Okay. So. What does one do when the party has literally turned into a free-for-all fight and you can't just leave or call the police because GJ was already there and the private mercs had already washed their hands of it?

…

…

...

Under the table it was!

One of the tables had been flipped over, but the one that had the lasagna and oysters was still sitting solidly. Probably because the lasagna was hot and heavy and no one liked oysters.

She dove under with a tuck-and-roll, landing very solidly underneath the large buffet-style table.

Now that she was safely ensconced in the space… ...what did she do now? It wasn't like she was the master of stealth, or fighting. She was lucky she even made it under the table in one piece!

Suddenly her boss rolled under the table with a loud "Ack!"

"Oh! Heya Doctor D~" Tara waved. "What are you doing here?"

"I saw you duck for cover when all this lunacy started, so I figured it wouldn't be a half-bad idea to join you. Besides…" he waved at his behind "I don't want a repeat of this." Now that she was looking, Tara noticed that several of the bird villain's feather-darts were lodged pretty solidly in his rear. Hopefully it was stuck in the layers of his outfit...

A minute or so passed, during which her boss removed the feathers with slight whimpering. It felt and sounded like another table had been broken or overturned. "So…" She began rocking back and forth. Hiding out was pretty boring. "...did you wanna play rock-paper-scissors?"

"Nnnngh… This is just great!" Her boss slapped his hand against his face as the table shook around them. "All I wanted to do was eat cake and talk about how smart I am. Not…" he waved his hands in the direction of the fight "...whatever all of this is."

Extra tragic because there was no cake… It was all a lie...

Suddenly, an explosion rocked the building.

"And now things are EXPLODING!" Drew threw his hands up as best he could in the confined space. "What next?!"

Then the table flipped over, a set of agents and a really reeeeeaaaaalllllly large ninja flying overhead in a tangle.

Tara gave her boss a look.

"Yeah, yeah, I asked for it," he said, standing up and ducking down at the same time.

She wanted to keep the look up, but gave it up after a taser cable whizzed by inches from her head. "What'll we do, Doctor D?" the blonde whispered, trying to keep her voice down. Even if it was super loud, you never knew who could hear you.

"We get out of here is what we do!" Drew pulled a weird device out of his secret-pocket-that-wasn't-secret and pushed a couple of buttons on it. He grumbled quietly, "This had better work… I spent days trying to get this right…!"

He dramatically pushed the last, big, red button on the device and crowed, waving his hand in the air while doing so.

Several seconds went by with nothing happening.

"...why isn't this working?" He shook the controller thing he had, listening to it intently, then pushed the button again.

Again, nothing.

"Why." Hit! "Isn't." Wham! "This." Slap! "Working?!" Slam Whap Bap Push!

Several more seconds. Several more nothings.

"Ugh!" He repocketed the device, vines flailing around him in frustration, and grunted, "So much for that… Wasted several nights for nothing…!"

"I think that-.." Tara cut herself off as she dodged a flying power cell thrown by a villain cursing out the blaster gun in their hands.

"Ithinkthatlet'sgetoutofhere," she said in one breath, worrying about the possibly radioactive piece of equipment that was now sitting a couple of feet behind her.

"Agreed!" He grabbed her arm and started dragging her towards the nearest doorway, vines still trailing around him.

They dodged behind a thin middle aged man with plain brown hair, a rather large round nose, a tasteful gray and blue pinstriped suit, finished nicely with a tasteful, herringbone-patterned tie. Tara wondered why a guy, who looked like a middle school teacher, was doing there, when he started shouting in a pleasant, broadcast quality baritone, "Behold my power, you weaklings! You shall not capture me, for I am THE Weatherman!"

He screamed wordlessly after his generic speech, apparently aiming a floating cloud at several agents. Hail burst forth from the cloud and pelted the men with several-inch round balls of ice.

The two scientists didn't get away unscathed, though, as the backdraft from the storm whipped Tara's hair to ruin and froze poor Doctor D's plants! They didn't deserve that!

"Ouchy ouchy ouch ouch ouch!" her boss chanted, holding some of his vines like they were themselves hurting him. Weird… Since when did that happen? Or did it always happen?

"Oops!" She was so busy thinking her thoughts that she almost got hit by a thrown pie… Which promptly melted the pillar she was next to. Tara gaped at the resulting hole. "Oh gosh…"

"Not the time to space off, Missy!" Doctor D resumed dragging her towards the portal. They were almost home free!

Then someone shoved Tara to the side and jumped in front of Drew.

"Dementor! You clod!" Her boss waved a fist at him. "Where do you get off getting in our way?!"

"Because I vant to ESCAPE und hyu are a LOSER!" Dementor cried, shoving Tara even more aside than she already had been and running to the doorway.

He almost made it through the door…

Almost.

Like magic, the guy with the bad haircut from earlier popped up out of nowhere.

"Leaving so soon, Dementor?" he said in an obvious attempt to be witty. It failed. But what didn't fail was his aiming with his watch, which was spot-on to hit the villain in the chest.

"Uck! Hyu heroes and hyur ANTICS!" The helmeted man shrugged and reached into his belt before pulling out a small ball of sorts. "Ah, vat can one do…" He then tossed it at the agent.

The agent promptly pulled out a small ray gun and shot the ball. It froze in mid-air before falling harmlessly to the ground, shattering on impact.

"Nice try with the bondo-ball," the smarmy man tsked. "We know about it, and have sufficient countermeasures…"

"You haff GOT to be KIDDING ME!" Dementor growled. "Do not make me pull out MINE BIG GUNS!"

"As if you would dar-.." The agent was tackled mid-word by a football-themed villain. If Tara didn't know better, she would've thought it was Brick!

Dementor ran through the now-open doorway. A mere second later, he was forced out by a rough-looking, buff agent wielding a riot shield and waving around a shock stick.

"C'mon!" Her boss ducked behind a pillar as Dementor started dodging and dancing around the big guy's attacks. After looking around for a moment, her boss began to scoot along the wall, clearly trying to make himself a smaller target. Considering how the fighting seemed to be condensing into the middle where clear battle lines were being drawn, and all the other exit points were blocked, Tara didn't disagree with the decision. She, too, began to strafe the wall like a secret agent afraid of getting caught.

Slowly, they made their way along the side wall towards the veranda. Then they could go around the mansion to the hovercar and get the heck out of there!

"FREEZE, Doctor Drakken!" A couple of agents jumped in their way. Drat! They'd almost made it! But that was an awful mistake they were making…

"Nono, not Drakken," Tara corrected. "He's Doctor Lipsky, thank you very much!"

"Not the time, Missy!" her boss said. He raised his fist at the two and snarled, "Out of our way! We aren't even villains; we were tricked into coming to this party!"

The agents both shared a chuckle. "Yeah, I'm so sure of that," one of them said. "Just like how that gal right there isn't your new sidekick."

"Assistant," Tara insisted. Man, these guys were really bad with names and labels.

"Whatever. It doesn't matter. Either which way, you're coming with us." They raised their wrists threateningly.

Just to get crushed into the wall by the head of a massive hammer.

"I had said zat I vould bring out mine BIG GUNS, und I vas not JOKING!" Dementor stood beside them, the handle of said massive hammer in his hand. It was a crazy-cool hammer, too, with a rocket jet on one end and a pointy tip on the other. Luckily, the agents were both hit by the non-sharp sides of the front of the hammer.

...where had he been keeping that?

"We didn't need your help, Demenz," Doctor D sneered.

"Zen maybe hyu should-.." A wave of sound blasted by his head and blew into the wall beside them. Turning his head, he uttered, "Vait… Is zat Ze Silver Blaster?!"

Dementor and Drew both stopped, gaping at a dark-skinned woman whose black hair, slightly shorter than Tara's, was sticking out of the back of a large helmet with a face shield and fancy-looking earmuffs. She had a basic sleek silver bodysuit on, but the remarkable part was her arms and legs. Attached to them were black wrecking ball-shaped speakers which were blasting out sound/air waves at anyone and everyone that was getting in her way.

"I thought she only operated out of Australia?!" her boss proclaimed.

Ze Silver Blaster? That sounded familiar…

Doctor D saw her expression and commented, "She's one of the 'new' generation of villains that popped up after the whole Lorwardian debacle." Snorting, he noted, "Bah! Like that somehow makes them 'better' than the rest of us… Even if she is very successful..."

"The rest of us?" Tara gave her boss the look again.

Her boss cringed. "I, ah, mean, the rest of them?"

Tara's expression brightened considerably. "Good!"

But…

It was bothering her. Why did Ze Silver Blaster sound so familiar?

Tara took a closer look at the villain who was now cackling with glee right next to the ponderous assistant.

...wait a sec… That hair, that skin, those eyes...

"Hope?" The dark-haired villain turned around, lifted her suit's visor, and gave Tara a wink in reply.

Wow! Talk about a cheer reunion! Now Tara knew why Ze Silver Blaster sounded familiar… It was what Hope had said her 'villain' name would be when they were all joking one day and teasing Kim, except when they'd been talking she had said 'the', not 'ze'. Tara had gone with The Dazzler, but the other girls thought it was too outdated or something lame like that.

"You're into villainy?"

"Oh, I SO am!" Hope tittered as she kicked away another agent, "I mean, it's a blast, and B set me up SO nice…" She practically danced around Tara, knocking agents and villains alike away from the two of them. "I have this sweet beachfront lair near the Sydney Opera House, and I'm trying to set up a small timeshare lair in Lowerton to stretch out my operation."

"You've been real busy…"

"No kidding!" The other woman laughed, loosening a blob of energy from her gauntlets.

"Soooo… You and B hanging out a lot then?" Tara figured that since they were hanging out right now, they could at least catch up on things. Especially since her boss and the Dementor guy were now arguing like B and K used to…

"Und hyur clothes are RIDICULOUS!" He waved his hand at the doctor, as if brushing dust off his jacket, even as he backhanded someone with his hammer. "Who vould PURPOSELY DRESS like a homeless person!?"

"Says the man wearing a bowl on his head!" Doctor D wasn't paying attention as he was glaring daggers at the shorter man, but his vines intercepted a couple of projectiles and tossed them back in the directions they came from.

"Like, we did a lot of hanging out back just after we graduated… Well," Hope cringed "when the two of us graduated. Bonnie's still taking those summer classes… Anyway…" She loosed another blast that cleared out a small section of the fight, sending several people flying a few feet. "Bonnie and I were hanging out a lot when we first started into villainy, about a week or so after that rockin' beach party."

A villain wearing springs on his feet bounced past, nearly smacking into Tara and dodging around Hope's clothesline. As that happened, the blonde noticed the wire-haired woman from earlier was trying - and failing - to interrupt the two arguing men as they offhandedly assaulted anyone who came within reach. Save for that woman, apparently. Why or how the two men didn't attack her, Tara wasn't sure.

"Wow! Only a week?" The blonde came back to the conversation and boggled. That meant that they'd hopped to it several months ago!

"Yup!" Hope laughed. "It took a lot of convincing to get me to go along with it. But once Bonnie and I pulled our first caper - stealing a few diamonds from a high-end jewelry boutique in London - I just couldn't help but fall in love with it." A contented sigh escaped her lips even as she backhanded an agent. "The freedom, the excitement, the glamour…" She made a face. "But Bonnie… I don't know…

"The wonderfulness of stealing whatever she wanted just didn't seem to click with her. She struggled. Like, really struggled…"

"With what?" The blonde was thoroughly confused. Since when did Bonnie ever struggle with anything?

"Everything." Hope pouted. "She was fine at first, really grabbing what she wanted and not caring about it… But then she started asking silly questions after our first run-in with heroes in this nowhere town called Go City. 'Why don't we just pay for it?' 'What's wrong with, like, not going to jail?' 'Won't this hurt someone who's trying to make a living?'. Just a barrage of questions that don't really have a place in villainy, y'know?"

"I guess…" It would've made Tara uncomfortable too. Then again, she wasn't a villain.

"So yeah. She's kinda been withdrawing a bit. I don't get it myself," Hope shrugged, then punched a nearby villain apparently just because. "I guess the lifestyle isn't for everyone…"

"I guess." Tara repeated, more sure of the actual answer. Maybe that's why-..

Another explosion rocked the building. "Op! Gotta run! Hafta save whatever's left of the basement for my villains-in-arms." Hope gave the blonde a biiiiiiiig hug. "It was great chatting!"

"Yup!" The assistant beamed. "Next time, we can chat about how things are on my end."

"That'll be peachy! Maybe next I'll raid wherever you work and hold you hostage so we can do this again," Hope joked. ...hopefully. "Later!" With that, she ran off towards the super secret wall with the super secret brick.

"Wow!" Tara breathed a sigh. Talking to a villain mid-fight sure was draining. Speaking of mid-fight…

"Boss? We have to-.." she paused, taking in the scene in front of her.

"Ich bin der BESTE BöSEWICHT aller ZEITEN!" Dementor yelled from his mountain of people whom he had knocked out with a combination of his hammer and various gadgets, such as the aforementioned bondo-ball and a weird melty power his hands had.

"Yeah, yeah, you and your German stuff." Her boss waved him off, even as he unknowingly held several unconscious people, villains and agents alike, in the grip of his vines. "We all know you're German, no need to yell it."

"I do not CARE vut hyu TINK!" the helmeted villain said in a thicker accent, even as he growled at the dismissiveness. "Hyu are a TERRIBLE VILLAIN!"

"At least I'm a decent hero!" He then noticed all the people he was holding. "Erm, anti-hero?"

"Vatever. All zat matters is zat I am BETTER ZAN HYU!"

"You are NOT better than me. You're just…" Doctor D struggled with a word that would put him in a better light than the guy that was clearly a better villain than him. "You're doing unusually well."

"HA!"

"Doctor D…" Tara walked over to her boss and grabbed at his arm. "We need to get out of here!"

"Hm?" He looked around as if he'd forgotten that there was a knock-down, drag-out fight going on around them. "Oh! Right. Uhm…" His vines dropped the people roughly and retracted. "Erm…"

"Zis vay, hyu VEAK EXCUSE of a VILLAIN!" Dementor waved his hammer in the direction of the veranda, the path clear as if people were trying to get out of the way of the hammer which, at this point, may have been on purpose.

"How many times do I have to say that I am NOT A VILLAIN!" Her boss stomped his foot in frustration like a child.

"Iff hyu are not a villain, vhy do you DRESS LIKE VON?!" the helmeted villain shouted, beginning to walk towards the veranda.

"Hey! I have a 'look'." Her boss marched next to Dementor, determined to not fall behind him. "What, do you want me to take a vow of peace or something? 'Cause that isn't going to happen!"

"Vell, perhaps hyu could at least change your style?" Dementor shrugged. "Hyu vould look better in someting vite, or more protective? Hyu are very bad vith the whole hurting yourself ting…"

As they walked out onto the veranda, they found the hovercar was floating towards them at a leisurely pace.

"Oh! Now it works! Wonderful!" her boss groused. He pulled the remote thing out again and glared at it. "Stupid piece of junk."

"At least it vorked, unlike hyur VILLAINOUS CAREER!"

"Shove it!"

The two men turned to each other.

"Vell… Zat vas not awful." Dementor held out his hand. "I suppose I vill see you later, ven I inevitably ROB ze SPACE CENTER?"

Drew stared at the hand for a second before taking it and shaking. "I guess I will, Loser."

"Ha! Zat is ze funny." The helmeted villain gave a jovial laugh before turning and practically skipping away towards the parking area.

"Thinks he's so smart…" Doctor D made a strangling motion, then sighed. "Oh well. That's Dementor for you."

"Let's go before-.."

"HEY!"

Tara froze, then cringed. Great, now who was going to confront-..

Ohwait, that voice was Bonnie's.

"B!" The blonde turned in the direction of her friend. "I was worried you-.." She cut off her words when she caught sight of the homecoming queen.

Her dress? Torn and ragged. Crown? Sideways. Face? Definitely developing a bruise. Footwear? One shoe was MIA.

"Oh B…" Tara walked over to where her friend was standing awkwardly, clearly in pain, and put a hand on the tanned woman's arm. "Do you need help?"

"Like, of course I don't!" Bonnie removed the hand and growled, "I just need these losers to leave my house. Papi said he's arranging for some people called the Golden Company or whatever to come clean up."

"It's never too early to line up a cleaning service," the blonde said with a nod.

"Right…" Bonnie trailed off. "You're leaving, huh?" B looked at the waiting hovercar and turned around. Bonnie said, annoyance clear with a hidden hint of defeat, "Like, just go."

The blonde paused in hopping back into her boss' hovercar. She just had to know one thing before she left…

"Why did you invite a clown to your party?"

Bonnie paused, turned around, then pouted, "I didn't. Papi liked the work he did with Ron and the circus stuff."

"Oh." That was pretty anticlimactic. "Well… I'll see you later, B."

Bonnie looked hopeful at that. "Really, T?"

"Really really." Tara nodded.

"You done yet?" Her boss revved the engine of his hovercar. "I'd prefer not to get caught up in that silliness again."

"Just a sec!" Tara gave her friend a quick hard hug. "I'm rooting for you, B."

A pause. "Thanks, T."

Tara turned and hopped into the waiting hovercar.

As they were flying away, flashes of green caught her attention. Looking down, she noticed that Shego had, apparently, not gotten away like it had seemed she would. In the middle of the lawn the green woman almost looked to be dancing around. Upon closer inspection, Tara realized there was someone else there. She looked to be in a fight with…

Doctor Director? That was weird…

The two women were moving with such speed and power - Shego tore clean through one of the pieces of metal littering the lawn - that Tara was certain Shego had been toying with her earlier.

Yikes.

"What's wrong?" her boss asked, looking back at her.

"Uhm, nothing!" Tara moved to block his sight and gave the most innocent smile she could muster.

He narrowed his eyes. "...you have something on your teeth."

"What!?" the blonde pulled out a mirror from her own hidden pocket and checked. Sure enough, there was some stray lipstick smeared on her two front teeth. "Dang it!"

A/N: That last part well and truly changes the last few chapters. Poor Tara had that going the entire time...!

Dementor's hammer is inspired by/stolen from Reinhardt from Overwatch. Dang is that an awesome hammer...