~*Chapter Two: Planning*~
Plans are nothing, planning is everything. - Dwight D. Eisenhower
She picked herself out of the rubble, coughing and wiping hair away from her eyes. Everything ached, and her slender body was dotted with bruises and there was a dark gash on her cheek. In front of her was the insurmountable white wall which barricaded Vector in his fortress. A high white dome, perfectly smooth and white, was dwarfed by a gigantic sky-blue pyramid. The pyramid of Giza had been painted the exact color of the sky behind it, and some clever artist had also painted several white clouds on the rough surface. Obviously, it wasn't fooling anyone except the police. Whirring softly in the doorway, a complicated wheel with boots on the spokes menaced her silently, and Supergirl regarded it warily. The machine had sent her flying into the air, and it was only due to her hoverheels which had prevented her from crashing down and becoming pavement pizza. Unfortunately, the experimental hoverheels had shorted out in midair, leaving her hanging upside down from the sky, scrabbling at the air and trying gamely not to scream.
Vector had filmed the whole thing.
Crushed and humiliated, Supergirl stood and dashed her wrist across her eyes, fighting back bitter tears. Vector didn't even have the respect to come and meet her face to face – he simply sent out this kicking machine, or whatever it was. Supergirl jutted her chin defiantly at Vector's glossy white dome, her voice hurt and angry as she shouted out, "Vector! This is your last chance, come out and fight!"
A small speaker set into the thick white wall crackled. "How about...no?" Vector said, and then giggled. She balled her fists, narrowing her eyes. If he only knew what she had done to get here! She had researched him extensively, studying his old heists and discovering all the gadgets he had patented. In order to make a good impression, she had worn these experimental hoverheels, a ridiculously decked-out skintight green supersuit, and enough weaponry to set off all metal detectors in a hundred mile radius. She took a menacing step closer.
"Vector, I don't think you understand who you're dealing with," Supergirl threatened. "There's going to be some changes in this town, Vector! Both you and Gru are going –"
"Gru?" The speaker chortled. "Puh-leeze. Are you telling me that my very first superhero isn't even mine? I have to share her? Yeah, okay, that's not happening."
Supergirl could just see Vector, stretched out on his orange circular couch, wearing that stupid pumpkin-colored jogging suit. With his bowl cut hair and thick black glasses, he had been nominated the #1 Dorkiest Villain last year – which had been hastily covered up by Vector, of course. She tossed her thick red hair. "You can't share justice, Vector! And there's going to be a lot of it going around. Both you and Gru are finally going to pay for your crimes!"
"Do they teach new superheroes how to spout cliché lines?" Vector wanted to know. "Because, really, that is so lame. You guys really need some new material."
"I'm warning you, Vector –!"
There was a muted clicking noise, and a deep roaring whirr as something revved up. Supergirl stumbled backwards as a rocket popped out of nowhere, aimed straight at her nose. "No, I'm warning you. Go bother Gru, okay? I don't have time for you right now. I'm super busy, y'know, with this whole evil plan in the works..."
"What evil plan?" Supergirl demanded, clenching her teeth.
Vector whooped with laughter. "Are you serious? You think I'm going to just tell you what my plan is? Oh, right, because that's what all supervillains do, am I right? Yeah, okay, bye-bye. I have stuff to do." Vector sniggered, and then pressed a button on his keypad. The kicking machine flared to life, and Supergirl started to run. When the first boot connected with her back, she couldn't stop herself from screaming and kicking off from the ground, activating her hoverheels. The new, stylish heels worked for once, and she zipped off into the sky, desperate to get away from Vector and his gadgets.
"...And then I just had to fly away, because he was so mean!"
She was sitting on her couch, sniffling, her supersuit and mask still on, her hair a mess, and the television blaring. A half-eaten Whitman's sampler was at her knee, and Jenny was curled up on the corner of the sofa, watching the Superheroes One-Stop Shopping Network through teary green eyes. Her hoverheels had been kicked off at the door and thrown against a wall, and they were crumpled by the radiator as if ashamed of their actions. Richie was sitting on the edge of the table, running his hands through his dark wavy hair. His young wife was injured, distraught, and eating more chocolate than most people consumed in their lives, and all because of Vector.
"Jenny, stop. Okay? Just stop. Forget this whole superhero thing, this town is fine, it really is." Richie insisted, his dark eyes pleading as he sat on the couch next to his wife. She didn't look at him, but ate another chocolate and sniffed. "You've been amazing by hanging on this long, but I'm not just going to sit by and let you get hurt. Please, please stop this madness."
"I can't," Jenny said in a small voice. "I can't stop, now that I've started this. And I don't want to stop. It's just hard, is all. I'm not used to..." She broke off and struggled to laugh. "This makes me sound so spoiled, but I'm not used to working this hard for something."
Richie leaned over and pressed a kiss to his wife's temple. "Please. Reconsider."
She finally looked at him, and those big green eyes were just as determined and strong as they had been when he first met her. "I'm not going to stop. Ever. I'm going to get Vector out of his fortress tomorrow, and I'm going to kick his butt twice to make up for lost time." Jenny said fiercely. She got to her feet, peeling off her superhero mask, and tossed it defiantly on the couch. "I'm going to drag him out of there by those stupid Air Jordans, and I'm going to send him sky high! Yeah! I'm going to go talk to Dexter in the lab, I need some more gadgets!"
Jenny scampered off, pressing buttons as she hurried towards her secret lab. Before the secret panels were even fully opened, she was calling out for her head scientist. "Dexter? Dexter! I need an electro-catapult! And a sonic battering ram! And some time bombs!"
Richie sat on the couch, his heart sinking heavily, and got slowly to his feet. His laptop was sitting innocently on the counter, glowing sweetly at him as though it were mocking him. As though pulled by some unseen hook, Richie went over to his laptop and keyed in his password. His email inbox was empty, which in itself was a surprise – usually he was flooded with emails upon emails of stock exchange reports from his associates. The market never slept, which meant neither did his associates. But as of late, he hadn't been receiving a fraction of the usual amount of emails. Still, his lack of business messaging wasn't what was worrying him.
With a few expert keystrokes, he opened his secure online email account, and tapped in his private password. A single email lay there, pulsing gently, and he tapped it open with a heavy heart. It was from Undisclosed Recipient, and it was not the first time – nor the last – that he had received such messages. And he had a fairly good idea what this one was going to be about.
There's a Superhero in town. She's bothering me. Deal with her as you see fit.
Richie slumped against the counter and put his face in his shaking hands. What was he going to do about his rambunctious, easily-amused wife? There was nothing he could do. She was too enamored with the idea of being a superhero. There was nothing he could do to stop her.
Unless...
Margo brushed those two annoying strands of hair which always fell by her temples out of her eyes, and tucked them behind her ears. She tapped her clipboard with a pencil, and looked authoritatively up at Edith and Agnes. The three girls were sitting cross-legged in their specially-created bomb beds which Gru had made for them. Long ago, when Gru had first adopted the two girls, their room had looked like an old storage closet and the beds had been hooked up on the walls with a pulley system. Now the room was painted a light purple, and the three beds were planted on the ground with dust ruffles and a canopy over Agnes's bed. The room itself was high-ceilinged by narrow, and it always made Margo feel cozy. Her lips tightened as she looked at her two sisters, who were staring at her. Margo had ordered the two of the to stay up later after Gru had read their bedtime story, and this had caught Edith and Agnes's attention completely. Margo advising to break rules? It had to be something important.
"Look, guys, I've been thinking," Margo whispered, so as not to alert Gru in the next room. "We're all happy here with Gru, right?"
"Really happy!" Edith enthused, and was shushed by Margo.
"He's th' best!" Agnes chimed in.
"Right," Margo said, feeling hot and uncomfortable. With a good deal of effort, she tried to keep her face straight. "But wouldn't it be cool if we had a mom, too?"
Warily, the oldest sister regarded her siblings. She had been thinking about this for quite a while, and it had hit her suddenly when she was in school. A mom. They were missing a mom. Gru was the best dad in the world, but every family needed a mom, right? Someone to pick out dresses with them, or giggle about boys, or stuff like that. Gru was great now, but in five years? Margo would be sixteen then, and she was planning the future. And a future without a mother didn't look very good. Margo loved Gru, but she couldn't talk to him about everything. That was what she really wanted, someone to talk to about things. Everything and anything. She wanted someone to color with, and make cookies with, and someone to brush her hair and tell her how to put on makeup. She could ask Gru, but it wouldn't be the same. Both of them would be painfully aware that they were pretending.
"No!" Edith burst out, almost loud enough to wake up Gru. The spiky-haired blonde glowered resentfully at Margo from beneath her pink hat. "We don't need a mom! Our last mom wasn't so great, and why do we need one now? We have Gru! He's our dad!"
"I know he's our dad," Margo explained patiently, hoping Edith couldn't see the disappointment in her eyes, "But I was just thinking that Gru could use a friend, too. He doesn't have any friends."
"He's got Uncle Nefario," Agnes piped up.
"And the minions," Edith pointed out.
Margo rolled her eyes. "Neither of them count. The minions work for Dad, and so does Dr. Nefario. I mean like a friend he can talk to, and go shopping with and stuff." She said, hoping to make more of a case from this angle.
"That's a dumb idea," Edith said sourly. "He doesn't need a friend! He's got us!"
"Edith, one day all of us are going to need more than each other," Margo said, finally saying what she had been wanting to say all along. "We're going to eventually need someone to tell us how to be girls, and someone to tell us things that only girls know how to do. Gru is going to be lonely when we get older. I don't want to leave him alone any more than you guys do, and I want ..." She choked up, and had to push her glasses up in order to rub at her eyes. "... I want a mom."
Agnes looked at her older sister, her huge brown eyes worried. She crawled out of bed and hopped into her older sister's bomb-bed, and snuggled up next to Margo. "What're we gonna do?"
Margo sniffed quietly and wiped her eyes. "I was thinking we could use the computer," Margo said softly. "There's a girl in my class who said her parents met on the internet. I did a little bit of research –" – At this Edith snorted, because Margo always did research – "-and I think it's a pretty good idea. We could sign him up, and maybe try to convince him to go out and meet people.
"He's a supervillain," Edith said bluntly. "You think he's gonna actually like going out and meeting people? And anyway, what are we gonna tell Dad?"
Margo's chocolate brown eyes looked away. "What Gru doesn't know won't hurt him," She said firmly.
This, more than anything, convinced Edith that Margo was serious about this. Margo in a rule-breaking mode was a rare sight to be seen.
A/N: Sorry about the sort of sub-par chapter, everyone~! I've been crazy busy these past few days, but that's no excuse. I do hope to update every Saturday! I'm hoping deadlines will help my chronic procrastination. :P
Anyway, I didn't really get any feedback on my last chapted, but I know there's readers out there! Just drop me a comment, tell me what you think, and we'll roll from there! I do love hearing from my readers, I'm such a sucker for reviews. :)
Thanks for the two 'guest' reviews, (one of them by my RP buddy, Ephie, THANKS MOMMA!) Keep 'em comin'!
