Blinq And You'll Miss It (gxg)

Chapter Three

When I got back to the house that afternoon, it was quiet. I assumed that everyone was out in the city kicking ass, and my mom would be down in the cellar monitoring their situations and making sure they could support each other if one of the harder villains was about. There weren't many of those, they tended to be taken down as soon as possible, because they were taken much more seriously. I don't think I'd heard my brothers chatting about a serious fight in at least a year. When they came back to the house these days, it was usually with a tale of an inept villain who had no idea what they were doing.

I was going to change that though.

I really shouldn't call it a house, since it was much too big for it to fall under that moniker. My mom always called it the estate, which probably fit better considering it was built for several generations of families to live in. The cellar has been gutted and lined with all kinds of barriers to limit snooping and electronic countermeasures, and that was where most of the operations for my brothers' missions were located.

My mom had a room with access to all kinds of traffic cams, radar, sonar, satellite imagery, police scanners, you name it. Did they need specialized weapons or tech? We had an armory with all kinds of gadgets. A suit repair? Each of the heroes had a pair of backups, and a suit specialist on call. There was a garage with their specialty vehicles, a conference room for video calls with the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hell, there were four bathrooms, several bunk rooms, and a full kitchen with a wood fired pizza oven, so that you didn't even have to leave the cellar in times of a crisis.

I hated it.

I know, I know, they were all doing good things for the city. I shouldn't be bitter and jealous, but I was. Ever since Hayden graduated from high school and joined the older two in crime fighting, I had nobody in my family to spend any time with. Yes, I had Libby, thank goodness, but it felt like I was just living in a take your kid to work world, but I could never go home because I was already there.

Which is why I actually liked going to school, because I could actually spend time with people that knew I existed.

But it being quiet was perfect. I slipped down the stairs to the cellar, like I had countless times before, and then went into the tech room. It wasn't hard, all the guards were outside the house, obviously not expecting the thief to be a family member. In the tech room, I grabbed three innocuous looking pairs of goggles. They were the same kind that my brothers used, and would have digital readouts that my mom sent, as well as attached earpieces to hear whatever information was being passed.

I needed those. If Libby was going to run things for me, then I needed to have a way to talk to her, and these would be perfect. We couldn't just use them as is, my mom would hear us, but I had a feeling that Libby could modify them to use a different frequency.

My next stop was to the sewing room, where I grabbed 20 yards of the black synthetic leather that was on a giant roll, a pair of the high tech laser scissors needed to cut it, and then some of the needles and thread that were designed to work with it too. I grabbed a smaller amount of red fabric, because I loved the color, and then moved like a blur up to my room. I rolled up all the fabric around the rest of the gear, and then packed it all inside a plastic garbage bag. I'd run it over to Libby's tomorrow morning so she could have fun playing with them.

I knew she'd secretly wanted me to be a superhero ever since she found out about my powers, and our little vacation to Florida that took less than a day had been eye opening to us both. She'd been giggling the entire time we sat on the beach, and I had to eat four steaks to replace the calories I'd used, but I was shocked I'd been able to do it. Ever since then she'd been begging me to allow her to make a costume for me, because she usually made cosplay outfits for herself, and I could be her dress up superhero doll. She was finally going to get her wish.

And I couldn't deny that I was looking forward to it.

A villain? Yeah, I could do that, I thought while laying back on my bed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an inherently evil person, but I did get a certain thrill from taking down Louis and making him squeal like his one-time lover. Sorry, I really needed to lose that memory. Maybe I could channel that inner gremlin to make my brothers a little miserable. At a minimum, I'd have fun, and then when I finally came clean to them maybe we'd all have a little laugh. Once the yelling was done anyway.

A sudden burst of static from overhead made me jump, but it was just the speaker. "Kamella, dinner is ready." My mother sounded just as monotone over the intercom as she normally did, and I looked over at my phone and noticed it was already 6:30. I'd been too busy daydreaming to realize the time, and the rest of the afternoon had just slipped away.

I stretched in my nice comfy bed, then sighed as I got up. I put on a pair of slippers to keep my toes warm and then trudged down the stairs. I was the only one living on the mammoth top floor, as everyone else had rooms closer to the command and control rooms in the basement. I preferred that, but I did get a little lonely sometimes. It made for better visits when Libby wanted to come over though, as we didn't have to worry about anyone bugging us.

I could hear everyone talking around the kitchen table as I walked closer, and I was happy to smell lasagna as I arrived. Lasagna meant that the food would be in the center of the table where I didn't have to scream to have things passed to me. Much easier to eat.

As usual, my mom sat at the head of the table, with Rhett on the other end. Kian and Hayden sat together on the far side, leaving me alone on my side of the table. For a change, I didn't hesitate, I just grabbed the pan of lasagna and took a big corner piece. With things cooked in a baking pan like that, location is everything to me. For instance, I like the crunchier melted cheese on the corner pieces in lasagna but prefer the middle pieces with brownies. Is that just me? I dunno.

But at that moment, I didn't care. I cut up my lasagna as I looked around the table then took a bite while the typical conversation went on. I rolled my eyes several times at the horrible names of the villains they'd busted, then Kian told a story about bank robbers who didn't even have any powers that he'd stopped. I guess they thought that heroes only dealt with people that had powers themselves and would ignore them. Nope, that isn't how it works.

"School starts tomorrow, I'm finally a senior." I didn't have much hope of being heard, but to my surprise, Kian's eyes actually flickered to me, and he started to smile and reply when Hayden interrupted.

"It's been way too quiet out there this week," he complained. "I mean, we shouldn't have to deal with bank robbers, but there really wasn't anyone else around that had superpowers. I mean, there were a couple little ones, but they were running as soon as they saw one of us. Not that I mind an easy week, but I heard Los Angeles has a lot more."

"It's the sun," Rhett pointed out. "Miami is the same way. We have it easy, most of our criminals lay low in the winter."

"Yeah, but Hayden has a point," Kian interjected. "It's the end of the summer, and I doubt the villains are on vacation."

"Perhaps they're gearing up to work on something. We had Knightlight and Heartstopper working together earlier, so maybe it is happening again." Rhett rubbed his chin with his thumb as he thought. "Oh, and our vehicles suck, we need something faster."

As for my thoughts, I was happy. My brothers were bored, and I had every intention of changing that. I'd have them screaming in frustration before the end of the month.

I just needed my suit first.

That night I logged onto Libby's Minecraft world, and as expected she had surprises ready. I tried to be careful, but she had arrow dispensers as a decoy while she ended up dropping tons of gravel on me to squish me. It was a new way to die for me, and I had to laugh at her sneakiness. It really had me looking forward to being tricky and messing with my brothers too!