I set off with Shoji, Tokage, Hagakure and Majestic in a police were fairly quiet, thinking over the upcoming mission. Gang Orca and Midnight-sensei were planning to throw this fight...I could only hope that nothing worse would happen to them than simply looking bad for a few hours in the media.

Best focus on what we were doing right now. My part of the whole thing.

Majestic was explaining now quietly, "We're going to be utilizing your shared abilities, Earphone Jack and Tentacole, to follow these villains. Once we've tracked them to their base, Invisible Girl will sneak in and plant a tracker. The others will follow us there and rendesvouz.

"Sir," said Tokage, "What's my role?"

"Reconnaissance. While we wait for the others, split yourself into parts and gather intel on the base, who's present and what kind of operation we're dealing with. Keep an eye out for trouble, and warn us if anything dangerous pops up."

"Gotcha."

"What do we do if they spot us there, or try to split?" I asked.

"Hopefully it won't come to that. We will do our best to keep them there, if push comes to shove - but the wait time will not be too long. Understood?"

We nodded, and decided not to bring up any other objections. We drove into a parking space in an alley near the open space where the fight was being staged between Midnight Sensei, Gang Orca's agency, Greed and Sloth. I hadn't seen these two before, only going off the descriptions. Sloth looked basically like a cloaked spook, like some sort of grim reaper painting, and I couldn't even see the mask beneath the hood from where we were. Greed glittered enough to blind me from a distance, even in the evening. Sloth had already knocked out Midnight sensei, who was lying on the ground, her somnambulist trickling out from her ultrathin sleeve like a fog machine. Gang Orca was aiming sonic blasts at Greed, who was dodging pretty easily and laughing. Gang Orca's sidekicks were keeping Sloth busy, to stop her from attacking Gang Orca himself.

It was hard to watch, as Greed pushed through Gang Orca's blasts, as if her super strength was overwhelming them, jumped forward, and laid a punch into his gut. It looked from a distance like something could have been broken, as he went sprawling back.

"Ok. So they leave now?"muttered Hagakure.

They weren't leaving. Gang Orca's entire crew had been knocked out by Sloth, who had turned her hand on him. He was down. Greed had strolled over to Midnight-sensei, and was reaching out towards her. She held up her arm, and I could hear through Earphone Jack what she was saying.

"Stupid hero. We wear masks, remember? No airborne drug's gonna work on us. Hm, nice whip you've got there. I could use a good weapon like that." She then made a sort of gesture and I heard something like bones breaking. She'd snapped Miss Midnight's arm, and I could hear my teacher, despite her grit, utter a harsh gasp of pain.

"Sensei!" gasped Shoji.

"No..." whispered Hagakure.

"Shh," Majestic told them, but I could hear the worry in his tone.

Greed had bent down and taken Midnight's whip from her hip-belt as she dropped our teacher to the ground with a hard 'thwack'.

"Yeah, this feels good. Can't wait to hurt someone with this. May as well see how well it works." She pulled back her arm, and wrapped the whiplash around Midnight-sensei's neck. "Let's give it a test run."

I reached for the car door on instinct. Majestic grabbed my arm. I was shaking with rage. I wanted to break through that car windshield, attach my earphone jacks to that villain's head, and blow her brains out. Well, not literally, but I wanted to stop her, to shut her up. To do something.

The police sirens came in the distance. Greed turned towards Sloth, who had been eerily still and silent the whole time.

"Oh well. Guess this mission'll have to wait another day." She pulled the whip back, letting Miss Midnight's head fall down again. "Lucky for you, hero." Then she gave a humor-free laugh. "Hero. You freaks are on your way out, believe me."

She jumped away, Sloth following. Majestic made a gesture and Shoji and I unleashed our weapons. My headphone jacks dug into the ground beneath us, scraping along to trace the sounds as we moved, joined by Shoji's dupli-arm ears. The car revved - an awful sound I had to block out - and I concentrated. Seperate out the sounds. The city sounds, other voices, cars...Concentrate on Greed's awful sneering voice.

"...Pretty pathetic showing from the heroes, huh? They sure are getting stupid. Still, they fouled it up for us anyway...imagine the haul we could've gotten! The Professor's loaded, always pays the big haul, and now we're screwed. After two cases gone wrong, she'll give up on us. Those damn UA based heroes always foul things up."

You're damn right we do. I gave Majestic a direction, as did Shoji, in the direction of Greed's voice -and off we went. I screwed up my eyes and concentrated with everything in me.

"Irritating to get cheated by trampy hero bitches like those two. Who was it screwed with Pride? Black ponytail bitch in some leotard? And that Midnight in the corset and heels, it's a joke. Those heroes strutting around in ridiculous costumes, putting on some silly show like fighting crime's a joke or an excuse to dress like a cabaret dancer. Well, they'll have to take us seriously from now on."

I had to fight the urge to blow the road up hearing them talk about Yaomomo that way. I gave another, even more irritated direction.

"Turn right, you lazy idiot. Keep your eyes on the road. Anyway, where was I? Oh, right. Heroes being idiots. Well, some of them are with the program, at least. Some have sense in their heads. But we should make it our business to eliminate those UA brats. Maybe we should kill Class 1A. Really show up the League of Villains, since they couldn't even handle those brats. Sound fun?"

You can try, moron. Go ahead and see how that works out for you.

"Turn here." The car turned again. We'd caught their tail, and they were entering - a trapdoor. They'd used some sort of card to touch a screen and open a ramp, which disappeared underground; when it slammed down again, there was almost no sign that anything was there.

"Shit," I muttered, as we watched the door shut.

"How do we even get in there?" said Hagakure.

"I got a good look at what they did," said a voice from an odd angle, and I looked up to see Tokage's floating eyeball and forehead outside the window. It made me jump to see it. "A passcode, 4515. All we gotta do is punch it in." Her eyeball floated in through the window and reattached to her head.

"My turn," said Hagakure, dropping her gloves and boots and taking up the tracker. "Pin it on that little switchboard, I guess."

"You two keep an ear out," said Majestic. "See if you can guess what direction they went."

I plugged in -a much easier job now we'd driven away from downtown and were standing still - and concentrated. The voices were coming, when I finally located them, from disturbingly far away - as if that underground hideout went down for quite some way.

"Got some bad news, boss," said Greed. "The job's gone south."

"You two idiots," snapped back one of their voices. "You've messed up, and now we're screwed."

"Look, boss, I know we messed up the job, but two heroes showed up, and -"

"We know," said a voice I recognized, and my heart dropped into my shoes. "That was the idea, idiots. It's a plan by the heroes. They lost to you on purpose and sent stealth heroes after you. Good chance they've already made you and a damn army of heroes is about to come knocking on our door. And you two morons didn't bother to bring comms with you so we could warn you off."

Tigress' voice. I couldn't mistake it. Shoji and I caught each others' eyes, and I could see he'd heard what I did.

"What is it, Earphone Jack?' asked Majestic. "What's wrong?"