Poem: Sloth

[shiori_makiba]

Poem: Sloth

by shiori_makiba

Word Count: 424 words in 68 lines

Inspired by a prompt from alatefeline during the June 2016 Thank Muse It's Friday Session.

Part of the Capes and Masks setting.

Feedback is not required but always appreciated.

“Sloth”

Sloth wasn't a superhero.

Thon had powers and

regularly used them to help people

but to thon's way of thinking,

thon wasn't a hero.

From certain other points of view,

Sloth was entirely correct.

And such people asserted,

thon's powers were lame.

This was mainly from the point of view

that superheroes save the world

by hitting things really hard.

Sloth didn't do that.

First, thon wasn't the hitting people sort.

To thon's way of thinking, hitting people didn't work.

All hitting did was hurt people.

It didn't solve the actual problems.

But it was an easy answer to hard questions.

And most people disliked hard questions

and liked easy answers.

Secondly, Sloth wasn't any stronger

than the average human on this planet.

Hitting someone into submission,

especially a lot of supervillains,

would require a lot of kicking and punching.

And thon wasn't into that level of exertion

for something thon considered to be pointless.

Supervillains (and other people)

also tended to hit back when you hit them.

And like many people,

Sloth didn't like getting hit.

For those who used

a different superpower measuring stick,

Sloth was scary.

Thon's power was a combination

of empathic projection and mind control

that urged anyone in his immediate surrounds

to calm down, relax,

maybe put down your weapons and eat something.

Or take a nap.

It didn't make you.

It was only a suggestion.

Now, at least.

It wasn't when Sloth's powers had first become active.

Sloth couldn't turn off the projection.

But thon had worked hard to dampened it

down from 'you will' to 'maybe you should.'

Sloth sometimes had to remind people that

there is a big difference between 'cannot do something'

and 'would really rather not do something.'

Thon didn't like doing things like that

but thon also didn't like getting hurt or

seeing someone else get hurt right in front of them.

Thankfully such incidents
were rare and getting rarer.

Sloth's friends on all sides of the cape

were helping make sure of that.

Which allowed Sloth to use

thon's powers the way thon preferred.

Like in situations where people staying calm

was a matter of life and death.

Or keeping heads cool during tense negotiations.

Other capes from all across the spectrum requested

thon's presence at such meetings for that alone.

It also helped that Sloth was good mediator in other ways.

The projection was also good at disrupting bad tape

when it started playing on an endless loop.

And to many, things like that made Sloth

very much a real hero.