“Delinquents! Stop!” The gym teacher roared, his muscles rippling and glistening with sweat as he trudged after the pair of escapees, emerging into the sunlit street. Martin’s heart sank into his shoes. This man was something persistent, a terminator whose primary mission was apparently hunting down class-skipping students.

“Heck. I think he might be a retired super.” Alexa squinted at the enraged teacher.

“How do you figure?” Martin asked, panting.

“Pocket sand didn’t even slow him down! Do you think I should nail his feet to the floor? Would that work?”

“Please don’t nail people’s feet to the floor.” Martin said dryly.

“You’re right, Mittens. I don’t have my nail gun. Can’t nail someone’s feet to the floor without my trusty, pink nail gun!” Alexa responded. “By the way, you owe me a new nail gun, considering how it’s your fault the school confiscated mine.”

She pointed to the “Home Hardware” sign in the distance, continuing to speak breathlessly. “You better have a credit card on you, cus all of my cash stacks and diamonds are in my backpack.”

Martin did have a credit card on him for buying lunch from town, given to him by his dad. He would be in deep trouble if he used it for buying hardware tools, if his dad were to look at the account balance. Alas, it seems that he had no other choices presented to him, as Alexa already turned in the direction of the shopping mall.

Martin’s brain caught up to her last sentence. “...Diamonds?”

“Skinwalkers don’t care for shiny things made for human dating rituals. Jewelry is pretty easy to grab from broken storefront windows in 2424.”

Of course her backpack was full of diamonds! Martin ground his teeth. If the vice principal or some teacher were to go through her bag, they would be very surprised indeed. Nail gun, stacks of cash and diamond-encrusted jewelry! God knows what else was in there! Likely more than enough evidence to get her arrested for questioning. She would die horribly if she was flung into the future in handcuffs!

“Why don’t you keep your diamonds at home, damn it!” Martin panted.

“A girl's gotta be ready for shopping anytime, you know. I also have plentiful shinies in my-uptree fortress with the rest of my worldly possessions.”

“Tree house? Don’t you live in the church?”

“Naw. Daddums doesn’t allow me inside the cathedral, on the account I might steal some of his tools and damage the bracelet in a dumb-ass attempt to remove it, or screw with his precious time masheeen setup and get myself smeared across space-time.” Alexa laughed, matching Martin’s exhausted pace with mild bouncing. She was barely breaking a sweat.

“That’s… awful. Not being able to go inside your own house,” he panted.

“Technically, it’s not a house. It’s a laboratory inside a cathedral. Daddums doesn’t believe in living rooms, bedrooms or kitchens. It’s all work, work and even more work, always surrounded by super interns and robots and brain jars. Honestly, he doesn’t even have time to talk to me with that schedule of his.”

“Stop!” The gym teacher was inevitably getting closer.

“Does someone actually stop when you yell that?” Alexa turned towards the teacher, bouncing backwards and pulling off her orange vest.

The muscular man merely glared, looking extremely irate. If he had eye lasers, Alexa would already be a pile of ashes. He tried to grab at her, but she leapt over him, wrapping her safety vest over his face, pulling him backwards with all of her weight. Somehow the teacher didn’t even budge or fall over. He merely made a grunt as she hung off him by the vest.

“Hekking mountain troll! How do you manage to drive a car? Did you have to cut a hole in the roof?” She grinned, rapidly tying the vest with a complex knot over his head. She leapt off the teacher’s back before he could grab her.

“I should have invested in a minion with more stamina.” Alexa bounced back to where Martin was panting.

“I want jump shoes too.” Martin whined.

“Yeah, I don’t think so. There ain’t no way you’d manage such highly advanced recoil tech, bud. You’d probably break your neck as soon as you put them on.”

The gym teacher roared, trying to remove the constricting vest from his face.

"That's right, elephantine mobster! We are going to the arcade and there's nothing you can do about it! You wont stop us from playing duck murder and digital hoopscotch!" Alexa yelled at him.

"Duck murder?" Martin whispered, as Alexa quietly pulled him into the Home Hardware shop.

"I don't know what it is you kids enjoy." She shrugged. "I'm too preoccupied for such frivolous pursuits. Having frequent business meetings with skinwalker and co is a real time buster."

Martin made a promise to himself to take Alexa to the arcade someday. Her childhood was clearly stolen from her by the future and it was breaking his heart.

He watched as she grabbed a shopping cart, driving through the aisles, acquiring a variety of tools and random chemical containers with focused determination.

Martin muttered about the credit card bill, seeing the pile of purchases grow.

"I'll pay you back with some diamonds." Alexa cheerfully promised, which didn't make Martin feel any better.

"Look I'm not happy about this either. They only have nail guns in blue." She grumbled, waving a blue nail gun at his face.

“It’s a hardware store; they have paint.” Martin deadpanned.

Alexa raised an eyebrow. “Did you just make a joke?”

“Is that not allowed?” He replied.

“Well, well, well. I see that I’m finally rubbing off on you.” She winked.

Martin sighed deeply as Alexa swiped his card through the machine upon checkout. When Martin saw the total, he nearly had a heart attack. Power tools were expensive! His dad was going to throw a fit. Martin only got himself a bottle of water, gulping it greedily.

Alexa, uncaring for his inner struggle, rolled the cart out into the parking lot and proceeded to pour various chemicals into smaller bottles. She then stuffed bits of twisted toilet paper into the top.

"Are you making... some sort of grenades out of household chemicals in a parking lot?" He asked, watching Alexa strap several belts to herself. She worked quickly, with impressive precision, using shower curtain rings and metal wires to attach bottles and power tools to the belts.

“Yeppers. Could get sent to the future anyyyytime now. Gotta be ready. Dying is kinda incredibly painful, you know.” She shoved the rest of her power tools into a new, black electrician’s backpack and glanced at him. “Right, sorry, you wouldn't know what that’s like.”

Martin looked at the girl villain. She looked like an adorable, little rambo.

She bounced up and down and side to side, getting used to the weight, readjusting and tightening the belts. Shoppers emerging from Home Hardware were giving her looks of mild amusement. They probably assumed she was a cosplayer of some sort.

She grabbed the water bottle from Martin's hands, finishing it. "Ah yes. Hydration. Totally forgot about human necessities. I think it’s time to refuel!"

Alexa shoved the empty glass bottle into the backpack and bounced towards the nearest fast food restaurant.

The McHeroes restaurant welcomed Martin with vibrant screens and posters featuring the latest top tier heroes and meal options named after them. He watched as Alexa swiftly ordered enough burgers to feed a family of ten with his credit card.

"Come on, are you trying to max it out?" He declared in annoyance, watching her press on all of the available burger buttons.

"Nah, just planning ahead." Alexa responded, handing Martin his card along with the receipt.

"How am I gonna explain this to my dad?" Martin whined, looking at the absurdly long receipt roll.

"You are a growing boy. Increased nutrition intake is important." Alexa wiggled her eyebrows, dragging Martin to a booth. She inserted a number tag dispensed by the digital cashier onto a slit in the table. “RESERVED” sign flashed over the booth. As they sat down, the table came to life, its surface lighting up with an embedded screen. Martin looked at the moving picture of the world's mightiest hero Nonpareil on the screen with resignation. Nonpareil winked at Martin with one of his beady, metal eyes embedded within his body. He was a very helpful, shiny, metal staple.

"I wonder what his weakness is." Alexa tapped the hero's grinning staple-face as he flew through the sky, punching through clouds with a sonic boom.

"He doesn't have one. His staple-body is indestructible." Martin said.

"I bet it’s something really mundane like guns or water." She mused, making a gun-shape with her fingers.

"You aren't listening at all to me, are you?"

"No, but someone else is." Alexa pointed at something.

Martin lifted his head. Alexa's finger gun was aimed at a teenage girl with long, deep-blue hair who wore the grey cloak of an Equalizer. She was looking at the semi-transparent holo menu.

"Who equalizes the Equalizers?!" Alexa yelled across the restaurant.

Green eyes focused on Martin and Alexa through the holographic screen.

"Eh?" Martin asked.

"The Equalizers think that they can make me join their dumb cult, so they sent a rep!" Alexa said. "Little do they know I'll be the one asking her to join me as a minion numero duo."

"Are you sure? What if she's just here having lunch or something?" Martin whispered. He knew that the Equalizers were one of the most formidable earth-based, super-lead organizations that refused to join the Superstate on principle.

Alexa's massive order had arrived - packaged, smoking burgers raining from a delivery chute onto a container space within the table. Alexa unwrapped a burger and started to eat ravenously, intently staring at the Equalizer. Martin pulled a burger from the burger pile for himself, chewing it slowly and ponderously.

“Are the Equalizers really after Alexa?” He thought. “If so, why? What do they know that I don't?”

After filling up, the teenage villain proceeded to shove the rest of the burgers into her pockets.

“Now I’m ready for future adventures.” She commented on her food hoarding. Pockets bulging with burgers, Alexa bounced towards the Equalizer's table. Martin got up with a sigh. It was as if she was actively looking for trouble.

"What's your mission?" The teenage villain arrived at her quarry.

The Equalizer raised her eyes at Alexa. "I exist to bring Equality to all," she spoke with a calm, nearly expressionless voice.

"Drop the shpiel, babes. What's your personal goal?" Alexa asked.

"I serve to uplift all of humanity…"

"Look, doll. Don't do the robot voice thing. It's creepy as hell and it ain't gonna convince me to join you." Alexa interrupted the Equalizer. "Speak from the heart and I will consider equality."

"You will consider Equality?" The girl's eyes opened a bit wider, the monotone voice gaining the smallest twinge of excitement. Martin nearly face palmed. Alexa didn't look like she was considering equality at all. She was grinning widely.

"Only if you offer me your heart and soul. I find myself low on adequately educated minions." Alexa said cheerfully.

Martin yearned to defend himself and resisted by the barest of margins. He was learning. Arguing with Alexa only made things worse.

"My heart belongs to Equality." The Equalizer's tone returned to an unenthusiastic drone as she made the equals sign with her fingers above the silver Enforcer pin that was glittering over her heart.

Martin gulped upon seeing the pin. This wasn’t a low ranking Equalizer. The girl was a genuine Enforcer! He’d seen videos of Enforcers executing supervillains in plain sight without remorse. These people were dangerous! The Equalizer Order often found ways to skirt around laws.

"I am Cassiopeia Terror Nova, as you have undoubtedly read in your borger menu!" Alexa declared.

Martin wasn't sure why her name would be on the McHeroes menu, but he kept quiet, feeling rather shy around authority. The Equalizer looked no older than Alexa, but her gray Enforcer cloak projected an aura of formidable power.

"I am Verse 24:19 - No cottages shall burn upon the distant shores of Yore," she said.

"That's a mouthful! I’m gonna call you… No Cottages… No, that's still too long and weird. Wait… Got it! Cottie!" Alexa proclaimed.

"I am Verse 24:19." Cottie insisted, not knowing that in Martin's mind she was already doomed to be forevermore called Cottie.

Once Alexa labeled someone it stuck and if they resisted the villain only managed to hammer it in harder with her social hacking bullshit. Seeing Alexa chatter away at the Equalizer from the outsider's perspective was giving Martin an understanding of how she operated.

"Minion name supersedes cult assigned one, Cottie." Alexa plowed ahead like a freight train with no brakes.

"The Equalizers are not a cult. We are a highly respectable Order of…"

"Why follow unattainable Equality when you can follow an adorable, budding supervillain instead? Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge." Alexa pointed at herself. "See, in my organization you can be minion number two, not whatever random ass verse number you are."

The Enforcer didn’t seem convinced by Alexa’s vocalized nudging and winking.

Alexa's bracelet beeped. She looked down at it with a small frown. “Welp, toodles. You can spy on me later in school, stalker-sama!”

She waved a hand at Cottie, turned and slid into an empty booth, away from prying eyes, settling beneath the noisy, flashing panel-screen of Knight Chalice. World’s third most powerful hero was busy signing plastic swords amidst a crowd of adoring fans who were cosplaying as medieval knights at what looked like a Renaissance Fair. Martin followed after Alexa into the depths of the booth and grabbed her hand.

"You need to stop. You are going to die. I don't want to make a tiny gravestone with the word Mittens on it in 2424." Alexa said sternly.

"But… you die all the time and you are clearly fine."

Alexa rubbed her head. "Look at yourself, idiot. You are bruised, scratched up and covered in questionable grime from the 25th century. The jump bracelet treats you like any other object I’m carrying. It will not reset your body if you die."

Martin persistently clung to Alexa.

The world around them rapidly darkened.

. . .

"Why are you doing this, Martin?" Alexa asked, looking at him from the decayed seat in the dark ruins of the mall complex. The McHeroes screens were twisted and shattered and most of the dining hall roof now laid all over the floor in an unwholesome arrangement of jaggedy steel shards and faded panels.

"I am your minion, no?" Martin said after a bit of looking around in concern. "As such, my purpose is to protect you."

Alexa sighed. "Well I walked myself right into that one, I suppose. Still, how about you learn to protect me from gym teachers first? Your presence in the future is extremely detrimental to your health. You will not survive forceful spongebob cosplay, like I have!"

"But…"

"No butts! Are you not listening?! I've been through this before, moron! I lost Zeke and Ike.. Tommy, Klondike and Miri!!!" Alexa uttered, her eyes glittering with wet sparkles. "The skinwalkers take no prisoners! They do not listen to reason! If you keep coming back here your skin will be worn by Mr. Noodles as another reminder of my failure!"

"Oh." Martin blinked. That's what she meant earlier. Alexa did say she had minions before him.

"Why do you think I wasted time making a curtain rope? It was to save your posterior from Mr. Handsphere! If I was alone I could have just leapt out of the window, trusting my jump-shoes to handle the landing!"

"Oh." Martin gulped. She was a villain, but she saved him! Alexa just kept on hammering against his conscience as if she was intent to utterly dismantle it. Her actions were blending the distinction between hero and villain in Martin’s mind. It was as if she was neither.

"White knight dummy, on an errant of self destruction." She sniffed, wiping tear sparks from her face. "I don't need you to die here, without purpose."

“I won’t die without purpose. I’m here to help you!” Martin pressed his case. Now that he'd thought about it, it would probably be a smart idea to contact his dad, confess everything and ask for help. Not that he could do that right now, from 400 years in the future.

Alexa shoved the blue nail gun into his hands. "If you see a skinwalker, and you can't run away, aim for the eyes. Follow me!"

"Where are we going?" Martin asked, trailing her out of the ruined restaurant.

"Back to school. To get my raygun. It's my best weapon out here. This hodge podge crap will only briefly annoy them." She pointed at her belt full of chemical cocktails and power tools, stepping into the murky open air through an enormous, jaggedy hole in the dining hall’s wall.

The parking lot was occupied by numerous car ruins. Martin looked inside of one, shuddering as he noticed blackened skeletal shapes within. Dark, gloomy cloud formations slowly spun overhead, an entire ocean of broiling sky highlighted by occasional flashes of lightning. Transfixed by the constantly shifting, vast supercell storm above him, Martin forgot how to breathe.

An enormous spider with far too many elbows emerged from one of the burned down shops, shoving aside broken car remnants with an ear piercing screech.

Alexa spun a lighter in her hands, igniting one one of the bottles.

"Lighten up Mr. Spoody!" She chucked the sparkling bottle into the spider's face and it detonated with a blinding flash. The spider hollered, pawing the flames from its face.

"After me, M!" Alexa snapped a glow stick tied to her belt, bouncing off into the mist. Martin ran, following the tiny, rapidly moving orange light. His feet were hurting from the earlier fall. He tripped over some random debris and the light vanished.

Martin clung to his nail gun, hissing in pain. The spider skinwalker was howling somewhere nearby, legs smashing through something.

Everything looked the same - gray, foggy twilight engulfing the world. Martin didn't know which way Alexa went. Stricken with rising panic he had to admit to himself that he was indeed an absolute idiot. For all of his earlier posturing and heroic declarations, unlike Alexa, he had no experience with this insane, alien world.

Thumps of something enormous resounded nearby. Martin ran in a random direction, gasping for breath, his heart hammering in his chest. A flaming skinwalker spider skittered in front of him, screeching madly. Its legs stretched out towards Martin, aiming to crush him like a tiny bug. Martin lifted the nail gun, firing. It did absolutely nothing to stop the spider's advance as nails thunked into its abominable dark shell without result. The spider’s finger-claws pincered Martin’s leg, twisting it with a snap. He screamed.

An enormous something came down from the sky. It was a gigantic limb. It plucked the burning spider into the air and few other colossal limbs rushed towards the brilliant chemical fire. The convergence of limbs extinguished the flames with a supersonic boom, crushing the spider into liquid paste.

Martin squealed indignantly as he was wholly drenched in liquified remnants of the spider skinwalker.

"Hollysheet. Well, that never happened before." Alexa landed next to Martin. "You look just like one of…"

Martin coughed, trying to get the foul, black fluid out of his mouth. Alexa looked up and suddenly flung herself forward, slamming into Martin. He whimpered as both of them rolled through the horrid puddle splashing the shiny, black goo all around. Alexa’s hand covered his mouth, silencing him as they both ended up cowering under an island of rusted metal that was once a truck, both of their bodies covered in spider remnants.

A gigantic, grotesque face came down from the sky, searching for its prey. It was dotted with pale, silver eyes that glowed ever so slightly from within. The shawl of human skins slid on the ground close to the two teens who clung to each other, trying to stay still and silent.

The head turned and Martin looked right into a gigantic, pale, shimmering eye that peered right back at him. Martin trembled, expecting to be smashed into human paste. The eye looked right at him -- no, past him! It couldn't see them at all beneath the black, thick gunk. Perhaps the titanic skinwalker thought of them as one of its kind.

The head lifted, vanishing in the somber sky and the thumps of gigantic legs began to move away.

"I can't… believe it. It didn't see us." Martin whispered. Alexa simply nodded, holding a finger to her mouth, telling him to stay silent. She looked like a horror movie victim or perhaps a monster, covered in black, glistening gore head to toe. She scooped a bunch of the black gunk off the ground filling up her empty water bottle. The pair of humans slowly rose and started to walk towards the ruins of their school. Martin was forced to lean on Alexa as one of his legs refused to function. He hoped that it wasn't broken, but it was hurting worse with every step.

“I’m nominating you to explain why we look like this to the teachers.” Alexa whispered to Martin as they limped on 3.5 legs into the decrepit shell of the Saint Mary Middle-School. “Cus I’m way too exhausted from supporting your broken minion ass to make earth-shattering jokes.”