Howler's spray paint was still wet. Owlette didn't touch it. PJ Robot beeped, and she nodded. "Take a picture first," she said, and PJ Robot whirred agreement. They went back to the PJ Seeker, where Gekko and Catboy were already waiting. PJ Robot closed the doors of the Seeker. The Seeker backed up, extended a hose, and blasted a caustic liquid at the wall.
"I don't get it," said Owlette. "I mean, I get it, but I don't really get it."
"What's there to get?" asked Catboy. "It's like how you doodle pictures of birds when you're bored at school."
PJ Robot pushed a button, and the flow of liquid ceased. Spray paint dripped off the wall and collected in a puddle of swirling colors on the sidewalk. He pushed another button, and the Seeker sprayed a different liquid at the wall. When it was done, the wall was pristine.
PJ Robot chirped in delight. Catboy said, "All done already? Take us home, I guess."
"I never thought we'd be cleaning up graffiti," said Gekko. "It doesn't seem like a superhero kind of job."
"It is if it's supervillain graffiti," said Owlette. "Especially if it's weird supervillain graffiti."
"It's not that weird," said Catboy, "just inappropriate."
Owlette brought up a picture of the graffiti on her screen. It was a nude woman, standing upright, with her hands on her hips. Each of her breasts were larger than her head. Owlette didn't see how anyone could find it sexy. It looked more like a diagram of a horrifying medical condition. Despite that, the woman seemed to enjoy showing off her grotesquely swollen chest. She was attempting to smile, though her smudged lips and off-center nose meant she didn't look especially happy.
"Do guys actually like looking at this stuff?" Owlette asked.
Catboy shrugged. "I bet he does."
"Not him. Someone less weird like you."
"Uh … not really."
Gekko stifled a laugh. When Owlette raised an eyebrow, he said, "It's nothing."
"Come on, you can't almost laugh and then say it's nothing."
Gekko glanced at Catboy, who was red in the face. To Owlette, Gekko repeated, "It's nothing."
Owlette said, "Don't tell me you two look at this stuff."
Catboy said, "Well, if you don't ask, then …" His voice trailed off.
"Then?"
"… then we don't have to tell you," Catboy mumbled. This time Gekko couldn't stifle his laugh.
Owlette had never looked at pornography herself, but she found the idea unpleasant. It was an emotionless display of body parts, a spectacle where human beings were treated like cuts of meat at a butcher shop. If pornography was true, then men and women were disposable and there was no such thing as love. But she knew she was in love, and that meant pornography was lies.
Lies, just like the ones Catboy and Gekko were telling her. Owlette said, "You two need to come clean right now."
Gekko said, "Fine. We've looked at some."
"Together?"
"More like, we're aware of a shared interest."
"How does that even come up?"
"How does it not?" Boys, it seemed, smuggled all sorts of sexual items into school. Sometimes they were innocent objects with edgy brand names, like a surfing product called, "Sex Wax." But there was real contraband, too, small things that could be hidden, like playing cards with naked women or folded-up printouts of pictures found on the Internet. Often they were just images that were discreetly passed from smartphone to smartphone, leaving an electronic trail of erections. "But there's not as much as you might think," said Gekko. "Nobody wants to get caught, and besides, most of the time at school, you're already busy."
"So what do you look at?" asked Owlette. She already knew that their answer would make her unhappy. Those girls had something she didn't have. Their hair or eyes or skin were a different color. They were better at makeup. They were taller and skinnier. They had bigger boobs and a bigger butt. They did things that she wouldn't. Owlette already felt like a failure.
Gekko said, "Kinda whatever. I guess I don't have really strong preferences? I don't spend that much time with it."
Catboy had remained silent ever since Owlette had demanded they come clean. Now she turned to him. "What about you?" she asked. "Anything specific?"
Catboy said, "Yeah …" He tried to pretend that Owlette and Gekko weren't expecting him to continue, but they just kept looking at him and waiting. Eventually he said, "It's usually drawn …"
"What kind of drawings?" asked Owlette.
"Of girls."
"Go on."
"Errr …" Catboy said, but he didn't continue.
"Now I'm worried," Owlette said. "Something must be wrong if you don't want to talk about it this much."
"They, uh, look"–Catboy's voice got very quiet–"like cats. They're called catgirls."
They were back at HQ now. Owlette had never heard of catgirls before. An hour ago, she would have dismissed them as a weird thing from the Internet. Now, however, they were a weird thing one of her boyfriends liked. Understanding catgirls was important.
Owlette went to the PJ Picture Player. "PJ Robot, show me pictures of catgirls."
Beep beep click?
"What? Catboy keeps a stash of catgirl pictures here?"
Whir beep beep!
"Then let's take a look."
Catboy clutched his tail. "Oh, this is so embarrassing," he said.
Catgirls flooded the screen of the PJ Picture Player. Most were, as Catboy had said, drawn. A few were rendered 3-D models or women in costumes. All of them had cat ears instead of human ears. Most also had tails, and a few had paws instead of hands.
"These are so cute!" said Owlette. "I don't understand why you were embarrassed about these."
Gekko pointed at one of the pictures and said, "Is she chasing a mouse?"
Owlette scrolled through the pictures. "What's this?" she asked, pointing to a folder labeled, "meow."
"Nothing!" said Catboy. "Just more pictures! It's nothing!"
Catboy's ears and tail were standing straight up. Owlette had the feeling that something was wrong. She clicked on the folder. Her eyes went wide, and for a moment, she was speechless. She cleared her throat and said, "I see why you didn't want me to click on it."
The first catgirl in the folder was naked. She lay on her side, facing the screen and displaying her body. Her chin rested on one hand while she held her tail with the other. Her body was normally proportioned, so that despite her cat ears, she looked more human than Howler's graffiti. Her face hinted at a pleasant smile, as if she enjoyed posing and wanted the viewer to enjoy it, too.
"What do you see in her?" Owlette asked.
Catboy stammered, "I—I—I don't know. Look, can we just delete it all? I promise I'll never download anything like this ever again."
"No way," said Gekko. "She's pretty hot. She's making me want to whip it out and go for it."
"Ewww, enough of that," said Owlette. She flicked the PJ Picture Player to the next picture. This catgirl was also naked. She was on her knees with her legs spread. She had shaped her hands into a heart and held the heart against one of her breasts. Owlette flicked the screen again. A naked catgirl bent over, displaying her tail and bottom. Owlette gave the PJ Picture Player another flick, and another, and another. Naked catgirls paraded across the screen. She said, "You have a lot of these."
"Look, I'm sorry," said Catboy. "I don't really have an excuse."
Gekko said, "You don't need an excuse for these. You have good taste."
As Owlette looked through Catboy's collection of catgirl porn, a terrible feeling, like millions of little pinpricks, spread through her body. Each new picture drove the pins deeper into her flesh, until at last she felt like she was being stabbed through by knives. She didn't realize that her eyes had filled with tears until the screen disappeared in a blur.
Catboy asked, "Are you okay? What happened?"
Owlette could tell Catboy was ashamed of his pornography. He knew it was wrong, but he downloaded it anyway, looked at it anyway, stored and curated his collection anyway. Gekko wasn't ashamed that he looked at pornography; he didn't know, or didn't care, that it was wrong. Owlette wiped the tears from her eyes and shut down the PJ Picture Player. She asked, "Am I not good enough for you?"
"You're the best," said Catboy.
Owlette shouted, "Then what was all of that? If I'm the best, why do you have it?"
Gekko put his arm around Owlette and said, "He didn't mean to hurt you—"
Owlette slapped his arm away. "Well, he did! And you're not helping!" She stomped off to her elevator.
How many years had they been friends? When the three of them had first met, they had been so small they could barely put words together to make sentences. They had been perfect friends in all the years since. They should have made perfect boyfriends and a perfect girlfriend. They shouldn't have had the kind of fights and drama that so many couples had. Happiness should have been inevitable, even predestined.
Owlette arrived at her floor of HQ. She flew to one of her training hoops and sat on it. It was the same one where Luna had once sat with her and pretended to be her friend. Was that what Catboy and Gekko were doing with her? Pretending? Maybe they thought of her just like they thought of the girls in those pictures. Maybe they didn't love her at all. Maybe it was all just a scheme for her body. What a change this was from before they were dating. To think she wondered if they only liked her personality!
PJ Robot flew in. He hovered next to her and chirped softly.
"Yeah, I'm pretty upset," Owlette said. "I feel betrayed. At least I don't have to worry about you. It's not like you have a secret porn stash." She patted his head.
PJ Robot hummed and looked sad. He sighed. Then he whirred and began projecting images on the nearest wall. First there was a circuit board. Next was a bundle of wires plugged into a socket of some sort. Then there were pictures of microchips. PJ Robot beeped.
"I don't get it," Owlette said.
PJ Robot kept projecting pictures. There were more circuit boards and chips, but there were also electric motors, gearboxes, and solid-state relays. He whistled at a pneumatic actuator.
"This is … robot porn?" Owlette asked.
PJ Robot chirped. He flipped through dozens, maybe hundreds, of pictures in the space of a few seconds, then turned off his projector.
"I had no idea that was even a thing. Why do you look at it?"
Chirp. Whir, beep. Beep click.
"I guess so. Maybe I should stop being their girlfriend and be yours instead."
Beep, whir. Click, click, beep. Whir beep, beep chirp!
"What are you talking about?"
Whir whir chirp beep!
PJ Robot started his projector again. It showed the inside of HQ a few nights ago. Catboy, Owlette, and Gekko were cooling down after finishing a mission. When the video started, the three of them were on a couch. Gekko sat on one side. Owlette sat next to him, leaning on his shoulder. Catboy stretched across the couch with his head in Owlette's lap and his feet over the arm.
In the video, Owlette said, "I'm so lucky." She kissed Gekko's shoulder and squeezed Catboy's hand. "I'd never be satisfied with just one of you." PJ Robot froze the video.
Beep chirp, click whir chirp, beep, beep beep.
Owlette folded her arms. "That's not the same at all. They're my boyfriends."
PJ Robot chirped again, and the video continued. Catboy said, "You wouldn't settle for just one of us? Not that I want to change anything. Just asking."
"Of course she wouldn't settle for just me," said Gekko. "All I have are biceps, triceps, deltoids, pecs, lats, abs, quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves. Whereas you, sometimes you look like you have a muscle or two. You're almost not unsexy." Catboy batted his palm at Gekko, who slapped it away. They laughed.
In the video, Owlette said, "Having you together is more than twice as much fun as having either of you alone. We make a great team."
PJ Robot froze the video again. Click beep, chirp.
"It's not greedy to have two boyfriends," said Owlette.
Click beep, chirp whir click whir beep, beep beep, chirp click!
"Okay, okay. Maybe it's unfair that I get both of them and they have to share me. But it's not like they're asking for someone else. Instead they're looking at porn, and—well—fine, maybe that's a little like asking for someone else. It's still not the same, though. Pictures don't have feelings. Pictures can't cuddle them. I can. Though it's usually one at a time. Yeah, there's your point again. One of me and two of them. Am I a bad person for wanting them all to myself?"
Whir beep. Chirp?
"I do. I love them a lot."
Beep beep!
"For someone who's never had a girlfriend, you know an awful lot about love." Owlette leaned over and planted a kiss on PJ Robot's head. "Thanks."
Owlette flew down from her perch and took the elevator back to Catboy's floor. Catboy was leaning over an arm of the couch, idly kicking the cushions. Gekko was stretched prone on the floor, motionless, too despondent and grief-stricken to move.
"Guys?" asked Owlette.
At the sound of her voice, Catboy and Gekko sprang to their feet. They leaned forward, faces eager with anticipation.
"I—" Owlette began, before her voice choked off. She knew what she wanted to say, but it was still hard. If she didn't say it, she could pretend it wasn't true. But it was just as true as the pornography wasn't. "I'm sorry. I overreacted."
Catboy said, "It's … okay with you? If I … you know?"
"No, it's not. I still don't like it, and I wish you would delete it all and never look at it again. But I did get a little too emotional." Owlette approached the boys, who were standing side by side, and hugged them both. "I know you love me more than anything, and I love you too. Even when I'm mad, I still love you." She took a moment to hold them tight before she continued. "I think we should take a group picture. Something we can look at when we're not together."
"A … picture?" asked Gekko. "Oh, you mean an innocent picture! Not a sexy picture."
"No sexy pictures. Ever," confirmed Owlette. "Just us. Being together."
"I like it," said Gekko.
"And one more thing." Owlette put her arms around Catboy's neck. "I'm going to order something. A costume. For me to wear and you to enjoy." She whispered in his ear, "Meow."