"What, wait how?" Heather questioned after they picked up Tony and as she drove off for Lord Superior's castle. Cam explained their mission, told them that Lord Superior has Chloe captive.
"I don't know; she called in a panic saying that Superior had her, then the line went dead." Cam explained, in his mind it wasn't a total lie it was just leaving out everything Chloe had asked him to.
Heather muttered a curse under her breath and picked up the speed.
"You have done well," Dementor said as he ran a checklist of everything needed for the plan, and with the children on their way everything was in place.
"Thank you fa-" Chloe began but Dementor cut her off.
"Do not finish that sentence!" He shouted, pointing an accusing finger at her. "Do not let this one success go to your head, you are still a tool," he reminded her.
Chloe frowned but nodded; she knew she shouldn't have even tried to say that.
"Of course, my apologies" she said before pulling on her mask and backing out of the room.
Outside of the wall the team, planning to in through the moat this time, had just finished putting their scuba suits over their clothes.
"Where are the snorkels?" Zach questioned as he looked through Cam's backpack.
"Here" Cam said handing everyone a small green cylinder.
"Uh, compact snorkels?" Heather questioned, staring down at the small object in her hand.
"Something Wade and I have been working on, it's called a breather. You bite down on it and it lets you breathe underwater," Cam explained.
Zach gagged at first when placing the device in his mouth and had to spit it out
"How come you guys can still breath and I can't?" He questioned and Tony spit out his own breather in order to answer the question.
"You've never had impressions taken for braces, we've all had clay shoved into our mouths, we can breath through anything." He half joked and Zach growled at the response, now it was Heather who spit out her breather.
"Just release the air through your nose," she instructed him but he snapped.
"Shut up! I know how to breathe," he insisted in a whiney voice.
"Oh says the kid who just asked why he couldn't breathe?" Heather retorted
"I'M NOT A KID!" Zach screamed. For a moment everyone froze, they began to look around; knowing that there was no way Zach wasn't heard.
When they were sure that nothing was coming for them, at the moment, Heather turned her attention back to her brother.
"First off, you're eleven-" she began
"And you're seventeen! You're not an adult either!" Zach argued
"I never said I was! But regardless you're acting like a baby so either shut up or wait in the car" Heather said to him in a threatening voice, she didn't know where her brother's outburst had come from but she did not have time to deal with it right now.
Zach stared up at his sister for a minute before marching off towards the car, furious that he had somehow ended up being treated even more like a kid.
Heather growled and had to consciously remind herself to keep her powers in check, which only added more stress to the situation.
"Run if anyone tries to attack you!" she yelled after her brother but he gave no response and so Heather turned around and followed her friends into the moat.
"What was that about?" Tony asked once the four of them were inside the castle and taking off their wetsuits.
"I don't know, Zach's usually pretty good on missions but sometimes he likes to remind me that even here he's still my obnoxious little brother" Heather answered.
"Focus you two, we need to find Chloe" Mark interrupted them.
"Oh I don't think that'll be a problem" a voice cut into the conversation. A minute later a ninja, the same ninja Cam and Heather had fought so many times before, came down from the ceiling rafters and stood before the group.
"Chloe? But you said?" Cam began, as he stuttered around his words he could almost feel the evil smile beneath Chloe's mask as he realized that he had been played.
"Wait a minute what?" Heather questioned and Chloe took off her mask, revealing her very smug face.
"Surprised?" She asked sarcastically.
"You're the ninja we've been fighting?" Heather exclaimed before whipping her head to the side to angrily glare at Cam "and you knew?" She demanded, but Cam only hung his head in shame.
"Don't blame Cam" Chloe began "he only found out cause he ripped off my mask after I knocked you out, and I lied about everything I told him, oh except Monkey Fist, he really is back." She explained; this time Mark and Tony also directed furious glares at Cam.
"What?!" Mark and Heather demanded simultaneously, by this point Cam was practically sweating with a mix of guilt and the fear of his own teammates wrath.
"Cam tell me she's lying" Heather asked of him, her voice even and calm, but also demanding. But when Cam just looked back at the ground and shook his head he actually heard her breath hitch inside her throat.
"The rock came from the rubble of his statue." He admitted, he didn't know what he expected his team to do but he certainly didn't expect what Mark did, not that he didn't deserve it.
Mark, who has a good three inches of height on Cam, practically charged him and grabbed him by the collar of shirt, lifting him up and against the nearest wall, as he demanded to know what the slightly smaller boy was thinking.
"YOU KNEW THAT ONE OF THE WORLDS MOST DANGEROUS AND MENTALLY UNSTABLE CRIMINALS WAS FREE AND YOU DIDN'T TELL US!?" He furiously demanded, as he continued to shout Heather came marching over.
"Mark let him go!" She shouted and when he didn't listen she began pulling at his arm. "Let him go!" She ordered, given the height difference between her and Mark, the rage in Mark's eyes, and the desperation in Heather's, Cam couldn't help but compare the scene to a little girl begging her enraged father to calm down, which he also knew is how they both felt.
Finally Mark dropped Cam, purposely letting him hit the ground with a thud, but then he turned on Heather.
"He lied to us! Why are you defending him?" He shouted at her
"He made a mistake!" Heather shouted back, Cam could not believe that she was on his side.
"Mistake?!" Mark exclaimed but before Heather could argue back a shrill voice cut through their fight.
"ENOUGH!" The voice shouted, all four teenagers turned see that the voice was that of Professor Dementor.
Letting their argument fall to a standstill the four teenagers noticed not only had Professor Dementor joined them, but Lord Superior as well.
"As entertaining as it is to watch you children destroy each other we have much to do in a very short amount of time," Superior said, drumming his fingers together evilly.
Then, before anybody could do anything, Chloe dropped a smoke bomb and everything went black.
When Heather, Mark, and Tony woke up Cam was gone, and they were all lying on the floor of a cell in Lord Superior's dungeon.
"Great! Cam's up there helping the villains with their take over the world plans, and we're in a cage!" Mark shouted as he got up and began pacing around the cell.
"We don't know that, Chloe could've been playing Cam." Heather theorized but Mark only rolled his eyes.
"Heather he knew Monkey Fist was alive. He knew it was Chloe who we were fighting." He reminded his friend
"She said she lied about everything she told him, whatever he believed it wasn't true," Heather challenged, trying to defend Cam.
"Would you open your eyes?! He's working with them!" Mark continued to shout.
"Stop!" Tony's uncharacteristically loud voice stopped the argument between his friends immediately. "You guys can stand here and argue all you want over whose side Cam is on but that's not going to change the fact that we still don't know where he is and three bad guys are still teamed up and trying to take over the world!" He continued.
For a minute it was silent, mostly because Mark and Heather were still staring each other down as if to decided whether or not to listen to Tony. Both of them knew that he was right of course, though neither of them wanted to admit it.
"Fine, but if Cam is on their side we can't hold back against him" Mark said, eyeing Heather and of course she knew what that meant.
"Fair enough, but I can't fight him" she bargained before turning away from Mark.
"Heather-" he began
"Mark. I just can't." She said, her voice a warning tone, which Mark caught but neglected to listen to.
"Why can't you?" He questioned after a moments hesitation. He's seen Heather fight Cam in training, and although fighting him for real would undoubtedly be different, she should be able to handle him.
Heather took a breath as she wrapped her arms around herself and slowly turned back to face Tony and Mark.
"Cam was the one who gave me control over my powers. He was there for me when no one else was and he helped me understand. During my first couple power practices Cam wrote down everything that happened, he studied what I could do and used the notes to help me control it. I never told you guys this but when we broke up… I kind of had a relapse." She admitted, her face showing how embarrassed she was by this.
"What do you mean you had a relapse?" Tony questioned.
"I mean I got in a fight with Emily and the next thing I knew my powers were flaring up." She confessed, "Just like before when I had no control, they just went up whenever I was angry. Since we were going on vacation that week I figured maybe that would help, but it happened three more times. By the third time I decided that I would call my mom once I was home but then after the fourth I realized it was happening because I didn't know where I stood with Cam anymore. Once I figured it out I was good and I'm glad we broke up because I clearly needed to learn how to control my powers without him, which I did. But fighting him, Mark he gave me something I searched all my life for. He SAVED me, I can't take him down." She explained. It was quiet at first, both Mark and Tony knew that Heather thought highly of Cam, they knew that he was the reason her control had progressed so quickly and easily, but neither of them knew that without him she could slip backwards.
"Look I understand that if he is a traitor then we need to put him away, and if it comes down to me vs. him with no other option I will do it. But I can't guarantee I'll be the same after" Heather finished and just then the door to the dungeon opened, and there stood Chloe.
"Oh trust, you won't be the same," she threatened as another girl followed her into the room.
This girl was the same age as the teens, slightly taller than Heather with short strawberry blond hair and was carrying a large, bazooka looking weapon, this girl was Emily.
Inside of his own cell on the opposite end of the castle Cam was pacing the floor in frustration.
"How could I have been so stupid?" He asked aloud to no one in particular. "She wasn't one of the good guys! She wasn't undercover! Actually I take that back, she was undercover. Undercover with us!" He shouted before kicking his backpack across the space of the cell. "Why me? Why did she choose me?" He asked, and he truly did wonder, but then his eyes fell upon his backpack.
"No" he whispered under his breath in horror, realization hitting him. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no…" he repeated over and over as he hit his knees next to the bag and began digging through it, desperate to find something he knew was not there.
"Emily this is where you've been everyday after school?!" Heather demanded, gripping the iron bars of the cage in fury.
"I told you I was hanging out with Chloe" Emily retorted
"You didn't tell me you were plotting to take over the world!" Heather shouted, but Emily only looked at her sister in confusion.
"What? Heather you got it all wrong, this isn't that kind of mission" Emily insisted.
"Then why are we in a cage?" Heather demanded, of course Emily nearly laughed at the 'misunderstanding'.
"You're in a cage because Mark tried to murder Cam when he revealed Chloe, we had to separate you guys in order to calm you down" the blond explained.
"Dementor, Monkey Fist, and Superior?" Heather questioned, her untrusting eyes locked onto her sister.
"My dad and his friends, they were helping us with this little project" Chloe put in as she pointed with her thumb to Emily's weapon.
By now Zach had finished complaining to himself and was just sitting impatiently in the front seat of the car when the video screen flicked on to reveal an incredibly dark image of Cam's face.
"Zach! Zach listen to me!" He nearly begged
"Cam? You guys almost done in there?" Zach questioned, though he didn't miss the urgency of the older boy's voice.
"No, I'm trapped and I think the others are too. I'm trying to get out but in the meantime Heather is in trouble, big trouble! Chloe played me, she's one of them, and she stole my notes." Cam explained as quickly as he could.
"What-" Zach began but he was interrupted
"The notes on your sister. The ones about her powers, the bad guys have them! I think the energy capulator was created to capture and either store or destroy energy currents as pure energy, just like Heather's plasma." He answered and Zach's eyes grew wide in fear, surely the villains couldn't really be planning what he thought? It's impossible, isn't it?
Without another word the eleven year old grabbed his grappling hook and bolted from the car, he had to make it before it was too late.
Superior entered the dungeon.
"Immobiles eius!" He chanted and the next thing Heather knew she couldn't move.
She began panicking, and as their normally strong and confident friend began to hyperventilate, Mark and Tony began prying at the bars.
"What did you do to her?!" Mark demanded angrily
"Eos quoque" Superior said casually, the two boys were now also frozen where they stood and could do nothing but glare as Chloe approached them.
"Nothing yet, but don't worry this is for her own good" she purred before turning to Emily.
"Get close, I don't know how many shots that thing is good for" she ordered or how much time we have before Cam escapes she added in her own head.
Emily opened the cage and stepped inside, stopping only two feet away from her petrified sister as she aimed the weapon.
"Em, Em what are you doing?" Heather stuttered in fear, her eyes following the mouth of the weapon as though her life depended on it, which it very well could.
"You were right Emily, she can't stand to not be in control of her own body." Chloe commented smugly, despite her intense fear Heather still managed a scowl towards the girl.
"Don't worry Heather, after this you won't have to worry about control" Emily said and Heather's eyes widened, realizing that could only mean one of two things.
"Em whatever I did to get you this mad, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I ate the last sugar cookie on Christmas, I'm sorry I never take my dirty clothes off the floor, I'm sorry I accidently deleted the recording of the season premiere of American Star maker before you saw it-" The immobile teen began ranting, thinking of anything and everything she had done within the last few months which had resulted in an argument with her sister.
"Heather relax this thing isn't going to kill you" Emily said but she didn't hear it when Heather said I know just as she fired.