As long as I'm not paying attention to it, it can't hurt me.

That is my power.

And I do mean “can't hurt me” in its most absolute sense: during testing, they had Hyperman punch me, using his [b]full[/b] strength!

I only noticed because the resulting shock wave broke the projector which they'd set up to show me the Star Wars films.

It's broad, too: when Mentalmind tried to brainwash me, she said that it was like trying to climb a mirror, all because she was wearing a suit and tie and I hadn't recognized her.

Plagues, acids, black holes, airborne toxins...none of them touch me, if I don't know about them or if I have a good book in my hand.

It's not the weirdest or most inconvenient power out there-I think that Manjaw, in Missouri, can enlarge any one of his body parts by a factor of ten, but only one at a time-but it's certainly situational.

And it leaves me wondering, a lot of the time, what the hell is happening around me, even as I know that I should really, really, take my curiosity and shove it where the sun don't shine, for the safety of myself and others. 

Case in point: I might have accidentally wandered inside the insta-kill radius of Polyphemus the fire Tyrant, fifteen minutes ago, and didn't notice aside from some heartburn.

And the corpses, of course.

Costumed corpses, young corpses, old corpses, corpses burned from the inside out and the outside in, corpses of mothers trying in vain to protect their children...oh, cool, Breaking Bad just finished downloading on my tablet! Imma binge on it right now. 

Oh, Walter White, you delightful scamp. You think you're such a monster when your kill count is barely in the double digits. You're adorable.

A persistent buzzing comes from my pocket, and I pause the show to take out my Iphone and check my emails.

Oh, dammit, it's the Feds. I can't just shrug this off and ignore it.

Being a government sanctioned super hero does come with a lot of perks-my paycheck is in the six digits, for one, and doing good deeds warms my heart deep down inside, but it does mean I have to actually follow orders and do what I'm told most of the time.

It's very impractical for me to actually go out and fight villains-Dreadlord had hurt me by simply putting on a drag costume, and then punting me in a wall and breaking most of my ribs.

Which was...bad. Even after I was healed, I didn't get out of my apartment for a couple of mont-oh, hey, I'm getting bored. Let's switch to the newest Game of Thrones novel. I was in the middle of yet another food porn description, but the smell of burning meat is making me peckish. Wonder what's cooking.

Anyway, it does mean I'm pretty phenomenal at search-and-rescue in extremely hazardous environments, as long as someone can be on the line to tell me where to go and what to do while I listen to a podcast. 

So I climb over some rubble to where the daughter of somebody important is lying mangled among the ruins of a house and put on a porn video for a quick boost in my tunnel vision.

I actually get very bored, very quickly by porn these days, but it's still occasionally useful for a quick distraction-oh dammit, lady, your screaming is [b]not[/b] helping with my concentration, and just because your leg is now just so much hamburger right now it doesn't mean putting us both in danger is a good ide-oh. It looks like the roof of the former house we were in broke on my head. 

Well, the girl is still alive (even if as white as a sheet), so yay me. 

Tablet is busted, though, so I take out my holdout mp3 player and put on an audiobook. Her iron grip on me stops bothering me soon enough.

[hr]

At the medical camp, I drop off the girl easily enough, and then take a look around to take stock of things.

There's long rows of body bags on one side. All the people I couldn't save. 

My gut churns for a moment, and then I take out the replacement tablet I'd been given by someone and go on my favorite fanfiction site.

As long as I'm not paying attention to it, it can't hurt me.