“Oh God,” Guilt Trip said, gazing down into the fresh crater. “Not again.”
They descended before smoke cleared; eyes stinging and lungs contracting. Weave wiped a smudge of ash from her cheek. “John can you not go like twelve minutes without clearing a forest?”
The Comet coughed in the crater, whirling his arms and trying to get his bearings. “Sorry, not sorry.” He said. “Those trees totally deserved it.” The whites of his eyes lied stark against his soot-smeared face. His hair stuck straight up like the trees of the glen he had so suddenly demolished.
“Dog pile!”Emote squealed with a hop. She landed more or less on the boy, half curled in a pile of dirt and half tangled in The Comet’s scrabbling arms. “Off. Now. GET OFF.” He fought her grip.
“Haha,” Rush smiled. “You guys are gonna smell like a bonfire for weeks.”
The Comet climbed out of his crater at last, brushed himself off, assessed the damage. “For rocketing from space and colliding into the Earth at thousands of miles per hour, I didn’t burn too much this time.”
Weave’s long blonde hair curled around Emote and dragged her out of the crater. “Hey did we at least stop that hero?” Emote inquired. “Yanno, the one with the green lightning and the crazy long fingernails and the spandex and the pchoo-pchoo!And—”
Guilt Trip sighed, loudly. “Yes, we understand what hero you’re talking about. And no, we didn’t win. Comet was in the air, keeping the other heroes off bay, until his anger kicked in and he shot up into the sky and left us all vulnerable.” She joined The Comet’s side, kicking him in a shin.
“I was so close to grabbing that power orb,” Weave wailed. “So close.”
Rush’s lips pressed into a hard line. “Could you believe those heroes? They had their hair and makeup done just for the battle. And they have names like, like ‘The Hurricane Havoc’ and ‘Spasmodic Spinster’, which doesn’t even make sense. I swear they have those names and the costumes just for the frippery.”
Guilt Trip looked up into the sky, assessing their location. “Well, since we followed Comet out here to God-knows-where, it’ll probably be night time before we get back.”
“You know what thaaaat means,” Emote sang, “Midnight ambush! Let’s go!” She hopped into the driver’s seat of the Volkswagon Beetle. “Come on Weave; join me in the Evil-Car-Mobile!”
“It’s okay to just call it the car,” Weave rolled her eyes with a smile, opening the door. “Can I drive next time?”
“Nope!” With that, Emote peeled out of the barren rock and sped into the distance.
Rush curled into a ball. “See you there!” At lightning speed, she rolled away, a blur on the horizon.
“Welp, you’re on your own.” The Comet hovered lightly above the dirt.
Guilt Trip crossed her arms. “Oh my God, for once in your life be a decent human being and fly me home,” she deadpanned.
“Ugh, fine.” He scooped her up, hand slipping on her sleek leather pants. “But we have to stop at Chik-Fil-A on our way home. You’re buying.” Before Guilt Trip could protest, he took off, rocketing into the sky to follow the rest of his colleagues.

An hour later, and they were hidden in their cozy headquarters, a boiler room in the belly of a church, long-deserted and forgotten. Rush curled up in a pile of blankets and pillows. “I am so tired. I had to stay up all night and bake for that Villains Anonymous meeting this morning.”
Emote was exasperated. “Why do you go to those meetings? It’s not like you’ve ever actually killed anyone in combat before, and you don’t seem to feel sorry when you punch people in their face.” She was livid, her face red, her extra-emotional abilities kicking in.
Rush buried her face in a shaggy quilt. “I mean, feel remorse sometimes. When I bust their spine or something. Medical bills for that is insane.”
“Good news!” The Comet clapped his hands, jolting Weave from her fashion magazine and calling the attention of his comrades. “While Guilt and I were flying home, we formulated the plan that will take action tonight. When the League of Heroes are sleeping soundly in their tower, we will sneak in and steal that orb of power, once and for all!”
“And we got Chik-Fil-A.” The brunette villain threw a paper bag crinkling onto the floor. She laughed as the villains pounced. “Eat up.”
Weave raised a finger, slick with grease. “One question. Will my costume get torn up again? Because last time that crazy fire hero seared my skirt, and you don’t know how long it took me to find one that color. Plus, I’m kind of through paying for your costumes when they get ruined, too. Rush and I are the only ones here with actual jobs; our combined money isn’t stretching too far these days.”
“Does ‘Freelance Singer’ count as a job?” Emote rolled a French fry in her palm.
Weave’s eyebrow shot up, “Do you get paid?”
“Well no, but—”
“Then no. No, it does not.”
“Trust me,” The Comet cracked his knuckles, and the venomous smile they all had come to find endearing smeared his face. “Once we’ve got that orb of power, all the money we can dream of will be ours.”
“That means infinite iTunes downloads,” Guilt Trip gasped.
“A new video game console,” Weave breathed.
“No more working double shifts at the Craft Barn,” Rush sighed.
“More food,” Emote grumbled, twisting the paper bag into a knot and dunking it in the trash bin.
“And the whole League of Heroes at our feet,” The Comet took a long drought from his Sprite. If one could drink Sprite wickedly, this man certainly could not, but that didn’t stop him from trying. “Crew of Foxy Villains, it’s time to assemble.”

Our Villains fought valiantly.
At the first stroke of midnight, they climbed floor by floor of the Hero Tower and struck down foe after foe. Emote used her extreme emotions to ward off enemies and slightly annoy them. The Comet, though not smashing through the atmosphere, did smash a record amount of furniture with the flaming rocks he conjured and the force at which he propelled them. Weave’s hair struck like horsewhips against the hides of heroes, they fell like hay to a scythe. Guilt Trip used her mind-penetrating thoughts to crush each opponent mentally and emotionally. (“Look at your life, look at your choices. You’re fighting in neon spandex with a picture of a carrot on your chest. How long has it been since you’ve had a date? How ashamed is your mother?”) Rush spun fast and ricocheted off walls, a sonic pinball crumbling the tower’s infrastructure as well as the bones of men. (Her real contribution was when a tire popped on the way there—she curled around the axle and served as a surrogate wheel.)
When, at last, they reached the orb of power, high in the observatory of the smallest, top floor, they could feel its presence and wonder permeate their skin, their minds. The Comet wandered forward first, arms outstretched, ready to pluck the orb off of it’s perch and—
“CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE WON THE GAME!”
The hatch to the simulator opened with a hiss, and out filed five teens.
“Nice super power, John,” Sally smirked. “Decimating tiny forests and creating craters. Marvel material right there.”
“Hey, shut up. Good thing I didn’t make people feel all guilty like you did. They still were happy when I burnt them, at least.”
“I had that stupid Sonic the Hedgehog theme stuck in my head,” Maeve grumbled, “so of course the simulator picked up on it and gave me his powers.”
“I had extreme emotions,” Maddie’s eyes were wide with confusion. “Why is that? That has nothing to do with my personality at all.” She looked to her friends for reassurance; they looked away, coughing and whistling nonchalantly.
Jessica felt a strand of her blonde hair, significantly shorter than it had been minutes before. “I miss being Weave.”