a military gamma test gone haywire.

David was endowed with superior size and strength, and became the being known as The Prodigious Mass!!
(Proma for short).

David/Mass immediately went back, and taught those nasty bullies a lesson!
From then on, he realized, it wasn't enough to just stop those bullies, but all wrongdoers, and so, he waged a one man war on crime!

1994, between crimefighting missions, David/Proma wins bodybuilding competitions to raise funds.

1995, David/Proma meets his sweetheart, Rose Betting.

1996, David/Proma meets his sidekick, Joe Ricke.

1997, David and Rose introduce Joe to his girlfriend, Phyllis Raymond.

1998, David and Rose, and Joe and Phyllis, have a big joint wedding.
Rose's asshole father, Lenny "Lightningcrash", Betting, interrupts the service, and shoots Joe in the shoulder.
David/Proma beats him like a redheaded stepchild.
Rose cheers him on.

1999, David, Rose, Joe, and Phyllis all go on a Hawaiian honeymoon, and meet and befriend Will Jameson, who, promptly dies of AIDS.
Someone somewhere utters the word "faggot", so Proma beats everyone in sight like redheaded stepchildren.
Rose cheers him on.

2000, Rose flirts with another super strongman, one Prof. Solomon.
Proma  beats him like a redheaded stepchild.
Rose cheers him on.
This starts to become a kink.

2001, David/Proma flirts with a green female cosplayer, Jugerella.
Rose beats her like a redheaded stepchild.
David/Proma cheers her on.

2002, David, Rose, Joe, Phyllis, Solomon, and Jugerella just go ahead and start having orgies.
It's the Ubermenschian way.

2003, Rose, Joe, Phyllis, Solomon, Jugerella, and even Lightningcrash, became David's extended family of sorts, even aiding him in crimefighting.

2004-2011, David/Proma and his family fight many mad scientists and monsters, saving the entire planet on every occasion.

2012, David/Proma acquired the original radiation equipment that caused his transformation, and empowered his "family", creating the superhero team known as The Mass Mass.

The Mass Mass built their own underground cave base in an abandoned salt mine.

2013, the government, apparently fearful of beings that powerful going unchecked, attacked The Mass Mass, slaughtering everyone but Proma himself.

Proma went into a fury of vengeance, and declared war on humanity itself.

Finally, in a last ditch attempt, they sent their own superhero, The Jade-Shade, after him.
This Jade-Shade was a vile techno-sorcerer, who resembled Death itself, who clouded Proma's vision with some sort of mysterious shroud....

No....his vision wasn't clouded...it was becoming clearer....

...the veil of self-deception fell away at last...


1993, David Peterson is assaulted in the showers of a YMCA.
Both physically, and sexually.

So that this would never happen again, he begins to lose weight, get in shape, and takes up weightlifting.

1997, it took David 4 years to lose and keep off the extra 200 pounds, but he reached his goal.

2000, David went beyond what he thought was possible with his training, and began winning bodybuilding competitions.

2003, 10 years to the day, David avenges himself upon his assailants.
They're never seen or heard from again.

2004, David decides it's not enough. Others must be protected from his fate, so he paints himself green, invents a cockamamie backstory involving radiation, dubs himself "The Prodigious Mass", (Proma for short) and continues fighting crime.

2012, The supplements and steroids are no longer enough, in an act of desperation, he illegally actually exposes himself to large-dose radiation with a disused cancer therapy machine from the 80's found by a bodybuilding friend in an abandoned hospital.

The machine had a glitch, and he received a hundred times the chosen dose.

2013, His mind rotting away, David/Proma kidnaps several people, naming them after people in his fantasies, and exposes them to the gamma machine in an attempt to make a "family".
Their hideous deaths, and his own culpability for same, are concealed from David in a haze of delusion.
Their bodies were hidden in an abandoned salt mine.

Police inspectors find the bodies, and call in backup.

May/June 2013, Jade-Shade arrives on the scene, and blinds David with a flash of green light.

In that moment, David begs "please...do it....kill me".

Jade-Shade gives him his wish.
He coats David's face with some sort of glue, and suffocates him.

David/Proma dies.


Jade-Shade followed the cops through the salt mine, his Geiger counter switched on.
They showed him the bodies.
It was a gruesome and pathetic sight.
Blood and pus smeared everywhere.
The meat had fallen off the bone like a roast chicken.
The women, horribly violated, even in death.
The Geiger went crazy.
JS got the hell out of there.

Soon, they found the culprit.
With the Geiger, it was a snap.

It was a hideous squirming mass of grey scar tissue, and greenish pustules, that used to be a man.
One of its eyes was whitened like an egg yolk.
JS could barely see traces of the being that used to be "The Prodigious Mass", in it.

It bolted forward shouting "Proma Smash!!".
JS whipped out his green lasers (from Peerless Person) and shot it in the eyes.
For all the good shooting the already blind one would do, he figured "fuck it".

It stopped dead, writhed around, sputtering guttural curses, then...as if stricken by a strange realization, looked blindly in JS's general direction, cloudy tears dribbling out, and gurgled "please...do it....kill me".

Jade-Shade gave him his wish.
He threw the glue bomb from Phidey, coating the creature's face, and suffocated him.

It took an uncomfortable 5 minutes from start to finish.
There was a lot of thrashing.
One of the cops vomited.


JS went outside to reflect, while the meat wagon arrived.
"Hope they bring lead suits", he thought grimly, smirking behind the mask.

He thought of the old footage he saw of Proma, from his prime.
Cocky, strutting around in his stretch pants, and little booties, and his little pony tail, flexing his green painted muscles.

Kind of...reminded him of Phidey.
Same swagger-y energy.

"It was a mercy killing in both cases", he gloomed.

Speaking of killing...The Mayor had to know Proma was an irradiated carcass.
What if he hadn't demanded the Geiger counter, and had gotten into a direct hand to hand tussle with him/it?

"Sonovabitch tried to kill me...he's scared of me".
He then smiled wickedly "okay, fucker, be scared, I can totally use that".

Then, he reflected on how, he'd used up all of his vacation days on the Phidey trip.
For this one, he was certainly fired.
The life of his secret identity was destroyed either way.
Something more to despise The Mayor for.
As if such a thing was needed.

"I'm going to have to tell the cowardly little rat to go fuck himself in no uncertain terms next time I see him", JS resolved quite coldly.

But, this time, he was really in no hurry to get back home.
What was there to run to?


The next day, Dusty Irwin had his Jade-Shade gear and what travel items he needed packed up in a duffle bag, and started hitchhiking.

You could almost hear the sad somber piano music.