Chapter 2

Chapter Two or Issue Two is the 2nd chapter of Strong Female Protagonist and the 2nd chapter of book one. It starts here on the site.

Recap
The chapter opens with a dream. Someone is shown is flying through the air, but their face is not shown. Suddenly a manhole cover is flung through the air, striking the flier and forcing them to crash into the ground. A shadowy caped figure watches them from a distance. The impact of their fall is strong enough to leave cracks on the pavement and as they get up, they are shocked to discover that their hands are bleeding. The shadowy figure is revealed to be a battered Mega-Girl. Mega-Girl who grabs their arms and demands to know who gave them the power to fly and to apologize to her. Mega-Girl twists their arms and the dream ends as they plead with her to stop hurting them.

Alison wakes up to her phone's alarm in a cold sweat. She swears after realizing that she is late for class, rushing out of her dorm and into the city. She leaps across the city, as spectators watch in awe from below. In the crowd below, someone holds a newspaper with the headline: POTUS ADDRESSES HARMONY COUNCIL. Alison arrives at the New School and enters her class through a window just as Professor Cohen calls out her name, to which she sheepishly replies as the entire class stares at her in amusement.

Later, as her professor hands the class their graded papers back, Alison is shocked to discover that her essay criticizing Nietzsche had received a failing grade. After confronting Professor Cohen about this, he tells her she should not expect to have everything in life handed to her just because she is used to everything going her way. When Alison asks if he is grading the paper or her, he responds that she failed because the paper was about the human condition, something she could not possibly know anything about. He then storms off, leaving a shocked Alison to look on. Alison complains to a Freshman Adviser, and the woman promises to speak to the Chairman about the issue.

Later, while walking down the street, she encounters Rat, one of Menace's old henchmen, spray-painting the side of a building in an alleyway. He dashes off as soon as she notices him, but Alison blocks his path by tossing a dumpster in front of him. She then tries to reason with him, but he immediately tries to attack her and she casually kicks him into the air with a knee. After catching him and trapping him in a trash can, she asks him why he is tagging the city with portraits of Menace. He mocks her, but after she threatens to drop him the Atlantic ocean if he doesn't talk, he tells her that Menace escaped from a black site in Russia and is returning.

When Alison asks who he got his orders from, Rat tells her that Graveyard got the tip about Russia but he does not know where the orders to tag the city came from, as it had already been on the streets for months. According to him, all of Menace's old henchmen had been waiting to hear from Menace and his lieutenants for a year, and jumped at the chance to follow their leader again. Alison then leaves, Rat screams insults at her as she walks away.

Alison then visits Rich Diaz, a hacker; and reports Rat's whereabouts to the police on a phone, but awkwardly hangs up after the operator asks if she's a registered superhero. She then asks Rich to hack into a government database and he finds nothing about a break-out and doubts that the CIA would even keep Menace alive if he'd managed to be captured since he's a telepath. Alison then asks if Rich could find if an online criminal network recruiting Menace's old henchman, because she's sure the orders aren't coming from Menace himself. When he asks how she's so sure, she tells him that Menace is long gone.

Elsewhere, at a prison for biodynamic supervillains, Graveyard breaks into Cleaver's cell and shows him a video recording of Alison (as Mega-Girl) and the Guardians being interviewed, shortly after Alison's last confrontation with Menace as Mega-Girl. The interviewer mentions that Menace's criminal network was being dismantled after his disappearance and that most of his minions are behind bars. When asked what direction the Guardians are going to take after the defeat of Menace, the last tier one supervillain; Mega-Girl awkwardly replies that crime-fighting seems irrelevant without supervillains and seethes when asked if she would be willing to participate in a war.