Literally everyone stabbed me in the heart in this chapter, goddamn. Enjoy! 😘

Chapter 15: Make Your Circles Out of Salt

As soon as Butch dropped off Brisa at Pokey Oaks Elementary the morning after Halloween, he hopped on his Live Wire and drove directly to B-3. There had been no texts or missed calls from either of his brothers the whole night after the Tentacle Monster's demise. Call him a sentimental bitch, but Butch was a tiny bit worried about them both.

Using his spare key to Boomer's second-floor apartment, Butch let himself inside. "Boomer?" he called.

He opened the door to the cramped bedroom, where sure enough Boomer lay mummified among the sheets. Butch's Super hearing picked up on his brother's fluttering heartbeat.

"Dude, I know you're awake. Are you still wearing your costume?"

Boomer said nothing.

Butch sat down on the edge of the bed. Boomer had his back to him, curled up in the fetal position and clutching a pillow.

"Uh, is this, like, a cry for help?" Butch teased.

Nothing. Not even a twitch.

Butch shook his brother's shoulder. "Hey man, what the hell? Did you talk to Brick last night?"

Fast as lightning, Boomer's cold hand closed around Butch's and squeezed. "Boomer—"

"I can't," Boomer said in a parched voice.

"What? Yo, just get up. It's almost 9 a.m.—"

Boomer turned over and looked directly at Butch. "I said I can't."

The sight of his normally calm, easygoing brother hollow-eyed and pale as a corpse after a night spent crying in bed in yesterday's clothes was a spike through the chest. Butch hadn't seen Boomer so drained since his break-up with Bubbles four years ago.

"What happened?" Butch demanded. He tightened his grip on Boomer's bony hand. "What did he do?"

Boomer wiped his sticky eyes. "He was so drunk, so angry, and I couldn't help it."

"Couldn't help what?" Butch hauled him into a sitting position and took him by the shoulders. "What the fuck happened last night? Tell me."

Boomer broke down and told him everything, and when he was done, Butch flew out of there faster than he could think about it, deaf to the ordinance and Boomer's protests.

Brick woke to harsh sunlight in his eyes and a terrible crick in his neck from sleeping on his stomach on the living room couch. His tongue was a fat, sour sponge too big for his mouth. He heaved himself up on shaky arms and immediately regretted it. His head pounded, and the room reeked of booze and vomit. The coffee table was shattered beyond repair, and mixed among the shards were two empty whiskey bottles, yesterday's rumpled silk tie, and a questionable stain on the rug.

He sat up properly and hung his head in his hands as he tried to get his bearings. Deep breaths, in and out. Water, a toothbrush. One thing at a time.

Groggy but determined, he got to his feet and walked to the master bathroom, not trusting himself to float there without running into anything. When he'd cleaned up, he examined his haggard reflection in the mirror. There were puffy bags under his eyes, which were not as bloodshot as they'd been last night now that he'd rested. His shirt was an unsalvageable ruin, so he ripped it off and threw it in the trash.

Going through the motions of dressing in a fresh shirt and chugging water, he had no revelatory moment wherein he suddenly remembered every terrible thing that had happened last night. Brick had not forgotten any of it, at least until about twenty minutes after Boomer bolted and Brick blacked out, blind drunk.

Desiccated dandelions lay on the floor near the balcony door where they'd fallen from Boomer's hair during his tearful escape.

Brick crushed the Fiji water bottle he'd drained. The plastic melted and warped under his searing power, and he dumped the remains in the trash. It landed with a clatter among its brethren's bodies, and the metal lid closed with a snap. He winced.

It was as still as a tomb in here.

He reached for his phone, the only one he had left after he'd crushed his useless work phone, and checked his messages.

Nothing.

Not a single text or even a missed call from Blossom. He tapped on her contact, and his eyes lingered on her thumbnail picture. She had her hair down, but she was professional and prim in a suit, an enigmatic smile on her face as she gazed at the camera.

Brick's thumb hovered over the 'Delete Contact' button.

"What the fuck do you know about love except how to burn it to the ground?"

Blossom's image blurred, and Brick squeezed his stinging eyes shut. "Fuck."

He locked his phone without erasing her and set it on the counter. He needed some air. He needed to figure out what the hell he was going to do now.

The wind was bracing on the balcony. He leaned his weight on the metal railing and looked out over Citiesville and the Golden Bay waters beyond. It was a blisteringly clear morning, the platinum sun a false hope against the autumn chill that cut through his red T-shirt. A migraine gnawed behind his eyes in slow, tenderizing bites. Perhaps that was why he was slow to notice the danger coming for him until it was too late. By the time Brick looked up and tensed, Butch's fist had already connected with his jaw and sent him hurtling high into the sky across the bay.

Before Brick had a chance to wonder what his brother was thinking, Butch kneed him hard in the gut. Brick reacted on instinct and fired his red blasters at Butch, who had obviously lost his mind attacking him out of the blue in violation of the anti-Super ordinance.

"What the fu—!"

Butch came in fast again and landed another punch that cracked Brick's jaw before he could finish berating him. Brick forgot all about his migraine as pain exploded in his face too fast for Chemical X to mitigate. Whatever had crawled up Butch's ass this morning, he was feral in a way Brick hadn't seen him in years. And he wasn't stopping.

Brick dashed away, his mind awake and racing to catch up with the adrenaline and instinct to survive that guided his body to the South side industrial area of Citiesville far from the densely populated downtown and, most importantly, away from prying police eyes.

"I'm gonna turn you inside out, you fucking grundlecake!" Butch bellowed as he powered up a shield and hurtled straight for Brick.

Brick grabbed a metal two-by-four from the abandoned construction site he'd landed in and whacked Butch as hard as he could, sending him crashing through the concrete foundation of an unfinished building.

Panting hard and popping his now-healed jaw, Brick flew after him but found no trace of Butch in the crater where he should have landed. Realizing his mistake, Brick whirled a second before Butch came up behind him and punched. Brick barely dodged the hit before another followed, then another, until everything faded except for the unfettered ferocity between them.

"Butch, stop!" Brick barked in a commanding tone he knew would throw Butch off.

He was right, and his brother hesitated for a split second. Brick let him have it hard in solar plexus, knocking the wind and some dignity out of him. "The fuck's gotten in to you?" he shouted.

Butch shook out the concrete dust from his hair and coughed. The naked, metal frames of unfinished skyscrapers loomed at his back, skeletal sentinels watching for blood. Glowing, green eyes utterly devoid of mercy fixed on Brick. "You got some fucking balls asking me that after your little temper tantrum last night."

Of course. Boomer must have told him about their confrontation. Of course he would go crying to Butch like he always did.

Brick's chest twisted at the memory of Boomer's anguish, bitter and ugly. But Boomer's cruel words were a knife poking a fresh wound. Brick tasted metal between his gritted teeth.

"So what, you're here to put me in my place?" Brick let his power leak into his eyes and make them glow, blood-bright. "I'd like to see you try."

Butch shook so badly he was in danger of bifurcating. "I'll do you one better!"

He lunged at Brick again, his pace punishing, and Brick narrowly dodged. A few direct hits from Butch at his full speed and power could put down a mountain. So he wanted to take a shot? Push his weight around and teach Brick a lesson?

Let him fucking try it.

Try Butch did, and the brothers soon transformed the forsaken construction site into ground zero of a meteor strike. Foundations crumbled and frames bowed and bent, sinking further into their dusty graves as Brick and Butch cleaved the rubble and each other.

"Knock it off!" Boomer was suddenly there and in between them, forcing them apart.

Butch glowed green, his shield energy bubbling over him like a viscous second skin. "He's a fucking prick, Boomer! You know he deserves a lot worse than this."

"Keep talking and I'll rip your tongue out," Brick said.

Boomer's hand crackled with blue power and stung where he pushed back on Brick's chest, but his little brother wasn't looking at him.

"I know, but this isn't the way," Boomer pleaded with Butch.

Butch's wild gaze flickered to Brick. "Look at him. He doesn't even give a shit."

Boomer looked back at Brick, and despite the dwindling glimmer of hope in his blue eyes, the pain there was as raw as an open sore. He tried to play the stalwart, but Boomer was always at his most obvious when he pretended. How Brick hadn't noticed the chasm in him before last night when he ripped out the sutures, he didn't know. And that… That was on him.

But it was too late now.

"Move," Brick commanded in a quiet, charnel voice.

Boomer's hand slipped as though it burned.

Butch shoved Boomer aside, green globules blooming off him. "Just stay outta this!"

With Boomer out of the way, Butch crashed into Brick again. He lobbed shield bubbles at Brick that exploded on impact, and Brick was forced to retreat.

"Butch, no!" Boomer shouted as he raced after them.

Brick ignored the pain in his back where Butch had hit him and led his savage brother in a chase around the stone and steel ossuary. Butch fired at blind angles and razed a path of indiscriminate destruction before him.

"You're gonna answer to me now!" Butch snarled.

But Butch was a short fuse with a flashy finish, and Brick didn't have long to wait until he fizzled out. Brick dashed in close as Butch's fragmented shield recharged, spun him around, and fired his laser eye beams at point-blank range at the back of Butch's neck.

The sound Butch made was almost comical, more squeak than scream. The remnants of his shield shattered, weak as it was to direct energy attacks, and Butch fell amidst broken steel bones and concrete gristle.

"Fucking brute," Brick muttered.

The brute struggled to pull himself up and clutched his smoking neck. Shifty eyes found Brick, half dead yet fully manic, and he burst with power like a popped boil. Brick blasted him again, but Butch did not know how to stay kicked.

"If I cut you open, what would I find?" Butch roared. "Tumors? Worms? Fucking ashes?"

Brick punched him in the face hard enough to shatter, but the bastard caught him in the ribs with an armored knee.

"Stop!" Boomer shouted to be heard over their bludgeoning. "You'll kill him!"

The dare charmed something black and malignant in Brick. It slithered out of the marrow in his bones Butch had cracked like kindling, gorged on the kerosene in his veins, and swelled in his mouldering lungs. And when Butch came in howling, Brick let him. He grabbed Butch's collar, anchored him close, and breathed.

The fire flooded out of him, a belligerent bile that spared nothing. Dazzling, it was all Brick could see as Butch's shirt disintegrated between his fingers. The rank stench of cooked flesh and scorched hair made Brick choke and suck in smoke, but the rage in him only roared louder, nearly loud enough to drown out Butch's dulcet screams.

All the light in the world pierced like needles through Brick's sooty eyes the moment Boomer's energy bat cracked over his head. He landed in a hole, interred among the remains of half-dreamed stone cadavers and at an absolute loss over whether he had, in fact, lost his head.

The blood in his mouth mixed with shards of broken molars Boomer had knocked loose in a smoky, mealy paste—got me good, you sad fuck. He swirled his tongue around the gummy holes, raw with the burgeoning heads of their slow-growing replacements, and thought of the wine he had shared with Blossom so long ago. Earthy, she'd said? Seemed about right.

He ignored the distressing pop in his neck as he staggered to his feet. Gouts of flame surrounded him like a demonic summoning circle. He spat phlegm at his feet, and the fire gorged on his blood and bones with a sepulchral hiss.

Boomer helped Butch to his feet not far off. His shirt was completely gone, and his tattooed arms and chest were pink and puckered like he'd donned a robe of worms. Smoke rose around him, and his head lolled drunkenly. Chunks of his hair had disappeared, cauterized to the root. Boomer supported his weight; he seemed unable to stand unaided.

They watched Brick, but they dared not approach. Steel skeletons leered down at the brothers from their broken, concrete crypts. Brick felt their empty gazes on his back, expectant, but he could only stand there opposite his battered brothers who refused to follow the flames closer.

Brick opened his mouth to call to them, but all that came out was a brittle croak and a bit of old blood on his lip. Butch's burned skin rippled. It was taking too long to heal.

Boomer lifted Butch into the air without a word. Get back here, Brick might have said. I'm your brother.

But Boomer and Butch's withering silence smothered the words left unsaid. He didn't stop them leaving. He couldn't have if he'd tried.

Little fires chewed through stone and sank deep into the earth at his feet. Nothing rose from the ashes, nothing but bitter smoke. Still the fire burned, sparing nothing.

By the time the Citiesville Fire Department arrived on the scene, the blaze had subsided to an aggrieved smolder, and Brick was long gone.

Buttercup nearly ripped the front door of her childhood home off its hinges in her rush to get inside. The lab door was wide open and she dashed down the stairs, completely ignoring Boomer texting in the living room by himself.

The basement was awash with artificial lamp light that transformed the clean glass and titanium bowels of the laboratory into a cold surgery. Buttercup's nose preemptively burned with the wet metal stink of blood, but the white tiles were pristine as always.

Blossom was with Butch, who lay supine on a gurney hooked up to an EKG monitor as she gently blew her ice breath over his bare skin. Even under the sheen of preternatural frost, his chest, neck, and cheeks were a horror of puckered pink skin pinched and sagging where Chemical X overcompensated against the burns that did not seem to want to heal.

"The Chemical X in your system is literally burning you from the inside out. How's the pain?" Blossom asked when she finished her breath. She had the bedside manner of a glacier.

"What pain?" Butch wisecracked. The burns on his cheeks stretched like pulled taffy when he grinned. He looked like a ghoul. He looked like he should have died.

The glacier melted a bit, but her frost didn't. Blossom helped him into a sitting position with a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. Fine ice crystals flooded from her fingertips up the back of his neck and rimed the hairline. He shuddered in relief.

Buttercup checked her shock at the door and marched over to them. Up close, he was downright ghastly. Buttercup ran her fingers through the clumps of hair that hadn't been burned away, studied his tenderized body, the glaze in his eyes he couldn't hide from her. Those beautiful eyes blurred the longer she looked at him.

Blossom's cold hands on hers brought her back, if only temporarily. She was saying something, and it was the hardest thing Buttercup had ever done to shift her attention from Butch to her sister right now.

"—should quell the burning. I used to do it to myself when I fought him. But Butch doesn't have my elemental immunity, so he'll need a supplemental Chemical X infusion." Blossom handed a cool, tin tub to Buttercup by way of an explanation. "It will go faster if you help me."

The Chemical X-infused burn cream was a whipped, greasy tar. Blossom didn't wait for her, already dipping her fingers into another tub of the stuff and spreading it over her palms. The next thing Buttercup knew, she'd grabbed Blossom's wrist and caught her eye.

"I've got it," she said.

This was the part when she was supposed to explain why. To offer the unpracticed words she had long kept to herself like a miser hoarding hearts. But Blossom had never needed her words. Buttercup squeezed her sister's wrist because she was afraid, but she was no coward. She was no hypocrite.

"I'm sorry," Buttercup whispered those miserable little words.

Blossom's smile was perhaps even more miserable in its understanding. She wiped her hands clean on a towel, but before she left she cast a last, lonely glance at them. "You're in good hands," she said perhaps to Butch, or perhaps to both of them.

Alone in the lab, Buttercup rolled up her sleeves and dipped her fingers in the tub of oily X cream. It tingled pleasantly when she rubbed it over her palms. When she was ready, she reached for Butch, who watched her with a serene sort of longing she was finding it harder and harder to pretend she didn't notice. Like ignoring him would make him go away, as if that had ever worked out before.

He hissed when she pressed her hands to his chest, and here at last she flinched, her fingers slippery and confused.

"Fuck, that's good," he groaned, zombie-like.

Buttercup worried her lip until it bruised, and she dutifully slathered more of the Super healing salve over his chest and shoulders. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, caught between agony and ecstasy like he couldn't choose between the two.

The work was quiet and efficient. She kneaded the balm in between the grooves of his burn-wrinkled skin, exorcising his suffering and absorbing it into herself like some kind of holy succubus. The more she explored the extent of the hell Brick had visited upon him, the more she fantasized about digging her fingers into Brick's wretched eyeballs until they dribbled down his cheeks in pulpy tears.

"I'm going to kill him," she said simply.

Butch's eyes flew open, and his hands caught hers as they massaged his burned cheeks. Trapped in his hands, in his gaze, she held his face in her hands with all the gravitas of a proper lover.

"He's not worth it," Butch said. "Buttercup."

For as long as she had known him, Butch had been desperate. Desperate to fight, desperate to feel, desperate for her. He saw what he wanted and he chased it like a homing missile, because what else was the point of living? Even when he pretended he didn't, even when he played it cool, even when he fucked off to fight for his country in wars that didn't matter for years on end without sending so much as a measly postcard, he never really changed. He never really gave up. Greens never do.

But he was giving up now.

"He's not worth it," Butch repeated.

Emotion Buttercup had eschewed for years picked now of all times to kick her in the balls while she was down. Here in her father's lab that she hadn't dared enter since the funeral, with her hands on Butch like they had been that last hasty night before he left on tour, her rage howling stupid with absolutely nowhere left to go, she let go of it all and chose him instead.

Butch's arms crushed her as he held her close, desperate as he was, and she held him up. Her fingers tugged gently at the clumps of hair he had left as he buried his face in the crook of her neck and opened like a vein. He clutched at the back of her shirt and her loose hair for something solid and safe, and quaked against the pain she could do nothing to ease except to be here with him now.

Buttercup held him to her, shaking and afraid, and let him mourn.

Boomer hovered in the living room, bobbing by the window like a gangly, blue hummingbird when Blossom emerged from the lab. She closed the door behind her to give Butch and her sister privacy.

"Is he okay?" Boomer asked, flitting to Blossom the moment she emerged.

"He will be," Blossom said. "He just needs some time to heal."

Boomer continued to hover. The couple inches off the ground added half a head to the one he already had over Blossom. "You're sure? He'll be back to normal?"

Blossom hooked her hands around his arms and reeled him back down to the ground. She didn't let go as he balanced on the balls of his feet. "Breathe."

Boomer breathed to spite his lungs. The muscles in his arms trembled with star-killing pressure. It was a wonder he'd managed to bring Butch here as quickly as he had, recount the fight with Brick with dispassionate clarity, and get out of her way. Blossom hadn't considered him then, too happy to be consumed by Butch after a wretched night consumed by Brick, but now she surveyed him closely. Grey as gruel, Boomer was ready to fly away at the slightest glint of teeth in the underbrush. He had the look of a thumb push puppet, his joints strung together like Cheerios on a thread: one more push, and he would collapse into pieces of himself.

Listlessly, she thought of Brick, but Brick wasn't here. So she pushed. "I've got you, Boomer."

He was lovely when he cried, she thought. A weird thought—Bubbles was a big time blubberer, but not Boomer. He sobbed as one adept in the art, a saturnine specialist.

They ended up on the sofa, Blossom with a wet shoulder and Boomer locked in a losing battle with his lungs. "Breathe," she repeated. "I've got you," she promised.

It took him a few minutes to gather his pieces together. It took him another two to brave her full attention. "I saw you last night," he confessed, "leaving his apartment."

He didn't need to say anything more, but he wasn't Brick, and so he did.

"I've got you too," he said.

Blossom was done with hearts and their breaking. She had barely made it back here late last night, her own pieces fumbling from her arms, but this time her sisters had been there to catch them. They would stay locked away now until she could figure out what to do with them. Or perhaps she would leave them tucked away in a dark pit to collect dust. She had not yet decided.

But it was the thought that counted. What was left of that mulish muscle swelled for Boomer. "Thank you."

He managed a smile that was in grave danger of tempting the same from her, and she marveled at how lucky Bubbles was to love him. He made it so easy, almost unforgivable not to.

"Let me call Bubbles. I'm sure we can get her to take the rest of the day off, considering," Blossom offered.

"No, it's all right. I texted her already and told her to stay put."

"Why would you do that?"

"To give her time to prepare," he said, strangely vague. It didn't suit him in the least. "There are things…"

Blossom slipped her hands in his. They sat facing each other on the sofa like teenagers self-isolating at a party to scheme and dream while their peers exalted their youth with alms of cheap beer and blunts.

"Things you couldn't tell him?" Blossom asked, and pointedly paused. Then: "Or things you already did?"

He looked at her as one waking from a long sleep. "You're so like him." Shaking his head like he didn't believe his own words. "Except completely not."

The hope in his eyes was as flattering as it was depressing. "I think you might just not know me well enough yet."

"I know I've never envied Bubbles more than I do right now."

Blossom could only imagine how Brick had probably lambasted his brother if Boomer went to see him last night in the state he was in. A state brought on by his relationship with her, and the complete dismantling of his personal empire she left in her wake when he told her to get out.

The emotions that visited her like a haunting threatened such a sudden and violent expulsion that Blossom clutched her throat to keep them down. Boomer's alarm was real and perhaps foolish as he reached for her and uttered some sympathies she didn't hear because she was too busy wrestling these spirits back into their black hole under lock and key.

"Are you all right?" Boomer asked.

He was solid and real and here, and Brick was gone. Brick was gone.

Blossom got to her feet, absurdly proud of herself for not wobbling. "Just thirsty. Do you want something to drink?"

He followed her to the kitchen and accepted a glass of water. At length, he changed the subject.

"Buttercup flew through here like they announced a White Stripes reunion concert," he said.

Blossom sipped her water. "There's no need to speak in pop culture references. Although, that one was admittedly near perfect."

He leaned on the counter and grinned, a little too eager for a distraction. Blossom, just as eager, indulged him.

"How long have you known about them?" he asked.

Blossom checked the wall clock. "About twenty minutes."

"Damn. So it's official?"

"Nothing is ever official when it comes to my sister."

He looked quite serious as he pondered that. "I knew the night they had their first monster happy hour after the Red Monster attacked Citiesville. I mean, I didn't know, but it was a good chance they were headed that direction."

That was…a while ago. Blossom ground her teeth on a petty pang of jealousy, unable to help herself. Buttercup had been so angry with her when she'd found out about Brick, and yet she said nothing about her own feelings for Butch. Until this morning, that is.

Blossom dumped the rest of her water down the kitchen sink along with that useless emotion. None of that mattered anymore now that Brick had decided for her. It was easier to be happy for Buttercup and leave it at that.

"Blossom?" Boomer asked.

He had that thousand yard look that could peek through any cracks she carelessly left in her walls. Best to turn that augural sight on a bigger target.

"I need to work," she said.

"Um, right now? You want to spend the day in an office?" he said, almost indelicately.

"No, I mean my other work."

She headed to the foyer closet and grabbed a windbreaker and a pair of olive duck boots from the shoe rack. Boomer faithfully followed her example and laced up his Converse.

"You don't have to come," she said.

He snorted. "Haven't I told you I always wanted to become a Powerpuff Girl?"

Blossom instantly thought of Princess, whom she hadn't heard from at all since Brick's meltdown. She had been harsh with Princess too, come to think of it. Perhaps an olive branch was in order. Maybe Princess had talked to Brick?

No.

That was the last time she would allow herself to think of him today. He most assuredly was not thinking about her. She had work to do, besides.

Blossom fired off a quick text to Princess checking in, and then she returned her attention to Boomer bundling up in a navy pullover. "You'll be at the top of my list when we open admissions."

He smiled goofily, and Blossom couldn't help but return it this time. "I'm going to write the most amazing personal essay you've ever read."

They stood there a moment as the weight of everything said and unsaid settled like sediment at the bottom of a blue lake. There were bodies here, bones buried deep. But there was a kindness to the quiet, a consideration for those secrets that perhaps were not yet ready, or not yet willing. He wasn't hiding from her, nor she from him. They both simply needed to feel useful again, to trust again.

"We're going to get to the bottom of these monster attacks," Blossom said, her voice a merciless, creeping hoarfrost. "We're going to find out why they're attacking, and then we're going to put a stop to them."

Boomer matched her glacial resolve with a fierceness he definitely did not get enough credit for. "I'm with you. Lead the way."

"We'll pick up Bubbles after school is out. For now, our first stop is the Office of the Golden Bay Coastguard," Blossom said. "I want to know where the hell these monsters are coming from."

Brisa was over the moon. For the second day in a row, she was going to hang out with her best friend in the whole world all afternoon! Gina passed Miss Bubbles her phone back, and Miss Bubbles passed it to Brisa.

"Your dad just wants to say hi real quick," Miss Bubbles said, and she smiled like sunshine.

Brisa held the large iPhone to her ear. "Hi Daddy."

"Hey, Supergirl," Daddy said. "I'm sorry to bail on you last minute like this, but Buttercup has some super top secret bad guy stuff to take care of this afternoon, and she begged me to help her—"

"You invited yourself, idiot!" Buttercup cut in. "Which I still think is a stupid-ass idea considering you're swaddled up like a huge, ugly baby."

"Woman, calm your tits. You can unwrap me later if you really want—"

There was a commotion on the line and a lot of no-no words, but eventually Daddy was back: "All right, so just chill with Richie for a couple hours, and I'll pick you up at his house later. Sound good?"

Brisa smiled. "Yup!"

"And hey," he added, softer, "if you need anything at all, you call me or Bubbles on your GizmoWatch. Got it?"

Brisa checked out the clunky watch with the skull-print strap buckled to her wrist. She thought about the monster that attacked last night. It looked so big and scary, but Daddy had fought it anyway. "Got it," she said, wanting to be tough.

Greens're tough.

They hung up, and she passed Miss Bubbles back her phone.

"Okay Brisa, off you go. Have a great time with Richie!" Miss Bubbles said.

"I will!"

Richie took her hand, and Gina guided them both to the waiting, black sedan that would drive them to Richie's house for the best afternoon ever. "Oh my gosh, this is so cool! You're finally gonna see my room! We can play heroes and monsters, and watch Muppet Pals, and Gina just got me a whooooole bag of Bubu Lubus we can eat!"

Brisa squealed. "¡Me los voy a comer toooooodos!"

Gina ruffled her hair and sang, "No si yo me los como todos primerooooo."

"Can we go now?" Richie whined.

"Of course! Those Bubu Lubus won't eat themselves." Gina winked at Brisa, and she giggled.

Today was going to be so much fun.

For the official record of All Those Times Buttercup Was Right About Shit, this was a monumentally dumb idea.

"This is a monumentally dumb idea!" Buttercup shouted to be heard over the wind.

Butch, his head uniformly shorn in the best approximation of a buzz cut Buttercup could manage with a pair of wavy-edged Crazy Cut Scissors, which were the only scissors Bubbles kept in the house in case of, like, emergency arts and crafts, sped up the Live Edge and blew through an intersection just as the light changed from yellow to red. The monumentally dumb idea-haver whooped gloriously. Buttercup squeezed his middle tighter, but not too tight that she would hurt him through his fresh bandages. She could be right without being a sourpuss about it.

As they passed through the Sirloin District into Chinatown, the grime-kissed, grey apartment buildings gave way to even more grime-kissed, grey apartment buildings packed and stacked tighter than Jenga blocks. Butch slowed the bike in front of a dingy dim-sum restaurant guarded by a man-sized, unspeakably creepy maneki neko. Its peeling, golden grin and yellow eyes beckoned Buttercup and Butch closer.

"I got us here in record time," Butch gloated.

"By breaking the speed limit and running not one, but two red lights."

"Yeah, but you're with me, so it's like a free pass."

"The only free pass you've qualified for is my foot passing up your ass, fuck-tard. You're lucky we didn't get pulled over."

He sneered, all curling and teeth, but the effect was somewhat ruined by the fat gauze bandages taped to his cheeks that made him look like a particularly menacing marshmallow. "You are so obsessed with my ass. I swear, it's all you fucking talk about."

"Butch."

"Yeah?"

"Shut the hell up."

Mercifully, he piped down and followed Buttercup through the resident access door next to the crappy cat. Stairs ahead led to the apartment floors above the dim-sum restaurant.

"J. James & J. James," Buttercup read the chicken-scratch name placard on the locked mailbox slot among the several others in this building. "Apartment 304."

"That's a lotta J's," Butch said.

"Yup."

"James 'Jimmy' James and J. James. Ten bucks says the sister's Jessie."

"Do you even have ten dollars?"

Butch patted the back pocket of his jeans. "I will soon."

Buttercup considered his back pocket, remembered how he'd called her out on her ass affinity (which, fair), and promptly looked away with a cough. "I bet it's something made up. Double James' parents wouldn't pick something as banal as Jessie."

He laughed. "You're on."

Apartment 304 was appropriately located on the third floor at the end of a grey-carpeted hallway that had once been dark green a century ago. A communal ash tray sat on the floor in a corner next to the door, home to a dozen blackened butts floating in a soupy, spittle cocktail. Buttercup was one hundred percent certain something had recently died in this hallway and its rotting corpse had been stashed behind the plastered walls like a natural fumigant.

"I'm doing the talking," Buttercup reminded her unofficial partner.

"Good cop, bad cop. I got it," Butch said.

"More like good cop, not-a-cop. You shouldn't really even be here."

His injuries were healing and they would disappear entirely, according to Blossom, but it would take a bit of time. More distressing was his bounce back after completely breaking down in her arms. He insisted he was fine, that he'd done what he could and Brick had made his bed. Fair. But having spent the last four years resenting Blossom for leaving the way she did, Buttercup knew it was not so simple to let go of a target, let alone a leader. Butch, however, would not be deterred from doing something useful, something he could actually push forward, and Buttercup would have sooner turned Bubbles' Crazy Cut Scissors on her own luscious locks than refuse him that.

"But I'm glad you are," she added, her gaze fixed resolutely on the door.

"Yeah, I know."

Buttercup knocked before she could do something truly stupid like look at him looking at her. In seconds, the door creaked open but caught on a chain. A woman with mean, brown eyes peered at them through the crack.

"Who're you?" she demanded.

Buttercup flashed her ID badge. "Citiesville Police, ma'am. My partner and I have a few questions about your brother."

"Jimothy? He don't live here anymore." She tried to close the door, but Buttercup caught it easily.

"That's what we wanted to talk to you about," Buttercup said.

If the woman's unblinking eyes could talk, they would have been telling Buttercup to eat her entire ass. But she hesitated at the sight of Buttercup's standard-issue firearm holstered at her hip.

"We know he was involved in a recent burglary and disappeared shortly thereafter," Buttercup said. "And we know you had nothing to do with it. We just want to ask you some questions about the night he disappeared."

The woman took a puff of her cigarette, lips pursed around it like a pinched asshole. She blew the smoke through the crack in the door directly at Buttercup, who was tremendously proud of herself for 1) not breaking down the door then and there and 2) looking like a total bad bitch who didn't even blink.

"Fine," the woman rasped. "But I know my rights."

Something told Buttercup she absolutely fucking did not know her rights, considering she welcomed a police officer lying through her teeth without a warrant, thus opening herself and her property up to further search and seizure if (when) Buttercup or Butch spotted anything reasonably suspicious, but cool.

The door closed, the woman removed the chain, and the door opened again, wide enough to admit Buttercup and Butch this time. She had the build and complexion of a daikon radish. Her mean gaze and meaner mouth lingered shamelessly on Butch's bandaged face. She took another long drag of her cigarette, and then she tossed it on the overfull dish on the doorstep.

"Don't touch nothin'," the woman said. She turned her back to them and headed deeper inside the apartment, her bunny-ear slippers scritch-scratching on the stained linoleum floor with every step.

Butch caught Buttercup's wrist and mouthed 'Jimothy' at her like it was the single-most exciting word in the English language.

Buttercup shot him a look that they both knew would do absolutely nothing to deter his glee, and followed the woman inside.

Bubbles knew what Blossom and Boomer were up to, and she did not like it one bit.

"The Coastguard confirmed it," Blossom explained to a distracted Clara Clearly, who was busy prepping a microscope in the tenth grade biology lab that was her home away from home. "There have only been a handful of monsters crossing from Monster Island through Golden Bay waters in the last ten years, and not a single one in the last two months."

"Uh-huh," Clara said, rooting around a tray of samples she kept refrigerated for the one she wanted.

Boomer literally breathed down Clara's neck where he hovered over her. "Which doesn't match Professor Utonium's accounts of the monster attacks over the same time period."

"Well, I can't exactly speak to where they came from," Clara said. "I'm a biologist, not a cartographer."

Bubbles took Boomer's hand and brought him back down to the floor. "Can I talk to you for a second, please?"

"But we're right in the middle of—"

Bubbles pressed a finger to his lips. "It'll only take a moment."

Boomer glanced at Blossom, but she was preoccupied studying the previous monster sample slides Clara had amassed with Bubbles' assistance. Bubbles led him to the other side of the lab and held his hands in hers.

"Hey," she said. "How are you?"

Boomer blinked at her as if she had spoken squirrel to him. "What?"

"Boomer, relax. Look at me." She caught his chin and brought him back when he tried to see what Blossom and Clara were doing.

"Can we talk later? We should really be helping them," he said.

Bubbles searched his drawn face. The soft flesh under his eyes was faintly bruised as though he had powdered himself in shadows. She ran her thumb across his temple. "Work is Blossom's way of coping, but it's not yours. Please let me comfort you."

Boomer was as stiff as a metric ruler, but she wrapped her arms around him anyway.

"I should have come home this morning," she said. "I should have been there for you."

"No, it's okay." His breath was warm and wan against her bangs.

"It's not. Why did you tell me to stay here? Why didn't you come over last night? Did you think I would turn you away?"

"Baby, no." Finally, he hugged her back and breathed her deep. "I couldn't take you away from your sisters. Not after what happened to Blossom last night."

Bubbles squeezed her eyes shut and wished he was wrong, but he wasn't. Not four years ago, and not now. But he wasn't right, either.

"You're mine as much as they are," she said. "You're worth my time and my love. Not because you can help us fight the monsters; because I love you."

Very slowly, he unfolded in her arms like a bud flowering at first light. Bubbles pressed her lips to his ear and threaded her fingers gently around his loose man bun.

"Bubbles," he said carefully, "I love you for saying that." The pads of his fingers followed the curve of her jaw from ear to chin. "But right now, I need to do this. I want to do it. I want to do something good."

She slipped her hand over his, entwining their fingers. "You have nothing to prove."

"It's not about proof. I want to do this because I can. I don't want to live my life according to his rules anymore."

His words carried with them the heavy weight of release, and Bubbles could not help but shiver. Gravitational, her eyes were drawn to Blossom, clinically calm as she swapped theories with Clara.

Boomer's smile was tired. "You should tell her the truth about four years ago. Buttercup too. I think you deserve that."

Bubbles sniffled and wiped her eyes before a few stray tears could fall and ruin her mascara. "Yeah, um, I'll think about it."

Boomer kissed her forehead and let his hands fall past her shoulders to her hands. "C'mon. Let's go see what they're working on."

She let him lead her back with a bounce in his feet, and she went along with his newfound purpose for now. But when he reached the top of his peak and the boulder came crashing down, Bubbles would be there to help him catch it. She was not going to make the same mistake she'd made four years ago.

"What'd we miss?" Boomer asked.

"Nothing new." Clara looked up from the microscope and pulled her corkscrew ringlets into a high ponytail. "The Tentacle Monster had the same design flaw as the previous three, confirmed."

"So they're all related?" Bubbles asked. "But they were all so different."

"Monsters." Clara shrugged. "It's weird, but it's not as though they obey the same natural laws that govern all other carbon-based life."

"So what, we're back to square one?" Boomer said.

Blossom, who had been pensive until now, said, "No. In fact, I think we've nearly solved it."

"How's that?"

Blossom went to the blackboard and grabbed a chalk stick from the box. "What do we know about the four monsters we've fought? Besides the fact that they share the same design flaw."

Boomer raised his hand. "We have no idea where they came from?"

Blossom wrote that down. "Good. What else? Anything that strikes you as similar between the four of them? Just call it out rapid fire. I'm a lawyer, not a professor."

Bubbles approached the blackboard and crossed her arms. "They were all huge."

"And they all attacked heavily populated areas," Clara chimed in, drawn into the exercise.

"Yes, good." Blossom listed both on the blackboard, and then she drew a large circle around all three of the observations she'd written down. "They didn't come from Monster Island." She tapped the first observation. "They were behemoths." Tap. "And they appeared in front of a lot of people." Tap, and then an arrow across the board. "And yet, no one saw them coming until they were already attacking."

Bubbles stared at the blackboard and followed Blossom's logical train of thought. "We should have seen them coming."

Blossom's eyes glowed, bright and baleful. "But we didn't. In fact, we didn't even hear them coming. There were six of us with Super hearing all gathered in one place last night, and not a single one of us heard the Tentacle Monster's approach until it was a block away. How do we explain that?"

Boomer, engrossed in the game, leaped off a desk and began to pace. "They dropped out of the sky. They teleported in. They—I don't know, they were tiny and then they inflated once they were in position."

Blossom scribbled furiously on the chalkboard.

"Okay, hold on," Clara said, joining Boomer in his pacing such that they began to circle each other. "While I don't doubt that some monsters could have some of those abilities, the chances of all four having them are infinitesimally small. Maybe if they were all the same species, but what do a Sludge Monster and a Tentacle Monster have in common, really?"

"The design flaw," Bubbles said.

Blossom wrote that down in the middle of the board and circled it thrice. "Boomer, repeat that last thing you said."

"Uh, they inflated to king-size?" he said.

"After that."

Boomer frowned. "That…they were in position."

Blossom wrote 'Intelligent' on the board, and then she drew a looping arrow to 'Design Flaw' circled in the center.

Bubbles felt the weight of her lunch settle in the pit of her stomach as she read the latest word Blossom wrote along the connecting arrow between them. "Pre-meditated."

"What, like a murder?" Boomer said, too casual to be totally casual.

"There was a moment when we were fighting the Tentacle Monster," Blossom said, still facing the blackboard, "and it grabbed people like it was going to eat them. Except it didn't. It dangled them in front of me, and it waited."

"Like it was taunting you?" Clara said, incredulous.

"Like it was taking hostages," Blossom said. "Like it recognized me as a threat, and it was warning me off."

"Okay, no." Clara put up her hands. "I'm not an expert on monster biology, but I've been doing a lot of research since Bubbles first brought me the Sludge Monster sample. The actual experts agree that monsters are no more or less intelligent than any other apex predator. They focus their efforts on hunting, fighting over territory or mates, and above all surviving. Everything we know about monsters suggests they can't strategize on the level you're suggesting."

"But these aren't normal monsters." Bubbles took a piece of chalk and traced over Blossom's center circles. "They share a design flaw. You said it yourself."

"They appear in heavily populated areas," Blossom rattled off. "They show up completely undetected, even to our Super senses. They show an extremely sophisticated level of intelligence unheard of in almost every other life form on the planet."

"They're blending in," Boomer said, white as a ghost.

Bubbles recalled the fight against the Sludge Monster and the numinous dread she had felt looking into its melted eyes as it assaulted the city's residents, hitting where it would cause the maximum amount of destruction and loss of life. "They're evil," she said.

"No," Blossom said, "but what's been done to them is." She erased 'Design Flaw' and wrote over the encircled space. "In their position, I think I would be just as desperate to fight back."

Bubbles dropped her chalk stick, and it snapped on the floor with a crack. The word Blossom had written in bold caps in the center of the board looked back at her with a canny presence of its own:

Human.

Butch scratched his bandaged arm through his black button-up. The Chemical X Buttercup had lathered him with burrowed deep into his pores like worms. Which was, frankly, a god-awful mental image, but not as god-awful as the state of this squalid piss hole of an apartment.

The kitchen counter was pockmarked with greasy pan burns, and a layer of fried grime so thick you could slice it with a bread knife was baked over the electric stovetop. Dirty plates, take-out cartons, and at least twenty-seven Big Gulp cups were scattered throughout the kitchen and living room like they had burst from a beaten piñata. There were three trash cans, only one of which held a bag, and all three were on the verge of eruption at the slightest tremor. A dead fish floated in a bowl of fetid, brown water.

In the middle of this shit sanctuary sat a $2,000 flatscreen television mounted to the should-have-been-white wall upon a throne of enough designer shoes in their boxes to dress a fashion-forward centipede.

The nauseating contrast of human detritus and glitz arrested Butch where he stood, prompting a stupefied (and stupid), "Uhhhh."

Buttercup flashed him a look from the living room, where she had somehow managed to keep her thoughts to herself as she interrogated the pasty, bath-robed, bunny-slippered, Virginia Slim-smoking slattern about her missing brother.

"Ms. James, can you tell—" Buttercup began.

"My name's Jelinda," said Jelinda, dead-ass serious. "Don't get all polite-like. Your tactics won't work on me."

Butch wheezed so bad he began to cough.

"Jelinda, right," Buttercup said. Her fingers curled around his and the crumpled ten dollar bill he slipped her when he passed behind her. "As I was saying, can you tell me about Jimmy's disappearance? You never filed an official missing person's report."

Jelinda puffed her cigarette with the ferocity of an overheated engine. "That's 'cause he's not missin'."

"He hasn't reported for work in weeks."

"So he's a slacker. It's a free country last I checked."

"Yeah, but I have it on good authority that he was involved in a burglary gone sour. Do you think whoever hired him for the job could have had something to do with his disappearance?"

"Hey, I'm no snitch."

"Jelinda, your brother has been missing for almost two months," Buttercup said with about as restraint as a pressure cooker on high heat. "If you know anything about his last job, no matter how small, you need to tell me. I don't care about anything but finding him, preferably alive."

As Buttercup tacked on a few points to her blood pressure in the most infuriating interview ever conducted, Butch explored the used diaper that dared to call itself a home. He was pretty sure Jimothy wasn't stashed in a cabinet somewhere hiding from them, if not because every cabinet was already jammed full of dog food for a mysteriously absent dog, then because the very idea was fucking stupid. Still, it didn't hurt to confirm it with his X-ray vision.

A look through to the bedroom piqued his interest, and he headed there. Buttercup saw him moving and moved with him so that Jelinda was facing away from the bedroom door and didn't notice him slip inside.

The bedroom was a nightmare of clothes and even more shoes scattered over the floor, the bed, and spilling out of the closet like roadkill viscera. Brick would shit an actual brick if he could see this place. Butch ignored the scenery and the extremely unwelcome thought of his dickbag former brother, and floated to the mattress shoved against the far corner. He pulled up the grey box spring and retrieved the sack that had caught his attention. It was full of cash: banded stacks of twenties, newly printed. He wondered how much Jelinda had hauled in to be able to afford a luxury television and three closets-worth of designer clothes. He couldn't wait to watch Buttercup ask her.

Jelinda whirled on him when he came out of the bedroom, her lips flapping with an unspoken vulgarity, but she shut up when she saw the familiar sack in Butch's hand. He dumped the money out on top of an oily pizza box on the living room coffee table and grinned at Buttercup.

She didn't return his smile, but her eyes darkened to a smolder that would have gotten him fully hard all on its own if they weren't standing in a human litter box.

"That's my property," Jelinda hissed. "You went through my property!"

"I sure did," Butch said.

"You fuckin' pig. I got rights!"

Butch smiled so wide his healing cheeks stung. "Not a cop. But I can do this." He snapped his fingers and produced a brilliant green spark.

When Jelinda tried to run, Butch's stomach actually flipped in celebration. He dashed to catch her in a blaze of gleeful green before she could take two steps and trapped her spindly, terrycloth-covered arms behind her back. He spun to face Buttercup, who sauntered over like she was trying to get him worked up. She swayed her hips and everything, for fuck's sake.

"That's a lot of cash you got there, Jelinda," Buttercup said. She picked up a stack of twenties and ran her thumb over the edges. "Not as much as you had before you bought that TV and the entire Spring collection. Where's the money from?"

Jelinda, who surely had a death wish, spat at Buttercup. Buttercup dodged in a blur of green and materialized inches in front of Jelinda's face. She stole the burning butt of Jelinda's cigarette from her fingers and crushed it underfoot.

"You didn't report your brother's disappearance," Buttercup growled in her face, "you're hiding an entire mortgage's worth of what I'm a hundred percent sure is hush money under your mattress, and you've got two Supers completely focused on you. Believe me, you will be much happier with our attentions turned on the fuckwads who put you up to this. So what's it gonna be, Jelinda?"

Jelinda, cowed and shaking in her smelly bathrobe, bleated like a goat with a poker up its ass. "Th-The drawer, there! Check the drawer! They left me a number on a card, just check it!"

Buttercup was in the kitchen throwing open drawers before Jelinda could finish.

"What kind of card?" Butch demanded.

"I-I don't know, a business card! White, I don't know!"

Buttercup had found enough business cards in the junk drawer for a round of Black Jack. She pushed a stack of paper cups and an empty Smirnoff handle off the counter to make space to spread them all out.

"Please, I-I was going to report 'im missing, I swear! But it was so much money, and I got expenses!" Jelinda brayed.

"Yeah, I can see you're putting your earnings to real good use," Butch said.

"Which card is it, Jelinda?" Buttercup said in a voice from the abyss.

But Jelinda was a weepy wreck mumbling incoherently, so Butch set her aside to help Buttercup.

"It's got to be one of these," Buttercup said.

Butch took a look and froze. His eyes landed on a plain, white card with a hand-written phone number and nothing else scrawled on it. But it wasn't the number that drew his attention. He picked it up.

"What?" Buttercup said.

Butch stared at the two-toned shield embossed on the card. "I've seen this before."

Buttercup snatched the card. "What? Where?"

"That's the one!" Jelinda cried, pointing her bony finger at the card Buttercup held. "That's the number he gave me to call in case anyone came sniffin' around about Jimothy."

"Who gave this to you?" Buttercup said. "Can you describe the guy?"

Butch wasn't listening to the conversation. He was in a bleached lobby sitting in an uncomfortable chair next to Brick staring at that same chromatic shield behind the receptionist's desk as they waited for Blossom to arrive so they could start the most boring tour ever. Brick had asked him to be there as a show of force. This was an important potential client, a lot of connections, and he needed to show her he was not to be fucked with. A face Butch had seen just yesterday trick-or-treating.

"Butch, hey," Buttercup said. "Hello?"

Butch barely heard her. He wasn't sure when he had begun to float, though Buttercup grabbed his hand to pull him back down. She was shouting at him now, but he didn't hear her. All he could hear was Brisa's voice as she had been on the phone earlier this afternoon, so eager to spend the day with her best friend while Butch hunted bad guys.

"Oh god," Butch said, in a voice that cracked.

Brisa was with her.

He'd said she could go.

Dinah had kept her safe. She was safe, last night proved it.

"Butch," Buttercup said, a protective urgency in her tone that would have made him love her if he didn't already.

He blasted out the dingy window, heedless of anything but the truth, which was that Dinah fucking Swathe was a liar and a villain and dead. Bottom of the ocean dead when he found her.

Parties were Princess' treat to herself. Some people indulged in bubble baths or too much red wine or Facebook stalking; Princess preferred Valentino, VIP lists, and vengeance. Tonight's indulgence came courtesy of her father, who offered her his invitation to a business soirée in Citiesville that promised a celebrity guest list and a first look at the venerated Aegis Labs' latest, cutting-edge innovation. Oliver Morbucks was courted for his wealth and potential liquidity injection, but he loathed social functions. He preferred a more intimate courtship where he could be the alpha bitch of honor instead of having to come within spitting distance of the hoi polloi.

Brick also hated these types of networking functions, especially the swanky ones. He had always resented how blind the privileged and powerful could be to their own advantage, or so he claimed. Princess had cried laughing when he told her that, as serious as the grave even as he dug the hole himself.

Anyway, fuck Brick. He was the reason she was going tonight. She just hoped he could feel the privilege and power she'd be absorbing tonight from the bottom of his dank, dark pit that he could absolutely stay in for the rest of eternity, because fuck him.

Antony drove and agreed to wait for her until she was ready to leave, because that was literally his job. She checked her phone at the door, house rules, and descended the stairs to an underground Olympus. Wall sconces and velvet drapery bathed the old speakeasy in lambent grey and violet and burgundy. Servers in harlequin masks poured generous goblets of Petrus and Screaming Eagle. A stage perched at the far end of the scrumptious room, currently empty. The finger food melted in her mouth. Princess groaned, imagining the big donor bucks that would come rolling in if the Swathe Foundation served mushroom pastries even half as good as the one she'd just eaten at their next gala. That particular daydream led to thoughts of Blossom, and Princess immediately shut it down.

Because fuck Brick, but fuck Blossom too.

How dare they scold her like a child? What gave them the right to scream at her like she was the one terrorizing the city and not the giant Tentacle Monster? She was a grown-ass woman. She knew the risks. She used to be a super villain, for fuck's sake! This wasn't her first rodeo, and she had yet to meet a bull with the balls to throw her off her game.

Princess ate another mushroom puff and washed it down with a beautiful gulp of Petrus that would have been criminal not to enjoy regardless of her mood. But as she stood alone at her table in a gold dress as soft as butter and her curly hair like a dream, she couldn't help but think of those two idiots.

She didn't need her phone to recall the unanswered text Blossom had sent her earlier that day, having read it so many times she'd memorized it:

[Blossom: Hey, just checking in. Let me know you're okay. Last night was awful. I feel awful. I'm so sorry. Please call me.]

Not a peep from Brick all day.

That craven motherfucker.

"You look like you need a hero," said a voice directly to her left.

A hunky, fit guy packed so tightly into his suit he resembled a sack of apples had approached her. His long, blond hair cascaded down his shoulders and hid one honey-chocolate eye. He leaned on her table, and Princess snatched her wine, concerned he might break the table under his top-heavy weight.

"You have got to be kidding me," Princess said.

The extremely recognizable Super flipped his hair to the envy of every shampoo model who ever lived. "I kid thee not, fine maiden. Are you spoken for?"

It was a shame she was drinking Petrus, because Princess wanted nothing more than to toss her drink in his Pantene-pandering face. But that would be an affront to the institution of good taste, and a waste of wine generally, something Princess abided about as much as split ends.

"Do you have any idea who I am, you Thor-kin douchebag?" she said.

Val Hallen, equal parts Super and shitbag, gaped open-mouthed at Princess. He was saved by his colleague and superior, sort of.

"Val, making sure the ladies are comfortable, I see. Your old world gallantry knows no limits."

A masked man loomed over Val Hallen in garish stars and stripes.

"Major," Val Hallen said, surprised. "The bodacious babe and I doth be exchanging righteous pleasantries."

"Yeah, no," Princess said. "Your IQ must be taller than your BMI to ride, babe."

Major Glory's laugh was mellifluous and rich, everything a luxury-branded Superhero's laugh ought to be. "I don't think Miss Morbucks is interested in exchanging anything with you tonight, Val. Run along now."

Val Hallen, thottery thwarted, turned up his perfectly sculpted nose, and he moved on to harass some other soul thirsty for something other than Petrus. Preferably one who did not speak English or Old Norse. Major Glory remained, but with far less affectation, his stripes as deterrent as a coral snake's. He sipped an Old Fashioned and regarded Princess thoughtfully.

"I apologize for my subordinate," Major Glory said. "Europeans, you know."

"If you're looking for my father, he isn't here," Princess said.

"I wasn't looking for anything until I espied you perched here alone."

Oh Christ.

Princess had met Major Glory once before when she was a teenager at one of her parents' charity galas. He'd assisted the U.S. government in averting a possible nuclear threat, and the Morbucks Foundation was only too happy to capitalize on the good press. A few million in donations and a photo-op with the star-spangled Super himself, and Oliver Morbucks doubled his personal wealth almost overnight. The Major had been the epitome of southern charm and etiquette the entire evening, to hear her Georgia-born mother tell it.

Princess only remembered the way he walked. Stiff and uncomfortable, like he was nothing but fleshy limbs hanging off a titanium pole. There had been a practiced cadence to his gait, like he had memorized the rhythm and steps of a foxtrot without ever having heard the music. To his limited credit, they probably didn't play the foxtrot on his home planet. Still, anyone who walked among humans like he'd learned it watching them from afar was not someone Princess wanted walking anywhere near her.

"I was sorry to hear about your chopper," Major Glory said.

If Princess was an uncultured swine, she may have choked on her Petrus. She let the wine sit on her tongue a moment, savoring the tannins, and swallowed slowly. "I see you're keeping up with the news in between your busy hero schedule. Not enough monsters in New York these days?"

"You make it sound like I yearn to engage with beasts." He meant it as a joke, but Princess eyed him like he had the plague. He cleared his throat. "There's no place like Townsville, as they say."

"Well, Townsville has enough Supers to go around. But I'll pass along your offer to the Powerpuff Girls."

He smiled, and it made the ends of Princess' hair cringe. His teeth were so white, so straight. "So they're still buzzing around these parts."

As if you didn't know.

Princess had watched the summit of the Association of World Super Men the year Blossom and her sisters had sought admission into the group and been turned away. The AWSM claimed it could not in good conscience extend membership to extreme minors, but that was a hot load of garbage and everybody knew it. Nemeses or not, Princess would never forget how upset Blossom had been after losing her first battle against systemic sexism and patriarchy on live television. Villainous or heroic, Super or not, it seemed women would forever remain inescapable allies in the oldest battle ever waged.

Blossom could be a preachy snob when she wanted to be, but Princess would not sit here and listen to this irrelevant Martian man compare her to a common mosquito.

"And they're not even getting paid to do it," Princess said. "Can you imagine?" No, he and his exorbitant tax-dollar stipend could certainly fucking not, and they both knew it. Satisfied that she had wasted enough of her valuable time allowing him to mouth breathe in her personal space, Princess turned to leave. The longer she stayed anywhere near Major Glory's airspace, the more she risked contracting a venereal disease.

He grabbed her wrist and stopped her dead.

"Don't go, Miss Morbucks," he crooned. His voice was southern hospitality smeared over shit. "The show's about to start."

A show of sorts did start, and though he let her go, Princess remained anchored to her spot, arrested. A high-browed woman in white Chanel whose face she recognized but didn't know came on stage, and a projector flickered to life behind her. She welcomed everyone and thanked them all for being here, with a special nod to Major Glory and the members of the illustrious AWSM who had deigned to make the trip out. He waved like a debutante at her coming out party when a spotlight landed on him, and Princess had never wanted to hurl more than she did right the fuck now, the Petrus be damned.

The woman introduced herself as Dinah Swathe, and she launched into a presentation on behalf of her company, Aegis Labs.

"I'm so pleased," Dinah said, "to share my progress with all of you tonight. You're all here because your donations have made our progress possible. I hope to count on your continued support as we move to the beta phase of Project Aegis."

A slideshow of chronically ill people recovering from their ailments ensued as Dinah described the revolutionary treatment Aegis Labs had been working on for years, and the breakthrough they had achieved recently in their drug testing.

"Imagine a world without weakness," Dinah dared the room, "where sickness is a myth and death is an afterthought. That world is within our reach now thanks to Compound X. And your generous support, of course!"

The sycophants laughed. Servers began handing out flutes filled with Dom Pérignon.

"Compound X has opened up possibilities for further exploration beyond the purely medicinal. I am honored to share with you the latest results of Aegis' dedicated research and testing." Dinah gestured off-stage, and a man in a navy blue smock accompanied by two black-clad, burly bodyguard types walked on stage. Even under the ambient lighting, a noticeable sheen of sweat made his large forehead shine under his dark, curly hair. The bodyguards, equipped with hazard masks and assault rifles pointed low, flanked the man but gave him room to breathe.

In spite of herself, Princess leaned over her table, her eyes glued to the smocked man, who appeared to be concentrating hard. Seconds passed when nothing happened, until something did. He bared his teeth and let out a shout, and white power flooded his eyes and shot from his mouth in a beam that blasted clean through the back wall over everyone's heads. The room erupted in shrieks as people ducked, afraid for their lives, but nothing happened. The smocked man powered down, heaving hard, and the two bodyguards at his sides trained their rifles on him as he slumped to his knees.

Princess stared, bug-eyed, at the exhausted man on stage. She had completely forgotten about Major Glory until he leaned in close and said: "And he's not even getting paid. Can you imagine?"

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

The room recovered once everyone realized there was no danger, but Princess couldn't take her eyes off the smocked prisoner—the prisoner—who was forcibly escorted offstage by his two handlers, their rifles jammed into his back to keep him moving. Dinah clapped, all smiles.

"Bids will open at 5 p.m. tomorrow," Dinah said. "Thank you all for your continued support!"

Major Glory held his glass out to Princess. His smile was waxy and wet with balm. "To a world without weakness."

Princess numbly clinked her wine glass to his. It was frighteningly easy to return his smile. He wasn't the only practiced one here. "Cheers."

She made sure to drain her glass for the excuse to grab a new one, and finally noped out of there. Her mind was curiously blank as she moved on autopilot and reached for her phone, only to find that she didn't have it because she'd checked it at the door. House rules. Something about that seemed tragically consequential now.

She'd made it nearly to the door when a voice stopped her.

"Princess Morbucks, I don't think I've quite had the pleasure."

Princess turned, a smile chiseled on her freckled face. "Dinah Swathe," she said with cold decorum. "The pleasure is all yours."

Dinah laughed airily. "A caustic wit, just like your father. I'm delighted to know the stories are true."

"Like father like daughter, as they say," Princess said, all honey and aconite.

Dinah continued to smile like she didn't know how not to. "Oh, I agree. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my father too. They're like that, aren't they?"

Princess held her unflinching gaze. "Controlling?"

"Inspiring," Dinah said, still smiling. She offered her hand. "I'm sorry Oliver couldn't join us tonight, but I would love to show you what I've been working on. I hear you've always been keenly interested in a world above and beyond the mundane."

Princess stared down the hand aimed at her like the barrel of a gun. Dinah's ice-white eyes were locked and loaded on a hairline trigger, waiting.

With a calculated smirk, Princess took Dinah's hand and stepped closer. "I'd absolutely love that."

"Excellent! Right this way. I'm sure you won't be disappointed."

Dinah led her back to the party and farther away from her phone, from Antony, from the exit. Princess thought again about Blossom's text left unanswered, about all the calls and voicemails Brick didn't leave her. They weren't here, and they wouldn't be coming.

She was on her own for this one, girl versus monster, and the monster's hand was cold in hers.

Buttercup would be an ass aficionado and y'all can pry that fun fact from my cold, dead hands.

Those of you hitting those Favorite/Follow buttons and leaving me Reviews are seriously keeping me going in quarantine. It's so uplifting seeing those notifications pop up in my inbox, thank you so much!

Next time: Brick cleans his apartment. Princess makes a friend.