"Calvin, would you please take out the trash?" Calvin's mother's voice drifted up the staircase.
Grumbling, Calvin picked up the garbage bag from the upstairs trash can and held it out at arms length, eyes and nose scrunched up, as he trudged towards the steps. "I hate useless filler words. 'Would.' 'Please.'..." He scoffed. "Just threaten me within an inch of my life and get it over with already..."
His right foot caught on the carpet and he stumbled. "Whoooa!" His little arms pinwheeled as he dropped the garbage bag and tried to balance himself, fumbling for the railing.
Suddenly, an orange, black, and white stripey blur slammed into him, knocking him backwards onto the landing. The garbage bag rolled down the steps, spilling all over the place.
Dizzy, Calvin pushed himself upwards and sat up, his lap full of tiger. "Ooooooh..."
Hobbes grinned. "Supertiger to the rescue!" He fluffed out his red cape and put his front paws on his hips, eyes closed, looking superhero-ish. "As Mom always says, 'a pounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.'"
Calvin groaned, touching a hand to the side of his head. "Pretty sure that's not quite it...but thanks..."
"Calvin, did you hear what I-" Mom appeared at the foot of the stairs, novel in hand. She slid the bookmark in between the pages and glanced up, gaping at the sight in front of her. Dirty tissues, band-aid wrappers, scrunched-up papers, sticky, dripping juice boxes, apple cores, and other random garbage covered the steps. "CALVIN! Pick up this mess right now!" She frowned daggers at him.
Calvin smiled sheepishly. "Don't worry, Mom, Supe-" He glanced to the left. A fluttering red cape lay draped along the upstairs hallway. He groaned. "I'll pick it up..."
Calvin stomped up the stairs half an hour later, old plastic salad tongs in hand, a mask on his face, goggles over his eyes, and gloves on his hands. He pushed open his bedroom door and found Hobbes sitting on his bed, reading a comic book from a stack on the nightstand. "So..." He snatched up the cape, balled up in one hand. "What happened to Supertiger?"
Hobbes set down the comic book. "My cape came untied. I couldn't let your Mom discover my secret identity, now, could I?"
Calvin thought for a moment. "I guess not..." He climbed up on the bed. "Wanna be my sidekick?"
Hobbes flipped through the book. "I thought Hazmat Dude worked alone."
Calvin folded his arms. "Not when he's invited to be part of an uber-secret dream team by a rogue government agent." He pulled a folded garbage bag out of his pocket. "This'll do for a cape." He looked inside the bag. "It's supposed to be made of compressed radioactive waste coated with a radiation-blocking polymer, but I guess this'll have to do." He pulled out a discarded bottle of women's fragrance, sniffed it, and made a face. "Yep. Definitely radioactive..."