The plasma ball erupted and when the smoke cleared Heather was still standing in the center of the room.
"Well?" She questioned, placing her hands on her hips as she stared up at the mirror at the top of the left side wall in the completely white room, or rather her side of the one way glass.
"Well you're still standing" Cam's voice came over the intercom
"The walls don't indicate any signs of damage, not even scorching. Nice job" Wade's voice congratulated and Heather sighed in relief with a huge grin.
"Alright you can come out now" Cam said, much to Heather's relief. As helpful as power practice can be she still wanted to make it home in time to watch TV before her brother beat her there.
Stepping out of the second room in Wade's basement Heather saw Wade going over the notes on his tablet of her work today and Cam and Mark slinging their backpacks over their shoulders.
"How'd I do?" She asked Wade as she picked up her own backpack from the corner of the room.
Over the last three years Wade had applied the same technology from his old holocube, plus a few upgrades to simulate solid walls and obstacles, into the spare room of his basement where he monitored as Heather practiced using her powers. He had tried this years ago when she was around eight but her lack of control prevented her from making any real progress and she stopped coming after just a few weeks, once she learned control she decided she was ready to try her hand at practice again. It had helped enormously, in just three years Heather had become a near expert at controlling her powers, which she considered to be extremely fast progress considering it took her fourteen years just to get control of them. Of course the rest of the team used the training room as well, they all went over to Wade's house every Saturday to run drills and simulations, and Wade liked being able to have the teenagers test any of his new inventions. But Heather still came after school at least once a month to work on her powers, to ensure that she never lost control.
"Pretty good, you're getting better at controlling the heat in the plasma balls as well as the accuracy. Maybe soon you'll even stand a chance against your mother" Wade answered her with a grin but she only laughed.
"I'd have to see her in order to fight her" the super powered teen sarcastically replied.
After meeting her biological parents Heather ended up having a very different relationship with each of them. Drakken, for example, had become as involved in her life as he could get while still living in his lair on a sorry excuse for an island off the coast, but all in all he was a pretty good dad. He had given up villainy not long after meeting Heather, though he claimed it was only because she had chosen to follow in her adoptive parents footsteps and there was no way he was going through the embarrassment of going to prison and having to explain that he was arrested by his own daughter. Heather had always loved sports but never actually played, her lack of coordination and impatience always held her back, but with control over her powers she tried out for the girls soccer team. She was one of the worst players and almost quit after her first game but when she saw Drakken came to watch her she stayed, and now she had improved in soccer almost as much as in power control. Shego, however, is a completely different story. Heather hasn't actually seen her mother since the day they met three years ago on the Senior's island, but their relationship isn't bad. The problem is that they're too much alike when it comes to family, they don't like making their feelings obvious. So the extent of their relationship in the last three years amounted to birthday, Christmas, and mother's day cards. It may sound bad and neglectful but it's enough for both of them.
There was an awkward silence in the room, really Heather and Shego are the only ones who understand that neither of them has a problem the other.
"Uh, we should go" Mark said awkwardly, him and Cam almost always tagged along whenever Heather came for 'power practice' as the team had dubbed it. Cam came because he sort of fell into the habit when he and Heather were dating, Mark just came because he's nosey.
"Yeah, yeah" Heather said casually before the three said goodbye to Wade and left the basement.
As they walked out of the house and began the walk to their separate houses Heather smiled, the boys were discussing something about the homework in a class she didn't have so for now she was in her own thoughts, and they had fallen on how much things had looked up for her in high school.
"UGH!" Emily over dramatically groaned as she looked at the latest text message lighting up her screen, Heather grinned in slight amusement.
"What's with you?" She questioned, only half focusing on the German homework she was trying to finish.
"Oh the usual, none of my friends can hang out cause they're all at cheer practice" the blond complained, this was always a problem as she hadn't made the cheer squad freshman year and never tried out again due to embarrassment, that and she never ended up making any new friends after middle school.
"I'm sorry" Heather said sympathetically, she still hated just about all of her sister's friends and she was beginning to think that Emily was starting to feel the same way, her 'friends' seemed to ditch her a lot.
The silence between the two girls at the kitchen table was thick for a moment, it had been like that a lot lately.
"You know I'm heading over to Cam's with the guys in a little bit, you're welcome to tag alone" Heather invited, ok so she didn't really want her sister there but she still felt bad for her.
"No thanks, I'm not into video games" Emily refused and Heather shrugged
"Suit yourself" she said.
The teen's Friday night of video games was cut short when they got the alert for a mission, Lord Superior, a villain who if the name doesn't imply thinks he's Superior to everyone, which is ironic considering that in reality the guy is pretty much living in the middle ages.
"I still don't get it. Lord Superior lives in a castle in the middle of nowhere, traps us in metal cages, and makes potions but he steels stuff from science labs" Zach said from the back of the goat farmer's cart where the team was hitching a ride.
"He steals chemicals for his potions, the nut job is convinced that he can outdo modern medicine" Heather explained to her brother.
"Which theoretically he could but it's a very slim chance" Tony added in
"So why do we bother with him?" Zach whined
"He used to design weapons for the British Military before he went off the deep end" Mark answered and that was when the cart came to a halt outside of a foreboding castle.
"Thanks for the ride Mr. Rutter" Cam said as the five of them hopped off of the cart.
"No problem son, I pass this old castle every day on my way to the market" the man said before driving off.
"Ugh, we smell like goat. How come we don't use mom's old car?" Zach complained and Heather rolled her eyes.
"Because Cam, Mark, and I are the only one's with licenses and none of us can drive other people yet" she answered, all three of them had passed their tests around the same time and so now they were waiting for their time to be up to be allowed to drive other people. She and Mark only had a week left to go, Cam has a month, and Tony still needs to take the test.
"Come on let's go" Mark said, bringing everyone back to the matter at hand.
They used grappling hooks to launch themselves over the moat and onto the top of the wall, then they used one hook to shoot a line over to an open window and zip-line through.
The room they found themselves in was dark, the walls and floors were all made of stone and as soon as they were in metal bars closed over the window.
"That figures" Heather remarked just before an elderly man with a long white beard and wearing medieval peasant clothes entered the room through its one wooden door.
"Ah and here I thought I was going to have the castle all to myself tonight" he remarked in a heavy English accent, sinisterly drumming his fingers together.
"Sorry to ruin your peace and quiet" Mark sarcastically apologized
"Nonsense, I can always do with more test subjects" Lord Superior insisted with a menacing grin, as menacing as a seventy something year old man with a couple missing teeth can get anyway.
"Sorry, not interested. Just give us the stuff you stole from the lab and we'll go" Cam bargained but Lord Superior shook his head.
"No, first we're going to have some fun" he announced and with a snap from his fingers a ten foot tall, one eyed monster dripping from head to toe in purple goo came out of the shadows.
Lord Superior then took a test tube from his pocket, placed it on the floor, and rolled it towards his enemies.
"Igor, fetch" he commanded.
"Igor? Seriously?" Heather remarked before igniting the fire on her hands and attacking the angry monster charging them.
"Your sorcery won't help you here witch, my monster is fire resistant!" Superior boasted, noting with a grin that Heather's attacks weren't phasing Igor in the slightest.
"How many times do I have to tell you? I am not a witch, and my powers aren't magic!" Heather shouted in annoyance.
Mark threw a silver ball in-between the monster's feet and another at it's chest, each ball exploded and incased the monster with a quick hardening foam. Igor roared in response and began clawing at his rocky imprisonment while Came and Tony attacked Superior, who is surprisingly good in combat for his age.
"That won't hold him long" Mark warned, referring to the foam.
"Doesn't need to, Zach's gone" Heather announced and so without another word the four teenagers retreated the same way they came, since Zach used a disintegrator bomb to destroy the iron bars of the window, they met Zach on the other side of the wall where he proudly presented the test tube.
"So what is it?" Heather asked as she and Mark hovered over Cam's shoulder while he inspected the chemical they had recovered.
The whole team was up in Cam's bedroom, Cam hovering over the microscope on his desk, Heather and Mark hovering over him, and Tony and Zach playing video games.
"Salad dressing" Cam reported, every single one of his friends looked at him as if he was insane.
"Are you kidding?" Tony asked, he and Zach paused the game when Cam declared that this top secret chemical was something sold in just about every grocery store worldwide.
"Nope, it was a test tube of french dressing" Cam further explained, everyone was silent as they tried to wrap their heads around the joke of a mission.
"Well he does use some pretty weird stuff in his potions" Zach finally said but Heather growled.
"That or it was a fake" she said, frustration evident in her voice.
"So we still have no idea what he stole?" Tony asked and Cam shook his head
"But he's never given us a fake before,so whatever he's got planned this time we need to be prepared for it to be big" Mark said and the others all nodded in agreement.
"Did the children take the bait?" The orange clad prisoner questioned his visitor, who's expression did not change beneath his baseball cap.
"Yes, now can we hurry this up? I hate wearing these monkey clothes!" The visitor quietly snapped, looking up to reveal to his friend that he was Lord Superior dressed in normal civilian wear.
"There is nothing wrong with monkeys!" The prisoner snapped
"My apologies, Lord Fist" Superior apologized, Monkey Fist sat back in his chair, accepting the apology.
"Patience Superior, patience. If there is one thing in which I learned while encased in stone it's that for an effective plan to work it requires patience" The monkey man lectured
"I know, but what was the point of giving the children a fake vial when we haven't stolen anything?" Superior inquired, Monkey Fist smiled evilly .
"Another thing I learned during my time as a statue is the true meaning of the phrase mind over matter. You see Superior the mind is everything. If we are to succeed then we must first destroy that team of teenage heroes, and the best way to do that is to first distract them, then take them down from the inside" he explained, his grin only growing wider.